What If Pokémon Cards Are Damaged in the Post?
Who carries the risk when a parcel of cards is crushed or lost, what insurance actually covers, and the packing that stops the question arising.
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Who carries the risk when a parcel of cards is crushed or lost, what insurance actually covers, and the packing that stops the question arising.
A standard Pokémon card weighs roughly 1.8 to 2 grams. Here is what that means for counting a collection by weight, for postage, and for pack weighing.
A Pokémon card weighs about 2 grams, so 1,000 cards run near 4.4 lb. Real weights for sleeves, boxes and binders, and where USPS postage stops paying.
Return swaps, off-platform payment requests, overpayment refunds, fake payment screenshots and late chargebacks — and the defense that works for each.
A mid-size collection worth $2,400 on eBay nets about $1,640 after fees, postage and supplies, across roughly 37 hours of work. Here is the full arithmetic.
PSA Regular is $79.99 a card, CGC Economy is $20, and Beckett's two cheapest tiers are sold out. Add postage both ways and supplies and four cards through PSA works out at roughly $88 each.
Penny sleeve, top loader, rigid mailer, and the $100 of USPS insurance you already paid for. Plus what PSA and CGC require instead, which is not a top loader.
Published buylist rates for bulk Pokémon cards as of August 2026, what eBay lots actually sell for, and why shipping often costs more than the bulk is worth.
eBay and TCGplayer take almost the same cut. The real cost of selling a collection yourself is the transaction count — here is the arithmetic.