author

Jay Montalbo

Contributing Writer

Jay Montalbo writes about grading and selling for Cardboard Alpha. His background is in information technology, with nearly six years as an IT systems administrator and later work as an IT support analyst, and he brings the same troubleshooting habit to cards: break the problem into steps, check each one, and trust the answer only when every step holds. His articles work through when a grading submission pays for itself, how condition and grading-company standards move a card's value, and what a sale actually nets after marketplace fees and shipping, using published population reports, fee schedules, and completed-sale data. Every source is cited inline, and each piece is fact-checked against those sources before it is published.

Credentials

Contributing Writer, Cardboard Alpha
Background in IT systems administration and technical support
Focus areas: grading economics, selling and trading
Research grounded in published population reports, fee schedules, and sales data, cited inline

Jay Montalbo's articles describe grading and selling mechanics using published population, fee, and pricing data. They are informational and are not personalized investment advice.

Articles by Jay Montalbo

A photograph of a young woman on the phone at her kitchen table looking concerned, a small padded envelope beside her, with flat hand drawn pokeball-red illustrations of exclamation marks, a question mark, a speech bubble drawn over it.

Grading

What to Do If You Bought a Fake Pokemon Card

Where you paid decides how you get your money back after buying a fake Pokemon card. This guide sets out the steps and, as of October 22, 2026, the deadlines and counterfeit rules at eBay, PayPal, TCGplayer and credit card issuers, plus what PSA and CGC guarantees leave uncovered on a fake slab.

9 min read

A photograph of a person pressing a strip of tape onto a small kraft box at a sunny packing table, with flat illustrated pokeballs, paper airplanes and stars drawn over the scene.

Selling & Trading

Shipping Pokemon Cards Safely: Materials and Insurance

TCGplayer and eBay describe the same packing for a single card: a sleeve, a rigid holder, tape or a team bag to stop sliding, and a bubble mailer or secure envelope. Value then sets the postage and the paperwork. On October 17, 2026, a Zone 1 Ground Advantage retail parcel cost $8.40, 4.3 times the $1.94 evaluated price of a raw Near Mint non-holo Mist Energy 161, while eBay's Standard Envelope started at $0.78.

7 min read

A photograph of a person packing a cardboard box lined with bubble wrap at a wooden table, with flat hand-drawn pokeball-red illustrations of a pokeball, a checkmark, an hourglass and exclamation marks drawn over it.

Grading

How PSA Grading Works: Submission Tiers, Fees and Turnaround

PSA authenticates, grades and seals each card, and its fee, insured-value cap and turnaround estimate all depend on the service level you pick. This guide covers the submission steps, PSA's fee table as archived on October 16, 2026, the Value tier pause, packing rules, order statuses and returns.

8 min read

A photograph of a young woman on a park bench holding up a sheet of shimmering holographic foil in the afternoon sun, with flat hand drawn illustrations of a rainbow swirl, sparkles and stars drawn over the foil.

Grading

Holo vs Reverse Holo vs Non-Holo: Value and Condition

Holo, reverse holo and non-holo cards differ in where the foil sits, how they come out of a pack and how graders treat foil flaws. This guide compares Cardboard Alpha's evaluated raw Near Mint prices for the same cards in each finish on October 10, 2026, across 115 English sets, and reads TCGplayer, CGC, Beckett and PSA on surface condition.

7 min read

A photograph of a smiling woman on her front porch holding up a padded envelope while a buyer waits in the doorway, with flat hand drawn pokeball-red illustrations of dollar signs and sparkles drawn over it.

Selling & Trading

How to Price Pokemon Cards to Sell Fast Without Underselling

Pricing a Pokemon card to sell starts with sold prices, then the ask ladder, then fees. Cardboard Alpha compared the lowest delivered Near Mint ask with the evaluated price for 139 heavily traded cards on October 9, 2026, and set the gap beside TCGplayer's price-plus-shipping ordering, both marketplaces' published fees and eBay's Best Offer settings.

8 min read

A gray-haired woman in a pink shirt sits on a sunny front porch checking her wristwatch, a tan folder on her lap, beside two hand-drawn pokeball stopwatches and curving red arrows.

