Marketplace fees take a fixed cut plus a percentage, and which one dominates depends entirely on the card's price. On TCGplayer, a Marketplace Level 1-4 seller pays a 10.75% commission (capped at $75 per item) plus a 2.5% + $0.30 transaction fee, per TCGplayer's own published fee schedule.
eBay's Trading Cards category charges 13.25% up to $7,500 plus a $0.30 to $0.40 per-order fee. A private sale paid through PayPal's goods-and-services option costs the seller 2.99%, per PayPal's merchant fee table.
The flat components barely register on an expensive card. On a cheap one, they can wipe out the margin.
What TCGplayer actually takes
TCGplayer splits its seller fees into two pieces: a commission based on seller tier, and a transaction fee based on the order total. Both apply to every Marketplace sale.
Seller tier
Commission
Cap
Marketplace Seller (Level 1-4)
10.75%
$75 per product
Marketplace Seller Pro (Non-Direct)
9.25%
$75 per product
Direct Seller (Pro and Non-Pro)
8.95%
$75 per item
On top of commission, TCGplayer charges a transaction fee of 2.5% plus $0.30, calculated on the full order total (items, shipping, and tax combined), per TCGplayer's fee schedule. International sellers pay 3.5% plus $0.30 instead.
The Marketplace Level 1-4 commission is a recent number. It rose from 10.25% to 10.75%, and the per-product cap rose from $50 to $75, effective February 10, 2026, according to TCGplayer's own announcement of the change.
TCGplayer publishes a worked example that shows both fees stacking on a single order. An item priced at $65.31 with $0.99 shipping produces an order subtotal of $66.30 and an order total of $70.94 after tax.
Commission on the item: $65.31 x 10.75% = $7.02
Commission on shipping: $0.99 x 10.75% = $0.11 (shipping carries no fee cap)
Transaction fee: ($70.94 x 2.5%) + $0.30 = $2.07
Total fees: $9.20, about 13% of the $70.94 order total
TCGplayer Direct's flat per-card fee
TCGplayer Direct, TCGplayer's own fulfillment program, carries a different fee stack than a self-fulfilled Marketplace listing. On June 18, 2026, TCGplayer replaced Direct's order-tier Shipping Replacement Cost model with a per-card Direct Fee.
Cards priced at $2.49 or below carry a fee equal to 50% of the card's value, and TCGplayer's fee schedule omits commission and transaction fees on those cards. Cards priced above $2.49 carry a flat $1.12 per card on top of the standard fees: the 8.95% Direct Seller commission and a 2.5% transaction fee. The flat $0.30 transaction fee that used to apply to Direct orders was removed.
TCGplayer's own year-to-date analysis, run from February 10 to April 27, 2026, projected that more than 95% of Direct sellers would see lower total fees under this structure than under the old one. That is TCGplayer's internal projection, not an independently audited figure.
What eBay actually charges
eBay prices its Trading Cards and Collectibles categories, which cover non-sport trading cards, sports cards, and collectible card games, as a single final value fee plus a small per-order fee.
Seller status
Final value fee
Threshold
Standard (non-Store)
13.25%
up to $7,500 per item, then 2.35% above
eBay Store subscriber (excludes Starter Stores)
12.35%
up to $2,500 per item, then 2.35% above
Both tiers add a per-order fee: $0.30 for orders of $10.00 or less, $0.40 for orders above that, per eBay's published selling-fees page. The fee is calculated on the total amount a buyer pays, which eBay defines as the item price plus any handling charge, shipping cost, sales tax, and other applicable fees.
Casual sellers without a Store subscription can still list up to 250 items a month for free; a $0.35 insertion fee applies to each additional listing, per eBay's Seller Center. A reserve-price auction adds its own fee: $5 or 7.5% of the reserve, whichever is greater, capped at $250.
eBay does run targeted seller incentives, such as a promotion capping final value fees at $20 on qualifying $200-plus sales for a seller's first five such sales. That kind of offer is account-specific and delivered by email or eBay's Message Center. It is not a standing rate, and a seller should not assume it applies without a personal invitation confirming it.
Where cheap cards lose money
The flat components of a marketplace fee, the per-order charge and the payment-processing add-on, do not shrink with the item price. On an expensive card they round to nothing. On a card selling for a few dollars, they can consume most of the margin.
