Today's tools are independent but shallow, incomplete, or too slow to trust. Card Prices makes cross-platform pricing comprehensive, accurate, and fast — free, and backed by independent research, for the $50B+ trading card market.
A collectible is only worth what the market will pay — but only if you can see the market. Today, the few companies that grade the cards, run the marketplaces, and publish the "official" prices are the same companies. Card Prices exists to give collectors, vendors, and researchers one thing the incumbents structurally cannot: an independent reference price.
Independent by design
No marketplace. No grading arm. No transaction fees. Nothing to steer you toward.
Free at the core
Cross-platform price comparison is free, with no account and no ads — and always will be.
Accountable to data
Methodology documented and reproducible, not hidden behind a black-box "Market Price."
Thesis source: card-prices.com/about — "When grading, marketplace, and pricing data are all controlled by interconnected entities, independent tools become essential."
CARD PRICES
02 · The Problem
Getting a price is easy. Pricing the right card is hard.
A parent can't tell these apart — and neither can a scanner that only reads the artwork. The same 1999 Charizard ships in 31+ printings we track; the right ID moves the price by orders of magnitude.
1st Edition
Shadowless
Unlimited
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Same name. Same art. Same language. The only physical tells: a 1-mm black “EDITION 1” stamp and a drop shadow on the art frame.
1ST ED
SHADOWLESS
UNLIMITED
● 1st Edition stamp
●
—
—
● Art-frame shadow
—
—
●
Typical raw · NM
$10–100K+
$1–10K+
$500+
Artwork-keyed scanners can't separate these — the pixels match. Ours votes a 10+ model ensemble, then verifies against catalog data.
…plus 28 more of the same art across 9 languages — No-Rarity Japanese, Black-Dot errors, five European 1st editions, and more. HOVER ANY CARD TO INSPECT
Collectors Holdings (PSA + SGC + Beckett) controls ~80% of grading volume — 2.2× past the “highly concentrated” line.
Consolidation & HHI analysis: Card Prices IEEE research draft, §§ II–III (2026). Underlying events: eBay–TCGplayer $295M (eBay IR, 2022) · Goldin→eBay & SGC/Beckett→Collectors (eBay IR & Collectors PRs, 2024–25) · GameStop $56B bid for eBay, rejected (GameStop SEC 8-K, May 2026) · Rasmussen v. Collectors Holdings, No. 8:26-cv-00897 (C.D. Cal., 2026) · Rep. Pat Ryan FTC request (Dec 2025). Grading: 26.6M cards graded 2025, PSA 71.8% / CGC 18.4% (cllct via Yahoo Sports).
CARD PRICES
04 · The Solution
Price the right card — properly, and independently.
Card Prices is the neutral layer that prices a card correctly: the exact variant, in the exact condition, against real recent sales and the lowest live listing — owning no marketplace and no grading business, so it has nothing to steer you toward.
ANY CARD, ANY FORM“absol”name · set · number · photo · 15 languages (Pokémon)
RESOLVED TO ONE IDENTITYEXACT VARIANT + CONDITIONprint · foiling · edition · language · grade
REAL SALES540-day realized priceswhat it actually trades for
LOWEST LIVE LISTINGsame variant · same conditionthe real buy-it-now path
No marketplace. No grading arm. No transaction or basic-use fees. The price has nothing to sell you.
Live today at card-prices.com. Sources: live product; card-prices.com/about.
CARD PRICES
05 · The Product
Already live — and deeper than it looks.
card-prices.com · Current Status: 200
iOS / Android beta, one card end to end — search “absol” → scan it (3-pass identification, edition/foil confirmed, condition auto-graded) → exact variant, lowest & market, recent sales, label price → collection by set & condition → binders
Deep search. Name, set, or number → lowest listing, market & recent sold for the exact variant + condition.
Card scanner (beta). Camera → exact variant, condition and price; 10+-model vision ensemble; label price to a thermal printer.
Collections & binders (beta). Value by set and condition; binders from set / artist / type templates that track what you still need; market / low / last-sold / sticker modes.
Exact-match filters. Condition, foiling, print, and language — narrow to the precise card, live.
Vendor pricing tools. Shops price and tag inventory at scale off the same independent reference — set dividers and condition-priced labels.
