UltraBall Research · Report
Auction or Buy It Now? What 900,000 Pokémon card sales say about how to sell
The same card in the same grade sold for a quarter less at auction than at a fixed price. The gap is widest on cheap cards and nearly closes above $2,500, and ending an auction on a Sunday made no difference to the price.
Published Oct 15, 2026 · 902,964 verified eBay US sales, 15 July to 12 October 2026
Key findings
- Across 10,311 cards that sold at least three times each way, the same card in the same grade sold for a median 24.8% less at auction than at a fixed Buy It Now price. Only 8.9% of them did as well or better at auction.
- With condition held fixed by a grading slab, the gap is 14.9%, and it is nearly the same at every PSA grade from 6 to 10 (13.5% to 16.0%). Ungraded cards show 30.3%, which may include differences in the condition of the copies sent to auction.
- The cheaper the card, the bigger the gap: 35.3% under $25, falling to 5.5% above $2,500, where auctions matched or beat Buy It Now for 32.5% of cards.
- Auctions made up 19.9% of sales but only 4.7% of the listings live on eBay on Oct 14, 2026. Sellers use them more as prices rise: 14.6% of sales under $25 against 36.3% above $2,500.
- Sunday is the busiest day for auctions to end (25.6% of them, 2.2 times an average weekday), but ending on a Sunday did not raise the price: the same card sold for a median 1.00× at a Sunday auction against its auctions on other days.
- Auction vs Buy It Now
- −24.8%
- median of 10,311 cards, same grade
- Graded slabs
- −14.9%
- 2,732 cards
- Cards under $25
- −35.3%
- 5,527 cards
- Cards over $2,500
- −5.5%
- 123 cards
The same card, a quarter cheaper at auction
Comparing every auction with every fixed-price sale would mostly compare different cards: auctions lean towards some cards and fixed prices towards others. So this report pairs like with like. For each card, printing and grade that sold at least three times at auction and three times at a fixed price from Jul 15, 2026 to Oct 12, 2026, it takes the median price of each, divides the auction median by the Buy It Now median, and then takes the median across all 10,311 cards. A 1st Edition copy is never set against an Unlimited one, and a PSA 9 never against a PSA 10.
The result is a median auction price 24.8% below Buy It Now. Half of all cards sit between 58.9% and 87.2% of their Buy It Now price at auction; fewer than one in ten (8.9%) reached it. Measured another way, against UltraBall’s own price for each exact copy on the day it sold, the median auction cleared at 80.6% and the median Buy It Now sale at 102.2%.
| Group | Cards | Auction vs Buy It Now | Middle half (auction ÷ BIN) | Auction at or above BIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All cards | 10,311 | −24.8% | 58.9% to 87.2% | 8.9% |
| Ungraded | 7,579 | −30.3% | 54.2% to 83.3% | 8.8% |
| Graded | 2,732 | −14.9% | 77.0% to 91.7% | 9.1% |
| PSA 10 | 1,097 | −13.9% | 78.7% to 91.7% | 5.0% |
| PSA 9 | 970 | −16.0% | 75.5% to 90.5% | 10.3% |
| PSA 8 | 407 | −15.7% | 74.8% to 92.8% | 12.3% |
| PSA 7 | 152 | −14.9% | 75.6% to 93.3% | 10.5% |
| PSA 6 | 67 | −13.5% | 75.4% to 94.4% | 20.9% |
Graded slabs are the cleanest test, because the grade fixes the condition: a PSA 9 sold at auction is the same object as a PSA 9 sold at a fixed price. Their gap is 14.9%, and it barely moves between grades. Ungraded cards show a wider gap (30.3%), and some of that is not the format at all: the sale records carry no condition for an ungraded card, so if worn copies go to auction more often than to fixed-price listings, part of the gap is condition. Read the ungraded figure as an upper bound on what the format costs, and the graded figure as the format alone.
The cheaper the card, the bigger the gap
- Under $2564.7%5,527 cards
- $25–10081.8%2,334 cards
- $100–50084.7%1,777 cards
- $500–2,50088.4%550 cards
- $2,500+94.5%123 cards
- Graded, all prices85.1%2,732 cards
Under $25 a card fetched 64.7% of its Buy It Now price at auction, a gap of 35.3%. Above $2,500 the gap was 5.5%, and for 32.5% of those cards the auctions did as well as or better than the fixed-price sales. Two things are likely at work. A low-priced auction draws few bidders. And the prices here are item prices before postage: a cheap Buy It Now listing with free postage carries the postage inside its price, while an auction that charges postage on top shows a lower item price for the same total. At the top of the market, a well-watched auction brings competing bidders who will pay up.
| Buy It Now price | Cards | Auction vs Buy It Now | Middle half (auction ÷ BIN) | Auction at or above BIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $25 | 5,527 | −35.3% | 50.3% to 77.6% | 6.9% |
| $25–100 | 2,334 | −18.2% | 73.1% to 89.5% | 9.8% |
| $100–500 | 1,777 | −15.3% | 76.0% to 91.4% | 10.0% |
| $500–2,500 | 550 | −11.6% | 77.4% to 95.2% | 16.7% |
| $2,500+ | 123 | −5.5% | 83.6% to 106.3% | 32.5% |
Who sells at auction
Of 902,964 verified sales in the window, 56.7% were at a fixed Buy It Now price, 23.2% were Buy It Now listings where the seller took an offer, and 19.9% were auctions. Auctions are a far smaller share of what is for sale at any moment: of 180,279 listings UltraBall matched to a card on Oct 14, 2026, 8,391 (4.7%) were auctions. An auction runs for a week at most, while a fixed-price listing can wait for weeks, so a share of sales and a share of listings measure different things and both are true.
