Why your card is worth less than the listings say

Search a card and the listings show £120. Filter to sold and the sales show £70. Nothing is wrong with either page. They are measuring different things, and the gap between them widens on its own without the market moving at all.

Why the gap grows by itself

Cards priced near the market sell and leave the list. Cards priced optimistically stay, get relisted, and stay again. Over time the surviving listings are increasingly the ones nobody would buy, so the average asking price rises even as the real market sits still.

The longer a listing has been up, the more it is evidence that nobody will pay that.

The other two reasons

• Anchoring. A seller who lists high with offers enabled expects to accept less. The visible price is a negotiating position.
• Fees. A seller pricing to receive £70 lists above it, because the platform takes its share of the headline figure.

How to read the listings page anyway

It is not useless, it is answering a different question. The count of active listings tells you about supply and about how quickly you could sell. If forty are listed and two have sold in three months, that is a real and important fact about your card that no sold comp will tell you.

Use listings for liquidity and sold comps for price. The distinction is the whole subject of sold prices versus asking prices, and the method that uses both properly is in how to price a sports card.