Methodology

What "master set" means

A master set is every Pokémon TCG card that belongs to some shared theme — across every English set, promo, and printing. MasterSet.io curates checklists across four kinds of master set:

• Pokémon — Every card featuring a single Pokémon — one master set per character, from Pikachu to Charizard.
• Expansions — Complete printed sets — Base Set, Jungle, Evolving Skies, and more — every card and variant in the expansion.
• Artists — Career-spanning sets for Pokémon TCG artists — every card credited to Mitsuhiro Arita, Ken Sugimori, and more.
• Promos — Black Star Promos and other promotional series — the hardest-to-track cards, organized into master sets.

Browse all published sets by category at /browse, or jump straight to one with the homepage search.

Customizing what counts

Every checklist has a rule preset controlling which cards appear, shown in the header and shareable via the URL (e.g. ?preset=variant_inclusive):

• Recommended — normal + holofoil printings, promos, English only. No reverse holos, stamps, or prerelease.
• Unique Printings — everything in Recommended plus reverse holos, one row per unique physical printing.
• Variant Inclusive — adds all stamped variants: prerelease, staff, cosmos holo, deck-exclusive.
• Completionist — everything: jumbo, World Championship cards, errors, all variants.

Individual toggles (finish, stamp type, card type) let you override a preset's defaults further — changes apply immediately and stay in the URL so a customized checklist is shareable.

How set values are calculated

Each card carries a market value. The set's estimated value is the sum of every card's market value; your collection value sums the cards you own; cost to complete sums the cards you're missing. Values are estimates and will differ from actual sale prices.

How card prices are sourced

Prices follow a precedence hierarchy:

1. Manual override (a value we set by hand) — always wins.
2. A mapped pricing provider (PriceCharting), when configured and fresh — printing-aware raw and graded values.
3. Pokémon TCG API / TCGplayer pricing from enrichment.
4. The last known value, flagged as stale.
5. Unknown, when we have no reliable price.

How marketplace links are matched

When a card has a confirmed TCGplayer product match, its card page shows a direct "Buy on TCGplayer" link — never a guessed or base-card link, only one we've verified points to that exact printing. When live listings are enabled, we also generate an eBay search query from each card's name, number, set, and foil, then score every result; a high-confidence match contains the card name and number with no exclusion terms (proxy, fake, custom). We show high and medium matches by default and hide or warn on low-confidence ones. Anywhere we don't have a verified direct link or live listings, we fall back to a tracked marketplace search on eBay or TCGplayer instead of guessing.

How often data updates

Card metadata and prices are refreshed by our enrichment process. Marketplace listings are cached for several hours to avoid hammering external APIs.

Why values may differ from real sales

Condition, grading, printing, and timing all move prices. Treat our numbers as a planning estimate, not an appraisal.

MasterSet.io is an independent collector tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, or any marketplace provider.