Just curious to see if anyone here actually has particularly good or ‘lucky’ experiences with cards from Troll and Toad, as the going meme seems to be that they always seem to overevaluate the conditions of their cards. You know, the ‘Troll and Toad NM’ gag. For me, it always seems to be the opposite, though.
For example, I ordered a Rayquaza GS from them for a significantly cheaper price because it was ‘Damaged/Peeling’, since I just need it for the binder. I then recieved this card, which does have the small indentation at the top that seems to be the start of peeling, but is pretty clean (for what I expected at least) everywhere else. I was hoping for just something somewhat aesthetically appropriate for the binder, but TnT always seems to favor me. I’d like to see if anyone else seems to have good fortune with them, or if the meme is as bad as everyone says.
Troll and toad is a huge retailer with so many orders a day that mistakes are bound to happen. Though their “NM” condition could be a bit on the lower side. At the end of the day you don’t buy from troll and toad to find your next psa gem. You buy from troll and toad because they are trusted and reliable and their prices are quite reasonable for most cards. I have had issues in receiving the wrong card or that the condition left little to be wanted and troll and toad has always taken care of it extremely professionally. That’s more than you can say for a lot of the crazy eBay sellers who will do literally anything to try to nickel and dime you out of every cent.
I agree. I’ve never had a negative experience with them, but I still do find the TnT NM meme to be pretty funny and somewhat true. I always hear the opposite circumstance of my case to be happening, hence the meme. So I’m curious to see if others have overtly good ‘tradeoffs’ with them.
I have both good and bad. Ordered a bunch of cheap binders that said like new and they were all new and sealed still. Also have ordered new binders and received filthy used ones.
I wouldn’t mind mistakes like that, haha. Although if I remember correctly I actually received a pretty rare Yu-Gi-Oh Secret Rare instead of a pretty worthless Common from TnT once, so I guess it happens sometimes.
I haven’t bought anything from TnT in the last couple of years though. I have bought multiple hundreds of cards from them when I was still into Yu-Gi-Oh. And buying all (affordable) Pikachus they had in stock in September 2015 was actually the start of my Pikachu collection and the reason I’m now here and have the second largest Pikachu collection in the world. It’s what got me back into collecting Pokémon again, after collecting and playing Yu-Gi-Oh for the two to three years prior. Just a single impulse buy, and after that everything went crazy, haha.
Anyway, apart from the few exceptions, I never had any bad experiences with TnT. They sometimes had an incorrect card or missing card, but I was always refunded or they send the missing cards later on. As for quality, it was usually what was mentioned. I will be completely honest though, I never really care about condition that much, unless it’s really bad. All cards where it was noticeable right away when they arrived were the ones that I actually bought in Played quality, because NM was out of stock, and even those were never as bad as some cards I still own which I once pulled as a kid. Although I could understand cards mentioned as NM could grade a 6, 7, or 8, instead of a 9 or 10 when they come from any retailer basically. I personally consider larger than or equal to PSA-7 Near Mint usually, but maybe that’s just me.
So, never any bad experiences with TnT for me. I usually buy English singles from CardMarket these days, because they’re only 2 eurocents for most, and with Dutch or German sellers, the shipping is cheap to me in The Netherlands as well. That’s the main reason I haven’t bought anything from TnT in years anymore, since I now know cheaper options. But if someone is primarily looking for English cards for both Pokémon and/or Yu-Gi-Oh, I can certainly recommend them tbh.
I feel like people like to meme on Troll and Toad’s rating system but in my experience for higher value items they tend to be more critical of condition. I ordered a Mudkip GS from them that was listed as MP but it was definitely a NM card. Several of my friends have had similar experiences with them.
I’ve had good and bad luck. You can get a PSA worthy card, but you can also get an overrated card. I have had both so middle of the road for me. Dont buy with PSA 9-10 in mind for sure.
That is definitely a very rare experience. I’ve spent 10’s of thousands with TT and the average condition are binder copy cards, which is what I expected.
I think people overestimate what a “near mint” card is meant to be and then that becomes a source of frustration after they’ve received mint cards which are advertised as nm from other sellers.
I’ve used them when I’m looking to purchase a large amount of uncommons/commons to finish binder sets and don’t want to deal with multiple individual sellers from ebay. The cards that I’ve ordered from them for that purpose have always been correctly described as far as their condition goes. Like others have said, if you’re expecting PSA 9-10 condition from a NM listing you’re going to most likely be disappointed.
Like 2 weeks ago I ordered like 60ish cards from them. Every card i ordered was advertised as NM. Just slightly over half were actually NM cards and the rest were somewhere in the LP range unfortunately.
When I made the order I requested each card be sleeved individually as to avoid holo scratching/edge wearing that could occur when putting multiple cards into one sleeve. They did not honor my request and each penny sleeve had 10 cards in it… then in addition to that, to top it off, 2 cards were completely unsleeved and just floating around loosely in the bubble mailer… that kinda pissed me off. If they dont sleeve cards individually that’s fine, but it would have been nice to get a message about their policy/procedures telling me that.
I wouldnt expect to ever get a PSA 10 worthy card, but plenty of 9’s seems totally achievable.
I bought a Lava Theme deck off them recently. It was listed as new with what appeared to be a stock photo. I was hesitant to put the trigger because of that but the price was just too good.
Well, I can nary find a defect! It is about as case fresh as I’ve ever seen and I am glad I took the risk. They also packaged it very well, I assume because they knew its value.
Although if I remember correctly I actually received a pretty rare Yu-Gi-Oh Secret Rare instead of a pretty worthless Common from TnT once, so I guess it happens sometimes. 
Although I could understand cards mentioned as NM could grade a 6, 7, or 8, instead of a 9 or 10 when they come from any retailer basically. I personally consider larger than or equal to PSA-7 Near Mint usually, but maybe that’s just me.
