PriceCharting: The Complete Guide to Game and Card Price Tracking

Last Updated: November 2, 2026

PriceCharting is one of the best-known free price guides for video games, trading cards and comics. Whether you are buying a SNES cartridge at a garage sale, selling a graded Pokémon card, or building a retro game collection, PriceCharting shows what items have actually sold for, not what sellers hope to get.

This guide covers everything you need to know: who runs PriceCharting, how it calculates prices, how often it updates, whether its prices are accurate, what the free and paid plans cost, and how it compares with eBay sold listings, TCGplayer, PSA and 130point.

Quick Answer: PriceCharting is a free price guide launched in 2007 by brothers JJ and Michael Hendricks. It turns sold listings, mainly from eBay and its own Marketplace, into one value per item and condition (Loose, Complete in Box, New, Graded and others for games; ungraded and grades 7 to 10 for cards). Prices update daily. Lookups and the collection tracker are free; the Collector plan costs $6 a month or $59 a year and the Legendary plan, which adds the API and price downloads, costs $49 a month.

What Is PriceCharting?

PriceCharting is a free online price guide that combines real sold listings into current market values. According to its About page, brothers JJ Hendricks and Michael Hendricks launched it in 2007 as the first publicly available video game price guide, starting with about 8,000 games priced in loose condition only. The company behind the site and its apps is PriceCharting LLC, the seller named on its App Store and Google Play listings. Its Android app still carries the old “vgpc” (Video Game Price Charts) identifier.

Today PriceCharting covers:

Video games: more than 45,000 games, consoles and accessories by its own count, across Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega, Xbox, Atari, Neo Geo and other systems, with separate NTSC (USA), PAL (Europe) and Japanese versions. Each game has Loose, Complete in Box (CIB), New, Graded, Box Only and Manual Only prices. Toys-to-life figures such as amiibo and Skylanders are included.

Trading cards: Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Lorcana, Digimon, Dragon Ball, Star Wars, Marvel and other card games, priced ungraded and by grade.

Comics: ungraded and graded comic book values, from grade 4.0 up to 10.0.

Other collectibles: Funko Pops, LEGO sets and US coins.

Sports cards: these sit on a separate site, SportsCardsPro, which PriceCharting links to for baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer and other sports.

The core idea: instead of checking completed eBay listings by hand, PriceCharting does the collection and cleaning automatically and gives you one figure based on actual recent sales rather than asking prices. The site supports seven languages and seven currencies, with prices shown in US dollars by default.

Is PriceCharting Accurate?

PriceCharting is generally accurate for common to moderately rare items that sell often, because its values come from completed sales that are cleaned before they are averaged. Every price column shows how often that item sells. On November 2, 2026, for example, the Super Mario Bros. 3 page for the NES showed about 4 sales per day for loose copies but only 2 sales per month for new, sealed copies. The more sales behind a number, the more you can rely on it.

Where PriceCharting is most accurate:

• Mainstream retro game titles (NES, SNES, Genesis, PS1, N64) with high transaction volume
• Popular Pokémon and other trading cards, both ungraded and in common grades such as PSA 9
• Loose vs. CIB vs. new distinctions for the same game

Where accuracy degrades:

• Very rare or obscure items that sell a few times a month or less, where one unusual sale can move the value
• Top grades and less common grading companies, where sales are thin (a PSA 10 of a sought-after card may sell about once a month)
• Regional variants and limited releases that have few comparable sales
• Items with sudden viral demand, where the value can trail the real market for a few days
• Listings that its tools cannot classify: for video games, a listing that does not state its condition is counted as Loose

Two further limits are worth knowing. The prices shown do not include shipping or other transaction costs, according to PriceCharting’s methodology page. And on eBay, an accepted Best Offer can display the original asking price instead of the price actually paid; PriceCharting does not say how it treats those sales, which is why some card collectors cross-check with 130point.

The critical point about accuracy: PriceCharting reflects completed sales, not listed prices. A game listed for $200 on eBay means nothing if comparable copies consistently sell for $80. PriceCharting shows the $80, not the $200, which is why collectors use it as a baseline check before buying.

How Often Does PriceCharting Update?

