From the front office
What we've shipped.
Card Bullpen is being built in the open, and this is the honest record of it — shipped work only, in plain language, written for what it means to a collector. No roadmap, no “coming soon,” no invented numbers. If it's here, it's working.
In active development · Launching 2026
The shipping log
Every roster move, newest first.
One source of truth, updated as the bench fills out. Each entry is a real, shipped change — translated from the engine room into what it does for your collection.
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The Story So Far
I've collected sports cards for thirty-plus years — since I was a kid in the 1980s. Baseball and hockey mostly — the sports I know in my bones — though the collection has crept into football, basketball, and soccer too, plus a shelf of sealed wax I keep telling myself I won't open.
For most of that time, the hardest part wasn't buying or selling. It was deciding. Is this prospect worth chasing before he gets called up? Is this card worth the grading fee, or does it come back a 9 and lose me money? What's my floor when someone makes an offer at a show and I've got thirty seconds to answer? Every one of those questions meant opening five tabs — a price guide, a checklist site, a pop report, sold comps, and a spreadsheet of everything I owned — and trying to hold it all in my head.
The hobby has a hundred places to buy and sell. What it doesn't have is a front office — the part of a team that scouts the talent, values it, and makes the call. So I started building one. For myself, at first.
It began as a personal tool so I would stop losing track of what I owned. In active development it's growing into more: identify a card from a photo, value it against real recent sales, watch prospects before the market notices, run grading math, set a show floor, flag a drop the morning it goes live. One piece at a time — still a build diary, not a finished product.
The thing I'd wanted to exist for years still isn't fully here for every collector — so I'm building it in the open for anyone who's ever juggled those same five tabs. It's called Card Bullpen: the front office for your card collection. Launching 2026.
This log is the honest record of what actually ships. No roadmap promises, no vaporware — just what's built, when it's built. Entries below are real work that landed; the waitlist is for the day the whole front office opens.
If that's the kind of tool you've wished for too, the waitlist is one email: cardbullpen.com. I read every reply.
— Mark
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No confidence score when we can't tell your card from a look-alike
- Sealed boxes, cases and plain base cards no longer show a comp-confidence score. When nothing about a listing — no serial number, parallel, grade, autograph or relic — can separate it from a near-identical one, a high score was really just measuring how many listings the search returned, not how many were actually your card.
- Open one of those cards and it now tells you why: we couldn't confirm the sold comps are the same product.
- Cards we genuinely can identify are unchanged, including the ones with only a few sales — a low score you can trust still shows, because it means something.
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"No recent sales" now means we actually looked
- When a price check doesn't complete, the card no longer says there were no recent sales — it says we couldn't confirm, and offers a retry. A failed lookup is not the same as an empty market.
- The comp-confidence meter lays out properly again — the label and its number were running together on some screens.
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We stopped calling cached prices "live"
- Sold-comp readings are now described as what they are — real sold comps, read within the last 24 hours — instead of "live comps", which implied a fetch that had just happened.
- When a price check fails, the app now tells you which kind of failure it was rather than showing one generic message.
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Signed out? You can actually get to sign-in now
- If you arrived signed out, the sign-in controls could stay hidden — leaving no way in. They now appear reliably, so an invite link works the first time.
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A failure shouldn't look like an empty collection
- When your collection or your sold-above-your-read data can't load, the app now says so and offers a retry — instead of showing $0, "0 open," or "clean read overnight" as if we'd checked and found nothing.
- Your alerts hold onto what they last knew — instead of emptying the list and resetting your unread count to zero.
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Signing out, honestly
- Signing out now confirms only when it actually worked. If the request fails, it tells you plainly instead of saying "signed out" while your session is still alive.
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A cleaner sign-in, and a settings screen that fits your phone
- Sign-in emails and the confirmation page now look like Card Bullpen instead of a plain system message.
- The settings screen reads properly on a phone — the export card no longer collapses to one word per line.
- The delete-account screen no longer warns about things that don't apply to your account.
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A prospect Pipeline in Scout
- Scout now has a Pipeline view for the prospects you're tracking — each with your read, a target range, a max bid, and the catalyst to watch — so you can work a prospect list instead of juggling tabs.
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A Research Desk in Scout
- Scout now has a Research Desk that surfaces reads worth acting on — including sell-signals drawn from the watched auctions that closed above your read, and an undervalued lane. A lane with nothing honest to say stays quiet rather than inventing content.
- A read's confidence now shows as a plain tier, not a filled gauge that implied a precision we don't have.
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A rebuilt Watchlist
- The Watchlist has been rebuilt around the auctions you're tracking, led by close time.
