Fees and payouts

A fee on each side of the sale, both shown before anybody pays. What a sale costs and when the money moves.

Buyers pay a $2.99 TCG Bolt marketplace service fee

The price on the listing is the price of the collection. On top of it is a flat $2.99 marketplace service fee on each order, shown on the listing next to the price rather than first at checkout. It is a fee TCG Bolt charges for use of the marketplace — ours, not the seller’s — and it covers what every order costs to run whatever the collection is worth: the card payment, the payout to the seller and the shipping label.

Each collection is its own order, so a cart of three carries three fees. A full refund returns the fee with everything else.

It does not buy Buyer Protection. Buyer Protection applies automatically to every eligible purchase at no additional charge. It is not sold, cannot be added to and cannot be declined.

Sales tax may be added where the law requires us to collect it, on the marketplace service fee as well as the collection. It is shown before you pay, and it goes to the state rather than to us.

Sellers pay 11%

11% of the sale price, deducted from the payout. On a $4,000 collection that is $440, leaving $3,560 before what it costs to insure the parcel.

The fee is never less than $12.00. That only matters on a sale under $109.10, where 11% would come to less — a $100 collection pays $12.00. Processing a sale costs us much the same whatever it is for, and the minimum is what lets listings start as low as they do.

The fee is charged on the collection, never on the tax. Tax we collect is added to the buyer’s total and comes to us, because we are the ones who remit it to the state — it is not part of your proceeds and we take no commission on it. Charging a fee on a tax-inclusive total would be taking a cut of money that belongs to a state.

One other thing comes out of the payout: the cost of insuring the parcel, 1.25% of what the collection is insured for. It is yours because the cover is yours — if the parcel is lost in transit, the buyer is refunded and your payment is reversed. We tell you the exact figure when we buy the label, before anything ships.

We add nothing to it. That percentage is what the insurer charges us for the cover, passed on and not marked up, and it is fixed at the moment of the sale so the figure you are shown is the figure you are charged. Where the insurer’s own price turns out to differ from it, the difference is ours either way — we keep nothing when it comes in under, and we absorb it when it comes in over.

Delivery is not one of them. The buyer pays for it, quoted live at checkout, and we buy the label out of what they paid.

Beyond those two there is nothing to pay by default. No listing fee, no monthly fee, no fee to be paid out.

One promotion changes this

Promoting a listing on a cost-per-sale basis costs nothing while it runs and adds 7% to the fee when the lot sells — 18% of the sale price rather than 11%. You choose it deliberately, on the promotion screen, and you are told there exactly what it means.

It binds the listing rather than the promotion. Pausing the promotion, stopping it or letting it finish do not end it, and every later promotion of the same lot is covered by it at no extra cost.

Taking the listing off the marketplace costs you nothing, and nothing is owed while it is down. Putting it back up carries the commitment for a further 30 days — a sale inside that window is charged 18%, a sale after it is charged the ordinary 11%. What those days are for is the promotion that already ran: it was paid for by us, for as long as the lot was listed, and a sale shortly afterwards is plausibly the sale it found. Every relisting starts them again, so removing a listing and putting it straight back is not a way to sell the same lot for less.

Promoting a listing for a set budget instead — paying for the people who see it — does not change the fee at all.

When you get paid

1. The buyer pays into your own account with our payment processor, and it is locked there — you are not paid yet. Where that money sits and when it moves is the Buyer Protection Policy.
2. You confirm how it is packed within 3 days and we send you an insured, tracked label to print.
3. It is delivered. The buyer has 3 business days to check it against the manifest, or 5 on a larger lot.
4. The window closes, or the buyer confirms early. Funds are released and reach your bank 3 to 5 business days later.

Business days rather than calendar days, so a Friday delivery does not spend the weekend counting down against a window nobody could act on.

Why the money is locked

It is the whole reason this marketplace can be used by two strangers. The buyer is not sending several thousand dollars to somebody they have never met; you are not posting a collection to somebody who might charge it back. The payment lands in your account and freezes there until the buyer has checked the collection, and neither side has to trust the other.

Getting set up to be paid

Payouts run through Stripe, which handles identity verification and the bank details. You will be asked to complete that before you can submit a listing for review — not to be awkward, but because a collection that sells to a seller who cannot be paid is a problem for everyone involved.

Stripe holds those documents; we never see them. We are told only whether verification passed.

Refunds

If a dispute is upheld and the collection goes back, the buyer is refunded the price, the delivery, the marketplace service fee and the tax in full, and sends it back on an insured return label that costs them nothing. Both labels are the seller’s cost — the one that sent the lot and the one that brings it back — along with the parcel insurance cost on the parcel, and all of it comes out of the fee we return to them on the refunded sale. A parcel lost in transit is the exception: its postage and insurance cost stay ours. See disputes and returns.

The exact terms are in the Seller Agreement. Where this page and that one differ, that one governs — this is the explanation, not the contract.

TCG Bolt does not give tax advice. What you owe on your proceeds is between you and your own accountant.