author · editor

Ryan Shugars

Collector & Market Data Builder

Ryan Shugars is an avid Pokémon card collector who builds the market-data tooling behind PokéQuant. He collects across multiple eras, tracks population reports and price movement as a matter of habit, and started building PokéQuant to get a straight answer to questions the existing price guides couldn't: what's actually trading, what's just an asking price, and what a grade is really worth on a given card right now. He writes from that same collector's vantage point, close to the data, skeptical of hype, and always checking a claim against the ledger before it goes in an article.

Ryan Shugars is a collector and the builder of PokéQuant's data systems, not a licensed financial advisor. Articles he writes or edits describe market history and mechanics; they are informational and are not personalized investment advice.

Articles by Ryan Shugars

Sealed & Investing

Sealed Pokemon Products and Long-Term Value, 2022-2023

Published TCGplayer market data, as reported by ICv2, covers seven sealed products between December 2022 and December 2023. Boxes from Evolving Skies and XY Evolutions rose. Boxes from Obsidian Flames and Paradox Rift fell in the month tracked, and two further products fell during presale months before their release dates. This is a review of what the data shows, grouped by documented release date, not a buying recommendation.

6 min read

Grading

Centering, Surface, Corners, Edges: The Four Grading Criteria

PSA, CGC, and BGS each grade a Pokemon card on centering, corners, edges, and surface, and every grade's published definition describes all four at once. Here is what each company actually publishes, where their numbers agree, and where they do not.

6 min read