It’s highly likely that you have come across Pokémon cards at some point in your life. It’s also very likely that you or your sibling(s) has some stored up in an attic at your parents house that haven’t been touched in 5-15 years. And wondering what the Pokémon card worth is of your collection should definitely be something that crosses your mind.
It’s worth knowing that Pokémon cards popularity and value have only risen since their release in 1999 in the U.S (and 1996 in Japan).
If you’ve kept up with Pokémon cards at all, you may have seen that an NFL star sold a Pokémon card for $670,000 at an auction or that the rapper Logic bought one for north of $220k. With a little searching you will find several others that have netted north of $100,000.
While it’s highly unlikely that your cards will net you that much, there is certainly a chance that you have several hundred and possibly several thousand dollars worth of cards lying around. So how should you go about figuring that out?
Well have no fear faithful reader, you have come to the right place. This article will help you to identify your cards and give you several ways to find out what they are worth. So without further ado, let’s get started!
Identify What Pokémon Cards You Have
The first step to determine if you have anything of value is to identify what card(s) they actually are. There are a tremendous amount of websites that can guide you on value (which we will cover below), but if you can’t identify what cards you have, then you will not be able to identify their value.
If you don’t know how to do this, check out my other article on identifying Pokémon cards.
It’s worth knowing that Pokémon cards typically hold value individually much more than a set. So if you have the original “Big 3” (Charizard, Blastoise, Venusaur), or even the entire base set collection, that typically won’t net you anything more than what the individual cards would.
If you have hundreds or thousands of cards, you will unfortunately want to look into most of them. That being said, there are a few key identifiers to look for that make cards more valuable.
How to Quickly Identify Pokémon Cards of Value
While the below are not going to help you 100% of the time in every scenario, they will certainly help you in most of them. And if you have hundreds or thousands of cards and don’t want to look up every single one, this list should be of use to you.
The Rarity Symbol
The rarity symbol is either a circle, diamond, or star (of different colors depending on the set) along the bottom edge of the card. The circle is the symbol for a card being common. The diamond is the symbol for a card being uncommon. And the star is the symbol for the card being rare.
A rare card was printed far less than the other two, which naturally makes it harder to find and will make it more expensive. There are a handful of somewhat expensive commons and uncommons, but the list of more expensive rare cards is far longer.
If It’s a “Holographic” Card
A holographic card refers to cards that are produced to give the card a holographic or 3 dimensional image. More simply put, holographic cards can be classified as “shiny”.
Most cards will look “flat” without much depth. If you hold those up to sunlight, nothing will look interesting or impressive about them.
Holographic cards however will “glow” in the sunlight and give off all kinds of different colors and patterns. The above image shows a few examples of what this may look like.
Holographic cards are more rare than their counterpart and will typically be more expensive as well. This is a great way to quickly separate cards that may have more value.
If It Has Both A Star Rarity Symbol and Is Holographic
Now, the above two are a great starting point. However, rare cards that aren’t holographic and holographic cards that aren’t rare are mostly only worth a few dollars or less. And the counterparts that are both will be almost always be more expensive than cards with one or the other.
The only cards that typically break this rule are older vintage sets. As an example, if you have any 1st edition rare cards from some of the original Pokémon sets, then you may have more value on your hands that’s worth knowing to figure out a value to your collection.
The above non-holo 1st edition Dark Charizard is a good example. If you’re lucky enough to have one, this guy on average goes for around $80.
If you don’t know how to identify a “1st Edition” card, then just look at the center left side of the card. On the above picture, you can see an “Edition 1” stamp to the bottom left of the picture. If your card has that stamp, then congrats! You have a 1st edition card which will always make that card more valuable than a non 1st edition.
Now that we’ve covered some basics in identifying valuable cards, we will dive into more of what actually makes a card valuable.
Figure Out The “Condition” of Your Pokémon Cards
Like most other collectible markets, the highest dollars always get paid to the product that is in the nicest condition. Pokémon cards are no different.
The “condition” in Pokémon cards refers to the amount of scratching, whitening, bends, or otherwise that your card has. The below two pictures show a VERY beat up Raichu and a VERY nice condition Dark Blastoise. I have an article diving deeper into the condition of Pokémon cards and why it matters here.
As you can see in this first picture, the Raichu is scratched all over the card. The holo, the edges, absolutely everything is worn down.
The Dark Blastoise is the opposite. There are no holo scratches, the edges look clean and crisp, and the card does not seem played with at all.
In looking at the back of the cards, the story is mostly the same. And yes, the backs of the cards are incredibly important with collectors as well.
The “whitening” refers the the coloring around the edge of the Raichu (left card), and you can see dark specs and bending in the card as well. The Dark Blastoise on the right has very little to no whitening, and there are no bends, miscoloring, or otherwise.
As we discuss actually pricing your cards below, take note that the conditions referenced above are the low and high ends of the pricing variations will come into play.
