Buying Pokémon cards safely in the UK: what to check before you pay anyone

We are not open yet. This is the standard we are holding ourselves to, written down before our first sale, so that when we do you can check us against it. Apply it to us. Apply it to anyone else.

Judging a seller

A business selling to UK consumers has to tell you who they are. Look for a trading name, a postal address and a way to contact a person. A site that gives only a contact form and no address is not necessarily dishonest, but it has failed the first test and you should weigh everything else accordingly. Our about and contact pages are where we do this.

Look for defined terms. If a seller uses "Near Mint" or "sealed", there should be a page saying what those words mean. A condition word with no written definition is a word the seller can redefine after the sale. Ours is on the condition standard page.

Look for the printing. A Base Set Charizard can be 1st Edition, shadowless or unlimited; a modern card can be a standard print, a reverse holo or a promo with the same name. A listing that gives the card name and nothing else is a listing you cannot compare to anything.

Look at the photographs. A seller who photographs the actual card, front and back, is showing you what you will get. A seller who uses a stock image is showing you what the card looks like in general. For anything beyond a bulk common, insist on the former.

Sealed product

The risk with sealed product is resealing: a box or pack opened, the good packs removed or weighed, and the wrap replaced. From the outside a competent reseal is hard to spot, so the real protection is the chain the product came down.

Ask where it came from. A distributor, a known retailer or Pokémon Center is an answer. "A collection I bought" is not. Be most careful with loose packs, especially of older sets, because they are the easiest thing to reseal and the hardest to check.

Check the wrap for the factory seam and the pull-tab. Modern boxes have a tape seal on the lid under the shrink wrap. A box with a seam that runs in the wrong place, or wrap that is loose on one side, is a box to send back.

Check the edition. An Elite Trainer Box with eleven packs is the Pokémon Center edition; nine is standard. A listing that is vague about this is being vague about something that affects what you receive.

Raw singles

A raw single is a card out of a sleeve with nothing but a seller's word for its condition. So the word has to be defined, the card has to be photographed, and the printing has to be named. Then look at four things in the photograph: the corners for whitening, the edges for chipping, the surface for scratches and print lines under angled light, and the centring of the border. A listing that describes a card as "mint" without showing you any of those is asking for trust it has not earned.

Fakes are a separate problem and mostly a problem for the cards everyone wants. The tells are on our authenticity page. The short version: check the card stock, the font, the rosette pattern in the print, the holo pattern, and the back, and compare to a card you know is real.

Graded slabs

A slab removes the condition question and replaces it with two others: is the slab real, and is the cert real. Type the certificate number into the grader's own lookup, not a link the seller gives you, and check that the card name, set, number and grade on the grader's page match the label. Look at the holder's seams and the label's print. Expect the seller to photograph the actual slab, both sides, with the label legible. A stock photograph of a slab is a stock photograph of someone else's card.

When it arrives wrong

If you bought from a UK business online, the Consumer Contracts Regulations give you fourteen days from delivery to cancel most orders for any reason, and the Consumer Rights Act says goods must match their description. A card described as Near Mint that arrives Lightly Played does not match its description, and you are entitled to a remedy. Keep the packaging, photograph the card as it arrived, and write to the seller before you do anything else. A seller who defined their terms in advance has less room to argue, which is the point of defining them.

What we will do

Name the person and the address. Define every condition word. Name the printing on every single. Photograph every card above a stated threshold, both sides, and every slab. State where every sealed product came from. Verify every cert on the grader's own site. Write the returns policy before the first sale and link it from every product. If we fall short of any of that, tell us, and hold us to this page.