How to Ship Your Cards

Buy your own postage and the label is in your name, the tracking belongs to you, and nothing about your box depends on us. This page is how to do that for as little money as possible, and how to make sure the box is recognisable when it lands on our counter.

One thing worth knowing before you pay for any of it: if your box counts to more than $500 in cash value, we refund what the shipping cost you, up to $25, added straight onto your payout. It is decided by our recount rather than by your estimate, so keep the postage receipt and it comes back to you with the money for the cards.

1. Pick the box

Cards are dense. A box that looks small will weigh more than you expect, and a box with room to spare lets the stacks slide and round off their own corners in transit. Choose a box the cards nearly fill, then fill what is left. A double walled box is worth it past about twenty pounds, because a single wall carton carrying that much cardboard bulges at the seams and arrives soft.

2. Pack so the corners survive

Damage happens when cards move. Band your sorted piles so each stays a block, stand the blocks upright rather than lying them flat, and pad every gap until nothing shifts when you tilt the box. Shake it before you tape it. If you can hear movement, the carrier will find it too. Keep the sorted categories separated, because the recount follows your sort and a box that mixes on the way here is slower to count.

3. Weigh it before you buy postage

This is the step people skip and the only one that reliably costs money. Postage is priced on weight and size, and if you declare less than the box actually weighs the carrier bills the difference afterwards. Put the sealed box on a bathroom scale, round up to the next pound, and measure the three sides. A thousand sleeved cards runs heavier than most people guess.

4. Buy the postage

The cheapest route for an individual posting a heavy parcel is Pirate Ship. It costs nothing to use and passes through commercial USPS pricing, which is normally reserved for businesses shipping in volume. Make an account, enter your own address as the sender and ours as the recipient, type the weight and dimensions you just measured, and it will show you the services side by side. Ground Advantage is almost always the right answer for cards, because nothing in the box is urgent and it carries tracking as standard.

Print the label and tape it flat across the top of the box, with no wrinkles through the barcode. If you have no printer, both USPS and the major parcel shops will print a label from the QR code Pirate Ship gives you.

5. Make the box identifiable

Boxes turn up here with nothing on them that says whose they are, and an unidentified box gets held rather than counted, which delays your payout for no good reason. Two things prevent it. Write your submission ID and your name on the outside of the box and post it under that same name, then put a slip of paper inside the box carrying both. The slip is the one that matters, because outer labels scuff, tear and get covered by carrier stickers, and the slip is still there when they do. The packing sheet on your submission confirmation prints with both on it and can go straight in the box.

6. Send it here

Monster & Shield
2552 Bengal Rd
North Charleston, SC 29406

Keep your tracking number until we have marked the box received, and keep the postage receipt in case your count clears $500. The box is your risk until we sign for it, and we cannot be responsible for a package that never arrives, so a service without tracking is a service to avoid.

What happens when it lands

We mark the box received, recount it by hand, and email you a final offer priced on the rates that were published when you submitted. Your status page tracks every one of those steps. If our count differs from what you declared by more than ten percent on any line, the comparison is shown to you side by side before you decide anything. The rules for what we buy and at what rate live on the buylist page, and it is worth reading the sorting section before you pack rather than after.