Methodology
Last updated: 17 August 2026
This page explains two things precisely: how a card’s condition is represented when four different marketplaces describe it four different ways, and how currency conversion is handled. For what we cover, how often prices refresh and how we’re paid, see our editorial & pricing policy and the full list of stores we track.
Condition grading
There is no official cross-marketplace grading standard for trading cards. eBay, TCGplayer and Cardmarket each use their own vocabulary, and independent stores describe condition however their storefront lets them. We standardise every listing onto one five-grade scale — NM, LP, MP, HP, DMG — but we never discard the source’s own wording: every price row on a card page shows our normalised grade next to (or hoverable to reveal) exactly what the store or marketplace actually said, so you can see the translation rather than trust it blindly.
| Source | Native grade | Normalised to | How it’s obtained |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent stores (Shopify) | The store's own variant title, verbatim — e.g. "Near Mint", "NM", "Lightly Played", or "Default Title" when the store sells only one condition | Matched by wording (Near Mint → NM, Lightly Played → LP, etc.); a title with no condition wording is left unclassified rather than guessed | Read directly from the product listing |
| eBay | eBay's own raw-card condition scale: "Near Mint or Better", "Excellent", "Very Good", "Poor" | Mapped by relative rank onto our scale — Near Mint or Better → NM, Excellent → LP, Very Good → MP, Poor → HP | Read from eBay's Browse API for each listing |
| TCGplayer | Always shown as "NM" | Shown as a labelled reference price, not folded into the store comparison | This is TCGplayer's algorithmic all-condition Market Price, not a graded Near Mint price — see the price note below |
| Cardmarket | Always shown as "NM" | Shown as a labelled reference price, not folded into the store comparison | Same shape as TCGplayer — a market-wide low converted to GBP, not a single graded listing |
When a listing’s condition text doesn’t match any known pattern, we show it unclassified rather than guess — a wrong condition claim is worse than an unlabelled one.
TCGplayer and Cardmarket reference prices
TCGplayer publishes one algorithmic Market Price per card — a blend across all conditions currently listed, not a single seller’s Near Mint price. Cardmarket’s figure is the same shape, converted from EUR. Neither is a real local listing you can buy at that exact price, so we never fold either into the store comparison or count it as a “store” — it’s shown separately, clearly labelled as a reference price.
Currency conversion
Every market’s store comparison is ranked and priced in that market’s own currency — we never convert between currencies to declare a cross-border winner, because that would mean publishing an exchange rate we can’t stand behind as a live quote. Where a converted figure does appear (the TCGplayer/Cardmarket reference price above, or an optional secondary EUR display), it uses a hand-maintained rate table, refreshed periodically rather than pulled from a live FX feed:
| 1 USD = | 1 USD |
|---|---|
| 1 USD = | 1.5 AUD |
| 1 USD = | 1.65 NZD |
| 1 USD = | 0.79 GBP |
| 1 USD = | 1.35 SGD |
| 1 USD = | 1.37 CAD |
| 1 USD = | 0.92 EUR |
These rates are indicative only. Real checkout is always billed in the store’s own currency — any figure converted through this table is a reference, never a quote.
How the comparison is ranked
Stores are ranked by item price. A store’s postage — when we know it — breaks ties between otherwise-equal prices, but it never demotes a store below a competitor just because that competitor’s postage happens to be known upfront and theirs isn’t (many stores only calculate postage at checkout). Delivered cost — price plus postage — is always shown alongside the price on every row, so you can compare on the total yourself. See our editorial & pricing policy for how we make money and why it never affects this ranking.