Comp
A comp, short for comparable sale, is a recent completed sale of the same or a very similar card in the same grade or condition. Comps are the standard basis for valuing a card, because they reflect what buyers have actually paid rather than an asking price or a printed book value.
Good valuation weights comps toward the closest matches in card, parallel, grade, and recency, and treats a single lucky or unlucky result with caution. A value grounded in a run of recent comps is far more defensible than one built on a single sale, which is why collectors talk about pricing from comps rather than from a fixed number. A printed book value or an active asking price is not a comp, because neither reflects what a buyer actually paid.
To value a graded rookie, a collector looks at recent comps for that exact card in that exact grade and sets a figure in line with them.
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