PriceCharting updates its prices daily, according to its About page. New sold listings are collected and cleaned every day, and the downloadable price guide for Legendary subscribers is regenerated every 24 hours.

The update frequency has practical implications for collectors:

For buyers: PriceCharting’s algorithm weights sales by age, so recent sales count more than older ones. It does not publish a fixed lookback window. If a game or card has spiked in the last few days, the value may need some time to catch up.

For sellers: do not rely solely on PriceCharting for final pricing decisions on high-value items. For anything worth more than about $50, open the item’s sold listings on PriceCharting or eBay and compare the last 10 to 20 sales in the same condition, using PriceCharting as a directional guide rather than a precise valuation.

For volatile markets: Pokémon and other trading cards can move sharply around new set releases, grading news and influencer coverage. Daily updates catch these moves, but there is always a short lag between real-world sales and the published value.

How PriceCharting Calculates Prices

PriceCharting collects sold listing data from eBay and from its own video game Marketplace, then combines those sales into one value per item and condition with a proprietary algorithm. Its methodology page says the algorithm considers measures such as the most recent sale price, the median price, the average price and an age-weighted average, and accounts for outliers and for when each sale happened. The exact formula is not published. On trading card pages, the sold listings also include sales tagged TCGplayer (ungraded cards) and Fanatics (graded cards) next to eBay sales.

The cleaning process has three layers:

Junk listing removal: automated keyword tools remove reproductions, lots, listings for a different region and other junk. PriceCharting says it removes thousands of junk listings every day.

Outlier review: sales that are abnormally high or low are flagged automatically and reviewed by an admin. PriceCharting says it manually reviews hundreds of listings every day.

User reports: anyone can report a misclassified sale for admin review, for up to 90 days after the listing ends.

Condition variants: the same game has separate values for Loose (cartridge or disc only), Complete in Box (game, original box and manual), New (factory sealed), Graded (a new copy graded by WATA or VGA), Box Only and Manual Only. Gamestop prices are shown for comparison only and are never used in the calculation.

For trading cards, the platform separates ungraded vs. graded values and breaks out Grade 7, Grade 8, Grade 9, Grade 9.5 and PSA 10, plus BGS 10, CGC 10 and SGC 10 in its data. Cards sold with qualifiers such as off-center or stained are excluded. Comics follow the same idea with grades from 4.0 to 10.0, including 9.2, 9.4 and 9.8.

PriceCharting App: iOS and Android

PriceCharting is available as a free mobile app, “PriceCharting: TCG, Games+”, for both iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play), making it practical to use at conventions, flea markets, game stores and garage sales. Version 1.34.4 was released on October 20, 2026. On November 2, 2026, the iOS app was rated 4.8 out of 5 from about 28,000 ratings, and the Android app was rated 4.7 with more than 1 million downloads.

The app’s primary use case: barcode scanning and photo search. Point your phone camera at a game’s barcode, a trading card or a comic, and PriceCharting finds the best match in its database and shows current values. The Photo Appraiser can also value several items in one photo; since July 2026 it can price a whole lot and save it for 30 days. It warns when a match has low confidence, so check the result before you rely on it.

Additional app features include:

• Collection tracking with total collection value
• Wishlist, with Deal Alerts for wishlist items listed below market value (paid)
• Deal Sniper, which shows eBay listings priced below the PriceCharting value (paid)
• A free card centering tool for checking a card before grading
• Historic price charts showing value trends over months and years

The app is free with the core functionality. Subscriptions bought in the app cost $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year for the Collector plan, slightly different from the website prices below.

PriceCharting Free vs. Paid: Subscription Prices in 2026

PriceCharting’s price lookups are free, and a free account removes ads and unlocks the collection tracker. Paid plans add deal-hunting, grading and data tools. These are the plans listed on PriceCharting’s subscription page on November 2, 2026:

Older guides, including an earlier version of this page, quoted a “PriceCharting Premium” plan at $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year. That plan is no longer listed. The subscription page also shows that PriceCharting data is built into the Grindless point-of-sale system used by game and card stores.

Which plan do you need? Most collectors never need to pay: price checks, the collection tracker and the app work on a free account. The Collector plan makes sense if you hunt deals on eBay, want more than three folders or plan to grade cards. Legendary is aimed at stores, resellers and developers who need bulk data.

