Why the Same Pokémon Card Has Five Different Prices

Look up any popular card and you'll find five different numbers for it. None of them are wrong — they're answering different questions. Knowing which is which is the difference between a good buy and an overpay.

1. The market price (the guide)

The number TCGplayer headlines: an algorithmic blend of recent actual sales for the Near-Mint English card. This is what the card trades at in the deepest market on Earth. On DexCompare it's shown on every card as the labelled market price guide, with its source — a reference, never a buy button. Local stores can sit above it (thin supply, import costs) or below it (overstock, stale pricing). Both happen daily, which is exactly why the guide is shown next to real store prices instead of pretending to be one.

2. The local store price

What a shop actually charges, driven by what they paid and what's in their drawer — not by the global market. This is the number you can actually pay today in your own currency with cheap domestic postage. It's also the number that varies 20–50% between shops, which is the entire reason comparison pays.

3. The eBay price

The floor-ish price for most cards — broadest supply, auction dynamics — but it comes with condition roulette and seller risk. Our eBay prices are filtered hard (no bundles, no graded slabs, no Japanese copies masquerading as English) so the eBay line you see is a genuine like-for-like single.

4. The graded price

A PSA 10 of a card is a different product trading in a different market — often 3–10× the raw price, while a PSA 8 can trade below raw NM. Never anchor a raw card's value to a slab listing, and be suspicious of any raw listing priced like one. (Full breakdown in our grading guide.)

5. The foreign-print price

Japanese and Chinese printings often cost a fraction of English — beautiful cards, legitimately cheaper, and the #1 source of "too good to be true" listings passed off as English. We filter them out of our comparisons; when buying elsewhere, check the listing's language before celebrating a bargain.

So which do you pay?

The cheapest in-stock local store price for the condition you want, sanity-checked against the market guide:

• Store ≤ guide → buy with confidence.
• Store slightly above guide → normal for your region; pay it or set a wishlist alert and wait.
• Store far above guide → wait, or take the eBay route.

Five numbers, one rule: know what each is measuring, then pay the lowest one that's measuring what you actually want.