{ "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/fair-offer-for-a-pokemon-collection", "slug": "fair-offer-for-a-pokemon-collection", "title": "What a Fair Offer for Your Pokémon Collection Looks Like", "summary": "Four shops that publish their buy rates pay 50% to 75% of a card's price in cash, and bulk goes for a penny or three a card. Worked through an example binder of 546 cards at a shop paying 60% cash, that comes to about 47 cents on the dollar, and nearly all of it is six cards.", "section": "Buyer's Guide", "published": "2026-11-15", "readMinutes": 9, "publisher": "moonstone", "findings": [ { "value": "50% to 75%", "measures": "cash on a Pokémon single, as a share of its price", "basis": "four shops that publish a rate, two in the US and two in Canada, read November 15, 2026" }, { "value": "60% to 80%", "measures": "store credit on singles at the same four", "basis": "Knight & Day's top 80% is for cards not on its buylist" }, { "value": "1 to 3 cents", "measures": "what one shop pays per bulk card", "basis": "a penny for a non-foil, three cents for a reverse or holo, Mighty Meeple" }, { "value": "87 cents", "measures": "about what you keep of each dollar selling on TCGplayer", "basis": "10.75% commission plus 2.5%, before the 30 cent order fee, postage and sales tax" } ], "tables": [ { "title": "What five shops say they pay for Pokémon cards, read from their own pages on November 15, 2026", "columns": [ "Shop", "Cash on singles", "Store credit on singles", "Percentage of what", "Bulk" ], "rows": [ { "Shop": "Empire Games, Anderson SC", "Cash on singles": "50%. A current promotion pays 60% on Near Mint and lightly played English singles over $20", "Store credit on singles": "60%, or 70% under the same promotion", "Percentage of what": "\"Low Marketplace value\"", "Bulk": "Rares under $3 count as bulk. ex, V and similar bulk at 25 cents each" }, { "Shop": "Chimera Gaming, Kitchener ON", "Cash on singles": "60%", "Store credit on singles": "70%", "Percentage of what": "\"current market value\"", "Bulk": "Not published" }, { "Shop": "Knight & Day Games", "Cash on singles": "\"approximately 60%\" on average, for cards not on its buylist", "Store credit on singles": "Up to 80%, case by case, for the same cards", "Percentage of what": "Not stated for singles", "Bulk": "$8 cash or $12 credit per 1,000 unsorted. Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolution only, lightly played or better" }, { "Shop": "Mighty Meeple, Concord NC", "Cash on singles": "Not published", "Store credit on singles": "Not published", "Percentage of what": "Per card", "Bulk": "1 cent non-foil, 3 cents reverse or holo, 5 cents above holo. Lightly played English" }, { "Shop": "Draw For Turn, Canada", "Cash on singles": "65% to 75%", "Store credit on singles": "75% to 80%", "Percentage of what": "\"TCG Player\"", "Bulk": "Under $3 is bulk. Bulk rates in Canadian dollars" } ] }, { "title": "Condition: what the market asks, and what Empire Games pays on a card over $20", "columns": [ "Condition", "Market price as a share of Near Mint (median)", "Empire's cut, as a share of its Near Mint offer", "Empire's rate before the cut", "Empire pays, as a share of the Near Mint price", "That, as a share of the card's own condition price" ], "rows": [ { "Condition": "Lightly Played", "Market price as a share of Near Mint (median)": "82.9%", "Empire's cut, as a share of its Near Mint offer": "90%", "Empire's rate before the cut": "60% (promotion)", "Empire pays, as a share of the Near Mint price": "54.0%", "That, as a share of the card's own condition price": "65.1%" }, { "Condition": "Moderately Played", "Market price as a share of Near Mint (median)": "60.6%", "Empire's cut, as a share of its Near Mint offer": "70%", "Empire's rate before the cut": "50%", "Empire pays, as a share of the Near Mint price": "35.0%", "That, as a share of the card's own condition price": "57.8%" }, { "Condition": "Heavily Played", "Market price as a share of Near Mint (median)": "42.9%", "Empire's cut, as a share of its Near Mint offer": "50%", "Empire's rate before the cut": "50%", "Empire pays, as a share of the Near Mint price": "25.0%", "That, as a share of the card's own condition price": "58.3%" }, { "Condition": "Damaged", "Market price as a share of Near Mint (median)": "36.0%", "Empire's cut, as a share of its Near Mint offer": "30%", "Empire's rate before the cut": "50%", "Empire pays, as a share of the Near Mint price": "15.0%", "That, as a share of the card's own