There are six real ways to sell a card, and the right one depends on three numbers: what the card is worth, how fast you need the money, and how much of the work you want to do yourself. This guide walks through each venue with its fees as of October 2026, then the mechanics that decide whether you get full price.
Before you list anything
Know the number. Every venue below works better when you walk in with a sold price, not an asking price, so start with the pricing guide. Then sort what you are selling into three piles: cards worth under about $25, cards worth $25 to a few thousand, and cards worth more than that. The piles go to different places.
Where to sell, and what each one costs
eBay
The largest buyer pool and the deepest comps, which is why it is the default for anything from $25 to a few thousand dollars. The trading card categories carry a final value fee of 13.25 percent on the first $7,500 of a sale, 2.35 percent on anything above that, plus a per-order fee of $0.30 on orders of $10 or less and $0.40 above $10. The fee is taken on the whole amount the buyer pays, shipping and sales tax included, which surprises people: a $100 card with $5 shipping and $7 tax is charged 13.25 percent of $112. The first 250 listings a month are free.
Best for: single cards and sealed boxes where you want the most eyes and can wait a week for an auction or a sale. Weak for: cards under about $15, where the fees and shipping eat the margin, and seven-figure cards, which sell at auction houses.
Whatnot
Live selling. You stream, buyers bid in real time, and you ship after the show. Whatnot takes roughly 8 percent commission plus payment processing of about 2.9 percent and $0.30 per sale, so about 11 percent all in. Prices generally run below eBay for the same card because the buyer is paying for the entertainment as much as the card, but the volume is high and cheap cards that would die on eBay move in a Whatnot show. If you are new to it, the breaks guide covers how the format works from the buyer’s side.
Best for: moving volume, especially the under-$25 pile, and for breaking. Weak for: one expensive card, which deserves a bigger audience than one stream.
Fanatics Collect
The former PWCC, now the auction venue where the big modern cards sell (every seven-figure NBA Debut Patch sale on our tracker went through it). Auctions carry no seller fee; the house takes a 20 percent buyer’s premium on top of the hammer, and the seller is paid the hammer plus a bonus that scales with the winning bid. Premier Auctions are reserved for cards with a market value of at least $10,000. Buy Now listings carry a 6 percent seller fee when priced at or below 120 percent of market value, 15 percent above that. Cards under $50 that sit unsold in the vault for 30 days pick up a one-time $3 fee.
Best for: graded cards worth $500 and up, and anything worth five figures. Weak for: raw cards under $100, where the vault and timing do not pay.
Goldin and Heritage
The other two auction houses that matter for cards. Both add a buyer’s premium in the neighborhood of 20 percent, and both charge sellers a tiered commission that falls as the card’s value rises and is negotiable on large consignments. Neither publishes a flat seller rate, so get the terms in writing before you ship. The trade-off is time: a card consigned today sells in the next monthly or quarterly auction and pays out after that.
Best for: vintage, high-grade, and anything that benefits from a catalog and a bidding war. Weak for: anything you need paid this month.
Consignment services
You ship the cards, they photograph, list, sell, ship and pay you a percentage. Probstein123 is the biggest eBay consignor and does not publish a rate card; sellers report payouts of roughly 88 to 95 percent depending on the sale price, with 30 to 90 days from shipment to payout. COMC charges per card to process (about $2 raw and $2.50 graded on its two-week service, less on the slow tier) plus 5 percent when you cash out, and holds your cards in its warehouse so buyers can combine shipping. MySlabs charges 1 percent on graded and 3 percent on raw plus payment processing, and you ship the card yourself.
Best for: a box of 200 cards you do not want to photograph. Weak for: anything where a few points of fee matter, since you are paying for labor on top of the venue’s fee.
Local card shop or a show
Cash today, no fees, no shipping, no returns. The price is the trade: a shop buying for resale has to pay you below the sold price, typically well below for commons and closer for a card it can flip the same week. At a show you can rent a table and sell retail yourself; table fees vary by show from under $100 to several hundred dollars, so the math works when you have enough inventory to cover it. Both are where you learn what dealers pay, which is useful even if you sell elsewhere.
Best for: the under-$25 pile in bulk, and for anything you want gone today. Weak for: your best card, unless you have a sold comp in hand and a dealer who matches it.
Your own store
Sealed product and higher-volume singles can sell from a store you run. The fees are only payment processing, about 2.9 percent plus $0.30 a sale, which is a fraction of any marketplace. The cost is that nobody is browsing your store unless you bring them, which is why ours sits next to the trackers and calendar. Our shop is a working example: sealed wax priced off current comps, shipped from Florida.
The fees side by side
On a $500 graded card, with shipping charged to the buyer at $10 where it applies, this is roughly what each venue leaves you before postage.
