The short answer
You need three things before the first card: a business entity so the marketplace payout is not tied to your personal name, a business bank account because eBay asks for one at verification, and about $500.
Of that $500, roughly $130 goes to inventory, $50 to a fictitious name registration, the rest to supplies and the store plan. The scanner is the one thing you can start without.
Nobody writes this part down because it is not about cards. It is the week before the cards, and getting it wrong means an account hold at the worst moment.
The entity
You can sell as an individual and plenty of people do. The reason to register something is that the payout, the tax form and the buyer facing name all end up attached to whatever you set up, and changing it later means re verification.
In Florida a fictitious name registration through Sunbiz costs about $50 and is what lets you trade under a store name rather than your own. If a company already exists, a DBA on it is usually simpler than forming a second entity.
The bank account, and the trap in it
eBay asks for a bank account matching the business name during verification. This catches people mid setup: the store is built, the listings are ready, and the payout cannot be enabled because the account is personal.
Any bank works, including the online ones, and you can change it later. What you cannot do is skip it: without a verified payout account the money simply sits.
What the $500 actually buys
| Item | Rough cost | Skippable? |
|---|---|---|
| Fictitious name registration | $50 | No, if trading under a store name |
| First bulk lot, about 1,750 cards | $133.00 | No, it is the inventory |
| Store plan, monthly | $22 and up | No, past 250 listings |
| Sleeves, toploaders, mailers | $60 to $100 | No |
| Postal scale and label printer | $40 to $200 | Yes at first, print at the counter |
| Document scanner | Several hundred | Yes, phone photos work to start |
Our own first lot was $133.00 for about 1,750 cards. That is the number to anchor on, because inventory is the only line that turns back into money.
What we would not spend on yet
Equipment. A scanner pays for itself at volume and at no volume it is an expensive way to feel like a business. Start with a phone, learn whether you can list a hundred cards a week, and buy the machine when the bottleneck is real.
Same for a label printer. Buying tools before you have a process is the most common way the first $500 disappears without producing a single listing, and we said the same thing about how many cards this actually needs.
The tax side, briefly
Marketplaces report your gross sales to the tax authority once you pass a threshold, and gross means before fees, shipping and the cost of the cards. That number will look much larger than what you actually made.
So keep the receipts for the bulk, the supplies and the postage from day one. Not because it is complicated, but because reconstructing a year of expenses in April is miserable and expensive.
Where the cards are going to live
Decide this before the first lot arrives, because a box on the floor becomes four boxes on the floor faster than anyone expects. What you need is not storage furniture, it is an addressing system: every card in a numbered position you can find in seconds.
Sorting alphabetically sounds tidy and it falls apart the moment a card sells out of the middle. Numbered slots do not, and pulling an order becomes a lookup instead of a search.
The order that works
Entity, then bank, then eBay verification, then supplies, then cards. Doing it the other way round means sitting on a box of inventory while a verification email decides your week.
And read which store plan you need before your first listing session. That one is cheap to get right and expensive to discover.
Frequently asked questions
- How much money do you need to start selling Pokémon cards?
About $500 works. Roughly $133.00 for a first bulk lot of 1,750 cards, about $50 for a fictitious name registration, and the rest for a store plan and supplies.
- Do I need a business bank account to sell on eBay?
eBay asks for an account matching the business name during verification, and payouts do not enable without it. Any bank works and it can be changed later.
- Do I need to register a business to sell cards?
You can sell as an individual, but the payout, tax form and store name attach to whatever you set up, and changing it later means re verification. In Florida a fictitious name registration costs about $50.
- What should I not buy at the start?
A scanner and a label printer. Both pay for themselves at volume and neither produces a single listing before you have a process. Phone photos and the post office counter work.