- The players and terms you follow now live in Scout, keeping the Watchlist focused on live auctions.
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A graded-value summary, clearer headers, and a refresh nudge
- The Graded view now opens with a summary strip — total estimated value, slab count, and average — drawn from your own estimates.
- Alerts, Releases, Catalysts, Nominations, and the calendar all gained clear headers so you always know which view you're in.
- When a new version ships, the app now lets you know and offers a one-tap refresh — so you're never quietly running an old version.
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See at a glance when your collection data was last refreshed
- A small freshness marker now tells you when your collection was last updated, so a stale view never reads as current.
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Your collection value now shows how much of it is priced
- The value at the top of your collection is now paired with a plain-language line — how many of your cards have a price behind the number, and how many are still waiting on one.
- When most of your cards are fully priced you see a single estimate; when they're not, you see an honest floor instead of a number that overstates what we actually know.
- No more guessing which cards the total does and doesn't cover.
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Your entries, honestly labeled
- Cards you add by hand now carry a quiet "Your entry — not catalog-verified" note, so a card you typed in yourself is never mistaken for one we've confirmed against the catalog.
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Tap a "Sold Above Your Read" card for the full sale
- Sold-above-your-read cards now open a real sold-event view — the actual sale price and date, and how far it ran past your walk-away — instead of a generic lookup.
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Meet Ask Bullpen
- Ask Bullpen a plain-language question about a card — from its detail page, right after a scan, or anywhere in the app — and get an answer drawn only from your own collection and our verified card data. It tells you honestly when it doesn't have a reliable read — or when a question (like your whole collection's value) is one it can't answer yet.
- Every answer is an informational estimate, not investment advice — never a guess dressed up as fact.
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Search from anywhere
- Press "/" — or tap search — anywhere in the app to instantly find any card in your collection, without hunting through tabs.
- One fast search box, everywhere you are.
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Honest values on every card
- Each card now shows an honest value — 'from $X' when we only have a floor, 'up to $X' for a ceiling, or 'not yet valued' — never a made-up midpoint.
- The rule behind it: show what we actually know, and be upfront about what we don't.
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See the sales behind a card's value
- Open a card and you can now see the real recent sales behind its estimated value — each one's price, date, and source — so the number isn't a black box.
- When there aren't enough trustworthy sales to show, we say so plainly instead of padding the list with weak ones.
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Import your collection from a spreadsheet
- Already tracking your cards in a spreadsheet? Paste or upload a CSV and bring the whole collection in at once.
- Imported cards land in a confirm step first — we ask what each column means instead of guessing, and nothing is added until you say so.
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An honest "couldn't load" for a card's sales history
- When a card's recorded-sales history can't be loaded — a sign-in hiccup, a server error, or a dropped connection — the card no longer says "no recorded sales yet" as if we'd checked and found none. It now tells you plainly that it couldn't load them.
- So an empty sales history means exactly that: we looked and there genuinely aren't any yet — never a quiet failure dressed up as an answer.
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Export your whole collection
- Download your entire collection as a CSV or JSON file — every card, in one step, available to everyone.
- It's your data. Take it anywhere — no lock-in.
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News notifications show the real headline
- Fixed a bug where some hobby-news and insider notifications could show a placeholder or an internal note instead of the real article headline — you'll now always see the actual headline.
- If we can't confidently pin down a real headline for an item, we now skip publishing a title for it rather than show something that isn't the real story.
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More complete card details
- Ran a pass over your existing collection to fill in details that were missing — many cards now show their serial number, parallel, and manufacturer where those fields were blank before.
- We only fill in a detail when we're genuinely confident about it — if something's truly ambiguous, we leave it blank rather than guess, so what you see stays accurate.
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More recent sales found — and an honest "couldn't check"
- Some cards were showing "no recent sales" when sales actually existed. eBay serves its sold listings in two different page formats and we could only read one — now we read both, and those sales show up.
- And when we genuinely can't check the market right then — a broken page or a failed fetch — the app now tells you exactly that and offers a Retry, instead of showing anything misleading.
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Cleaner card names
- Cards that match our catalog now show their name in the standard hobby format on Card Detail — year, brand, set, player, card number, serial, and grade, in the order collectors actually use.
- So a card reads the way you'd write it on a want list, instead of however the original listing happened to be worded.
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Start a sell plan in one tap
- You can now start a sell plan straight from a card — its title and details carry over automatically, so you're not retyping what you just looked at.
- If we have recent sales for the card, your asking price is pre-filled from them; if we don't, the price is left blank for you to set — never a made-up number.
