From Abra to Zubat- what are your Pokémon cards worth?

How we developed a software-based grading service for Pokémon trading cards for the eCommerce platform Lotticards.

When the first Pokémon video games were launched in Japan in 1996, hardly anyone could have imagined the hype that would arise around the little pocket monsters worldwide. Almost simultaneously with the release of the games in the USA and Europe in 1998 and 1999 came an anime series, a trading card system, and even a feature-length cinema release (more than 20 more films were to follow until 2021). Suddenly, Pikachu and Co. were ubiquitous thanks to a clever marketing strategy. The video games sold over 200 million copies and the collectable card game was also extremely popular.

Admittedly, the Pokémon boom passed me by at the time. Maybe it was because I tend not to have to do much with trends anyway, or perhaps I just wasn't part of the target group. Regardless, I could never have imagined that Pokémon cards would still be such a big thing today. Dennis, the managing director of Lotticards, Germany's largest online shop for Pokémon cards, proved me wrong. He approached us in autumn 2020 on the recommendation of an agency friend and told us about his plan to start a grading service for Pokémon cards. Grading is the process of evaluating trading cards according to predefined criteria, such as condition, print quality or rarity.

At the time, there were already other grading service providers, but they all had considerable weaknesses in terms of professionalism, transparency and security. If you wanted to have Pokémon cards graded by a reputable provider, you inevitably had to send them abroad. Dennis, therefore, planned to expand his card business, Lotticards, to include a grading service that would meet the latest and highest quality standards. Our task was to develop customised software for this and to digitalise the entire purchasing and grading process. For this, we needed not only technical know-how, but above all a lot of in-depth product knowledge. We had to learn to think like card collectors and in the process, we dived into one of the craziest worlds we have seen to date.

Pokémon trading cards are booming like never before!

We only realised what dimensions the hype around the Pokémon trading card game had taken on when we started to look more deeply into it as part of our preparation for the project. Pokémon cards are sometimes traded like jewels and sometimes fetch similar prices. The market is highly competitive and constantly growing. There are several reasons for this: On the one hand, YouTubers with a wide reach are fuelling the business by buying up huge quantities of cards and posting unboxing videos online. Secondly, the trade in Pokémon cards is quite lucrative. The value of older cards in particular has risen so much that one could conceivably buy their own home with them. At $375,000, the Pikachu Illustrator Card, for example, is one of the most expensive cards. That much money for a piece of cardboard with a little yellow mascot printed on it? This can be seen as part of a general trend where pop-culturally charged items such as trading cards, films, and games are replacing historical collectables such as stamps or porcelain.

As a result of this boom, grading is also becoming more popular, and more important! Official grading services are intended to help bring a certain objectivity to the sometimes opaque trading card market, make prices comprehensible, and make the trade more transparent. Grading serves not only to determine the condition and value of a card based on its characteristics, but is also a value-enhancing process. The cards are inspected, catalogued and officially recorded, but also shrink-wrapped in a case together with a certificate. This means that they are preserved in their current condition.

A Google sheet as a data basis

Dennis is a real trading-card professional who knows his community and has long recognised the need for a professional evaluation platform in Germany. When he got in touch with us, he already had precise ideas about what a good grading service should look like. He knew which providers existed and what the weaknesses of their systems were. A key point was the following: none of the existing grading platforms at the time offered the possibility of pre-filtering. Collectors sent in their cards and could at most make guesses in a free text field about what they thought the specimens were. The service evaluating the cards could only hope that the collectors' assessment was in the right direction.

Dennis laid out his vision of a piece of software that works like a data-based assistant and uses exclusion procedures to narrow down the cards in question as much as possible. Pre-filtering on the user side should make the work of the Lotticards staff easier. Therefore, our first step was to set up a high-performance database. At that time, there were more than 70,000 cards. Dennis provided us with a list of them as a Google sheet. It was no small task to work through the mass of data and import everything into the database. But, with hard work, we accomplished our task. Our efforts paid off as the database is now the foundation of our technology. It is regularly updated with newly-appearing Pokémon cards and so is constantly growing.

Thinking like a trading card fan

Our next step was to set up a Shopify account in order to enter Lottigrading's products - i.e. their services. After purchasing a product, such as an express grading, the customer receives an order number. With this number, you can log in to a submission page and create an order kit by selecting the cards you want to send in for grading based on our database.

The challenge of technically mapping the selection process was to take the perspective of a Pokémon trading card fan. The problem was that filtering from the highest to the lowest common denominator was not feasible. This is down to the fact that not everyone who collects Pokémon cards is a professional in the field and knows all the relevant information. While some know exactly which set and which year their cards come from, others can only state what they see on the card. In these cases, the user might only be able to discern the language of the printed text and the name of the depicted Pokémon.

We had to ask questions from a completely different direction - in such a way that they could be answered by the experienced and the inexperienced alike. The result was the development of a UI assistant that narrows down the selection based on the user's answers in such a way that, in the end, they only have to click on the right card from a maximum of four or five.

A grading app with many talents

Once the collectors have chosen their cards, they receive a PDF to print out, which they attach to the cards as a checklist, as well as a label with a QR code. This is then stuck on the outside of the package like a return label. On a status page in the Order Kit, they can track the shipment status of the parcel and every further step in the processing up to the return shipment live. For this purpose, the Order Kit receives information from the grading app that we developed specifically for Lottigrading. When the parcel arrives, the employees scan the QR code attached to the outside of the parcel using the app. At the same moment, the customer sees on the status page that the package has arrived. There is a second QR code on the checklist which, when scanned, gives the status "Review". In this step, the employees check whether the collector has correctly identified the cards sent in.

To prevent bias, the cards are then distributed to a box system. This way, staff members cannot see from which box or from whose account the cards they are grading come from. After grading, each individual card is stored together with a certificate welded into a case and returned. The certificates are provided with a security hologram and can be printed automatically via our grading app. Since a simple PDF would not have sufficed as a print template for these purposes, we opted for a solution in which the text is set coordinate-based.

Pop report for verification of graded maps

While the development of the app did present us with some challenges, it was not an insurmountable task. Since it was a PWA (Progressive Web App), it required a few tricks to enable the QR codes to be scanned in via the website and local camera. In the end, however, we managed to do this without having to reinvent the wheel. As a tool and interface between the service and customer sides, the app is of great importance to the entire system.

Once grading is complete, our app sends the updated data back to the Order Kit to generate a pop report. This is a publicly viewable overview page that lists how many and which cards were graded with which grades by Lottigrading. On each certificate, there is a QR code that the customer can use to call up the corresponding entry in the pop report and check the data. It is also possible to search for cards if one is interested in a specific specimen.

Digitising processes? Yes we can!

The Lottigrading project is hands-on proof that we have what it takes to digitise existing processes. We have developed solutions for poorly running offline processes that provide customers with a pleasant user experience and support Lottigrading employees in their workflow. It wasn't so much that special technology that was needed, but rather a thoughtful and intelligent application to create a bespoke solution. Our app and database can be adapted to different types of cards. Plans for Yu-Gi-Oh and football cards are already in the pipeline. Overall, the potential for trading card systems is huge and we look forward to everything that is yet to come!