概要 About
What is Kanto Research?
We track what graded Pokémon cards actually sell for, and Yuki texts you when a listing lands under it. No predictions, no hype, just the numbers.
Why this exists
Since 2004, Pokémon cards have returned about 3,821% on Card Ladder’s index, against 483% for the S&P 500 over the same period. That is the Wall Street Journal’s September 2025 piece, citing Card Ladder rather than the Journal’s own numbers.
Worth saying what that comparison leaves out, because we would rather you heard it from us. The S&P figure is price appreciation only, so it excludes reinvested dividends, which would raise it materially. And a card index carries costs an index fund does not: grading fees, shipping, insurance, the spread between what a card lists at and what it sells for, and the plain fact that you cannot liquidate a slab in a second. Treat it as evidence the market is real and large, not as a projection.
Millions of graded cards trade on eBay every year. Billions of dollars move through that market. And yet finding out whether a price is fair still means you, a browser tab, and the hope you’re not overpaying.
So we hired someone to watch it for you.
How it works
Meet Yuki
AI concierge
Yuki is who you text. You tell her which cards you are hunting and what you would pay. She watches every listing and auction, checks each one against what that card has actually been selling for, and texts you when one lands under it. Then she goes quiet. There is nothing to log into.
Disclosure: Yuki is an AI, not a person, and she will say so if you ask. She does not buy anything on your behalf, does not bid, and does not hold funds. Every price she quotes traces to completed sales in our database. She does not give financial advice, predict future prices, or tell you what to buy.
How we make money
Yuki is a subscription. $19 a month for ten cards, $49 for fifty, and billing starts when she opens rather than when you join the waitlist.
When you click a deal and buy through eBay, we earn a small commission from eBay Partner Network. It doesn’t add anything to your price — eBay pays us out of their margin, not yours. Those links never appear in a text message.
We show the affiliate link wherever there is one. A research tool that hides how it gets paid is not one.
Where the data comes from
We ingest sold listings from eBay continuously. Every title gets parsed into a structured record (card, set, variant, grade, price) and written to our database. Active listings refresh every five minutes. Completed sales arrive on a daily cycle, so a fair value reflects sales up to the previous day.
Our catalog is pulled from the official Pokémon TCG API and cross-referenced against the community-maintained Pokémon TCG Spreadsheet. 20,114 cards across 173 sets, or 24,728 once each variant is counted separately.
Full technical breakdown — resolution, confidence tiers, the 90-day window — is on the methodology page.
What we promise
Company
Kanto Research is operated by Brands of Babel LLC