Terms of Service

1. The agreement, acceptance, and eligibility

SwapSlabs operates an online marketplace where members swap, sell, and buy collectible trading cards — sports cards and trading card games alike. These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are a binding agreement between you and SwapSlabs. They incorporate by reference the Privacy Policy (/privacy), the Cookie Policy (/cookies), the 100% Guarantee terms (/guarantee), the Fee Schedule (/fees), the Shipping Policy (/shipping-policy), the Acceptable Use Policy (/acceptable-use), the Community Guidelines (/community-guidelines), the Prohibited & Restricted Items list (/prohibited-items), and the Intellectual Property / DMCA Policy (/ip-policy). Together these are the “Agreement.”

You must accept the current version of the Terms and the Privacy Policy when you sign up, and again whenever SwapSlabs publishes a materially updated version (see Section 21). If you do not agree, do not create an account or use SwapSlabs.

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher, and able to form a legally binding contract. SwapSlabs is not directed to and may not be used by anyone under 18. If you use SwapSlabs on behalf of a business, you represent that you are authorized to bind that business, and “you” includes that business.

SwapSlabs is offered in the United States. It is not directed to residents of countries subject to comprehensive trade sanctions, and you may not use it if you are on a US government restricted-party list.

2. Account registration and security

One person, one account. You must provide accurate registration and profile information — including a valid email address — and keep it current. Passwords are handled and stored, hashed, by the authentication provider (Supabase Auth); SwapSlabs never sees your plaintext password.

You are responsible for everything that happens under your account and for keeping your credentials secure. Do not share your login, and tell SwapSlabs promptly at the address in Section 24 if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission. SwapSlabs may refuse, reclaim, or require you to change a display name that is misleading, infringing, or offensive.

Creating additional accounts — in particular to manipulate ratings, evade a suspension, or circumvent a limit — is a breach of these Terms.

3. Payment card on file and payment authorization

Creating an account and browsing listings is free and open. Before you can initiate or accept a sale or a swap, view the realized (sold or swapped) price on a completed transaction, or message another member, you must have a valid payment card on file with the payments processor, Stripe.

Your full card number is entered directly into Stripe's fields, is tokenized by Stripe, and never touches SwapSlabs servers. SwapSlabs stores only a token plus display details (brand, last four digits, expiration) and Stripe customer and payment-method identifiers.

By adding a card and by transacting, you authorize SwapSlabs (and Stripe on its behalf) to charge that card, including on a later off-session basis, for amounts you owe under this Agreement. Those amounts include: commission-inclusive purchase totals; itemized payment processing; shipping, packaging, and signature fees under the Tier 1 program; applicable taxes; and a Guarantee charge if you are the party found on the evidence to have defaulted in a dispute (see Section 9). For a counterfeit or knowingly misrepresented item, that charge also includes an authentication and handling premium.

Keep a working card on file for as long as you have open or recently completed transactions. If a charge fails, SwapSlabs may retry it, restrict your account, use another payment method you have on file, offset the amount against funds owed to you, and pursue the balance through lawful means, including a collections agency.

4. SwapSlabs's role — a venue, not a party to member trades

For sales and swaps between members, SwapSlabs is a venue. SwapSlabs is not the buyer, the seller, a party to the trade, an escrow agent, an appraiser, or an authenticator of members' cards. The contract for each card is directly between the members involved. SwapSlabs does not take title to or possession of members' cards and does not pre-inspect them.

SwapSlabs does not guarantee that any listing, member, sale, or swap is genuine, accurate, or lawful, and does not endorse any member or card. Estimated values, suggested prices, comparable-sale data, and any “Cert-verified” badge are informational tools, not appraisals, authentication certificates, or investment advice.

SwapSlabs does operate two programs directly: the 100% Guarantee (Section 9) and the Tier 1 shipping and logistics program (Section 10). Those are services SwapSlabs provides, and the relevant terms in this Agreement, the Guarantee terms, and the Shipping Policy apply to them.

5. Listing rules

You may list only collectible trading cards that you own or are authorized to sell or trade, that are lawful to sell, and that you have described accurately — category, player or game, set, year, grading company and grade (PSA, BGS, SGC, CGC, TAG, or raw), condition, and any flaws. Photos must be of the actual card in your possession, not stock or borrowed images.

Every listing receives an automatic estimated market value from recent sold comparables. That estimate is informational and is not a promise of resale value or a minimum price. You set your asking price; the 8% commission is built into it (Section 7).

