How TCG Buyers Can Beat US Tariffs

13th May 2025 EDT FEATURES

How TCG Buyers Can Beat US Tariffs

With these tips, anyone can avoid the TCG price (red, white, and) blues.

In March and April 2025, the United States imposed various tariffs against other countries—initially against just Canada, China, and Mexico before expanding these tariffs worldwide. As one might expect, these new US tariffs have impacted every economic and commercial sphere—and the TCG sphere hasn’t been spared.

Owing to these tariffs, many in the TCG community—both in the US and elsewhere—are in search of options which would enable them to minimize the impact which the tariffs would have on their purchases of TCG products.

With this in mind, we’ve summarized what TCG buyers can do to ensure that US tariffs won’t burn too big of a hole in their wallets when buying the cards, packs, or boxes they’re interested in.

For International Buyers

Since most TCG franchises print the English versions of their cards in the US, international buyers might thus deem the imposition of the tariffs to represent an opportunity to focus on buying and collecting cards in Japanese or other languages. Apart from Japanese and English, the TCG languages which generally tend to be most sought after if the franchise in question has products in those languages are Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional) and Korean.

International buyers who remain interested in English cards, meanwhile, might choose to pivot to those which have not been printed in the US. Many TCG franchises which print English cards in the US do so elsewhere as well, albeit usually in far smaller quantities. Examples of companies outside the US which print TCG cards for multiple well-known TCG franchises include Millennium Print Group Europe (Netherlands), Legatoria Editoriale Giovanni Olivotto S.p.A. (Italy), and Cartamundi (Belgium).

Similarly, non-US TCG collectors who are interested in having their cards graded can opt for grading service providers located outside the US. Recently, US-based Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) closed its doors to grading submissions from outside the US until further notice. In addition, grading services rendered to international customers from other US-based graders such as Technical Authentication & Grading (TAG) and Sportscard Guarantee Corporation (SGC) will also be subject to tariffs.

As such, those outside the US who want their cards graded can choose from the likes of Ace Grading (UK), Arsales Co., Ltd. (ARS) (Japan), Beckett Grading Services (BGS), or Certified Guaranty Company (CGC); while BGS and CGC are headquartered in the US, they provide card grading services from their respective branches in Germany as well.

For US Buyers

In general, most of our advice to non-US buyers can be reversed for US buyers. To avoid the tariffs imposed on international products brought into the US, TCG buyers in the US might choose to focus on English cards and products since most English TCG cards are printed in the US. This could be of particular note to US-based ONE PIECE Card Game collectors because starting from April 2026, all ONE PIECE Card Game sets will have simultaneous global launches; there will no longer be a delay between the Japanese and English releases.

US-based TCG buyers might also choose to start focusing on single cards over booster boxes or other boxed TCG products. This is because even if the cards in the boxes are all in English, the boxes themselves contain parts manufactured abroad—including, most notably, in China: the country hardest hit by the tariffs. As such, single card prices should be less impacted by the tariffs than boxed product prices will.

With regard to card grading, once again, the opposite of the advice for international collectors applies. Those in the US can opt for PSA, SGC, TAG, BGS, or CGC, among others. More card graders are based in the US than anywhere else in the world; as such, despite the tariffs’ imposition, the US TCG community should find themselves relatively unaffected as far as card grading is concerned.

In any case, tariffs or no tariffs, the TCG products which SNKRDUNK sells continue to have among the best value for money anywhere. Please proceed to one of the following links to browse our product selection for each of these TCG and sports card franchises:

▪ Pokémon
▪ One Piece
▪ Yu-Gi-Oh
▪ Dragon Ball
▪ Weiß Schwarz
▪ Lorcana
▪ Topps

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