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A home base for hunting cards
- The Scout area brings your card-hunting tools together: a home view to jump off from, a release calendar, and a Hot Board of what's active right now.
- One place to look up a card, see what's coming out, and spot what's moving.
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Your graded cards, together
- A new Slabs view gathers your graded (slabbed) cards into one place, so you can see your graded collection at a glance instead of hunting through everything.
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See the card while you scan
- When you scan a card, the photo you just took now stays on screen while we read it — so you can confirm at a glance that we're looking at the right card.
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Card pages open instantly
- Opening a card you've looked at before is now instant — the page appears right away and quietly refreshes in the background, so repeat visits never wait on a spinner.
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Find card shows near you
- A new Show Calendar lists upcoming card shows so you can plan where to buy and sell in person.
- Every show is checked before it appears on the calendar — you're seeing real, confirmed events, not unvetted listings.
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A roomier layout on the big screen
- On desktop, Card Bullpen now puts the main sections in a left sidebar and their sub-sections in a strip across the top — easier to move around, with more room to work.
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More dependable notifications
- We fixed an issue that could send the same alert more than once. Notifications now arrive dependably — and without the duplicates.
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Tidier, clearer auction alerts
- An auction you're watching now sends a single alert instead of stacking two notifications for the same listing.
- Card names no longer get cut off mid-name — the player name stays in view.
- Deal alerts now spell out how far under value a card is — like "64% under estimate" — instead of a bare percentage.
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Scan a card and we'll ask for whatever we can't read
- Scanning a card is now a quick interview: instead of leaving a field it couldn't read blank, it asks you for it — the player, year, set, parallel or number — one question at a time, pre-filled with its best read so a single tap confirms it.
- You can skip anything you're unsure of, and it never guesses — so you always reach a finished card with the details you have, never a dead end or a made-up value.
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Recent sales for more cards, matched to the right player
- Insert and autograph cards that used to show "no recent sales" now pull their real recent sold prices — fixing cases where sales clearly existed but weren't being found.
- Card values now confirm the player too, so a sale of a different player from the same set or with a similar name no longer slips into your card's estimate.
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See which raw cards are worth grading — and take that read anywhere
- The Collection's Grading view reads each raw card's upside from real recent sales of that exact card — never odds or guesses — and surfaces a "Worth grading" shortlist with the payoff spelled out conditionally: what it could be worth graded, over the grading fee.
- Cards that don't clear the bar aren't dressed up as "grade it" — you see their real graded market and exactly what's missing.
- Your reads now save to your account and follow you across devices, until you re-check them.
- The card view shows a card's full read at a glance — what it could be worth graded, the recent-sales context behind it, and when it was last evaluated — with a one-tap re-evaluate to pull fresh comps any time.
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Track your sell plan — and export it to eBay
- Turned the sell plan into an editable tracker: set each card's status, marketplace, target and realized price, timing and notes right in the app.
- Export your plan as a JSON file, or as a two-part eBay seller CSV — a worklist to plan from, plus a bulk-upload template to start your listings.
- It records what you plan to sell and tracks how it went — it never nudges you to sell.
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Sealed wax and singles, cleanly separated
- Split sealed wax from singles in your collection: hobby boxes, cases and tins no longer clutter the Cards list, and the Cards count now reflects just your cards.
- Gave Sealed Wax its own browsable, editable list — filter your sealed product by manufacturer, sport and type, and edit or remove any item right there.
- Added a category control in the add/edit screen so you can move an item between Cards and Sealed Wax when it's filed in the wrong place.
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Sharper card values — and an honest "not enough data"
- Tightened comp matching to the exact card — set, parallel, serial number and grade — so a value reflects the real card instead of a loose title match.
- Added a reliability check that says "not enough data" when recent sales are too thin or scattered to trust, rather than showing a shaky number.
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A Front Office home for your collection
- Added a Front Office home screen that opens to today's movers — recent sales that beat expectations and auctions closing soon — and the calls that need a decision.
- Pulled what needs your attention onto one first screen, instead of scattered across tabs.
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Thousands more cards added to the lookup database
- Loaded thousands of real cards into the lookup database, including Topps and Bowman flagship (2023-2025 Series 1, 2 and Update), Bowman Chrome Prospects, Upper Deck hockey (base, Young Guns and Canvas) and UEFA soccer Chrome sets.
- Improved player and card-number matching so spellings with accents, hyphens or spacing differences (like UD Canvas alpha codes) still find the right card.
- Sharpened identity matching so cards are sorted to the correct year, player and product instead of getting confused with look-alikes.
