E4 is a great place to discuss most parts of the Pokemon hobby, however there are some things that even the world’s best collectors cannot do.
Values on Pokemon cards are inherently difficult. Small variances can mean anywhere from a few bucks up to tens of thousands of dollars in value difference. When a card is professionally graded, it’s much easier to ascertain its value. Asking a price check on a single card or small class of cards, provided you have already followed the rules laid out here and done your own price research, can be helpful and is something the forum can easily help out with.
However, asking the forum to value large lots of cards, be they your own childhood collection or your local facebook purchase, is not feasible. As @pkmnflyingmaster recently pointed out, there are three reasons why this is nearly impossible for the forum to do:
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Condition. As previously mentioned, small condition differences can mean massive value differences. It is impossible to ascertain a card’s condition from pictures, even detailed ones. Since condition cannot be reliably ascertained, neither can value.
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Effort. Valuing one or a couple hard-to-find cards simply relies on one member to have some insider knowledge. Valuing large collections expands that work massively. If you cannot find the time to do the valuation yourself, you should not expect someone else to do it for free. Furthermore, barring any insider knowledge, we all have access to the same price tools.
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Market. The market is dynamic and changing frequently, especially now. It is impractical to a) expect people to be able to give up-to-date values, and b) to have those values remain accurate. As we have seen recently, one class of cards may rise dramatically while another stagnates or drops.
Accordingly, the answer to these collection valuation threads is almost always the same: we can’t tell condition, we shouldn’t do free appraisals, and go look the cards up on eBay/Facebook/TCGplayer.
We will now be locking threads which ask the forum to value large lots, collections, or collection purchases. As always, and as the Price Check Rules state, before you create a price check thread you must do your own research beforehand.