condition price": "41.7%" } ] }, { "title": "The example binder, priced the way a shop prices it (cash)", "columns": [ "Stack", "Cards", "What they ask", "Shop pays", "Rate used" ], "rows": [ { "Stack": "Cards over $20", "Cards": "6", "What they ask": "$338.00", "Shop pays": "$202.80", "Rate used": "60%, Empire's promotion and Knight & Day's average, the two US shops with a singles rate" }, { "Stack": "Bulk commons and uncommons", "Cards": "500", "What they ask": "$95.00", "Shop pays": "$5.00", "Rate used": "1 cent each, Mighty Meeple" }, { "Stack": "Reverse holos", "Cards": "40", "What they ask": "$9.60", "Shop pays": "$1.20", "Rate used": "3 cents each, Mighty Meeple" }, { "Stack": "Whole binder", "Cards": "546", "What they ask": "$442.60", "Shop pays": "$209.00", "Rate used": "47.2% of what it asks" } ] }, { "title": "How bulk drags a whole-binder offer down. Singles at 60% cash, everything under $3 at the example's 5.9%", "columns": [ "Share of the binder's asking value in cards priced as singles ($3 and up)", "Fair cash offer, as a share of what the whole binder asks" ], "rows": [ { "Share of the binder's asking value in cards priced as singles ($3 and up)": "100%", "Fair cash offer, as a share of what the whole binder asks": "60.0%" }, { "Share of the binder's asking value in cards priced as singles ($3 and up)": "90%", "Fair cash offer, as a share of what the whole binder asks": "54.6%" }, { "Share of the binder's asking value in cards priced as singles ($3 and up)": "75%", "Fair cash offer, as a share of what the whole binder asks": "46.5%" }, { "Share of the binder's asking value in cards priced as singles ($3 and up)": "50%", "Fair cash offer, as a share of what the whole binder asks": "33.0%" }, { "Share of the binder's asking value in cards priced as singles ($3 and up)": "25%", "Fair cash offer, as a share of what the whole binder asks": "19.4%" } ] }, { "title": "Selling one card yourself on TCGplayer against a 60% cash offer, after fees and $1.31 of envelope postage", "columns": [ "The card asks", "You keep", "The shop pays at 60%", "You're ahead by" ], "rows": [ { "The card asks": "$4", "You keep": "$1.86", "The shop pays at 60%": "$2.40", "You're ahead by": "-$0.54" }, { "The card asks": "$8", "You keep": "$5.33", "The shop pays at 60%": "$4.80", "You're ahead by": "$0.53" }, { "The card asks": "$20", "You keep": "$15.74", "The shop pays at 60%": "$12.00", "You're ahead by": "$3.74" }, { "The card asks": "$40", "You keep": "$33.09", "The shop pays at 60%": "$24.00", "You're ahead by": "$9.09" }, { "The card asks": "$100", "You keep": "$85.14", "The shop pays at 60%": "$60.00", "You're ahead by": "$25.14" } ] } ], "charts": [], "sections": [ "Sort the binder into three stacks", "Price each stack the way a shop does", "Take off for condition", "Add it up: one example binder", "Pull out the cards worth selling yourself", "Shop variance, private offers and rough bulk prices" ], "method": [ "Shop rates. Each was read from the shop's own page on 2026-11-15 and the raw pages are kept for the fact-check. A shop is in the table if its page prints a buy percentage or a per-card rate for Pokémon. Paradox TCG (Hamilton, Ontario) and Black Rose Hobbies (Toronto) print only bulk rates in Canadian dollars and are left out. Draw For Turn and Chimera Gaming are Canadian too and are kept for their percentages, which carry no currency. Draw For Turn's bulk rates are not used. Empire Games, https://empire-games.com/pages/buylist-policy, marked 'Policy current as of 8.13.2026', pays 50% cash and 60% store credit of the card's Low Marketplace value. Its current promotions pay 60% cash and 70% credit for Near Mint and lightly played English Pokémon singles valued over $20. Where no condition comparison is available it pays LP 90%, MP 70%, HP 50% and DMG 30% of the Near Mint buylist value. The condition table applies the promotion to lightly played and the 50% general rate to the three lower conditions. Rares under $3 are bulk, and ex, EX, GX, V, VSTAR, VMAX and Illustration Rare bulk is $0.25 each. The Anderson, SC address is in the page footer. Chimera Gaming, https://chimeragamingonline.com/pages/our-buylist-makes-trades-easy, pays 60% cash and 70% store credit on Pokémon, 'a percentage of current market value'. Its page gives a Kitchener, Ontario address. Knight & Day Games, https://knightanddaygames.com/pages/tcg-buy-rates, writes 'Our buy rates for cash average approximately 60% and we pay up to 80% in store credit on a case by case basis for