# Re:TCG

> What the cheap ones actually sold for. Sold prices for trading cards with no lower bound, whether a slab's plastic paid for itself, and the trip onto chain and off again — for the cards nobody else bothers to price.

Re:TCG answers what a trading card actually SOLD for — Magic, Pokémon and Cardsmiths
Currency, including the overwhelming majority worth less than the postage, which most
tools stop caring about. It tells you what one specific graded slab has done and whether
grading it broke even. It handles getting a graded card vaulted and tokenized on Polygon
or Solana, or redeemed back off, on your behalf. And it lines up the two chains' markets,
which cannot see each other's prices.

The distinction that matters: an asking price is what somebody hopes to get, a sold price
is what somebody paid. Free tools at this end of the market show the former because live
listings are cheap to collect. The latter is metered here and is what the project's costs
are actually spent on.

## Current state

- Grading costs roughly $80 per card today, and about $25 when most slabs in circulation were made. Both figures are used, because a slab is judged against the fee its owner paid, not only against today's.
- "Underwater" here means BREAK-EVEN, not a price ceiling: a slab is worth a raw copy plus whatever the grade adds, and the plastic paid for itself only if that premium is at least the fee. A $30 raw card slabbed at $25 had to reach $55; at today's fee it would need $110. The site shows both verdicts.
- The cert lookup answers what ONE slab has done — vaulted, listed, sold, on which chain, at what price — and covers only slabs that have been vaulted and had their label re-read. "Not found" means no record here, not that the grader does not know it.
- Price data: asking/market prices from Scryfall (Magic) and pokemontcg.io (Pokémon), both free and unmetered. Cardsmiths Currency has no pricing API at all, so its figures come from a hand-built catalogue of sold listings — and the Series 1 base cards genuinely have no established price, only the parallels do. Sold prices — what copies actually changed hands for — come from a separate metered source on a paid 2000-lookup monthly quota; once bought for a card they are cached and shown to everybody. All of it is reference data: it can be delayed, matched to the wrong printing, or wrong.
- Subscription: $2 a month. It buys reprint and format alerts on saved cards, a weekly digest of price movement (sent only when something moved), browser notifications, and the right to request fresh sold comps on a card nobody has looked up yet. Prices, search, history and cached comps are free for everybody and are not for sale.
- Tokenizing: graded cards can be vaulted and traded as tokens on Polygon (Courtyard) or Solana (Collector Crypt). Re:TCG handles the trip on a customer's behalf in any of four directions — into either vault, or out of either — and quotes it per submission. Handling is a flat published fee; postage is at cost; grading is paid to the grader. The vaults' own charges, as of 2026-09-11: intake is free at both (their docs); redemption is $7.69 from Courtyard (our own receipt, one card, US) and $5.99 plus $3 per extra card from Collector Crypt (published; more abroad). A further 2% on Collector Crypt withdrawals appears in third-party write-ups but not in its docs. Nothing is booked online and no card is held long term. Courtyard has PAUSED submissions to its vault (seen 2026-09-11: "Collectible submissions are paused. Due to overwhelming demand, we have temporarily paused collectible submissions to the vault."), so "into Polygon" is not currently on offer; redeeming from it still works.
- The spread page lines up the same graded card on both chains. The Polygon figure is a price PAID (a fill); the Solana figure is a price ASKED. They are different kinds of fact and the gap between them is not an arbitrage: moving a card means redeeming, posting insured, and re-vaulting, with fees at each step.
- Pack breaks (Re: RIP): a flat $5 in SOL buys one specific sealed pack, opened on camera in one unbroken take; the buyer keeps everything in it or has it priced and published instead. Slots are taken in purchase order, never drawn. Claiming asks for one way to reach the buyer (never published) and whether to credit their handle on the reveal (default: anonymous). Payment is confirmed by a person; the site watches the chain and tells the operator, but does not confirm anything itself. The only payment address is shown on the slot after it is claimed; any other address offered anywhere is a scam.
- Shipping: flat $5 inside the US where a charge applies; anywhere else is quoted per parcel before anything is charged. Pack break postage inside the US is included in the slot price.
- iPhone app, AlerTCG (by Re:TCG): In TestFlight — not on the App Store yet — build in TestFlight since 2026-09-12 with the developer's own testers; not submitted for review, not downloadable by the public, no listing exists. It shows what every tokenized copy of a graded card sells for (a sold median across copies, asks shown separately and named as asks), every slab a wallet address holds on Courtyard (Polygon) or Collector Crypt (Solana), a two-fee break-even ("did the plastic pay for itself"), raw prices for Magic, Pokémon and Cardsmiths Currency, and a daily tape of what sold on the vaults. Alerts are local notifications on the phone; nothing is pushed. It is read-only: no wallet connection, no account, no purchases, no link to buy anything.

