It is the recent sold price for the same card at the same grade — completed sales, not asking prices, and that distinction matters more than anything else on this page. Anyone can list a card at any number; only a sale proves what it is worth.
Two figures appear on a card page and they are not the same thing. The MARKET COMPARABLE is the evidence: the median of the most recent sale-days — up to five, at least three, all within the past year — on which that exact card, same set and number, at that exact grade from that grader sold in a completed eBay sale as recorded on PriceCharting, with same-day sales averaged into one figure. Nothing adjusts it. It is what the market did.
The FMV is what Harmony Collect calculates the card is fairly worth, and it is derived from the comparable in the open: the comparable multiplied by the rate for that card’s sample grade. The arithmetic is printed on the page in one line, so you can check it rather than take it. Neither figure is licensed from a price guide; a handful of cards carry only a guide price from our vault provider, which we do not publish: the listing shows no comparable and says why.
We take the median of sale-days rather than a plain average of sales, because one odd sale moves an average a long way and a median hardly at all. A rarer printing is a different card with its own sales and its own figures; rarity does not adjust either one.
Auctions and buy-it-now sales both count. An auction with real bidding is the truest price a card has, so excluding them would throw away most of the evidence on anything expensive. We record what the buyer actually paid — buyer’s premium included, shipping and tax excluded — and we ignore any sale where the price is hidden, where nobody bid against the opening, or where a lot was broken up into per-card guesses.
Each figure shows the date of its newest sale and the date we computed it, along with the cheapest and dearest of the days it was taken over. A new FMV is calculated only while the card’s newest sale is within 30 days. Once our figure for a card is more than 30 days old, counted from the day we computed it rather than from its newest sale, the listing shows no figure at all and says why. We would rather publish nothing than present a number from four months ago as if it were today.
The comparable is context, not a promise. Sometimes our price sits above it — for a scarce grade, or a card we paid up for — and you can see that plainly, which is the intended behaviour.