How this site is made
One person decides what gets published and answers for it when it's wrong. Software collects the prices. AI is used for code and guide work: an AI research session chooses sources, reads and checks them, drafts guides, and re-verifies facts; a separate AI review session reviews the claims and changes. A person reads and approves every page before it is published, and every release.
Collecting prices
Software reads each listed shop's public catalog several times a day. It never logs in, and it follows each shop's robots.txt. No price on this site is typed in or estimated: if a shop's page says $49.99, that is what you see. Each row on Deals shows when that price was last checked.
MSRPs come from the publisher or its distributor. Where a publisher prints only a pack price, we multiply it out and label the result as our calculation. Every MSRP shows its source, and when no price has been announced, the site says so.
Deciding what's fair
Every fair-price product meets one rule: at or under MSRP, or up to 5% or $10 over MSRP, whichever is more, and never more than a quarter over. Software applies that rule; nobody hand-picks deals, and nobody can pay to appear. One Piece is the labelled exception: English boxes rarely sell at MSRP, so its lowest prices from vetted shops appear in a separate "Above MSRP" tier, each marked with how much over, never in the fair-price list.
Vetting shops
Every shop is checked against the standard on How we choose shops before it is listed. Automated checks test each shop against that standard, and a person approves every listing: shops that pass every check are approved together, the rest one by one after a look. Shops that fail a later check are paused.
Where AI helps, and where a person decides
- Code. The site is built and maintained with AI coding tools, and every change is tested before it goes live.
- Guides. An AI research session researches and drafts each guide, chooses the cited sources, and re-verifies facts when a guide is revised; a separate AI review session reviews claims and changes. A person reads and approves every page before it is published, and every release.
- Not prices, not rankings. AI doesn't write or adjust a price, and it doesn't decide the order shops appear in. Price decides that.
- Live site and data. The live site has no AI connected to it. The subscriber database is separate from the AI research and review sessions, and those sessions are not allowed to query it. AI coding tools that maintain the code may run database commands only with that person's explicit approval.
Checking and correcting
For new and revised guides, the AI research session opens the cited sources and checks the numbers, dates and quotes it uses against them before publishing. Glossary and MSRP sources are re-checked on the 1st and 15th of each month. A link check runs at every update, and the full test suite runs before every production release. Every figure in a guide links to its source, rumors are labelled as rumors, and each MSRP shows where it comes from. Reviews are logged.
If a link doesn't say what we claim it says, that is our mistake, and we want to hear about it. See what's new on Updates.
Corrections
When something is wrong, we fix it and list it here with the date: what it said, what it says now.
- · Lorcana buying guide, Illumineer's Trove contents. Said: "8 packs plus dice, a lore counter and a storage box". Now says: "a full-art box with 8 booster packs, 6 damage dice and more", as the product page lists it.
- · Lorcana buying guide, Hyperia City. Said: "204 cards". Now: the card count is removed, because no official page we found states it; Coco and ink drops are cited to Ravensburger's announcement.
- · Lorcana buying guide, the Disney Lorcana app. Said: "is free". Now says: "The official Disney Lorcana app has a play guide…"; the app page doesn't state a price.
- · Pokémon buying guide, Pokémon TCG Live. Said: "is free on phones and computers". Now quotes Pokémon: "the perfect way to learn more about the Pokémon TCG"; the cited page doesn't state a price.
- · One Piece buying guide, the Teaching App. Said: "is free". Now says where to get it (Google Play and the App Store) and quotes Bandai; the cited page doesn't state a price.
- · Gundam buying guide, the Teaching App. Said: "is free". Now says: "runs in an app or a web browser"; the cited page doesn't state a price.
Report a problem: support@printedprice.com.
Want to lend a hand?
- Spot a wrong price, date or source? Tell us, and we'll fix it and credit you in the corrections list if you'd like.
- Know a good shop that isn't listed? Suggest it on How we choose shops.
- Know one of these games better than we do? A second pair of eyes on a guide is the most useful thing anyone could offer.
Reach us at info@printedprice.com or on r/PrintedPrice.