Blog · · 4 min read
Why we built SlabX
A collection is a set of numbers you cannot check, a grade you cannot verify, and a history nobody wrote down. SlabX started in April 2026 to fix all three.
Every collector has the same three problems. The number at the top of a tracking app comes from somewhere the app will not name. A slab says PSA 9, and the app takes the label's word for it. And when the card changes hands, everything that happened to it, what it cost, where it came from, when it was graded, goes with the old owner's memory and nothing else.
SlabX started in April 2026 as a fix for the first problem and grew into a fix for all three. The first build did four things: scan or search a card from Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or the four major sports; look a PSA cert up against PSA's own registry; keep one collection with a value total; and show, next to every price, where that price came from.
The rules we set on day one
- Real numbers only. A price comes from a named source or from you. If it is an estimate, the app says so.
- Your collection is yours. It lives on your device. We do not need it on a server to give you a price, so we do not take it.
- Every category gets equal weight. A Charizard and a rookie card get the same tools and the same care.
- Say it plainly. Cards, slabs, grades, pulls. No hype, no exclamation marks, no fake urgency.
Those four rules are still on the About page, with two more that came later. Everything we have shipped since has been a consequence of them: the grader picker, the history ledger, owner photos, and the decision to keep the record free on every plan.
If you collect anything with a grade on it, this is being built for you.