Frequently asked questions

A price guide built from real market data only (free to browse), a free account with 10 card unlocks a month and 2 AI pre-grades, plus paid tiers that unlock the rest: exact buy/sell price targets for every venue (with a verdict on any asking price), an AI card scanner, portfolio tracking, watchlist alerts, a bulk lot calculator, and a market assistant. AI pre-grade (photo → an exact estimated grade, with reasons, before you pay to grade) and the backtested buy signals are the two features reserved for the Pro tier. The full tour lives on the "What is it?" page.

Trading card games (Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon, Pokémon Japan, Dragon Ball Super, Flesh and Blood, Star Wars Unlimited, One Piece, Union Arena, Digimon, Lorcana, Gundam, and Riftbound), plus sports cards across baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and soccer. New sports sales flow in daily, and the sports catalog grows from that real market activity.

Real market activity only. TCG prices come primarily from JustTCG's per-condition market prices, keyed to the exact printing, with TCGplayer's sales-derived market price filling in any card JustTCG hasn't priced yet. Sports card prices come from recorded sold sales on eBay and the major auction houses: actual completed transactions, never asking prices or active listings. If a card hasn't traded, we show that honestly instead of inventing a number.

Daily. Prices, trends, indexes, signals, and trending lists all recompute every night on the newest sales.

Every whole and half grade from 1 to 10 across PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC, plus raw: 77 tiers in all. Raw and ungraded prices come from live market data. Most graded values are estimates along the grading curve. Real graded-sale prices are shown where they exist (mostly sports today), and every estimate is labeled and kept out of the signals and indexes. Raw TCG cards also get a condition ladder: Near Mint is the live market price, while Lightly Played through Damaged use standard market discounts, labeled as estimates.

Every night the engine scores every actively traded card and grade from 0 to 100 with a proprietary multi-factor model. BUY calls flag cards set up to rebound. We publish BUY calls only where the backtest showed an edge: currently sports cards scoring 55 and up, with a plain-language reason on each call, and the strongest calls are labelled STRONG BUY. The exact factors and their weights are proprietary. Lightly and Moderately Played conditions get their own BUY signals from a separately validated trend-following model on per-condition prices. Those signals are published only because that model cleared the same point-in-time backtest bar.

Two ways, and the second is stricter. Before launch we replayed the engine point-in-time across ~2 years of real daily market prices (100 weekly windows), using only the data that existed at each point in time, with no hindsight. Since then we have graded outcomes against real completed sales, and we re-test after every data-cleaning pass. That process once withdrew our highest-scoring band (scores of 70 and up) when it measured negative; a later cleaning pass found the contaminated sale data behind that reading, and with it removed the band re-measured as our strongest, so it publishes again for sports cards. The latest full test puts published buys about 5 points ahead of the market over the following days, with solid statistical confidence. It also showed that after typical selling fees the absolute return was not distinguishable from zero. So we will not promise you a profit: signals exist to stop you overpaying and to surface cards worth a look, and every call is logged before its outcome is known. That is measured past performance on our data, not a promise of future results.

Same reason we pulled sell signals: we could not prove the rest. Grading a call honestly needs real completed sales after the call, and outside sports cards most of our signaled cards did not have enough recorded sales to grade at all. Where we could run a weaker test on quoted prices instead of sold prices, the result was indistinguishable from zero. So buy calls on Pokémon, Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! and other non-sport categories stopped publishing rather than ride along unproven. The calls that had already published stay on the public track record, labelled as no longer published, because nothing in that log is edited after the fact. Our recorded-sales coverage is growing daily, and those categories come back if and when they pass the same test sports cards did. The separately validated Lightly/Moderately Played condition signals are unaffected.

Because we could not prove they worked. Sell calls used to publish alongside buys, but too few of them ever reached a graded 4-week outcome to show whether the calls were right, so we stopped publishing them rather than keep running something unproven. The sell calls that had already published stay on the public track record, labelled as withdrawn, because nothing in that log is edited after the fact. Buy signals are unaffected. That's the "DataNeverLies" promise working as intended.

No. Signals, prices, and estimates are informational tools. Backtested performance is a measurement of the past, not a guarantee about the future. Collect and trade at your own judgment.

