What to do with bulk Pokémon cards

What counts as bulk

Collectors use the word for cards that are worth little one at a time: commons and uncommons without foil, basic energy cards, and the many copies of recent cards that were printed in huge numbers. Bulk is not worthless — it is sold, traded and played in quantity — but it is not worth an evening of looking up prices card by card.

What is not bulk is everything that shines, everything with a star or a higher rarity symbol, anything numbered above its set's total, promos, and older cards from the first sets. The next section is a quick way to find them.

Pull out what is not bulk

Go through the box once, quickly, and take out:

• holo rares, with foil in the artwork, and reverse holos, with foil everywhere else;
• full-art, textured and gold cards, and cards whose names end in ex, EX, GX, V, VMAX or VSTAR;
• anything with a star or a higher rarity symbol in the bottom corner;
• any card whose collector number is higher than its set's total, such as 105/102;
• promos, marked with a black star instead of a set symbol;
• older cards with a Wizards of the Coast copyright line, and any card with a 1st Edition stamp.

Those cards are worth checking one by one, and which Pokémon cards are worth money explains each mark. What stays in the box is your bulk.

Sort what is left

Sorting bulk is optional, but it pays back whatever you decide to do with it. A buyer who can see what is in a lot, a trader looking for one card, and you finishing a set all need the same thing: cards grouped so they can be found.

The simplest useful order is by set, using the small symbol near the bottom of the card, and then by collector number within each set. If you or someone in the house plays, sorting by type — the energy symbol on each card — makes decks easier to build. Duplicates can be kept apart from the start; they are the first thing to trade or give away.

Five things to do with it

Sell it as a lot. Many card shops buy bulk by count, and bulk lots are sold online by count or by weight. The price per card is small, so this is about clearing space rather than making money, and a sorted lot is easier to sell than a mixed one. A shop pays less than a collector would, because it has to resell the cards.

Trade it. Another collector's bulk is where the card missing from your set turns up, and the reverse is true too. Local game stores and league nights are where these trades happen.

Give it away. A box of bulk is a good present for a child starting out, a school club, or a local league that hands out cards to new players.

Play with it. Bulk is what most decks are built from. The game's own rules decide which cards are allowed in organised play, but for playing at home any card will do.

Keep it for a set. If you are completing a set, every common in it counts. Bulk sorted by set and number is the list of what you already have.

Where a scanner helps, and where it does not

Scanning every common in a box of bulk one card at a time is slow, and it mostly confirms what the rarity symbol already told you. Your eyes are faster at the first pass. A scanner earns its place on the cards you pulled out, where the exact printing decides what a card is worth and the differences are easy to miss.

GrailFox reads one card per photograph: it names the set, the collector number and the printing variation, and shows the market value for that print in the condition you choose. When it cannot settle the printing, it asks rather than guessing, and a photograph it could not read costs nothing.

Storing what you keep

Bulk keeps well in a plain storage box, standing upright and packed loosely enough that the cards do not bend. Rubber bands dent the edges and trap moisture; card dividers between sets do the same job without the damage. Keep boxes somewhere dry and away from sunlight.

The cards you pulled out deserve more: a sleeve each, and a binder or a rigid holder for anything you would be upset to see scratched.