Read, cost, decide
Baseball card values: what five sold prices actually say
There is no book value for a sports card. There is what one like it sold for, several times, and the arithmetic you do to those numbers. Three free calculators: the sold prices into one usable figure, what a grading submission really costs, and whether the graded price covers it.
- 3
- free calculators on this site
- Card-value arithmetic, nothing else
- Calculators
Read, cost, decide
A card is worth what one like it sold for, and nothing else
Five sales, not one, and never the highest
One completed sale is an anecdote. The usable figure is a run of recent sales of the same card in the same condition, with the highest and the lowest dropped, because a single freak result moves an average more than everything else in the run put together.
A grading fee is not what grading costs
The per-card fee is the part people quote. The submission also carries per-card extras, postage out with insurance, and insured return postage the grader charges, and on a small submission the postage alone can be most of it. The cost per card is the number that decides anything.
The graded price has to beat raw plus that cost
Grading pays when the price at the grade you actually get, less the selling fee, exceeds the raw price less the selling fee, plus what the submission cost per card. Written out like that it is one subtraction, and it settles a question people usually answer by feel.
Why not just use a price guide?
Because a printed or subscription price guide answers a different question. It gives one number for a card, usually stale, usually for a condition nobody specified, and often published by somebody who also sells cards, grading or the guide itself. What is on this site is the arithmetic on its own, done on sales you found yourself, with nothing attached to the answer and nobody with an interest in which way it comes out.
- Where the number comes from
- Trading Card Value Checker Completed sales you read and typed in, today
- A price guideA figure set by the publisher, on a schedule of its own
- Whether condition is in it
- Trading Card Value Checker You choose comparables in your card's condition, and the spread shows you how much condition is moving them
- A price guideUsually one number, sometimes a grade ladder, rarely for the card in front of you
- What the outlier does
- Trading Card Value Checker Dropped, and printed beside the answer so you can see what it was doing
- A price guideInvisible; you get the number, not the sales behind it
- Who is paid
- Trading Card Value Checker Nobody. The site sells nothing and takes no money from anybody in this trade
- A price guideThe publisher, by subscription, and often by the trade around it
This is a comparison of what a page is FOR, not of firms. No price guide, grader, auction house or marketplace is ranked or recommended anywhere on this site, and none is linked.
Three calculators, one question each
Free to use. No account, no card, nothing to buy.
| Calculators | figures they give back | Calculators, on the worked example |
|---|---|---|
| Baseball Card Values and Card Value Checker | Five completed sales in, the middle-three average out, with the outlier shown | $28.67 The middle three averaged - the figure to use |
| How Much Does It Cost To Get A Card Graded | Fees, extras and postage both ways into the real cost per card | $300 What the submission costs you, all in |
| Graded Cards: Does Grading This One Pay | Raw price, graded price and the cost of grading into one net figure | $65 Net gain from grading, after the fee and the cost |