The Trading Card Price Census: what all those cards are actually worth
Everyone knows the stories about five-figure cards. Almost nobody talks about the other 99%. We priced 337,175 cards across 29 trading card games and counted where every single price falls. The short version: the median trading card is worth $0.45.
The price pyramid
Where all 337,175 prices fall. Every band measured identically across all 29 games.
Read it bottom-up and the hobby's economics are laid bare: 82% of every trading card in print trades under $5, and only 1.8% — 5,927 cards out of 337,175 — clear $100. The value of a collection is almost never spread across it; it hides in a handful of cards. (How extreme that gap gets per game is its own study: the Chase Multiple.)
Every game, ranked by its price floor
Median card price, high → low. “Bulk” = share under $1. Tap a game for its full study.
| Game | Cards | Median | Bulk (under $1) | $5+ | $100+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sorcery | 2,941 | $2.63 | 37% | 39% | 162 |
| Pokémon (Japan) | 19,665 | $1.71 | 41% | 27% | 287 |
| hololive | 1,625 | $1.28 | 47% | 28% | 74 |
| Pokémon | 28,463 | $1.10 | 49% | 31% | 1,316 |
| Godzilla Card Game | 815 | $0.78 | 55% | 21% | 20 |
| One Piece | 6,514 | $0.76 | 53% | 30% | 442 |
| Future Card Buddyfight | 2,713 | $0.66 | 59% | 17% | 4 |
| Force of Will | 6,435 | $0.61 | 65% | 11% | 4 |
| Gundam | 1,544 | $0.60 | 55% | 31% | 55 |
| Shadowverse Evolve | 5,112 | $0.58 | 59% | 17% | 86 |
| Dragon Ball Fusion World | 3,729 | $0.51 | 58% | 27% | 177 |
| Cardfight Vanguard | 21,591 | $0.47 | 64% | 17% | 216 |
| Digimon | 8,766 | $0.47 | 61% | 17% | 127 |
| Weiss Schwarz | 20,574 | $0.44 | 65% | 13% | 385 |
| Union Arena | 5,931 | $0.43 | 64% | 18% | 191 |
| UniVersus | 5,275 | $0.40 | 65% | 14% | 24 |
| Magic | 105,671 | $0.39 | 66% | 17% | 1,294 |
| Yu-Gi-Oh | 45,170 | $0.38 | 72% | 12% | 331 |
| Grand Archive | 3,661 | $0.37 | 71% | 17% | 147 |
| Dragon Ball Super CCG | 10,026 | $0.35 | 70% | 14% | 120 |
| World of Warcraft | 2,305 | $0.34 | 78% | 3% | 2 |
| Elestrals | 1,960 | $0.34 | 71% | 12% | 7 |
| Riftbound | 1,159 | $0.32 | 61% | 24% | 71 |
| Flesh & Blood | 8,455 | $0.27 | 69% | 17% | 163 |
| Star Wars Unlimited | 6,643 | $0.27 | 74% | 11% | 49 |
| MetaZoo | 1,418 | $0.25 | 81% | 8% | 0 |
| Final Fantasy TCG | 5,205 | $0.22 | 74% | 14% | 27 |
| CookieRun Braverse | 738 | $0.20 | 68% | 20% | 4 |
| Lorcana | 3,071 | $0.13 | 80% | 14% | 142 |
The floor is not the same everywhere
The bulk share ranges enormously by game. At one end, Sorcery has the highest floor we measured — a median card of $2.63 — with Japanese Pokémon and hololive close behind: small print runs (or a market that only bothers importing the good cards) lift the whole price band. At the other end sit the deep-bulk games, where Lorcana leads with a median of just $0.13. Bulk share is a design choice: modern sets subsidize a handful of spectacular chase cards with an ocean of near-worthless ones, while high-floor games spread value across the whole print run.
Method & sources
- For each game we pulled the TCGplayer market price of every priced card (one price per product, the Normal printing where present) across every set, via the open tcgcsv.com dataset — 337,175 card prices in total. Sealed product (boxes, packs, decks, bundles) is excluded by name.
- Each price is then counted into one of six bands: under $0.25, $0.25–1, $1–5, $5–25, $25–100 and $100+. Band shares, medians and percentiles are computed per game and across the whole pool.
- The measurement is identical to our chase-multiple capstone (same games, same one-price-per-product rule), so the two studies can be read together: that one measures the top of the market, this one measures the floor.
- TCGplayer market price via the open tcgcsv.com dataset. Valued 2026-07-06. Reference estimates for raw, ungraded cards, not sold or graded records; prices move. Reproducible from the open dataset.
FAQ
What percentage of trading cards are worth less than $1?
About 63% of the 337,175 cards we measured across 29 games trade under $1, and 31.7% trade under $0.25. The share varies a lot by game — from about 37% in the highest-floor game (Sorcery) to about 80% in the deep-bulk games (Lorcana, MetaZoo).
What is the average trading card worth?
The median trading card across every game we measured is $0.45. We use the median rather than the mean because a handful of very expensive chase cards drag the mean far above what a typical card is actually worth. Nine in ten cards (90%) are under $13.
How many trading cards are worth over $100?
5,927 of the 337,175 distinct cards we measured — about 1.8% — carry a market price of $100 or more. That thin top slice is what drives the "lottery" economics of modern sets: nearly everything else in the pack is bulk.
How was the census measured, and where does the data come from?
For each game we took the TCGplayer market price of every priced card (one price per product, the Normal printing where present) across every set, via the open tcgcsv.com dataset (TCGplayer market price via the open tcgcsv.com dataset, valued 2026-07-06) — the exact same measurement as our chase-multiple capstone, so the two studies are consistent. Sealed product is excluded by name. These are reference estimates for raw cards, not sold or graded records, and prices move.
Most cards are bulk. Find out which of yours aren't.
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Related research
The Chase Multiple: which TCG is the biggest lottery?
The companion study: how many times the typical card the top 1% is worth, in every game.
37%Sorcery has almost no bulk
The anti-bulk outlier: small print runs lift the whole price floor.
49–79%Is value concentration a law of TCGs?
Within a single set, the top 10 cards hold half to four-fifths of all the value.
Cite or embed this study
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Source: <a href="https://foilio.net/studies/tcg-price-census?utm_source=share&utm_medium=study_embed&utm_campaign=viral">The Trading Card Price Census: what all those cards are actually worth, Foilio</a> · data CC BY 4.0
</p>Foilio (2026-07-06). The Trading Card Price Census: what all those cards are actually worth. Retrieved from https://foilio.net/studies/tcg-price-census