Consignment terms

These are the terms we consign cards on, and they are part of your contract with us rather than a summary of it. The receipt you sign at the appointment says so on its face: it lists your cards and their agreed prices, sets the commission and the term, and names this page as part of the same agreement. The two are read together. Where the receipt and this page genuinely conflict about your cards or your prices, the receipt governs, because it is the one that was written about your collection.

Consignment means we sell your cards for you. You keep ownership until a card sells; we keep possession, scan and list them, handle the buyer, and pay you your share.

Who these terms are between

You, the consignor, and Jupiter Coastal Media LLC, a Florida limited liability company trading as JupiterTCG. There is no public storefront and no mail-in consignment; everything starts with an online submission and an appointment.

What we take

We consign in batches, with a minimum total agreed list value of $250 per batch. There is no minimum per card - a batch can be one card or two hundred, as long as the batch clears that value.

We decide what to accept after seeing the cards in person. Anything we do not take goes home with you the same day; nothing is kept without being written on the intake receipt.

The standing list of what we will not take on consignment:

• Bulk and commons below our minimum. The fees and the shelf space cost more than the cards return.
• Sealed and unopened product. We buy sealed outright, but we will not hold somebody else's sealed box and pay them for it before anyone can know what is inside.
• Anything that is not a trading card - memorabilia, game-used items, comics, coins, figures. Signed cards only where the signature is certified on the slab itself; a certificate that arrived separately from the card is not something we can check.
• Cards you do not own outright, cards under dispute, and cards from anyone under 18. If you are settling an estate we need to see that you are the person entitled to sell.
• Collections with mould, mildew, insect or rodent activity, or a heavy smoke smell. We store other people's cards in the same room as yours, and that is not a risk we can pass on to them.

Most of what we decline, we decline because we cannot check it, not because we think anything is wrong with it. And taking a card at the appointment is not a promise to list it: every card is scanned front and back at the same scale before it goes on sale, and every graded card's certificate is checked against the grading company's own record. Anything we cannot list comes back to you at our cost, at an appointment we arrange, and the rest of your batch carries on unaffected. The one exception is a card the certificate check comes back against, which is dealt with at the end of this page.

Before we take possession

Two things happen before any card leaves with us, both at the appointment and both in your hands before you go:

1. You sign a consignment agreement covering the batch.
2. We produce an itemized intake receipt listing every card we are taking, its condition as recorded, and its agreed list price.

If either of those is missing, the cards stay with you. We do not take possession on a handshake.

Where we list your cards

You authorize us to list and sell the cards on our website, on eBay, on TCGplayer, on Whatnot, and in person, in whatever combination we judge will sell the card. A card listed in several places is delisted everywhere else as soon as it sells.

We scan the cards ourselves and the scans are ours. You are welcome to a copy of them.

Pricing and price changes

Every card gets an agreed list price, written on the intake receipt when you sign. That is where it starts.

Cards move at different speeds, so prices move too. Reductions within 10% of the agreed price are at our discretion; larger reductions are agreed with you by email and recorded on the item.

That is a real record, not a courtesy: the email is what authorizes the change and the note stays attached to the card, so a price you never agreed to cannot appear on your statement, with the one exception set out at the end of this page.

Your receipt has a floor beside each price where you set one: the lowest price you told us you would take. Not every card has one, and a card where none was agreed prints a dash rather than a blank, because that is a term of the deal too. We write a floor down so it is in writing rather than in somebody's memory.

Where you set a floor, it binds us: we do not list or reduce that card below it. Going lower takes your agreement in writing, and what you agreed is recorded on the card. Where no floor was agreed — the dash on your receipt — the rule above is the whole rule.

Our commission

Flat 15% of the sale price; platform fees come out of the sale first, and postage is never deducted from you.

Your agreement records the commission basis in force on the day you sign, and you are paid under that basis for its whole term. Changing the setting later does not reach back into an agreement already signed.

Here is what that looks like on a card that lists on eBay and ships tracked. Platform fees are the marketplace’s, not ours, and the shipping line is shown so you can see it is not yours:

Fees and postage vary by marketplace and by card, so your figures will differ. The arithmetic does not: every line on your statement is computed this way.

When a sale settles and when you are paid

A sale settles 45 days after the order ships. A refund or cancellation recorded before then stops the sale settling; one recorded after it is reversed on your ledger. On a card sold through our own website we also check its order before it settles for an open payment dispute and for a refund that has not gone through, and either one holds the money until it is resolved. We cannot run that check on eBay, TCGplayer, Whatnot or a sale in person, where a buyer claim reaches your ledger as the refund or cancellation we record against the sale. The wait clears the window every channel we sell on gives a buyer to start a claim.

