What things are actually worth

How the number is made

1. FMV is the fair market value calculated by Harmony Collect from completed sales of the same card at the same grade. Completed sales only — an asking price proves nothing.
2. One method, and every row names it. FMV is 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 sold in a completed eBay sale as recorded on PriceCharting, with same-day sales averaged into one figure. A rarer printing is a different card with its own sales and its own FMV; rarity does not adjust the figure. A card that cannot be priced this way — a handful carry only a guide price from our vault provider — shows no FMV and says why.
3. The median of sale-days, never a plain average of sales. One shill bid or one bundle broken out wrong moves an average by hundreds of dollars and moves a median by nothing.
4. Auctions count and so do buy-it-now sales — an auction with real bidding is the truest price a card has, and throwing those out would discard most of the evidence for anything expensive. What we record is what the buyer actually paid, buyer’s premium included, shipping and sales tax excluded.
5. Four things never count: an accepted offer whose price the venue hides, an auction that closed at the opening bid with nobody bidding against it, a lot or bundle broken out into per-card guesses, and a private treaty sale. None of them is a price two strangers agreed on in the open.
6. A new FMV is calculated only while the card’s newest sale is within 30 days. An FMV is withdrawn rather than carried forward once our figure for the card is more than 30 days old, counted from the day we computed it rather than from its newest sale. That is why some cards in the vault show no FMV at all.
7. Past prices are not a forecast, and nothing here is investment advice.