How to read the Ledger
Every card gets a verdict every day. This page explains what each one means, what the tiers are, and how we grade ourselves in public. Five minutes and you can read the whole board.
The Ledger in 10 seconds
Green stamp? The data likes this card. History says cards in this exact state usually went up.
Red stamp? Weakness is showing. History says cards in this state usually kept falling.
HOLD? Nothing to do. Most cards, most days. That's an answer too.
No gut feel anywhere in the chain. Every stamp comes from rules tested against 2.5 years of real recorded prices.
What a call looks like
We made it easy for every collector: green means the buy odds are with you, red means decide your exit. Checked every day, on every card. Here are the two stories the board tells.
A buy call fires
The card sat quiet for weeks, then the engine spotted the setup: sales heating up, momentum turning, price still reasonable. That combination earned the green stamp.
In held-out testing, qualified entries finished higher 8 weeks later 66% to 86% of the time depending on the price band. The rest didn't. That's the honest deal.
A warning fires
The card ran vertical and stretched way above its own average. The engine has seen this movie before, and it usually cools. That earned the red stamp.
In testing, cards stamped like this slid a further 10.7% (median) over the next 8 weeks. If you were thinking of selling, strength like this is when sellers get their price.
The call lives on the chart
You never have to take our word for when a call fired — it's drawn on the price chart itself, on every card page.
The five stamps
The stamp is the result of all the research, boiled down to one word. Why buy into a HOLD? Use the stamps to your advantage and let the data carry the decision.
The buy-side stamp
One of our tested buy patterns is firing on this card today, qualified against the rules for its price band. Across 2.5 years of backtesting against real recorded prices, qualified entries finished higher 8 weeks later 66% to 86% of the time depending on the band — the band records below show exactly which. The market average over the same windows was under half.
What to do with it: If you were thinking about adding this card, history says the odds are with you. Check the card's price band and which tier fired (below) for how reliable that specific pattern has been.
The default stamp
Nothing actionable either way. The card may even be rising fast, but none of our tested buy patterns qualify it, often because the move is too vertical, too young, or missing confirmation. Most cards, most days, are HOLD.
What to do with it: Patience costs nothing. If you own it, keep it. If you don't, the system is not telling you to chase.
The warning stamp
A sharp weekly fall, or a strong month that has started slipping, a common top pattern. In backtesting, cards entering SELL WATCH kept falling roughly 7 times in 10, averaging another 6% down within 4 weeks.
What to do with it: Not a command to panic-sell. It is a prompt: if you hold this card, decide your exit plan now rather than after another leg down.
The speculative stamp
A beaten-down card showing its first signs of life: hard fall, fresh upturn, calming volatility, on a set past its launch chaos. Historically about half of these calls win, but the winners paid well.
What to do with it: Bargain-hunter territory. Smaller positions, tighter exits, eyes open.
The supply stamp
Live eBay listings are drying up while the price holds an uptrend: supply pressure building under the market. This is our newest signal; its listing-count history is young, so it carries no backtest record yet.
What to do with it: Treat it as an early heads-up rather than a proven pattern, and watch how its live record develops on the Ledger.
Price bands: four markets, four books
What works on a $5 promo and what works on a $500 chase card are different games, so the playbook treats them as different games. Every card sits in a price band (set by its 30-day median price), every pattern is tested and graded separately inside each band, and every call keeps the band it was made in forever — so no band's record can ever borrow another's.
Those figures come from the held-out validation slice of our backtest — data the rules never saw while they were being tuned. The cheaper the card, the stricter the rules: chasing a fresh spike burned worst at the bottom of the market, so that is where the caps bite hardest.
The buy tiers: which pattern fired
Not every card behaves the same, so we never treat the data the same either. The playbook is a family of tested patterns. When a card earns the stamp, its page shows which pattern fired and that tier's full backtested record. The exact rules stay private; the results never do.
A big card (over $200) that has been climbing steadily this week and this month, without a crazy spike. In our testing this was our most reliable buy signal.
Record: 89% of these were worth more 8 weeks later · typical gain +22.2% · most never fell below the price we flagged them at
A tournament or promo card that will never be printed again, climbing at a healthy pace. Limited supply plus steady demand is a strong mix. Sudden spikes do not count here, steady climbs do.
Record: 74% of these were worth more 8 weeks later · typical gain +15.3% · most never fell below the price we flagged them at
A big card (over $200) sitting near its highest price ever and still trending up. For top-end cards, strength like this usually keeps going rather than stopping.
Record: 78% of these were worth more 8 weeks later · typical gain +13.8% · most never fell below the price we flagged them at
A big card (over $200) rising slowly and quietly, week after week. This is what it looks like when serious collectors are buying without any hype.
Record: 81% of these were worth more 8 weeks later · typical gain +12.1% · most never fell below the price we flagged them at
The number of copies for sale is shrinking while the price rises. Fewer sellers plus steady buyers usually pushes a price up.
A card under $200 with real gains this week and this month, but not a spike. In our testing this pattern beat the market at every price level.
Record: 64% of these were worth more 8 weeks later · typical gain +11.7% · worst dip along the way was usually -0.2%
Sell-side patterns work the same way: Hard Drop flags a sharp weekly fall, Rollover flags a strong month that has started slipping. Both feed the SELL WATCH stamp.
The Scarcity Score (0-100)
We track PSA, BGS, and CGC graded populations plus live eBay supply, every day. Beat that. Bandai publishes no print runs, so this score is our best estimate of what is actually out there.
Strategy fit: Flip, Hold, Grade
No two collectors play the same, so buy for what you actually want. Three scores out of 100 on every card: Flip rewards liquidity and quick momentum, Hold rewards durable steady climbs, Grade rewards a strong raw-to-graded gap. A card can be a terrible flip and a great hold at the same time, and the scores will say so.
How we grade ourselves
Every public call is logged the day it fires and graded automatically at 4 and 8 weeks against its flag price. We cannot edit or delete a call once it is made. The Ledger shows the full scoreboard: the backtested record behind every tier, and the live record accumulating in real time. If the rules stop working, that page will say so before we do.
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Observations, not financial advice. Fan-made; not affiliated with Bandai, Toei, or Shueisha.