Guide

How Zard Charts prices work

Every price on Zard Charts answers one question: what does this exact card or product sell for right now, in near-mint condition? Here's where the number comes from, and the rules that stop it from lying to you.

The price: TCGplayer's near-mint market price

For a single card, the price is TCGplayer's near-mint market price for that exact printing, in that card's own language. For sealed product it's the same thing for unopened product. TCGplayer works out a market price from recent completed sales, and Zard Charts reads it from TCGplayer's own price history for that printing and condition.

Two details matter more than they look:

• The exact printing. A Reverse Holo, a Holo, a 1st Edition and an Unlimited copy of the same card are different products with different prices. A plain common can be worth a few dollars while its Reverse Holo is worth a hundred. Zard Charts never borrows one printing's price for another.
• The exact language. A Japanese card is priced from Japanese sales, an English card from English sales.

Why it can differ from the number on TCGplayer's page

TCGplayer's product page shows one headline "Market Price" per printing. On cards that sell often it matches the near-mint price closely. On cards that rarely sell, it can mix every condition together. For example, if the only recent sales were one Lightly Played copy at $150 and one Damaged copy at $55, the headline can land around $85, a price no near-mint copy ever sold for.

So Zard Charts shows the near-mint price, and when TCGplayer's page shows a different number, Check a price tells you so and why. If a printing has no near-mint price at all, Zard Charts shows TCGplayer's headline but labels it all conditions, so you know it isn't a near-mint figure.

Price moves: what "up 20% this week" means

A move compares TCGplayer's near-mint market price at the start of the period with today's. It sounds simple, but TCGplayer's history has a trap: on days when nothing sells, it keeps showing the last market price, and for a printing that has never sold it can show a placeholder. Measure a move from one of those and a single new sale can look like a 1,000% jump that never happened.

The rules Zard Charts uses so that can't happen:

• The "then" price must have been set by a real sale. If nothing had sold yet at the start of the period, the move starts from the first day something did, or there's no move at all.
• A move needs a sale after it starts. A price that just sat there isn't a move.
• Lists need volume. The weekly gainers and drops need at least 6 near-mint sales in the week (3 for sealed), the monthly ones at least 12 (6 for sealed).
• Spikes are labelled as spikes. A big jump on one or two sales can be real, but it's shown with its sale count so you can judge it. A 10x jump on a single sale is never counted as a move.
• One move, every page. The home page, Top lists, Check a price and the share cards all read the same move from the same history, so the same card never shows two different percentages.

Last sold, sale counts and the 90-day range

When you check a price you also see the last near-mint sale, how many near-mint copies TCGplayer counted as sold in the last 30 and 90 days, and the latest sales of that printing in every condition, each labelled (NM, LP, MP, HP, DMG). If nothing near mint sold in 90 days, you'll see when it last did and for how much. The 90-day high and low are TCGplayer's near-mint market price at its highest and lowest, not one-off sales that can be mislabelled or bundled.

Things a price is not

• A lowest listing is an asking price. When something has never sold, Zard Charts may show the cheapest listing, labelled as an asking price. It's never used as a sale or as the end point of a price move.
• Graded prices are separate. TCGplayer prices are for raw cards. PSA prices come from their own sales feed.
• A failed lookup says so. If TCGplayer can't be reached, you'll be told, never shown "no sales" or $0.

Check a price →