I love collecting Japanese Pokémon cards, but I’ve had some bad experiences with Mercari sellers—scams, misleading listings, and other frustrations. I’ve been using Buyee for a while, but they offer little to no after-sale assistance when things go wrong.
It got me thinking: would high-resolution scans of cards when they arrive at the warehouse, along with solid after-sale service, matter to collectors like you?
I’m seriously considering building my own platform to address these pain points(I have a solid computer science background). The idea is to provide transparency with high-res scans so buyers can verify card conditions upon arrival at the warehouse and offer reliable after-sale support to handle issues like misleading listings or damaged cards.
Would this be something you’d find valuable? Do you think the Pokémon TCG community would be interested in a platform like this? Or do you have suggestions for what features such a service should include?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice—especially from those who’ve faced similar struggles with buying cards from Japan.
Id be curious about it myself overall, but would your platform do this for free?
People that buy graded cards do not need the verification guarantee, and people that buy raw cards mainly use ebay since their money back guarantee is pretty solid.
My question to OP is why I would use their platform over all the other methods for buying, and what would the prices for the services entail?
It takes a tremendous effort to get enough people to support a new service like this because so many people are all bandwagon’d together promoting what they already know.
It sounds like this would almost need to be a service you sell to buyee so they can provide their customer base with the scans etc.
I do not know what the sellers perspective on mercari is like but I do know the return process is non-existent.
So perhaps these scans may not be something buyee would be interested in.
I have had good luck requesting photos and even additional photos with buyee to confirm legitimacy and condition.
I think from a middleman perspective this role is filled with eBay authenticity guarantee in the American market.
In all situations I think buyer awareness is the most important thing. Don’t buy poncho pikachus in mint condition listed waaay below market. Check seller’s and ask fellow collectors their opinion of the sellers before making a big purchase.
I’m considering offering free high-resolution scans for cards priced over 10,000 yen. For cards priced below that, I’m thinking of charging around 200–300 yen for the service.
I believe most people, including myself, buy from Japan because the Japanese card market often has mint-condition vintage raw cards that are hard to find elsewhere. Personally, I always buy raw cards from Japan to grade them later. However, many times I’ve been scammed by Mercari sellers, and Buyee has been unable to offer any assistance.
That’s why I think a service like this is so important—it could provide buyers with transparency and peace of mind by verifying the condition of the cards before shipping.
I think the reason Buyee doesn’t offer this specific service is because TCG is only a small part of their business. I want to build a platform specifically for Japanese card collectors, focusing solely on this niche market. However, I’m unsure how large this market will be.
From my personal experience, after I stopped using Buyee, I had a friend in Japan help me buy cards. He successfully assisted me and his other customers in winning multiple disputes with Mercari sellers. This is another reason why I believe a specialized platform, with support for things like that, could fill a crucial gap for collectors who have faced similar issues.
Charging only 200-300 yen is too cheap for you to do. Also charging what you should be charging to make it worth it, probably 750 yen, gets a little pricey for people. Buyee is nice because of consolidation and 1 shipping fee. If buying cheaper cards, you can afford to get scammed every now and then because the deals are good compared to eBay.
Tcgplayer having Japanese now offers much needed competition and buyer protection
I think this is a great idea, but might run in to some implementation problems. Are you based in Japan? I assume not, because you’re using Buyee. First of all, how do you plan to set up a business in Japan?
Second, the problems with buyer protection on Japanese sites are largely the result of platform-based policies, not middlemen. Middlemen practices certainly enable scams, but to the best of my understanding there is limited recourse on Mercari and Yahoo if you don’t receive the item pictured in the condition described. Certainly nothing like eBay’s money back guarantee. How do you plan to navigate this? What happens when an item arrives that isn’t as described? Will you hope to recoup the money from the seller and return the item? Are you effectively running a self-insured business that pays out to customers when their ordered item isn’t exactly what they expect? If it’s the latter, then your fees should be fairly significant and increase with the cost of the item.
