THE QUICK ANSWER

Separate unit cost, sale price and operating expenses. Use actual sales to evaluate a price change; a spreadsheet cannot guarantee what a customer will buy.

Official TCG Card Shop Simulator 1.0 artwork showing a stocked card shop
OPNeon Games / Xbox Wire. Image credits.

Markup is not margin

For a hypothetical product costing $10 and selling for $15, markup is 50%, but gross margin is 33.33%. Both describe the same $5 gross profit using different denominators.

Markup = (price − cost) ÷ cost. Gross margin = (price − cost) ÷ price. Neither includes rent, wages or other operating costs.

Build a transparent scenario

Enter your own unit cost, planned markup, units sold and allocated operating costs into the profit calculator. Treat unsold units and any one-time purchases separately from recurring operating profit.

The break-even estimate assumes identical units and constant unit profit. A real mixed inventory is more complicated; do not confuse a planning estimate with a prediction of your next day.

Test one price change

Choose one product or a small comparable group. Keep a note of the previous price, the new price and quantities sold over comparable periods. Changing layout, stock and pricing simultaneously makes the result hard to interpret.

A claimed universal “best markup” is not established by this guide. Sales behavior, game updates and your product mix are reasons to check results rather than repeat a number blindly.

Keep collection spending visible

Opening stock for your personal collection reduces what is available to sell. Assign that spending to a collection budget instead of hiding it inside a shop-performance calculation.

A rare pull may be exciting, but it should not disguise whether routine sales can support the shop.

Price the exact card, not a different grade

For individual cards, keep the current graph value, your asking price and completed-sale proceeds separate. Graded-card prices can be inspected by selecting that grade in the price graph; do not compare a slab with an ungraded entry or another finish. Follow the card-selling checklist if a valuable listing remains unsold.

Before grading, compare the ungraded sale you are giving up with the full service costs and a hypothetical graded sale using the local grading comparison. It is a scenario calculation, not a predicted grade, customer budget or guaranteed margin.

QUICK ANSWERS

Good questions. Clear answers.

Does the calculator know the best in-game price?

No. It calculates the scenario you enter and does not model customer willingness to buy.

Are card prices fixed?

This site does not publish a live price database. Use the value and pricing information in your current game for decisions.

SOURCE NOTES

Source-reviewed . Recommendations are editorial guidance, not in-game benchmark results.

TCG Card Shop Simulator — official Steam listing Game identity, management features, single-player classification and PC requirements.

OPNeon Games — Early access build 0.60: Card Grading Historical developer announcement, reopened September 23, 2026. Documents the phone app, up to eight cards per package, service-dependent cost/time, the Graded album and grade-specific price graph. It does not list a fee table, grade probabilities or a guaranteed resale result. Grading was not newly introduced in September 2026.