How Scouter prices a card
Every price on Scouter, on a card page, in a set list, in a vault total, comes from one function applied to one set of data. This page says what that function does, so a number can be read for what it is.
What is tracked
For each printing, Scouter tracks the public asking prices of current fixed-price listings on eBay, grouped by what is being sold: a raw card, a graded slab (kept apart and never used as the card's price), a silver, gold or unmarked energy marker. Listings are matched to the exact printing by their titles: an alternate art, a promo, a special rare and a Japanese copy each go to their own row, and titles for bundles, sealed product, custom cards and autographs are discarded. Auctions are excluded because a current bid is not an asking price.
Beside the listings, Scouter keeps three references built from sales, each matched to the exact printing in the same way: TCGplayer's market price, a recorded sold-price reference for eBay sales, and the sales trend of a large European card marketplace.
The asking-price figure
From the most recent thirty listings of a printing, the highest and lowest asks are trimmed (the top and bottom tenth when there are eight or more; the outer quarters when there are five to seven; nothing when there are three or four). The figure is the lower quartile of what remains: the level at which a quarter of current sellers are willing to sell. A single lowest ask is not used, because one mispriced or damaged listing would set the price.
The cross-check against sales
Asking prices sit above what cards change hands for, most of all for cheap cards, where shipping puts a floor under every ask, while the few asks for a rare card can sit well below what it sells for. So since 3 October 2026 the asking-price figure is checked against the sales references before it is shown:
- Two references agree when they are within a factor of two of each other, or within 50 cents when both are under a dollar. The asking-price figure takes part from $5 up; below that an ask is mostly shipping.
- The largest group of references that all agree with each other decides. When there is no such group, or two groups of the same size disagree, the asking-price figure stands.
- When the asking-price figure sits well above the agreeing sales (more than 1.5 times them under $1, twice up to $20, two and a half times up to $100, three times above that), the price comes down to the highest sales figure in the group. This applies to regular prints and to any card under $10. An expensive special print never comes down this way: two references describing a different printing can agree by accident.
- When the asking-price figure is under 60% of what the agreeing sales say, and they say at least $2, the price goes up to them. This applies where one listing row is one printing: regular prints, alternate arts, super alternate arts, secret rares, God Rares, special leader rares and the like. A tournament print goes up only when the European sales trend agrees with another reference.
- A regular print with no agreeing group follows TCGplayer's market price when its asking-price figure sits above it by the same margin.
- Energy markers keep the asking-price figure.
Confidence and fallbacks
Fewer than three listings is not a market. When a printing has fewer, or when its asks sit far above the market reference for the same card, Scouter starts from a market reference price instead: the TCGplayer market price where TCGplayer carries the printing, otherwise a recorded sold-price reference where one exists. A printing with none of these shows no price rather than an invented one.
A handful of rare printings with almost no sales carry a price set by hand from the evidence (sales, asks and shops), reviewed every three months. A newly released set can be held without prices while only pre-sale asks exist.
What the numbers are not
- They are not offers to sell. Scouter sells nothing and holds no inventory.
- They are not one sale or one listing. A price starts from current asks and is checked against recorded sales. Where a page says "asking prices", it means what sellers ask today.
- They are not condition-specific. Listings are assumed near mint; damaged copies are trimmed away where they show up as outliers.
- They are in US dollars. Listings in other currencies are converted at the day's rate.
Freshness
Listings are refreshed on a schedule: the printings that move most every day, the rest at least weekly. Each card page states when its price was last updated. Prices are recorded once a day, which is where the price history and the movement figures come from. The cross-check started on 3 October 2026, so a card's history can show a step on 4 October that no market made, and the weekly movers leave that change out.