E-Commerce for Trading Card Dealers: Costs and Setup

E-commerce for trading card dealers works best when the store is a view of the inventory you already keep, not a second system you maintain by hand. InVelocity runs a branded shop at invelocity.app/shop/your-store with a cart, shipping or local pickup, and Stripe checkout, starting at $49.99/mo for up to 2,500 items, plus a 0.5% platform fee on storefront sales and Stripe's own processing rate. The thing that decides whether it works isn't the store design. It's whether a checkout on your site immediately drops the quantity on eBay, Shopify, and your show POS. If it doesn't, you have just bought a double-sale problem.

Last updated: September 2026

The part everyone skips

Every dealer knows they should have their own store. That advice is everywhere and it isn't wrong. What gets skipped is that e-commerce for cards is not the same problem as e-commerce for t-shirts, and almost all of the gap lives in the catalog rather than the checkout.

A shirt has a size and a color. A single has a game, a set, a card number, a finish, a condition grade, sometimes a slab with a grading company and a cert number, and a market price that moved this week. A generic cart stores none of that as real data. It stores it as words inside the product title, which means you can't filter on it, price against it, or sync it anywhere. That is the actual reason so many dealers stand up a store, hate it by week three, and quietly go back to marketplace-only.

It's not your fault that the store turned into a second job. Built that way, it is one. If you are tired of retyping the same card into three systems and still getting counts wrong, the store isn't the fix by itself. What sits underneath it is.

Three things a card store needs that a generic cart doesn't

Real inventory fields. Condition, finish, set, card number, and cost basis each have to be their own field, not free text you retype per listing. That's what makes NM/LP/MP filtering, margin reporting, and bulk repricing possible at all. Without it you have a catalog you can display but can't operate.

Identification that doesn't eat your evening. Photograph a card and get back the name, set, variant, finish, rarity, and TCGPlayer market price, with reprint disambiguation so a 2016 printing doesn't get priced off a 2023 one. Typing 300 singles into a web store by hand is how a storefront project dies before it ever takes an order.

Graded pricing kept separate from raw. Slabs don't price off the raw market. InVelocity pulls nine price points per card — branded in-app as Invelocity Price — running ungraded through PSA 10, BGS 10, CGC 10, and SGC 10, with a daily sync across 350K+ cards. A store that shows one price regardless of grade will either cost you money or land you in an awkward message thread.

Put those three pieces together and the actual build is mostly configuration, not construction — how to create an online card shop walks through that setup step by step, and selling trading cards from your own website covers what the finished storefront actually does at checkout.

The sync question, answered properly

This is the whole ballgame, and it's worth being precise about it instead of accepting "syncs with everything" as an answer.

The failure mode is not that inventory is wrong. It's that inventory is wrong for a few hours, which is exactly long enough for someone to buy a card you already sold. Sunday morning after a Saturday show is the classic one. You refund the buyer, you eat the fees, you take the feedback hit.

InVelocity handles storefront checkout with automatic inventory deduction and cross-marketplace quantity sync, so an order on your own site pulls the stock down and pushes the new quantity out to eBay and Shopify rather than waiting for you to remember. eBay sync runs two ways: list items, sync prices and quantities, pull orders and sales, manage Best Offers, and auto-relist sold-out items when you restock them.

When you are evaluating any e-commerce setup for cards, ask what happens in the gap. Does a storefront sale update the marketplace immediately, or on a schedule? Does an in-person sale at a show update the storefront? If the vendor can only answer one direction, you have found the leak.

The show table is part of your e-commerce stack

Card shows are not a separate business from your online store, even though most software treats them that way. The stock is the same stock. A dealer who sells a chase card at a Saturday show and can't get it off their website before Sunday doesn't have an e-commerce problem, they have an architecture problem.

InVelocity's point of sale runs in-person sales with customer management, store credit, tax calculation, and receipt generation, against the same inventory the storefront sells from. If you want the in-person side in more depth, the mobile pos for trading card dealers write-up covers it directly.

Local pickup matters here too. Storefront checkout supports shipping or pickup options, which is how you let a regular buy online and collect at the next show or at your shop, without a separate arrangement over DMs every time.

