- Estimate
- What we think this card in this grade would sell for today.
- Built every night from the sales we counted (and within the hour when a card is newly loaded), weighted toward the most recent, and adjusted to typical eBay auction prices. It moves only when sales show a lasting change. Older pages and reports called it the Estimated Market Value (EMV).
- Recent sales
- The middle price of the last few sales, so you can see where the newest sales sit.
- The median of the last 3 sales we counted (or 2, or the last one), adjusted to typical eBay auction prices. Earlier pages called it the fast read.
- Evidence
- How much the estimate rests on: strong, moderate or limited.
- Strong: at least 4.5 effective recent sales (older and clustered sales count for less) with a spread under 0.15. Moderate: at least 2.8 with a spread under 0.30. Limited: anything less. Earlier pages showed this as confidence grade A, B or C.
- Range
- Where we expect the next sale to land, or, for grades with few sales, what they sold for.
- With enough sales, an 80 percent interval: in past checks, about 8 of every 10 next sales fell inside ranges built this way. With too few sales, the lowest to highest sale we counted.
- Range of recent sales (or Paid this past year)
- For grades with few sales: the lowest and highest price actually paid in the last year.
- Shown instead of an estimate range when a grade has too few sales to measure one. These are the prices paid, as in the sales list, not adjusted.
- Sales we counted
- Real sales of this exact card, grade and printing.
- We leave out duplicates reported by two sources, lots, reprints, wrong cards or grades, qualifiers, signed or altered slabs, unpaid auctions and prices far from every other sale until they are checked. Earlier pages called these valid sales.
- Middle sale
- The price in the middle when sales are lined up from cheapest to dearest.
- The median: half the sales were at or below it, half at or above. One odd sale moves it far less than it moves an average.
- Estimated from similar cards
- For grades with few sales, the estimate also uses related cards and grades.
- A modeled estimate: older sales of this grade moved to today by how the era's prices changed, the grades just above and below, other printings, and comparable cards from the same set. Shown only where it has beaten the last sale in tests.
- Adjusted to typical eBay auction prices
- Every price is put on the same footing as an eBay auction.
- Buy It Now and auction-house prices differ from eBay auctions by a gap we measure for each era; we remove that gap so all sales compare fairly. The sales list always shows the price paid.
- Momentum
- Whether recent sales have moved away from the earlier price, and whether later sales held there.
- Unconfirmed: recent sales moved well away from the earlier level. Rising or Falling: later sales held the new level. Settled: our estimate caught up. Reversed: sales moved back.
- Shared estimate
- Neighbouring grades can share one figure so a lower grade never shows above a higher one.
- Where a lower grade's figure would sit above a higher grade's, the grades are pooled into one precision-weighted estimate: each figure weighs more the tighter its range.