[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":461},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-list-en":3},[4,136,228,357],{"id":5,"title":6,"body":7,"date":127,"description":128,"extension":129,"meta":130,"navigation":131,"path":132,"seo":133,"stem":134,"__hash__":135},"blog\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fcollection-roi.md","How to Calculate Your Trading Card Collection's ROI",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":118},"minimark",[10,14,18,23,26,37,40,44,47,76,79,83,86,90,93,97,104,111,115],[11,12,6],"h1",{"id":13},"how-to-calculate-your-trading-card-collections-roi",[15,16,17],"p",{},"Most collectors can tell you what a card is worth today. Far fewer can tell you what they\nactually paid for it, or whether the whole collection is up or down. ROI (return on\ninvestment) closes that gap — it turns \"I think this is worth more now\" into an actual number.",[19,20,22],"h2",{"id":21},"the-basic-formula","The basic formula",[15,24,25],{},"ROI on a single card is simple in principle:",[27,28,33],"pre",{"className":29,"code":31,"language":32},[30],"language-text","ROI % = (Current value − Purchase price) \u002F Purchase price × 100\n","text",[34,35,31],"code",{"__ignoreMap":36},"",[15,38,39],{},"A card bought for €20 that's now worth €35 has a ROI of +75%. The hard part isn't the math —\nit's keeping the purchase price attached to every single card you own, across however many\nyears you've been collecting. Most people don't, because there's no natural place to write it\ndown. A spreadsheet works until you have a few hundred cards across multiple sets and two\ndifferent games; at that point updating prices by hand becomes a part-time job nobody signed\nup for.",[19,41,43],{"id":42},"what-you-actually-need-to-track","What you actually need to track",[15,45,46],{},"To compute ROI honestly, per card, you need:",[48,49,50,58,64,70],"ul",{},[51,52,53,57],"li",{},[54,55,56],"strong",{},"Purchase price"," — what you paid, not what a price guide said it was worth at the time",[51,59,60,63],{},[54,61,62],{},"Current market value"," — a live price, not a number you remember from six months ago",[51,65,66,69],{},[54,67,68],{},"Grading status"," — a PSA 10 and a raw copy of the same card are not the same asset",[51,71,72,75],{},[54,73,74],{},"Purchase date"," — useful context, even if it doesn't enter the formula directly",[15,77,78],{},"The purchase price is the one people skip most often, usually because they add the card first\nand mean to fill in the price \"later.\" Later rarely comes. If you're setting up any kind of\ntracking system, make the purchase price a required field from the first card you add, not an\noptional one you'll backfill.",[19,80,82],{"id":81},"live-prices-vs-price-guides","Live prices vs. price guides",[15,84,85],{},"A common mistake is anchoring current value to a price guide figure looked up once, then never\nupdated. Card markets move — sometimes slowly, sometimes in a single weekend after a set\nrotation or a reprint announcement. For ROI to mean anything, \"current value\" has to come from\nan actual live market, not a snapshot from whenever you last checked. In Grail, current value is\npulled from TCGPlayer (USD, US market) and Cardmarket (EUR, EU market) — the two largest\nsecondary markets for both Pokémon TCG and One Piece Card Game — and refreshed automatically,\nnot manually re-entered.",[19,87,89],{"id":88},"grading-changes-the-equation","Grading changes the equation",[15,91,92],{},"A raw card and a graded one are effectively different assets with different price curves. A\nPSA 10 Charizard doesn't track the raw ungraded price 1:1 — grading adds both a real cost\n(submission fees, time) and a real premium (population reports, buyer confidence) that raw\npricing data doesn't capture. Automated market data for graded cards is much less standardized\nthan for raw cards, which is why most tracking tools — Grail included, today — handle graded\ncards differently: you record the grading company (PSA, BGS, CGC), the grade, and a manual\nmarket value you set yourself, rather than relying