TCGplayer catalog Source
Cards, sets and daily prices for 20+ games, which we read through TCGCSV. We keep a copy of every day’s file, so we never have to ask for the same day twice.
How it works · CardLabs, Inc. · September 2026 · 4 min read
How the Data Works
This page follows the data from its sources to a card’s record. It covers how ATLS reads each source, how we track graded populations, how grader rows pair to exact printings, how live listings arrive, and how our team checks the work.
The system
How the System Fits Together
It helps to think of ATLS in layers. Readers pull from each source on that source’s own schedule.
What they collect lands in four ledgers: catalog, population, pairings and market.
The record joins those ledgers for a single card, and search sits on top, learning from what people pick.
The loop back to collectors is the one place people feed the system: what they pick teaches search.
Where the data comes from
Sources and Partners
We read each source at its own pace and within its terms, link back to wherever a listing came from, and label affiliate links clearly.
Grader population reports Source
Graded population counts from PSA and Beckett. We record every change as it appears.
eBay Partner
Live graded listings, read through the eBay Developers Program. Listing links are eBay Partner Network links, and your price is the same either way.
TCGplayer partner program Partner
Some links to TCGplayer are affiliate links, through their partner program run by impact.com.
Collector Crypt Source
Listings and completed sales for graded cards held in their vault.
Phygitals Source
Listings and completed sales for graded cards held in their vault, read through OpenSea’s API.
Collectors Signal
What people search for and which cards they pick. It helps tune search. Other collectors never see who searched or picked. When you are signed in, your searches are kept with your account: the Privacy Policy says how.
Population
Tracking Graded Populations
A population report is really a ladder: for one card, how many copies exist at each grade.
Every time any rung changes, we store the whole ladder again, low grades included. That gives us a full history instead of a snapshot.
Pop growth
From that history we measure Pop growth, or how quickly a grade’s count is rising. New releases always get graded in a rush, so we compare each card with others released around the same time.
A new set’s early wave doesn’t look like a signal that way, but a ten-year-old card whose PSA 10 count suddenly jumps does.
The heart of ATLS
Pairing: Connecting Grader to Catalog
Graders often split what the catalog calls one card into anywhere from 2 to 12 rows, by finish, edition, language, stamp or error.
Neither list can hold the other, so we keep a third list of our own, called printings. Each grader row pairs to exactly one printing, and each printing belongs to one card. A ✓ means someone on our staff confirmed it.
Here’s how a pair gets made:
- The matcher proposes. It trusts the card number first, then the name, and only looks inside the right set.
- Our staff confirm. No pair counts until a person has checked it.
- Unknown stays unknown. If a source doesn’t say which printing something is, we record “not stated” rather than guess.
So far that adds up to about 28,000 confirmed pairs across 23,000 printings.
Every minute
Live Listings and Sales
Every minute, the market reader does three things. It checks for new and changed listings, starting with the cards people are looking at.
It resolves each listing to a card, a grade and, when the listing says so, a printing. When a match isn’t clear, the listing goes to a review queue instead of onto a record.
When a marketplace stops showing a listing, it comes off the record.
We only show listings while they’re fresh.
People in the loop
Data Quality: People in the Loop
Automation gets us most of the way, but a record is only as good as the checks behind it. So ATLS is built around a simple rule: machines propose, and our staff decide.
On a normal day, our team:
- confirms pairings set by set, in a workbench that shows each grader row beside the card it might be
- reviews listings the matcher wasn’t sure about, and fixes those matches by hand
- keeps the catalog in order: placing new sets when they release, sorting sets into the right series, and hiding duplicates
- approves every new search word before it goes live
- adds searches that went wrong to our validation set, so they can’t go wrong again
Two principles guide all of it: nothing reaches a record on a guess, and the grader’s own words are kept exactly as written. Because an admin’s pick counts as the strongest vote in search, a fix made by our team helps everyone right away.
In short