What you actually get paid for your Pokémon cards

A quick word on "market value". It means what the card most recently sold for, not what somebody is asking for it. Asking prices are wishes. Sold prices are facts, and they are the only thing we price from.

What eBay actually costs

eBay charges a final value fee of 13.25% of the total sale, plus $0.40 per order on anything over $10. There is no separate payment processing fee, and above $7,500 the rate on the excess drops to 2.35% (eBay selling fees).

Two things surprise people.

If the buyer pays shipping, that shipping money counts as part of the sale and eBay takes its percentage on it.

And the fee is charged on the sales tax too. eBay's own words: the total amount of the sale "includes the item price, any handling charges, any shipping costs collected from the buyer, sales tax, and any other applicable fees" (eBay selling fees). You never touch that tax. eBay collects it from the buyer and sends it to the state (eBay taxes). You pay 13.25% on it anyway.

So take a $1,000 card, with 6% sales tax:

• Fee on the card: $132.50
• Fee on the $60 of tax you never see: $7.95
• Per-order fee: $0.40
• You keep $859.15, before you have shipped anything

Then you have to ship it

A thousand dollar card is not going in an ordinary envelope. Insuring a package for $1,000 with USPS costs $15.05 — the fee is $9.05 plus $1.50 per $100 over $600 (USPS Notice 123). That is the insurance alone, before the postage itself, the box, the toploader and the tape.

So call it $844.10 or less by the time the card is out of your hands.

And at $750 you lose a choice

This one is buried in eBay's rules and catches sellers out badly. Once an order total reaches $750, signature confirmation stops being optional:

"If the order has a total cost (including shipping costs and any taxes) of $750 or more, you're required to purchase signature confirmation to be protected if a buyer reports an item not received or opens a payment dispute."

— eBay signature confirmation policy

So that is another paid add-on you have to buy, and if you skip it and the buyer claims the card never arrived, eBay's own policy says you may not be covered and may face dispute handling fees on top.

Note that the total includes shipping and tax, so a $720 card can cross the $750 line without you noticing.

TCGplayer, for comparison

TCGplayer charges a 10.25% commission for a standard marketplace seller, plus 2.5% + $0.30 to process the payment. The commission is on item plus shipping; the processing fee includes taxes (TCGplayer fees).

On the same $1,000 card: $102.50 commission, $26.80 processing. You keep $870.70, then the same postage and insurance comes off.

What we pay

On a card at that level we are typically at 85% of market value. That is $850, with no fees taken out, no postage to buy, no insurance required to pay and no signature confirmation to remember. We send you a prepaid label, and you are paid once the cards arrive and match the photos.

Our labels are UPS. That is deliberate. UPS has put RFID into the labels themselves, into every one of its US package delivery vehicles and into its facilities, so packages are scanned automatically as they move rather than relying on somebody remembering to do it by hand (UPS). When you are putting a four figure card in a box, knowing exactly where it is matters more than saving a dollar on postage.

Against eBay's $844.10 after insuring the package, you are ahead. Against TCGplayer you are roughly level, and you did none of the work.

On the cards people really want

For the genuinely desirable material — e-Reader cards, early ex's, the right Pikachus, Gengars, Charizards, Mewtwos, Mews — above about $2,500 we will go up to 90%.

At $2,500, eBay's fee is $351.53 and you keep $2,148.47 before postage. Insuring that package costs $37.55 (USPS Notice 123). At 90% we pay $2,250.

That is over a hundred dollars more in your pocket, immediately, with no listing, no packing, no waiting and no chance of a return three weeks later.

We are not going to publish a grid of percentages by card, because it would be dishonest. What a card is worth to us depends on what is selling right now. A PSA 10 that everybody wants this month is a different proposition from one nobody is asking for, and pretending otherwise would just mean quoting you a number we would later have to walk back.

Where selling it yourself wins

Small single cards. The fees are a percentage but your time is a fixed cost, and on a cheap card the listing, the packing and the trip to the post office are worth more than the card. We do not typically buy single cards under about $100 for exactly that reason — not because they are worthless, but because neither of us would be getting anything out of it. If a lower value card comes with the rest of a collection, we will usually take the lot so the whole deal gets done.

The three things fees do not measure

Certainty. Our number is the number. There is no unsold pile, no return three weeks later, no buyer claiming it arrived damaged, no chargeback.

Speed. You know what you are getting before you ship anything.

Volume. One card is a pleasant afternoon. Forty is a job — weeks of photographing, listing, packing and posting, with the fees coming off every single sale.

Pawn shops and local card shops

We are not going to put a number on these, because none of them publish one. Anyone telling you "pawn shops pay 30%" is guessing, and we would rather say plainly that the rate is unpublished and varies than invent a figure that makes us look good.

What we will say is this. Ask any shop what percentage of recent sold prices they are offering, and ask to see the sales they used. If they will not show you, that tells you something. It is the only question that matters, and it is why we publish every price we pay.

The short version

• A card worth about a thousand or more: we pay more than eBay nets you once you have insured the package, and you do none of the work.
• Genuinely desirable material above about $2,500: we are over a hundred dollars ahead, and further ahead the higher the card goes.
• Single lower value cards might be better to sell yourself.
• Either way, do not accept an offer from anyone, us included, without seeing the sold prices behind it.