on an automated feed. It's more effort, but\nit's honest — a fabricated \"estimated\" graded price is worse than no price at all.",[19,94,96],{"id":95},"portfolio-level-roi-vs-per-card-roi","Portfolio-level ROI vs. per-card ROI",[15,98,99,100,103],{},"Per-card ROI tells you which single pulls or purchases performed best. Portfolio-level ROI\ntells you something different and arguably more useful: whether the collection ",[54,101,102],{},"as a whole","\nis a good store of value, after accounting for the cards that dropped alongside the ones that\nmooned. A collection can have three cards up 200% and still be net-negative if the other 40\ncards quietly lost half their value. Looking only at your best performers is a selection bias\nthat flatters your decisions — the number that matters is the aggregate.",[15,105,106,107,110],{},"This is also where a ",[54,108,109],{},"daily price history"," earns its keep, rather than a single before\u002Fafter\nsnapshot. A chart that only shows \"then\" and \"now\" hides how you got there — whether the value\nclimbed steadily or spiked once and has been declining since. Grail keeps a daily snapshot of\nevery wallet's value specifically so that history is real, not reconstructed after the fact from\ntoday's price.",[19,112,114],{"id":113},"the-takeaway","The takeaway",[15,116,117],{},"ROI on a card collection is only as good as the data behind it: real purchase prices, live\nmarket values, and a distinction between raw and graded. Get those three right and the number\ntells you something true about your collecting decisions — not just how much your best pull\nhappened to be worth today.",{"title":36,"searchDepth":119,"depth":119,"links":120},2,[121,122,123,124,125,126],{"id":21,"depth":119,"text":22},{"id":42,"depth":119,"text":43},{"id":81,"depth":119,"text":82},{"id":88,"depth":119,"text":89},{"id":95,"depth":119,"text":96},{"id":113,"depth":119,"text":114},"2026-07-19","A practical guide to tracking return on investment across your Pokémon TCG and One Piece Card Game collection — what to record, what it misses, and how grading changes the math.","md",{},true,"\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fcollection-roi",{"title":6,"description":128},"en\u002Fblog\u002Fcollection-roi","EobQnDZUL89Jt_LJIauxmX0EsElcFcCLNyKX7o0jpbE",{"id":137,"title":138,"body":139,"date":127,"description":222,"extension":129,"meta":223,"navigation":131,"path":224,"seo":225,"stem":226,"__hash__":227},"blog\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fpokemon-vs-one-piece-market.md","Pokémon TCG vs One Piece Card Game: Comparing the Two Markets",{"type":8,"value":140,"toc":214},[141,144,147,151,154,158,161,165,172,176,179,183,209,211],[11,142,138],{"id":143},"pokémon-tcg-vs-one-piece-card-game-comparing-the-two-markets",[15,145,146],{},"More and more collectors are building portfolios that span both games rather than picking one.\nThat's a reasonable instinct — the two markets behave differently enough that understanding\nboth makes you a sharper collector in either one.",[19,148,150],{"id":149},"two-very-different-starting-points","Two very different starting points",[15,152,153],{},"Pokémon TCG launched in 1996 and has nearly three decades of secondary-market history behind\nit. Base Set, 1st Edition prints, and the earliest vintage cards have gone through multiple full\nhype cycles, crashes, and recoveries — the market has, in a sense, already stress-tested itself\nseveral times over. One Piece Card Game launched globally in 2022 from Bandai, built on top of\nan anime and manga franchise with a massive existing fanbase but a card game with only a few\nyears of trading history. That difference in market maturity shapes almost everything else.",[19,155,157],{"id":156},"rarity-systems-arent-equivalent","Rarity systems aren't equivalent",[15,159,160],{},"Pokémon's rarity tiers (common, uncommon, rare, various holo and secret rare tiers, alternate\narts) evolved over decades and differ across eras — a \"rare\" from a 1999 set and a \"rare\" from a\n2024 set aren't comparable in scarcity or print run. One Piece's system — including tiers like\nSuper Rare, Secret Rare, and Manga Rare — is more consistent set-to-set simply because it's had\nless time to fragment into era-specific quirks, but it's also less battle-tested; collectors have\nfewer full market cycles to know how each rarity tier actually holds value over years, not\nmonths.",[19,162,164],{"id":163},"print-runs-and-scarcity-work-differently","Print runs and scarcity work differently",[15,166,167,168,171],{},"A big driver of vintage Pokémon prices is that early print runs were genuinely small relative to\ntoday's collector base — decades of new collectors chasing a fixed, shrinking supply of\nfirst-print cards is a big part of why vintage Pokémon commands what it does. One Piece TCG is\nstill early enough that most of its chase cards come from recent print runs where supply, while\nlimited, hasn't been tested by decades of demand growth the way 1999 Pokémon has. That doesn't\nmake One Piece a worse market — it makes it a ",[54,169,170],{},"different risk profile",": more upside if the\ngame's popularity keeps compounding the way Pokémon's did, but without the multi-decade track\nrecord to lean on.",[19,173,175],{"id":174},"where-prices-actually-come-from","Where prices actually come from",[15,177,178],{},"Both markets are tracked through the same kind of secondary marketplaces — TCGPlayer for the US\ndollar market, Cardmarket for the EU euro market — which is what makes side-by-side tracking\npractical in the first place. The mechanics of price discovery (completed sales, active listings,\nmarket depth) are the same; what differs is how much historical data exists to contextualize a\ngiven price. A One Piece card's \"this feels expensive\" is harder to verify against history simply\nbecause there's less of it yet.",[19,180,182],{"id":181},"what-this-means-if-you-collect-both","What this means if you collect both",[48,184,185,191,197,203],{},[51,186,187,190],{},[54,188,189],{},"Treat vintage Pokémon and current One Piece as different strategies",", not two flavors of\nthe same play — one leans on decades of proven demand, the other on a newer game's growth\ntrajectory.",[51,192,193,196],{},[54,194,195],{},"Don't assume One Piece rarity tiers will age the way Pokémon's did."," It's too early to know\nwhich One Piece rarities will become the \"1st Edition Base Set\" of the game and which won't.",[51,198,199,202],{},[54,200,201],{},"Watch both markets' daily history, not just today's price",", especially for One Piece —\na market with less history is also a market where a short-term spike is easier to mistake for\na real trend.",[51,204,205,208],{},[54,206,207],{},"Keep the two collections in view together, not in separate tools."," If you're weighing\nwhether to put your next budget into a Pokémon vintage chase or a One Piece secret rare, you\nneed both portfolios' real performance side by side, not a mental estimate of one while\nlooking at a spreadsheet for the other.",[19,210,114],{"id":113},[15,212,213],{},"Pokémon TCG and One Piece Card Game aren't competing for the same collector logic — one is a\nmature market with decades of price history to lean on, the other is a fast-growing market still\nwriting its own history. Neither fact makes one game the \"better\" collection to build. It just\nmeans the two need to be evaluated on their own terms, ideally in the same place, so you're\ncomparing real numbers instead of vibes.",{"title":36,"searchDepth":119,"depth":119,"links":215},[216,217,218,219,220,221],{"id":149,"depth":119,"text":150},{"id":156,"depth":119,"text":157},{"id":163,"depth":119,"text":164},{"id":174,"depth":119,"text":175},{"id":181,"depth":119,"text":182},{"id":113,"depth":119,"text":114},"How the Pokémon TCG secondary market compares to the newer One Piece Card Game market — history, rarity systems, and what it means for collectors tracking both.",{},"\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fpokemon-vs-one-piece-market",{"title":138,"description":222},"en\u002Fblog\u002Fpokemon-vs-one-piece-market","KOvvBd3vJq-2tyNczr2y-SISYLr_EdyiG-fsLCwfuGI",{"id":229,"title":230,"body":231,"date":127,"description":351,"extension":129,"meta":352,"navigation":131,"path":353,"seo":354,"stem":355,"__hash__":356},"blog\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fpsa-vs-bgs-vs-cgc.md","PSA