A Pokémon Card Seller's December Report: Why I Took a $40 Loss

The Reality of a One-Week Work Month

For anyone running a side business, time off is a real factor. In December, I was only in my office for about one week. The rest of the month was split between a business trip and family vacation. I left my Shopify store open with a notification about shipping delays, but I turned on vacation mode for CardTrader for three weeks since I couldn't meet their mandatory Monday shipping schedule.

This scenario is a practical look at what happens to your sales and profit when you're not actively managing your business day-to-day. The numbers speak for themselves.

An Unexpected Shopify Win

Even with the store on semi-vacation, I got a couple of orders on Shopify. One of them was a huge win: a single order for 150 bulk cards. This was the largest bulk sale I've ever had on any platform, including Cardmarket, where my previous record was maybe 25-30 cards.

I believe the customer came over from Cardmarket after seeing the flyer I include in my packages. This confirms something I've been noticing: order values on Shopify can be significantly higher than on marketplaces. It's a huge advantage and a key reason I want to grow my Shopify customer base this year, even though it's still small.

The Bottleneck with Higher-Value Cards

My current big project is figuring out how to efficiently list my more valuable cards—the ones worth $1, $2, and up. In the past, I sold these on Ricardo (a Swiss marketplace similar to eBay), but I've stopped listing there manually while I wait for a Shopify integration that has been delayed for months.

I want to get these 900-1,000 valuable cards into my TCG Power Tools workflow to sync them across Cardmarket, CardTrader, and Shopify. The problem is my process is built around a Magic Sorter, which is great for bulk but not for hits.

• Low Detection Rate: The sorter struggles to identify cards like secret rares, with only about a 30% success rate.
• No Sleeves Allowed: You can't run a sleeved card through the machine because the glare from the sleeve prevents the camera from identifying the card.
• No Toploaders: Toploaded cards don't physically fit in the sorter.

I'm not willing to risk damaging higher-value cards by running them through unsleeved. So, I need a new, efficient process to get these cards, their images, and their Cardmarket IDs into my system without spending hours on manual data entry.

December by the Numbers

With the context out of the way, let's look at the actual performance for December.

Inventory & Fixed Costs

My total listed inventory value on Shopify is around $2,600. My bulk inventory, listed across Cardmarket and CardTrader, sits at about $17,000. My fixed costs for the month were $265. This includes TCG Power Tools (which is tied to sales volume), a new $12/month bank account fee, and my Shopify subscription, which I lowered to $30/month by switching to a yearly plan.

Revenue Breakdown

• Ricardo: $170 (from old listings)
• Shopify: $430 (driven by the large bulk order)
• Cardmarket: $53 (bulk cards only)
• CardTrader: $7 (vacation mode was on most of the month)

This brings the total revenue for December to $660.

Profit (or Loss) Breakdown

• Ricardo Profit: $50
• Shopify Profit: $125
• Cardmarket Profit: $50
• CardTrader Profit: $0 (shipping costs ate the small revenue)

After accounting for my $265 in fixed costs, the total profit for December was -$40. A net loss.

The Main Takeaway: You Have to Keep Listing

If you only work one week per month on it and do not list any cards at all, you will lose money on it because you have fixed costs. You cannot pay them with only very low sales volume.

This month was a perfect, if painful, illustration of a fundamental rule for card sellers: you need to constantly add new cards to your stores. My fixed costs are always there. When sales volume drops because I'm not active and not listing, those costs quickly eat up any profit and turn it into a loss. The small profit from Cardmarket was from bulk that has been sitting there for a while; it wasn't enough to carry the month.

Looking Forward to January and Beyond

Despite the rough month, I'm optimistic. My total profit for my first six months in business is still a respectable $2,740. For 2026, I've secured a stall at a local flea market for about 10 dates throughout the year, which is a new and exciting sales channel to explore.

My immediate priority is solving the listing problem for my valuable cards. Once I get those 900+ cards online, I expect to see a significant increase in sales on Cardmarket and CardTrader. The goal for January is to get back into the green.