If you buy vintage or older cards then you have to expect the condition to be worse than described. Some sellers are the exception and if you find them you better remember their accounts for future buys.
As a seller cardmarket is pretty decent too. The fees are fine with 5% and you can easily sell low value cards.
The annoying things are people ordering 1 card worth 20 cents from you since that is not worth the time.
Their customer service always sides with the buyer and they wonât hesitate to block your account during a dispute. As a seller with 1000+ positive reviews I have had bad experiences with about 5 buyers.
One time a buyer claimed that I had sent him the wrong 5⏠card and customer service blocked my account for weeks because I refused to send him another one.
Overall the experience is good and perfect for buying binder cards.
The real problem is CM standard set the grade on NM, you have to change it manual to a lower/higher grade. IF they would set the standard on EXC it would be more acurate (EXC = LP on USA markets)
I did sell many ungraded cards in the past, always marked them EXC and never ever got a return or a request for the refund or negative feedback.
I do agree many card (even with pictures) do not meet the grade they claim, But on Ebay thatâs the same. NM is most times not NM on Ebay either.
This is pretty much the exact experience I have with cardmarket as well. Itâs great for modern cards, low value cards and some vintage cards. And there are some sellers where a EX card usually is NM to Mint.
Also whenever I reached a card in a way worse condition than advertised I never had a issue with receiving a refund directly from the seller.
I love cardmarket. Itâs frankly the only viable option for lower value Japanese cards within the EU. Modern cards are pretty much always mint (then again, why wouldnât they).
For vintage cards, it was (and still is, to some degree), a bit of a trial and error thing for me. Some sellers have phenomenal condition cards, others are occasionally really trying to sell you a LP card as NM. Over time, you will find yourself a couple of trustworthy sellers with good cards and learn to avoid others. Returning something I didnât agree with was also never an issue.
For higher value cards (>âŹ50) they have pics most of the time and if they donât, it usually never took too long for them to DM me some.
While I absolutely did already receive PSA 10-worthy cards for NM raw prices from CM, I would suggest not always expecting it by default (as others have already said). Always keep in mind that NM only translates to a mere 7 on the PSA scale. And I find cardmarketâs grading scale even slighty stricter than PSAâs on average.
I personally love CM, and have probably bought at least 1/4th of my Pikachu/Seviper collection on CM. Itâs especially useful for those hard to find French/German/Italian set cards, which will pop up on CM eventually in my experience.
But I can understand itâs not for everyone. I personally collect all TCG languages, and donât care too much about condition of cards (to some extend), so if I buy a card marked as NM and it arrived as EX or LP, I give a negative or neutral feedback depending on how bad it is, but still keep the card for my binder/collection.
Then again, I have also received a lot of Gem Mint cards when they were marked as NM on CardMarket, and also received played or off-centered cards that were different than the pictures on eBay. You have good and bad sellers everywhere.
I personally have not too much issues with buying cards without pictures, though. Although it does depend on price, and for 500+ euros cards I usually will ask for a picture first.
I strongly disagree with both of you, if the site gives you a guide for condition you should follow it while listing your products or you just advertise something far from the truth.
You use the site? You follow siteâs rule.
You disagree with siteâs condition guide? Sell somewhere else.
The priceâs cheaper? Yeah, you find different prices everywhere, why would you buy a Ferrari for 300k when you can buy it for 200k? (Not the best example cause I surely donât know neither care how such a car will costs)
If itâs listed as NM i expect it to be NM. Otherwise itâs your fault as a seller to be a fraud.
This is the only thing that changes my perception. If itâs true, than most of the time might be an unexperienced seller trying to sell cards not knowing about conditions. But this should be an exception, not the rule. And should be prevented by CM itself.
Imo itâs best to think of Cardmarket as a player focused seller platform, hence the lack of photos and slow response times.
Iâve purchased cards from there several times and say itâs hit or miss if the card condition is accurate only anything preSWSH but itâs still the best option for multiple languages. The few times I have asked for photos the seller has messaged back, but I only ask if the card is over ÂŁ50 or so. My biggest issue is when a seller cancels an order or simply fails to ship; I guess some people only want to sell domestically.
Iâve been using CM for a while now, and I really like the way it works. Selling is super easy and depending on what you buy I also think it works great.
Sometimes sellers take a long time to response, that is true. But in my experience sellers with over 100 sales are pretty fine doing deals with.
