Guide
How all of this actually works.
Six flows, in the order you would meet them. Nothing here is a summary of something else — each one describes what the site really does, including the parts that are not switched on yet.
In four steps
The short version.
Ask what it sold for
Not what someone is asking — what a copy actually changed hands for, graded copies included. Free, no account, and no floor underneath it, because most tools quietly stop caring somewhere around a dollar and that is precisely where the questions start.
See the gap
Grading runs about $80. The card is a common with a bent-looking dragon on it. Stacking those two numbers is not a punchline here, it is the measurement — it tells you whether a slab in a bin is worth lifting out of it.
Bid on the acrylic
Slabs come out of the vault and go up for auction, settled in the token. That is what the token is for. There is nothing else to do with it and nothing else is claimed.
Fees restock both
Trading fees pay the data bill and buy the next box of graded nothing. Both get posted with what they cost, so the spending is something you can check rather than something you are told.
Look up a price
Looking up what a card is worth
Search either game by name and get a live market price, with no account and no floor below which the tool stops caring.
- 01
Type a name
Two characters is enough to start. Searching runs as you type and every request cancels the one before it, so the table always matches the box rather than whichever request happened to come back last.
- 02
Both games at once, or one
Magic comes from Scryfall, Pokémon from pokemontcg.io, and the two are merged and sorted together. Either source can be switched off if you only care about one.
- 03
Sort, and filter to the ceiling
Cheapest, dearest or alphabetical. The "under water only" filter hides everything worth more than it costs to grade — about $80 — which is the whole population this site is about.
A card with no price sorts last in every direction. An unpriced card is not "cheapest" — it is unknown, and floating it to the top would mislead.
- 04
Open the exact printing
Each row links out to the marketplace listing for that specific printing, where the picture and the live listings are. Nothing about the card is reproduced here beyond its name, set, number and price.
Results are a window of at most 60 matches per source, so "cheapest" means cheapest of what was fetched. The footer says so whenever the set was truncated.
Prices are reference data from public sources. They can be delayed, matched to the wrong printing, or simply wrong — and when a source does not answer, the page says which one failed instead of quietly showing you a shorter list.
Re: CYCLE
Sending in a slab you do not want
Post in a graded card, it gets photographed, staged and auctioned, and your name goes on the lot.
- 01
Tell us what it is
The form takes the card, the grade and the certification number. Nothing is committed at this point and no address is exchanged in either direction.
- 02
It gets looked up
The certification number is checked against the grader's own database, and the card is priced. Anything worth less than the $80 it cost to grade is exactly the population wanted here — somebody already paid more for the plastic than the card will ever fetch.
Every cert number shown on a lot is public. Don't take our word for it — look any of them up yourself.
- 03
Postage instructions come back
By email, to the address on the form. You pay the postage — that is the part that makes a donation cost something, and it is the only contribution that leaves you with less than you started.
- 04
It goes on the stage
Photographed in its slab, listed with its certification number, and credited to whoever sent it. Donated lots stock the auctions without spending a cent of fees.
Prizes are never sold for cash. A donated card goes to whoever wins it, or stays in the vault.
Place a bid
Bidding on a lot
Connect a wallet, sign a message to prove it is yours, and bid in $RETCG. Nothing is transferred to place a bid.
- 01
Connect a wallet
The connect panel lists the wallets actually installed in this browser. Connecting exposes a public address and nothing else — no balance is read and no transaction is prepared.
- 02
Sign the bid
Bidding signs a plain-text message naming the lot, the amount and the moment. It is a signature, not a transaction: it costs no fee, moves nothing, and cannot be replayed against a different lot because the lot is named inside the text that was signed.
The server rebuilds that exact message from its own copy of the lot and checks the signature against it. A bid whose text does not match what the server would have written is rejected.
- 03
Raise without starting over
A later bid on the same lot only asks for the difference. If you are already the high bidder the site refuses to outbid you rather than quietly taking a second bid at a higher price.
- 04
Watch the clock
A lot is live only while it is open and its closing time is still ahead. The board sorts on that, not on a status flag, so a lot whose clock has run out cannot appear as live.