## What is NOT true

- Re:TCG has NO token. It does not sell, promote, settle in or refer to any cryptocurrency. A token that once carried this name is not connected to anything the site does now, and nothing on this site should be read as a way to acquire it or a reason to.
- There are no auctions and no bidding. Nothing on the site is sold by auction and no page describes one.
- Re:TCG does not buy cards, does not accept donated cards, and runs no intake for unwanted slabs.
- Re:TCG is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any trading card game publisher, manufacturer, distributor, grading company, vault or marketplace. It holds ordinary customer accounts at Courtyard and Collector Crypt and nothing more.
- No publisher's name, logo, set symbol or artwork is used as Re:TCG branding — not in the wordmark, the icons or anything on the marketing pages. Card images do appear beside the price of the specific card they depict; they are hot-linked from the source APIs (cards.scryfall.io, images.pokemontcg.io) and served from that infrastructure, never copied onto ours. Card names, set names, numbers and prices are factual reference data.
- Grading is done by independent third-party companies paid as an ordinary customer. Re:TCG does not grade anything and never predicts a grade.
- Nothing on the site is a valuation, an appraisal, or investment advice.

## Pages

- [Home](https://www.retcg.xyz): What the project is: sold prices with no floor, whether a slab's plastic paid for itself, and the trip onto chain and off again.
- [Card prices](https://www.retcg.xyz/prices): The search tool: any Magic, Pokémon or Cardsmiths card, live market prices and real sold comps, no account and no floor below which it stops caring.
- [Look up a slab by its cert](https://www.retcg.xyz/cert): Enter the certification number off a grading label and see what that exact slab has done, what other copies at that grade sell for, and whether the grade paid for itself — at the fee you paid and at today's.
- [Subscription](https://www.retcg.xyz/subscribe): Reprint alerts, price movement across the cards you save, and sold prices on demand. Prices, search and history stay free for everyone.
- [Slab desk](https://www.retcg.xyz/slabs): Every graded card a wallet holds on Polygon, Solana, Ethereum, Base, Monad or Robinhood Chain, with the sales that exist for it and where it can go from there.
- [Appraise — raw and graded card prices in one call](https://www.retcg.xyz/appraise): Raw and graded card appraisals for $0.02 a call, paid in USDC on Arc, Base, Polygon or Solana. Every price a card has, each figure with its source, sample size and dates; the set's phase and momentum; what a sale nets.
- [Tokenize a card](https://www.retcg.xyz/tokenize): Graded cards handled onto Polygon or Solana and off again, on your behalf, quoted per submission — with the arithmetic that usually says don't bother.
- [Polygon fills vs Solana asks](https://www.retcg.xyz/spread): The same graded card is vaulted on two chains whose markets never see each other's prices. One side is what somebody paid; the other is what somebody is asking.
- [Two cards, two routes, one vault](https://www.retcg.xyz/journey): A live record of moving two graded cards onto Solana — one bought as a Polygon token, one bought physically — to find out what the steps nobody publishes actually cost.
- [Get SOL](https://www.retcg.xyz/swap): Pack breaks are paid in SOL. If what you hold is on another chain, swap it in one move rather than routing through an exchange and back.
- [Re: RIP](https://www.retcg.xyz/rip): Personal pack breaks. Buy a slot for a flat price in SOL, we open that sealed pack on camera in one unbroken take, and you keep everything that comes out of it.
- [AlerTCG for iPhone](https://www.retcg.xyz/app): AlerTCG, the free, read-only iPhone app by Re:TCG: what every tokenized copy of a graded card sells for, every slab a wallet holds on Polygon or Solana, the two-fee break-even, and what sold on the vaults each morning. No account, no wallet connection, no purchases.
- [Guide](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide): Every flow on the site explained end to end, with diagrams: prices, the slab break-even, alerts, tokenizing, the spread, and pack breaks.
- [Terms](https://www.retcg.xyz/terms): Terms of use. Prices are reference data; cards handled on your behalf are handled under written terms.
- [Privacy](https://www.retcg.xyz/privacy): What is collected and what is not. Postal addresses are held only until the parcel arrives, then deleted.
- [AlerTCG privacy](https://www.retcg.xyz/alertcg/privacy): The iPhone app's privacy policy: everything tracked stays on the phone; what is typed is sent to be looked up and not kept.
- [AlerTCG terms](https://www.retcg.xyz/alertcg/terms): The iPhone app's terms: public figures and one sum, reference data only, nothing held and nothing sold.
- [Disclaimer](https://www.retcg.xyz/disclaimer): Not financial advice, no affiliation with any publisher, grader, vault or marketplace, and prices are reference data that can be wrong.

