How to sell Pokémon cards
There is no single best place to sell. There is a best place for the cards you have, the time you're willing to spend and how soon you want the money. Here is what each route actually pays.
Written by Ben and Tom, Cardinal
Start by splitting the pile
Almost every collection is really three collections. A small number of cards carry most of the value, a middle band is worth listing individually, and the rest is bulk that costs more in time than it returns.
Sorting first saves you from the most common mistake: spending an evening photographing and listing cards that were only ever worth a few cents each, while the one card that mattered gets sold in the same job lot.
Hits — the top few percent
Chase cards, sealed vintage, anything already graded. These deserve individual research, individual listings and, sometimes, grading before sale.
Mid-range singles
Playable and collectible cards worth roughly the cost of postage several times over. Worth listing individually or selling as themed lots.
Bulk
Commons, uncommons, played duplicates. Sell by weight or by the thousand to a shop or bulk buyer and move on.
What each selling channel pays
These are the ranges vendors work within, not guarantees. A shop's offer moves with how fast the card sells and how confident they are in its condition.
The gap between a shop's cash offer and a marketplace sale is not a rip-off — it is the price of speed and certainty. The shop pays you now, takes on the risk that the card cools off, and absorbs the fees, photography and shipping you would otherwise do yourself.
Before you accept any offer
- Check sold prices, not asking prices. Anyone can list a card for anything. Only completed sales tell you what people actually pay.
- Identify the exact printing. Set symbol, card number, first edition, holo pattern, reverse holo, promo stamp. Two cards with the same artwork can differ in value by a factor of ten.
- Be honest about condition. Whitening on the back edges, surface scratches under angled light and off-centre borders all move the price. A buyer will see them.
- Get more than one offer on the big cards. For anything genuinely valuable, two or three quotes cost you an hour and often move the number meaningfully.
- Ask about trade. If you're going to spend the money on cards anyway, trade credit is usually worth more than the cash number.
If you're the one buying
Vendors face the mirror image of this problem: value a stranger's binder quickly, make an offer you can defend, and still make a margin once fees and shelf time are counted.
That's the job Cardinal does. Scan a card or a whole binder page, get a value built from recent sold prices, apply your own cash and trade percentages, and see the margin behind the offer before you say a number out loud.
See what a card is worth right now
Search any card in the live demo and see the market value, a cash offer, a trade value and the margin behind them — no account needed.
Keep reading
Make better deals with your own stock.
Know what you own, what it's worth and what you're making on it.