How it works
TakoCards is a marketplace of independent sellers. We run the catalogue, the checkout and the dispute process; the sellers own and ship the cards. Here's what that means in practice — buying, selling, condition, shipping, and what happens when something goes wrong.
Buying
One cart, one checkout — even when the cards come from five different sellers.
Search the whole catalogue, or browse listings by category, condition and price. Cards, sets, characters and sealed product all have their own pages, so you can start from the card and work out to who's selling it.
Every listing states its condition, or its grade and grading company if it's slabbed, and shows the seller's rating. Where the catalogue has price history for that product, you get a chart of it next to the buy box.
Your cart can hold items from any number of sellers at once. Promo codes are applied in the cart, before checkout.
You pay once. Behind the scenes the order splits into one order per seller, each quoted with that seller's own shipping to your address, so everyone ships their own parcel.
Your orders shows each shipment, its tracking events as they're scanned, and a downloadable receipt.
After an order you can review the seller. Those reviews are what the star rating on a store is calculated from — there is no other input to it.
Keep the whole transaction on the platform. An offer to complete a deal by direct transfer isn't just against the rules — it puts the purchase outside every protection described on this page. See buyer protection.
Not ready to buy? You can follow a card, a sealed product or a character on your wishlist and be alerted when one is listed or when the price crosses a threshold you set. You can also keep a set of browse filters as a saved search and re-run it whenever you like.
Selling
Selling is an upgrade to a normal account, not a separate sign-up — but it's reviewed before you can trade.
Fill in the seller application with your store details and upload the identity documents it asks for. Applications are reviewed by our team, and documents are stored for that purpose only.
Once approved you get a public storefront: name, logo, description, where you ship from, and your shipping rates. A vacation switch pauses the store without deleting anything.
Attach each listing to the card variant or sealed product it actually is, then set condition or grade, price, quantity and photos. Bundles let you sell several items as one lot.
Orders arrive in your dashboard. Pack them, mark them shipped and add the carrier and tracking number — that's what appears on the buyer's order page.
Buyers pay the platform, not you directly. Your share becomes eligible for payout a set number of days after delivery, and is held in full while any dispute or pending refund is open on the order.
Buyer reviews build your public rating. Repeated valid disputes can lead to restrictions on the account — that's set out in the refund policy.
What it costs. A commission is deducted from your item revenue after discounts — shipping isn't commissioned. The rate is configured per seller rather than being one fixed number for everyone, so the rate that applies to you is the one shown in your seller dashboard, and it is deducted at settlement rather than billed separately.
Condition & grading
Two different things, described two different ways.
- Condition
- A raw (unslabbed) card is listed against a shared condition scale — the same options for every seller, so listings are comparable. It's the seller's own assessment of their card, and the abbreviation is shown on the listing tile.
- Grade
- A slabbed card is listed with the grading company and the numeric grade on the label, and gets a gold badge instead of a condition badge. The grade is the grading company's, not ours — we don't grade cards.
- Sealed
- Sealed product is listed against the product itself rather than a condition, and is badged SEALED. Sealed items have their own catalogue pages.
Sellers are required to describe condition, authenticity and any defects accurately, and a significant mismatch is grounds for a dispute. Minor differences that fall inside normal grading variance are not: grading raw cards is a judgement call and two careful people can read the same card differently. Both of those lines are drawn in the refund policy.
We don't see items before they ship, so a condition on a listing is a claim by the seller, backed by their photos and their rating — not something the platform has verified.
Shipping
Each seller ships their own parcel, priced by their own rates.
Shipping isn't one platform-wide price. Every seller sets up rate bands for the destination zones they ship to, and a band can depend on how many cards are in the parcel and what the order is worth. At checkout each seller's part of your basket is quoted against their rates for your address, which is why a five-seller order can show five different shipping lines.
A store's bands and where it ships from are shown on its storefront, before you commit to anything.
Tracking. When a seller marks an order shipped they add the carrier and tracking number, and scan events appear on your order page as they come in.
Combined orders. If you buy from the same seller more than once, they can combine those orders into a single shipment. When they do, the shipping is re-quoted over the combined parcel and the difference is refunded to you automatically — you don't have to ask.
When something goes wrong
Talk to the seller first; escalate if that doesn't work. Both happen in the same thread.
Most problems — a delay, a question about what shipped — are fastest to fix directly. Keep it in platform messages: those are visible to us and can be used as evidence later.
From the order, against the specific seller's shipment. The seller can offer a full or partial refund and you can counter. Their payout is held from the moment it's open.
If you can't agree, either side hands it to us. Both of you submit evidence — photos, video, messages — and we make a binding decision: full refund, partial refund, or funds to the seller.
Account, payment or site problems go to support as a ticket. Dodgy listings and sellers have a report link on their own page, which reaches moderation.
Film the unboxing. Any claim about what was inside a parcel needs footage that starts while the package is still sealed — the details are on buyer protection, and they're worth reading before your first delivery arrives.