Pokémon card scanner

How to scan a Pokémon card

1. Lay the card flat on a plain surface, in even light. One card at a time in One card mode.
2. Tap “Take or choose a photo” and fill most of the frame with the card. Make sure the name at the top and the number in the bottom corner are sharp.
3. Read the result. The card, its set and number, and its value. If another card looks the same, the scanner shows both and you tap yours.
4. Carry on. Open the card’s page for the sales behind the price, add it to the tray, or scan the next one.

How to scan a binder page

A binder is slow going one card at a time. Switch the scanner to Binder page and photograph the whole page: it names every card in the pockets and lines them up for you to check. It’s built for a standard 3 by 3 page, and it works on any page where the cards sit in rows.

Photographing the page

• Beat the glare first. The pockets are plastic, and so is any sleeve inside them, so glare is what spoils most page photos. Turn the flash off, move away from the lamp or window behind you, and tilt the page until no pocket is shining.
• Keep the page flat. Lay the binder open on a table. A page that bows bends the cards near the rings.
• Shoot straight on, from above the middle of the page, with every card inside the frame. A card cut off by the edge of the photo can’t be read.
• One page to a photo. Get as close as the page allows. The number in the bottom corner of each card should be readable when you zoom in on your photo.

What happens to the photo

1. The page is read in one go. A full page takes around ten seconds.
2. Every card found is outlined and numbered on your photo, then listed in the same order: left to right, top to bottom. Each row puts the card cut from your photo beside our picture of the match, so you can compare them at a glance.
3. Each card is judged on its own, by the same two checks as a single scan. A card it can’t name, a card with a look-alike reprint, and a card that isn’t English each say so in their row.

The review step

Nothing goes into your collection straight from a photo. Every match is shown to you for review first, and we don’t quote an accuracy figure for binder pages, because we haven’t tested enough pages to give one. On each row you can:

• Fix the card. “Wrong card?” opens the other matches from your photo and a search by name and number.
• Choose the printing where the card has more than one, such as 1st Edition, Shadowless and Unlimited, or a reverse holo. No price is shown until you do, because the printing decides the price.
• Choose the condition: raw, or the grading company and grade for a slab. Nothing is filled in for you. If the whole page is raw, “Set all to” does every row at once, and each row can still be changed.
• Set how many copies, or leave the card out.

A row is ready once it has a card, a printing where one is needed, and a condition. The total at the bottom counts ready rows only. “Add to my collection” adds those and tells you which went in, which didn’t save and why, and which were left out.

Limits and sign-in

Binder pages need an account, because the cards you confirm go into your collection. Each card on the page counts as one scan: a full page of 9 uses 9 of the 60 scans a signed-in collector gets in 24 hours, and a page is only read when there is room left for a full one. Up to 6 pages can be read in 24 hours, and one photo shows up to 20 cards.

How it knows which card it is

Two checks, because one alone gets reprints wrong.

• The picture. The photo is matched against every card’s artwork. That finds the card in most cases, and it’s why a card with a worn or missing number can still be found.
• The name and number printed on the card. The scanner reads the text off your photo. The same artwork is often printed in more than one set, with only the number to tell them apart, so when the number it reads disagrees with the picture match, the number wins.

When neither check is sure, it says so and shows the closest cards. It doesn’t guess. A wrong card means a wrong price, and that’s worse than a question.

How accurate it is

We tested it on 60 photos from real sold listings, cards from every era, on Sep 29, 2026. The first card it named was the right one for 55 of 60 (92%), and the right card was among those it showed for 59. It named a card without asking 37 times and was right every time. For the other 22 it showed the closest matches and asked, and it turned one English card away as non-English by mistake.

The photos were sellers’ own, not clean scans: phone shots on desks and carpets, cards in sleeves, cards on stands. The right answer for each was the card the listing was for, which was checked by a separate title-matching system and not by eye, so a few of the “wrong” answers may be the listing’s fault. It’s a test on 60 cards, not thousands, and we’ll repeat it as the scanner changes.

Where it struggles

• Reprints with the same artwork, when glare or blur hides the number. McDonald’s promos are the usual case.
• Sets with many cards of one name, such as the nine Arceus in the Arceus set.
• Dark or angled photos, where it may find nothing at all.

Where the value comes from

Every price is UltraBall’s own, the same figure you’d see on the card’s page. It’s built from sold listings matched to the exact card, not from what sellers are asking. The first figure is for an ungraded copy in near-mint condition. PSA grades are shown next to it where enough slabs have sold. A played card is worth less than the near-mint figure: the price checker shows what played copies sell for. How we price has the method.

Getting a good scan

• Light from the side, no flash. Flash on a holo wipes out the artwork.
• Fill the frame. A card that’s a small rectangle in a big photo has too few pixels in its number.
• Keep the bottom corner clear. That’s where the number is. Thumbs and card stands tend to cover it.
• One card in One card mode. For a full page, switch to Binder page.
• Hold still. If the name isn’t readable to you in the photo, it isn’t readable to the scanner.

Scanning a pile

In One card mode, each card you confirm can go in the tray at the bottom of the scanner, with a running total. When you’re done, export the tray as a spreadsheet or add it to your collection in one go. Every card is asked for its condition before it’s added, so the total is for the cards you really hold.

You don’t need to scan everything. Most of a pile’s value is in a few cards. How to tell if a card is rare shows which to pull out first.

What it doesn’t do

• It doesn’t judge condition. Use the AI card grader for that.
• It doesn’t authenticate. It can’t tell a fake from a photo.
• It doesn’t price non-English cards, or other card games.
• It doesn’t read a whole binder at once. One page to a photo.

Once you know what you’ve got

• Worth slabbing? The AI card grader estimates the grade, and the grading calculator shows whether the fee pays.
• Selling? The selling calculator shows what’s left after eBay’s and TCGplayer’s fees.
• Keeping? Put it in the collection tracker.
• Scanner stuck? The set symbols chart and the price checker get you there by hand.