Research

How prices move

Two years of daily, card-by-card prices, read for the regularities that repeat. Three hold across every game we cover. Each figure measures what has already happened, with its window attached; none of it is a forecast.


After a release

A new set's cards ease to about two-thirds of their release-week price, then settle.

the marketa new setRELEASE30 WEEKS

~35% below release, most of it inside 13 weeks

Value concentration

A few cards carry a set. The single most valuable one holds 8% to 20% of all its value.

One Piece
20%
FAB
18%
Pokémon JP
18%
Pokémon
16%
Lorcana
15%
Yu-Gi-Oh!
13%
MTG
8%

top card's share of its set, by game

Big moves

Almost every card barely moves on a given day. The rare exception is large, and skews up.

99%
top 5% of moves
73%
top 10%

the largest daily moves, of 71,940 measured

60% up40% down

See which cards broke away lately

Why card by card

Each card writes its own story

Read the three together and a card's move is almost all its own. Across every game, about 97% of a day's price change belongs to the card itself, not the market moving together (from 92% to 99% by game).

So the market average says little about any one card. We read each card against its own history and name the break-away: the move a card's own past does not account for.