Buyer's guide

Before you buy any Pokémon card or sealed product, check five things: what exactly is being sold, its condition, the current market price, whether it is genuine, and what happens if it arrives wrong. This guide walks through each in order.

Buying Pokémon cards well is not about secret knowledge. It is about doing five checks in the same order every time, so you never talk yourself into a purchase you would not have made an hour later. This guide is the checklist we use ourselves, and the same one we would give a friend before their first serious purchase.

1. Know why you are buying

There are three honest reasons to buy, and each one justifies a different price. If you are buying to enjoy, buy what you like and stop worrying about resale. If you are completing a set, the cheapest acceptable copy is usually the right copy. If you are buying because you expect to hold value, condition, printing and grading potential matter far more than the character on the card.

• ▪For enjoyment: pick art you actually want to look at. Reverse holos and lower-rarity cards are often the best value per unit of joy.
• ▪For set completion: track what you still need, then buy in batches from one seller to save on postage.
• ▪For value: fewer, better items beat lots of average ones. Damaged copies of expensive cards rarely recover.

2. Identify exactly what is being sold

Two cards can share a name and a picture and be worth ten times apart. Before you buy, write down the set, the card number out of the set total, the printing, the language and the edition. If a listing does not tell you all five, ask. A seller who cannot answer that is a seller to skip.

1. 01Set name and set symbol — printed near the card number on modern cards.
2. 02Card number, for example 4/102. The number after the slash is the size of the main set.
3. 03Printing: normal, holofoil, reverse holofoil, or a special/illustration rare. Prices differ sharply.
4. 04Language: English and Japanese prints are separate markets, with separate prices.
5. 05Edition and stamp: first edition, shadowless, promo stamps, staff stamps and prerelease stamps all change value.

3. Judge condition properly

Condition is the single biggest driver of price for older and higher-value cards. Grading companies look at centring, surface, edges and corners, and so should you. Insist on photographs of the actual card, front and back, taken under even light, and look at the four things below before you look at anything else.

• ▪Centring: how even the border is on all four sides, front and back.
• ▪Surface: print lines, scratches, dents, whitening on holofoil and any cloudiness.
• ▪Edges and corners: whitening, fraying or soft corners are permanent.
• ▪Back: bends and creases are easiest to see when the card is tilted against the light.

If a listing uses a grade like 'Near Mint' with no photographs, treat it as an opinion rather than a fact. If a card is already graded and sealed by a grading company, check the certificate number against that company's public lookup before you buy.

4. Check the price against real sales

An asking price is a hope. A sold price is evidence. Look at what the same card, in the same printing and roughly the same condition, has actually sold for recently, and treat anything materially above that as a decision you should be making deliberately.

• ▪Compare like with like: same set, number, printing, language and condition.
• ▪Ignore single outlier sales at both ends — look for the cluster.
• ▪Factor in postage, and for graded cards, the cost of grading if you plan to submit it yourself.
• ▪Prices move around set launches, anniversaries, restocks and reprints. Buying in a hype week costs more.

5. Confirm it is genuine

Counterfeits exist at every price point, and they have improved. The reliable checks are physical and boring: text quality, colour, the feel of the card stock, and the layered look of a genuine card when you view the edge. If a deal is far below market with no explanation, that is the explanation.

• ▪Font and spacing: fakes commonly get the energy symbols, HP text and set symbol slightly wrong.
• ▪Colour and gloss: overly blue-grey backs and either flat or plasticky gloss are warning signs.
• ▪Card stock: genuine cards have a dark inner layer visible at the edge and a firm snap.
• ▪Sold in bulk, sealed 'lots' of high-value cards, or shipped from a seller with no history: slow down.

Buying sealed product

Sealed boxes and packs carry a premium precisely because nobody has seen inside. That premium only holds if it is obvious the item has not been opened, weighed, searched or resealed.

• ▪Look at the wrap: original factory wrap is tight, with clean folds and no reheated shine or wrinkling at the seams.
• ▪Boxes should have intact seals and crisp corners. Crushed corners cost money even on unopened product.
• ▪Loose packs are the easiest thing to tamper with. Buy them from sources you trust, or buy them to open.
• ▪Out-of-print sealed product is priced on scarcity. Reprints and restocks can move that price quickly.

Buying from the right seller

• ▪Published returns and postage terms, and a real contact route.
• ▪Photographs of the actual item, and willingness to send more when asked.
• ▪Packaging that protects the card: sleeve, toploader or semi-rigid, then a rigid mailer.
• ▪Tracked postage on anything valuable, and clarity on who carries the risk in transit.
• ▪In the UK, buying from a business gives you statutory rights when items are misdescribed or faulty.

Mistakes that cost people money

1. 01Buying the character rather than the card — paying a chase-card price for a common printing.
2. 02Bidding in the last minute of an auction without having decided a maximum beforehand.
3. 03Ignoring postage and fees, then finding the 'cheap' copy was the expensive one.
4. 04Buying damaged high-value cards hoping condition will stop mattering. It never does.
5. 05Storing a good purchase badly. A sleeve and a toploader cost pennies compared with the value they protect.
6. 06Spending money you need. Card prices go down as well as up, and nothing here is investment advice.

A video version of this guide is planned for the DeuxyDex channel.