Ready-made price ladders for any card and grade: sell targets at 95 / 90 / 85 / 80% of market value and buy targets from 80 down to 60%, computed separately per venue. The venues are eBay (~13% seller fee netted out of your sell targets), TCGplayer on raw TCG cards (~12.75% in fees netted out), and cash deals at a show. Illiquid cards automatically get wider discounts so the targets stay realistic.

You enter an asking price and where you're buying (eBay, TCGplayer on raw TCG cards, or in person), and it renders a verdict (steal, buy, fair, rich, or pass) using the card's market value, the venue's fair-price band, and the card's liquidity. On the Pro tier, it also factors in any active buy signal on the card. Like everything here it's informational guidance, not financial advice: the call, and its outcome, is always yours.

That row has no reliable market price of its own for that grade, so it is derived from the prices we do have on the card, or is its last known price carried forward. Estimates are always labeled, are excluded from signals and market indexes, and never masquerade as real prices.

Photograph a card and the AI identifies it (set, number, parallel) and pulls up its live prices. If it's a slab, it reads the label and cert number for you; verifying the cert is done on the grader's own site (we don't run a cert database), and having the number read off the slab makes that a ten-second job.

No. It's an estimate to inform your grading decision, not a grade. The tool examines your photos, measures centering, and returns a decimal-precision grade estimate (like PSA 9.54) inside a likely range, with subgrade detail and the specific reasons for the number, so you can skip submissions that wouldn't pay off. It knows what to look for on TCG and sports cards alike, modern chrome or vintage paper. Only PSA, BGS, CGC, or SGC can assign an actual grade.

A clear, well-lit front photo; adding the back improves the estimate since edges, corners, and surface wear on the back move real grades. Blurry photos get a 'retake' response instead of a fake confident answer.

Add your cards with grade, quantity, and what you paid. The portfolio then marks everything to live market prices: total value, gain/loss per card and overall, and a performance chart over time.

Watch any card and set a threshold in either direction. Alerts appear in the app and land in your email digest, so you don't need to keep checking the page.

Yes. Upload a CSV (up to 500 rows at a time) with columns like name, set, number, grade, quantity, price, and date. Confident matches are added automatically; anything ambiguous is listed for review instead of being guessed, so nothing lands in your portfolio under the wrong card. A template is available in the import dialog.

Yes, anytime, on any plan including expired ones. The Export CSV button on your collection downloads every card in the same format the import accepts, so you can re-import it here or take it anywhere else. Your data is yours; there is no lock-in.

The price guide and the grading calculator are free to browse with no account at all. A free account (email verification only, no card) adds 10 card unlocks a month and 2 AI pre-grades. Collector removes the lookup limit and unlocks trade targets, the AI card scanner, the set explorer, portfolio, watchlist and alerts, the bulk lot calculator, and the market assistant. The backtested buy signals are Pro-only. AI pre-grade (send in photos, get an exact estimated grade with the reasons) is included on Pro; Free accounts get 2 lifetime pre-grades to try it. Collector does not include pre-grade.

Free is $0 with no card: 10 card unlocks a month, 2 AI pre-grades total, and the grading calculator. Collector ($14.99/month) removes the lookup limit and adds every collection tool: portfolio, watchlist and alerts, the set explorer, the AI card scanner, trade targets, the bulk lot calculator, and the market assistant. Pro ($29.99/month, or $199.99/year) adds unlimited AI pre-grade (photo → exact estimated grade with reasons) and the backtested buy signals, and lets the buy advisor factor an active signal into its verdict. You can move up at any time, and a Free account never expires.

Unlocking one card you haven't seen before. Once a card is unlocked it stays unlocked permanently: re-opening it next month costs nothing, and switching between grades or comparing it later never counts again. Searching, browsing the price guide, and the grading calculator never count. Cards already in your collection or watchlist don't count either: your oldest 25 on Free are always free to view. Your monthly allowance of new unlocks refills at the start of the 1st of each month, UTC, and the cards themselves never expire.

No. Once you unlock a card it's yours permanently. You can re-open it, switch grades, and check its price history next month or next year at no cost. The monthly limit only applies to cards you haven't unlocked before.

