Glossary
What does sealed product mean in TCG retail?
Sealed product is any unopened trading-card product still in its publisher packaging — booster packs, booster boxes, bundles, prerelease kits, starter decks, collector boxes. It contrasts with singles, which are individual cards opened from product.
Margin profile
Sealed product carries lower percentage margins than singles (typically 15–30% vs 40–70%) but moves in larger ticket sizes and requires no grading, listing, or repricing labour. Most shops run a mixed model: sealed for predictable revenue, singles for margin.
The crack-vs-sell decision
Shops constantly weigh whether to sell sealed boxes intact or open them and sell the singles inside ('cracking'). The decision turns on the expected value of the box's singles vs the sealed price, plus the operational cost of grading and listing the contents. For most modern sets, sealed is more profitable; for chase-card sets, cracking can win.
Related terms
- Prerelease — A prerelease is the in-store event held the week before a new trading-card set hits general retail. Players pay an entry fee to open sealed product from the new set early, build a deck, and play in a small tournament — usually with promotional cards as prize support.
- Chaos inventory — Chaos inventory is unsorted bulk trading-card stock — sold by weight, box, or fixed price rather than tracked card-by-card. It's a deliberate decision to skip the cost of grading and listing the long tail of low-value singles.
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