How UltraBall prices Pokémon cards

Where the sales data comes from

Sales are public completed listings: eBay sold listings, Fanatics Collect and Goldin auction results, and a small number of other marketplaces. Each sale is recorded with its date, price, listing title, the grader and grade if it was a slab, and the listing’s own photo where the marketplace provides one. Asking prices are recorded separately and never treated as a sale.

Only English-language cards are covered. Japanese and other language cards are a different market and are left out of every count and price on the site.

How sales are matched to cards

A sale is matched to a card by its set, name and collector number. Before it counts, listings that don’t describe a single copy of that card are dropped: lots and bundles, several copies at once, proxies and custom cards, digital codes, non-English cards, and slabs listed under an ungraded price. A title that names a different card number, or a different set size, is treated as a different card and dropped too.

Some mismatches still get through. That is why every price rests on many sales rather than one, and why a card page shows the recent sales behind its number, so you can see the evidence rather than take our word for it.

How printings and variants are kept apart

1st Edition and Shadowless printings of the Wizards of the Coast era are separate entities with their own pages, their own sales and their own prices. The main card page is the Unlimited print. A sale is assigned to a printing from its listing title, and a printing is only priced when it has at least three of its own sales in the window.

Reverse holo sales are never mixed into a card’s price or sales list; they are a different market object and are left out until reverse holos have pages of their own. Where a modern card has several marketplace printings (holo, reverse holo, non-holo), the card page lists them separately.

How ungraded prices are calculated

An ungraded price is for a single, near-mint English copy. It combines recent completed sales with current marketplace prices, weighted towards sales, and sales of played copies (listed as lightly, moderately or heavily played, or damaged) are left out, because they sell for less than a near-mint copy and would drag the figure below what a clean card fetches. A listing is what a seller hopes for; a sale is what a buyer paid. Alongside the price, the card page shows how many ungraded copies sold in the last 90 days in every condition, and the median of the near-mint ones, so the market price can be checked against like-for-like sales.

If a card’s marketplace price sits more than three times above what it has actually sold for ungraded, and it has at least five ungraded sales in 90 days, the median of those sales is shown instead and the price is marked as a median recent sale. Condition matters: a played copy sells for less than the near-mint figure. The Espeon ☆ (POP Series 5) page shows all of this in one place.

How graded cards are handled

Graded prices come from sales of slabbed copies at that exact grader and grade. A PSA 10 and a PSA 9 are different markets and are priced separately, and PSA, CGC, BGS, SGC and TAG slabs are never mixed. A grade is only shown when there is evidence for it: a missing grade means too few sales, not a worthless card. Sales counts on a grade row count only that grade.

Rankings such as the most valuable cards are ordered by ungraded value only. Graded values are shown alongside, but a single gem-mint slab never moves a card up the list.

How outliers are identified

A recorded sale that sits below a third of, or above 3 times, the market price for its grade is marked as an unusual price on the card page and is never used as a card’s last sale. These are usually a different card, a different printing, or a mislabelled listing. Record sales are only listed when they sit within half and twice the card’s price at that grade, so a listing ask recorded as a sale cannot become a record.

On price history, a single day more than 40% below or 67% above its neighbours is dropped, and a short run at 2.5× or more that snaps back is treated as the feed reporting another printing and removed.

What Market Price means

Market Price is our estimate of what one copy in that condition sells for today, given the recent sales and current listings. It is not the last sale, not the cheapest listing, and not an offer to buy or sell. The typical range beside it is where most recent sales fell. Two cards with the same Market Price can be very different to sell, which is what the confidence and liquidity marks are for.

What Price Confidence means

Confidence describes the evidence behind a price, not the card. It combines the source’s own confidence band with the number of sales in that exact condition over the last 90 days and how tightly they agree. Tap the mark on any price to see the facts behind it: qualifying sales, sales in the last 90 days, the typical range, and when the last sale was.

• High. Many recent comparable sales that agree closely.Many recent comparable sales that agree closely.
• Medium. Some recent sales, or sales that vary more than usual.Some recent sales, or sales that vary more than usual.
• Low. Few recent sales in this condition. Treat the figure as a rough guide.Few recent sales in this condition. Treat the figure as a rough guide.

Thirty or more sales in a condition in 90 days lifts a price to at least medium confidence; a hundred or more with a tight range lifts it to high. A price whose typical range is wider than the price itself is never high, and a graded price with fewer than three sales behind it is always low. When the last recorded sale is more than a year old the mark reads “stale evidence” instead.

What Liquidity means

A card can be worth $4,000 and still take months to sell. Liquidity says how easily a card sells in one condition. It is scored out of 100 from three inputs, all taken from that condition’s own sales: how many sold in the last 90 days (up to 60 points, on a curve where one a month scores about 12 and thirty a month scores 60), how recently the last one sold (up to 25 points), and how tightly sale prices agree (up to 15 points). Sixty-five and above is high, thirty-five to sixty-four medium, below that low.

• High liquidity. HighSells often at prices that agree. A fair listing should find a buyer quickly.
• Medium liquidity. MediumSells regularly, but expect some wait or some spread between sale prices.
• Low liquidity. LowFew recent sales in this condition. Selling may take time and the price is less certain.
• No recent sales. No salesNo recorded sales in this condition, so we cannot say how easily it sells.

We do not hold live listing counts or bid and ask prices, so those are not part of the score yet. Where a condition has no recorded sales, no score is shown rather than a guess.

Price changes, history and the market index

Older history is recorded as monthly averages and recent history as daily prices. A four-week change compares today’s price with the same condition’s own line four weeks ago, and is only shown when both points sit in the daily record; a change never spans the join between the monthly and daily measures, and never crosses a fivefold jump caused by the feed reporting another printing. On the chart, daily prices are shown as a 7-day average so a single unusual day does not swing the line.

The market page indices are the four-week move of a basket holding one of each of the 100 most valuable ungraded cards in a group, so a $10,000 card moves the index more than a $10 one. Biggest movers lists are limited to cards worth $100 or more with at least 5 ungraded sales in 90 days, so a move rests on real trading. The long-run Pokémon card index is chain-linked monthly and rebased to 100.

How often prices update and how stale data is handled

Prices, sales and history are rebuilt once a day; the dates at the top of this page and in the footer say exactly when. Nothing on the site is real-time. A card that has not sold in over a year keeps its last price but its confidence mark reads “stale evidence”, and its last-sale date is shown so you can judge the age of the number yourself.

Prices are recorded in US dollars. Other currencies use the European Central Bank reference rate from Sep 29, 2026: a converted price is the US market value in your currency, not a local market price, which can differ because of shipping, fees and supply.

Reporting a wrong price

If a price looks wrong, first check the recent sales on the card page: they are the evidence behind the number, and a mismatched listing is the most common cause. To report a card whose sales are being matched wrongly, a missing printing, or a price that has gone stale, email hello@ultraball.com with the card page’s address. Reports are reviewed by hand and fixes ship with the next daily update. UltraBall does not buy or sell cards, and no price here is an offer; see about UltraBall for how the site is funded.