What I Learned in My First Year Selling Trading Cards Online

Mar 05, 2026

TL;DR

- TCGplayer fees are real (~16.8%). Use the platform to build social proof, then shift focus to your own store.

- Your local game store is your best sourcing channel. Show up, trade fair, be consistent.

- Don't sell bulk singles yourself. The shipping math kills you.

- Don't open sealed product expecting profit. Rip packs for fun, not for business.

- *Do* invest in sealed product you believe in. Premium, limited, iconic IP.

- TCGplayer gets you started. Shopify builds your future.

- Everything you're doing should be building toward distributor access.

The Headline Numbers

I started selling on TCGplayer at the end of May 2025. Nine months later, here's where things stand:

1,414 sales on TCGplayer
$14,525 in product sold
$2,697 paid in platform fees
~$1,500 spent on tracked shipping
$401 in refunds
~5,500 cards currently listed in my TCGplayer store
10 orders on Shopify, ranging from $10 to a $4,000 BGS 9.5 Luffy
Hit Level 4 seller in about two months
All 5-star reviews except for a single 4-star

None of the above accounts for overhead — shipping supplies, organizational tools, time spent on the business, and so on. I spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day on this, sometimes several hours. It's a side hustle, but it's not passive.

I'm sharing these numbers because when I started, I couldn't find real data from small sellers. Everything online was either "I made $100K flipping Pokémon" clickbait or vague advice with no receipts. So here are the receipts.

TCGplayer Fees Are No Joke

This was the first thing that hit me. TCGplayer takes a meaningful cut — and when you factor in shipping costs and the occasional refund, your margins shrink fast. On roughly $14,500 in product sold, I paid about $2,700 in fees alone. That's close to 19%. If you include shipping reimbursement ($1,518 from TCGplayer), it comes out to 16.8%; this doesn't include what I paid for 'shipping included' items that exceeded $5. So, safe to say 17-19% of your revenue will be going to TCGplayer.

But here's the thing: without the platform, it's extremely difficult to sell. The eyeballs are on TCGplayer. That's where people go to buy singles. You can have the best Shopify store in the world and it won't matter if nobody knows you exist. eBay isn't much different; their fee structure is very similar to TCGplayer.

So the goal — my goal, at least — is to use TCGplayer as a launchpad. Build up sales, build up reviews, build social proof. Then gradually shift attention toward your own platform where you keep more of the margin. Easier said than done, but that's the play.

Your LGS Is Your Best Supplier

This one surprised me. I attend Gundam Card Game weeklies at my local game store on Fridays, and I'd estimate 80% of my trading happens there. Not online. Not at card shows. At a folding table on a Friday night.

We regularly trade at 80–90% of TCGplayer market price. That's a fair deal for both sides — the person selling gets instant cash (or trades) without dealing with shipping and fees, and I get cards below market that I can list for a profit.

If you're thinking about getting into this, find your local scene first. Get known. Be the person who always has cash (or Venmo) and is willing to trade fair. That reputation compounds over time.
This is how I sourced most of my OP leaders (about 20 are in my grading pipeline right now). Whether you're looking for singles to run, or stuff to add to your collection, your local scene is worth exploring.

*some cards I picked up from a fellow GCG player at my LGS in Boise.

Selling Bulk Is a Trap (Unless You Use TCG Direct)

I learned this one the hard way. You list a bunch of $0.07–$0.25 cards thinking volume will add up. Then someone orders 20+ cards and suddenly the order doesn't fit in a plain white envelope with a stamp. You're paying $4–5 in postage for an order worth $2.69. In other words, you're paying out-of-pocket to send someone your bulk.

My advice: don't sell bulk yourself. Either donate it to new players at your LGS, or sign up for TCGplayer Direct and let them handle the logistics. I haven't tried Direct yet myself, but it exists to solve exactly this problem.

Don't Open Sealed Product

Don't get high on your own supply.

I love ripping packs. The dopamine hit of pulling a chase card is real. But ripping packs is not a business strategy. The math doesn't work out in your favor over any meaningful sample size. If you want to open packs for fun, go for it — just don't book it as a business expense and expect to come out ahead.

The influencers who seem to profit from pack openings are making their money from content, not from the cards. That's a completely different business model, and it's a tough market to break into.

If someone tells you they consistently profit from opening sealed product, they're either lying, don't have a large sample size, or they have a distributor relationship that gives them a cost basis you don't have access to.

Sealed Product Is Where the Real Investing Happens

Here's the flip side: sealed product that you *don't* open can be a legitimate investment.

The formula is clean. Once a set goes out of print, every box that gets opened puts more singles on the market and removes one sealed box from existence. Supply goes down. If demand stays flat or grows, price goes up. Econ 101.

The key is skating to where the puck is going. When I started last June, it was becoming clear to me that One Piece TCG was growing. My locals went from 25 to 30 to 35 to 40+ regular attendees over the course of a few months. The anime is massive. Netflix is rebooting it. You have an existing generation of fans playing the game and a new generation being introduced to it.

So I bought an OP01 (Romance Dawn) booster box. They were in the mid-$2,000s at the time. Today they're sitting around $5,000–6,000.

My philosophy: the premium stuff is where you invest. It's similar to real estate. Sure, you can buy a house in the middle of nowhere for $200K and maybe it's worth $300K in ten years. Or you can buy the beachfront property for $2M and watch it hit $3M. The supply is limited, the demand is real, and the risk-adjusted return is better. First edition, first set, iconic IP — that's the beachfront property of TCGs.

TCGplayer Is Easy. Shopify Is Your Future.

TCGplayer is a marketplace. You list cards, people buy them, you ship. The barrier to entry is low and the process is straightforward. It's a great place to start.

But you don't own the relationship. TCGplayer owns the customer. You're a vendor on someone else's platform.

Shopify is where you build your brand. It's where you control the experience, build an email list, tell your story, and eventually — if things go well — get access to a distributor. That's been my goal from day one: use TCGplayer for volume and social proof, then put the real energy into building something I own.

My Shopify numbers are modest (10 orders in the same period), but that includes a $4,000 sale. The per-order value is dramatically higher because Shopify is where I sell my graded slabs and higher-end product. Different platform, different customer, different strategy.

The Distributor Question

This is the long game. Having a distributor relationship is, in my opinion, the most straightforward path to making this a sustainable business rather than a hobby that occasionally pays for itself.

Distributors give you access to sealed product at cost, which changes your entire margin structure. But they want to see that you're a real business — sales history, a legitimate storefront, a customer base. That's why everything I'm doing (TCGplayer sales, Shopify store, reviews, social media) is building toward that credibility.

I'm not there yet. But every sale, every review, and every returning customer gets me closer.

What's Next

I just sent about 55 cards in for grading — a mix of MTG commanders and One Piece leaders based on what I'm seeing people search for. I'm also expanding into Gundam Card Game territory with EX Bases and EX Resources. These are promo cards with incredible art that start outside your deck (similar to commanders and leaders), which makes them a natural fit for Slim Player Slabs.

If you want to see what's coming, follow us on Instagram or sign up for the newsletter. I'll be posting previews of the new inventory as it comes back from grading.

Chris Coca