You are responsible for describing grading and certification honestly. If you enter a certification number, SwapSlabs may check it against the grading company's public verification database and show a “Cert-verified” badge on a match; the badge reflects that lookup at the time of listing and nothing more. Do not represent a raw card as graded, misstate a grade, or list a card whose slab or label has been tampered with.

Listing a card valued over $1,000, and completing any sale or swap valued over $1,000, requires the party or parties involved to complete identity verification first — a government-issued photo ID plus a live selfie, handled by SwapSlabs's verification provider (see the Guarantee terms and the Privacy Policy). SwapSlabs may also require identity verification for higher-volume selling; declining it will limit or suspend the affected activity.

SwapSlabs may edit, re-categorize, lower the visibility of, or remove any listing that violates this Agreement, and may limit the number or value of listings an account may have.

6. Prohibited and restricted items

Some items are never allowed on SwapSlabs, and others are allowed only under conditions. The full, maintained list is the Prohibited & Restricted Items policy at /prohibited-items, which is part of this Agreement. At a minimum, the following are prohibited:

• •Counterfeit, reproduction, bootleg, or fake cards, and cards misrepresented as authentic
• •Altered, trimmed, recolored, restored, or otherwise doctored cards not clearly and prominently disclosed as such
• •Cards misrepresented as to grade, grading company, or condition, and cards in tampered, resealed, or counterfeit grading slabs
• •Stolen cards, cards obtained by fraud, and cards you do not have the right to sell or trade
• •Cards whose sale or trade is illegal in your jurisdiction or the other member's jurisdiction
• •Anything outside the scope of this marketplace — including event tickets and other nonrefundable goods, non-card memorabilia sold on its own, digital-only items, and services

7. Fees and payments

SwapSlabs charges an 8% commission on every sale and every swap. The commission is built into the displayed price rather than added as a separate line item to the buyer: a seller who wants to net a given amount lists at that amount divided by 0.92. On a swap, the commission is 8% of the greater of the two sides' total value, snapshotted when both parties accept.

Ungraded ("raw") cards are the exception: they can only be bought and sold, never swapped, and the commission on an ungraded sale is 10% instead of 8%.

Every sale and every swap carries a minimum commission of $1.00, never more than the price itself. On most cards the percentage is higher than $1 and the minimum does not apply.

Standard payment processing (approximately 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction) is itemized and passed through at checkout, on top of the displayed price. Shipping, card-safe packaging, and signature fees under the Tier 1 program are charged to the member who ships and include a modest markup over the carrier rate SwapSlabs is billed.

You are responsible for any taxes on your own transactions, other than taxes on SwapSlabs's net income. Where SwapSlabs is required to act as a marketplace facilitator, it will calculate, collect, and remit applicable sales tax and will report qualifying seller activity to tax authorities (for example on IRS Form 1099-K) as the law requires. The Fee Schedule at /fees shows a full worked example.

Fees are earned when a transaction completes and are generally non-refundable except where required by law or expressly stated. If a sale is refunded, fee handling follows the Fee Schedule.

8. Swap mechanics

A swap is a value-based trade. Each side of a proposed swap is totaled using SwapSlabs's estimated values, and either party may add cash to equalize an uneven trade. Before anyone accepts, both parties see the same comparison: the total value of each side, the difference, and the cash top-up (if any) that balances it.

You may counter a proposed swap; a counter replaces the prior offer. A swap becomes binding when accepted by both sides with a payment card on file. On acceptance, SwapSlabs snapshots the commission and the agreed values, marks the listings as swapped, and opens a transaction where both parties confirm receipt, arrange shipping, and rate each other.

Estimated values are decision-support tools derived from market data, not appraisals. Accepting a swap means you accept that side's cards and any cash adjustment as described, subject to the 100% Guarantee for items that do not arrive as described.

9. The 100% Ironclad Delivery Guarantee and dispute process

The 100% Ironclad Delivery Guarantee is SwapSlabs's core trust mechanism: every item must arrive exactly as described and as promised, or the responsible party is made whole. It applies to completed sales and swaps arranged on SwapSlabs and shipped with SwapSlabs's label and tracking. The full terms are at /guarantee.

If a problem arises, first contact the other member through SwapSlabs messaging. If that does not resolve it, open a dispute on the transaction promptly after delivery or the expected delivery date, and within any window shown on the transaction. Provide your evidence: carrier tracking, the listing and its photos, the message history, dated photos of what was received and its packaging, and grading or authentication records where relevant. Keep all packaging until the transaction is fully closed.

