How To Sell Pokémon Cards Online (Or Any High Value item)

So, you've got your entire childhood collection sat there, you've visited our page How to Value your Pokemon Cards and you're ready to go. Now what?

Selling online, can be as easy and as trusting as you want, but you're always best to protect yourself.

Since the rise in popularity of Pokémon - and honestly, any collectable be it records, One Piece, Shoes, everything is demanding a premium these days, and whether you're in it for the long haul, or you're just trying to shift what you've got, follow this guide to help you protect yourself on the internet.

Firstly, most common question, where to sell? There's tonnes of places, if it's Pokémon, you can always contact ourselves, love to buy your stuff, but that aside, you've got: eBay, Vinted, Facebook Marketplace, community groups (lots of TCG adjacent ones), or local game stores (but they will buy at a percentage).

With all of these differing marketplaces, comes different processes in selling. Vinted and eBay are the most common, and the easiest to use if you don't want to deal with people directly.

How to protect yourself

If you're selling on an online marketplace (ebay, facebook, vinted), always make sure you've received payment, and that you're ready to go. Packaging single cards should be done to avoid the one main thing: damage in transit.

So protect the card by using a sleeve (usually referred to as penny sleeves), a top loader if you can, and securing the card inside the top loader. You can also secure the item to a piece of cardboard from an old cereal box, or an old amazon envelope, whatever works, but you want to just keep the item in good condition so that it goes through the shipping process cleanly, and smoothly. 

I tend to avoid bubble mailers, unless I am sending like 20/30 cards at once, and use cardboard backed envelopes as they are an additional level of security.

This is just basics of protecting the item, but how do you protect yourself as a seller? Firstly, anything of value over £20, should always go via a tracked service. Whether this is EVRi, Royal Mail, whoever, just has to be tracked to avoid any complaints of 'item not received'.

Secondly, I always take pictures of me packaging the items, putting them in an envelope, and taking a picture of the items in the envelope, what's even better is if you can get someone to film you packaging the envelope, closing it, and then attaching the label. It might feel strange, and it might feel overkill, but honestly, it'll save you hassle down the line. I also recommend this for opening items too, so you have concrete evidence of tampering.

I know this all feels a bit strange, but honestly in todays day and age, trusting anyone online is just not worth it. I personally hate the thought of losing out on money, and it'll honestly ruin your trust in humanity. So please follow these simple steps, protect yourself, and enjoy selling your items.