Sell and price Japanese Pokémon cards on Shopify

On the shelf

What Japanese Pokémon shops sell

Shops carry Japanese Pokémon for collectors who want art rares and promos, for players who like the card stock, and for sets that release in Japan months before their English version. Japanese sets are also split differently from English ones, so the same artwork can sit in a different set with a different number.

• Main expansion boxes

  Boxes of short Japanese packs, often sold whole.

• High-class pack boxes

  Special sets packed with art rares.

• Starter and deck sets

  Ready-made decks for the Japanese format.

• Promotional products

  Boxes and files bought for an exclusive 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 Japanese Pokémon printings, foils and versions work

Japanese sets have their own set codes and numbering, for example SV2a for Japanese Pokémon Card 151. The catalog follows that numbering, so a Japanese card is matched and priced as itself.

Japanese prices often move differently from English ones, both after a Japanese release and again when the English version comes out. Keeping the two as separate games means each follows its own TCGplayer market, and you can give each its own price rule.

Conditions

How condition pricing works for Japanese Pokémon cards

Every Japanese 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 Japanese art rare, condition by condition

Say a Japanese art rare has a Near Mint market price of $12.00. Your Japanese Pokémon rule uses "Near Mint's, less a percent" with the default percents, modifies it by +10%, 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 Japanese Pokémon cards with Shopify POS

With the Shopify POS app installed, Synq can add new Japanese 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 Japanese 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.

Japanese stock often lives in its own sheet. A Game column and a Card number column help each row land on the Japanese card, and in Review you pick the right card whenever a name fits more than one. Each import takes up to 5,000 products.