10 Months Selling Pokémon Cards: A Realistic Look at Profits, Problems, and Process

A Shipping Lesson Learned the Hard Way

This month brought a first in ten months of selling: a customer reported a damaged envelope with missing cards. Unfortunately, it was a large Shopify order totaling around $350. These larger orders are rare for my store—maybe one or two a month—so it was a significant issue.

The order was for 30 cards, shipped in three stacks of 10 inside top loaders. One of the three stacks was missing, resulting in a loss of a little over $100. After seeing pictures from the buyer, who is a long-time, trusted customer, I realized the problem. The envelopes I was using were very easy to open without showing obvious signs of tampering.

My learning is now I always check if the envelope is easy to open. And if it is, then I just put like another tape and better seal it.

The Calculated Risk of Shipping Insurance

This incident naturally brought up the question of shipping insurance. I didn't have it on this package because, frankly, it's never been an issue before. When I look at the numbers, I've had maybe one package lost out of 500 to 1,000 shipments over the last 10 months.

The loss rate is very low. Paying for insurance on every single package would likely cost more in the long run than absorbing the occasional loss. For now, I'm sticking with the process of self-insuring and focusing on more secure packaging as the primary defense.

My Card Processing and Storage Workflow

When I get a new collection, my process is straightforward. I batch cards for photos in groups of 400-500, list them on my website, and then separate them by language, since I sell both German and English cards. From there, I move to storage, and I do something a little different than most sellers.

Why I Top Load Every Card

After sleeving, I put every single card into a top loader. There are a few reasons for this:

• Protection: I can be clumsy. I once dropped a Charizard from 151 right after pulling it. Luckily it landed flat and wasn't damaged, but the scare was enough. A top loader provides much better protection against accidental drops.
• Storage and Sorting: Cards in penny sleeves tend to stick together. When they're all in top loaders, it's much faster to thumb through a box to find what I need.
• Shipping Efficiency: A majority of my sales, especially on platforms like Ricardo, are for a single card. Since I have to put the card in a top loader for shipping anyway, having it done ahead of time means I can just grab it and pack it. For my specific sales pattern, it doesn't add extra time; it just moves the task upfront.

March 2026 By the Numbers

Looking at the dashboard for March, the business generated about $2,000 in revenue, resulting in $370 in profit. This is very similar to February's revenue of $1,900, but the profit was higher that month at $490. I suspect the difference is due to the sales mix; March had more high-value single card sales, which tend to have thinner margins than the bulk cards that likely drove February's profit.

• Cards Sold: 800
• Orders: 150
• Average Selling Price: $2.44
• Average Order Value: $13

Analyzing Sales Across Different Platforms

The average order value of $13 is pulled down by platforms like Cardtrader, where I sell mostly bulk. The real story is in the channel breakdown. Ricardo sales are frequent but small, often just one card per order. Cardmarket is steady. But Shopify is where the high-value orders happen.

I only had five Shopify sales in March, but they included orders for 126 items and 248 items. The average order value on Shopify is significantly higher than any other channel, which is why it's my main focus for growth.

The Shopify Challenge: High Value, Low Traffic

The power of your own Shopify store is clear: you get larger orders and pay lower fees. The challenge is getting customers to your site. I haven't figured out how to do this efficiently yet, and it's my main target for the next few months. I ran an email campaign for Easter, which did generate a couple of sales, but my customer list is still too small for it to be a major driver. Scaling that Shopify traffic is the key to scaling the whole business.

A Look at Current Inventory

As of the end of April, my total active listed value is $5,800. To be honest, I'd hoped this number would be higher after nearly a year. The inventory breaks down like this:

• Bulk Cards: ~48,000 cards with a total value of $1,200 (priced at 2 cents each).
• Single Cards: ~1,000 higher-value cards making up the remaining $4,600 in value.

The growth feels slow. With a monthly profit of around $370, it's hard to acquire new inventory and grow the listed value quickly. This reinforces the need to improve the turnaround time of capital, which again points back to driving more high-margin Shopify sales.

Managing Operations and Costs

My fixed costs are stable at around $280 per month, covering my postal address, TCG Power Tools subscription, Shopify fee, and bank account. It's a manageable overhead.

One operational tip: I import all my fixed-price Ricardo sales into my Shopify dashboard. This allows me to have a single, unified view of orders that need to be fulfilled. I can print one picking list and find all the sold cards from my inventory quickly, rather than managing separate lists for each platform.