Get an AI-Powered Trading Card Price Checker via API

Each week, customers asked, “Can your Collectibles Recognition service return eBay listings so users can purchase items directly?”. It became clear that the demand for listing & pricing search API in general is strong. Collectors, small shops, and marketplaces need more than identification – they want to buy and find valuable cards on the marketplaces.

We knew building such a tool for collectibles wouldn’t be easy. Gathering data to ensure accuracy and reliability took months of development, testing, and fine-tuning. Now, we’re thrilled to introduce a major update: an AI-powered listing tool for trading cards and comic books. With this tool, collectors can easily identify their most valued Pokémon cards, find the listings of the card (or comics) and purchase it on the marketplace.

Visual AI for Collector Websites

Our Existing Solutions

As a tech-driven company, we’re dedicated to delivering top-tier visual search and image recognition technology through our API. Marketplaces, communities, and apps for collectors utilize the following solutions:

• AI Recognition of Collectibles – The core service can detect and identify collectible items in photos, such as trading cards, sports cards, comic books, manga, stamps, banknotes, and coins, with more categories added on demand.
• Collectibles Identifiers – After initial recognition, our system provides detailed identification of collectibles like trading cards, sports cards and comic books. This service delivers all the necessary metadata for listing, cataloguing, and text-based searches.
• AI-Powered Grading Services – We offer tools for evaluating the condition of collectible cards, including:
  • AI Card Grader provides individual and overall grades based on standards like PSA or Beckett.
  • Card Condition assessments for an overall quick evaluation without detailed grading.
  • Card Centering analysis for precise alignment evaluations.

• OCR System – Specialized optical character recognition for trading cards, comic books, manga, and slab labels.
• Reverse Image Search for Collectibles – Widely used for finding matches in databases, such as coins, or identifying similar antique furniture and home décor items. For instance, we built a Pokémon search engine!
• Image Enhancement Tools – Features like an image upscaler for improving photo quality and a background removal model for clean, professional visuals.
• AI Price Guide – This latest addition to our portfolio offers pricing insights (listings) for trading cards, comic books, and other collectibles, so you can find & purchase it directly from the marketplace.

Our Customers

Our AI is widely used by diverse customers in the collectibles’ industry, including:

• Smartphone app developers who use our technology for visual identification. For instance, apps allow users to upload scans or photos of collectibles to instantly identify them and access market values.
• Large online marketplaces that integrate our tools to help buyers and sellers identify items in bulk and also track price trends over time for informed pricing decisions.
• Offline stores and warehouses that leverage our AI for efficient inventory management of large collections of items such as cards, books, and memorabilia.
• Social networks and niche websites using our tools to boost community engagement, enabling collectors to share, discuss, and trade items with instant identification and pricing data.
• Antique sellers and price comparison websites that rely on image recognition and reverse image search to provide visitors with similar alternatives to their search queries and interests.

Interested to know more about the collectibles’ industry, marketplaces, technologies and apps? Check out our articles The Best Online Tools, Apps, and Services for Card Collectors and How To Scan And Identify Your Trading Cards With Ximilar AI.

Introducing Online Collectibles’ Price Guide Based on Computer Vision

AI Card Pricing Specifics

Our API provides specialized tools for listings, offering comprehensive data such as card grades, conditions, grading company and more. By sourcing pricing information from platforms like eBay and Rakuten, it equips collectors with the insights needed to make informed buying or selling decisions.

The listings we provide include information on parallel variations. For instance, limited editions, special foil versions, or other design differences that collectors often seek.

The data specifies:

• Whether a card, comic book, or manga has a grade from services like PSA, Beckett, CCG, and others.
• The actual grade number (e.g., on a 1–10 scale for cards).
• Details about parallel variations (e.g., special editions) or direct sales vs. newsstand editions for comics.

Analyzing Marketplaces From the USA, Europe, and Japan

To deliver accurate and actual data, we gather listings from major marketplaces like eBay, Rakuten, and others, cross-analyzing them with advanced AI.

Our data system analyzes top marketplaces to provide up-to-date pricing for sports cards (e.g., baseball) and TCGs such as Magic The Gathering (MTG), Lorcana, and others. Trading platforms vary by country, each serving as a key source for card pricing data:

• In the United States, eBay stands out as a key source, given its vast number of listings and active collectors who sell on eBay daily.
• In Japan, platforms like Rakuten play a similar role. They serve as hubs for trading card games, manga, and comics in one of the most vibrant collectibles markets globally. By analyzing these platforms, we ensure our system will return data from multiple sources and are relevant globally.
• In China, e-commerce giants like Taobao, Tmall, and Xianyu (all owned by Alibaba Group) reach hundreds of millions of people every month. The collectibles market is also growing quickly on these platforms, as well as apps like Jihuanshe or Douyin.
• In Latin America, Mercado Libre connects millions of buyers and sellers every month. It’s also becoming a popular platform for the growing collectibles market.

You can find the taxonomy of all the games we support in our developer documentation. This is a long-term project with big plans ahead, so stay tuned!