Mobile apps (beta). iOS and Android in testing on TestFlight and Google Play — the delivery vehicle for the scanner.
Sources: live product (search, collections, blog); TestFlight & Google Play internal-testing builds. Items in testing / development labeled as such.
CARD PRICES
06 · The Opportunity
A $50B+ market, growing and globally fragmented.
MARKET DATA · BOARD2024 → 2033
TRADING CARDS · TOTAL$50B+→ $90B BY 2032
COLLECTIBLE SINGLES$9.5B→ $15.7B BY 2033 · +65%
GRADING SERVICES$202M→ $637M BY 2033 · 3.2×
JAPAN SINGLES · FY24$1.99B2× YOY · KOREA ~$630M · CHINA +56.6%/YR
WHATNOT LIVE COMMERCE$8B+GMV · INVISIBLE TO TODAY'S PRICING TOOLS
CARDS GRADED · 202526.6MTCG PASSES SPORTS · NO NEUTRAL REFERENCE
Six growing markets, one shared gap: no independent, cross-platform price reference exists anywhere. That gap is the product.
Sources: Intel Market Research — Trading Cards Market Outlook 2026–2032 ($52.1B 2025 → $90.2B 2032); internal market-research summary. SAM/SOM are illustrative.
CARD PRICES
07 · Competition
The exact printing, with accurate pricing.
Tool
Independent
Cross-platform
Free core
No conflict
Per-condition
Graded
★ Card Prices
YES
YES
YES
YES
YES
All graders
TCGplayer (eBay-owned)
No
Own only
Browse
8–15% fees
Yes
Partial
eBay (Terapeak)
No
Own only
Browse
Owns market
Partial
Partial
Card Ladder / PSA (graded-only)
No
Partial
$15–20/mo
Grades it
No
Graded
PriceCharting
Yes
eBay-only
Yes
Yes
Single #
Partial
Collectr
Yes
Yes
Limited
Yes
Yes
Partial
Cardmarket (EU)
Yes
Own only
Browse
Fees
Yes
No
Other tools offer quick access to some of this — but gaps in comprehensiveness, accuracy, or ease of use leave the average person trusting bad data as their source of truth, pricing the wrong variant (extremely common), or anchoring to non-standard numbers.
And the few that are per-variant/condition accurate guard it on purpose — clunky paywalled interfaces, blocked API access, and anti-scraping walls keep that data hard to reach and impossible to build on.
Card Prices is the only tool that is independent and cross-platform and free and per-variant/condition accurate — and openly accessible.
Sources: internal market-research summary; competitor product review. “Partial” = capability exists but limited in coverage, depth, or access (one marketplace, graded-only, or higher-tier).
CARD PRICES
08 · The Moat
Three layers that compound — and one rivals structurally can't copy.
01 · CAPTURE
Listing lifecycle tracking
Every live listing is fingerprinted and followed through its lifecycle — active, relisted, or gone — alongside cross-platform public pricing.
02 · VERIFY
Sales and live listings
Disappeared listings are vetted for a legitimate sale — a true sold record — while the lowest live listing stays first-class data beside it.
03 · RESOLVE
One canonical identity
Pokémon cards & variants across all 15 release languages reconciled to a single identity — the connective tissue rivals lack.
04 · IDENTIFY
10+ model ML ensemble
Vision ensemble — automated card ID by majority vote, then verified against catalog data; the engine behind the scanner.
05 · PRICE
The reference price
Recent sales + lowest listing per exact variant & condition — independent by design.
Recurring infrastructure for the search core: ≈$0/mo — free-tier hosting, Cloudflare Workers + R2, and startup-program cloud credits in front of one on-prem server. Lean today; scanner inference is the cost that scales, with usage.
And the deepest moat: identifying the exact printing. Collectr proves collectors pay for a scanner; we read the printing itself — 1st Edition stamp, Shadowless, finish — measured on 1,060 real scans, and price that exact printing across platforms.
Sources: internal data-pipeline & infrastructure documentation; scanner print log (Sep 7 – Oct 3, 2026). All figures are real, documented internal data.
card variants priced across 55 games — incl. 166,283 Pokémon across all 15 release languages
7.78M
market & low price points tracked
541,412
unique cards priced across 55 games
≈$0/mo
search-core infrastructure today — MVP-lean by design; scanner inference is the cost that scales, with usage
Across all cards, their variants, their conditions, and their languages, pricing data is being sourced for over 7 million distinct products.
