What PokeTracker Is
PokeTracker is an independent Pokemon card price tracking and analysis platform. We aggregate real-time pricing data from major marketplaces including eBay, TCGPlayer, and CardMarket to help collectors and investors make informed decisions about Pokemon cards as both a hobby and a long-term store of value.
The platform tracks over 16,000 individual Pokemon cards across 115 sets, from the original 1999 Base Set through the latest Scarlet and Violet releases. Every card page includes live pricing, recent sold listings, grading guidance, and links to verified marketplaces.
What PokeTracker Is Not
PokeTracker is not a marketplace. We do not sell cards directly. We do not hold inventory. We do not have a stake in any specific card's price going up or down.
PokeTracker is also not a financial advisor. The investment analysis we publish on the blog reflects independent collector research, not professional financial guidance. Pokemon cards are an alternative collectible asset class with significant volatility, illiquidity, and condition risk. Anyone buying cards as an investment should do their own research and understand they may lose money.
Who Runs It
PokeTracker is built and maintained by an independent Pokemon collector and developer based in Belgium. The site began as a personal project to solve a real problem: existing card pricing tools were either expensive, inaccurate, or limited to a single marketplace. The goal was to build something better, free, and genuinely useful to the broader Pokemon collecting community.
The operator has been collecting Pokemon cards for over a decade and tracking the secondary market closely since the 2020 collector boom. The blog content reflects this firsthand market experience rather than scraped content or AI-generated filler.
How We Make Money
PokeTracker is funded entirely through affiliate commissions. When users click through to eBay or TCGPlayer from our card pages or blog posts and make a purchase, we earn a small commission at no additional cost to the buyer. This is the same revenue model used by most card price tracking sites.
We do not accept paid placements, sponsored content, or "featured card" payments. Every card recommendation on the blog reflects honest analysis. If we recommend a card, it is because we genuinely believe in the thesis, not because someone paid us to promote it. See our Affiliate Disclosure for full details.
Our Data Sources
PokeTracker aggregates pricing data from several sources to give users the most complete market picture available:
- PriceCharting: our primary source for graded PSA 10, BGS 10, CGC 10, and SGC 10 sold prices, refreshed weekly from their CSV price guide. This is the same graded pricing dataset major auction houses and collectors rely on. 14,395 cards currently have verified graded pricing.
- TCGPlayer market prices: North American raw market reference pricing
- CardMarket averages: European market data including 1-day, 7-day, and 30-day average prices
- eBay live listings: current asking prices from active marketplace listings for affiliate integration
- PokeTracker internal database: 16,000+ card records built on community-maintained Pokemon TCG data with our own variant enrichment layer (Prismatic Evolutions, H-set variants, 1st Edition tracking)
Card images and base metadata are sourced from publicly available APIs and are owned by their respective rights holders, including The Pokemon Company International.
How the Grading Calculator Works
The Grading Calculator is our most transparent tool. Here is exactly how it computes expected value.
Grade tier prices come from PriceCharting. We pull PSA 7, 8, 9, 9.5, 10, BGS 10, CGC 10, and SGC 10 pricing for every card that has verified sold data. Coverage varies by tier: grade 9 and 9.5 are populated for 98.9% of cards, grade 8 for 50%, grade 7 for 33.8%. Where lower-tier data is missing, we use conservative modeled fallbacks.
Grading fees reflect standard bulk-tier submission rates: $25 PSA, $20 BGS, $18 CGC, $25 SGC. These change occasionally as graders adjust pricing; we update the calculator when they do.
Gem rate baselines are era-based estimates: vintage (pre-2003) ~15-20%, EX-block (2003-2010) ~20-30%, modern holo (2011-2019) ~25-40%, modern SIR/Alt Art (2020+) ~45-55%. These reflect general PSA population patterns across the Pokemon TCG catalog rather than card-specific data. Individual card gem rates can vary meaningfully from the era baseline.
Condition adjustments modify the base gem rate: Rough (0.3×), Fair (0.7×), Good (1.3×), Mint (1.8×). This reflects that screening quality is the single largest factor in real grading outcomes. Cap: gem rate never exceeds 80%.
Outcome distribution model — For any gem rate G (capped at 22% for distribution math), we assume: PSA 10 with probability G, PSA 9-9.5 with probability 2G, PSA 8 with probability 1.5G, and PSA 7 or below with the remaining probability. At gem rate 20%, this produces roughly 20/40/30/10 across the four tiers. This is a simplified model, not the empirically-observed distribution for any specific card.
Expected value formula — For each grader, we compute: EV = P(10) × price₁₀ + P(9) × price₉ + P(8) × price₈ + P(<8) × price₇ − fee − raw cost. Below-grade prices for CGC and SGC use modeled multipliers where PriceCharting data is unavailable (roughly 15% of PSA 10 price for PSA 8 tier, 8% for PSA 7 tier). We flag these fallbacks in the calculator's methodology note.
Recommendation logic — The grader with the highest expected value is recommended, with narrative adjustments for scenarios where BGS Black Label premium or CGC/SGC liquidity considerations meaningfully affect the practical decision. The math is transparent; the recommendation text explains why the math points where it does.
Assumptions and Limitations
We try to be honest about what our tools can and cannot tell you.
Sample sizes on rare cards are small. For vintage grails like Skyridge Gengar H9 (approximately 10-20 PSA 10s known globally), PriceCharting's price reflects a handful of auction sales. This is directional signal, not tick-by-tick certainty. When our blog posts cite specific dollar figures for extreme rarities, the underlying data may be one to five recent transactions.
The distribution model is not empirical. We model P(PSA 10), P(PSA 9), P(PSA 8), and P(<PSA 8) from era and condition assumptions rather than card-specific PSA population data. Real distributions vary considerably by card. Card-specific PSA population data would materially improve our estimates, and we are researching whether that data is available via legitimate means.
Sold data is retrospective. Prices reflect what buyers paid in the past. Future prices depend on market conditions, collector attention shifts, and macro dynamics that no tool can predict reliably. Our blog analysis is honest research, not forecasting.
Grader fees can change. Bulk-tier submission rates shift as PSA, BGS, CGC, and SGC adjust their pricing. We update the calculator when these change, but there may be a gap between announcement and our update.
Not financial advice. Pokemon cards are an alternative collectible asset class with significant volatility, illiquidity, and condition risk. This site helps you think about grading decisions and portfolio construction; it does not guarantee outcomes. Grade conservatively. Screen carefully. Do your own research. Prepare to hold long enough that short-term price movements do not matter.
Editorial Independence
The blog content published on PokeTracker reflects independent research and personal collecting experience. Pricing analysis is based on verified eBay sold listings within the past 60 days. We do not republish PR releases, paid promotions, or AI-generated text. Every post is written and reviewed by a human.
When market conditions change, we update existing blog posts with revised pricing data and bump the "last updated" date so readers know what they are getting. We would rather acknowledge that the market moved than leave stale numbers in place.
Get in Touch
For questions, feedback, partnership inquiries, or to report incorrect data, you can reach out via our contact page. We read every message and try to respond within a few days.