An eBay community forum thread describes exactly this outcome. One seller reported selling a trading card for $0.99 with free shipping that cost $0.69 in postage, then paying $0.43 in eBay fees, a $0.13 loss on every such sale. That account is a single seller's anecdote, not a verified transaction record.
The arithmetic is consistent with eBay's schedule, though: 13.25% of $0.99 is about $0.13, and the $0.30 per-order fee brings it to $0.43.
The same dynamic shows up in TCGplayer Direct. A card priced at $2.49 or less pays 50% of its own value as the Direct fee; TCGplayer waives commission and transaction fees on it, but half the sale price is still gone.
Bulk, low-value inventory is where fee structure matters most, not least. A single $300 card can absorb a percentage fee without much thought. A stack of $1 commons cannot.
Selling directly on PayPal
Selling outside a marketplace, through a collector forum, a Facebook group, or a Discord server, usually means settling payment through PayPal goods and services rather than through a platform's own checkout.
PayPal's merchant fee table (last updated September 1, 2026) lists Send/Receive Money for Goods and Services at 2.99%, with no fixed fee on that line. A buyer who pays through PayPal Checkout instead, for example via a seller's invoice, costs the seller 3.49% plus a $0.49 fixed fee. International sales carry an additional 1.50% on top of either rate.
A private PayPal sale skips the 10.75% or 13.25% cut a marketplace charges for hosting the listing and handling buyer discovery, and pays only for payment processing. The seller also gives up the marketplace's own buyer and seller protections and has to find the buyer alone. Reporting a private sale for tax is a separate question, covered in our general guide to card taxes.
A higher-end fixed-price option
Fanatics Collect, the auction house formerly known as PWCC, also runs a fixed-price Buy Now marketplace with its own fee structure, separate from its consignment auctions.
Per Fanatics Collect's own announcement, listings under $120 priced within 20% of the platform's fair-market price estimate carry a 6% seller fee, letting a seller net up to 94% of the sale. Listings under $120 priced more than 20% above that estimate instead carry a 15% fee.
That figure comes from a Fanatics Collect announcement dated July 16, 2024, more than two years before this article's own research date. No more recent published fee schedule for that marketplace could be confirmed in this research pass, so treat it as a documented past rate rather than a confirmed current one.
Same two cards, three channels
Applying the sourced rates above to two real, catalog-verified cards shows where the fee structures actually diverge. Charizard ex 006/165 from the 151 set carried a raw Near Mint evaluated price of $7.89 as of September 24, 2026. Charizard ex 199/165, the Special Illustration Rare from the same set, carried a raw Near Mint evaluated price of $347.58 on the same date.
Raw Near Mint evaluated price $7.89 as of September 24, 2026, used here as the cheap-card fee example.
The table below applies each platform's own published rate to both prices, assuming no shipping charge, no sales tax, and no eBay Store subscription or promotional fee cap.
Channel
Fee on $7.89 card
Fee on $347.58 card
TCGplayer Marketplace (10.75% + 2.5% + $0.30)
$1.35 (17.1%)
$46.35 (13.3%)
eBay Trading Cards (13.25% + per-order fee)
$1.35 (17.1%)
$46.45 (13.4%)
PayPal goods and services (2.99%)
$0.24 (3.0%)
$10.39 (3.0%)
Total fees by channel on a $7.89 card
TCGplayer Marketplace1.35USD
eBay Trading Cards1.35USD
PayPal goods and services0.24USD
Fee math applied to TCGplayer, eBay and PayPal's published rates against the Charizard ex 006/165 raw NM evaluated price of $7.89 as of September 24, 2026.
Raw Near Mint evaluated price $347.58 as of September 24, 2026, used here as the expensive-card fee example.
On the cheap card, the two marketplaces take about 17% of the price, because their flat $0.30 components weigh heavily on a $7.89 sale, while PayPal's straight 2.99% takes 3.0%. On the expensive card, the two marketplaces land within a tenth of a percentage point of each other at about 13.3% to 13.4%, and PayPal still takes 3.0%.
Neither card reached TCGplayer's commission cap or eBay's $7,500 rate break. TCGplayer's $75 cap only binds once an item passes about $698, since 10.75% of $697.67 is $75.
Ways to cut your fee exposure
None of these change what a platform charges. They change which fee structure a given sale runs into.
Match the channel to the price tier. A sub-$5 card loses a much larger share of its price to flat fees than an expensive one does, on both marketplaces above.
An eBay Store subscription lowers the percentage rate. Dropping from 13.25% to 12.35% only pays for itself once total monthly sales are high enough to cover the subscription cost.
