How we rate
Last updated
Every site in our rankings carries one score out of 10. For most sites it combines the site’s published terms with our own hands-on use of the site, such as buying packs and, where the site offers them, using the trade-in offer and shipping a card home. A few partners are scored from their published facts alone. Each review says which one its score rests on. Our page on how we test explains what a hands-on test covers and lists every test we ran.
The eight criteria
| Criterion | Weight | What we look at |
|---|---|---|
| Trust and track record | 20% | Who runs the site, how long it has operated and what the public record shows |
| Card rates published | 15% | Whether card rates and the card pool are shown before you buy, and how clearly |
| Trade-in terms | 15% | The instant trade-in offer as a share of value, its fee, how long it stays open and whether it pays money or credit |
| Fees | 15% | Payment surcharges, marketplace fees and every other charge between buying a pack and holding a card |
| Withdrawal speed | 10% | How fast, and at what cost, an account balance reaches a bank account |
| Shipping and vault | 10% | What it costs to ship a card home, how long it takes, and how the vault stores and insures cards |
| App and site | 8% | Whether the app and site work, and whether the key facts are easy to find |
| Support | 7% | How quickly and clearly support answers, and how complaints are resolved |
Each criterion is scored from 0 to 10. The overall score is the weighted score, rounded to one decimal.
Each review lists the criteria we scored, and its score is the weighted average of those criteria. A score from published facts scores a criterion only where a published fact supports it, and the site record keeps the reason for each one. A site needs a score for trust and at least two other criteria to be ranked.
Who we score
The rankings hold the sites that pass our checks: packs of real, physical items. That covers cards and every other kind of rip, from watches to rare coins. A ranked site is scored after our hands-on test or from its published facts, and until it is scored it does not appear in the rankings. A site we tested and do not recommend is shown below the rankings it would belong to, unranked, with the reason and no link to it. The main ranking ends on a table of every rip site we track, ranked or not: a site we track from its own published pages has no score there and gets a plain link to its home page.
Re-checking
We re-check every listed site’s published terms each month. Each review says whether its score rests on our test or on the site’s published facts, and a review is marked “Due for a re-check” once its check day has passed. A site that stops meeting our checks is removed from the rankings, reviews and catalog.
What a score is not
A score describes a site’s rules and service as published and as we found them in our test. It is not a statement about the value of any card or pack, and it is not a prediction.
Where the scores are
Every score sits in the ranking, each site’s full review in our reviews, and any two tested sites side by side in the compare tool.