Two apps, one trick
Courtyard and CrownCards are the only apps on this site where we have proved the same specific thing: the gallery of expensive items on the pack screen is not the pack’s contents.
Courtyard’s Heavy Hitters is one vault-wide leaderboard per sport, shown on every pack screen in that sport and cut off at that pack’s stated maximum. We proved it across 24 screens. CrownCards’ Top Pulls does the same job from the same input — Pokémon Diamond ($5,000) and Pokémon Emerald ($2,500) display an identical five items because both packs stop at $100,000. Across 23 CrownCards screens the headline item sits at 75.6%–100% of its own pack’s ceiling and never above it.
Two different companies, two different countries of incorporation, the same design. If you take one thing from this comparison, take that: on both apps, the beautiful thing at the top of the screen is a function of the ceiling, not an inventory.
The numbers, computed the same way
Both publish value bands with probabilities, so both go through the same arithmetic on this site and the figures are directly comparable.
| Courtyard | CrownCards | |
|---|---|---|
| Packs captured | 31 | 30 |
| Price range | $15 – $5,000 | $1 – $5,000 |
| Categories | 3 | 4 (adds watches, sneakers) |
| Distribution settings | 1 | up to 4 |
| Median break-even chance | 21.1% | 50.0% |
| Median return floor | 82.6% | 76.5% |
| Buy-back | 84.6% of stated value, measured | Not published |
| Vaulting | Indefinite | Seven days |
| Seller fee | 0% | Not published |
| Our score | 8.5 | Unrated |
Read the two bolded rows together, because they pull against each other and that is the whole story of these two products.
CrownCards clears your outlay about 2.4 times as often. A median CrownCards pack gives you a coin flip; a median Courtyard pack gives you roughly one chance in five. Courtyard’s floor is about six points higher. It returns a little more per pack on the pessimistic reading, but it gets you above water far less often.
That is a real design choice rather than one app being better at arithmetic. Courtyard concentrates value in outcomes you probably will not get. CrownCards spreads it flatter and lets you deliberately un-flatten it with the volatility selector — where Max is exactly 90% floor band and 10% Grail, and cuts the break-even chance to exactly 10%.
Where Courtyard wins, and why it takes this
The vault. Courtyard holds your card indefinitely; that is the product. CrownCards’ terms permit storage “for up to seven (7) days”, after which it may require shipment, charge fees, or repurchase the item at a price it sets. If you want to hold a card, one of these apps is built for it and the other is not.
The exit is a known number. Courtyard’s standing offer is a flat 84.6% of its own stated Market Value — a formula we confirmed to the cent across four cards from $1,930 to $5,922, which works out at 81–86% of real sold prices. It is not generous. It is knowable, and you can decide against it before you spend.
CrownCards’ front page offers to let you “sell it back at market value”. Its terms say it “may, in its sole discretion, display a buyback offer”, and that its Estimated Market Value “is not a guarantee of any resale price, cash-out price, future value”. No rate appears anywhere in the app or the paperwork.
And Courtyard charges 0% to sell on its marketplace, which CrownCards does not have.
Where CrownCards wins
The odds table is better. Six named bands with a range and a probability on each, four volatility settings, and a price that always lands exactly on a band boundary so break-even is read rather than estimated. Courtyard publishes five bands and a stated average — good, and less.
You can choose your variance, which no other app in the category offers.
It is cheaper to try at $1, and wider, with watches and sneakers running on the same structure as cards.
Which should you pick?
- Pick Courtyard if you intend to hold anything, if you want to know the buy-back rate before you spend, or if you want an app we have actually scored.
- Pick CrownCards if you want the best odds disclosure in the category, want a materially better chance of breaking even on any given pack, or want to set your own variance — and plan to ship your pulls rather than leave them sitting.
Both are worth reading against Triumph, which beats them on the one thing neither does well: telling you what you will be paid when you sell.