Terms of service

Agreeing to these terms

By signing in to Cardsteward or otherwise using the service, you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use it.

Who can use Cardsteward

• You must be at least 18 years old.
• Cardsteward is in a private, invite-only beta. There is no public sign-up: we create each account for a person we have invited. Requesting an invite doesn't guarantee one, and we decide who to invite and when.
• An account is for one person. Don't share your sign-in details or let anyone else use your account, and don't use anyone else's.
• Your account's email address must be one you control, because password-reset links are sent to it.
• When we set up your account we give you a starting password: change it on the Account page the first time you sign in, and choose one you don't use anywhere else. Keep it safe. You are responsible for what happens under your account after that. If you think someone else has used it, change your password (or use “Forgotten your password?” on the sign-in page if you can't get in), sign out, which signs your account out on every device, and tell us at support@cardsteward.com.

What Cardsteward does

Cardsteward looks for graded Pokémon cards listed for sale on third-party marketplaces (currently Fanatics Collect, Arena Club, Courtyard and ALT) and compares each listing's price with an estimate of what that card, at that grade, sells for. It shows you:

• buy-now listings priced below the estimate, with the estimated market price, the saving and the percentage off;
• auctions, with the current bid and a “bid up to” figure;
• a confidence rating (High, Medium or Low) and a short reason for each deal;
• card pages with estimated values by grading company and grade, and ungraded prices with links to TCGplayer;
• your own want list, and a minimum discount setting that decides which deals you see.

The service covers English-language cards graded by PSA, CGC, BGS or SGC with a numeric grade from 1 to 10. It does not cover every marketplace, listing or card.

What Cardsteward is not

• Not a marketplace, and not a party to your purchases. The service doesn't sell cards, doesn't handle payments, and never buys, bids or acts for you on any marketplace. Every purchase or bid is between you and the seller or marketplace, under that marketplace's terms. The people who run Cardsteward are collectors too, and may buy cards for themselves, including cards that appear on the service.
• Not financial or investment advice. Nothing on Cardsteward is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any card, or a prediction of what a card will be worth. Cards can lose value.
• Not an appraisal, authentication or grading service. We never physically inspect or handle the cards. An estimated value is not an appraisal, and we don't check that a slab is genuine, undamaged or correctly graded.

Estimates can be wrong: check before you buy

Everything Cardsteward shows is produced automatically from data we don't control, and any of it can be wrong or out of date. In particular:

• Estimated values are drawn from several sources, such as recorded sales and published value estimates, and combined by automated rules. They are estimates, not the price a card will actually sell for.
• Listings are matched to cards automatically. A match can pick the wrong card, printing or grade, especially when a listing has no certification number.
• Confidence ratings are our own judgement of how far to trust a match and a value. A High rating can still be wrong.
• The price shown is the listing's asking price, plus shipping only where the listing itself states a shipping charge. It leaves out buyer's premiums, vault or retrieval fees, sales tax and any other shipping or delivery costs, so what you pay can be more than the price that the “% off” and “save” figures are based on.
• “Bid up to” is our estimate of the highest bid that would keep your total at least your chosen minimum discount below the estimated value, using our understanding of the marketplace's buyer's premium and retrieval fee. Some marketplaces charge retrieval on the card's insured or listed value rather than your bid, so the real cost can be a little higher. It leaves out sales tax and shipping, it isn't shown for every auction, and marketplaces can change their fees at any time. An auction's discount is measured against the current bid and will move as bidding goes on.
• Listings change quickly. We check the marketplaces several times a day and look for new listings more often, but a listing may already have sold, ended or changed price by the time you see it.
• Some marketplaces keep cards in a vault or sell them as digital tokens. Getting the physical card can involve extra steps and fees that Cardsteward's figures may not reflect.

Before you buy or bid, always check the listing on the marketplace yourself, including the price, the fees, the slab's certification number and photos, and the marketplace's terms. Every decision to buy or bid is yours.

Marketplaces, TCGplayer and other third parties

Cardsteward is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Fanatics Collect, Arena Club, Courtyard, ALT, TCGplayer or any grading company. Listing details, prices and card information come from those sites and other third-party sources, and we can't guarantee that they are accurate or current.

Links to a marketplace or to TCGplayer take you to a site we don't control, with its own terms and privacy policy. Any purchase you make there is between you and that site or its seller. These links are plain links: they carry no affiliate or referral code.

Card pictures and set logos are loaded directly from third-party image services, as the privacy policy explains.