I always have the same problem with the scans. That is why I take pictures (front & back) and use an app to combine these to one picture and upload that. It may take a bit more time but for any card above âŹ20 I donât mind.
And if anyone wants to see a picture of my available cards I always send the pictures.
Because that is the way I also would like to be treated
Edit:
I do understand that professional sellers donât take pictures of cheap cards. It is just not worth there time. My local card shop also doesnât do this, but they place any new card as NM so it could be a Gem mint card while it is listed as NM
I broke 1k sales last week on CM and have well over that in purchases.
Itâs done great for me as a seller platform and as someone who just doesnât trust eBay (from a selling point) at all.
But they had issues last year and all scans of cards uploaded before that time will not load unless the seller takes down the listing and reposts it with the same scan. Iâve found sellers (when buying) to be fairly fast (24 hours or less) to send pictures. And from experience the worst non repliers are from Spanish or Italian sellers with the Germans, Dutch and Belgians being the most responsive and and helpful on both sides.
Some people take it very seriously (myself included) but sellers will often just list a card as ânear mintâ without any information on any possible flaws and when you disagree if they send pics they either say your wrong or just then donât reply.
The 5% fee per sale is also fantastic vs eBay & PayPal fees and the fee caps at âŹ100 irregardless of item value.
My only gripe with the platform now is that support who were once fantastic seem to have dropped down in quality over the last few months. Iâve noticed many times they mention there is a delay replying to tickets because theyâre getting in so many now and are not as help as they would have been in years gone by.
For example. Some fella in Spain (50 purchases total) bought a few Dragon Ball super singles off me, no card worth more than âŹ5. He marked me down to good for my âdescription of itemsâ because of the card in the pic attached below. I sent him pics of psa 7 Pokemon cards and psa 8 dragon ball cards and still insisted I was wrong. Went to discord for ups and multiple people agreed I was right in my card assessment. So I went to support to get the feedback removed.
They said they wouldnât do anything and the feedback would remain and PSA grading standards are not the same as their ânear mintâ standards.
Pics are of the backs of a PSA 7 Phantom Forces Gengar Ex and Furious Fists Dragonite ex full arts
I just listed about 700 cards on cardmarket on Sunday, almost all Japanese old back commons and uncommons worth between 15 cents and 1 Euro. It is just not worth the trouble adding images for all these cards. I generally do so for more valuable cards, but being able to upload only one image per card means I have to combine two images to show front and back.
(Currently I am using ZomboDroid Image Combiner for this, if someone knows something more efficient I am glad for any suggestions.)
The guide is a guide. This is what people donât understand.
My NM will not be your NM. Someone elses NM will not be my NM etc.
You absolutely cannot get hung up and pissy about condition when you reference a guide that uses language like âvery fewâ in relation to whitening, âsurface must generally appear clean,â âIt can have a few minor spots.â Further to that, they only include one example picture of each condition and that example appears to be at the top end of their criteria. So itâs setting a false expectation.
So I can sell you a card that has a handful of white spots on the edges, quickly investigate it under light and I canât see anything (maybe I inspect it at an arms length, you inspect it 6" away from your face) and has some minor spots of damage. By Card Marketâs standards, I have met the criteria for Near Mint.
Thats why I say problems come when people use the site with high expectations and you should expect when you buy something that it will actually turn up one condition grade lower.
If you want to buy cards that meet a recognized standard, go buy graded cards from a company whoâs standards fit yours. Donât buy sight unseen raw cards that are judged by someoneâs standards that you do not know, and to a subjective guide, then start talking about sellers being fraudulent when they dont turn up in a condition you agree with.
I agree in half.
Itâs ok that not everyone has the same standard for nm. But that site has one and gives you some hints to follow.
It canât tell you âif It has 1 whitening spot itâs NM, if It has 4 itâs excâ. But if you buy a card as nm, open the guide and see the pictures and looks totally like a played card, you may have the rights to have your money back.
About the sight inspection, I think youâre just being polemical about the distance from which you check, obviusly I wonât look at a card 2 meters in the distance. Also I wonât stuck my nose on it. Still, sight is even more subjective than a guide itself, cause not everyone has an Hawk Eye, so to judge a card you adjust your distance (and glasses, if youâre like me)
Most of my purchases in big time are from cardmarket and while it has its downsides i couldnât be happier with it, at least once i learnt how to buy from there. I always gringe when i here people buy modern rare holos from ebay for few dollars when iâve bought 10 holos for same price
