1. Capture the card
Use a clear, straight-on photo with all four corners visible. Avoid glare and keep the printed number readable.
HOW IT WORKS
A clearer picture, step by step.
Your photo is the starting point. You always make the final call.
2. Check the candidates
Our recognizer compares the image with the catalog, and reads the printed card number when the picture alone is not decisive. When the match is uncertain it says so, and you choose from the candidates or search manually. Similarity is a ranking score, not a probability.
3. Confirm the variant
Printing, finish, condition and grade change a card’s price, and Near Mint through Heavily Played are priced separately. Confirm the card you actually own; we do not infer a professional grade from a photo.
4. Make it yours
Save cards, manage quantities and tags, and connect an account to access your collection on other devices. Source timestamps make older price data visible.
How accurate is it?
On a locked test set of 38 photos of cards the model was never trained on, it picked the right card 94.7% of the time from the image alone, and 97.4% of the time once the printed card number is read as well. Every scan it accepted on its own in that test was correct; the rest came back as candidates for you to choose from.
The caveats matter as much as the number. That test set is small, so a few points either way mean nothing. The photos come from public datasets, shot on phones against fairly clean backgrounds — not from our own shoot, and not yet covering sleeves, binder pages, harsh glare or heavy wear. On a second, harder set of 291 photos from five public datasets, the image alone clears 80%.
It can also be wrong about what it is looking at. Shown 565 images that were not English Pokémon cards — card backs, other trading card games, everyday objects — it still accepted roughly 2% of them as a match. Reprints that share the same artwork and card number are the hardest case and we do not have a dedicated check for them yet, so confirm the set yourself. Finish is always your choice, and about 900 cards in the catalog have no reference image, so they can only be found by search.
Where the prices come from
The US reference is TCGplayer. Near Mint, Lightly Played, Moderately Played and Heavily Played are read from that condition’s own English sales history, so a played card is not a Near Mint price with a formula applied to it. Cardmarket is shown separately in euros; we do not convert currencies and average them together, and we do not average several sources into a single figure.
Every price carries its provider, marketplace, metric and the time the source last updated it. eBay results are asking prices from active listings, labelled as such, and they never count towards your collection’s value. When a price is ambiguous or missing, it stays missing.
Prices are market references, not sale guarantees. Missing prices and missing history stay empty. Scan photos are processed for recognition and are retained only if you explicitly choose to donate a photo.