Sell and price Pokémon cards on Shopify

On the shelf

What Pokémon shops sell

Most Pokémon shops make their margin on singles: chase cards like Special Illustration Rares and other secret rares numbered above the set count, playable ex cards and trainers for Standard decks, and binders of reverse holos and commons. A single card can exist in two printings, such as Normal and Reverse Holofoil, and each one sells for a different price.

• Booster boxes

  The display of booster packs, sold whole or opened for packs.

• Elite Trainer Boxes

  Packs plus sleeves, dice and energy, a common gift purchase.

• Booster bundles

  A smaller pack bundle at a lower price point.

• Collection boxes, tins and blisters

  Packs with a promo card, often bought for the promo.

In Synq, singles and sealed live apart. A single is one Shopify product per card and printing, with a variant for each condition. A sealed product is one product with a single Unopened variant. Each game can send its singles and its sealed product to their own Shopify collections.

Printings and versions

How Pokémon printings, foils and versions work

In Scarlet & Violet sets, commons and uncommons come as Normal and Reverse Holofoil, rares as Holofoil and Reverse Holofoil, and ex cards and higher rarities as Holofoil only. TCGplayer tracks a separate market price for each, and so does Synq: each card and printing is its own Shopify product, so the Reverse Holo of a card is never priced from its Normal copy.

Some sets add special reverse holo patterns, such as the Poké Ball and Master Ball Pattern versions in Prismatic Evolutions. TCGplayer lists these as their own entries, so each is priced from its own market. Older Wizards of the Coast era sets also carry 1st Edition and Unlimited printings, which the catalog lists apart when they exist.

Japanese Pokémon is a separate game in Synq, Pokémon TCG Japan, with its own catalog and prices, so an English card is never priced from a Japanese one.

Conditions

How condition pricing works for Pokémon cards

Every Pokémon single can carry five conditions, each its own Shopify variant with its own price and stock. Sealed product has one, Unopened. Your price rule prices each condition in one of two ways.

• Each condition's market price

  The default. Each condition follows its own TCGplayer market price. A played condition with no market price of its own uses Near Mint's, less the percent you set for it.

• Near Mint's, less a percent

  Every condition is priced from Near Mint's market price, less its own percent. Useful where played copies rarely sell.

A worked example

Pricing a Holofoil ex card, condition by condition

Say a Holofoil ex card has a Near Mint market price of $24.00. Your Pokémon rule uses "Near Mint's, less a percent" with the default percents, modifies it by +5%, and rounds up to x.99. Here is what each condition would list at.

Example numbers in US dollars, not live prices. Synq converts market prices to your store's currency and rounds in that currency.

A rule can also set a minimum, a fixed amount or your cost plus a margin, so no condition lists below it. Before anything changes on Shopify, the rule's preview shows the original and updated price of every product and condition.

At the counter

Ring up Pokémon cards with Shopify POS

With the Shopify POS app installed, Synq can add new Pokémon products to Point of Sale with scannable barcodes. Each single gets its own code per condition, so scanning a Lightly Played copy rings up the Lightly Played price, and sealed product gets the box UPC from the catalog, or a Synq code when there isn't one. Synq doesn't print labels; Shopify's free Retail Barcode Labels app does, if you skip its option to create barcodes.

Moving in

Bring the Pokémon cards you already have

A TCGplayer export is recognized on upload and read as exact SKUs, so card, printing and condition match. Your own CSV can have any columns; Synq matches each row by TCGplayer SKU, TCGplayer ID, barcode or name, and you review the matches before anything is created. Products already in Shopify can be linked one at a time, and Synq takes over their price and stock from the next rule run.

If you sell on TCGplayer, its inventory export is read as exact SKUs, so the card, printing and condition come in exactly. From your own sheet, a name column is enough to start; Synq asks you to pick when a name fits several cards, for example a Pikachu printed in many sets. Each import takes up to 5,000 products.