SwapSlabs reviews the evidence and decides on a preponderance of the evidence — what more likely than not happened. If SwapSlabs establishes that a party defaulted through non-delivery or a not-as-described item, that party's card on file is charged the item's value — the transaction value or realized price, up to the amount reasonably needed to make the wronged member whole — and those funds reimburse the wronged member. The defaulting party may also be suspended or removed.

Counterfeit and knowingly misrepresented items are treated more severely. If SwapSlabs establishes on the evidence that a member sent a counterfeit item, or an item they knew to be materially misrepresented, that member's card on file is charged the full item value plus an authentication and handling premium, the account is suspended, and the matter is referred to the appropriate law-enforcement authorities. [PLACEHOLDER — confirm the premium amount, suspension terms, and law-enforcement referral practice with counsel for each launch jurisdiction.]

SwapSlabs's determination governs eligibility for reimbursement and any Guarantee charge under this program; it is final for the program. It does not limit any legal rights members have against each other, and it is separate from any chargeback you pursue with your own bank (see Section 17 for how a chargeback interacts with amounts owed).

10. Shipping and risk of loss

Ship-by deadline. When a trade locks — both parties accept a swap, or payment clears on a straight sale — each shipping party must hand the card to the carrier within 2 business days. The exact date is shown on the transaction screen and in the confirmation notification. You may take one self-serve one-business-day extension per trade by giving a reason in the app. If nothing ships by the deadline and you have not communicated, the other party may open a non-delivery claim, and a proven default is charged to your card on file under the 100% Guarantee (Section 9).

SwapSlabs operates a Tier 1 shipping program: you buy card-safe packaging through SwapSlabs, and on transaction confirmation SwapSlabs generates a QR code containing the shipment details tied to SwapSlabs's carrier account. You take the packaged card to a participating drop-off location, where staff scan the code and print the label. Local pickup is available as an alternative, except where a signature is required.

Shipments with a declared value above $750 must ship signature-required and carry an added signature fee; local pickup is not available for them. The full flow, packaging standards, fees, and insurance thresholds are in the Shipping Policy at /shipping-policy.

Unless the Shipping Policy states otherwise, risk of loss passes to the recipient on delivery to the recipient's address. You must use the SwapSlabs-generated label and tracking and declare value accurately; failing to do so can forfeit Guarantee and insurance protection and shift responsibility for a lost or damaged package to you.

11. Ratings and reviews

Ratings may be left only by a party to a verified, completed transaction — one rating per transaction per party, about that transaction. Reviews must be honest and based on your actual experience. The member you rated may post one public reply.

Do not manipulate ratings: no buying, trading for, or coordinating positive reviews; no retaliatory or coordinated negative campaigns; no fake accounts. SwapSlabs detects patterns such as clusters of low ratings against one member from new accounts and reciprocal low ratings tied to disputes, and may suppress affected ratings pending review. SwapSlabs may remove reviews that violate this Agreement or contain unlawful, abusive, or personal-data content, and may recompute displayed averages accordingly.

12. Your content and the license you grant

“Your content” means everything you submit to SwapSlabs — listing text and photos, profile details and avatar, messages, ratings and reviews, dispute evidence, and support correspondence. You keep ownership of your content. You are responsible for it and represent that you have the rights to submit it and that it does not infringe anyone's rights or break the law.

You grant SwapSlabs a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, adapt, publish, publicly display, and distribute your content for the purposes of operating, securing, promoting, and improving the marketplace and its services — including displaying your listings and profile, resolving disputes, and using de-identified or aggregated data. This license ends for a given piece of content a reasonable time after you delete it or close your account, except for content already shared with another member or the community (such as a rating you left or messages in a shared thread), content retained in backups until they age out, and content SwapSlabs must keep for legal, tax, or fraud-prevention reasons.

You grant other members a limited license to view your public listings and profile as the marketplace presents them. SwapSlabs may, but is not obligated to, monitor, screen, or remove content, and may do so at its discretion.