PriceCharting for Video Games: What Collectors Need to Know

For retro game collectors, PriceCharting is the primary market reference. The database covers:

Cartridge and disc-based systems: Atari 2600 through Nintendo 64, PlayStation through PlayStation 2, Sega Genesis through Dreamcast, Game Boy through GBA and DS. Coverage extends to modern platforms including Switch and current PlayStation and Xbox consoles, but the primary use is retro. Strategy guides and Nintendo Power issues are listed too.

Regional variants: NTSC (USA), PAL (Europe) and Japanese versions are tracked as separate consoles, for example Nintendo NES, PAL NES and Famicom, reflecting that regional variants often sell at a premium or a discount depending on collector demand.

Graded games: for factory-sealed games, PriceCharting tracks a New price and a separate Graded price for copies graded by WATA or VGA. Graded sealed copies usually sell far less often than loose games, so check the sales volume shown under the price before you rely on it.

How to use it effectively: when evaluating a used game purchase, check all the condition tiers. If loose is $25 and CIB is $80, buying a loose copy and finding a box separately may not make economic sense, or it might, if Box Only and Manual Only prices are low. PriceCharting gives you the data to make that calculation.

PriceCharting for Trading Cards

Trading card coverage on PriceCharting includes Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece, Lorcana and other card games. The platform tracks individual card prices within sets, with an ungraded value and values by grade. In March 2026 PriceCharting added set and item population reports that combine PSA and CGC data, showing how many copies of a card have been graded at each level.

For Pokémon: PriceCharting covers Base Set through current expansions, tracking both English and Japanese cards. The intersection of Pokémon card collecting and blockchain technology has become a notable market trend. Courtyard, which joined the Rarible marketplace as covered in our report on Rarible’s integration with Polygon, sells digital packs tied to vaulted, insured graded cards, including PSA, CGC and BGS graded Pokémon cards, which can be redeemed for the physical card.

For sports cards: PriceCharting sends sports card collectors to SportsCardsPro, a separate price guide for PSA, BGS and ungraded sports cards. For high-value sports cards, collectors also check PSA’s Auction Prices Realized and 130point.

For MTG: coverage includes current sets and older cards. Older Reserved List cards are tracked, but many sell rarely, so check the sales volume before using the value.

PriceCharting Folders and Collection Management

PriceCharting’s Collection Tracker is free, with unlimited collection size. You can record each item’s grade, condition and quantity, add up to six photos and notes per item, add items by barcode scan, import a whole collection from a text list, and share your collection with anyone. The total value updates automatically when prices change, and historic values show how your collection has moved over time. Since March 2026 you can also record items you have sold, with sale price, date and costs, to see your profit.

The Folders feature lets users organize a collection into custom groups, for example by console, by franchise or by set. A free account can use up to three folders; the Collector and Legendary plans include unlimited folders.

How to add items to your collection:

1. Create a free PriceCharting account and log in
2. Search for an item, or scan its barcode in the app
3. Add it to your collection, choosing condition or grade and quantity
4. On a paid plan, or within the three free folders, assign it to a folder

How to delete a folder in PriceCharting: PriceCharting does not publish written steps for removing a folder. Folder options are managed from your collection page while logged in. If you are on a free account and have reached the three-folder limit, removing or merging an unused folder frees a slot. If an option is missing, the site’s Contact Us page is the official route for help.

PriceCharting API and Price Guide Downloads

PriceCharting offers price data through an API, but only on a paid subscription, and full API access and the daily CSV price guide are part of the Legendary plan ($49 a month). Each subscription has a 40-character token that is sent with every request.

What the API returns: the main endpoints look up one product by ID, UPC barcode or search text, or search for up to 20 matching products. For video games, the response includes loose, CIB, new, graded, box-only and manual-only prices. For cards and comics, the same fields map to grades (for cards, ungraded through PSA 10, plus BGS 10, CGC 10 and SGC 10). Prices are returned in pennies, so $17.32 comes back as 1732, and a sales volume field gives yearly units sold. A separate Marketplace API lets large sellers list, ship and manage orders.

