How to flip Pokémon cards: buy on TCGplayer or Cardmarket, sell on eBay

How to flip Pokémon cards using this list

1. Match the exact card. Open the card page and check the set, number and printing on both the listing you buy and the eBay sales. A 1st Edition, shadowless or reverse holo copy can sell for several times the regular one, and a mismatch creates a gap that does not exist.

2. Check the exit. Each row shows how many raw copies sold in the last 90 days. With none, the sold median rests on sales up to a year old and may not hold. The most-traded cards are the easiest to resell.

3. Price every cost before you buy. The net column already takes off eBay's selling fees. It does not include shipping to you, sales tax, Cardmarket's cross-border shipping and import charges, or postage to your eBay buyer. The fee calculator works out your break-even price.

4. Judge condition from photos. The buy prices are near-mint prices. The sold median leaves out copies whose listing says they are worn, but a listing can undersell a copy's wear. Whitening, scratches or poor centering on the copy you buy can wipe out a flip. The condition guide shows what each grade looks like.

5. Sanity-check the gap. We hide rows where the sold median is more than 1.5× above CardTrack's own estimate, or the buy price more than 1.5× below it. Those are usually a different printing or a thin market, not a profit. You can show them with the toggle above the list.

What each price means

• Sold median (sell): the median of the card's raw (ungraded) completed sales over the last 12 months, from CardTrack's sales ledger: eBay sales from several feeds, including our own daily eBay trawl, plus the occasional raw Fanatics sale. Listings that say the copy is worn, graded, fake or a different printing are removed, one sale recorded by two feeds counts once, and recent sales count more (a sale's weight halves every 120 days). A card needs at least 3 sales in the 12 months to be listed.
• TCGplayer (buy): TCGplayer's near-mint market price for this printing from our TCGplayer price feed, or a TCGplayer near-mint price we have matched to this printing. TCGplayer calculates its market price from recent sales, so it is a typical price, not a live listing. Check current listings before you buy. Where we cannot tie a TCGplayer figure to the printing (261 cards), we leave the card out rather than fall back to our own estimate.
• Cardmarket (buy): Cardmarket is a European marketplace priced in euros. Our feed stores its price converted to US dollars when the price was fetched, so the euro price you see today can differ. Our current feed has a usable Cardmarket price for only 31 of 20,902 cards, and it is the cheaper leg on 2 of the 95 rows shown. Buying from Cardmarket into the US adds cross-border shipping and can add import duty or tax, none of which is included.

PriceCharting and CardTrack's own estimate are not used as buy prices: neither is somewhere you can buy a card.

eBay fees that come off the flip

eBay charges its fees on the sale price, so they come off the sold median. This is what our fee model charges on a $100 raw card:

Rates checked against eBay's fee page on 26 September 2026. Standard-seller rates only; store subscriptions, promotions and promoted listings change them. Buying costs money too: shipping to you, sales tax, and on Cardmarket orders cross-border shipping and import charges. None of these is in the net column.

Why a gap on this list is not yet a profit

Of the 144 cards in the scan band, 49 have a price more than 1.5× away from our estimate, which is why they are hidden. Of the 95 shown, 0 have no raw sale in the last 90 days, so their sold median rests on older sales. The median net is 12% of the buy price, before shipping and buying costs. Prices also move: a gap can close between buying a card and listing it, and a small flip on a cheap card may not cover postage. Treat this list as a shortlist to check card by card, not a buy list. The biggest movers show where prices are changing fastest.

Cheap flips and expensive flips are different trades

The median buy price on the rows shown is $17.38; 52 of the 95 rows have a buy price under $20, and 69 net less than $5 after eBay's fees. On a cheap card the fixed costs dominate. eBay's fees come to $1.63 on a $10 sale (16.3% of it) against $13.65 on $100 (13.7%), because the per-order fee is flat ($0.30 on a $10 sale, $0.40 on $100) rather than a share of the price, and a tracked postage label costs the same whether the card sold for $12 or $120. A $4 net on a $10 card is real, but it is a $4 payment for the time to buy, receive, photograph, list, pack and post one card. The largest net on the list is $297.04 on Pokémon Center (Wizards Black Star Promos), bought at $1,199.00, and 7 rows net $20 or more, which is where a flip starts to pay for the handling.

Modern sets sell faster than vintage

67 of the 95 rows shown are from sets released in 2020 or later. That matters for the exit. A modern card has more copies in circulation, more buyers searching for it and more completed sales behind its median, so the price you see is closer to the price you will get. A vintage card can show a wider gap because its sold median rests on a handful of sales, where one strong result lifts the whole figure, and it can sit unsold for weeks at a price the median says it should reach. The 90-day sale count on each row is the quickest way to tell which kind of row you are looking at; the most-traded cards are the ones with the most behind them.

Selling the card once you have it

The sold median is a median, so roughly half of the weighted sales in the ledger came in below it. A clean listing sits in the upper half: your own photos of the actual card, front and back, in daylight, with any whitening or scratch visible in the picture rather than discovered on arrival; the set, number and printing in the title exactly as the card page states them; and a condition stated plainly in the terms of the condition guide. Stock photos and vague titles are how a card ends up in the lower half, or comes back as a return.

Fixed-price listings let you hold out for the median; an auction finds a price by its close, and can close below the median when few bidders are watching — the live marketplace shows how current auctions are tracking against value. Ship tracked in a rigid holder, because a return for a bent or lost card takes the whole margin with it, and price the postage into your net before you buy rather than after. If a flip only works when the buyer pays inflated postage, it does not work: buyers see the total.

Flipping Pokémon cards FAQ