vs BGS vs CGC: Which Grading Company Should You Choose?",{"type":8,"value":232,"toc":342},[233,236,239,243,250,264,268,275,291,295,302,314,318,321,325,328,332,335,339],[11,234,230],{"id":235},"psa-vs-bgs-vs-cgc-which-grading-company-should-you-choose",[15,237,238],{},"Grading turns a card into a sealed, third-party-verified asset — a number on a slab that the\nmarket trusts more than a seller's own description of \"near mint.\" But PSA, BGS, and CGC don't\ngrade the same way, don't cost the same, and don't carry the same weight for every card. Here's\nwhat actually differs.",[19,240,242],{"id":241},"psa-professional-sports-authenticator","PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator)",[15,244,245,246,249],{},"PSA is the most recognized name in the hobby, and for Pokémon specifically, a ",[54,247,248],{},"PSA 10"," is the\nde facto benchmark buyers compare everything else against — it's often the price other grades\nget measured relative to, even from competing companies. PSA uses a single numeric scale from 1\nto 10, with no sub-grades shown on the label (centering, corners, edges, and surface are\nevaluated internally but not broken out individually the way BGS does).",[48,251,252,258],{},[51,253,254,257],{},[54,255,256],{},"Strengths",": highest brand recognition, deepest population data, generally the strongest\nresale premium for a 10, especially on Pokémon.",[51,259,260,263],{},[54,261,262],{},"Trade-off",": no visible sub-grades — you get one number and have to trust their internal\nprocess.",[19,265,267],{"id":266},"bgs-beckett-grading-services","BGS (Beckett Grading Services)",[15,269,270,271,274],{},"BGS grades on the same 1–10 scale but publishes ",[54,272,273],{},"four sub-grades"," — centering, corners,\nedges, surface — printed right on the label alongside the overall grade. A card can earn a\nBGS 9.5 overall while showing a perfect 10 in one category, which sports and vintage collectors\nin particular tend to value for the transparency.",[48,276,277,286],{},[51,278,279,281,282,285],{},[54,280,256],{},": full sub-grade transparency, and the top tier — a ",[54,283,284],{},"BGS 10 \"Black Label\"","\n(all four sub-grades at a perfect 10) — carries a real premium of its own precisely because\nit's rarer than a plain PSA 10.",[51,287,288,290],{},[54,289,262],{},": outside of the Black Label tier, BGS grades of the same numeric value don't\nalways command the same market price as PSA on Pokémon cards specifically — brand premium\nvaries by game and card.",[19,292,294],{"id":293},"cgc-certified-guaranty-company","CGC (Certified Guaranty Company)",[15,296,297,298,301],{},"CGC built its reputation in comics before expanding into trading cards, and it's grown quickly\nas an alternative — often with ",[54,299,300],{},"shorter turnaround times and lower fees"," than PSA, especially\nduring periods when PSA is backlogged. CGC also uses a 1–10 scale with sub-grades similar in\nspirit to BGS.",[48,303,304,309],{},[51,305,306,308],{},[54,307,256],{},": typically faster and cheaper, increasingly accepted market-wide, distinctive\nslab design some collectors prefer for display.",[51,310,311,313],{},[54,312,262],{},": still building the same level of long-term resale trust that PSA has accumulated\nover decades — the gap is closing, but it's not closed everywhere.",[19,315,317],{"id":316},"turnaround-time-and-cost-arent-fixed","Turnaround time and cost aren't fixed",[15,319,320],{},"All three companies run multiple service tiers (economy through express), and actual turnaround\nswings hard with submission volume — weeks in a quiet period, months during a surge, particularly\naround major set releases. Don't plan around a fixed number; check current published times\nbefore submitting anything time-sensitive.",[19,322,324],{"id":323},"does-it-matter-for-one-piece-tcg-the-way-it-does-for-pokémon","Does it matter for One Piece TCG the way it does for