Live experiment

Two cards, two routes, one vault

Everything on /spread rests on costs nobody publishes — what it takes to redeem a card from one vault and get it accepted by another. So we are moving two cards and writing down what actually happens.

Spent so far

−$368.89

money that has actually left the account

Costs still unpriced

fees no venue publishes, which is why both cards are moving

Recovered

$0.00

one card is in hand, one is still in the post; nothing has sold

Polygon → Solana

Buy a tokenised card, redeem it, re-vault it on the other chain

Mewtwo — Art Rare — graded slab, cert 97677959

Mewtwo — Art Rare2023 · #183 · Japanese SV2a Pokémon 151 · PSA 10Our slab · cert 97677959 · the vault's own render

Paid: $100.00; offer accepted on Courtyard
eBay sold, median: $114.25; n=40 · $104–$125
Vault insured value: $124
Solana ask: $250.00; 2.0× insured — an ask, not an exit

Offer accepted on Courtyard−$100.00Sep 5
Offered $100 and it was taken — $24 under the vault's insured value and $14 under the eBay median. Cert 97677959. The card's only prior Courtyard fill was $92.04, so this is a touch above where the last one traded.
Redeem the physical card from Courtyard−$7.69Sep 5
$7.69, paid the same day the offer was accepted — one upfront charge to ship it out of the vault, postage included. No venue publishes this figure; it is the first of the four unknowns to come back with an answer.
Dispatched by CourtyardSep 15
Courtyard sent the card out of the vault on 15 September — ten days after the $7.69 redemption was paid on the 5th. That interval is the first thing this route has measured that no venue publishes: the time between paying to redeem and the card actually leaving. Nothing further was charged on the way out.
Card arrives
In the post since 15 September. The Latias ex took nine days from order to door on the other route; this leg is measured from dispatch, so the two are not the same clock.
Ship to Collector Cryptcost unknown
Intake, vaulting and tokenisationcost unknown
Collector Crypt's docs say there is no cost to deposit (read 11 Sep). This step is what turns that sentence into a receipt — it stays marked unpriced until the card is in and nothing, or something, has been charged.
List on Collector Crypt
Sold

Listing at

$250

There is a $250 ask on Solana and it is listable — 2.0× insured, inside the 2.5× line past which an ask stops describing a market — but it is not the expectation. Solana sales clear at about 0.90× the vault's insured value, which puts a realistic exit at $112, and forty eBay sales put the card itself at $114.25 (middle half $104–$125). Against that, $107.69 actually spent — $100 for the card and $7.69 to ship it out of the vault — leaves $4.31 of headroom before the two remaining unpriced steps — the postage into Collector Crypt, and whatever it charges to take a card in — are counted. Their docs say the second is nothing (read 11 Sep); if that holds, the postage alone is likely to eat the $4.31, and the $14 discount bought here was smaller than the round trip. That is the finding this route was bought to produce, and it is not final until both steps carry a receipt. Courtyard dispatched the card on 15 September, ten days after the redemption was paid, with nothing further charged; it is in the post.

Physical → Solana

Buy a slab in the wild, send it straight to the vault

Latias ex — Special Art Rare — graded slab, cert 127528426

Latias ex — Special Art Rare2024 · #087/064 · Japanese SV7a Paradise Dragona · PSA 10Our slab · cert 127528426 · our photograph, taken on arrival

Paid: $243.00; $236 + $7 shipping, GameStop
eBay sold, median: $249.99; n=21 · $210–$280
Vault insured value: $210
Solana ask: $500.00; cut from $650 on 4 Sep — same slab
A copy cleared on Polygon: $179.94; 4 Sep · cert 97828283

Bought on GameStop−$243.00Sep 4
$236 plus $7 shipping. Cert 127528426. No redemption leg on this route — the card is already physical, which is what makes it a clean measurement of the Solana side alone.
Card arrivesSep 13
Arrived 13 September, nine days after the order — the first leg on this page to finish with a measured duration rather than a guess. Photographed the same day; the picture beside the card name is this slab, cert 127528426 on its label, and it is the only photograph of it that exists, since a card that has never been vaulted has no render. Nothing has been paid since the $243.
Deposit created at Collector CryptSep 13
The deposit shipment was created from our account the same day the card arrived: one card, declared at $250 for the trip, shipment #732795. It goes to PWCC's vault in Tigard, Oregon — Collector Crypt does not hold cards itself; a partner does. Creating it charged nothing, which is the first figure on this route to come from the account rather than the docs. It is not the intake fee; that is decided when the card is received.
Ship to Collector Crypt−$18.20Sep 14
Posted 14 September by USPS, insured for the $250 declared on the deposit: $18.20 with the insurance. Bound for the PWCC vault in Tigard, Oregon, as shipment #732795. That is $18.20 more than the docs mention anywhere, because it is not Collector Crypt's fee — it is the cost of getting a slab to their partner's door, and it is real money on this route all the same.
Intake, vaulting and tokenisationcost unknown
In the mail to Tigard since 14 September. Collector Crypt's docs say there is no cost to deposit (read 11 Sep), and creating the deposit charged nothing (13 Sep). Neither is the intake itself: the partner vault receives the card, and this step is where whatever it charges — or does not — becomes a receipt. It is the last unpriced cost on this route.
List on Collector Crypt
Sold

Listing at

$500

🔴 CORRECTED 5 Sep. This note used to put the expectation near $225, reached by taking 0.90× the eBay median. That is the wrong base: the 0.90× is measured as a completed Solana sale divided by the VAULT'S INSURED VALUE, across 123 sales, and applying it to an eBay figure inflated the expected recovery by $36 on the one page that must not flatter itself. Against $210 insured the honest expectation is $189. On 4 September a tokenised copy of this exact card — PSA 10, same set, different cert — cleared $179.94 on Polygon, which corroborates $189 far better than $225 did. So: $243 paid, roughly $189 back, about $54 underwater before a single fee is counted. The $500 Solana ask is listable at 2.4× insured, and the same slab asked $650 in August before its seller cut it, but an ask is not an exit. This leg was bought at market rather than under it and it does not clear its costs. It is being run anyway, because what the Solana side actually charges to take a card in — their docs say it is nothing, read 11 Sep — is the number this whole page exists to put a receipt behind. The card arrived 13 Sep and the deposit was created at Collector Crypt the same day, bound for its partner vault — PWCC, in Oregon — at no charge to create. Posted 14 Sep by USPS, insured, $18.20 — so $261.20 is now out against roughly $189 back, about $72 underwater with the postage counted. One receipt remains: the intake.

Why two routes

The Polygon card has to be redeemed out of one vault before it can enter another — two custodians, two fee schedules, and a physical leg in the middle. The GameStop card skips all of that: it is already in hand, so it isolates what the Solana side alone costs. Run together, the difference between them is the price of the redemption leg, which is the number the spread explorer currently has to assume.

What would make this fail

An intake fee nobody publishes. A vault that declines the card. A listing that sits unsold at the asking price, which is the ordinary case — asks realise at about 0.82× of themselves. Any of those ends the trip in the red, and that result gets written up here in the same detail as a good one.

Last updated 2026-09-15. Reference prices come from slabbasis, which reads both chains directly, and can be checked against the same cards on /spread. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy anything.