Where prices come from

We price a card game card from TCGplayer and a sports card from eBay, and a graded card usually needs a price from you.

A card game card is priced from the TCGplayer market price for its printing. A sports card is priced from the current eBay listings for the same card, with a discount, because a listing is not a sale.

The two markets do not agree. Under about $5 a card usually fetches more on eBay. Over about $25 it usually fetches more on TCGplayer.

Why card games use TCGplayer

TCGplayer holds one price for each printing of a card.

An eBay title does not say which printing sold, so a Reverse Holo and a Non-Holo land in the same pile. The middle of that pile is neither card.

It is also instant. We hold the table, so a 250-card batch prices as fast as it reads. Japanese cards are priced from the Japanese table, which has its own price per printing.

When we look at eBay

TCGplayer sells no sports cards and no slabs, so those are priced from the current eBay listings for the same card. A graded card counts only listings of the same slab at the same grade.

• We drop slabs when your card is raw, and we drop raw copies when your card is in a slab.
• We drop anything whose title names a different card number.
• We drop anything more than 2.5 times away from the middle of the prices.
• We drop the single highest and the single lowest, so one lucky auction cannot set your price.

When a card has no price

When there is nothing to price from, the card gets no price and says so. It never falls back to a guess.

You have two ways out. Type a list price yourself, or press Open on eBay or Search Google and price the card from what you see there.