Before you send your list
The things people ask most, answered plainly. Anything missing, just email cards@cardscoffee.com and we'll add it here.
Pricing
How much do you pay?
65% of TCGplayer market value for cards worth more than 50¢. Market value is the price TCGplayer publishes based on actual recent sales — not the cheapest listing, and not the highest. You can look up any card yourself and do the math before you contact us.
Cards over $100 are negotiable. Big cards move differently than the rest of a collection, and it's worth a conversation rather than a formula.
Below 50¢, cards are priced as bulk at flat rates:
- 7¢ per rare
- 10¢ per mythic
- $2.50 per 1,000 commons & uncommons
Foils aren't a separate category — if a foil is worth more than 50¢ it gets the 65%, and if it isn't, it's bulk at its rarity's rate.
Why 65% and not more?
The gap covers what happens after we buy: sorting, grading, listing, storing, marketplace fees, shipping, and the time between buying a card and someone finally buying it from us. Some cards sit for a year. Publishing the number up front means you can decide whether that trade is worth it to you — plenty of people would rather take a fair number today than list 400 cards themselves.
What about cards worth less than 50¢?
Rares and mythics under 50¢ are bulk, at a flat 7¢ for rares and 10¢ for mythics. It's a small number per card, and it's honest about what those cards actually do: they take just as long to sort, list, store and ship as a $20 card, and most of them sit for a year before anyone buys one.
Commons and uncommons go by the thousand rather than by card: $2.50 per thousand. No need to count them — a thousand cards weighs roughly 4 pounds (a bit more with foils or older cards) and stacks about 12½ inches tall. A bathroom scale or a tape measure gets you close enough.
If you'd rather keep the bulk and only sell the good stuff, that's completely fine — say so and we'll price just the cards over 50¢.
Condition & sorting
Do I have to sort or grade my collection first?
No. Send the list however it comes out — a decklist, a spreadsheet, a rough typed list, a link to your Moxfield or Deckbox collection. If you know conditions, include them; if you don't, don't worry about it. We'll go through the cards together when we meet.
What do the condition grades mean?
These are the standard TCGplayer grades, and condition matters most on expensive cards:
- Near Mint (NM) — looks like it came out of the pack. Maybe the tiniest edge wear.
- Lightly Played (LP) — minor edge or corner wear, small surface scratches. Still sleeve-playable.
- Moderately Played (MP) — visible wear, minor scuffing or whitening on the border.
- Heavily Played (HP) — significant wear, creasing, or scratching, but structurally intact.
- Damaged (DMG) — water damage, tears, heavy creasing, writing.
Cards in sleeves inside a binder are usually in better shape than people expect. Loose cards in a shoebox usually aren't. Either is fine — we just price what's actually there.
Getting paid
How do you pay?
Cash or Venmo, whichever you'd rather have, paid when we meet and you've handed over the cards. No waiting on a check and no store credit.
Where do we meet?
Somewhere public and convenient for you around Franklin & Nashville, Tennessee — a coffee shop, a game store, somewhere with tables and people around. There's no storefront to visit; that's the whole model. We'll sort out the specific place once you've accepted an offer.
Do I have to ship anything?
No. Everything happens in person locally, so your cards never go in the mail and you're never waiting to hear whether they arrived.
Timing
Will you buy cards from the newest set?
Not right away — we wait until two weeks after a set releases. Prices swing hard in the first days and often settle a long way from where they start. Waiting means the number we quote you is one that's actually going to hold up.
How long until I hear back?
Usually a day or two, depending on how big the list is. A shoebox of bulk takes longer to work through than twenty specific cards.
Everything else
What if I just want to know what my collection is worth?
That's fine. Send the list and we'll tell you. There's no obligation to sell, and no hard feelings if you'd rather list the cards yourself once you see the numbers.
Do you buy other trading card games?
Magic: The Gathering only, for now. Mana Pool — where everything we buy gets listed — is a Magic-only marketplace, so there's nowhere for us to sell Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece or sports cards. If that changes, it'll say so here.
What happens to the cards you buy?
They get cleaned up, graded, and listed on our Mana Pool storefront. Nothing disappears into a vault — most of it ends up back in someone's deck.
Ready when you are
Send your list and we'll come back with an offer. No obligation, and worst case you get a free price check on your collection.
Send us your list