Pokémon cards and products: Which language is worth more?

The result at a glance

Each time, we compared the cheapest offer in a language with the cheapest English one — for singles in Near Mint. The values are medians.

In short: for sealed products, English is the most expensive language, followed by French, Spanish and German, with Italian by far the cheapest. Expensive cards look similar — only French sits slightly above English there. For cheap cards, the picture flips: French and Spanish copies cost around half as much again as English ones.

Sealed products: English is the most expensive

For booster boxes, Elite Trainer Boxes and other sealed products, the cheapest English offer was, at the median, more expensive than that of every other language compared:

For expensive products from 100 euros, the gaps are almost the same. If you want to open a booster box and do not mind the language, Italian saves the most, while German or Spanish still save a good tenth.

Singles: it depends on the price

For singles, the result depends heavily on how expensive the card is. The table shows the median per price range, measured against the cheapest English Near Mint offer:

Italian is clearly cheaper than English in every price range, by a fifth to a third.

German gets cheaper as the price rises. For cards under 5 euros there is no difference to English; from 100 euros, German sits around a fifth below.

Spanish and French are much more expensive than English for cheap cards, by around half. The more expensive the card, the smaller the gap. From 100 euros, Spanish is below English and French only just above.

A single figure across all cards would therefore be misleading: it would be driven by the many cheap cards. And even within a price range, the patterns hold only on average. For a specific card, only a look at its offers helps.

How we compared

• Same card, same product: Every comparison was made within the same Cardmarket product page — same set and same number, or the same product.
• Same condition: For singles, Near Mint offers only, so condition does not skew the comparison. Sealed products have no condition.
• Lowest price per language: the cheapest offer, with offers from sellers in the EU preferred, excluding shipping.
• Which cards and products: Pokémon singles and sealed Pokémon products that users track in TCGPriceTracker and that had offers in several languages. Only items costing at least 1 euro in English were included.
• Median rather than average: Individual cards with extreme gaps barely move the median.
• Reference date: October 21, 2026.

Possible reasons

The price data shows the result, not the cause. A few obvious explanations — as context, not as proof:

• Who buys: English cards and products are bought all over Europe, including by collectors whose language is not printed at all. Other languages mainly have buyers in their own language area. That points to higher prices for English, especially for booster boxes and sought-after cards.
• Few offers for cheap cards: There are probably far fewer offers for cheap French and Spanish cards than for English ones. Then the cheapest offer sits higher without the card being worth more.
• Collecting by language: Anyone who deliberately collects in their own language often pays a premium for it — especially if that language is rarely offered.

Which forces dominate for which language cannot be read from offer prices alone.

What about Japanese?

Japanese and Korean cards do not appear in this comparison. Japanese cards come out in their own sets with their own numbering and have separate product pages on Cardmarket; Korean cards are usually listed as a language on those Japanese pages. A comparison with the same English or German card is therefore generally not possible. What a Japanese card is worth is best judged by its own offers.

What it means for you

When buying: If you do not mind the language, it pays to look at Italian and German offers for booster boxes and expensive cards. For a card that costs 150 euros in English, a fifth less can quickly be 30 euros. For cheap cards, on the other hand, English is often the cheaper choice compared with French or Spanish. Still check what you are getting before you buy — see Buying trading cards safely.

When selling: Never go by the unfiltered From price of the product page. Without a language filter it mixes all languages — and for a German card it may well be an Italian offer. How to find the lowest price for exactly your language is explained in Cardmarket lowest price. More pitfalls: The 9 most common mistakes when selling cards.

When valuing your collection: Price trend and average prices on Cardmarket know no language. If your collection consists mostly of German or Italian booster boxes and expensive cards, the trend may show you more value than your copies would actually fetch. The same applies to condition — how much it shifts the price is shown in Card condition and price.

What else determines a card's value — condition, variant, rarity, demand — is explained in What makes a card valuable.

Valuing your collection by language

TCGPriceTracker values your collection by entry price by default; you can switch to the trend under Valuation in your account. With the entry price, each card is valued by the up to three cheapest matching offers in its entered language — and also in its condition or better and in its variant. The same applies to sealed products, where only the language counts. The language difference from this comparison is thus automatically reflected in the value of your collection.

The setting applies to the dashboard, lists, detail view and the history of your collection. How to record cards with their language is explained in Pokémon card value.