Pokémon, sports and TCG singles. Small, light and easy to damage, so you need card protection and Large Letter postage.
The kit our builder picks for a typical Trading cards seller. Change the answers to fit yours.
Storage
Long cardboard boxes with dividers for bulk cards.
Lighting
A smaller app-controlled panel for a key or fill light.
Microphone
Keeps your voice clear when you turn away from the phone.
Each step in the order you'll need it.
Start with penny sleeves, toploaders, team bags and board-backed card mailers. That covers almost every single-card sale, from a bulk common to a chase card. Add a pocket scale that reads to a tenth of a gram, because card mailers sit close to postage weight bands.
A thermal label printer saves more time here than in most categories, since you post lots of small orders. If you open packs on camera, a phone on an overhead arm and a soft panel light come next.
Sleeve the card first, then slide it into a toploader. Seal the toploader in a team bag or tape over the open end so the card can’t creep out. Put it in a board-backed mailer and press the flap down firmly.
For multi-card orders, stack toploaders face to face and wrap the stack in a team bag. Bundles of commons can go in a sleeved stack between two pieces of card, but anything a buyer chose by name gets its own toploader.
Keep singles in card storage boxes with labelled dividers by set, then by number. Give every listed card a short location code, like box 3, divider B, and put that code in your listing notes or a spreadsheet. On a live show you won’t have time to hunt.
Sealed product belongs on a shelf away from sunlight and radiators. Shrink wrap and box art fade, and buyers of sealed stock notice.
Kit for this step
Shoot the front and back of every single on a plain dark background, out of the sleeve if the card is raw. Buyers look at corners, edges and centring, so add a close-up of any flaw. Use the set name, card number and variant in the title, the way collectors search for them.
On eBay, item specifics for set, character and grade help buyers filter to your card. On Vinted, cards sell best as small themed bundles with one clear photo of the whole lot.
Live breaks and singles auctions move cards faster than fixed-price listings. Pre-sort what you’ll run into a numbered stack before you go live so each lot comes off the top in order. Keep sleeves, toploaders and team bags within reach so you can protect each card the moment it sells.
After the show, pack in sale order and tick each buyer off the show’s order list. Print labels in one batch rather than one at a time between lots.
Most single cards go Large Letter in a board-backed mailer. Weigh and measure thickness each time you add toploaders, because Royal Mail’s Large Letter size and weight limits are strict and an underpaid letter costs your buyer a surcharge. Check the current Royal Mail size guide rather than guessing.
Once orders pass 50 a week, pre-build mailers in a batch before shows and buy sleeves and toploaders by the case. A fanfold label stack and a printer that feeds itself stop the label step being the slow one.
Each one costs you money or reviews, and each has a fix.
Complete kits for one kind of seller, costed and laid out.
What most orders like these go by, at today’s published prices. Prices checked 6 October 2026.
Royal Mail 2nd Class Large LetterUsual£1.55 to £2.70
Single cards in a rigid mailer, jewellery and other flat items up to 750 g that fit through a letterbox.
Royal Mail Tracked 48 Large Letter£2.90
Higher-value cards and flat items up to 1 kg that need tracking and a delivery photo.
Loose cards in plain envelopes. They bend in sorting machines, and the refund costs more than the mailer.
The thin first layer for each single card you sell.
Rigid holders that keep a sleeved card flat.
Step-by-step help for the jobs that come next.
Cards are light and valuable for their size. Most single-card orders fit in a rigid mailer and ship as a Large Letter, which keeps postage low if you pack them flat.
Every card goes into a penny sleeve, then a toploader, then a team bag. Store singles by set and number in long boxes so you can pull a sold card while the show is still running.
Usually. A sleeved, top-loaded card in a C6 board-backed mailer stays within Royal Mail’s Large Letter size and weight limits. Check the thickness: a stack of toploaders can push it over 25 mm.
It helps, because card mailers often weigh within a few grams of a postage limit, and a 0.1 g pocket scale tells you which side you’re on. Keep a larger parcel scale for bundles and sealed boxes.
Yes. Use a tracked or signed-for service for any card you’d struggle to replace, and keep proof of postage. Check the compensation level of the service against the card’s value.
Not strictly, but a team bag keeps moisture off the card and looks tidier when the buyer opens it. Using both costs pennies a card.
Yes, cards and collectables are listed on Vinted. Bundles and mid-value singles do well there; high-value cards tend to find more buyers on eBay or live on Whatnot.
Wrap the slab in bubble wrap and send it in a small box or a padded mailer stiffened with card. A slab is too thick for a Large Letter in most cases, so post it as a small parcel.