No. The Free plan needs a verified email address and nothing else. Signing in with Google counts as verified. A card is only required if you choose to start a 7-day trial of Collector or Pro.

No. They're a lifetime allowance on the Free plan, not a monthly refill, so they don't reset. The grading calculator itself stays free and unlimited for everyone, account or not. Pro includes unlimited AI pre-grade.

If you don't add a payment method, your account moves to the Free plan automatically. Nothing is deleted: your collection, watchlist, and portfolio history stay exactly as they are, in read-only form, and everything becomes editable again the moment you upgrade. You keep 10 card unlocks a month on Free, and every card you already unlocked stays unlocked.

No, and it's worth knowing before you spend one. The 7-day trial is offered only while your free allowance is completely untouched. The moment you use a single lookup or pre-grade, the trial is no longer available on that account and Collector and Pro start as normal paid plans, charged on the day you subscribe. Nothing else changes: the Free plan itself carries on indefinitely.

Nothing to start: the Free plan is $0 with no card. Standard pricing: Collector is $14.99/month. Pro is $29.99/month, or $199.99/year (≈ $16.67/month, over 5 months free versus paying monthly). If a lower founding-member price is shown on the pricing panel, that lower price is what checkout charges, locked for the life of your subscription. Both paid plans offer a 7-day trial if you haven't used any of your free allowance yet; it requires a card.

The trial is optional: you can use the Free plan indefinitely without one. It's for people who want to try Collector or Pro before using the free allowance, so it's offered while your free lookups and pre-grades are still untouched. Once you've used any of them, you've already tried the product, and Collector and Pro start as normal paid plans. If you do take a trial: full access to that tier for 7 days, a card required to start, $0 charged today, and canceling before it ends means you pay nothing and your account stays on Free.

Settings → Billing, one click into the secure Stripe portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current period and you keep access until then. No emails, no phone calls, no retention hoops. When the period ends your account moves to the Free plan rather than being closed, and your collection and portfolio data are kept read-only until you come back.

The Free plan is how you evaluate the product, indefinitely and with no card. The 7-day trial is a second option for trying a paid tier first, and cancelling before it ends means you're never charged. Charges already made are non-refundable except where required by law, as covered in the Terms of Service.

Yes. Upgrade from Collector to Pro (or switch Pro between monthly and annual) right in the app under Settings → Billing. The change applies instantly with a prorated adjustment. Payment methods, invoices, and cancellation are handled in the secure Stripe portal from the same page.

Not yet, but it's coming, and we're excited about it. We're building this the right way: website first, until it's the best card-data tool it can be, and as membership grows a native app is next on the roadmap. Every member genuinely brings it closer. In the meantime DataNeverLies runs beautifully in any mobile browser. The scanner works straight from your phone's camera, and adding it to your home screen makes it behave like an app today.

On the Free plan: 10 new card unlocks per calendar month (UTC) and 2 AI pre-grades total. Unlocked cards stay unlocked permanently, so only new unlocks count against the monthly allowance. On Collector and Pro, lookups are unlimited. AI scans are capped at 50 per day combined, with up to 25 pre-grades and 40 identifications inside that, and the market assistant at 200 messages per day. Those are ceilings meant to stop abuse, not real use. Portfolio and watchlist hold up to 100 and 25 cards on Free (2,000 / 250 on Collector, 10,000 / 1,000 on Pro), with no caps on browsing the price guide, the grading calculator, or alerts.

All prices are in US dollars, reflecting the US market the sales data comes from.

No. Only completed sales and sales-derived market prices feed the guide. Asking prices tell you what sellers wish for; sales tell you what buyers actually paid. We only use the second kind.

Sales are matched with guards for set, year, parallel, serial numbering, autographs, and multi-card lots, and the matching is audited against the raw listing titles. When an audit finds a bad match, the sale is removed and the matcher is hardened so it can't recur.

It says so. A card that last sold ten months ago shows 'last sold' with the date rather than a fresh-looking count; thinly traded cards carry wider trade-target discounts; and price rows without real market data are labeled estimates and excluded from signals and indexes.