Where our market comparable comes from — and when we hide it
Every card shows a comparable next to its price. Here is what that number is, where it is sourced, and the rule that makes us remove it.
Next to almost every price in the Collect Shop there is a second, smaller number labelled "comp". It is the market comparable: what the same card in the same grade has been selling for elsewhere. It is there so you can judge our price instead of taking it.
Most of ours are sourced from Card Ladder, which aggregates public sold listings. A few come from a manual appraisal when no usable sales data exists for that card in that grade. The product page names which of the two it is, and the date it was last refreshed.
The rule that matters is the one about removing it. A comparable that has not been refreshed in thirty days is not shown at all. 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. At the time of writing one card in the catalog is showing no comparable for exactly this reason: its last valuation was a manual appraisal from early June, and June is not now.
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.