A beta service

Cardsteward is in beta. It is free during the beta, and it may be incomplete, contain errors, or be slow or unavailable at times. We may change, add or remove features, change limits, or pause or end the beta or the service at any time. If we ever introduce paid features, we will tell you first, and you won't be charged for anything you haven't agreed to.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• scrape, crawl or bulk-copy the service or its data, or access it with bots, scripts or other automated tools;
• resell, republish or redistribute Cardsteward's listings, values, ratings or other content, or use them to build another product or data set;
• share your account or sign-in details, or use someone else's;
• try to reach accounts, data or parts of the service you aren't allowed to, or get around any security measure or access limit;
• interfere with or overload the service, or probe or test it for weaknesses (if you come across a security problem, please tell us at support@cardsteward.com);
• use the service to break any law or anyone else's rights;
• put anything unlawful or abusive, or anyone else's personal information, in an issue report or other feedback.

Issue reports and feedback

You can report a problem with a card, a value or a page, or send a suggestion or other feedback from the Feedback page. A report is stored with your account, together with the page you were on and, for a report about a particular listing or card, which one and a snapshot of what the site showed. Reports are reviewed by Cardsteward with the help of AI tools, and used to check and fix the service. You can't view or change a report after sending it, and we can't promise to act on every report or to reply.

By sending a report or other feedback, you allow Cardsteward to use it to improve the service, without payment or credit to you. Please don't include personal or sensitive information in a note. The privacy policy explains how reports are handled.

Intellectual property

Cardsteward's website, including its design, text and software, and the estimates, ratings and other content it produces, belong to Cardsteward or its licensors, apart from the third-party material described below. While your account is open and you follow these terms, we give you a personal, non-transferable permission to use the service for your own collecting and buying decisions. We may withdraw that permission, and nothing else is licensed to you.

Listing details, card names, card pictures and prices belong to the marketplaces, TCGplayer and their other owners. Pokémon and the names of Pokémon cards, sets and characters are trademarks of their owners, including Nintendo, Creatures Inc., GAME FREAK inc. and The Pokémon Company. The names of the marketplaces, TCGplayer and the grading companies (PSA, CGC, BGS and SGC) are trademarks of their owners. They appear on Cardsteward only to identify cards, grades and where a card is listed.

Cardsteward is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by The Pokémon Company, Nintendo, Creatures, GAME FREAK, any marketplace or any grading company.

If you own material that appears on Cardsteward and believe it is being used without permission, email support@cardsteward.com with a description of the material, where it appears on the site, and how we can reach you. We will review it and remove or change it where appropriate.

Privacy

The privacy policy explains what personal data Cardsteward holds (such as your email address, your settings, your want list and your issue reports), how it is used, and the choices you have.

Suspension and closing your account

• You can stop using Cardsteward at any time. To have your account deleted, email us at support@cardsteward.com from the address on the account.
• We may suspend or close your account, or end your access, at any time, including if you break these terms, if we need to protect the service or other people, or when the beta changes or ends. Where it is reasonable to, we will tell you first.
• When an account is deleted, its settings, want list and issue reports are deleted from Cardsteward's database. The privacy policy explains what else may be kept.
• The parts of these terms that by their nature should continue, including what Cardsteward is not, the disclaimers, the limitation of liability, the indemnity and governing law, still apply after your account ends.

Disclaimers

The service is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the fullest extent the law allows, Cardsteward makes no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, non-infringement, accuracy or availability. We don't promise that the service, its values, listings or ratings will be accurate, complete, current, uninterrupted or free of errors, or that any listing will still be available at the price shown.

Limitation of liability

Cardsteward is free during the beta, and these limits reflect that. To the fullest extent the law allows:

• Cardsteward will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any lost profits, lost savings or lost data, or for any loss arising from a card you buy, sell or bid on, or decide not to, whether or not you relied on the service.
• Cardsteward's total liability for all claims relating to the service or these terms is limited to US$50.

These limits apply whatever the legal basis of the claim (contract, tort including negligence, or anything else), and even if we were told that a loss was possible. Some places don't allow some of these limits; where that is so, they apply only as far as the law allows.

Indemnity

If someone else brings a claim against Cardsteward because you broke these terms or misused the service, you agree to cover Cardsteward's reasonable losses and costs from that claim, including reasonable legal fees.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Mississippi, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute about these terms or the service will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in Mississippi, and you and Cardsteward agree to those courts' jurisdiction. Before bringing a claim, please contact us at support@cardsteward.com so we can try to resolve it informally.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example as the beta grows or features change. The date at the top shows when they last changed. If a change is significant, we will tell account holders before it takes effect, by email or with a notice on the site. If you keep using Cardsteward after a change takes effect, you accept the updated terms; if you don't agree, stop using the service and ask us to delete your account.

General

These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between you and Cardsteward about the service. If any part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce a term straight away, we haven't given up the right to enforce it later. You can't transfer your account or these terms to anyone else; we may transfer them to whoever takes over the service. Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have by law that can't be changed by agreement.

Contact

Questions about these terms? Email support@cardsteward.com.