Cover the whole case, not one game

Pokemon gets the search volume and the headlines, and there are dedicated resources for pokemon card dealers for a reason. But almost no dealer's case is one game deep.

If you carry Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Lorcana, One Piece, sports, sealed product, and accessories alongside it, your store has to price and identify all of it with the same fields. InVelocity supports 25+ TCG games, plus sealed, graded, and accessories as inventory types in their own right, so the long tail in the back of your case isn't a second workflow.

What running it actually costs

Four tiers, priced on how many items you carry, with every feature included at each one:

• Starter, $49.99/mo: up to 2,500 items
• Growth, $79.99/mo: 2,500 to 5,000 items
• Professional, $99.99/mo: 5,000 to 10,000 items
• Enterprise, $149.99/mo: 10,000 to 20,000 items

Over 20,000 items is a custom quote. Every tier includes 1,000 AI credits a month, eBay and Shopify sync, the public storefront with checkout, and the full feature set. The storefront isn't reserved for the top plan, which is worth checking on any platform you compare this against.

On top of the subscription, storefront sales carry a 0.5% platform fee, and Stripe charges its own processing rate on the card. Stripe Connect handles the payment directly, so no card data touches InVelocity's servers. Budget all three lines when you model this, not just the monthly. A storefront that saves you marketplace commission still has a cost, and the honest comparison is fee against fee rather than fee against zero.

Onboarding currently runs through a consultation rather than self-serve checkout, so the first step is a call rather than a credit card.

Two features marketplaces won't give you

Running your own store isn't only about keeping more of the sale. Two things only work when the storefront is yours.

Customer trade-ins. Accept submissions with photo upload or CSV import, identify the cards, apply tiered offer pricing and loyalty bonuses, and pay out in store credit or cash. Customers track the status themselves instead of messaging you for updates. That turns the buy side of your business into something that runs while you are at work.

Wishlists. Buyers save cards on your storefront with a heart toggle and come back to them later, and each store gets its own wishlist page. On a marketplace, that intent belongs to the marketplace. On your store, it's a list of people who told you what they want.

Neither of those exists on a seller storefront you rent. Both are ordinary features once the store is actually yours.

Where to start

If you have never run your own store, start by getting inventory clean and identified before you touch store design. A store built on an inventory you don't trust just publishes your errors to a new audience. Once stock is right, the storefront is configuration: logo, banner, accent color, announcement banner, shipping and pickup options, and you're live.

If you are still comparing platforms rather than planning a rollout, the best software for card dealers comparison covers the wider field.

FAQ

Do I have to stop selling on eBay and TCGplayer to run my own store?

No, and most dealers shouldn't. Your own storefront works best alongside the marketplaces, not instead of them. Marketplaces bring search demand you didn't have to earn. Your store keeps more of the sale on buyers who already know you. InVelocity syncs quantities across eBay, Shopify, your storefront, and in-person POS from one inventory record, so running all of them doesn't mean tracking stock four times.

What does it cost to sell through my own storefront?

Three lines. The monthly subscription, starting at $49.99/mo for up to 2,500 items with all features included. A 0.5% platform fee on storefront sales. And Stripe's own processing rate on each transaction. Sales you make on eBay or at a card show are not charged that platform fee, since the marketplace or the POS path applies instead.

How does inventory stay accurate across the store and the marketplaces?

Storefront checkout deducts the item automatically and pushes the updated quantity to your connected channels, and eBay sync runs in both directions for listings, prices, quantities, and orders. In-person POS sales draw from the same stock record. The point of running e-commerce through inventory software rather than a standalone cart is that there is only ever one number to be right.

Does this work for games other than Pokemon?

Yes. 25+ TCG games are supported, including Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcana, and One Piece, plus sports cards, sealed product, accessories, and graded cards. Graded items get nine price points per card, branded in-app as Invelocity Price, from ungraded through PSA 10, BGS 10, CGC 10, and SGC 10, so slabs don't get priced off the raw market number.

Can customers pick up at a show instead of paying shipping?

Yes. Storefront checkout includes shipping and pickup options, so a local buyer can order online and collect in person. Because POS and the storefront draw from the same inventory, a pickup order is already accounted for before they walk up to the table.