How to Read a Card Price Chart

A price chart looks objective, but every line on it encodes decisions about sources, sampling, and honesty. Here is how to read one properly — ours or anyone's.

The history line

The solid line is what the card has actually traded at. Two things to check on any chart: granularity and source. Old history is usually monthly or weekly buckets; recent history may be daily. A line that suddenly looks jagged didn't get more volatile — it got more detailed. On CardStock, zooming in swaps in finer detail (monthly → weekly → daily) so each view has one consistent texture.

The forecast fan

The dashed segments extend from the last real price to the model's 1-month, 6-month, and 1-year targets. A forecast without a range is a guess wearing a suit: the low-to-high band matters more than the point. Wide band = the honest answer is "this could go several ways."

Past-forecast dots — the receipts

Each dot is a prediction the model made in the past, plotted at the date it was aiming for and the price it predicted. The vertical gap between a dot and the history line is the miss, drawn where you can see it. Hover one and you'll see the price it started from and what the price actually did. If a chart never shows you its old predictions, ask why.

Three traps

The listing-price trap: a "market price" that hasn't moved in weeks often isn't a price at all — it's someone's ask that nobody has paid. Real markets wiggle. The percent trap: +40% on a $2 card is 80 cents of noise; always ask what the dollars are. The seam trap: when a chart switches data sources (as any long-history chart eventually must), a step at the seam can look like a market move. Good charts label their sources; ours documents the switch on the About page.