What’s the best way to go about selling your Pokémon cards? Both fortunately and unfortunately, there are a large number of ways to do it and the best way can vary based on your goals and needs.
Some ways require a fair amount of work and will earn max value while others will allow you to get rid of them all in one fell swoop, but not get you the most money possible for them.
And obviously, there are benefits and drawbacks to each. The good news is this article is here to help! It will lead you through a number of ways to sell your Pokémon cards as well as the positives and negatives of each.
Let’s get started!
What is Your Goal?
In selling your Pokémon cards, you should first figure out what you actually want from selling them. Do you want to get rid of them and get some money quickly? Are you looking to get as much money as possible? Are you willing to be patient as you go through the process? Is it okay if you have some cards left over?
Unfortunately, it’s near impossible to have all of the above. If your cards aren’t graded (article on card grading here), then the value of your cards can vary drastically based on their condition. The cards will also have different values based on how rare and sought after the card is.
Before you get too hasty and sell then, I have a big recommendation regardless of what your goal is.
Do Your Research / Identify What You Have
This is so important that I have another full article on Identifying Pokémon cards. There’s a possibility that you have cards that are worth a decent amount of money and before letting them go at a garage sale for $20, take a few minutes to look into the cards.
If you have too many, then just look up a few of the holographic or “shiny” cards. Just google the card name and the number on the bottom edge of the card. That should pull up the card you have and what some people are selling it for.
The best and most accurate resource is sold listings on eBay. I’ve also found that Pricecharting.com does a nice job of capturing average value of cards also (as it does use sold eBay data as well).
Once you check them out and make sure you aren’t sitting on anything of large value, then we can move onto our next sections, where we will dive into how to sell your cards depending on your goals!
Selling Pokémon Cards: The Best Way to Do It Quickly
Let’s say you want to get the cards off your hands and want to maximize value. It’s also okay if you’re not sure what the total value of your cards could be.
If the above is true, I think there is one best option with a runner up depending on how quickly you’re trying to offload them. The first is…
eBay
eBay. And specifically eBay auctions. eBay gets 1.7 BILLION visitors monthly and boasts 187 million active users. And the competition isn’t even close.
This makes eBay a powerhouse when trying to sell items and maximize your value. Simply take pictures of every page (or make sure that every card is pictured), throw it up for 7 days, and the buyer market will bid it up to a reasonable price for the lot.
I’ve watched and sold enough on eBay personally to see that it gives incredibly good value for most cards. In doing an auction, the pricing can fluctuate, but nice and sought after cards will typically get sold for pretty good value.
Factor that in with the minimal work it will take to list, package, and ship off your cards, and I would say you have a pretty good dollar return for time spent trying to sell.
Before we get too hasty though, let’s look into the positives and negatives of eBay.
eBay Positives
- MASSIVE buyer base
- Ability to run auctions and buy-it-now
- Easy to get signed up with and use
eBay Negatives
- 13.5% selling fee + other charges
- Auction pricing can fluctuate largely so this won’t always maximize value
- You will have to wait until after delivery of the item to get paid
While the benefits are solid, the negatives can be a turn-off depending again on your goals. If you don’t have the time to wait out an auction and need money from cards quickly, then there is really only one option.
Your LCS (Local Card Store)
If you’re trying to make money quickly on your cards and aren’t sure what they are worth, then a run to a local card store will be just about your only option. Local card stores want to pick up card sets quickly as reselling them is how they make their money.
However, that being the case means that they have to buy low so that they can make money on what they sell the cards for. So the major negative is that they will typically be one of the lower payout options that we will discuss in the article.
Depending on how nice your cards are though, you may have negotiation and wiggle room to make more from them. Again though, you should expect that you will make less through this method than others. If you want or need money quickly though, it will be your best option.
Let’s look at the positives and negatives of local card shops.
LCS Positives:
- Will allow you to get cash faster than other methods
- Takes far less effort than other means
LCS Negatives:
- Will typically net you less money than all other means
- May not have one close to you depending on where you live
Local card stores can get a bad reputation because of how little they may offer on cards. Again though, it takes far less effort so the balance will truly come from how much time and effort you’re willing to spend and how much of the potential value you are looking to gain.
If you don’t want to spend any time at all and want some cash on hand, there really isn’t a better option than a local card store. If you’re willing to spend a bit more time and effort though, eBay will most likely net you more dollars.
Let’s look into the opposite scenario next.
