Whether you’re into hockey, basketball, football or baseball cards, if you’re into sports cards, eBay eBay has quietly rolled out a powerful in-app price guide for both raw and graded cards. It’s really a must-use tool for any card enthusiast. We also love it because it’s completely free, and with no usage limits either. The new price guide feature lives inside the “My eBay” tab of the app. It lets collectors scan any card, view live comparisons, and even add it to their collection or list it for sale.
How the New eBay Sports Card Price Guide works
To use the free price guide, open the eBay app and navigate to “My eBay.” There, you’ll find a shortcut (often under “Scan Cards” or a similar menu) that allows you to use your phone’s camera to identify a card. You’ll see real-world sales data: two years’ worth of completed eBay transactions (including “Best Offer” accepted prices) plus active listings.
Beyond eBay’s internal data, the tool also pulls in external population reports (for example, from PSA) so you can see how many of a given graded card exist and get a better sense of rarity.
Another compelling benefit: listings and sales data refresh within about 24 hours — meaning you’re working with very current pricing.
Scan, See Comps & Decide to Buy, List, or Track.
For years, serious collectors and investors have relied on third-party services like Card Ladder, or Market Movers) to gauge sports card values. However, those tools often rely on imperfect data, like unverified listings, auctions that never paid, or even inconsistent naming conventions (P.S.A versus PSA, for example). Thankfully, eBay itself acknowledges the challenge of getting clean data in this niche so by building this feature inside its own ecosystem, eBay brings transparency (sales history and population reports) at no cost to the user.
We believe this levels the playing field and offers hobbyists the same raw information that resellers might otherwise pay for.
How often have you spoken to someone who uses eBay list prices to say their card is worth $1,000, for example, when all the comparable sales have shown a value of much less? This new app will help verify the real market of sports cards, instead of simply relying on list-price speculation. We asked our East Coast Ambassador Sylvain Cormier what he thinks and he said “if you’re thinking to pull the trigger on a card buy, this new app gives you a solid baseline of what’s actually changing hands.”
Early Access & Other Things to Know
This tool is still in its ‘early access’ phase, so early users should expect some bugs, missing information or historical data. Early users can also shape the app’s trajectory because eBay will continue to refine the user experience based on collector feedback.
Users can use the scan feature for raw and graded cards to see the real difference in value between an ungraded card, and a PSA 9 or PSA 10, for example.
The app is impressive and long-needed but as with everything else, collectors should not exclusively use this app as gospel. The app uses two years of sales data, which, on its own is pretty impressive, but that shouldn’t completely influence a collector’s decision making. Collectors must also take into account hype, market swings, grading trends and other factors that will inevitably influence a card’s value.
Like the Discogs app, which allows collectors to track the value of their vinyl record collection, compare it’s last ten sales for low, medium and high values, and even add albums to their want list or their collection, the eBay app allows users to add scanned cards to “My Collection,” too. This becomes a tracking tool as much as a pricing tool to monitor values over time, and be ready to list when the timing is right.
We also really like that once a seller scans and identifies a card, the app pre-fills listing details (including comparable pricing). This will make the list-to-sale workflow even quicker and more data-driven.
eBay continues to be a large player in the sports card market. This new app shows just how serious eBay is about recognizing how large this industry is becoming, and how collectors and investors alike want an easier way to track values with real-world data.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how this will affect third-party pricing tools? Do you think it will it lower barriers to entry for new collectors? If you collect sports cards, the new eBay Price Guide is a no-brainer tool to add to your workflow. It’s free, it’s integrated, and it gives you instant access to real sales history plus rarity data.
This will be a great tool for collectors buying, selling, or holding cards for long-term value, and we’re excited to be part of this new data-driven journey!