- eBay: 13.25 percent of $510 plus $0.40, about $68 in fees, you keep about $432 plus the $10 shipping to spend on postage.
- Whatnot: about 11 percent, roughly $55 in fees, you keep about $445, but expect the hammer itself to land below $500.
- Fanatics Collect auction: no seller fee; the buyer pays $600 with the premium, you receive the $500 hammer plus the seller bonus.
- Fanatics Collect Buy Now: 6 percent, $30 in fees, you keep $470.
- Consignment: roughly 8 to 12 percent on top of the venue’s cut, so figure $440 to $460 and a month or more of waiting.
- Card shop: an offer, not a fee. Anywhere from $300 to $450 depending on how fast the shop can resell it.
- Your own store: about $15 in processing, you keep about $485, if a buyer finds it.
Auction, fixed price, or Best Offer
Auction finds the market price on a given night. Use it when comps are plentiful and recent (the card will land where it should) or when you have no idea what something is worth and want the market to tell you. Start at $0.99 only when you are sure there are enough bidders; a low start on a thin card is how you sell a $200 card for $40. Seven days ending Sunday evening Eastern is still the standard.
Fixed price gets your number, eventually. Use it when the comps are tight and you can wait, and when the card is scarce enough that a buyer searching for it will find yours. Price it at the top of the recent cluster and let it sit.
Fixed price with Best Offer is the compromise most experienced sellers use: list a little above the cluster, set an automatic accept at your real number and an automatic decline below your floor, and let buyers feel like they won. Remember that an accepted offer hides the real price in eBay’s public sold data, which the pricing guide explains how to see through.
Listing so it sells
- Title: year, set, player, card number, parallel, serial number, grade. “2025-26 Topps Chrome Update Cooper Flagg Rookie Debut Patch Auto DPA-CF 1/1 PSA 10” is a title. “Flagg rookie WOW” is not. Buyers search the way the title reads.
- Photos: front and back, in focus, on a plain background, corners visible, plus a close-up of anything a buyer would ask about. For a graded card, the label must be legible. Twelve photos cost nothing; a return costs a week.
- Condition: say what is wrong before the buyer finds it. A corner ding disclosed is a sale; a corner ding discovered is a return and a defect on your account.
- Sealed product: state whether the box is factory sealed, and if the manufacturer ships it unsealed by design (Topps Chrome Update mega boxes, for one) say so and link to the proof. Unsealed is not opened.
- Shipping: state the method and the handling time, then beat it.
Shipping and packaging
Raw cards go in a penny sleeve, then a semi-rigid or top loader, then a team bag, then a bubble mailer. Graded slabs go in a bubble mailer with the slab in a sleeve and a piece of cardboard on each side. Sealed boxes ship in a box with two inches of padding on every side; a crushed corner on a hobby box is a 20 percent price cut on arrival.
For cards under about $20, eBay Standard Envelope ships a plain-white-envelope card with tracking for around a dollar and is the only way the under-$25 pile is worth listing individually. Everything above that goes tracked in a mailer; anything above about $750 goes signature required, which is also what the marketplaces require for their seller protection to apply. Insure anything you could not afford to lose.
Payments and taxes, briefly
Marketplaces report your sales to the IRS on a 1099-K once you pass the federal threshold ($20,000 and 200 transactions for 2026, with some states setting lower thresholds). You owe tax on profit, not on sales, so keep what you paid for every card and box you sell, including the ones you pulled from a box, where your cost basis is a share of the box price. A spreadsheet of purchases by date is enough.
When not to sell the card
If you own a box rather than a card, the question is whether to sell it sealed, open it, or break it. Sealed is the floor and the simplest. Breaking it on Whatnot can beat the sealed price for a hot product and loses to it for a cold one; the breaks guide has the math. And a card with no comps at all, like a fresh one-of-one from a set that has not had public sales yet, is usually worth holding until the first few sales set the structure, unless you need the money now.
The quick version
- Get a sold comp first, then pick the venue by value and speed.
- Under $25: Whatnot, a shop, or a show. $25 to a few thousand: eBay. Graded and $500 and up: Fanatics Collect. Five figures and vintage: an auction house.
- eBay takes 13.25 percent of the whole payment including shipping and tax, plus $0.30 or $0.40. Whatnot about 11 percent. Fanatics Collect auctions charge the buyer, not you.
- Auction when comps are deep, fixed price with Best Offer when they are tight.
- Title like a search, photograph like an inspector, disclose everything.
- Tracked above $20, signature above $750, insured when it would hurt.
- Keep your cost basis; you pay tax on profit.
Fees in this guide were checked on October 21, 2026 against eBay’s fee schedule, Fanatics Collect’s How It Works page, and dated fee comparisons for Whatnot and the consignment services. Platforms change their rates; if one of these is out of date, tell me and I will fix it.