Marketplace terms

1. Who we are and our role

Trading Card Lane ("we", "us") runs an online marketplace where independent sellers list trading cards and buyers purchase them. Trading Card Lane is operated by Ermal, a sole trader, based in London.

Each sale is a contract between the buyer and the seller. We are not the seller of the cards and don't hold stock. We provide the marketplace, seller shops, checkout and payment collection, Live Verified photos and buyer protection. We take payment from buyers and pay sellers through our payment provider, Stripe.

2. Your account

• You must be 18 or over and give accurate details. One person or business per account.
• Keep your password secure. You're responsible for activity on your account.
• The same account works on the marketplace and on every seller's shop, including shops on their own web address.

3. Buying

• When you pay at checkout, you enter a binding contract to buy the cards in each seller's order.
• Prices include any VAT the seller charges. Postage is shown per seller before you pay.
• Please confirm delivery on your order page when your cards arrive, or tell us about a problem within the buyer protection time limits.
• Your purchases are covered by buyer protection. Business sellers must also honour your statutory rights, including under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013.

4. Selling: your obligations

If you sell on Trading Card Lane, you agree to:

• only list cards you own and have in your possession, and keep quantities accurate;
• describe each card honestly: the exact printing (set code, rarity, edition, language), its condition using our scale, and any flaws;
• only upload photos of the actual card you're selling, never stock images or photos of a different copy;
• dispatch within the handling time shown on your shop, packed in a sleeve and a rigid holder, and add tracking when you mark an order as shipped;
• reply to buyer messages and disputes promptly;
• set up a Stripe account and complete its identity checks to receive payouts. If you sell as a business, you must say so on your shop and meet consumer law obligations, including providing your business details and handling cancellations;
• give us the information we need for HMRC digital platform reporting when we ask for it. We report your income from sales to HMRC under the Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023 for each calendar year in which you make 30 or more sales or receive more than £1,700.00. Once your sales in a year reach 25 or £1,400.00, we ask for your date of birth and National Insurance number or UTR (and your tax number abroad if you're resident elsewhere), or, for a limited company, its registration number, UTR and any VAT number. If you reach the reporting threshold and haven't given them 60 days after our first reminder, we hold your payouts until you do; your orders aren't cancelled or refunded. You can see what we report in your seller dashboard, and we send you a copy each January.

5. Card conditions

Every listing uses this scale (based on Cardmarket's). Buyers rely on it, and disputes are decided against it.

Mint (MT)

Perfect: no scratches, clean surface, back indistinguishable from a fresh booster. Signed or stamped cards are never Mint.

Near Mint (NM)

Looks never played without sleeves. At most a few tiny white spots on the border; no scratches.

Excellent (EX)

Used for a few games without sleeves: minor wear such as a couple of white spots or faint scratches; no creases.

Good (GD)

Used for a long tournament without sleeves: strong wear all round, many white spots, scratches, some dirt; no bends.

Light Played (LP)

Used without sleeves for an extended period. May look very bad but still clearly legal in a sleeved deck.

Played (PL)

As bad as regular unsleeved play gets; doubtful tournament legality even in a sleeve, but not tampered with.

Poor (PO)

Damage beyond regular play: destroyed, tampered (inked or painted borders, scribbles) or obviously illegal.

6. Live Verified

A Live Verified badge means the seller photographed that exact card live on their phone through our capture page, front and back plus a short tilt video where the phone supports it, with a one-time code written beside it. We stamp each photo with the code and the capture time and reject images that have been used before. Uploads from a photo library aren't possible.

The badge shows the seller had the card and what condition it was in when photographed. It is not a grade and does not prove a card is genuine. A capture is current for 60 days; after that the badge reads "Verification expired" until the seller verifies again. Faking a capture, for example by photographing a screen, is a serious breach of these terms.

7. Auctions

• Bidding needs a saved card and a delivery address. Each bid is a binding offer to buy at the final price if you win.
• Proxy bidding. You enter the most you're willing to pay. We bid for you, only as much as needed to keep you in the lead, in standard increments, up to your maximum. Nobody else sees your maximum. If two bidders enter the same maximum, the earlier bid wins.
• Anti-sniping. A bid placed in the last 2 minutes extends the auction to 2 minutes after that bid, as many times as needed, so everyone gets a fair chance to respond.
• Paying. When the auction ends we charge the winner's saved card automatically. If the charge fails, the winner has 24hours to pay from their account.
• Non-payment. If the winner doesn't pay in time, they receive a strike and the next-highest bidder may be offered the card at their own maximum bid, with 48 hours to accept. 2 strikes within 90 days suspend bidding for 30 days. 3 strikes within 365 days ban bidding until our team reviews the account.
• Sellers can't bid on their own auctions or ask others to bid for them (shill bidding).

8. Fees and payouts

Listing is free. When you sell, we charge 5% + 30p per order, plus any boost you choose for promoted listings sold through the marketplace. There's no fee on postage. Full details and examples are on the fees page, which forms part of these terms.

We pay out each order when the buyer confirms delivery, or 10 days after it is marked as shipped. Payouts are held while a dispute or card chargeback on the order is open. We may deduct amounts you owe us, such as refunds after payout, fees kept on seller-caused refunds, or a card chargeback decided against us on your order plus Stripe's dispute fee (up to £20), from future payouts.

9. Prohibited items

You must not list:

• counterfeit cards, or "proxies", reprints or custom cards that imitate official cards, even if described as such;
• cards that have been altered (trimmed, re-coloured, re-backed or cleaned to hide damage) unless the alteration is clearly disclosed;
• stolen goods, or cards you don't have in your possession (pre-orders are allowed only for officially announced products, clearly labelled);
• digital codes or accounts, or anything illegal to sell in the UK.

We remove listings that break these rules and may suspend the seller. Report a listing to [email protected].

10. Disputes and refunds

Buyers can open a dispute up to 14 days after delivery, or 21 days after payment if the order hasn't arrived. Both sides can add messages. Our team decides using the listing, Live Verified captures, tracking and anything either side provides. If the buyer's claim is upheld, we refund the buyer and recover the amount from the seller. Our decisions on disputes are final as far as the marketplace is concerned but don't limit anyone's legal rights. See buyer protection.

11. Suspension and removal

We may remove listings, restrict bidding, hold payouts or suspend accounts and shops when we reasonably believe these terms or the law have been broken, or to protect buyers. We'll tell you why unless the law or an investigation prevents it, and you can ask us to review the decision by emailing [email protected].

12. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits liability that can't be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Otherwise we're not liable for the acts of buyers or sellers, for losses that weren't foreseeable, or for business losses. Our total liability to a seller in any 12 months is limited to the fees that seller paid us in that period.

13. General

• We'll give at least 30 days' notice of changes that affect sellers, and show the date of the latest version at the top.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Consumers in Scotland or Northern Ireland can also bring claims in their local courts.
• Contact: [email protected].