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Your collection now lives with your account
- Moved your collection onto a per-account database so it travels with you instead of living on one device.
- Migrated existing collections over with verified, non-lossy checks so nothing was dropped in the move.
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More accurate values from real recent sales
- Switched valuations to use true final sold prices and to separate cards that actually sold from listings that ended unsold.
- Started capturing ended-auction results into a shared price history so estimates get steadier over time.
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Dark, light, and System themes
- Added a choice of Dark, Light, or System (follow-your-phone) appearance.
- Refreshed the typography with the Anton and Oswald display fonts for a cleaner, more readable lockup.
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A home for your alerts, plus tap-to-read hobby news
- Added an in-app Alerts tab that collects your deal, bid-queue and news notifications in one place, with an unread count and the ability to mark read or clear them.
- Turned on hobby news and insider alerts, and made each one tap straight through to the full article or the relevant card.
- Hardened notifications so taps always land safely inside the app or on a trusted eBay listing.
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Smarter deal discovery, now live
- Turned on automated deal discovery that scouts listings each morning and surfaces buys matched to the players and cards you care about.
- Cut duplicate and junk listings (mystery boxes, repacks, Topps NOW / Panini Instant noise) so the deals you see are cleaner.
- Added per-seller and per-name limits plus balanced coverage across categories so one seller or one name can't flood the feed.
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Connect your eBay account
- Added a secure eBay sign-in so your watchlist restores automatically instead of being hand-loaded.
- Pulled in 152 missing eBay purchases as cost-basis entries so your collection reflects what you actually bought.
- Added a connection-status badge that tells you, plainly, when your eBay link is healthy or needs reconnecting.
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See what a card is asking for right now
- Added a Current eBay listings panel that shows the going asking range beside your recent-sold comp.
- Filtered out troll prices and outliers so the range reflects realistic asks, not noise.
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A clearer, more dependable Bid Queue
- Reworked each bid-queue card so the walk-away price leads, the ceiling is clearly labeled, and the listing link and thumbnail just work.
- Split out ended auctions and made bids and countdowns honest, never showing a synthetic bid as if it were live.
- Moved the queue onto durable storage so large watchlists sync reliably without dropping items.
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Add a card by taking a photo
- Added photo scan: snap a card and it identifies the player, year, set and parallel, then drops it into your collection.
- Built in confidence checks so a guessed field is left blank rather than filled in wrong, and flags possible duplicates before you add.
- Added a delete-a-card flow so you can cleanly remove an entry and everything tied to it.
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Scan a graded slab's cert label
- Added cert-label scanning that reads a graded slab, detects the grader and cert number, and matches it against your collection.
- Anchored results to cards you actually own so it confirms what you have instead of inventing a match.
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Tools for working a card show
- Added show-floor pricing with a clear walk-away FLOOR as the hero price and an ASK beside it for negotiating at the table.
- Added a Candidates view to pick what to bring, with filtering, scoring and CSV export, plus a day-of tracker for what's in, sold or back home.
- Added a Scan / Look up entry point right inside the Show tab for pricing a card mid-conversation.
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Automatic watchlist suggestions
- Added nominations that suggest players and cards worth watching based on hobby chatter, which you can accept or dismiss in one tap.
- Added an in-app badge so you know when new suggestions are waiting.
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Real recent-sold comps you can trust
- Rebuilt card valuation to pull real recent eBay sold comps, with the dates, prices and titles read straight from each listing rather than guessed.
- Added fail-loud guards so when a comp can't be fetched it says so honestly instead of making up a number.
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Introducing the Bid Queue
- Launched the Bid Queue: import your eBay watchlist and see walk-away and ceiling prices on the auctions you're tracking.
- Added ending-soon and deal alerts so you get a heads-up before a watched auction closes.
- Improved card-lookup accuracy with a much larger name dictionary, lifting clean parses from the mid-40s into the 70s percent.
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Card lookup and hobby news arrive
- Shipped the core card lookup: paste or type a card and get a structured read of player, year, brand, set, parallel and grade.
- Added a hobby news and insider feed that aggregates from Reddit and RSS sources.
- Added a Watchlist of terms to follow, with push notifications wired up for high-signal hits.
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The app goes online
- Stood up the installable phone app (PWA) with secure sign-in so your data is tied to your account.
- Moved your Sell Plan off a single device and into account-backed sync, with a last-synced indicator.
- Laid the push-notification groundwork so the app can reach you with timely alerts.
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Card Bullpen launches in 2026. Watch the log fill out here; when you'd rather hear the moment doors open, leave your email and we'll tell you the day it's ready. No spam, no noise.
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