Lots on the stage are previews until they are priced from a live $RETCG quote. Bids open when they are.
Win and settle
Winning a lot and paying for it
The high bid at close wins, and settles in $RETCG. Half of what is paid is burned and half goes into the pool.
- 01
The clock runs out
Highest signed bid at close takes the lot. There is no extension, no soft close and no reserve beyond the opening price.
- 02
Send the tokens
Settlement is not automatic yet. There is no published address to send to, and the site says so plainly rather than showing a box that does nothing. Winners are contacted directly until it is wired.
Nothing is owed while there is nowhere to pay. Do not send tokens to any address given to you in a message.
- 03
What happens to it
50% of the $RETCG received is burned and 50% goes into the liquidity pool. Both halves land on chain, which is the only reason it is worth stating — don't take our word for it, go and look at the transactions.
Neither half goes to the operator.
Auctions are the only thing the token does. Nothing else is claimed for it, and nothing here is an investment.
Get it posted
Getting the card sent to you
A signed address form after settlement, flat $5 inside the US, quoted per parcel anywhere else.
- 01
Prove it is your win
The address form appears only for a lot that is closed, paid and won by the connected wallet, and submitting it signs a message the same way bidding does. The server re-checks all three — the form is a convenience, not the control.
- 02
Fill in where it goes
Name, address, country. Postage is a flat $5 within the US.
- 03
Abroad is quoted, not guessed
International postage varies per parcel, so you get an actual number worked out for your address before anything is charged. No estimate is shown that could turn out to be wrong.
- 04
Then it is deleted
The address is kept until the parcel arrives and then removed. It is never logged, never shown in an error message, and nothing about it is remembered for next time.
The form deliberately does not save anything between visits. A convenience cache would quietly break that promise.
Where the money goes
What the fees and the bids pay for
Trading fees buy data quota and graded cardboard. Auction proceeds are split between a burn and the pool.
- 01
Fees buy lookups
Sold-comps data is metered. The free tier is 100 lookups a month and runs out early, so the 2000-a-month tier at $9 is already subscribed and paid out of pocket. Fees are what stop it being out of pocket — and that quota is the whole difference between a demo and a tool that answers every question put to it.
- 02
Fees buy cardboard
Graded cards bought out of bulk lots and shop bins — the ones worth less than the plastic around them — then auctioned back here. What each one cost gets posted alongside it.
- 03
Bids burn and pool
$RETCG paid for a lot is split 50/50 between a burn and the liquidity pool.
These are intentions, not a guaranteed allocation, and they are never rendered as fixed percentages of anything except the auction split — which is the one part that is checkable on chain.
What counts
If grading costs more than the card, it qualifies.
Grading runs about $80, so anything worth less than that is under water. That is the entire requirement — it does not have to be old, rare, or interesting to anybody but you. A few you will recognise on sight:
The junk rare
Gold border, holo dragon, the best card you owned in 1999. Books at ninety cents and has never once been played.
The bulk common
You own forty. Everyone owns forty. Dealers price them by the pound and they are not wrong to.
The one you pulled yourself
Worth nothing, and you can still describe the carpet you were sitting on when it came out of the wrapper.
The tenth reprint
Mechanically identical to the expensive one. Printed so many times that this particular copy will never be the expensive one.
The shoebox stratum
Four hundred cards compressed under their own weight since the Clinton administration, smelling faintly of cardboard and school.
The graded nothing
Somebody already paid $80 to seal a four-dollar common in acrylic forever. These are the ones we go looking for.
How to help
You already own everything you need.
Queries
Look things up. What people actually search for decides which data is worth paying to enrich, and it costs you nothing to vote that way.
Finds
Cheap slabs surface constantly in bulk listings and shop bins, and almost everyone scrolls past them. Post one, the room picks it, the treasury buys it, your name goes on the lot.
Donations
Post in graded cards you do not want. It costs you real postage, it stocks the auctions without spending a cent of fees, and it is the only contribution that leaves you with less than you started.
Bids
Auctions are the only sink the token has. A bid is the one contribution that directly pays for the next lot.
That is the whole thing.
RETCG buys graded cards that were never worth grading. There is nothing else to do with it and nothing else is claimed for it.