Pokémon card price alerts: the options compared

Price alerts and listing alerts are different things

Most apps that promise price alerts watch a card's market price: you set a target, and you get an email when the card's value rises or falls past it. That's useful for tracking a collection or timing a sale.

To buy below market you need the other kind: a listing alert, which fires when one particular copy is listed for less than the card usually sells for. Market prices move slowly, while a cheap listing on a chase slab can sell within minutes. So two questions matter for any alert: what triggers it, and how quickly it reaches you.

eBay saved searches (free)

Search eBay for the card, number and grade, for example charizard 199/165 psa 10, add a maximum price and the Buy It Now filter if you want them, then select Save this search at the top of the results. eBay says it will email you when new items matching your search are listed, and the eBay app has a Saved Searches notification setting for app alerts.

• You set the price. eBay doesn't know what the card is worth, so the cap in your search is the only price check, and you have to move it as the market moves.
• One search per card and grade. Watching twenty cards in two grades means forty saved searches.
• Timing. eBay's help page doesn't say how quickly the emails go out. Buyers in eBay's community describe a daily email rather than an instant one.

Our guide to finding underpriced PSA cards shows how to build these searches.

PriceCharting deal alerts ($6 a month)

On PriceCharting's paid Collector plan, $6 a month, Deal Alerts send you an email when an item on your wishlist is for sale below market price, and the Watchtower setting narrows those emails by grade and discount. The same plan includes an eBay Deal Scanner, a page of newly listed eBay items priced below market. The free account has a wishlist but no deal emails.

It's the closest thing to a listing alert among the big price guides. You build and maintain the wishlist yourself, and the alerts come by email.

Price tracker apps: Card Codex and others

Collection apps watch market value, not listings. Card Codex is a clear example: it emails you when a card's tracked market price reaches or crosses your target, and it checks prices once a day. By default it tracks the ungraded (raw) market price. Free accounts get 3 active alerts; Pro raises that to 100 for $5 a month after a 7-day trial.

Use a tracker to see when your collection's value moves, or when a card you want has come down in general. It won't tell you that one seller just listed a PSA 10 well under the going rate.

SlabPing (free, on Discord)

SlabPing is a listing alert for graded cards that needs no targets or wishlist from you. Every card and grade we track has a market price from recent completed sales, refreshed daily, and the list grows every day with the cards sellers list most. We check new eBay Buy It Now listings every 45 seconds through eBay's official API, plus auctions in their last 15 minutes.

• Deal: the total with shipping is 20% or more under the price for that exact grade.
• Steal: 35% or more under.
• Ending soon: an auction in its last 15 minutes with the bid 25% or more under.

Listings priced too low to be real, raw cards, lots and sellers under 98% positive feedback are filtered out, and each alert comes down when the listing ends. The limits: it covers the English cards in our price guide, it can't yet watch a card you pick (that's planned for Premium), and it posts to Discord, not email.

Side by side

They work well together: a saved search for the one grail card you're chasing, SlabPing for graded deals across the market, and a tracker for your collection's value.