- Under $2514.6%574,112 sales
- $25–10027.4%187,355 sales
- $100–50030.6%108,541 sales
- $500–2,50032.9%27,287 sales
- $2,500+36.3%5,669 sales
Sellers turn to auctions more as the card gets more valuable, which matches where auctions price closest to Buy It Now.
Does ending on a Sunday help?
Sunday is when auctions end: 25.6% of the 179,381 auctions in the window closed on a Sunday, 2.2 times an average weekday. On the raw averages Sunday also looks like the best day, with auctions clearing at 82.8% of UltraBall’s price against 77.8% on Mondays.
That difference is about which cards end on Sundays, not about Sunday. Comparing each card’s Sunday auctions with its own auctions on other days (4,435 cards with at least three of each), the Sunday median was 1.00× the other-day median, and the Sunday auctions came out ahead for only 51.8% of cards: a coin toss. What does differ is the mix: the median card at a Sunday auction was priced at $37.64 against $26.22 on other days, and 30.2% of Sunday auctions were of cards priced at $100 or more against 22.8%. Sellers of more valuable cards favour a Sunday finish, and valuable cards clear closer to their price at auction, which lifts the Sunday average without any card selling for more.
| Day the auction ended | Auctions | Share | Median vs UltraBall price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 22,947 | 12.8% | 77.8% |
| Tuesday | 22,023 | 12.3% | 80.2% |
| Wednesday | 22,897 | 12.8% | 81.6% |
| Thursday | 20,860 | 11.6% | 79.1% |
| Friday | 17,819 | 9.9% | 79.5% |
| Saturday | 26,993 | 15.0% | 80.5% |
| Sunday | 45,842 | 25.6% | 82.8% |
Every era, the same story
The gap is not an artefact of new releases or of vintage cards. It holds in every era of the game with enough cards to measure:
| Era | Cards | Auction vs Buy It Now | Middle half (auction ÷ BIN) | Auction at or above BIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scarlet & Violet | 1,968 | −23.5% | 63.2% to 85.2% | 2.9% |
| Wizards of the Coast | 1,814 | −23.5% | 59.2% to 89.2% | 11.9% |
| Sword & Shield | 1,545 | −27.9% | 56.3% to 84.4% | 3.4% |
| Sun & Moon | 1,185 | −24.5% | 59.9% to 88.1% | 6.1% |
| EX | 1,039 | −22.1% | 61.0% to 97.0% | 22.4% |
| XY | 859 | −25.7% | 58.1% to 87.7% | 8.8% |
| Mega Evolution | 854 | −24.7% | 61.1% to 84.5% | 4.7% |
| Black & White | 329 | −33.0% | 49.1% to 86.7% | 13.4% |
| Diamond & Pearl | 317 | −28.1% | 56.2% to 89.7% | 18.0% |
| HeartGold & SoulSilver | 209 | −25.0% | 56.1% to 95.0% | 19.6% |
| Platinum | 192 | −25.2% | 55.7% to 90.2% | 15.1% |
What it means for a seller
On these figures, a fixed price set near the market has sold for more than an auction of the same card in nine cases out of ten, and by the most on cheaper cards, where postage and thin bidding weigh most. The exception is the top of the market, where a third of cards above $2,500 did at least as well at auction. Timing an auction to end on a Sunday puts it in front of the most buyers but, card for card, did not raise the price. These are readings of past sales, not advice: a fixed price that is too high does not sell at all, and this report measures only what did sell.
How this was worked out, and its limits
Data. UltraBall’s sold ledger: eBay US sales of English Pokémon cards dated Jul 15, 2026 to Oct 12, 2026, each matched by UltraBall’s exact-card matcher to the card, printing, grade and language and verified. Sales flagged as far outside the copy’s usual price are left out. Each sale carries the format eBay reported and UltraBall’s price for that exact copy on the day it sold. Prices are item prices before postage.
Pairs. A card counts when its card, printing and grade had at least three auction sales and three Buy It Now sales in the window. Its figure is the auction median divided by the Buy It Now median; the headline is the median of those figures across cards, so a card counts once however often it sold. Price bands use the Buy It Now median. Buy It Now listings where the seller accepted an offer are left out of the pairs because eBay shows the asking price, not the price paid.
Sunday. A card counts when it had at least three auctions ending on a Sunday and three ending on other days; the figure is the ratio of the two medians. Days are the sale dates eBay reports.
Limits. The ledger was not collecting on 20 of the 90 days (15 to 19 July, 24 and 25 July, and 19 to 31 August 2026), so the window holds 70 days of sales; every comparison here is within the same window, so the gap is unaffected, but the sales totals are not a full 90 days. Only cards that sold both ways three times are in the pairs, which leaves out the rarest cards. Ungraded condition is not recorded. Live listings are those UltraBall matched to a card, not all of eBay. The full definitions are on the methodology page; the same comparison, updated hourly, is on the Auction vs Buy It Now data page.
The figures in this report are fixed as published. For the latest readings see the live data; every term is defined on the methodology page.