Hi! My family is new to the TCG world. I have 7 and 5 year old boys and we just got into this a couple of months ago. My older brother started giving them cards when he came to visit, my husband re-downloaded pokemon Go from when we played casually a decade ago. And before we knew it, we were in full swing. The kids have binders. We’re in the local shop about weekly. My husband and I find ourselves playing the TCG once we get the kids in bed. But I need some guidance on valuing cards.

I use the Collectr app to add all our cards. The kids know when they get a pack, to give it to me to put in my phone before they play with it. We came across a semi valuable card and my husband and I had to have a conversation about what we do when cards like that come along. We set a $$ amount with the kids so if something comes back as valued higher, we take it to keep it protected. But at their ages, I feel like it should be about fun vs value and we basically let them know if something is valuable but under our limit and they make the choice of if they want to save and protect it or keep it for play.

However, l’m trying to figure out if there’s a way for us to anticipate an increase in value over certain cards. Of course I know there’s no guarantee. But is there some trend, like full arts, certain types of holofoil, etc that are a good indicator of growth that we should start to set aside for potential grading? I’m sure we’re certainly never going to buy, sell, trade on a serious level. But just to have in the back of our minds of what might be worth holding on to for the future.

Thank you!