13. Acceptable use and prohibited conduct

Your use of SwapSlabs is subject to the Acceptable Use Policy at /acceptable-use and the Community Guidelines at /community-guidelines, both part of this Agreement. Among other things, you agree not to:

• •Misrepresent a card, a grade, an authentication, your identity, or your authority to sell
• •Circumvent SwapSlabs fees, or move a transaction off-platform to avoid the Guarantee or the commission
• •Scrape, crawl, resell, or bulk-extract listing, pricing, or realized-price data except as expressly permitted, or use bots to access the service
• •Interfere with or probe the platform's operation or security, or attempt to access data you are not authorized to access
• •Harass, threaten, defame, or discriminate against other members or staff, or post unlawful, hateful, or sexually exploitative content
• •Use SwapSlabs for money laundering, sanctions evasion, fraud, sale of stolen goods, or any other unlawful purpose
• •Infringe intellectual property or publicity rights, or list counterfeit or replica cards

14. Intellectual property and DMCA notice-and-takedown

“SwapSlabs,” the $wapBinder wordmark, the site design, and the software are owned by SwapSlabs and its licensors and are protected by intellectual-property law. Nothing in this Agreement transfers those rights to you. Player names, team marks, set names, and card imagery belong to their respective owners and appear on SwapSlabs for identification and resale-listing purposes.

SwapSlabs responds to notices of claimed copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and to reports of counterfeit or trademark-infringing listings, and it terminates the accounts of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances. The full procedure, the elements a valid notice must contain, the counter-notification process, and the designated agent's contact information are in the Intellectual Property / DMCA Policy at /ip-policy.

Send copyright and other IP notices to ip@swapslabs.example. [PLACEHOLDER — register a DMCA designated agent with the US Copyright Office and publish the agent's name and physical address here and in the IP Policy before launch.]

15. Suspension and termination

You may close your account at any time from your account settings; obligations from transactions already in progress survive, and closing your account does not erase records SwapSlabs must keep (see the Privacy Policy).

SwapSlabs may suspend or terminate your account, remove listings, restrict features, hold or reverse payouts, or cancel transactions if you breach this Agreement, if you create risk for other members or the platform, or if required by law. Where practical, SwapSlabs will give notice and an opportunity to cure, but it may act immediately for fraud, safety, legal, or platform-integrity reasons.

Amounts you owe — including a Guarantee charge and any premium — remain due after termination. Sections that by their nature should survive (including 4, 7, 9, 12, 14, 16–20, and 22–24) survive termination.

16. Disclaimers

SwapSlabs is provided “as is” and “as available.” Except as expressly stated in this Agreement and the Guarantee terms, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, SwapSlabs disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, and any warranty arising from a course of dealing or usage of trade.

SwapSlabs does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that estimated values, comparable-sale data, or cert lookups are accurate or current. Cards are sold and swapped by members, not by SwapSlabs, and SwapSlabs does not warrant any card's authenticity, grade, or condition beyond operating the Guarantee. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you.

17. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, SwapSlabs and its officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, lost goodwill, or the cost of substitute services, arising out of or relating to the service or this Agreement, whether based in contract, tort, or any other theory, even if advised of the possibility.

SwapSlabs's total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to the service in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the total fees you paid SwapSlabs in that period or $100 — except that this cap does not reduce amounts properly payable to you under the 100% Guarantee for a transaction you completed on-platform using SwapSlabs shipping and tracking.

If you file a chargeback with your bank for a transaction, and SwapSlabs or the other member has already made you whole (through a refund, a Guarantee reimbursement, or replacement), you must not also keep the charged-back funds; SwapSlabs may recover a double recovery from your card on file or offset it against amounts owed to you. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you, and nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law.

18. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless SwapSlabs and its officers, employees, and agents from and against any third-party claims, demands, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: your listings, cards, transactions, or content; your breach of this Agreement or of any law; your infringement of another person's rights; or a dispute between you and another member. SwapSlabs may assume the exclusive defense of any matter subject to indemnification by you, and you will cooperate.

19. Binding arbitration, class-action waiver, and 30-day opt-out

PLEASE READ THIS SECTION CAREFULLY — IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS. [PLACEHOLDER — this clause names an industry-standard default (the American Arbitration Association's Consumer Arbitration Rules, the most common provider in US consumer/marketplace terms) so this section isn't an empty template, but counsel must still confirm that choice (or pick a different provider), the seat — which must align with the governing-law state in Section 20, itself still unset pending the entity's actual state of incorporation/operation — the consumer-arbitration cost allocation, the carve-outs, the mass-arbitration process, and enforceability in each launch jurisdiction, before this is relied on.]

Except for the excluded claims below, you and SwapSlabs agree that any dispute, claim, or controversy arising out of or relating to this Agreement or the service will be resolved by final and binding individual arbitration, administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules [PLACEHOLDER — confirm this is the intended provider/rules; AAA is the common default but is not a substitute for counsel's confirmation], rather than in court, and that the Federal Arbitration Act governs the interpretation and enforcement of this section.

