How CardPrice prices Pokémon cards

Every number on this site can be traced to real market activity. This page explains exactly where our data comes from, how often it updates, and what we do to keep bad data out.

Raw card prices

The headline price on every card page is the current market price for an ungraded, near-mint copy. We sync it nightly from TCGplayer market data — the largest trading card marketplace in North America — for every printing we track separately: Unlimited, 1st Edition, Shadowless, Reverse Holo, and so on. When a card has multiple printings, each gets its own price and its own history chart.

Why you won’t see a $60,000 common here

Thinly traded cards are where most price sites go wrong. When only one seller lists a card, their asking price — however unrealistic — can become “the market price”. We guard against that: every raw price is sanity-checked against two independent ceilings — the card’s own current graded values, and its sales-verified ungraded price built from completed transactions. If a lone listing blows past what real sales support, we show the sales-backed number instead. During one audit this correction fixed over 1,100 Japanese cards, including a “$60,000” trainer card whose actual sold price was $67.99.

Graded values & population

PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC values come from completed-sale data per grade, refreshed weekly across the catalog and daily for actively traded cards. Population counts — how many copies exist at each grade — come from the grading companies’ published census data, refreshed monthly. Together they answer the question collectors actually have: is this card worth grading?

Japanese cards

Japanese sets are tracked as first-class citizens with their own catalogs, numbering, and prices — a Japanese card’s value is never inferred from its English counterpart, because the two markets move independently.

Update cadence

Citing CardPrice

Prices on card pages are timestamped and free to reference with attribution — link to the card page you’re citing, since values change nightly. For bulk or commercial data use, get in touch.

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