A sale we make in person does not ship, so it settles on the day of the sale: there is no postage and no marketplace claim window. Settling is not the same as being paid: a settled balance goes out on the next payout run, whatever day it settled on.

Settled balances are paid out monthly, on the 1st, covering every sale that settled by the last day of the prior month. What usually holds a payout is taxpayer details we are required to collect and do not have yet; the Taxes section below says what happens then. The other is money from a card we have stopped over, which is dealt with at the end of this page.

Your balance is a running total of settled sales less our commission and the marketplace's fees. Postage is not deducted: whatever it costs to ship a card of yours, on our own site or on a marketplace, it never comes off what you are owed. The balance is derived from the ledger, never typed in by hand, and you can ask for a statement covering any date range at any time.

You choose how you are paid when you sign: a bank transfer we send from our own account, Zelle, or cash at an appointment. We do not post cheques. You can change the method by telling us in writing before a payout date, and we read the details back to you before the first payment goes out.

There is no minimum. If you are owed six dollars you are paid six dollars.

If we ever send your money to the wrong place, that is our mistake and not yours. You are still owed every cent and we send it again at our cost.

Refunds and returns after a sale

If a buyer returns a card after the sale has settled, the payout is reversed on your ledger: the commission and the fees come back too, so you are put back where you were rather than charged for the buyer changing their mind. The card comes back into consignment and can be relisted.

If a buyer's bank reverses the payment for your card — a chargeback — the money is taken back out of our account and you are not owed it. You are paid out of what a buyer pays us, so a sale whose payment is reversed earns no payout: if it has not settled it does not settle, and if it already has, the payout is reversed on your ledger the same way a return is, named against the sale it came from. The buyer keeps the card in that case, so there is nothing to relist.

A reversal can leave your balance below zero for a while. The next settled sale absorbs it; we do not ask you for money back when a buyer changes their mind or a bank reverses a payment.

The term, and what happens at the end of it

Each batch runs for 90 days from the day you sign. We will contact you before the term ends.

Bringing us more cards later starts a new agreement rather than extending this one, with its own receipt and its own term running from the day you sign it. That is so every card has one clock and the receipt in your hand always lists exactly what you just handed over. The minimum batch value applies to a first batch; if you already have cards with us, you can add to them without meeting it again.

We do not guarantee that any card will sell, and nothing here is a promise of a price. You are paid out of what a buyer pays us, so a card that does not sell within the term earns no payout; what you get back is the card.

At the end of the term you choose one of two things for anything unsold:

• Authorize a price reduction and extend, which is usually what sells a card that has sat.
• Take the cards back. We arrange an appointment and give you an itemized return receipt for everything handed over.

Cards already listed and about to sell are not pulled mid-transaction; a card with a buyer waiting completes first.

None of that means you have to wait for the end of the term. You can ask for any or all of your cards back at any time, for any reason, with no fee; how that works is set out under "Taking cards back early" below.

Care, storage and insurance

Your cards are stored sleeved and in top loaders or in their slabs, indoors, out of sunlight, in a locked space, and separately identified as yours. They are never mixed into our own inventory: every card carries its own record and is traceable to your intake receipt.

We do not insure your cards while they are here. Insuring them is not something we undertake to do, and you should know that before you sign rather than after something happens. If you want your collection covered, arrange it yourself. The itemized receipt you sign, with every card and its agreed price on it, is the record to start from, and you can ask us for a copy while we are holding your cards. Some insurers will want more than that, an independent appraisal; ask us and we will tell you where to find one. We name nobody - a name from us would be a recommendation we are not in a position to make - but these three bodies each publish a directory you can search: the International Society of Appraisers, the American Society of Appraisers and the Appraisers Association of America. The one exception is postage, and the cover there is the carrier's rather than ours: an order from our own store at or above the amount our shipping page names for signature and insurance travels signed for and insured, and a card sold on a marketplace ships under whatever that marketplace provides. Either way that is cover on a package, not a policy on your collection.

We take reasonable care of your cards and we handle them the way we handle our own. That is the standard we hold ourselves to; it is not a promise that nothing can ever happen to them, and it does not make us your insurer. If a card of yours is lost, damaged, stolen or destroyed while it is with us, or does not come back to you for any other reason, sold by mistake, handed to the wrong person, or simply not where it should be, the most we can ever owe you for it is its agreed price: the one written on the intake receipt you signed, or the lower price if it had since been reduced under the pricing section above. That limit applies however it happened and whatever you call the claim, our own mistake included. Where a card is damaged rather than lost, the most we owe is what the damage took off that agreed price, measured against the record we made of the card when it came in, and never more than that agreed price. A card we have paid the damage on stays yours; a card we have paid the agreed price for in full becomes ours. Where several cards are affected, the most we can owe is the total of their agreed prices.

