Editorial & pricing policy

Who writes the content

Guides and posts are written by the people who run RiftCompare, publishing under the RiftCompare byline. Writing that is generated directly from our price database — index movements, price snapshots, set-level distributions — carries a separate RiftCompare Markets Desk byline instead, so you can always tell which is which.

Every guide and post shows its author, its publish date and, where it has been substantively revised, its last-updated date. See who writes RiftCompare.

What is automated, and what isn’t

We are explicit about this because the distinction matters. Three different things appear on this site:

• Prices and market data — collected automatically from public store listings, every day. No human writes these numbers.
• Card page analysis — the “About” section on each card page is assembled programmatically from that card’s own recorded data: its cross-market spread, its price trajectory, how many stores stock it, what its variants cost, where it sits in its set. It is generated, and every statement in it is derived from a figure we have actually recorded. Where the data doesn’t support an observation, the observation is left out rather than guessed at.
• Guides and posts — written by people, and researched against the same price database, so the figures quoted are the ones our importer recorded.

How prices are collected

We track roughly 119 retailers across Australia, New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Canada, plus eBay in each market and TCGplayer. Prices come from those stores’ own public product listings and from official marketplace APIs. We do not accept price submissions from retailers, and no retailer can pay to appear, to rank higher, or to have a competitor removed.

Each listing is matched to a specific printing — set code and collector number, not just a card name — so a promo, an alternate art and a Signature print are tracked as three separate products with three separate prices, because that is what they are.

How often prices refresh

• Store prices: a full import runs once every 24 hours.
• Price history: one recorded point per card per market per day, which is what the charts and trend figures are built from.
• Card pages: regenerated at most every 24 hours, and immediately when that card’s data changes.
• Index and homepage: hourly.

Every page that quotes a price is showing the last figure we recorded, not a live lookup. Stock sells and shops re-price between imports, so always confirm the price on the retailer’s own site before you buy. We say so in the footer of every page for the same reason.

How prices are verified

• A listing that hasn’t been seen in a recent import is marked out of stock rather than left standing as a live price.
• Prices are compared in each market’s own currency. We do not convert between currencies to declare a winner, because we would be publishing an exchange rate we can’t stand behind.
• Rankings are by delivered cost where a store’s postage is known, and item price otherwise — never by what we earn.
• A consistency audit runs over the card database on demand, checking for duplicate records, broken identifiers, impossible prices and stale listings.

Corrections

When we find or are told about an error, we fix the underlying data and let the affected pages regenerate — usually within minutes for a single card. Where a published guide turns out to be wrong rather than merely out of date, we correct the text and update its last-updated date so the change is visible rather than silent. We don’t quietly delete pieces that turned out to be wrong.

How to report an error

Email riftcompare@gmail.com or use our contact form. The most useful report includes the page URL, what it says, and what it should say — a link to the retailer listing settles almost every pricing question in one step.

How we make money, and what it does not buy

RiftCompare is funded by advertising (including Google AdSense), affiliate commissions, Premium subscriptions and marketplace fees. Outbound links that earn us a commission are marked rel="sponsored" and disclosed in plain language next to the link.

None of it affects the prices we show or the order results appear in. Ranking is computed from price and postage alone; a store we earn nothing from outranks one we do whenever it is cheaper, which is most of the time. See our privacy policy for what advertising and analytics cookies are set and how to opt out.

Independence

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Riot Games, and we are not owned by or affiliated with any retailer we compare. We do not accept payment for editorial coverage, and we do not publish sponsored posts.

Nothing on this site is financial or investment advice. Trading card prices are volatile and can fall as easily as they rise.