Building a Pokémon Card Business: A 5-Month Progress Report with Real Numbers

New Inventory Acquisitions

This month I added two new collections to the inventory. The first was an auction lot of 135 cards for about $85. It was a mix of EX cards, trainer cards, and Master Ball holos. I figure just 30 of the cards are worth over $100, and the rest are easy-to-list singles in the $1 to $2 range.

The second, and largest collection so far, cost around $220. Most of these cards were near-mint and stored well, including some rainbow and secret rares. I've already sorted through them and set aside a few, like a Rayquaza card, that look like good candidates for grading later on. I'm holding off on PSA submissions for now, since sending from Switzerland to the US is tricky with taxes. I'm waiting for a PSA submission center to open in Germany next year.

Developing the Shopify Store

My Shopify store now has all 360 cards listed that are valued over $1. A new feature I added is a hover-to-see-photo effect. I'm taking my own photos for every unique card, not just using stock images. This is a requirement for listing on Ricardo, the Swiss platform similar to eBay, where I sell a lot of my cards.

This process took some time, especially for the German cards, as finding high-quality stock images to match against was harder than for English cards. Most of the matching can be done automatically, but it still requires some manual checks. The goal is to have a solid process in place so adding new cards is mostly automated.

Tapping into Google for Traffic

To get more eyes on the store, I've integrated with Google Merchant Center. The idea is for my cards to show up in Google's free shopping listings. When someone searches for a specific card, my Shopify listing could appear without me having to pay for an ad.

So far, I've only seen five clicks over the last couple of weeks. The products show as 'approved' in one part of the dashboard but 'under review' for 'free listings' in another. It seems I just need to wait a few more days or weeks for everything to get fully processed and hopefully start driving some traffic.

The Challenge: Syncing Inventory Across Platforms

Right now, most of my sales still come from Ricardo. The big headache is that my Ricardo and Shopify inventories don't sync. When a card sells on one platform, I have to manually adjust the quantity on the other to avoid selling something I no longer have. This is not a sustainable way to operate.

Building a Custom Solution

To solve this, I'm building a connection that will automatically sync sales between Ricardo and Shopify. The goal is to use Shopify as the single source of truth for my entire inventory and sales data. I wrote a script hosted on Google Cloud Platform that runs every five minutes. It pulls the inventory from Shopify using their API, matches it with the photos I've stored in an S3 bucket, and formats it all into a file that Ricardo can read to list my offers.

I also built in a daily email notification that tells me if I've forgotten to take a photo for any card in my Shopify inventory. The whole system is built but I'm just waiting on final approval from Ricardo to activate it. Hopefully, that comes through next month.

Where in the World are CardTrader Sales Going?

I took a look at my sales data from CardTrader for the last three months. It's my smallest marketplace, but the geographic spread is interesting. My cards have been shipped to 31 different countries.

• #1 Italy: Accounts for about one-third of sales, totaling around $160. This makes sense, as CardTrader is an Italian company.
• #2 United States: This was a surprise, considering shipping can take up to five weeks. Together, Italy and the US make up half of all my CardTrader sales.
• The Rest: The other half of sales are spread across countries like the UK, Spain, Finland, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Canada, and Australia.

This is very different from my Cardmarket sales, which are almost all within Switzerland or occasionally to other European countries. The high taxes and shipping times seem to limit European cross-border sales there, but CardTrader is proving to be a genuinely international platform.

October 2025 Financial Breakdown

Let's get to the numbers for October. My total listed inventory value is up slightly to $2,500, and that's before I've even processed the new collections or the 10,000 bulk cards I have waiting.

Revenue by Platform

• Ricardo: $715
• Cardmarket: $135
• CardTrader: $50
• Shopify: $15
• Direct Sales: $0
• Total Revenue: $925

Profit by Platform (Before Fixed Costs)

• Ricardo: $420
• Cardmarket: $130 (Almost 100% margin on these bulk sales)
• CardTrader: $30
• Shopify: $6

The Bottom Line: Total Profit

After subtracting my fixed costs of about $200 for the month, the total profit for October comes out to $385. Sales on CardTrader slowed down a bit, which I think is because I haven't listed new bulk cards there recently. I expect that to pick back up once I get that inventory listed.

Over the five months I've been doing this, the business has generated about $6,000 in revenue and $2,500 in total profit. That averages out to about $500 in profit per month, which is a great result that I honestly didn't expect.