How a card reference price is calculated

A “reference price” is an estimate of what a specific card, in a specific grade, is worth right now. The number is easy to print; the hard — and honest — part is showing the sales it comes from. A reference price built on hidden or invented inputs is just an opinion. One built on real, named, verifiable trades is a measurement.

Built from completed sales, not listings

We compute each reference price from completed transactions — sales that actually happened — not from asking prices or active listings. Listings tell you what a seller hopes to get; transactions tell you what a buyer actually paid. Only the latter belongs in a price you can rely on.

Every transaction we use is attributed to its source and links back to the original record, so any number on the site can be traced to the trades that produced it.

Mean, median and VWAP — and why we show all three

There is no single “correct” average. The mean is the simple average of recent sale prices. The median is the middle sale, which resists a single outlier (a freak high or low sale moves the mean but barely touches the median). The volume-weighted average (VWAP) leans toward the prices where the most value actually changed hands.

A thin or volatile market can pull these three apart; a deep, liquid one brings them together. Showing all three — instead of picking one and hiding the rest — lets you judge how settled a card’s price really is.

Grade and company matter

A card’s value is inseparable from how it was graded. A PSA 10 and a PSA 9 of the same card are different assets with different markets, so we compute a separate reference price for each company and grade rather than blending them into one misleading figure.

How to read it

Start with the headline reference price, then check the trade history beneath it: how many sales, how recent, how tightly clustered. A price backed by many recent, tightly-grouped sales is one you can lean on. A price backed by two sales from months ago is a hint, not a fact — and because every trade is shown, you can tell the difference at a glance.