Selling Pokémon Cards: The Best Way to Do It For Max Value
Now before we get started, it’s worth mentioning that you can spend a LOT of time trying to make the maximum value on all of your cards. Sought after and rare cards will always have market appeal and can sell quickly.
The place you are going to spend a lot of your time is selling your .25c to $5 cards. If you part all of these out and try to sell them individually, you can earn a decent amount in total, but it can take a GOOD amount of time and effort to do so. I would be careful with this as the money earned may or may not be worth the time spent to do this.
With that in mind, let’s move forward.
As we discussed above, eBay will be a good place to get a reasonable fair market value for your cards. That being said, there are a few ways you can potentially earn more.
Pokémon Card Grading
One major way to make the maximum money from your Pokémon cards is grading. If you don’t know what that is, you should check out my other article. Let’s give a quick rundown here as well.
Grading a Pokémon card entails you paying to send your cards into a grading company where they will then be assigned a “grade’. The higher the grade, the higher the value of the card. And depending on what card you have and what grade it gets, it’s value can increase exponentially. If you check out the chart from pricecharting.com below, you will see what I mean.
Pricecharting takes eBay sold listings and gathers the data to put it into the above graph. And from that, we can see how much value can be gained from a card like the Charizard above.
The way that cards get assigned grades is due to the quality of the card. When you pull a card right out of a pack, it will (should) have no scratches, markings, or otherwise, which means it will be Near Mint and will typically grade really well. A pack fresh card though does not guarantee that you will get a 10.
Grades are based off the surface, whitening and markings on the back of the card, the condition of the edges, and the final one (which is completely out of your control), the centering. If you are wondering if you should get your Pokémon cards graded, I’ve got another article covering just that here.
All that being said, getting your cards graded is both time consuming and will cost you money before you make it back. Let’s look at the positives and negatives of Pokémon card grading.
Pokémon Card Grading Positives
- Can increase the value of your collection tremendously
- Will protect your cards far better than any other means
Pokémon Card Grading Negatives
- It costs between $12-$100+ per card to grade
- I can take between 1-3 months to get your cards back from grading
- If you have a grade expectation, you could be disappointed in the final result
While the positive and negative list isn’t quite as long as the others, they are serious factors to consider. Value CAN be gained, but it’s not guaranteed. Not only that, but you have to spend more money before making that back and you’ll have to wait a long time to get it back.
The last word of advice I’ll give is that there are only 3 grading companies you should use if you are in the US. PSA, Beckett (BGS), and CGC. Those three gain the highest value and have the most clout in grading. Almost every other won’t be worth spending the money on.
In my opinion, grading is 100% worth it if your cards are nice enough. That being said, the additional money and time waiting won’t be worth it to everyone.
Let’s get to some other options.
That’s right. Facebook. And not just the regular Facebook that you may be thinking of. There are two separate sections within Facebook that can pocket you the most dollars of any means. They aren’t perfect, but they can be a great place to start trying to earn max dollars.
One caveat to this is that you absolutely must do your research on the cards. If you don’t know what your cards are and might be worth then it won’t do you any favors to go through this method.
One other caveat is that people on Facebook tend to be picky. So if your cards aren’t rare or in good condition, you may not get much interest on them.
Now that that’s off my chest, let’s dive into both.
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook marketplace is a local shopping site. You can think of it like Craigslist or a garage sale. People go on to post any and all items they are looking to sell.
There’s quite a range of goods on Marketplace and believe it or not, Pokémon cards have a place within it.
With Facebook Marketplace, you will need to be okay with meeting up with someone, but because of that you can avoid the fees that come with other websites and methods. On top of that, you can get yourself some money pretty quickly depending on what you have and where you live.
Let’s run through some of the positives and negatives of Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace Positives
- No selling fees
- Don’t have to ship your item and worry about damage, loss, or otherwise
- Can get you payment in hand quickly
Facebook Marketplace Negatives
- People will likely try to haggle with you on price
- Is not as large of a buyer base and may be tougher to sell items if you are in a smaller city
- You can ship but would likely meet with someone face to face to sell (which might be a negative for some)
- There are a number of scams that people do through Facebook Marketplace
All-in-all, Facebook Marketplace can be a great way to sell, but it does not guarantee that you will get your cards off your hands like you might through an eBay auction. But like I mentioned at the beginning, getting max value for your cards will take more time and effort.
Let’s look at the other Facebook selling option.
