Recently I have been seeing many people posting a certain video on Facebook titled “What are your pokemon cards worth now?” , with ridiculous valuations for cards that weren’t that rare. It seems people are digging up their collections now and finding out the reality, that their collections are worth at most a few hundred dollars. Since I have been selling pokemon cards online for a while now, I wanted to create an in depth guide I can send people to actually correctly valuing what their collection is worth. I’ll break it down into some sub categories so if you want to refer to it later you can.

Commons and Non Holofoils

Commons, most of the time are not worth anything. If they are in very good condition they can be traded in bulk to some stores who will pay around 3-5 cents per common. Rares they might buy in bulk at around 8-10 cents. The vast majority of non holo rares/ common, uncommon cards are not even worth it to sell, as they would usually cost more to sell/ship them than they are even worth. There are some creative ways to make money off them like selling a pack of 100 of them and adding a mystery holo card, but unless you have a massive 2000+ card collection I wouldn’t recommend it.

Anatomy Of A Card

First let’s break down the basic anatomy of a card for purposes of identifying it. For the above card I highlighted some parts of the card you need to know about and numbered them so I can put them here for easy view.

#1. This icon is the set that the card comes from. Every set has a different icon in order to identify it. NOTE: The base set does not have an icon, it will just be blank. You can find a list of the sets and their icons here –
http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_Trading_Card_Game_expansions

#2. This icon identifies if your card is a first edition print run or not. First edition cards are worth a decent bit more than unlimited (cards printed after the first print run). First edition cards only exist for the first 11 sets then got rid of them.

#3. This icon shows the rarity of your card. Here is a picture of the basic icons and what they mean. 99% of the time you wont have to worry about just the basic rare, uncommon and common icons.

#4. This is the number of the card in the set, so in the picture Dragonite is the 4th card out of 62 cards in the set.

Shadowless Cards

Shadowless cards will get their own section because they are some of the most sought after cards because of how rare they were. Basically there was a print error on the original set which gave the cards in the set a certain look to them, sometimes they would be lighter, sometimes darker than other cards. Shadowless cards only exist in the base set , here is how you identify them.

. First edition cards cannot be shadowless, the print error occurred after the first run.

. You can use your eyes to tell if a card is shadowless, but for holos it can be tricky. Non holo cards are almost always lighter cards.

. The best way is to look at the bottom of the card and look at the dates listed. If you look at the comparison above you will see three of the same card. The order from right to left is first edition, shadowless and then unlimited. If you look at the dates at the bottom of the card on the shadowless card you will see © 1995, 96, 98, 99 Nintendo, while the unlimited run does not have the 99 on the end. The first one has the 99 on the end, but because it is first edition it cant be shadowless.

Card Grading and conditions

Almost all of the high priced cards you see will be graded, meaning a company looked at them to see how good the condition is, basically giving the collector a seal of approval. The ratings go from 1 to 10, 10 being the best. If you have old cards I can almost guarantee that you will not have a card that is an 8, 9 or 10 unless you literally took them and put them in a sleeve and never touched them once after that. Old packs that are opened today don’t always get 9s or 10s, in fact 10s are very rare. Because of this, graded 10s are the most sought after and expensive cards you will find.

There are 2 main companies that grade cards, Beckett and PSA. People believe that Beckett grades too high and many will only buy PSA graded cards so take that in mind if you ever want to get something graded. For prices basically graded 8 cards will be slightly more than non graded cards, but not by much , graded 9s will be worth a decent amount more, and graded 10s will be worth A LOT more as it is hard to get that grading and many collectors want full psa 10 sets.

If you are just self grading your own cards take a look at this guide here.

http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-to-Grade-Pokemon-Cards-Properly-/10000000175923558/g.html

However If you are selling own cards you should always take an exact picture of the card and let the buyer decide.

Finding The Price Of Your Card

The price of your card depends mostly on where you are buying it from. There are some sites that tend to sell for lower than others, but I think ebay is the best place and usually you get the best prices so Ill stick with ebay for now.
If you want to find the value of your card, you want to search the card name followed by the number of the card out of the set and the set name, like the following if I was doing Dragonite above. “Dragonite 4/62 fossil”
Usually this will bring up your card and you can see what others are selling for. If it doesn’t come up just look up Dragonite fossil or dragonite 4/62 to find the card. It is IMPORTANT when deciding what to price your card as, that you go to the side of the ebay bar and click search sold. You only want to see what the cards actually sold for because many people overprice their cards. You usually get 50 free listings a month so if you list your cards make sure you list them as fixed price 30 days with best offer. I have found this is the best way to sell them. I talked a bit more about this in another post I did which should be in my blog if you are interested.

Shiping your card

If you are going to ship a card over $20 ship it in a little envelope as media mail through usps, as you will get free tracking. Its technically not media but you can get away with it. If it is under that price just send it in an envelope with a stamp and it should be fine. You risk the possibility of someone scamming you, but if you are selling a lot of cards you probably won’t get scammed more than 10-15 percent of the time.
I hope you enjoyed this guide. If you have any other questions feel free to ask and Ill answer them if I see them!

-Calaber24p

Extra Nostalgic 90s throwback tournament video