How to value a Pokémon card

Most valuations go wrong in the same place. Someone types a card name into eBay, sees a listing for £400, and takes that as the value. Neither half of that usually holds: it is rarely the same card, and a listing is not a price.

Getting to a number you can rely on takes five steps.

1. Identify the card properly

The name is not enough. The same artwork reappears across sets over the years, and between those printings there are often orders of magnitude. You need two things, both printed at the bottom of the card:

• The card number, usually as a fraction — 4/102. The first figure is the card, the second is the size of the set.
• The set symbol next to it.

The card number is the more reliable anchor. On many cards the set name is not written out at all — what is printed is the series, and a series usually spans several sets. Searching by the text on the card is how people end up pricing the wrong printing.

2. Spot the print variant

Within one set the same card often exists more than once:

• Normal — matte artwork, no shine.
• Holo — the artwork is foiled, the border is not.
• Reverse holo — the other way round: foiled border, matte artwork.

This is not cosmetic. The variants carry their own prices, and the gap between them is routinely a multiple rather than a percentage. On older cards, markers like 1st Edition or Shadowless move the value again.

The language it was printed in counts too. A German and an English copy of the same card are not worth the same — English printings have the larger market, German ones the smaller and, in some sets, the scarcer supply.

3. Read market value, not asking price

Now the distinction that does most of the work:

A listing is a claim. Only a sale is a price.

On Cardmarket the number that matters is the market price, not the cheapest open listing. On eBay you have to actively switch: filter to Sold items. An unfiltered eBay search shows you sellers’ hopes, some of which have been sitting there for months precisely because they are too high.

For Europe, Cardmarket is the better source: the prices are already in euros and do not need converting. For graded cards it flips — sold eBay listings are more meaningful there, because that is where most slab volume happens.

4. Scale for condition

Every market price you read anywhere silently means Near Mint. Your card probably is not. To get its actual value you have to scale the reference price to the condition it is in.

This is the ladder CardBroker prices by internally — Cardmarket’s scale, because that is where the prices come from:

So a card in Good is not “worth a bit less” — it is worth roughly half. And a card you think is Near Mint frequently is not; how to judge that honestly is in the guide to card condition.

5. Sanity-check the number

Before you act on it, check that it holds up:

• Are there enough sales at all? For a card that trades twice a month, each individual sale is the market. Those prices swing, and that is the market rather than a fault.
• Is the price far outside comparable cards from the same set? If so, the identification is usually wrong, not the market.
• Is the card graded? Then compare only against the same grade from the same company. A PSA 9 and a PSA 10 are economically two different cards.

The three mistakes that cost the most

1. The wrong set. By far the most common. Always work from the card number, never from the name.
2. Listing instead of sale. Especially on eBay without the sold-items filter.
3. Ignoring condition. The reference price is for Near Mint. Everything else has to be scaled down.

When it needs to be faster

The method above works for one card. For a binder of two hundred it becomes an evening. That is what the card scanner is for: photograph the card, and the set, number, variant and condition are read out, with the market value and condition factor applied straight away.

Where those prices come from, and where they are thin, is set out openly under where the prices come from.