Pokémon?",[15,326,327],{},"One Piece Card Game is newer, and its graded secondary market is still forming compared to\nPokémon's decades-deep grading culture. PSA has become common there too, but with a shallower\npopulation report history, grade-based price premiums are less predictable card to card. If\nyou're grading One Piece cards mainly as a value play rather than for preservation, do more\nhomework on comparable recent sales before submitting than you might for an established Pokémon\nchase card.",[19,329,331],{"id":330},"tracking-graded-cards-once-you-have-them","Tracking graded cards once you have them",[15,333,334],{},"Whichever company you use, what matters afterward is keeping the grade, the certification\nnumber, and a link to the cert attached to the card in your records — not just a photo of the\nslab in your camera roll. In Grail, you can mark a card as graded, record the grading company,\ngrade, and a link to the certificate, and set its market value manually, since automated pricing\nfor graded cards isn't yet standardized enough across companies to pull reliably. It's slightly\nmore manual work up front, in exchange for a record that's actually accurate.",[19,336,338],{"id":337},"the-short-answer","The short answer",[15,340,341],{},"If resale value on Pokémon is the priority, PSA's brand premium is hard to ignore. If you want\nfull transparency into why a card didn't get a 10, BGS's sub-grades give you that. If turnaround\ntime and cost matter more than maximum resale premium, CGC is a legitimate, growing alternative.\nNone of the three is strictly \"better\" — they're optimized for different things.",{"title":36,"searchDepth":119,"depth":119,"links":343},[344,345,346,347,348,349,350],{"id":241,"depth":119,"text":242},{"id":266,"depth":119,"text":267},{"id":293,"depth":119,"text":294},{"id":316,"depth":119,"text":317},{"id":323,"depth":119,"text":324},{"id":330,"depth":119,"text":331},{"id":337,"depth":119,"text":338},"A practical comparison of PSA, BGS, and CGC card grading — turnaround times, grading scales, market perception, and which one makes sense for Pokémon TCG and One Piece cards.",{},"\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fpsa-vs-bgs-vs-cgc",{"title":230,"description":351},"en\u002Fblog\u002Fpsa-vs-bgs-vs-cgc","LY5yANEIxI2m9lvEDWjTaKoTiwgj1b0UEZccI98LlDI",{"id":358,"title":359,"body":360,"date":127,"description":455,"extension":129,"meta":456,"navigation":131,"path":457,"seo":458,"stem":459,"__hash__":460},"blog\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fshared-collection-tracking.md","How to Track a Trading Card Collection You Share With Someone Else",{"type":8,"value":361,"toc":447},[362,365,368,372,375,379,382,386,389,393,412,416,442,444],[11,363,359],{"id":364},"how-to-track-a-trading-card-collection-you-share-with-someone-else",[15,366,367],{},"A lot of collections aren't solo projects. Couples build one together. Siblings inherit or\nsplit a childhood collection. Two friends pool budget to chase a set they'd never afford alone.\nNone of these fit a tracking setup built around a single owner — and most tools are built\naround exactly that assumption.",[19,369,371],{"id":370},"why-a-single-spreadsheet-or-single-account-app-breaks-down","Why a single spreadsheet or single-account app breaks down",[15,373,374],{},"The obvious first move is one person \"owns\" the tracking — one spreadsheet, one login, one\nsource of truth. It works for a while. Then someone adds a card the other person doesn't know\nabout, or updates a quantity from memory instead of checking, and the two people's mental\npicture of the collection quietly drifts apart from the actual one. The underlying problem isn't\ncarelessness — it's that a single-owner tool has no way to represent \"we both look at this and\nwe're both allowed to change it.