all cards not listed within our Buy List.' No card under $0.50 goes on its buylist, and its minimum condition is lightly played. Its bulk page, https://knightanddaygames.com/pages/sell-us-your-bulk, pays $8 cash or $12 store credit per 1,000 unsorted Scarlet & Violet or Mega Evolution cards. Sorted rates are store credit only, $0.01 a common or uncommon and $0.04 a holo or reverse holo. It takes nothing below lightly played and no yellow-bordered bulk. Mighty Meeple, https://mightymeeple.com/pages/selling-bulk, pays $0.01 for any non-foil Pokémon card, $0.03 for a reverse or holo foil and $0.05 above holo, for lightly played English cards. Its Concord, NC address is in the page footer. It prints no singles rate and is not part of the 50% to 75% range. Draw For Turn, https://drawforturn.ca/pages/sell-to-us, pays 75-80% store credit and 65-75% cash on English Pokémon non-bulk, 'based on TCG Player', and calls anything under $3 on TCGplayer bulk. Fees. TCGplayer's seller post of 2026-01-08, https://seller.tcgplayer.com/blog/important-changes-to-tcgplayer-direct-minimum-pricing-and-marketplace-fees, raised the Level 1-4 commission from 10.25% to 10.75% from 2026-02-10 and the cap from $50 to $75 per product. The transaction fee, 2.5% of the order total including shipping and tax plus $0.30, is from the fee table at https://help.tcgplayer.com/hc/en-us/articles/201357836-Fees, which refused a direct read and was read from its Internet Archive copy of 2026-10-14. eBay, https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/fees-credits-invoices/selling-fees?id=4364, charges 13.25% of the total amount of the sale, including shipping and sales tax, up to $7,500 per item in Toys & Hobbies > Collectible Card Games, with a per-order fee of $0.30 at $10.00 or less and $0.40 above. Postage is from USPS Price List Notice 123, effective 2026-10-04, https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/Notice123.htm. A stamped 1 oz First-Class letter is $0.82, and a letter USPS counts as nonmachinable pays a $0.49 surcharge. Being too rigid makes a letter nonmachinable under DMM 101.1.2, https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/101.htm, which is why a toploader is costed at $1.31. A retail Ground Advantage parcel up to 4 oz is $8.40 in zone 1 and up to $10.20 in zones 8 and 9. Our figures are taken from the published studies linked in the text and are not recomputed here. The 19 cents is the median, across the 2025 to 2026 group of sets, of each set's median card on day 20718 (2026-09-22). The 24 cents is the median reverse holo ask over 2,376 pairs in sets released 2023 to 2026, from the era table of the reverse holo study read on 2026-09-28. The condition medians are LP 82.9%, MP 60.6%, HP 42.9% and DMG 36.0% of Near Mint, with the LP 25th percentile at 68.7% and LP at 88.2% under $5 and 70.2% at $200 and up, all asks read 2026-09-28. The printed price equalled the cheapest listing on 82.7% of 52,309 priced lines on 2026-09-22. The eBay raw sold median ran 1.08x the ask with 43.2% below it on 125 products asking $100 to $500, and 1.05x with 45.0% below on 40 products asking $500 or more, from eBay medians of 2026-09-21. The Base Set Charizard pair is as that study dates it, 2026-09-22. The WotC era had 12.0% under a dollar and a 10th percentile of $0.86 on 1,652 cards in the 2026-09-22 correction, against a Sword & Shield 10th percentile of $0.07. The 64 of 192 is from the grading study's September 2, 2026 reading. The example binder is invented: six cards at $22, $28, $35, $48, $65 and $140, 500 bulk at $0.19 and 40 reverse holos at $0.24, all Near Mint. It combines rates from different shops. A shop's offer is the rate times the ask for singles and the per-card rate times the count for bulk. Selling on TCGplayer keeps the ask x (1 - 0.1075 - 0.025) - $0.30 per one-card order, with buyer-paid shipping and sales tax left out. The per-card gain over a 60% cash offer is the ask x 0.2675 - $0.30 - postage, which breaks even near $6.02 at $1.31 and near $32.52 at $8.40. Against 70% credit it is the ask x 0.1675 - $0.30 - postage. The six-card total after postage sends the four cards under $50 in envelopes at $1.31 and the $65 and $140 cards tracked at $8.40. The bulk-drag table assumes 60% on every card priced as a single ($3 and up) and 5.9% on everything under $3, the example's ratio of $6.20 paid to $104.60 asked. Percentages are rounded once from the full value." ], "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file." }