Every way to get your cards
and how we make each one simpler
There are more ways to get a card than anyone tells you — buy across Europe, order straight from Japan, or send a card off to be graded. This page walks every route honestly: what it costs, how long it takes, and where the hidden fees hide. Cambridge TCG doesn't sell these cards. We're the map, not the merchant.
01Which route is for you
Three honest routes, at a glance. Pick the one that fits, then read its section for the detail.
Cardmarket (Europe)
The deepest singles pool and Europe's price benchmark. Buy from a UK seller and it's a domestic order.
Under a week UK–UK · ~1.5–3 weeks cross-border
Japan, via a proxy
The cheapest Japanese-language singles on CardRush — but Japan-only, so you order through a proxy and pay import VAT.
~2–3 weeks + 20% import VAT
Grading (a rate slip)
Turn a mint card into a trusted, resellable slab with a numeric grade and a cert number.
Weeks to months
How we simplify: we put all three in one place, with the honest number beside each, then link you straight out. Open any card on the site and you'll find one-tap links to these channels.
02Trading on Cambridge TCG (retired)
New paid trades on Cambridge TCG were retired on 23 September 2026: the market no longer accepts listings, bids, offers or purchases. Trades agreed before then still settle from your account, with escrow, shipping and refunds unchanged.
03Cardmarket — Europe's deepest singles pool
Cardmarket is Europe's biggest TCG marketplace and its de-facto price reference (the “Trend” price). It's the widest choice of singles you'll find — and it's strongest when you filter Seller country: United Kingdom, which makes it a domestic order with no customs at all.
How we link you
From any card on the site, a Find on Cardmarket link runs a Cardmarket search built from the card's name and number — so you land on the right card, not an empty search box. (We can't always reconstruct the exact product page from the fields we hold, so it's an honest search link.)
Costs (as of 6 Jul 2026 — verify live)
- •Buyers pay no marketplace fee. Sellers pay 5% (private) / 3% (professional) / 1.5% (powerseller), capped at €100 per article.
- •A ~3% currency-conversion fee can appear when you pay a non-GBP seller.
- •UK VAT: for EU professional sellers, Cardmarket collects UK VAT at checkout on orders of £135 or under (its own UK VAT number on the invoice). Over £135, the courier collects import VAT plus a handling fee (~£8 Royal Mail; more via other couriers) at your door.
- •Shipping estimates run roughly €1–3 untracked to €5–15 tracked/insured — these are seller-set, so treat them as a guide, not a quote.
Wait time
UK-to-UK is usually under a week. EU-to-UK is roughly 1.5–3 weeks, with the occasional customs hold.
How we simplify: we show you the card here first, with a labelled reference price, then hand you a ready-made Cardmarket search so you arrive at the right card in one tap.
04CardRush — buying from Japan
CardRush (カードラッシュ, operated by 株式会社RUSH) is a low-price card chain that calls itself among Japan's largest, based around Tokyo (Akihabara and Ikebukuro). It's a family of per-game stores — cardrush-op.jp (One Piece), cardrush-pokemon.jp (Pokémon), cardrush-db.jp (Dragon Ball) — ten stores in all, from Yu-Gi-Oh to Duel Masters. Everything is in Japanese, priced in yen — and it does not ship internationally, so a UK buyer reaches it through a proxy (next section). The full shelf directory, with every store linked and the listing vocabulary explained, lives in Ordering from Japan.
How we link you
From any card here whose game CardRush carries (the full store directory is in Ordering from Japan), a Search CardRush (Japan) link opens that game's store filtered to the card's number — so you can copy a clean product link and hand it to a proxy.
Two honest cautions
- •Prices are in yen — watch the exchange rate (around ¥190 to £1 (as of 6 Jul 2026 — verify live)).
- •We link to CardRush, but we never republish their yen prices — those are theirs. The reference price you see on our card pages is a derived, rights-labelled guide—not a reuse grant.
- •Note: cardrush.co.ukis a different, unrelated UK company; and an eBay “Card Rush Inc” storefront exists whose link to the Japanese firm we haven't verified.
How we simplify: we take you from a card here to the exact search on the right Japanese store, so you have a clean link ready for the proxy step.
05Order from Japan with a proxy
A proxy service buys a card in Japan on your behalf, holds it, and reships it to the UK. It's how you reach stores like CardRush that don't post abroad. Remambo is the one we've walked — the step-by-step, with fees, consolidation and the traps, is in Ordering from Japan — other names you may hear we have not walked or verified, so we describe only Remambo. Here's the whole chain, honest to the door.
Find the card on CardRush
Copy its product URL — the link straight to that one card.