\"",[19,376,378],{"id":377},"what-real-time-sync-actually-solves","What real-time sync actually solves",[15,380,381],{},"The fix isn't a shared login (which just moves the same single-owner problem to a shared\npassword) — it's a wallet that genuinely belongs to more than one account, where every member\nsees the same cards and quantities updated live. If your partner adds a card from their phone\nat a card show, it should show up on your phone before you're both back in the car, not after\nsomeone remembers to \"sync the spreadsheet\" that evening. In Grail, shared wallets work exactly\nthis way: you invite a collaborator with a link, and everyone in that wallet sees the same state\nin real time, with an editor or viewer role depending on how much control you want to give them.",[19,383,385],{"id":384},"roles-matter-more-than-people-expect","Roles matter more than people expect",[15,387,388],{},"Not every collaborator needs the same permissions. A partner actively adding and pricing cards\nneeds editor access. A parent who just wants to check in on a kid's collection, or a friend\nwho's merely curious what's in a group pool, only needs to view it. Treating \"shared\" as one\nflat permission level either locks out people who should be able to contribute, or gives edit\nrights to people who only wanted to look — both are avoidable with a proper editor\u002Fviewer split.",[19,390,392],{"id":391},"the-wantlist-problem-in-group-collecting","The \"wantlist\" problem in group collecting",[15,394,395,396,400,401,404,405,408,409,411],{},"Solo collectors use a wishlist: cards ",[397,398,399],"em",{},"they"," want. Group collections need something slightly\ndifferent — a shared list of cards the ",[54,402,403],{},"group"," wants to add next, visible to everyone, so\nnobody buys a duplicate of something a co-collector already has queued up, and everyone can see\nwho requested what. This is a distinct concept from a personal wishlist, and conflating the two\nusually means someone's \"I want this\" gets lost in a private list nobody else can see. Grail\nkeeps these separate: a personal wishlist for what ",[397,406,407],{},"you"," want, and a shared wantlist per wallet\nfor what the ",[397,410,403],{}," is chasing, with each entry showing who added it.",[19,413,415],{"id":414},"practical-tips-for-collecting-with-someone-else","Practical tips for collecting with someone else",[48,417,418,424,430,436],{},[51,419,420,423],{},[54,421,422],{},"Agree on who prices what, up front."," If one person always sets purchase price and the\nother never does, your ROI numbers will be inconsistent and half-true.",[51,425,426,429],{},[54,427,428],{},"Decide editor vs. viewer per person, not by default."," Don't give blanket edit access just\nbecause it's the path of least resistance when inviting someone.",[51,431,432,435],{},[54,433,434],{},"Use the shared wantlist instead of a side chat."," A \"hey did you want this Charizard?\"\nmessage in a group chat gets lost in twenty minutes; a wantlist entry doesn't.",[51,437,438,441],{},[54,439,440],{},"Check the shared history, not just today's total."," A shared wallet's value history tells\nyou whether the collection has been growing steadily or whether one big pickup did all the\nwork — useful context before deciding how much more to invest together.",[19,443,114],{"id":113},[15,445,446],{},"Shared collecting fails quietly, not loudly — nobody notices the tracking has drifted from\nreality until someone finds a card \"missing\" that was actually just never logged, or buys a\nduplicate nobody flagged as wanted. Real-time sync and the right permission model don't make\ngroup collecting more complicated; they remove the manual coordination that was making it feel\ncomplicated in the first place.",{"title":36,"searchDepth":119,"depth":119,"links":448},[449,450,451,452,453,454],{"id":370,"depth":119,"text":371},{"id":377,"depth":119,"text":378},{"id":384,"depth":119,"text":385},{"id":391,"depth":119,"text":392},{"id":414,"depth":119,"text":415},{"id":113,"depth":119,"text":114},"Tracking a Pokémon TCG or One Piece collection built with a partner, sibling, or friend has different needs than tracking a solo collection — here's what actually matters.",{},"\u002Fen\u002Fblog\u002Fshared-collection-tracking",{"title":359,"description":455},"en\u002Fblog\u002Fshared-collection-tracking","5QE-PMpOvfKXUqw-Isob9Ffmoq-3A9zQEerezRtnhlo",1790191572643]