Bundling spreads the per-order flat fee. eBay's $0.30 to $0.40 per-order charge and TCGplayer's $0.30 transaction-fee component apply once per order, not once per card, so combining several low-value cards into a single sale reduces how many times that flat charge gets paid.
TCGplayer Direct's flat fee changes the math at $2.49 and below. A card worth $2 pays a $1.00 Direct Fee (50% of its value), with commission and transaction fees omitted, per TCGplayer's fee schedule. Sold as a self-fulfilled Marketplace listing instead, the same card pays about $0.57 in commission and transaction fees, but the seller covers postage.
Comparing a specific card's live price against these fee structures, rather than against an average, is the more useful exercise. What a price cut saves in fees is worked through for heavily traded cards. Setting a price alert on a card keeps its current number in view instead of relying on whatever price came up in an old listing.
Delivered price, meaning what a buyer actually pays after shipping, factors into all of this from the other side of the transaction. The depth-and-absorption explainer walks through delivered price, item plus shipping, and why it has to be folded in before two offers can be compared honestly. How Cardboard Alpha reads the market prices used in these examples is covered in the market-data guide.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage does TCGplayer take from a card sale?
A Marketplace Seller (Level 1-4) pays a 10.75% commission, capped at $75 per product, plus a 2.5% + $0.30 transaction fee on the order total. That commission rose from 10.25% and the cap rose from $50, effective February 10, 2026, per TCGplayer's own published rate change.
What percentage does eBay take on Pokemon card sales?
eBay's Trading Cards and Collectibles categories charge a 13.25% final value fee on the total sale amount up to $7,500 per item, plus a $0.30 or $0.40 per-order fee. An eBay Store subscription (other than a Starter Store) lowers that final value fee to 12.35% up to $2,500 per item.
Is PayPal cheaper than TCGplayer or eBay for selling cards?
On a private sale, a PayPal goods-and-services payment costs the seller 2.99%, per PayPal's merchant fee table, with no marketplace commission stacked on top. Applied to a $7.89 card and a $347.58 card from the 151 set, that came to $0.24 and $10.39, well below TCGplayer's or eBay's total on either price. The trade-off is that PayPal provides payment processing only, not the listing and buyer discovery a marketplace charges its commission for.
Why can a cheap Pokemon card lose money to fees alone?
Per-order and transaction fees are mostly flat, so they take a much larger share of a low-price sale than a high-price one. One eBay seller reported $0.43 in fees on a $0.99 card sold with free shipping that cost $0.69 in postage, a $0.13 loss per sale. That is a single anecdotal account, but the math matches eBay's $0.30 per-order fee plus its 13.25% rate.
What is TCGplayer Direct's fee structure?
Since June 18, 2026, TCGplayer Direct charges a per-card Direct Fee in place of its old order-tier Shipping Replacement Cost model. Cards priced $2.49 or below pay 50% of their value, with commission and transaction fees omitted. Cards priced above $2.49 pay a flat $1.12 plus the standard 8.95% Direct Seller commission and 2.5% transaction fee.
Sources
TCGplayer Fees, TCGplayer Official / primary source · accessed September 27, 2026
Fee Calculation Examples, TCGplayer Official / primary source · accessed September 27, 2026
Important Changes to TCGplayer Direct Minimum Pricing and Marketplace Fees, TCGplayer (seller.tcgplayer.com) Official / primary source · accessed September 27, 2026
Simpler and More Predictable Fees Coming for TCGplayer Direct June 18, TCGplayer (seller.tcgplayer.com) Official / primary source · accessed September 27, 2026
Selling fees, eBay Official / primary source · accessed September 27, 2026
Seller fees, eBay Seller Center Official / primary source · accessed September 27, 2026
Ryan Shugars is an avid Pokémon card collector who builds the market-data tooling behind Cardboard Alpha. He collects across multiple eras, tracks population reports and price movement as a matter of habit, and started building Cardboard Alpha to get a straight answer to questions the existing price guides couldn't: what's actually trading, what's just an asking price, and what a grade is really worth on a given card right now. He writes from that same collector's vantage point, close to the data, skeptical of hype, and always checking a claim against the ledger before it goes in an article.
Ryan Shugars is a collector and the builder of Cardboard Alpha's data systems, not a licensed financial advisor. Articles he writes or edits describe market history and mechanics; they are informational and are not personalized investment advice.
