The Pokemon card scanner that gets the printing right

Almost every common, uncommon, and rare in a modern Pokemon set exists at least twice: the base print and the reverse holo, where the card body is foiled instead of the artwork. Same name, same artwork, same collector number. Frequently very different price.

A scanner that logs the base print while you are holding the reverse holo has not made a small mistake. It has valued the wrong card, and your collection total quietly inherits the error. Multiply that across a binder and the number on screen stops meaning anything.

Cube identifies the exact card and the exact printing, and cross-checks every scan multiple ways to reduce bad matches. Reverse holo, base, and holo are separate entries with separate prices, because that is what they are.

Modern sets stack their chase cards above the printed set size: full arts, ultra rares, special illustration rares, gold hyper rares. The tell is the collector number. A card numbered 230/197 is a secret rare, and it usually shares a name with a plain holo sitting inside the set count.

The gap between those versions is often the entire value of the pull. Naming the card is not enough; the version is the price. Cube resolves the specific version you scanned, so an illustration rare never gets filed, or priced, as its regular-art twin.

Pokemon printings are pinned down by small marks: the set symbol, the set code (OBF, PAF, and so on), and the collector number. Promos run on their own numbering entirely, with black-star SWSH and SVP numbers instead of a set fraction. Two cards with identical artwork and different codes can sit at very different prices.

These marks are exactly what a scan has to get right. Cube's Pokemon card data comes from TCGdex, and every scan is cross-checked multiple ways against it before a match is accepted. The goal is simple: the entry in your collection matches the card in your hand, down to the printing.

A Japanese card is not the English card with different text. Japanese sets have their own codes, their own set sizes, their own rarity ladder (AR and SAR instead of IR and SIR), and they often release months before the English equivalent. They are priced on their own market too, sometimes above the English print, sometimes well below.

Folding both into one line of a spreadsheet muddles both prices. Cube treats language as part of the printing, so an English and a Japanese copy of the same artwork sit as separate entries with separate values.

Modern Pokemon prices do not sit still. An illustration rare can spike on release week, drop when a set gets restocked, and drift again as grading interest grows. A price from last month is trivia, not a valuation.

Cube prices from live trading-card market data, refreshed continuously. On top of that it keeps the portfolio math you actually want:

• Cost basis vs current value, so you know what a card has done since you got it.
• Return over time, for the collection and (on Pro) per card.
• Set-completion progress, so working through a master set is measurable.

Scanning is continuous: point the camera at a page and keep going, card after card. A full binder gets cleared in one sitting, not one card per tap.

The free tier is genuinely usable: 150 cards with full value tracking, continuous scanning, and the leaderboard. Pro is $9.99/mo or $49.99/yr for unlimited cards, per-card return, and unlimited collections. No countdown timers, no invented discounts.

The leaderboard is opt-in and ranked by distinct-card value. Duplicates do not count, so a stack of the same promo moves you nowhere; a broader collection does.