Paste it into the proxy's order form
The proxy buys it in Japan using a Japanese address and card.
It lands at their warehouse
Remambo holds it and can combine several orders into one parcel — the storage window and consolidation rules are in the walkthrough.
Pick a carrier and pay shipping
EMS to the UK is around ¥3,150 for 500g (as of 6 Jul 2026 — verify live); heavier or faster costs more.
Pay import fees on arrival
Before the parcel is released, you pay UK import VAT plus the courier's handling fee. This is the step that ambushes people — so here's the maths.
The import maths (as of 6 Jul 2026 — verify live)
- VAT:UK import VAT is 20%, charged on the goods plus shipping.
- Duty:None if the goods' own value is £135 or less (that test is on the card value, excluding separately-shown shipping). Above £135 a small rate (around 2.5%) may apply, though trading cards can classify differently or at 0%.
- Handling:Royal Mail charges about £8 to collect the VAT for you (£25 where a full declaration is needed).
- Payment:A processor fee — usually under 1% via Wise, around 3.8% by card.
- Service:Remambo's own fee is a flat ¥500 per order.
Two worked examples
~£50 order
Lands around £78–£100 once shipping, VAT and handling are in — the exact figure depends on whether VAT is charged on a sub-£135 parcel.
~£200 order
Lands around +50% over sticker by the time it reaches your door.
Rough, hedged figures — the point is the shape, not a quote.
Wait time
Around 2–3 weeks door to door by EMS. Longer if you consolidate several orders or hit a customs hold.
Two things that are moving
- •The £135 duty-free threshold is set to be abolished from 1 October 2028 — after that, duty maths changes.
- •Low-value (£135 or under) proxy parcels are taxed inconsistently in practice — don't plan around “slipping through.”
How we simplify: we write the whole chain down in one place with real numbers, so the import fee never ambushes you at the door. But the parcel, the VAT and the customs are yours to handle — we're the map, not the importer.
06Grading — turning a card into a trusted slab
Grading (a “rate slip”) is when a third party authenticates your card, scores its condition 1–10, and seals it in a slab with a cert number. (What the graders actually measure — the centering tables, the defect vocabulary, what separates a 10 from a 9 — lives in Condition & grading.) It's worth doing when a top-grade version of the card is worth at least around three times the grading cost — because the grade is never guaranteed, and a card can come back lower than you hoped. (Modern pack-fresh cards hit the top grade far more often than the old “2–5%” myth suggests — PSA's overall gem rate ran near 43% in 2025.)
The sensible UK default — graded at their Bloomsbury, London office, so no transatlantic leg, no customs, no return VAT. Modern card tier around £30 (£36 inc VAT); Modern Bulk around £27. (as of 6 Jul 2026 — verify live)
Best resale liquidity, but slow right now: the cheap Value tiers were paused (2 June 2026, huge backlog), and Regular is $79.99 with a 40–50 business-day turnaround — budget roughly six months via a UK intermediary. Good news coming: PSA is opening a Frankfurt grading centre (summer 2026) and a Greater London receiving centre (H2 2026) that will remove the US round-trip. (as of 6 Jul 2026 — verify live)
Beckett — four sub-grades and the rare, coveted Black Label. Reached via a UK intermediary submission service.
Best for Japanese-language cards, reached via a proxy such as Cardova (around a 15% overseas surcharge).
Import tip
When a card goes abroad to be graded and comes back, ask the grader to declare the raw value to stay under the £135 VAT threshold (at the courier's discretion; Returned Goods Relief may also apply). You can verify any PSA slab at psacard.com/cert/{number}.
How we simplify: we lay the trade-offs side by side — speed vs resale vs customs — so you choose a grader once and don't relearn it every time.
07eBay & the other catch-alls
eBay is the universal fallback — good for graded slabs and hard-to-find singles, and buying from a UK seller means no customs. From any card here, a Search eBay UKlink is built from the card's name and number. (Same two cautions as CardRush: cardrush.co.ukis a separate UK company, and the eBay “Card Rush Inc” storefront's link to the Japanese firm is unverified.)
08The honest fine print
- •Every price, fee and wait time here carries a date — they drift. Check the live page before you spend.
- •Import VAT, customs duty and courier handling are yours to pay. They're never included in a figure a seller shows.
- •Cambridge TCG doesn't buy or sell these cards. We publish policy-bound reference prices (never offers or open-data grants) and route you to where cards actually trade — including our own collectors' market.
- •The outbound links here are plain links — we earn nothing when you click one today. If that ever changes, this line changes with it, and we'll say so.
- •We link to CardRush; we don't republish their prices.
See it on every channel
Open any card and you'll find one-tap links to every channel above.