So, now that you have some rare and holographic cards set off to the side and you understand some basics about what the “conditions” of your cards may be, let’s get into some of the best ways to identify what your collection may be worth.
Best Websites to Value Pokémon Cards
10-20 years ago, there was almost no way to value the cards that you had. You had to guess based on local card shops and crummy trades with your friend. Frankly though, no-one was thinking about the value of their cards. But I digress.
At this point in time, there are seemingly hundreds of websites and otherwise that give the valuation of cards. And if you don’t know any better, it can be a lot to sift through and some can certainly lead you astray.
Fear not though faithful reader. After selling thousands of cards and thousands of dollars worth of cards, I have found the below are three tried and true websites that have been the most effective in identifying the value of cards. Sometimes, one is enough, and sometimes, using all three will be most useful in getting a good understanding of the value.
Pricecharting
Pricecharting.com has quickly become one of my favorite websites to quickly gather Pokémon card values. The layout is super clean, it gives you values of a card based on grades, and it pulls all of that from sold eBay listings.
On top of those benefits, it can give you a good idea on if grading your Pokémon cards will be worth the money based on the grade you think your card may get.
The main downside to this website is that there isn’t a ton of quality assurance on the stuff that gets listed. So a Birthday Pikachu on pricecharting will typically have both the black star promo version of the card as well as the celebrations version (which in case you didn’t know is a massive price difference). And that is just one of many more examples.
So is it the end all be all? Sometimes but maybe not. If your unsure though, then lets head to the next website reference check.
eBay
eBay has been and will likely be the gold standard for pricing valuations of Pokémon cards. The amount that is bought and sold every day far outpaces any other website. And the best part? You are free to access that information whenever you please.
So in checking eBay for card values, you would simply search your card and filter by “sold” listings. If I do that for a “Dark Blastoise 3/82 holo” per our card above, then I would get something like the following.
If you notice though, I do still have to filter through the listings as some of these are graded, one is first edition, and one is raw (meaning not graded). So finding the value of my card will take a bit of effort, despite eBay giving me some great information.
Also, compare the Pricecharting picture with the eBay picture. A raw one sold for more than a PSA 6 and for a lot more than the “raw” card value per pricecharting above. If I scroll further down on that page, other raw Dark Blastoises sold for $62, $40, and all the way down to $15. This variation is because of the “condition” of them as mentioned above.
TCG Player
TCG Player is my third and final recommendation for finding pricing. They also sell a tremendous amount of cards and will give some quick ideas for what the highest and lowest cost sellers are sending cards for. Their filters also make it easy to look at your card with the condition that it is in and see what others are selling it for.
If we once again use Dark Blastoise as our example and filter by Near Mint, we will get the below.
The main downside of TCG Player is that there are typically not pictures available. So it’s usually impossible to tell how nice (or not nice) the card is that you’re comparing to.
Once again though, we can once again see that there is some serious variation in the pricing for this card. The main reason for this is that there is variation in what one would call a near mint card or otherwise.
True collectors will pay far more for as perfect of a card as they can get. And a near mint card can mean a grade 7 up to a grade 10 on a card. And in referencing the beginning of this article, the collectibles that are in the nicest condition (i.e. a grade 10) will always net the most money.
So TCG player can give a good range, but it’s hard to compare your card precisely to others that you are up against.
Next up, let’s take a moment to speak about your non-rare and non holographic cards
What Are My Non-Rare and Non-Holo Pokémon Cards Worth?
There is a reason the majority of this article has been around your holo and rare Pokémon cards. It’s simply because they are worth far more money (typically) than your non holo and non-rare cards. So when gathering the value of your entire collection, you typically shouldn’t bank on more than .10-.25c for every card that fits that description.
That being said, let’s play a little game. Can you put the below non-holo cards in order from most to least expensive? What do you think they’re worth?
If you guessed the Fletching would be the cheapest, you would be correct. They have sold for as low as 1 cent on eBay. The next cheapest is the Gastrodon coming in at less than $1.
The next most expensive are the Black Star Movie Promo Electabuzz (~$5) and the 1st Edition (did you catch that?) Team Rocket Charmander (~$6).
The last 2 Pikachu’s are pretty sneaky. The top middle Pikachu is an E3 promo that goes for about $15. The bottom right is a 1st Edition W Stamp that goes for about $30. How many did you properly identify?
So why did we play this game? Just to give you an idea of the variation on some of these non-holo non-rare cards. But also to possibly show you that it’s not always easy to identify.
The long short though? Plan on most of your common and uncommon cards being worth less than $1.
Conclusion
Hopefully this article gave you some good guidance on identifying and figuring out the value of your Pokémon cards.
If you’re interested in capturing the potential value of every card in your collection, check out my other article on the best apps to use to figure that out!
If you are curious about Pokémon cards being a worthy investment, read on here.
Want to know what grade your Pokémon cards might get? Get some insight on how to tell here!
If I missed anything or if you have any comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected]!
Thanks for reading!