FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

User account

The username cannot be changed. It may be changed only by the Customer Support and only if there is a valid reason for a change (like an offensive username or a trademark/copyright violation).

All your personal data can be changed in your user profile:

My account -> My profile

Please note that your username and your real name cannot be changed. If you made a mistake typing your real name, please contact our Customer support to have it changed.

Registration on Cardmarket is limited to the available countries. If you cannot find your country in the list, you cannot open a user account.

If you would like to buy on Cardmarket from a country that is not supported, you may do so via a buying agent (i.e. a friend that lives in Europe and can buy for you), or using a mail forwarding service like for example: Mailboxde.com or myGermany.com.

Please do not open a user account with "another" country, this usually leads to serious delivery issues.

The vacation mode is only relevant if you are a seller on Cardmarket. When your account is in vacation mode, other users cannot buy from you, thus you cannot sell anything. You may switch your vacation status at any time in your user profile.

The bank wires necessary to complete seller activation are sent out once per working day at about 16:00h. From there on, it depends on the banks involved, but usually a SEPA transfer takes 2 business days. Thus you should expect to receive the two wires about 3 business days after you requested seller activation.

Buying

Shipping costs are set by Cardmarket. They depend on the shipment size, weight and value and of course on origin and destination of the shipment. You can find all the details on our Shipping Cost page.

Registered shipping is mandatory for:

  • Any shipment worth more than 25,00 €
  • Some shipments worth more than 10,00 € from a new seller.
  • Some shipments from a new seller when he has "too many" shipments currently sent but not yet arrived
  • Any shipment from a seller with a loss rate > 2%.
At least one of your orders uses the Trustee service, which makes sure that the seller is only paid once you have received the order.

The fee is calculated by the following rule:

  • If the postal insurance value is less than the shipment value: 1% of the merchandise value
  • If the shipment value is > 100,00 €, the insurance fully covers it and either buyer or seller are professional: 0% (no trustee fee)
  • In all other cases (default): 0.5% of the merchandise value

Payment

You may credit your user account with bank transfer or by cashing in a Cardmarket coupon. If you have unpaid orders, you may also pay with PayPal or SOFORT transfer.
If you would like to pay your orders or credit your account via bank wire, you need to send a SEPA wire to the following bank account:
Recipient Sammelkartenmarkt
IBAN DE80100400000107541500
BIC COBADEFFXXX
Transfer Reason See instructions
Please make sure that you provide your User name and the user ID (you will find both in the transfer instructions in your user profile) and that they are spelled correctly. Else we will not be able to associate the transfer with your user account.

There are two ways to pay with PayPal on Cardmarket: Either directly when checking out the Shopping Cart or in your Unpaid orders menu.

Please use one of those links to be forwarded to PayPal and pay your orders. Please note that you must use your own PayPal account. We will not accept PayPal payments from another person's account.

To use a Cardmarket coupon to pay for your orders, you have to cash it in to your user account. Please navigate to:

My account -> My profile then choose TOTAL CREDIT -> CASH-IN COUPON

Simply enter your coupon code and you're instantly receive the corresponding amount credited to your user account.

If you have paid with bank wire, please note that a SEPA bank wire takes 2-3 business days to be transfered. If you have sent the money on a friday afternoon or on a week-end day, you will very likely receive it on Wednesday of the next week. Please note, that this is the standard duration for bank wires, we have no way to accelerate this.

If you have paid more than 5 business days ago and the money still has not been credited to your account, please contact our Customer Support with all the details of the missing transfer (Account number, exact amount and transfer date).

PayPal payments are usually directly credited to your user account. Exceptions are:
  • Your payment has to be processed manually. This will take a few hours maximum.
  • Your payment has been rejected. In that case, the money has already been transferred back to your PayPal account. Please check your PayPal account.

If you would like to pay "extra money" (like for example new or more expensive shipping costs), please use the function "Refund & Extra Payment" that you will find in the options menu in the shipment.

In order to offer an extra payment you need to have enough credit on your Cardmarket account. If there is no money available, you'll have to credit your account first.

Upon offering the extra payment, the corresponding amount will be deduced from your Cardmarket account. The seller needs to accept the extra payment within 7 days in order to receive the amount on his Cardmarket account.

If you should not be able/allowed to make an extra payment, you may also buy a Cardmarket coupon and send the coupon code to the seller.