How We Monitor the Market Listings

Our system prioritizes the most frequently searched or traded items, automatically updating and adding the listings of popular collectibles. The criterium is the search frequency via our Collectibles Recognition API. This ensures users always have access to the most relevant and up-to-date market insights.

Developers can use these tools to create personalized apps for card & comics identification, card grading and propose to users listings from major marketplaces.

Test the Card Listings Search API

Since transparency is one of our key values, our API’s pricing is public, and we allow you to test the technology for free. There are several ways to do so: via live interactive demos, via Ximilar App, and, of course, via API.

Public Demos

To try a light version of our card price search system, visit our public demos. Go to the service page and select a demo. Then click on any sample image of a card or comic book, or upload your own photo.

The main demo at the top allows general recognition of collectibles. The demos further down showcase card grading, condition evaluation, and centering analysis.

As mentioned, our system also includes data from Japanese markets (other marketplaces from China, Latin America and India will be available soon), covering the most popular manga such as One Piece or trading card games such as Pokémon and Union Arena on Japanese marketplaces like Rakuten, or Rakuma.

For example, look at how our system processed One Piece Vol. 107 by Shueisha, the most popular manga in Japan, with listings available from online sources.

To learn more about the functionalities of our comic book & manga recognition and search system, check out our article on how to Identify Comic Books & Manga Via Online API.

Ximilar App

For registered users with a subscription plan, simply login to the Ximilar App to access card identification and listings via our test forms under Collectibles Recognition in the sidebar.

Select either TCG Card Identification, Comics Identification or Sports Card Identification, then click the toggle to enable “Pricing Information.”

For example, here’s the result for Shohei Ohtani’s Baseball card from Topps 2023. Our system found two listings on eBay, both priced at $10. The output includes the baseball card listings along with information on whether the card is graded and a link to the marketplace – so you or your users (customers) can purchase it.

Connect to the Comics & Card Price Search API

Accessing the listings of cards, comics or manga is simple with our AI Collectibles Recognition system. Whether you’re building a mobile app or integrating with an online marketplace.

Our price guide is integrated with our AI Recognition of Collectibles service. This allows you to identify cards or comics from photos and instantly retrieve their prices in JSON format.

For full integration, our primary focus is seamless connectivity via our REST API. We provide several endpoints for collectibles identification, each of them with a different use case, such as:

https://api.ximilar.com/collectibles/v2/sport_id       - sports cards 
https://api.ximilar.com/collectibles/v2/tcg_id         - trading cards
https://api.ximilar.com/collectibles/v2/comics_id      - comic books + manga
https://api.ximilar.com/collectibles/v2/analyze        - general

Here’s an example curl request that returns sports card prices:

$ curl https://api.ximilar.com/collectibles/v2/sport_id -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Token API_TOKEN" -d '{
   "records": [{ "_url": "PATH_TO_IMAGE_URL"}],
   "pricing": true
}'

How the Typical Response Looks

Here’s an example of how the response from our card value finder might look:

{
  "item_id": "v1|XYZ|0",
  "item_link": "https://ebay...",
  "name": "2021 Panini Chronicles ...",
  "price": 20.0,
  "currency": "USD",
  "country_code": "US",
  "source": "eBay",
  "date_of_creation": "2024-11-11",
  "grade_company": "PSA",
  "grade_value": 10
}

Explanation of the Data Fields

Here is a detailed explanation of individual fields:

• item_id: A unique identifier for the product item on the marketplace.
• item_link: The URL link to the item’s product page.
• name: The name of the submission on the marketplace (e.g., “2021 Panini Chronicles Shohei Ohtani”).
• date_of_creation: The date the item was posted on the marketplace (formatted as YYYY-MM-DD).
• price: The item’s price at the time of creation.
• currency: The currency of listing (typically USD, EUR, or YEN).
• country_code: A Two-letter country code based on ISO 3166-1 standard.
• grade_company: The company that graded the item (such as PSA or BECKETT).
• grade_value: The numerical grade of the item (if it has a grade).
• date_of_sale: The date the item was sold (formatted ad YYYY-MM-DD, can be null).

In accordance with our partners’ terms (TOS), we use this data solely to promote their marketplaces and provide direct links to the marketplace (item_link) – You are only able to purchase the item directly from the marketplace.

Continuous Improvements: Enhancing Card Pricing Accuracy

Our API allows you to build your own comics and manga price checkers. Moreover, it helps to check values based on PSA and other grading standards. With this service, you can identify collectibles and quickly access detailed pricing data in listing-compatible formats automatically and at the same time.

Whether you’re evaluating football cards or assessing Pokémon card values, our technology supports collectors and businesses alike. This is just the start. As we expand functionality, our mission is clear: to deliver top-tier AI-powered API solutions for collectors worldwide. If you are a marketplace that would like to increase your revenues, then contact us – our users will be able to find & purchase the collectibles from your marketplace.

We are dedicated to building the most comprehensive and mature service for card & comics identification in the world – utilising data from the USA, Europe, Asia (including China and Japan), and Latin America.

Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional, we’re here to help with cutting-edge tools and data-driven insights. Need assistance with setup or want to discuss a custom solution for your app or website? Contact us to explore your needs and find the best solution together.