The manifest guarantee

The manifest is the list of what is in a collection. It is the thing you are buying against, and the thing a dispute is decided on.

What it is

Every listing carries one: each card or group of cards, the set, the condition, and the grading where a card is graded. The seller writes it. We check it against the photographs before the listing goes live, and cards above a value threshold need photographs of their own — front and back.

What it promises

That the collection matches it. The cards listed are the cards present, in the quantities given, in the conditions stated. That is the seller’s statement, and it is the one thing the whole marketplace rests on.

If it does not match, you are covered. Specifically:

• Cards missing, different, or fewer than listed.
• Condition worse than the manifest claimed.
• Anything not genuine — reprints, fakes, or a slab that is not what it says.
• A sealed product whose seal is not what the photographs showed. See below — the guarantee on sealed items is worded differently, because you cannot open one to check it.

Any of those and you return the lot on an insured label that costs you nothing, and are refunded in full. See disputes and returns.

Sealed products

A booster box, an Elite Trainer Box or a bundle is listed as itself rather than as the cards inside it, because nobody knows what those are — that is what sealed means. So the guarantee on a sealed row is a different sentence, and it is worth reading before you buy one.

What is guaranteed: that the product is the one named, that its seal is intact where the listing says it is, and that it is in the condition stated — factory sealed, sealed with a damaged box, or opened. The photographs the seller took of the wrap and the seams before it shipped are the record, and a parcel that arrives with a seal that does not match them is a dispute we will decide in your favor.

What is not: what is inside. We cannot promise a box has not been searched and re-wrapped by somebody upstream of the seller, and neither can they. Nobody can open it to find out without destroying the thing you paid for.

Opening it ends the guarantee on that item. That is not a rule we made to be difficult — it is the nature of the product. Once a box is open there is no way to tell an unlucky pull from a box that was light when it arrived, and any marketplace claiming otherwise is guessing. Check the seal against the photographs; that is the check that exists.

What it does not promise

That the stated market value is what the collection is worth. Stated market value is the seller’s own arithmetic, added up across their own manifest, and it is labeled as theirs everywhere it appears. We do not appraise collections and we do not endorse that number.

A disagreement about what a lot is worth is not a disagreement about whether the manifest was accurate, and only the second one is covered. The same goes for the market moving after you bought.

It also does not promise a grade. If a card is in a PSA 8 holder, the guarantee is that it is genuinely in a PSA 8 holder — not that PSA should have said 9.

How we check

A dispute is decided on the manifest, the seller’s photographs and the carrier tracking. Those are the three things both sides were told we would use, which is why they are the three things we use — not impressions, and not who wrote the longer email.

This is also why photographs are required rather than encouraged. A manifest with no pictures behind it is an assertion; a manifest with pictures is evidence, and it protects an honest seller at least as much as it protects you.

The window

You have 3 business days from delivery to check the lot against the manifest and say something, and 5 on a larger lot — 500 items or more, or 50 or more graded cards and sealed products together. That is the protection — once it closes, the seller has been paid and the sale is done.

Open the parcel and go through it when it arrives. That is the whole job the guarantee asks of you.

This is the explanation. What you are owed when a lot does not match is the Buyer Protection Policy, and it sits under the Terms of Service. Where this page and those differ, those govern.