If there's a credit to your Cardmarket account (because you deposited money, got paid for a sale or received a refund), shipments are paid in chronological order (i.e. the "oldest" open order first). However, if the incoming credit is no sufficient to pay for the first open shipment, the system will then try to pay as many shipments as possible, thus it will rather leave a large shipment unpaid and pay smaller shipment that was placed at a later time than to not pay anything at all.
You receive special credit when crediting your account via PayPal or by cashing in a Coupon. You can use it for purchases on Cardmarket just like your normal credit, but you cannot cash it out again. This is a necessarity security measure.

Selling

If your user account is on vacation mode and you cannot return from vacation, your account has been suspended by our Customer Support due to critical problems with your selling activity. Please contact Customer Support to find a solution to this.

If you would like to make a refund, please use the function "Refund & Extra Payment" that you will find in the options menu in the shipment.

You need to have enough credit on your Cardmarket account for the refund. If there is no money available, you'll have to credit your account first. Upon offering the refund, the corresponding amount will be deduced from your Cardmarket account. The buyer needs to accept the refund within 7 days in order to receive the amount on his Cardmarket account.

You can only add a card scan at the moment when you put the card for sale. To add a scan, use the corresponding link in the selling form. The following limits apply:

  • You may only upload one scan per offer.
  • You may only upload image files (JPG, PNG, TIFF)
  • The maximum file size is 1 MB.

Please note that adding a scan to an existing offer is not possible. To add a scan to an existing offer, you'd have to delete that offer and list the card again with a scan.

If you run a business in the trading card domain, you may open a professional account.

To open a professional account, just use our "Register" function, choose "professional" as account type and follow the instructions.

Based on the evaluations you receive, you will have a "seller rank", visualized by a star symbol. The "seller rank" is calculated as follows:

  • Only general evaluations are taken into account
  • Only the last 100 evaluations or the last month (whichever is greater) is taken into account
  • The "worst" feedback is ingored for the seller star (shown as grey in the user profile)
The requisites for the different seller ranks are:

  • Outstanding seller (gold with halo): min. 36 evaluations, min. 97% very good, max. 1% neutral or bad
  • Very good seller (big gold star): min. 36 evaluations, min. 92% very good, max. 3% neutral or bad
  • Good seller (small gold star): min. 6 evaluations, max. 4% neutral, max. 2% bad
  • New seller (no star): less than 5 evaluations, no neutral or negative feedback.

Any seller with worse stats will be listed as bad seller (Symbol: Thumbs down). We do not recommend to buy from these sellers.

Once the buyer has paid for a shipment, you will get the info and task to ship it. You will receive payment for the shipment:
  • upon confirming shipping if the order is untracked.
  • upon arrival confirmation if the order uses our trustee service
The amount will always be paid out to your Cardmarket account. The sales commission will be automatically deduced.
The automatically generated price suggestions are as follows:
  • LOW: The lowest available price
  • AVG: The average price of all current offers
  • SELL: The average sale price in the last 28 days
  • TREND: The trend price (based on a linear regression of the last 28 selling days)
  • MY: Your own price, if you are currently selling an identical article

Shipping

If you are selling 1-16 single cards, you should:

  1. Put the cards into sleeves (max. 4 cards per sleeve)
  2. Seal the sleeve with adhesive tape.
    Use a piece of paper between tape and the sleeve opening to prevent the tape from touching the cards.
  3. Fix the sleeve(s) on rigid cardboard (e.g. a postcard, but not "normal" paper).
  4. Use another piece of cardboard to "cover" the cards from the other side.
    You may of course use a toploader, but only 1 card per toploader. And you need cardboard in addition.
  5. Send in a normal envelop.

Bubble envelopes are not a suitable protection for trading card shipments. We do not recommend to use bubble envelopes

For larger orders, we recommend to use piles of cards that you wrap into paper (like a present ;-)) to form a block.
Make sure to fix and protect the block in a box or big envelope.

The CN22 customs form is used to declare the value of a shipment when sending outside the Euopean Union. It is a very simple document, presenting 4 fields that have to be filled out:

  1. Choice of content: Please choose Other.
  2. Description: Toys is appropriate here.
  3. Weight: The weight of the letter
  4. Value: The item value as stated in the Cardmarket order.

Add date and sign and that's it.

You should get a CN22 form sticker at your local post office. If this is not working, you may print this form for example and glue it to your letter.

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