Selling & Trading

When to Sell: Timing the Pokemon Card Market

The most expensive card in each of the first four Mega Evolution expansions ended its first 180 days at anywhere from 39 to 150 percent of its release-week price, per Cardboard Alpha's evaluated prices. Here is that release-cycle data, a single holiday quarter tested, and why the seller queue and fees can outweigh the calendar.

7 min read

A photograph of a man at a bright desk holding up two small white boxes, with flat hand drawn pokeball-red illustrations of a pokeball and a percent sign drawn on them.

Grading

Grading Japanese Pokemon Cards: What's Different

TAG and CGC publish rules that cover Japanese-language Pokemon cards, each with exclusions or identification caveats. In eight same-art pairs between July 9 and October 6, 2026, the Japanese PSA 10 median was below its English twin's in seven pairs and tied in one, and the PSA 10 step over a PSA 9 was smaller on the Japanese copy in the four pairs with enough sales to compare. No Japanese population counts were available to say why.

6 min read

A photograph of a woman at a desk looking through a large magnifying glass as she draws on a sheet of white paper, with flat hand drawn pokeball-red illustrations of scissors, a question mark and sparkles drawn over it.

Grading

Trimmed and Recolored Cards: Card Doctoring Explained

A trimmed or recolored card is a genuine card altered to look better than it is, and PSA, CGC and TAG refuse it a numeric grade. This guide sets out how PSA, CGC, Beckett and TAG label such cards, what PSA's May 2026 fraud report found, and how the PSA 10 premium on four real cards on October 3, 2026 explains the incentive.

7 min read

A photograph of a gray-haired man in white cotton gloves holding a white card up in front of his face by a bright window, with three hand drawn pokeballs, two red and one pink, each above a downward arrow, drawn on the card.

Grading

Near Mint vs Lightly Played: A Raw Card Condition Guide

Near Mint and Lightly Played are measured, not felt: TCGplayer's standards cap NM at 3 points of imperfections and LP at 6, with whitening, grime and bends ruled out at NM. On October 2, 2026, the median LP copy priced at 95.3 percent of NM for Scarlet & Violet cards worth $20 or more and 73.5 percent for Wizards of the Coast cards.

7 min read

A photograph of a woman stacking two uneven piles of coins beside two graded card slabs on a sunlit desk, with flat hand drawn pokeball-red illustrations of pokeballs, dollar signs, upward arrows drawn over it.

Grading

PSA 10 vs PSA 9: How Much Is the Grade Jump Worth

The gap between a Grade 9 and a Grade 10 slab of the same card is not one number. Cardboard Alpha's Grading Opportunity model (build 2026-09-21, sales from all graders pooled) shows it ranging from 1.83x to 8.13x across five tracked cards, while only 19.8% of the 2,963 cards it evaluated clear a positive grading expected value.

8 min read

A photograph of a man weighing a small shipping box on a kitchen scale next to a stack of envelopes, with flat hand-drawn red illustrations of pokeballs, an hourglass, and percent signs drawn over it.

Selling & Trading

How to Sell Pokemon Cards: Fees, Timing, and Platform Comparison

TCGplayer and eBay both work for a normal single, and their headline fees, checked against each platform's own published rates on September 26, 2026, land close enough together that speed often decides between them more than the last dollar, while a local shop trades a lower cash offer for same-day payment. The real gap most sellers miss is time: eBay's Authenticity Guarantee is a one-to-two-business-day authentication step on single cards sold for $200 or more to US buyers, explicitly not a grade, and an actual grading submission adds a separate turnaround that depends on the grader and service level chosen.

7 min read

A photograph of a man holding up a graded card slab in a sunlit living room, with flat hand drawn pokeball-red illustrations of pokeballs, stars, percent signs drawn over it.

Grading

Gem Mint 10 Odds by Set: Which Sets Grade the Hardest

Gem mint 10 rates are not one hobby-wide number: PSA's Population Report puts Neo Genesis at roughly 3.2 percent PSA 10 and 2021's Evolving Skies near 59.2 percent, an eighteen-fold spread inside the same grading company's own data. PSA publishes the counts behind each rate but no cause for the gap. Even within a single set, one chase card can grade far harder than the set's own average.

6 min read