Safeguards
What happens if someone tries to rip you off
Short answer: they pay for it, not you. Every member keeps a payment card on file before they can deal, so when a dispute goes against someone, we charge them — and we check hard for the tricks people use to get around that.
The protections
A card on file before anyone can deal
LiveNobody can sell, swap, or accept an offer without a payment card on file. That's what lets us charge the person who fails to deliver instead of asking the honest one to absorb it.
The defaulter pays, not you
LiveIf a dispute is upheld, the party at fault is charged the full value of what they failed to deliver. A proven counterfeit costs them an authentication premium on top — the greater of $25 or 15% of the card's value.
One person, one account
LiveWe check new accounts against the ones we already have — same card, same verified phone, same ID, same address, same slab. A second account that looks like someone who already owes money can't trade until a human clears it.
ID checks where the money is
LiveOver $1,000 on either side, both parties pass a government-ID and selfie check and have a verified phone number. Same for sellers once they're carrying 10 active listings or $5,000 of inventory.
Ratings that can't be farmed
LiveA rating only exists if a real transaction completed. Brand-new accounts piling onto one member, accounts rating each other, and reviewers with no trading history of their own get flagged and held out of the average instead of quietly counting.
Wash trades stay out of the prices
LiveDeals between accounts that look connected are excluded from the sold-price data. Two accounts trading a card back and forth can't invent a market value for it.
The same slab can't be listed twice
LiveCertification numbers are fingerprinted, so one slab can't sit active in two listings — or on two accounts — at the same time.
Tracked shipping, signature over $750
LiveLabels are bought through us with card-safe packaging, tracking posts to the deal automatically, and anything over $750 declared value ships signature-required with no local pickup.
Nothing is final until it arrives
LiveThe seller's money is held until the buyer confirms the card arrived as described. On a swap, both sides ship before either side is settled.
Your cert number is encrypted
LiveCertification numbers are encrypted at rest, so nobody — including anyone with database access — can lift your cert numbers and pass them off on another site.
Automated checks, human decisions
LiveSoftware watches for the patterns above around the clock, and it drafts the case. A person makes every decision that charges a card, restricts an account, or settles a dispute — and any automatic restriction can be appealed to a human.
We re-check the grader's record ourselves
Pending accessA Verified badge appears only when our own lookup with the grading company matched the listing. Until a grader gives us API access, we say we couldn't check it and link you straight to their record — we never guess.
If a member doesn’t follow through
Each step needs a dispute upheld on evidence — we don’t charge anyone on one person’s word.
| What happened | What we do |
|---|---|
| First upheld failure to ship, pay, or send what was described | Charged the full value of the item, and a warning on the account. |
| Second upheld failure within 12 months | Charged again, and the account is restricted — no new listings or offers until it's resolved. |
| Third upheld failure, or a guarantee charge they never paid | Charged and suspended. |
| A proven counterfeit, first time | Charged the item's value plus the authentication premium, and suspended. There is no warning for this one. |
| A new account that looks like a suspended member | Blocked from transacting until a person reviews it. Evading a charge by starting over doesn't work. |
Read the full guarantee for how a charge is calculated, or open a dispute if a deal has already gone wrong.
How much you can list, and how it goes up
A new account starts with a low per-card ceiling, because the guarantee is only as good as the card behind it. Two minutes of verification removes it.
| Tier | What it takes | Per-card ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| New account | Email confirmed, payment card on file | Up to $100 per card |
| Established | Verified phone number, or 3 completed deliveries | Up to $1,000 per card |
| ID verified | Government ID and selfie checked | No cap from your account tier |
Over $1,000, both sides of a deal need an ID check and a verified phone number, whatever tier they’re in — get verified.
What we ask of you
- One account per person. If you need a second one for a shop or a business, ask us first and we'll set it up properly.
- Describe the card you actually have, photograph the real one, and don't edit out flaws.
- Ship within the window, in card-safe packaging, with the label we issued.
- Keep your address and phone current — a deal that can't reach you is a deal that fails.
- Raise a problem through a dispute with evidence, not a rating. Ratings are for how a completed deal went.
Everyone makes mistakes. A late package, a photo that missed a flaw, a card that got damaged in the post — tell us and we'll help you sort it out, and nothing gets charged. This exists for the small number of people who take someone's card and go quiet. Our word to you is worth exactly as much as we make it cost to break it.
What these protections don’t do
- A certification check proves a number exists in a grading company's database and matches the listing. It does not authenticate the physical card in someone's hands, and we never say it does.
- We don't take custody of anyone's cards, so we can't inspect a card before it ships. What we can do is make the person who misrepresented it pay for it.
- Automated checks produce false positives. Every automatic restriction can be reviewed and reversed by a person — if we got it wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.
- A guarantee charge depends on a card on file that can actually be charged. That's why the card is required up front rather than after something goes wrong.
Something already went wrong?
Open a dispute with your evidence — photos, tracking, messages. We read the record, not the loudest voice.