Third, how do you plan to manage what is quickly going to become a scam-navigation service? Effectively you aren’t just offering free scans, you’re offering free Japan-based navigation of the (limited) dispute processes on Yahoo and Mercari. If this service existed today, I’m buying every questionable listing I see because there’s no downside for me. You can deal with getting my money back. For everything else that I don’t think is a scam, I’ll just buy through Buyee and cut my losses if it’s not what I wanted.
Yeah, you’re right, Buyee is great for consolidation and a single shipping fee, which is definitely a feature my platform should aim to offer as well. However, when it comes to cheaper cards, it’s easier to take the risk of getting scammed, but for me personally, I mainly buy minty raw vintage cards from Base to BW era, and they’re typically priced above 10,000 yen. It would be really helpful to have some form of protection and the option to get my money back in case things go wrong.
As for TCGPlayer, it’s great to see them offering Japanese cards, but from my experience, they don’t have as many minty vintage cards or even minty modern cards compared to Mercari or Yahoo Auction. That’s why I feel there’s still a gap in the market for a platform that specializes in providing better buyer protection and support for the type of cards I’m looking for.
Yes, I am based in the States, but my friend, who is based in Japan, will help set up the business there. He’s already been assisting many customers with similar issues for a decade, and we both agree that there is a real demand for this service. I’ll handle the tech side, while he will manage the operations in Japan.
Regarding your second point about buyer protection: From my personal experience, I’ve had success winning disputes when the item I received didn’t match the description. For example, if a card in the listing claims to have no creases or whitening, but the card arrives with visible damage, I’ve been able to get a refund or resolution about 90% of the time. However, I do recognize that this doesn’t work every single time, as there are some cases where disputes may not be resolved in the buyer’s favor. But I still believe this is a good service to provide to customers.
One reason my friend has been so successful in these disputes is because he always has his camera on and records the opening of the packages, which serves as strong evidence to present to the platform. This added level of transparency has helped ensure that he has the proof necessary to win disputes more consistently. I believe this approach could be valuable for a platform like mine, as it provides a clearer, more reliable way to handle disagreements and ensure that buyers are fairly compensated when issues arise.
If the plan is to always have a camera on and these high res scans, that’d be great, but I feel like the cost of the equipment/people needed if the service actually takes off as the Buyee TCG alternative would accumulate really quickly.
I understand your concern about the potential for abuse of the service if it becomes a “scam-navigation” platform. The goal of offering free scans and dispute resolution support isn’t to create a loophole for people to exploit but to offer a fair and transparent way for collectors to confidently buy from Japanese platforms like Mercari and Yahoo Auction.
To address your concern: while I want to provide high-quality services such as scans and support with dispute processes, this will not be a free-for-all service for dubious buyers. For instance, the service would require verification from buyers that the product did not match the description (using pictures and evidence), just as platforms like eBay do when handling returns. There will be strict guidelines for the cases we take on, and I’d aim to limit the service to legitimate disputes where the buyer clearly received an item different from what was described.
Moreover, I’m not planning to bear the full risk of refunding customers for every questionable purchase—there will be limits to the kinds of disputes the platform can handle, and fees will be structured to cover the costs of offering this service. The goal is to offer value to genuine collectors who face challenges with the current buying process, not to create a loophole for people to take advantage of the system.
Honestly, I don’t think we’ll have more than 200 customers because I know this market is really niche. My main goal is just to provide valuable service for my fellow Japanese card collectors, rather than trying to scale massively.
Theoretically everyone would benefit from good pictures, but modern smart phones are more than capable of this if used properly. A high quality scanning service sounds unneccessarilly complicated, expensive and time consuming for what it’s worth
As others have pointed out grading basically solves this problem and PSA even provides high quality scans by cert number now. NM condition on raw listings has to be taken with a pinch of salt otherwise people would only buy guaranteed raw 10s and return anything less so they can make infinite profit by grading cards. There are buyers out there who abuse the ebay system by doing this. As a buyer I don’t expect gem mint and as a seller it’s frustrating when buyers do
Single-handedly creating your own profitable platform that competes with trusted established ones worth millions isn’t realistic without a huge investment IMO
It’s unfortunate that some platforms have poor buyer protection so personally I would avoid them or stick to sellers with good reviews. I’m not sure what type of scams you mean or if you just mean that you have bought something that said NM that you planned to grade and it arrived in a condition that would grade a PSA 6 or 7 and not a 9 or 10
In my opinion, Buyee’s very crude photo request feature is already pretty effective. I’m not sure that a high-def scan will be desired by most buyers, especially given that the major issue with listing photos is sellers obscuring surface indentations.
