Valuing a sports card
A card does not have a price. It has a range of prices that people have recently paid, and a wider range that people are currently asking. Almost every disagreement about what a card is worth turns out to be one person quoting the first number and another quoting the second.
These posts cover the working method: finding sales of the same card rather than a similar one, reading a spread instead of an average, knowing when there are too few sales to say anything at all, and what to do when the only comparable sales are from a different market. The full method is in how to price a sports card.
Start here
How to price a sports card
The method underneath everything else on this site: find comparable sales, discard the ones that are not comparable, and read what is left.
Everything on this topic
- 1 min
Why your card is worth less than the listings say
The gap between the listings and the sales is not pessimism. It is arithmetic.
- 1 min
Price guides versus real sales
Where guide numbers come from, and why they disagree with what you can actually get.
- 1 min
How often do card prices change?
Some cards reprice in an afternoon. Others have not moved in three years.
- 1 min
How to value a whole collection
Valuing five hundred cards is not valuing one card five hundred times.
- 1 min
Best Offer sales and hidden prices
Some sold listings show a price that nobody paid. Here is how to spot them.
- 1 min
Does postage count in a card value?
A small question that quietly distorts every comparison if you answer it inconsistently.
- 1 min
Valuing a card with no recent sales
Sometimes the search comes back empty. That is an answer too, and here is how to work with it.
- 2 min
What is my sports card worth?
The question everyone starts with, and the method that answers it in about five minutes.
- 1 min
How to check eBay sold listings for cards
Two clicks most people never find, and the filtering that has to happen after them.
- 2 min
Why the same card sells for different prices
Two sales of the same card, weeks apart, at very different prices. Usually one of six things.