Limits: the prices API allows one call per second, and the CSV download is limited to one call every 10 minutes and is regenerated every 24 hours, so PriceCharting recommends the CSV for bulk data. Data is licensed for internal use only; showing it to others in an app requires a commercial license, and all stored data must be deleted when the subscription ends.

Is PriceCharting Legit?

Yes. PriceCharting has operated since 2007, is run by PriceCharting LLC, and is used as a pricing reference by collectors, resellers and stores. Its subscription page lists 8,583 customers, its Android app has more than 1 million downloads, and its data is built into the Grindless point-of-sale system for game and card stores.

The platform’s legitimacy rests on its methodology: prices are derived from completed sales rather than seller-reported values, and the database is large enough to be statistically meaningful for high-volume items. Values are calculated from sales, not set by sellers. PriceCharting discloses that it is user supported and may earn an affiliate commission when you buy through its links to eBay or Amazon.

The legitimate caveats to understand:

• PriceCharting mostly reflects eBay sales, which means it reflects the buyer pool that shops on eBay. Local markets, Facebook Marketplace and specialty collector shows can have meaningfully different prices.
• It is a price guide, not an appraisal. For insurance purposes or estate valuations, a professional appraisal is required.
• It does not replace direct market research for high-value items. For anything over $100, check 10 to 20 recent completed sales in the same condition before buying or selling.

Collectors sometimes complain online that easy access to price data has made garage sale and flea market bargains rarer, because casual sellers now check values before pricing. That is not a criticism of PriceCharting’s accuracy or legitimacy; it is the consequence of market transparency.

PriceCharting vs. Other Price Guides

PriceCharting’s strongest competitive advantage is breadth: no single platform covers video games, trading cards, comics, LEGO and coins in one place with the same condition-by-condition detail. For collectors with interests in several categories, it is the most practical single reference.

PriceCharting vs. eBay sold listings: eBay shows every individual sale, which is the raw evidence, but you have to filter out lots, reproductions and wrong conditions yourself. PriceCharting does that cleaning for you and gives one number, at the cost of hiding some detail.

PriceCharting vs. TCGplayer: TCGplayer’s Market Price comes from recent sales on its own marketplace and follows the printing and condition filters you choose, which suits ungraded singles. The two can differ noticeably for the same card, so check both for raw cards; for graded cards, PriceCharting’s grade columns are more useful.

How PriceCharting Connects to the Broader Collectibles Economy

The collectibles market PriceCharting serves has drawn growing attention, driven by nostalgia for retro games, the grading boom for sports and Pokémon cards, and blockchain-based ownership records for physical collectibles.

Platforms like Courtyard, which entered the Rarible marketplace on Polygon, let collectors buy and trade graded physical cards that stay in a vault while ownership changes hands digitally. Card companies have tried similar ideas; our guide to Panini Blockchain explains how Panini’s NFT platform works and what changed after its NBA and NFL licenses expired. This creates an interesting dynamic: PriceCharting tracks the physical card market, while NFT marketplaces track trading in tokenized versions of the same physical assets.

For collectors navigating this intersection, PriceCharting remains a reference for physical market values, while NFT marketplaces provide data on digital ownership premiums, which can trade above or below physical values depending on the card and platform liquidity. Our OpenSea review covers the largest general NFT marketplace.

For broader context on how digital collectibles and the NFT market have evolved, the weekly NFT market overview tracks the intersection of gaming NFTs, trading card tokenization and blockchain collectibles across major platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is PriceCharting accurate?
Generally yes, for items that sell often. PriceCharting builds its values from completed sales, mainly on eBay, after removing junk listings and reviewing outliers, and it shows how many sales sit behind each price. Accuracy drops for rare items, top grades and regional variants with few recent sales. Prices exclude shipping, so for purchases over $100 compare recent sold listings in the same condition yourself.

How does PriceCharting get its prices?
PriceCharting collects sold listings from eBay and its own video game Marketplace, and card pages also show TCGplayer and Fanatics sales. Bots remove reproductions, lots and wrong regions, abnormal prices are flagged for manual review, and users can report bad sales. A proprietary algorithm then combines recent, median, average and age-weighted prices into one value for each item and condition.