Product
Live at card-prices.com — cross-platform comparison, graded pricing across every grading company, collections beta, label printing; iOS & Android apps in beta testing.
Partnership outreach
45 emails to platforms across 12 countries — Heritage Auctions granted data access; 42 conversations open.
Research
Research-grade methodology, documented in a working draft — independently developed, with academic-advisor outreach underway.
Pre-launch on audience. card-prices.com hasn't been advertised yet — the figures above are the data engine, not the audience. Growth is the next phase — usage analytics (PostHog + Search Console) instrumenting now to measure the first cohort. See the model and go-to-market that follow.
Sources: internal dataset; outreach tracker. Audience is pre-launch; Year-1 growth targets are illustrative (next slide).
CARD PRICES
10 · Scanner Accuracy real use
Measured on real cards. Sleeved and toploaded.
1,060
cards scanned and printed, Sep 7 – Oct 3, 2026 — every one in a sleeve and/or toploader
97%
resolved from the scan itself — 1,030 of 1,060; 30 needed a search
92%
the right card — 971 of 1,060; misses are mostly promo and reprint printings
82%
finish right in a labelled test — 41 of 50 cards; foil is the open problem
First scan, nothing changed: 81% exactly right on card, set and finish (859 of 1,060).
Finish · the open problem
Holo / reverse / normal and 1st Edition fixed from the scan's own choices: 112 of 1,060 (10.6%) — a floor, since rushed prints go uncorrected.
Printing · close
Promo, Prize Pack and exclusive printings picked over the main set: 53 (5.0%). A genuinely different card: 6 (0.6%).
Scoring · strict
Each printed label is ground truth: as scanned = accurate; fixed from alternates or the printing picker = mostly accurate; replaced via search = miss.
Next milestone: finish. The round funds the compute and labelled data to close the foil gap — our largest remaining error.
Sources: scanner print log, Sep 7 – Oct 3, 2026 (n = 1,060); labelled finish test, Oct 1, 2026 (n = 50). All cards sleeved and/or toploaded.
CARD PRICES
10 · Sustaining the Mission
Free core is the engine — premium tools keep it alive.
PLUS affiliate referrals (eBay · TCGplayer) · developer API (exploratory) · grants & sponsorship
The scanner is the flagship paid product — priced by usage, with margin built in.
Usage-priced scanning with margin built in. A 10+-model vision ensemble that IDs the exact variant and prices it live — vendors scan binders at scale and pay by usage, priced above cost; no subscription lock-in.
Paid tiers on top. Vendor tools — inventory tracking, custom label printing, shareable inventory with card photos, storage — and collector upgrades such as extra binder shelves and deck slots. Search, compare and collections stay $0 forever; nothing here compromises independence.
Team: one builds the engine, one drives distribution.
ERIC SCHNELKER — Founder & CEO, Card Prices LLC
Built and runs every layer solo — product (search, collections, alerts, iOS/Android betas), ML/CV (10+-model vision ensemble), data (7.78M price points) and infrastructure (search core ≈$0/mo) — all in production.
PRIOR EMPLOYERS
Department of the Air Force, Tinker AFB — Computer Scientist, Aug 2024–present; Palace Acquire (PAQ) program.
Freelance software engineer — 2023–24. Lab-scheduling optimizer for a materials-testing client: ≈88% less manual assignment time.
Textron Systems (2021) · Bell Flight (2020) — engineering internships: C++ test frameworks, analytics automation, flight-safety procedures.
CREDENTIALS
M.S. Software Engineering — Purdue University (ECE / CS, Dec 2026).
B.S. Computer Science · B.S. Cybersecurity · B.S. Mathematics — University of Tulsa (2024); minors in Data Science, HPC and Music.
Domain expertise — ground-truth fluency in how cards are identified, graded and priced; author of a market-transparency methodology (card-research.com).
JESSICA ABDO — Marketing Lead · Social Media Manager · SEO Specialist
Owns distribution — the $0-CAC engine: programmatic SEO pages for every card and set, community-led launches, social and video content, and the Google Ads / Analytics measurement loop behind them.
