- tcgrate
- Index
Market index · Sep 2, 2026
One number for the whole market.
Game indices
same method, per gameHow the index is computed
Every day at TCGplayer's market close we take the market price of every card variant that had a price both today and the day before, and that was worth at least $1 yesterday. The index moves by the ratio of today's sum to yesterday's sum over exactly that set of cards. Then it chains: indext = indext−1 × Σ pricet / Σ pricet−1.
Chain-linking matters because the card universe changes daily. A new set adds thousands of prices at once; a simple sum would jump on release day and tell you nothing about existing cards. In a chained index, new cards enter the comparison only from their second priced day, so the line reflects price change, not catalog growth.
The $1 floor removes bulk commons whose price is dominated by rounding. Weighting is by price, so a $500 card moving 5% matters as much as fifty $10 cards moving 5% — the index tracks where the money is, not where the count is.
Base is 100 on February 8, 2024, the first day for which a full daily archive of TCGplayer prices exists. There is no data before that; we don't backfill from screenshots or third-party estimates.
Per-game and per-set indices
Identical method, restricted to cards of one game or one set. A set index starts at 100 on the first day it has priced cards, which makes "since release" directly readable: a set at 140 has gained 40% since it first got prices.
What it does not do
It does not track graded cards, condition tiers, or sold listings. Market price is TCGplayer's own estimate for near-mint copies. It does not predict; the calls page is where we put predictions, and where we keep score.