Card price sites compared: what each one measures
Which sales Card Ladder, eBay's Price Guide, TCGplayer, Collectr and CollX build their prices from, which statistic they use, and how often each updates.
By the Rip.fan Editorial Team.
Published 8 min read
Every card price site turns a pile of sales into one number, and each does it its own way. Card Ladder takes the newest sale it trusts and moves it with an index. eBay’s Price Guide reports the median of eBay sales, counting accepted Best Offer prices. TCGplayer averages recent sales on its own site, and apps such as Collectr and CollX blend data from several marketplaces. So the same card can show three different prices on the same day, each one right by its own method. Knowing which sales and which statistic sit behind a figure tells you when to trust it.
What does each price source measure?
| Source | Built from | Number shown | How far back, how often | Covers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Card Ladder | Sales from more than 30 listed platforms, plus private sales its Pro members submit | CL Value: the newest trusted sale, moved by an index | For a slab without a Ladder profile, the last 6 months (3 if it sold more than 10 times); the value moves daily with the index | Raw cards, sealed boxes and slabs from PSA, BGS, BVG, SGC, CGC and CSG |
| eBay Price Guide | Completed eBay sales, matched to the same card and grade where possible | Median sold price, using accepted Best Offer prices | Up to two years; updated every 24 hours | Raw and graded cards, US only |
| TCGplayer Market Price | Recent sales completed on TCGplayer | An average of recent sales, with outliers ignored | No window on its Market Price pages; updated as sales complete | Each printing and condition you filter for |
| Collectr | TCGplayer, eBay, Cardmarket and possibly other markets, by product | A price per product, with raw and graded comps | Refreshed every 1 to 2 days; up to 5+ years of history with Pro | Cards and sealed product across many TCGs |
| CollX | Public sales from several auction and marketplace sites | The median of the last 10 sales | A six-month window; updated daily | Any condition or grade you set |
| Rip.fan card pages | A weekly read of market prices | NM market price, plus low and market figures by raw condition where a price exists | Weekly, each page dated | English Pokémon cards, raw only |
Card Ladder is the only one here that scales an older sale of a card with an index.
How does Card Ladder work out a value?
Card Ladder, which PSA’s parent company Collectors Universe bought in December 2021, sorts cards into two groups.
Cards on its Ladder. Its research team reviews every sale of these cards. For them, CL Value is the last sold price scaled by how far the player’s or character’s index has moved since that sale.
Graded cards without a Ladder profile. Here the sales get less review, so Card Ladder adds safeguards:
- Pin down the exact card, grade and grading company. That trio is treated as one item.
- Gather up to 1,000 of its sales and drop any from flagged sellers.
- Keep the sales from the last six months, or the last three if there were more than 10 in six months.
- If more than three remain, keep the newest 25 and remove unusually high or low prices with a standard outlier rule based on the range between the 25th and 75th percentile prices.
- Take the newest sale left standing. If it is under two weeks old, that sale is the CL Value.
- If it is older, scale it by the index. Card Ladder looks for a player or character index first, then a category index such as Pokémon or Magic, and falls back to its CL50 index. It skips the value if the index lacks a data point within 60 days of the sale or of today.
Take a made-up example. A slab’s newest clean sale was $200, six weeks ago, when the player’s index stood at 500. The index now reads 550, a rise of 10%. The CL Value is $200 times 550 divided by 500, or $220, with no new sale of that card.
Each CL Value also carries a confidence rating from 1 to 5, higher when the last sale is recent. In February 2023, Card Ladder said it publishes a daily list of sales it is holding back for more checks and watches auctions for signs of shill bidding. It also said that, for cards that sell often, only auction results had been added, with no Buy It Now or Best Offer sales, and that those charts say “Auctions only.”
Card Ladder gives two counts for its reach: more than 30 selling platforms, from eBay and Goldin to Heritage, and 22 marketplaces.
CL Value follows the most recent clean sale, not the middle of many. For a card that rarely sells, the index does most of the work. Look at the sales behind the value before you rely on it. Our guide to market, listed and sold prices shows how one rip site uses Card Ladder’s figure to set a selling fee.
What does eBay’s Price Guide show?
eBay’s Price Guide is free and works in the US only. Open the eBay app, choose Scan cards under My eBay, and photograph the front of a raw or graded card. You can also tap See insights on a card’s listing page, or open My Collection on a desktop.
The guide is built from completed eBay sales, matched to the identical card and to its grade where one is on record. Its median sold price uses the accepted Best Offer price, which can be below the price on the listing. The data covers up to two years and updates every 24 hours, so it won’t show a move from this morning.
