How to Check a Pokemon Card's Value From Sold Listings

Sold listings are the best way I know to judge whether a price is fair. I also look at the Collectr app and TCGplayer. Here is the method, step by step. There are no prices in it on purpose. Prices move, and a number copied from an article is already old by the time you read it.

Sold prices, not asking prices

A live listing shows what a seller wants. A sold listing shows what a buyer paid. Only the second one tells you anything about the market, so skip asking prices when you judge a deal.

TCGplayer makes the same point about its own marketplace. Its help center says the median of listed prices can differ significantly from what people actually pay, especially on older products with few copies for sale. A sale you can compare against is called a comp (see Comp (comparable sale)).

How to see sold listings on eBay

On a computer:

1. Search for the card by name, set and card number (the search itself is covered in How to Search eBay for a Specific Pokemon Card).

2. In the filters on the left of the results, near the bottom, tick Sold items.

3. Sort the results so the most recent sales come first.

You can also start from eBay's Advanced Search page, which has Sold items and Completed items boxes. Tick Sold, not Completed. Completed also includes listings that ended without selling, and those tell you nothing about what a buyer paid.

In the eBay app, open Filters at the top left, scroll down a little and tap Show more, then scroll down to Sold items.

Two things catch people out:

• You need to be signed in. eBay sends a signed-out visitor to its sign-in page instead of showing sold results, so sign in before you search.

• The sold search is recent only. eBay's community mentors put it at about 90 days. Sellers with access to Seller Hub also get eBay's Product research tool, which eBay says covers the last 3 years of sales.

Match the exact card

Most bad comps come from comparing the wrong card. Before a sale counts, it has to match on every line of this table.

The holo trap is an easy one to fall into. I once bought a non-holo Jungle Vaporeon thinking it was the holo (the full story). The holo is 12/64 and the non-holo is 28/64, so their sold listings are two different searches.

So open each sold listing and read its photos, not only its title. Sellers write the titles, and a title that says "holo" or "PSA 10" can be wrong.

Best Offer sales hide the real price

Card listings can accept offers. eBay's help explains that with Best Offer, the seller can accept, decline or counter the buyer's offer. The catch is that the sold results don't show the accepted amount.

On eBay's community forum, members describe the usual display: an accepted offer shows the original price crossed out. Members have also reported sales that went through on an offer with no crossed-out price at all, so the listed price appeared as if it were the sale price. I've seen that myself: a sold PSA slab marked "or Best Offer" showed its full price in green, with nothing crossed out, so there was no way to tell from the page whether an offer was taken.

So if a sold listing offered Best Offer, assume the price shown may be higher than what the buyer paid. Treat it as a ceiling, not a comp, and lean on auction results and fixed-price sales without offers.

Drop the outliers

Once you have only matching sales, line them up by date and look at where most of them cluster. One result far above or below the others needs a reason before you count it. Open it and ask:

• Is it really the same card, number and print?

• Does the condition in the photos match the others?

• Was it a lot, or a card with extras?

• Is it much older than the rest?

If you can't find a reason, keep it in view but don't build your price on it. One sale is a data point, not a price.

Other tools, and what they measure

Price tools are built from sales, but each one counts different sales. Before you trust a figure, know whose sales it is built from.

• TCGplayer shows a Market Price on its product pages. Its help center says the Market Price is compiled from recent sales completed on TCGplayer.com, and that it follows the printing and condition filters you pick. TCGplayer's marketplace lists cards from Near Mint to Damaged.

• Collectr is an app for cataloging a collection and tracking its value, with card scanning. It says its values are updated daily from real sales data. Its home page does not say which marketplaces those sales come from.

• eBay Product research (Terapeak) is eBay's research tool for sellers in Seller Hub, with average sold prices and sold price ranges.

I look at Collectr and TCGplayer alongside eBay's sold listings. When they disagree, I go with eBay's sold listings for the exact card and grade: to me they're the best picture of supply and demand. So when two tools disagree, go back to the sold listings.

A checklist before you set your price

Run through this before you settle on a number.

• Signed in to eBay, Sold items filter on, newest first

• Same set and card number in every sale you count

• Same print, foil and language

• Same grader and grade, or the same raw condition

• Single cards only, no lots

• Best Offer sales treated as a ceiling

• Outliers opened and explained, or set aside

• Several recent sales, with their dates noted

ChaseBoard does not show sold prices. Each card tile has a Sold link that opens eBay's own sold search for that card, so you can run this check, then set the price range your watch alerts on.