Nevertheless, what you are describing is something that Buyee should implement for a premium, not a standalone service. In a perfect world, Buyee would also authenticate the item’s condition for a fee and instantly initiate returns on behalf of the buyer. However, they can’t do this, as it will clog up their pipeline, reduce the number of sellers that they can buy from, and lead to a lot headaches.
If Mercari had an interest in reducing scams, they would work on it internally or externally with proxy buying services like Buyee. I’m sure that they haven’t done so because it will not appreciably impact their bottom dollar.
I don’t think that this will be the best use of your energy and time, especially given that you are operating outside of the company that ultimately needs to implement this service for effective scaling and testing.
That said, it sounds like you are smart and motivated. I hope that you continue to think of new ways to improve our collecting sphere. Good luck!
Yeah, I agree that grading solves many of these issues, but the main reason people buy raw cards from Japan is the potential value. Raw cards are often significantly cheaper compared to PSA 10s, and many buyers either collect them as-is or aim to profit by grading and reselling them.
The scams I’m referring to don’t involve buyers expecting guaranteed raw 10s. Instead, most buyers are taking a gamble on listings described as 目立った傷や汚れなし (no noticeable damage or dirt) on platforms like Mercari. But, sometimes they end up receiving cards with creases, whitening, or other visible damage.
I’m not trying to compete with Buyee across the board. My focus is on improving the experience for TCG collectors specifically. Platforms like Buyee handle many product categories, and TCG is just one small part of their business. I think there’s room to enhance how the TCG segment is managed, especially for buyers who value transparency and want to minimize the risk of unpleasant surprises.
That said, you’re right that this isn’t a massive market, and it’s definitely a niche service. I’m more focused on creating value for a small group of collectors rather than trying to build a platform that competes on a massive scale.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback! I think you make some great points.
I agree that Buyee’s photo request feature is effective to a certain degree, but it doesn’t always address the key issue of sellers hiding surface damage like indentations. That’s where high-res scans could help, especially for collectors who are grading-focused or care about transparency. It’s not something everyone might need, but for buyers of higher-end vintage cards, it could be a game changer.
I get why you feel this might be better as an upgrade to Buyee rather than a standalone platform. However, I think Buyee’s strength is in being a jack-of-all-trades proxy service. TCGs are just one tiny part of what they do. A specialized platform could focus solely on collectors’ needs, without overloading Buyee’s operations.
You’re absolutely right about Mercari, too. They probably won’t tackle these issues unless it significantly impacts their profits. But that’s where a niche platform could come in—serving collectors who are frustrated with the current system and are willing to pay for better transparency and support.
I really appreciate your encouragement! My goal isn’t to reinvent the wheel but to create something that adds value to our community. Even if it starts small, I’m passionate about improving the experience for collectors like us.
Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate your response!
I’m curious how scans would help buyers see indents. Are you hoping to build some sort of convolutional neural net trained on surface indents of flat scans of trading cards? Or perhaps you’re talking about a 3D scan like what TAG does?
Typically, the best way to highlight indents is to take an image of the card at an angle, where light could reflect off of the concave surface of the dent. Most flat scans will have some difficulty in highlighting concave surfaces.
Yeah you are right, I think it would make sense to include a manual inspection step for cards where surface quality is crucial—especially for high-value or vintage cards. Having a person check for indentations and use angled lighting for photos could complement the scans and provide a more thorough evaluation.
This might not be scalable for every card, but for higher-end purchases, it could be a key feature to ensure transparency and help collectors make informed decisions.
because I know this market is really niche. My main goal is just to provide valuable service for my fellow Japanese card collectors, rather than trying to scale massively.