How we price Pokémon cards for the UK market.
Every value on this site — and every valuation in Cardfolio — comes from one pricing engine. This page explains exactly how it works, what it corrects for, and where its limits are. No black box.
From recent sales to a GBP value.
The engine runs weekly. Each run works through a rotating share of all 270+ sets, oldest data first, so every card in the catalogue is refreshed on a rolling cycle. Each price in the app shows its own "price as of" date.
Collect recent sale prices.
We source recent-sales data from PriceCharting, which aggregates real eBay sales — the same source named in our privacy policy. For each card we take the ungraded sale average and the PSA 10 sale average, in US dollars.
Convert at the live exchange rate.
USD prices are converted to GBP using the live exchange rate fetched at run time — not a stale hardcoded figure. The rate used is logged with every run so any price can be traced.
Calibrate vintage cards to the UK market.
For pre-2020 sets, a per-rarity multiplier corrects the gap between US sale averages and what the same card actually fetches on eBay UK. The full multiplier table is published below. Modern (post-2020) cards are converted directly — the spread between the two markets is tight enough that no correction is needed.
Leave graded prices alone.
PSA 10 cards trade on an effectively global market with tight price convergence, so graded values get the currency conversion and nothing else. No multiplier, no uplift.
Catch bad data before it reaches you.
Per-rarity price ceilings flag values that only happen when something has gone wrong upstream — for example a single graded sale skewing an ungraded average. Suspect prices are capped rather than published raw.
Check the output against reality.
Multipliers are tuned by spot-checking real eBay UK sold listings, rarity bracket by rarity bracket. When a bracket drifts, the multiplier is adjusted and the change ships to every card in the catalogue. The public collection on this site is valued by the same engine — it is the standing proof.
The vintage multipliers, published.
These are the actual numbers in the live engine, applied to pre-2020 cards before currency conversion. They exist because the US ungraded average blends heavily-played copies, while UK collectors pay a premium for clean vintage — and that premium scales with rarity.
Holos, ultra rares, secret rares, 1st Edition & Shadowless: tiered by value
For holo-class vintage the NM premium is non-linear, so the multiplier steps with the card's raw US price. The cheaper the holo, the bigger the gap between a played US average and a clean UK copy. At the very top end the US average is already driven by near-mint sales, so only a modest uplift remains.
On top of the rarity calibration, all ungraded prices carry a 5% UK market uplift — the consistent premium the UK pays over a raw currency conversion. English promos pass through at close to face conversion (1.05×). When the engine's numbers change, this page changes with them.
A worked example.
Take a vintage holo with a $120 US ungraded average. It lands in the $50–$150 tier, so: $120 × 2.65, converted at the live rate, plus the 5% UK uplift. A naive dollar conversion would price it at roughly £95 — the calibrated UK value comes out around £265, which is what clean copies actually close at on eBay UK. Its PSA 10 price, by contrast, is converted straight: graded cards cost what they cost worldwide.
What these numbers are not.
A methodology you can't fault is one that admits its edges. Here are ours.
Not offers.
A valuation is what comparable copies have recently sold for — not what a buyer will hand you today. Condition, photos, timing, and platform fees all move the real number.
Obscure cards wobble.
A card that sells twice a year has a noisy average. The engine's ceilings catch the worst of it, but low-volume cards carry more uncertainty than chase cards.
Weekly, not real-time.
The engine runs weekly on a rolling cycle through every set. Every price in Cardfolio shows the date it was last updated — check it before you act on it.
Collecting first.
Nothing here is financial advice. We built this to document collections honestly, not to predict markets or sell a dream.
We use it on our own collection. Publicly.
The TCG Mart London collection — 2,000+ cards across 8 master sets — is valued by this exact engine and published openly, price history and all. If the methodology is wrong somewhere, it's wrong in public, on our own cards first. Then it gets fixed.