The same ceiling follows a card in transit, wherever we have sent it. One leg is different. A card that has already sold belongs to the buyer, so if it goes missing on the way to them, what we can owe you is not the price on the receipt but what that sale would have paid you, and a card we have paid those proceeds on in full is ours. If it comes back damaged rather than lost, damage in transit is worked out the same way as damage here: the most we owe is what the damage took off the agreed price, and the card stays yours. Where the parcel was tracked there is a carrier claim to make, and what we can owe you is worked out once that claim has been decided; where the card travelled as a letter there is no carrier claim to make at all, and the limit above is the whole of it. Either way a sale settles the way any other sale settles, not sooner. What no limit in this section stretches to:

• A price that moved after you signed, either way. An auction that might have gone higher, the year you were going to hold it: we go by the agreed price, not the one the market was quoting on the day and not the one you were waiting for.
• A grade the card never had. An ungraded card is valued at its agreed price, not at what a 10 of it sells for.
• Sentimental value. We know it is real. It is not something anyone can put a number on, and we will not pretend otherwise by paying one.
• Knock-on costs: lost profit, lost time, money you had counted on, or what it would cost you to find another copy somewhere else.

Tell us as soon as you know a card of yours is missing or damaged, and in any case within 30 days of getting your cards back or of your final statement, whichever is later. After that we cannot investigate it properly and cannot take it on. A claim is worked out against the intake receipt, which is why we itemize it in front of you rather than after you leave, and if a card of yours is ever in our hands without an agreed price written down for it, the limits in this section still apply to it and the limit for that card is what it was worth when it came in. None of this covers our own dishonesty: if we defraud you, steal from you or damage a card deliberately, the limits above do not apply and were never meant to. Nothing here takes away a right the law does not let us limit, and if any part of this section cannot be enforced, the rest of it still stands.

If a consignor dies

Most of our work is with people settling an estate, so this is worth writing down plainly rather than working out in a difficult week. This section is addressed to whoever is sorting things out, because by then it cannot be addressed to the person who signed.

As soon as we are told, we stop selling. Anything unsold comes off every channel that day and is held here, not listed and not priced, until somebody with the authority to deal with it tells us what to do. We do not need a court order to stop. Email hello@jupitertcg.com or use the contact form, and give us the name the cards were consigned under so we can find them. We stop that day. We would far rather stop on a rumour and start again than sell a card we should not have.

Anything that had already sold settles the normal way and the money is held as the estate balance. To collect either the cards or the money, whoever is acting for the estate shows us the same thing we ask an executor for at intake: something official saying they are entitled to deal with the property, and photo identification. We hand over to that person and nobody else, and we hold the lot in the meantime at no charge for as long as it reasonably takes - probate is slow and that is nobody's fault.

Taking cards back early

You can have any or all of your cards back at any time, for any reason, and there is no fee for it. Ask us in writing - an email is enough - and say which cards. We start taking listings down the day your request arrives, and we expect everything to be down within five business days. Until a card is down it can still sell, and a sold card is sold.

We delist by hand across several marketplaces, beginning with our own website, which is why it is five and not two. That is also why a card can still sell while it is coming down, and once it has sold we cannot take it back from a buyer on your behalf.

Your cards are listed at a fixed price unless we have agreed otherwise with you first. Where we have agreed to run a card as an auction and bidding has started, that auction runs to its end: we cannot pull a card out from under people who are bidding on it.

We hand cards back to the person who signed the agreement, against photo ID, at an appointment we arrange. If somebody who did not sign asks for them - a relative, a spouse, a lawyer's letter - everything stops: nothing sells and nothing is handed over until it is sorted out in writing.

Taking your cards home does not close your account and does not speed up your last payment. Anything that sold before the cards came back is paid on the normal schedule, which will usually land after you already have them.

Taxes

What you make from consignment is your income, not ours, and reporting it is yours to do. We are a card shop and not an accountant: nothing on this page, nothing on a statement and nothing in an email from us is tax advice. Ask your own accountant what you owe and what you have to file, particularly if you are selling for an estate, a trust or a business rather than for yourself.

