This new eBay rival to TCGs wants to make buying and selling ungraded Pokémon cards less of a headache

Speaking from experience, buying and selling rare Pokémon cards on the internet can be a nightmare. Aside from cards expensive enough to be officially graded and sealed inside a fancy box by companies like PSA, hunting down less expensive cards (look, I'm no Post Malone) comes with the constant risk of shelling out money for something that either doesn't arrive, arrives in a different condition than you expected, or turns out to be a total fake.

So I'm intrigued by the lofty promises made by new TCG marketplace company Ungraded, founded by a pair of Cornish Pokémon card collectors (i.e., collectors are from Cornwall, they don't collect Pokémon called Pastyrnip or something) who believe they've found a way to trade cards for real money without the fuss and frustration of rolling dice online.

As the name suggests, Ungraded plans to focus on “raw” cards from titles like Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, as well as other collectible cards like football or American sports cards that have yet to receive an official condition grade.

Rather than requiring sellers to send their cards to an independent specialist and pay to have them graded or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, end up listed with a couple of blurry photos on something like eBay, Ungraded’s seemingly unique imaging technology will take enough high-resolution photographs of the cards submitted by sellers to create a 3D preview for potential buyers to examine.

The apparent promise is that the company's “revolutionary” 3D technology is accurate enough to allow customers to properly judge a card's condition by rotating and zooming through the digital replica made up of hundreds of ultra-high-definition photos, even being able to see things like CMYK printing patterns, as well as scratches, scuffs or centering, meaning they can be seemingly sure of its condition before placing a bid, even without seeing it in person.

Sellers will be able to sell cards worth more than £25, with buyers paying a fee equal to 20% of the value of the card sold for cards worth up to £250; more expensive cards will see the fee reduced to 17.5% for cards worth up to £1,000 and 15% for the most expensive cards worth more than £1,000. Cards with a fixed price will have no additional fee for the buyer (sellers will pay 15% instead), and cards worth less than £25 will charge the seller the difference between 20% of the card value (paid by the buyer) and the minimum fee of £5.

Since cards listed for sale are sent to Ungraded to be photographed and uploaded, cards that don't sell after 30 days will be charged a non-sale fee equal to 1% of the average card price every 30 days after that, so you'd best hope your card sells quickly. When they do sell, Ungraded says it will cover costs like shipping and insurance, so sellers should just send their cards in.

Ungraded plans to launch its marketplace in July and run a series of auctions starting in late May that will include cards from Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Magic: The Gathering. It seems pretty ambitious, as is often the case with these things, so it will be interesting to see how it fares come summer.