The short answers to the questions we get most. Scroll to the section you need, or jump to the bottom if nothing here fits.
Click Add asset from the portfolio page. Pick an asset class (TCG card, sports card, art, watch, comic book, or precious metal), confirm the structured name preview, and fill in the acquisition details. Prices pull in the background and your portfolio totals update the moment the save finishes.
Collector is free and covers 5 items in one asset class. Enthusiast unlocks unlimited items across any three asset classes with full cost basis and realized P&L. Investor unlocks every asset class plus the tax lot manager with CSV export, PSA / PCGS / NGC grading ROI, insurance export, collection insights, and CSV bulk import. Both paid tiers are billed monthly or annually — see pricing for current rates and the full feature comparison.
Yes. CSV bulk import lives at Dashboard → More → Import CSV. Download the branded XLSX template, fill one row per asset across any combination of classes, and drop the file back in. The preview grid shows per-row validation errors inline and lets you fix them before the final import. CSV import is an Investor feature.
eBay's sold-listing data is our default source. For a given asset, we fetch up to 90 days of completed sales in the relevant category and use the median of the results rather than the mean, because one mislisted auction will skew a mean but not a median. Precious metals also have a live USD/troy-oz spot price floor from a daily-refreshed table so melt value is always known.
Automatically every 6 hours in the background. You can also force a refresh on-demand: Refresh all at the top of the portfolio page requests fresh comps for every owned asset (rate-limited to once per hour), or use the Refresh button on any individual asset detail page. Refresh failures preserve the last successful price.
High means 20 or more comps in the last 90 days. Medium is 5 to 19. Low is 1 to 4. None means we could not find any recent sales, in which case we show “Not enough data” rather than a misleading $0. Higher confidence generally means a tighter price distribution around the median.
Yes. On any asset detail page, click the pencil next to the current value to enter a manual market price. Manual prices always win over eBay comps in the portfolio view until you clear them or trigger a refresh. Useful for rare items where eBay comps do not exist or when you have a known recent appraisal.
Owned assets contribute to your unrealized gain, total portfolio value, and allocation charts. Sold assets move out of the portfolio view the moment you record the sale and surface in the tax summary with a realized gain or loss. Investor tier can return a sold asset to inventory from the tax page if you need to correct a mistake.
Total cost basis = acquisition_price + acquisition_costs, multiplied by quantity for multi-unit holdings (e.g. a 6-box case). Acquisition costs should include grading fees, authentication, and shipping you paid to receive the item. When you record a sale, cost basis is frozen onto the sale row at that moment so later edits to the asset never retroactively change historical gains.
Collectibles gains held longer than a year are capped at a maximum 28% long-term rate (vs 15 to 20% for stocks). Short-term collectible gains use your ordinary income bracket. We show 28% as the conservative display rate for long-term holdings. This is an estimate, not a bill. Consult a qualified tax professional before filing.
Selling assets at a loss to offset realized gains from other sales. The IRS allows up to $3,000 of capital losses to offset ordinary income per year, with the rest carrying forward indefinitely. The Tax-Loss Harvest Optimizer on /dashboard/tax surfaces every underwater position and estimates the tax value if you harvested them today.
No. AltGems gives you the numbers, the lot-level breakdown, and a Schedule D-ready CSV export. You or your CPA still files. We're a portfolio OS, not a tax preparer.
Cards: PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC. Comic books: CGC, CBCS, PGX. Coins and bullion: PCGS, NGC, ANACS. Each service's tier table (base price, surcharge curve, turnaround) is encoded in the calculator at /dashboard/grading-calc.
The calculator uses the raw value you enter, the expected grade, and per-tier fees to compute ROI vs cost basis and ROI vs raw value. It does not predict grades, population premiums, or grading-service slab resale bumps. Treat the output as a break-even comparison between service tiers, not a guaranteed return.
Pricing page → pick a tier → you land in Stripe Checkout. Existing subscribers can change tier from Settings, which opens the Stripe billing portal. Your tier updates inside AltGems the moment Stripe confirms the change.
Nothing is ever deleted. If your new tier has a lower item or asset-class cap, you pick which classes (and for Free, which specific items) to keep active. Everything over the cap is archived, not destroyed, and is restored automatically if you upgrade back.
Settings → Manage subscription → Cancel inside Stripe's billing portal. Access continues through the end of your paid period, then drops to Collector. Your data stays put.
See the refund policy in Terms of Service. Short version: monthly subscriptions are non-refundable; annual subscriptions can be pro-rated on a case-by-case basis. Email hello@altgems.io if something went wrong.
Yes. Postgres on Supabase (AWS) with row-level security isolating every row to its owner, encrypted at rest, Stripe for payments (we never see your card), and HTTPS everywhere. See Privacy for the full breakdown of what we collect and who we share it with.
Investor tier exports a Schedule D-ready tax CSV and an insurance-ready PDF from the portfolio page. If you need a full raw export of every asset and sale row, email hello@altgems.io and we'll send a JSON dump within 30 days.
Settings has a Danger zone → Delete account. We remove your profile and your portfolio permanently within 30 days of the request. A backup retention window of up to 30 days exists for operational recovery only; after that the data is unrecoverable.
Still stuck?
Email hello@altgems.io or visit support. We read every message and respond within 24 hours.