What percentage of market should I pay on a buylist?

There is no universal figure. Work backwards from how quickly the card sells and what it costs you to list and ship it, then set a ladder: thin percentages on slow, cheap cards and stronger ones on fast staples. Review the ladder monthly against what actually sold, not against what a competitor advertises.

Should I publish my buylist prices online?

Publishing wins more stock than it costs, because sellers compare before they travel. The risk is that a stale published list becomes a target, so only publish prices you can keep current, cap quantities per card, and state clearly that offers depend on condition verification when the cards are in your hands.

How do I stop sellers cherry-picking my buylist?

Cherry-picking happens when your list lags the market. Reprice on the same cadence as your sell prices, cap the quantity you will take per card, and exclude cards you are already deep on. Some shops also drop the percentage automatically once stock passes a threshold, which removes the incentive without a manual review.

Do I need to check the condition of every card?

Every card you are paying a meaningful amount for, yes. For low-value bulk lines, a sample check plus a blanket played-grade price is faster and costs you less than the labour of grading each one. Draw the line at a fixed value and apply it consistently so customers always know what to expect.

What do I do with cards I do not want to buy?

Say no clearly and early, and explain why — too deep already, too slow, or a grade you cannot resell. Offer a bulk rate as the alternative rather than a low individual price, which reads as an insult. Sellers who leave with a straight answer come back; sellers who leave with a lowball offer do not.

Should the buylist run online as well as at the counter?

Online submissions let customers price their collection at home and arrive decided, which shortens the queue on a busy evening. The key control is that an online submission is a request, not a completed purchase: nothing becomes paid inventory until staff have verified condition and quantity in person.

← All glossary terms

Glossary

What is a buylist?

A buylist is the set of prices a card shop offers customers for cards they want to sell or trade in. Most shops publish two prices per card: a lower cash rate and a higher store-credit rate.

How a buylist works end to end

A buylist has four moving parts: a price list, an intake route, a verification step, and a payout. The price list says what you will pay per card, per condition, usually as a percentage of a market reference. The intake route is either the counter or an online submission form. Verification is a member of staff confirming that the card is genuine, that the condition matches what was declared, and that you still want the quantity offered. Payout is cash, store credit, or a mix.

Mail-in buylists add a fifth part: a quote that expires. Prices move while a parcel is in transit, so shops normally lock a submission for a set window and re-quote anything that arrives outside it or in worse condition than declared.

Setting buy percentages: a worked example

Suppose a near-mint single has a market reference of $10. You offer 50% in cash ($5) or 65% in store credit ($6.50). If you list it at $10 and it sells on a marketplace charging roughly 10% in commission plus payment fees, you collect about $9 and clear $4 on the cash purchase. The credit purchase looks worse on paper — $2.50 — until you remember the $6.50 of credit comes back as a purchase at your normal margin, so a good slice of it returns to you.

Those percentages are an example, not a rule. The right number depends on how fast that card sells, how deep your stock already is, and what your local competition pays. A sensible pattern is a tiered ladder: lower percentages on cheap, slow, easily replaced cards and higher percentages on the staples you can resell the same week.

Why store credit beats cash for both sides

Cash leaves the shop. Credit comes back through the door and is spent on stock you bought at your own buy rates, so the effective cost of a credit payout is lower than its face value. That is why nearly every shop publishes a credit rate meaningfully above its cash rate.

Customers are not being conned by this, and it is worth explaining plainly at the counter. A player who was always going to buy a new deck is better off taking the higher credit number. A seller clearing out a collection to pay a bill wants cash and will accept less for it. Publishing both rates side by side lets the customer self-select instead of haggling.

Common buylist mistakes

Pricing off a single stale reference is the most expensive. If your buy prices are recalculated weekly and the market moves daily, sharp sellers will only bring you the cards where your list is now too generous. That is not bad luck; it is arbitrage, and the cure is frequent repricing rather than lower percentages across the board.

Buying without stock depth limits is the second. Your fifth copy of a $2 uncommon is worth far less to you than your first, so cap quantities per card and let the cap fall as stock rises.

The third is an inconsistent condition standard. If one member of staff grades generously and another does not, customers learn who to queue for. Write the standard down, keep a graded reference card of each grade by the till, and make the buy price change visibly with the grade.