How often does PriceCharting update?
Daily. PriceCharting says it updates prices every day, and its downloadable price guide is regenerated every 24 hours. Because the algorithm weights sales by age rather than reacting to a single sale, values can lag sudden spikes, such as a Pokémon card going viral or a game featured in a popular video. For fast-moving items, check the latest individual sales as well.

Is PriceCharting free?
Yes, the core service is free. Price lookups, historic prices, the collection tracker, the wishlist and the apps work on a free account, which also removes ads. Paid plans add tools: Collector costs $6 a month or $59 a year on the website, and Legendary costs $49 a month. The older $4.99 Premium plan is no longer listed.

How much does PriceCharting cost?
On November 2, 2026, PriceCharting listed three plans. The Free Account costs nothing. The Collector plan costs $6 a month or $59 a year on the website, or $5.99 a month and $59.99 a year in the app, and adds deal alerts and unlimited folders. The Legendary plan costs $49 a month and adds API access and daily price downloads.

Does PriceCharting have an API?
Yes. PriceCharting offers a prices API and a Marketplace API, but they require a paid subscription, with full API access and CSV price downloads listed under the Legendary plan at $49 a month. Requests use a 40-character token, return prices in pennies and are limited to one call per second. The data is licensed for internal use unless you buy a commercial license.

How do I delete a folder in PriceCharting?
PriceCharting does not publish written steps for deleting a folder, so manage folders from your collection page while logged in. Free accounts can use up to three folders, so removing an unused one frees a slot, while Collector and Legendary subscribers get unlimited folders. If the option you need is missing, use the Contact Us page on PriceCharting’s website for help.

Does PriceCharting have a mobile app?
Yes. The free app, PriceCharting: TCG, Games+, is available on iOS and Android from PriceCharting LLC. It scans barcodes, identifies cards and comics from a photo, values whole lots with the Photo Appraiser and tracks your collection. On November 2, 2026, it was rated 4.8 on the App Store and 4.7 on Google Play, with more than one million Android downloads.

Is PriceCharting legit?
Yes. PriceCharting has run since 2007, was founded by brothers JJ and Michael Hendricks and is operated by PriceCharting LLC. Its prices come from completed sales, not asking prices or seller claims. It also discloses that it may earn affiliate commissions when users buy through its eBay and Amazon links. It is a market guide, not a professional appraisal for insurance or estates.

Who owns PriceCharting?
PriceCharting was started in 2007 by brothers JJ Hendricks and Michael Hendricks, according to the site’s About page. JJ had been collecting price data for an online video game business, and the brothers decided other retailers and collectors would find it useful. The website and apps are published by PriceCharting LLC. Sports cards are covered on a separate site, SportsCardsPro.

Is PriceCharting or TCGplayer better for Pokémon cards?
They answer different questions. TCGplayer’s Market Price comes from sales on its own marketplace and suits ungraded singles you plan to buy or sell there. PriceCharting combines eBay and other sales and adds values for graded cards from grade 7 to PSA 10, plus CGC and BGS tens. For graded Pokémon cards PriceCharting is usually more useful; for raw singles, check both.

Does PriceCharting include shipping in its prices?
No. PriceCharting’s methodology page says its prices do not include shipping or other transaction costs, so the value shows what the item itself sold for. Its Marketplace is separate: listing and selling there are free apart from payment processing, and domestic orders ship free. When comparing with an eBay listing, add the seller’s shipping charge before deciding whether a price is fair.

Data sources: PriceCharting About, FAQ, methodology, subscription, collection tracker and API documentation pages, item pages for Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) and Base Set Charizard, and PriceCharting blog (all read November 2, 2026); Apple App Store and Google Play listings; eBay help (Product Research), TCGplayer help (price points), PSA Auction Prices Realized, eBay Inc. (TCGplayer acquisition), Courtyard and hobbyDB help (Best Offer prices).

This article is for informational purposes only.

About the author

Mushumir Butt is a seasoned crypto journalist with over three years of experience reporting on the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency. At Blockchain Reporter, he delivers insightful news, in‐depth project reviews, and precise price analysis and predictions. With a strong background in SEO and digital marketing, Mushumir excels at breaking down complex trends into clear, accessible content, ensuring readers stay ahead in the fast‐paced crypto space.

View all articles by Mushumir Butt