How RareGrove compares prices
RareGrove monitors Pokémon TCG shop prices for shoppers in the Netherlands. Coverage varies by product and by which shops can be checked.
Products that can be compared
English single boosters, factory Booster Bundles containing six packs, factory Booster Boxes containing 36 packs, and Build & Battle Boxes. Expansion, product format, language, packaging, edition and weight distinctions form the exact comparable product group.
Six loose packs are not a factory bundle. Thirty-six loose packs are not a factory booster box. ETBs, tins, collection boxes, cases and Build & Battle Stadiums are outside these formats. The website's product definition can establish a factory bundle or box when a count is omitted; explicit conflicting quantities remain excluded.
English is assumed when no other product language is indicated, and explicit English evidence is recorded separately. Non-English and unresolved conflicting language evidence are excluded. A website's language alone does not establish the language of its cards.
Item price, currency and availability
Only confirmed, in-stock, validly priced listings qualify. Sold-out, preorder, unknown-stock and review-required products do not contribute. Availability comes from saved storefront evidence at the time of the check; a failed request does not mean sold out.
Benchmarks exclude shipping. Display currency is EUR. Original currency and conversion evidence are retained; DKK uses the approved fixed policy of 7.46038 DKK per EUR. Tax verification is not an eligibility gate. Confirm the shop's final price and delivery conditions before purchasing.
Shopping destination: Netherlands. This does not mean every shop is located in the Netherlands or that Dutch delivery has been verified. Where evidence is missing, we say “Delivery to Netherlands not confirmed”.
Monitored-shop average and price deviation
Each shop contributes at most its cheapest qualifying listing for an exact product. The average is the arithmetic mean of those shop prices. The normal deviation is the mean absolute difference from that mean, not statistical standard deviation.
The deviation score is the average minus an offer's price, divided by the mean absolute deviation. A positive score means below average. Configured opportunity thresholds are 1, 2, 3 deviation units. One shop is insufficient for a meaningful comparison; two provide a limited average; three or more permit deviation analysis. A zero deviation has no score.
Daily checks, failed shops and retained prices
The daily collection is scheduled for 09:00 Europe/Amsterdam (CET in winter, CEST in summer). Actual starts and coverage can vary with runner availability, access restrictions, cooldowns and source failures.
The strict collection benchmark uses that run's eligible observations. The dashboard and these public pages also provide a clearly labelled latest-known comparison through the same read-only query service. Previous reliable observations can remain visible during a collection or after a failed or partial check. They are not copied into the new run or historical snapshots.
Fresh prices are less than 24 hours old; recent results are less than 6 days old. The default retained-price window is at most 30 days. A complete healthy in-scope check can confirm that a listing has disappeared; an incomplete check cannot. Inactive shops are excluded from current offers.
Every price has its original verification time. Failed checks and retained results are labelled. Search structured data includes only qualifying fresh offers with no stale or failed-check flag. A short public-page cache may delay newly committed results by up to five minutes.
Historical prices
History uses one completed daily market snapshot per product per Amsterdam calendar day, selected from the first finished eligible full collection. Partial, diagnostic and subset runs do not create full-market historical snapshots.
The historical average is the mean of daily market averages over the configured 365-day window. Historical deviation is their mean absolute deviation. Today's date is excluded from its historical benchmark. Historical offer and whole-market scores remain separate from the current comparison.
Historical maturity thresholds are 7 days for early data, 30 for usable data, and 90 for mature data. Before the first threshold no historical score is calculated. Thin history must not be interpreted as proof of an exceptional deal.
Genuine extreme prices are not silently trimmed. Suspected extraction or product-identity errors remain excluded for review. A smaller review queue alone does not establish better matching quality.