Class-action waiver: you and SwapSlabs agree to bring claims only in an individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. The arbitrator may not consolidate more than one person's claims and may not preside over any form of a representative or class proceeding.

Excluded claims: either party may (a) bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies, and (b) seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court for actual or threatened infringement or misuse of intellectual property or unauthorized access to the service. Nothing here prevents you from reporting a matter to a government agency.

30-day opt-out: you may opt out of this arbitration section and the class-action waiver by sending written notice to the address in Section 24 within 30 days of first accepting these Terms, stating your name, the email on your account, and that you opt out of arbitration. Opting out does not affect any other part of this Agreement. If any portion of this section is found unenforceable, the remainder stays in effect, except that if the class-action waiver is found unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim (and only that claim) proceeds in court.

20. Governing law and venue

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules, and by applicable US federal law. [PLACEHOLDER — confirm the governing-law state and the exclusive venue with counsel; align them with the arbitration provider's seat in Section 19.]

For any dispute not subject to arbitration, you and SwapSlabs submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in the governing-law jurisdiction, and waive any objection to venue there. Nothing in this section waives consumer-protection rights that cannot be waived under the law where you live, including the right to bring a claim in your home jurisdiction where that right is guaranteed.

[PLACEHOLDER — multi-state operational review needed before launch, not yet done: SwapSlabs operates nationwide and each member's home state's consumer-protection, sales-tax, and marketplace-facilitator law can apply to that member regardless of the governing-law clause above (courts widely limit choice-of-law clauses from displacing a resident's own non-waivable consumer protections — see the carve-out in the paragraph above). This has not been reviewed state-by-state and must be before launch. Flagging one specific, previously-unexamined risk area for that review: SwapSlabs's swap flow allows cash to move between members to equalize an uneven trade, and settles both sale and swap proceeds through Stripe Connect (see `src/lib/connect/`). Whether this structure qualifies for the money-transmitter licensing exemption most marketplaces rely on (acting through a licensed payment processor/facilitator rather than as a money transmitter itself) has not been confirmed by counsel in any state and must be before this feature is relied on at real volume — state money-transmitter statutes and licensing thresholds vary significantly and this is not a determination SwapSlabs's own team or its tooling can make.]

21. Changes to these Terms and re-acceptance

SwapSlabs may update this Agreement. Every legal document on SwapSlabs shares a single date-based version. When SwapSlabs makes a material change, it publishes a new version and updates the “last updated” date. Non-material fixes (typos, formatting) may not trigger a new version.

The version you accepted is recorded on your account and in an append-only acceptance log, along with the date and the IP address and browser captured at acceptance. When the current version is newer than the one you accepted, SwapSlabs shows a notice and asks you to review and re-accept the update at /account/legal; continued use of transactional features may require accepting it. If you do not agree to an updated version, stop using SwapSlabs and close your account.

22. Force majeure

SwapSlabs is not liable for any delay or failure to perform caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including natural disasters, fire, flood, epidemic or pandemic, war, terrorism, civil unrest, labor disputes, carrier or logistics disruption, utility or internet failure, denial-of-service attacks, changes in law, or acts of government. Guarantee timelines and shipping estimates are extended for the duration of such an event.

23. Assignment, severability, entire agreement, and no waiver

You may not assign or transfer this Agreement or your account without SwapSlabs's prior written consent. SwapSlabs may assign this Agreement, in whole or in part, including to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of assets.

If any provision of this Agreement is held unenforceable, that provision is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the rest stays in effect. SwapSlabs's failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of its right to enforce it later. There are no third-party beneficiaries.

This Agreement, including the documents it incorporates by reference, is the entire agreement between you and SwapSlabs about the marketplace and supersedes any prior agreement on that subject.

24. Contact, legal entity, and registered agent

General and legal questions: support@swapslabs.example. Privacy and data-rights requests: privacy@swapslabs.example. Copyright and IP notices: ip@swapslabs.example.

Notices to you may be sent to the email on your account or posted in the app; notices to SwapSlabs must be sent to the addresses above and, where this Agreement requires writing (for example an arbitration opt-out), also to SwapSlabs's mailing address below.

[PLACEHOLDER — before launch, add the real legal entity name and form (e.g. “SwapSlabs, Inc., a Delaware corporation”), the principal mailing address, and the name and address of the registered agent for service of process.]