It’s fair to say that the absolute pinnacle of Pokémon card collection has passed…for now. People were buying and selling cards for hundreds of thousands of pounds a few years ago, particularly during the pandemic, and things have mellowed out since. That’s not to say they aren’t still extremely popular – or that we could see another massive boom at any given moment. These cards remain the most popular collectables on the planet, which is why so many people are still interested in buying them.
Now, you could just go to a shop and buy boxes of cards to open, but true fans want to buy specific cards from sets that may no longer be available. To do this, you have to find a genuine Pokémon card seller – and that’s how we stumbled upon BuyGradedCards. It’s a platform that promises to offer graded Pokémon cards in all sorts of varieties, so we gave it a go, and here’s our honest review.
What Does BuyGradedCards Actually Do?
First off, here’s a really quick bio of BuyGradedCards and what it does. The site was created by a Pokémon enthusiast who wanted to provide fellow fans with an easy way to buy genuine Pokémon cards that have been graded by ACE or PSA. For those in the know, these are the two most prominent grading companies out there, and any cards with a grading from either can use that as a massive seal of approval.
BuyGradedCards won’t grade the cards themselves, but they sell cards that have already been graded. All you have to do is search through the website, pick out any cards that attract your attention, and place an order. The company will package your card(s) and send them out as soon as possible.
It’s really quite simple, but we were intrigued to find out what else this website offers and whether or not it’s worth using in the long term.
The Positives: Things We Liked The Most
As avid fans of collecting, we were immediately happy to see Pokémon cards for sale at attainable prices. A lot of these stores only stock the rarest cards, which aren’t within reach for the average person. You can get GEM MINT 10 cards for under £100 here – and there’s a nice selection of new Pokémon cards, slightly older ones, and proper retro options from the very first sets.
With that in mind, here are the things we like the most about BuyGradedCards during our little experiment:
- Can Sort Via Lots of Categories: We love how you can sort for ACE graded cards, PSA graded ones, English ones, Japanese ones, Chinese ones, vintage ones, and so on. BuyGradedCards gives you lots of categories to pick from, which filter your results and mean you can easily find what you’re looking for.
- Willing To Source Cards For You: Probably the best feature we found, but BuyGradedCards has a list of all previously sold cards on its website. Why? Because you can look through them and then contact the site to ask about specific cards. They’ll then try to source the card for you and list the closest match, which we think is very cool.
- Free Delivery On All Orders Over £25: You won’t be surprised to know that it’s very easy to meet the £25 threshold, meaning most customers will get free delivery on this site. It’s 48-hour delivery through Royal Mail as well, which means you get tracking details and should have your cards within a couple of days.
- 10% Off First Orders & Other Promos: BuyGradedCards offers 10% off your first order, and it also runs different seasonal promotions. This is great if you’re into Pokémon card collecting but want to save money.
- Nice Protective Packaging & Cool Extras: All orders come in excellent packaging that adds extra protection to your cards. Also, you get fresh sleeves for your slabs so you can slip them into your collections with ease, which is a great little touch.
- Can Connect A Shop Account: Hands up, who hates it when you have to fill in a registration form and add your card details to a site when buying something? We do, so it came as a great success to see that BuyGradedCards will let you connect a Shop account. It’s one of those one-click connection options that instantly lets you use your Shop account details and payment methods.
The Negatives: Things We Weren’t So Keen On
To be frank, it’s quite hard to criticise a website that only sells graded Pokémon cards. In many ways, it does exactly what it says on the tin, so we couldn’t really complain about much. All the cards are genuine, the delivery service is great, and that means there’s only one thing that might annoy some people: the selection of cards.
While there are plenty to choose from, the site normally only has around 200 products for sale. At the time of review, it listed 219 products, but a few had recently sold, so you only really had 180-ish to choose from. Some of the more die-hard collectors will also point out that it doesn’t sell that many rare cards – but then you could argue that’s a benefit for casual collectors who aren’t looking to spend thousands of pounds.
At the end of the day, it’s all relative to you. If you find the card you’re looking for on the site, then you won’t care about the fairly small collection. If you can’t, it will annoy you.
The Final Verdict
On the whole, we lean towards recommending BuyGradedCards because it’s a great site that means well and has plenty to offer. Sure, it’s not got the most exclusive selection of cards, but it still has hundreds of graded options in English and Japanese. The chances of you finding a card to add to your collection are extremely high – and you also benefit from fast delivery that’s almost always going to be free.
The way we see it is that you could either take a chance and use another marketplace full of individual sellers, or you could pick BuyGradedCards and have the confidence of knowing that your purchase is from a legitimate company. If you’re a Pokémon fan, this site is definitely worth checking out.