A Pokémon card price checker on every Marketplace and Kijiji listing

How to check a Pokémon card’s price by hand

Card prices come from completed sales, so a price check is three lookups:

1. Identify the exact card. Set, collector number (“199/165”), edition and language, then condition, or the grader and grade for a slab.
2. Check PriceCharting and TCGplayer. PriceCharting builds its prices from sold listings and lists them by grade for many cards. TCGplayer Market Price comes from recent TCGplayer sales. Both show US dollars; PriceCharting’s currency menu switches to Canadian dollars.
3. Check eBay sold. Filter to sold items for single sales at the exact grade or condition.

Take the lowest sensible figure as your ceiling for a local cash deal. How to price Pokémon cards explains why the three sites disagree.

On a phone, that is the routine. On a computer, Sift turns it into one click per site.

Which listings Sift recognises

Sift reads the title and stays quiet unless it is fairly sure the listing is a card. It looks for Pokémon (or “pkmn”) with a card word, popular species such as Charizard, Pikachu or Umbreon with a card word, a number with a rarity (“58/102 holo”), booster boxes, packs and elite trainer boxes, and graded titles such as PSA 10, BGS 9.5 or CGC with a card-game word. Facebook’s trading-card and Pokémon-card pages and Kijiji’s Arts & Collectibles category help confirm a match.

The other games get the same trading card price check: Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, the One Piece card game, Lorcana, Flesh and Blood, Digimon, Dragon Ball Super, Weiss Schwarz, Star Wars Unlimited and Union Arena.

Left out on purpose: sports cards, comics, sleeves, toploaders, playmats, empty binders, plush, figures, video games, and “we buy” or WTB posts from other buyers. A vague title can be missed too. Those listings still get everything else Sift does.

PriceCharting and TCGplayer, one click from the listing

Open a recognised listing’s details and the card is headed Trading card. Under Check elsewhere, the first two links are Prices on PriceCharting and Search TCGplayer. Before searching, Sift strips the words that wreck a card search: PSA 10, NM, mint, lot, bulk, graded. You land on the card, not on every slab and lot that shares a word with it.

Then come the links every listing gets: Sold on eBay (ebay.ca for Kijiji listings and Canadian homes), Search by image with Google Lens on the listing photo, which shows whether the photo was lifted from somewhere else, Google Shopping, and the same search on the other site.

The links open only when you click them, and Sift doesn’t convert or show card values itself: the price guides do that. Remember both quote US dollars unless you switch PriceCharting to CAD.

PSA 10 and graded cards

A PSA 10 can sell for many times a PSA 9 of the same card, so the grade has to match. Sift recognises graded titles and drops the grade from the search; PriceCharting then opens on the card, where you pick the grade you are looking at. Compare like with like: the same card at the same number from PSA, CGC and Beckett sells at different prices.

Sift doesn’t check cert numbers or slabs. Look the cert up on the grader’s site, then inspect the slab in person. How to spot a fake PSA slab covers both.

Is the asking price fair here?

Every listing also gets a verdict: Below typical, Typical or Above typical, worked out from the other listings on the same search page once there are at least eight usable prices. On cards, it only means something on a narrow search. “umbreon vmax 215” compares like with like; “pokemon” mixes $2 singles with $300 booster boxes, so ignore the verdict there and use the price links.

Sift also remembers every price it sees. When a listing comes back cheaper, a badge lands on its photo (↓ 25%), measured from the highest price Sift has seen, and pointing at it shows the dated history. More on the price tracker.

Red flags, and what Sift doesn’t check

The trading cards check adds price links, not warnings. What Sift flags on a card listing are its general red flags, the same on every listing: a deposit or e-transfer before you see the card, a push to WhatsApp, text or email, a seller who can’t meet, and a price under half of what the page usually asks. Each shows as a red Check this chip with the words that matched. See the scam checker for the full list.

Sift doesn’t detect fake cards, resealed packs or fake slabs, and it doesn’t grade condition. Those checks happen with the card in your hand:

• How to tell if Pokémon cards are fake: nine checks, without damaging the card.
• Resealed booster boxes and ETBs: wrap, seams and weight.
• Pokémon card scams: the deposit, shipping and swap tricks.

The one-click Trading cards setup

Choose the one-click Trading cards setup in Settings › Presets, or pick Trading cards on the welcome page the first time you open Sift. One click saves a preset named Trading cards, applies it and switches the Trading cards kit on.

It also turns on the Message for price word pack, which hides listings that say “PM for price”, “DM for price”, “contact for price” or “price on request”. Those posts tell you nothing until you ask. Add your own block words (“proxy”, “custom”, “empty box”) and a distance limit, and it takes about a minute.

Alerts for a new set or a card you want

Open a newest-first search for what you want, such as “151 ETB” or “umbreon vmax”, then press Watch this search in the Sift popup. Sift checks it in the background as often as every 15 minutes, runs new listings through your filters, and notifies you about the ones that pass. You can watch up to 10 searches. Kijiji searches all of Canada, so pick your area there first. Details on new-listing alerts.

Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji

The trading cards check works the same on both sites. From a Facebook listing in Canada, one click runs the same search on Kijiji, and the reverse. For where the good binders turn up and how to meet safely, read Pokémon cards for sale on Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji; for binders and bulk, Pokémon card lots; for other games, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece and Lorcana and Magic: The Gathering cards.

Sift is free, needs no account, and runs right in Chrome, Edge or Brave on a computer. It doesn’t run in the Facebook app or on a phone.

Pokémon is a trademark of Nintendo, Creatures Inc., GAME FREAK inc. and The Pokémon Company. Sift is independent and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by them, or by PriceCharting, TCGplayer, eBay, Facebook or Kijiji.