Methodology

A card's market price is the median of its hand-verified eBay sold prices over the trailing 90 days. We use the median, not the average, so a single outlier sale can't distort the number.

Flagged or suspicious sales are excluded. When a card has no sales in the last 90 days, we show the last known sale and its date instead of inventing a current price.

Every price is per grader and per grade, and we never merge graders: a PSA 10, a TAG 10, and a BGS 10 are three different markets, priced separately.

Every graded price carries a confidence badge based on how many sales back it in the last 90 days:

• High — 5 or more sales.
• Medium — 2 to 4 sales.
• Low — exactly 1 sale.
• No recent sales — none in 90 days; we show the last known sale with its date.

Two sales is not a market, and we say so — thin data is labeled, never dressed up as authoritative.

Alongside the gross market price we show an estimated net — roughly what a seller keeps after eBay fees: net = gross × (1 − 0.135), about 13.5%.

This is an estimate of eBay's final-value fee, not an exact figure — it doesn't account for shipping, promoted-listing fees, or payment-processing variations, which differ per seller and sale.

The per-card grading calculator estimates the expected value of grading a raw card, for each grader. It weighs every grade by how often that grade actually comes back, using our population data:

expected net = Σ (population share of each grade × net(that grade’s comp))

Each grade keeps its own identity, designation included — a BGS Black Label 10 is a separate outcome from a standard BGS 10, priced separately. This matters because graders have genuinely different shapes: a PSA submission is close to a 10-or-nothing bet, while the most likely BGS result is a 9.5, with the 10 and Black Label sitting above it. The calculator shows the most likely outcome for each grader so you can see that shape rather than assume every grader behaves like PSA.

Both comps and the raw baseline are taken net of ~13.5% eBay fees. Profit is the expected net minus the grading fee minus what you’d net selling the card raw. Grading fees default to each grader’s published service tiers (with turnaround shown) and are editable.

Grades that have never sold carry no comp, so they’re left out and the estimate is rescaled across the grades that do have one — we show what share of the population that covers, so you can see how much of the estimate is grounded in real sales. Where a grader publishes no population report at all (TAG), the calculator falls back to a hand-entered gem-rate estimate over a grade 10 and grade 9, clearly labelled as an estimate. This is a decision aid — not financial advice. Comps are hand-curated, fees change over time, and thin-data comps are flagged.

Raw (ungraded) prices come from TCGplayer market data, refreshed automatically each night.

About TCGplayer Market Price. Market Price is TCGplayer's time-weighted average of completed sales on TCGplayer — not current listings. On fast-moving or rarely-traded cards it can lag the real market by days or weeks. That's why we also show the lowest current listing, and on select high-value cards we log recent ungraded eBay solds under "Raw (ungraded)" so you can see where the card is actually clearing today.

Graded sold prices are researched from eBay sold listings using Terapeak and 130point, then hand-reviewed and verified — matched to the correct grader and grade, English-only, with each sale linked back to its source listing.

Promo cards (Nexus Night, Organized Play / Regional Qualifier, Judge Program) are tracked in the Promos set. Prize Wall and Best of Legend metal versions are always tracked separately — tiers are never merged, same rule as graders. For ultra-rare promos with no TCGplayer market, we record manually-researched eBay sold prices for ungraded copies under a clearly labeled "Raw (ungraded)" tier; these are never mixed with graded prices.

Population counts for PSA and BGS come from GemRate, which mirrors those graders' published population reports, refreshed daily. Counts are always kept per grader and per grade — PSA 10, BGS 10 and BGS Black Label 10 are never combined. We don't currently publish TAG population data, because no reliable automated source for it exists.

We currently track PSA, TAG, and BGS for prices and sales. Population counts are available for PSA and BGS only. CGC and others may be added as their sales volume grows.

To keep the data clean we exclude flagged or suspicious sales, non-English listings, Rune cards, and lots or bundles (which don't reflect a single card's value).

Raw TCGplayer prices refresh nightly. Graded sales are added as they're researched, so the newest comps appear shortly after they close.

Each sale in a card's sales log will have a flag button (coming soon) so you can report a comp that looks wrong. Flagged sales are reviewed and, if valid, excluded from the market price.

Prices are informational and are not financial advice. TCG HQ participates in the eBay Partner Network and the TCGplayer affiliate program (via Impact) and may earn a commission on qualifying purchases made through links on this site.