Pokémon Facebook Groups
There are quite a few Pokémon card groups that people buy, sell, and trade through. One of the main groups is called the Pokémon World group. It has 81,000 members at the time of writing this article and there are at least a dozen posts a day of people trying to offload cards.
This method will take some work depending on the amount of cards you have, but you may be able to get away with far less selling fees which may pocket you more money.
If you have a large lot of cards, some will opt to run a “Claim Sale”, in which they post their cards in the comments (front and backs) with a price, and people comment if they want to “claim” the card or offer less.
This does take time and effort, but can net you a good amount of money with minimal “fees” that you will have to pay. Let’s run through all of the positives and negatives
Pokémon Facebook Group Positives
- Good buyer base who is very focused on Pokémon cards particularly
- Minimal fee payout (Paypal G&S is the standard at 3% if you have to ship it)
- Can let you offload a good amount of cards pretty quickly
Pokémon Facebook Group Negatives
- Takes a good amount of effort between pictures, pricing, shipping materials, and posting it all through the group
- You will typically have some cards left over
- There are a number of scams that people do through Facebook groups that you should be aware of
While those are some of the more common ways to make max value on your shipments, there is still one more that is worth mentioning…
Pokémon Card Show
If you are located in or around a mid-size to large city, it’s highly likely that a Pokémon card show comes through it every so often. And if you haven’t been to one before, it’s worth knowing that cards and money go flying around them like money grows on trees.
Was that an exaggeration? Kind of but not really. Myself and others have seen thousands and tens of thousands of dollars of cash pulled out while people make deals. So what does that mean for you?
Bring your cards to a show with pricing labeled on the sleeve that it’s in (and not directly on the card for the love of all things holy) like the picture below.
From there, set up on a table with the binder out and make some friends. People will come up to you and speak about your items and it’s up to you to negotiate from there!
This binder was actually the first page of what I brought to a show and quickly sold my entire stock. I did come down from my total amount, but it allowed me to offload my entire lot incredibly quickly for no fees at all and very minimal effort.
To recap the positives and negatives again, let’s look below.
Pokémon Card Show Positives
- Can get you cash in hand deals
- Will allow you to potentially sell your collection quickly
- Can net you more dollars than other means
Pokémon Card Show Negatives
- Will require you to negotiate in person on deals
- Your cards will have to be rare and somewhat sought after to catch the attention of people
- Can leave you with cards left over
There you have it. Some great ways to try to earn maximum value on your cards. Before we finish though, let’s give one more option that I have personally had a lot of success from.
Other Noteworthy Selling Options
Before we conclude, there is one other platform that is worth mentioning. I’ve used this platform to sell hundreds of items and made thousands of dollars through it. It can get you great value and can be a great balance between max dollars and minimal time spent offloading.
The only reason it wasn’t listed earlier is because it may not be the fastest way to sell and it brings good value but does still have a fee attached to it. It is…
Mercari
Like I said above, Mercari is a great platform to sell Pokémon cards. It has an easy-to-use interface, allows you to manage offers and negotiate with buyers, and has does very well on google rankings so that your cards can get recognized and sold.
The bonus to using a website like this is that both buyers and sellers are covered in a number of ways. Buyers are protected from getting incorrect or fake items and sellers are protected from theft and fraud. There are a good number of scammers trying to use Mercari as well so be aware!
I’ve personally had items stolen in transit and been solid fake cards while on Mercari, but in every case they assisted and resolved the issues. Those are the kinds of things that can make the fees worth the trouble.
Let’s run through the positives and negatives.
Mercari Positives
- Good buyer base and good google search rankings for your listings
- Very good customer support
- Easy to use interface
- No Seller Fee (As of March 27th, 2024)
Merceri Negatives
- Beware of scam accounts
Outside of the scam accounts, I really don’t have any other negatives with Mercari. Just don’t buy ridiculously cheap items from sellers with no reviews and you should be good!
My personal experience has been very positive with them and they have been a great balance between getting items sold quickly and getting a good market rate for them. So if you’re considering selling your cards, definitely consider Mercari as an option!
Summary
There you have it. All of the best options for selling your Pokémon cards.
If I missed anything or if you have any comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected]!
Want to know some reasons to get your Pokémon cards graded? Look no further.
Curious which Eeveelution Pokémon cards are the most expensive? I’ve got you covered.
Want to make sure you are storing your Pokémon cards effectively? It’s incredibly important.
Thanks for reading!