You don't need a Charizard to start making money in Pokémon cards. "Bulk," the holo rares, reverse holos and commons that get left behind after someone pulls the expensive stuff out of a collection, is the cheapest way in. Sellers like TJ from PokePastor TCG built a real side income on it starting with a few dollars of cards and a couple of hours a few evenings a week. Here's what the math actually looks like, and how to start.

The math behind $500 a month

You don't need one big sale to hit $500. You need small, repeatable ones. On his site and eBay store, TJ's day-to-day bulk sales run like this: a stack of 21 cards that cost him nothing (pulled from bulk he already owned) sold for $58, which came out to $40 after shipping. A single card that cost a fraction of a cent sold for $1.99, netting 63 cents after eBay's fees and postage. A lot of 100 artist cards, all bought for pennies apiece, sold for $50 with no fees at all on his own site. None of these are big wins individually. Add up a few of them a week and it's a different number: over time, bulk alone has added $3,000 to $5,000 a month to his business. Getting to $500 a month is the early, entirely realistic version of that same math.

  • Cost to source 1,000 commons

    What sellers actually pay buying bulk by the thousand.

    $10–20

  • Real sale, zero-cost bulk

    21 cards pulled from free bulk, sold as one lot.

    $58

  • Profit after shipping

    What was left from that same $58 order.

    $40

  • Time for that order

    Pulling, sleeving and packing, start to finish.

    min15

The Playbook · Side hustle Celeste TCG · Miami, FL

Four things to do this weekend

  1. Find your first bulk. Search Facebook for your city's "buy sell trade Pokémon" group and post that you're buying, with a rate per thousand cards. Full detail on rates and what to ask for in how to sell Pokémon bulk step by step.
  2. Sort it in one sitting. Pull anything shiny, anything from a popular Pokémon (Eevee, Snorlax, Mimikyu, Squirtle), and set the rest aside. The full category list is in how to sort bulk fast.
  3. List it with a floor price that's worth your time. Not 5 or 10 cents, more like 25 to 40. Why that number matters is in is selling bulk actually worth it.
  4. Get the basics to ship it. A pack of top loaders and team bags covers almost every order under $50. See what's actually worth buying in Gear.

None of this needs to happen all at once, and it doesn't need much money to start. A few dollars of bulk, a Saturday afternoon, and a floor price that respects your time is enough to see whether this is worth doing more of.

Read the full step-by-step guide →