Where our market comparable comes from — and when we hide it

Next to almost every price in the Collect Shop there is a second, smaller number labelled FMV. It is the fair market value calculated by Harmony Collect: what the same card in the same grade has actually been selling for. It is there so you can judge our price instead of taking it.

We compute it ourselves from completed sales — it is not licensed from a price guide. It is the median of the most recent days 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: up to five sale-days, at least three, all within the past year, 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 A handful of cards carry only a guide price from our vault provider; we do not publish it, and the product page says why. PriceCharting is named as the record we read, not as a partner.

The rule that matters is the one about removing it. A new FMV is calculated only while the card’s newest sale is within 30 days. A comparable is not shown at all once our figure for the card is more than 30 days old, counted from the day we last computed it. Not greyed out, not marked stale — removed. A two-month-old number presented next to today’s price is worse than no number, because it looks current and is not.

That rule costs us. A card whose last figure has aged past the window shows no comparable at all until fresh sales price it again, however well it sold before. And a figure that was never read from sales, such as a manual appraisal, is not shown at any age.

And a comparable is not a promise. It says what other people paid recently. It does not say what you will get if you sell, which is why the buyback rate is published separately and as a percentage we are contractually on the hook for.