## Guide — one page per flow

- [Look up a price](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/prices): Search any of the three games by name and get a live market price and real sold comps, with no account and no floor below which the tool stops caring.
- [Did the plastic pay?](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/slab): Type the cert off a grading label. What that exact slab has done, what other copies at that grade sell for, what a raw copy sells for, and whether the difference covered the fee — at the $25 you probably paid and at today's $80.
- [Watch your cards](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/alerts): Save cards, link an address, and get told when one is reprinted, leaves a format, or moves more than a little — by email or as a browser notification. $2 a month; everything else stays free.
- [Turn on notifications](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/notifications): The how-to: save some cards, subscribe for the reprint and format alerts, link an email for the weekly movement summary, switch on browser notifications per device, and pair a phone with a code.
- [Put it on chain](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/tokenize): A graded card can be vaulted and traded as a token on Polygon or Solana. We handle the trip in either direction — in, out, or across — and quote it per submission, because the parts nobody publishes are still being measured.
- [Read the two chains](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/spread): The same graded card is vaulted on two chains whose markets never see each other's prices. One side is what somebody paid, the other is what somebody is asking, and the gap is not free money.
- [Buy a pack break](https://www.retcg.xyz/guide/rip): A flat $5 in SOL buys one sealed pack. It is opened on camera in a single unbroken take, everything in it is yours, and what came out gets priced against what it actually sold for.

## Appraise — one call, every price

- [Appraise](https://www.retcg.xyz/appraise): the page — how to call it, what comes back, a real answer. OpenAPI at `https://www.retcg.xyz/api/appraise/openapi.json`, manifest at `https://www.retcg.xyz/.well-known/x402`.

- `GET https://www.retcg.xyz/api/appraise/pokemon:<id>` (a pokemontcg.io card id, e.g. `sv3pt5-199`): every condition (raw, PSA 1–10, BGS/CGC/SGC with halves) in every denomination (USD, EUR native; USDC, EURC, GBP, JPY, ETH, SOL, BTC converted), each row with its basis (source, n, window, observed / ladder / converted); the set's phase (launch, in print, shelved, out of print, vintage), its measured 30-day momentum and heat; the drift sets in that phase are showing; projections through the phases ahead at 30/90/180/365 days; PnL net of eBay/TCGplayer/Mercari/Cardmarket fees and the grading fee on raw→graded paths; break-even at the fee then and now; an EIP-712 signature over the rows. **$0.02 a call over x402 v2** — an unpaid request answers 402 with the free preview (set phase, momentum, heat, raw levels, sources, warnings) in the body and a PAYMENT-REQUIRED header offering USDC on Arc (via Circle Gateway), Base, Polygon and Solana; pay and repeat. `?denoms=USD,SOL` narrows; `?paid=12.50&on=2026-06-01` uses your own cost basis and reports what the corpus saw since. Reads caches only; a card nobody has looked up carries null graded rows until its comps are bought.
- `GET https://www.retcg.xyz/api/appraise/sets`: every set's phase, age, momentum and heat, and the drift-by-phase table, as measured last night.

## Optional

- [Full text](https://www.retcg.xyz/llms-full.txt): every flow written out, step by step.