PullBinder: Mark

The right card, first.

A card's name and number aren't enough to mark it. Charizard #4/102 is a Celebrations reprint, a 1999 Base Set original worth many times more, and a gold-metal novelty that isn't a real card at all. Same name, same number, wildly different money.

Every card is resolved to one catalog identity before a single price is pulled. If a listing is not your card, it never touches your number.

Celebrations#4/102 · the card you hold

✓

1999 Base Set#4/102 · a different card

≠

Gold metal promonot a real card

≠

Gather it. Weigh it.

Everything we can find on the card is gathered: what people are asking for it right now, what the sold market says it trades for, and what we have marked it at before. Only the condition you hold is pulled. Proxies, lots, bundles, empty sleeves and mistyped listings never reach the number.

Then the three are weighed against each other, each for what it is worth. On the ask side, fantasy prices are set aside: a listing far above where the card trades, listed on hope, and a listing far below that is really a sticker. Real sales are never set aside. No single input is the mark, so no one listing, sale or figure can pull it around on its own.

SoldAsking×marks an ask set asideIllustrative example, one card.

The range, not a point.

The mark is published with the span of live asks it sits in: the lowest ask and the highest kept ask. Beside it, where the mark falls in that book, and how deep the book runs. The mark itself is none of the simple answers: not a midpoint, not a median, not the cheapest ask wearing a costume.

A single figure hides the shape of the market. Two cards can carry the same mark with very different books behind them: one tight, one all over the place. The range tells you which you are holding.

When the data is thin, we say so.

A mark built from deep, recent data and a mark built from almost nothing should not look the same. Where a card trades thinly, the span comes out wide. The span is the warning.

And where there is not enough to mark honestly, there is no mark. The card stays out of your totals instead of dragging them.

No mark

An honest “we don't know” beats a precise number that's wrong.

What we never do.

Average three different cards together because they share a name and number.

Let one wishful listing pull the number up, or one mistake pull it down.

Compare a raw card to graded slabs, or a near-mint to a beater.

Print a one-sale guess and a fifty-sale consensus as if they're equally solid.

Show you a number and hide where it came from. The legend under every mark shows the ask bar, the averages and the recipe behind it.

A number you can actually check.

One piece of the ledger, not the whole point.

Start your binder