Free tool
TCG Fee Calculator
What does a card sale actually pocket after marketplace fees, payment processing, postage, and supplies? Enter your numbers — the math below is the same fee-true profit engine FlipBasis runs on every sale.
Why sellers get this wrong
A $25 sale is not $25 of revenue. On TCGplayer's standard marketplace terms (10.75% commission + 2.5% + $0.30 payment processing), fees take about $3.29 before you've shipped anything. Add a stamp, an envelope, a sleeve and a toploader, and a card you bought for $12 nets closer to $8 of profit — a third less than the "$13 profit" mental math suggests. Multiply that gap across a year of sales and it's the difference between a profitable operation and a hobby that loses money invisibly.
The break-even price matters more than the profit
The calculator's break-even figure answers the question that should gate every listing: below what price does this sale lose money? Because percentage fees scale with the sale price but postage and supplies don't, cheap cards break even at surprisingly high multiples of their cost — which is why bulk sellers live or die on shipping strategy.
If you sell more than $600/year, read this twice
Marketplaces report your grosssales to the IRS on a 1099-K once you cross $600. If you can't document what you paid for the cards — your cost basis — that gross number is what you risk being taxed on. FlipBasis exists because we got tired of reconstructing cost basis from spreadsheets in April: it tracks fee-true profit and lot-level cost basis automatically, on every sale.