The guide adds PSA and CGC population reports and Card Ladder indexes for context. Its coverage is strongest for sports cards and the most popular TCGs, including One Piece, Disney Lorcana, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic: The Gathering, and Pokémon in English and Japanese.
eBay has two other ways in. Its completed listings search reaches back 90 days. Product research, for sellers with Seller Hub, covers three years and shows the actual price when a Best Offer was accepted. Our guide on how to find what a card sold for walks through both.
Where do TCGplayer and the apps get their prices?
TCGplayer. Market Price averages several recent sales on TCGplayer and ignores outliers. It updates as sales complete and follows the printing and condition filters on the product page. Its volatility rating looks at 30 days and counts an order of several copies as one data point.
Collectr. The source depends on the product: TCGplayer, eBay, Cardmarket and possibly other secondary markets. It gives two refresh rates: every 1 to 2 days for product prices, and daily for cards and sealed products. Its price guide shows raw and graded comps with population reports, and PRO adds up to 5+ years of history. On October 11, 2026, PRO cost $7.99 a month or $59.99 a year, a price Collectr called reduced for a limited time.
CollX. It gathers public sales from several auction and marketplace sites and updates daily. A card’s figure is the median of its last 10 sales within six months. With no sales in that window, CollX shows the last known sale. With none at all, it estimates from comps for other cards in the set and for the same player, adjusted for rookie, autograph and parallel versions. One quirk: it calls the figure both an average and a median.
Ludex. The Ludex Estimate is a range built from recent eBay sales, updated once a day, though elsewhere it names eBay and other marketplaces.
Our comparison of card scanner apps covers what each app identifies and what it costs.
Why do two sites show different prices for the same card?
Run through these five differences before you decide one site is wrong:
- Which sales. TCGplayer counts only TCGplayer sales, and the Price Guide’s sales come mainly from eBay. Card Ladder draws on many auction houses, and Collectr mixes sources by product.
- Which statistic. Card Ladder uses the newest clean sale, eBay and CollX a median, and TCGplayer an average with outliers removed.
- Which moment. An index can move a CL Value between sales. The other methods start from sales data, and CollX adds an estimate from comps when a card has no known sale.
- How fresh. TCGplayer updates as each sale completes. eBay’s Price Guide, CollX and Ludex update daily, Collectr every 1 to 2 days, and Rip.fan weekly.
- Which version. A different grade, grader, printing or condition is a different item, and not every tool matches them as tightly.
Which number should you use?
| Job | Start with | Cross-check with |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing a raw TCG single | TCGplayer Market Price for the exact printing and condition | eBay sold listings |
| Pricing a graded card | Recent sales of the same grade and grader, from eBay or Card Ladder’s sales history | CL Value |
| A card with few sales | Individual sold listings, read one by one | Any model value, as a rough guide only |
| Checking an app’s figure | The app’s own list of recent sales | A second source |
| A quick look at a raw English Pokémon card | Rip.fan’s card price lookup | Recent sold listings |
Comps means recent sales of the same card in the same condition or grade, and a market price is one built from completed sales.
Where do Rip.fan’s prices fit?
Each week Rip.fan checks the NM market price for all English Pokémon cards. The card price lookup finds a card by name, set or number, and a card’s own page, where it has one, shows low and market figures by raw condition and printing, with the date checked. The figures do not include graded cards, which sell at different prices. Browse from the Pokémon card prices index, or see the biggest changes between weekly checks on the movers page. These price pages cover English Pokémon cards only.
Frequently asked questions
Is Card Ladder free?
Partly. The free plan includes price guide searches, indexes and a daily recap of verified sales. CL Value, the full sales history and collection estimates need Card Ladder Pro, which costs $20 a month or $200 a year.
How do you find raw cards on Card Ladder?
Add the word Raw to the end of a search to see the Ladder cards Card Ladder tracks in raw condition. On a card's profile, the condition menu tells you whether a raw version is tracked.
Which auction houses does Card Ladder take sales from?
Besides eBay, Goldin and Heritage, Card Ladder takes sales from REA, Lelands, Memory Lane, SCP, Huggins and Scott, Clean Sweep, MySlabs and Alt, among others, plus private sales from Pro members.
What do TCGplayer's volatility ratings mean?
Low means a product stays near the same price over 30 days, Medium that it moves a little more, often on fewer sales, and High that it moves a lot. Indeterminate means too few sales in 30 days to rate.