PRIOR EMPLOYERS
The Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI), Tulsa — Digital Media Coordinator, Sep 2025–present: leads social strategy and content calendar; films and edits video for social and YouTube; conference marketing.
University of Tulsa Financial Wellness — Marketing Intern, summer 2023: print and digital campaigns reaching ≈3,800 students.
University of Tulsa Libraries — Bibliographic Services, 2021–22: multimedia asset redesign for branding and accessibility.
CREDENTIALS
B.S.B.A. Marketing — University of Tulsa (2025), minor in Art; Tulsa Tech Multimedia Design (2021). Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere · Google Ads & Analytics · Mailchimp · WordPress.
Every card is a long-tail query ("Machop Evolutions price"). Per-card and per-set pages = thousands of indexable, compounding entry points — the primary $0-CAC wedge.
Community-led
Seed r/PokemonTCG, collector Discords, and Facebook groups by answering pricing questions with the tool — card collecting is one of the most community-driven hobbies online.
Independent watchdog
The consolidation story is earned-media gold — David-vs-Goliath PR that collectors and journalists share for free, with Card Prices as the independent voice in it.
The scanner is the artifact
"Watch someone scan a 500-card binder" is inherently shareable — the demo that sells itself.
NORTH STARindexed card pages→organic sessions→returning users
A free, principled, genuinely useful tool against conflicted incumbents is remarkable enough to be talked about for free.
MITIGATIONInfrastructure documented & automated · lean by design (≈$0/mo to run) · distribution now owned by a dedicated marketing lead (Jessica Abdo) · active contributor + advisor pipeline (card-prices.com/join).
Monetization
Free-core models can stall before they sustain.
MITIGATIONThree independent levers — affiliate referrals, premium tools, grants — no single conversion assumption carries the model; the free core stays free.
A funded competitor
A well-capitalized rival could copy the product surface.
MITIGATIONIncumbents are structurally conflicted — neutral cross-platform pricing cannibalizes their take rate. Our edge compounds: ease of use, accuracy, and a UI built for collectors — plus coverage rivals don't attempt (13 release languages, Topps, Bandai, Old Maid Pokémon).
Raising a $3.5–4M pre-seed — the first outside capital.
Nothing raised to date. A SAFE for 24 months: the founder full-time, two engineers, our own GPUs for the scanner, and launch — plus non-dilutive support alongside it: cloud/compute credits, platform data partnerships, grants & accelerators.
$972K
People — founder full-time + two engineers ($672K) · outsourced development & design ($300K)
$1.52M
Owned compute — two reader stacks, three scan servers & hosting ($1.27M) · AI usage ($250K)
≈$4.2M over 24 months. The low end ($3.5M) trims marketing and the reserve.
What it proves for the seed round: paying Vendor and Shop subscribers, weekly scan growth, and printing-level finish accuracy measured on real phone photos.
Use-of-funds model, Oct 2026: salaries as planned; GPUs and hosting at list price; marketing at plan estimates.
CARD PRICES
15 · How to Help
What accelerates the mission now: partners, data, compute, and people.
Data partnerships
Access agreements with platforms & marketplaces to widen and legitimize coverage.
Grants, accelerators & credits
Non-dilutive funding and cloud/compute credits to keep the core free as it scales beyond free tier.
Research backing
Academic & institutional support for the independent research that anchors our credibility.
Contributors & advisors
Volunteer builders & advisors — data engineering, ML, frontend, market expertise, CAD, QA — to extend a one-founder stack. card-prices.com/join
The infrastructure is built and the unit cost is near-zero. What accelerates the mission now is distribution, legitimacy, and data access — exactly what the right partners and supporters provide.
Programs: AWS Activate, Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub and Cloudflare for Startups — approved; NVIDIA Inception — member; Google for Startups Cloud Program — applying.
STAGE 3 · Evolves from price guidesPut Card Prices on the $50B+ market
Card Prices ∞ HP
The trading card market needs its Bloomberg terminal — except free.
Ability · Independent Reference
Compare every market for the exact variant and condition. This power can't be used if you own a marketplace, a grading arm, or charge transaction fees.
weakness none foundresistance conflicts of interest −30retreat cost never
A $50B+ market, newly consolidated into conflict — and one independent, research-backed, already-live tool making card pricing comprehensive, accurate, and free.