Where the buylist touches everything else

A buylist is the cheapest acquisition channel a card shop has. It is also the part of the operation most tangled up with the rest: intake feeds inventory, payouts feed store credit balances, condition feeds your pricing ladder, and the cards you accept today become the marketplace listings you sync tomorrow. TCG Sync applies your buylist rules per rarity, per condition and per catalogue on every submission, issues store credit when a submission is accepted, and keeps kiosk and online submissions in a staff review queue until someone has checked them.

The operational test of a healthy buylist is simple: can a new member of staff buy a twenty-card stack, pay the customer and have it appear as sellable stock without asking anyone for help? If that takes three systems and a spreadsheet, the buylist is costing more than it earns.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of market should I pay on a buylist?: There is no universal figure. Work backwards from how quickly the card sells and what it costs you to list and ship it, then set a ladder: thin percentages on slow, cheap cards and stronger ones on fast staples. Review the ladder monthly against what actually sold, not against what a competitor advertises.
Should I publish my buylist prices online?: Publishing wins more stock than it costs, because sellers compare before they travel. The risk is that a stale published list becomes a target, so only publish prices you can keep current, cap quantities per card, and state clearly that offers depend on condition verification when the cards are in your hands.
How do I stop sellers cherry-picking my buylist?: Cherry-picking happens when your list lags the market. Reprice on the same cadence as your sell prices, cap the quantity you will take per card, and exclude cards you are already deep on. Some shops also drop the percentage automatically once stock passes a threshold, which removes the incentive without a manual review.
Do I need to check the condition of every card?: Every card you are paying a meaningful amount for, yes. For low-value bulk lines, a sample check plus a blanket played-grade price is faster and costs you less than the labour of grading each one. Draw the line at a fixed value and apply it consistently so customers always know what to expect.
What do I do with cards I do not want to buy?: Say no clearly and early, and explain why — too deep already, too slow, or a grade you cannot resell. Offer a bulk rate as the alternative rather than a low individual price, which reads as an insult. Sellers who leave with a straight answer come back; sellers who leave with a lowball offer do not.
Should the buylist run online as well as at the counter?: Online submissions let customers price their collection at home and arrive decided, which shortens the queue on a busy evening. The key control is that an online submission is a request, not a completed purchase: nothing becomes paid inventory until staff have verified condition and quantity in person.

Why this matters in card-shop software

Terms like Buylist are not just vocabulary. They shape how a card shop models products, prices, customers, trade-ins, events, and marketplace listings. Generic ecommerce platforms usually treat these details as notes or custom fields; a TCG platform has to make them part of the workflow so staff can use them at the counter and customers can use them online.

TCG Sync uses this kind of operational language throughout the platform: product records, buylist rules, POS screens, autopricing, deckbuilder results, and marketplace sync all depend on the same definitions. That consistency is what keeps inventory accurate when the same card can be sold in-store, online, or on a marketplace in several conditions at once.

Related terms

1Cart trade-inA 1Cart trade-in is the TCG Sync flow that lets a customer buy cards and sell cards back to the shop in the same cart, in the same checkout. Once staff approve the trade-in, the credit is netted against the purchase total and TCG Sync adds any remainder in Shopify and to the customer's balance — no separate buylist site and no second visit to spend it.
Store creditStore credit is a balance a card shop owes a customer, most often issued when the shop accepts a buylist trade-in. Shops typically pay more in credit than in cash because credit is spent back in the store — and the balance should live on the customer account, not in a spreadsheet.
AutopricerAn autopricer is software that reprices a card shop's singles automatically against live marketplace data — typically TCGplayer market price, Cardmarket trend price, or eBay sold listings — applying margin rules per channel and per condition.
Market price vs lowTCGplayer market price is an algorithmic average of recent sold prices across conditions. TCGplayer low is the lowest currently-listed price. Market is more stable and reflects actual transactions; low is a snapshot of the cheapest seller right now and can be skewed by a single outlier.
NM / LP / MP conditionNM (Near Mint), LP (Lightly Played), MP (Moderately Played), HP (Heavily Played), and DMG (Damaged) are the standard condition grades for ungraded trading-card singles. Each step down typically reduces the card's market value by 10–25%.