Everything on the card means something, and almost none of it is explained anywhere on the card. Here is what each number and symbol is telling you, written for somebody holding their first one.
The suffix after the name is not decoration. It is a different card, with a different price. You will see ex, EX, GX, V, VMAX, VSTAR, LV.X, Prime, BREAK and Tag Team. Whichever is printed is part of the card’s name and has to be part of any search you do, or you will be looking at a different card.
The same letters have been reused decades apart — a lowercase ex was used in the mid–2000s and is in use again now. So the suffix alone does not date a card. The copyright year on the back does, and that is step six.
Not useful for collecting. It is useful for spotting a fake, because fakes frequently print an HP that does not match the real card — see section 6.
4/102 means card 4 of a 102-card set. On modern cards there is also a two-to-four letter set code beside it — SVI, PAL, OBF, MEW, EVS, SSP. That code names the set. Read it exactly as printed rather than guessing which set it belongs to.
A ● circle is Common. A ♦ diamond is Uncommon. A ★ star is Rare. Modern sets add more above Rare, including marks of their own for Illustration Rare and Special Illustration Rare.
The symbol tells you how the card was printed, not what it is worth. A Common from a 1999 set can be worth more than a modern Rare.
A small logo near the card number, identifying which set the card came from.
©1999 Nintendo, Creatures, GAMEFREAK. That is the card’s year — not the artwork, and not the design. Modern sets reprint old looks on purpose, so a card that looks like 1999 can be from last year.
When the first number is bigger than the second, you are holding a secret rare. 199/197 in a 197-card set means the card was printed beyond the published checklist. Those are usually the most wanted cards in the set.
The original 1999 Base Set has no set symbol at all. A blank space where the symbol should be is how you recognise it — that one absence identifies the most collected set in the hobby.
Two completely different cards that both look shiny. Which part is shiny is the whole distinction.
The same Pokémon, in the same set, exists as all three — at three different prices. Look at which part catches the light before you decide which one you have.
If you have a 1999 Base Set card, which printing it is matters more than almost anything else about it. Three versions, scarcest first.
A Japanese card is not worth the English price converted. Different print runs, different demand, different prices entirely — sometimes far less, occasionally far more.
How to tell: Japanese characters in the name and the attack text, a slightly smaller card, and usually a card number printed with no set total after it.
CardGauge treats these as a different card, which is why the scanner reads the language off the card before it looks for a price.
The usual four things people look at:
Surface is the Pokémon-specific problem. Holofoil scratches far more easily than ordinary card stock, and the scratches only show when you tilt the card under a light. A 1999 holo that looks perfect lying flat on a table can be covered in fine lines at an angle.
This is the most common reason a card grades lower than its owner expected, and it costs real money. Check before you buy, not after.
Fakes are far more common in Pokémon than in sports cards, and the most-wanted cards are the most faked. None of these tests is conclusive on its own; together they are usually enough.
CardGauge prices the card you tell it you have. It cannot tell a fake from a photograph, and it will not pretend to. A confident price on a counterfeit is still a confident price, which is exactly why this section is on this page.
You do not need to collect everything. Picking one direction makes the hobby cheaper and more interesting at the same time.
These are the same labels the Pokémon board filters by, so the words you learn here are the words the rest of the site uses.
The board also sorts by what people are actually chasing: Charizard, Alt Art, Holo, Promo, Gold and Trophy.
It will not tell you which cards are going up. Nobody knows that, and anything that tells you it does is selling you something.
What CardGauge does instead is show you what cards actually sold for — and refuse to give you a number when the sales it found were not really your card. On a 1999 holo that means a lot of refusals, because a search for it pulls in graded copies at ten times the price of a raw one, and averaging those together would produce a number that describes no card that exists.
A refusal is the honest answer. It is not the app failing.