What a tax authority requires of the person paying you depends on how much you are paid, and it changes. Rather than guess in advance who will cross a threshold, we take your taxpayer details at the appointment along with your name and address, on the same agreement you sign. It is one more line at the moment you are already signing paperwork, and it means your money is never waiting on a form later. That number is not kept on our website or in the system that runs it. It lives on your signed agreement and in our accounting software, and what the website knows is only that we have it. Where we are required to, we will:

• Collect taxpayer details before a payment goes out - the legal name, the address and the taxpayer identification number of whoever we are paying.
• Report the amounts we have paid.
• Hold back part of a payment and send it to a tax authority. Anything held back still counts as paid to you: it went there rather than to you.

We do not pay out until we have the details we are required to collect. Taking them at intake is what stops that ever arising, but if something is missing or wrong your payment waits, and we tell you what it is. Waiting is not losing it - the balance stays yours on your ledger and goes out on the next payout you are due, as long as your details reached us in time to be checked before it goes. Where the law requires an unclaimed balance to be handed to the state we have to do that, and before we do we write to the last address you gave us and tell you how to claim it back.

The details you give us have to be right, and they have to belong to whoever we are paying: you, or the estate, trust or business you signed for. We will not pay one person and report it under another. If details you gave us turn out to be wrong, what it costs us to put that right comes out of what we owe you.

Ending the arrangement, and governing law

These terms are governed by the law of the State of Florida. If we cannot settle something between us, it goes to a court in Palm Beach County, Florida: the state courts sitting in that county, or the federal court that covers it, and nowhere else. You bring a claim on your own behalf rather than as part of a class, and neither of us asks for a jury. Those three things bind us exactly as they bind you. We may update these terms; a change applies to agreements signed after it, never to one already running.

You can end an agreement early, as this page has already said. So can we, and we do not need a reason for it. You get it in writing, and from that day your listings come down on the same timetable as when you ask for your cards back. The same three things stay true as well: until a card is down it can still sell, a card with a buyer waiting completes first, and an auction already running runs to its end. Your cards come back the same way too - an appointment we arrange, photo ID, an itemized return receipt. There is no fee for it.

Some things end an agreement on the spot: you cannot show the cards are yours to sell, a card turns out to be counterfeit, altered or stolen, you break these terms, or you are abusive or threatening to us. We stop your cards going out to buyers that day, take the listings down the same way as above, and tell you why. A card we simply cannot list - a flaw the scan found, a condition we will not sell, a certificate we cannot confirm either way - comes back to you at our cost, the way this page already says. What stays here is narrower: a card the grading company's record says that certificate does not belong to, or one we have some other specific reason to think is counterfeit, altered or stolen. That card stays while we look the certificate up against the grading company's own record, which is the same check we run on every graded card and costs nothing and nobody any time. We do not send cards away to authenticators, yours or ours - that is money and risk on a card we are already unsure about, and we would rather hand it back than spend it. So there are only three ways this ends. The record clears the card: it goes straight back on sale. The record settles nothing either way: the card comes back to you at our cost and we decline it, and you are free to have it authenticated yourself and bring it back afterwards. The record says that certificate does not belong to that card: it stays here, because a known fake does not go back into the hobby from us. A card law enforcement is already involved in goes to them.

Ending an agreement does not unwind what already sold. Anything that sold before your listings came down settles on the normal schedule, with commission and fees applied as usual, and is paid to you the normal way - whoever ended it and for whatever reason. The exception is a card we stopped over: where a card may not have been yours to sell or may not have been genuine, the money that card made waits until that is answered, whether the card is still sitting here or had already sold when we found out. Everything else is paid to you while it waits. If your balance is below zero at the end we take it out of anything else we owe you, and what is left we write off rather than bill you - except that a card a buyer sends back after your agreement has ended stays here until the balance is square. The one thing we do ask back is money we paid you on a card that was not yours to sell or was not genuine. A buyer changing their mind, or a bank reversing a payment, is never something we bill you for. A card that was never yours, or never real, is different.

When your cards are ready to collect we offer you an appointment. If you do not take one, or you do not come, we write to you again at the email address we have for you and at any postal address you have given us. Once we have done that and waited 60 days from that second letter, we may list and sell them at the price we would put on the same card for anybody else, on the same commission as the rest of your batch. We do not buy them ourselves. What they make goes against anything you owe us first and the rest is held for you: the cards do not become ours and neither does the money. Your balance stays yours to claim, and anything still unclaimed after that is handled the way Florida law requires. This part keeps working after the rest of the agreement has ended, because that is when it is needed - though we would far rather hand you a box, so tell us where you are and we will get you booked in.