For card shops · card shows
Know what you took, and what came back.
Group stock for an event, sell from it, and walk away with the day already reconciled against your inventory — instead of a cash box and a stack of notes to type up on Monday.
You will need a connection at the table. Selling at a show runs in the same web app as the rest of your stock, so it needs a connection. Offline recording is built on the server side and waiting on the mobile app — until that ships, plan for signal at the table.
How a show works
Create the show
A name, a location and the dates. It becomes a container for the stock you are taking.
Allocate stock to it
Move units onto the show channel. They leave your shop window while they are allocated, which is exactly right — a card in a box on a table is not available to a collector browsing online.
Sell from it
Record sales and trades against the units you took, so a sale at the table decrements the same stock record as a sale anywhere else.
Come back with it reconciled
What sold is already a transaction, what did not is still allocated to the show, and returning it to the shop channel is one move rather than an evening of typing.
Collectors can see where you will be.
While a show is upcoming or running, it appears to collectors alongside your shop — the event, the dates, the location and your name. There is no publish switch to remember and nothing to take down afterwards: a finished show drops off by itself.
Only event details and your shop byline are ever shown. Stock levels, costs and margins are not part of it.
Why show stock is separate
A unit sits on exactly one channel at a time. Moving it to another channel reassigns it rather than copying it, which is what makes overselling impossible — a card allocated to a show cannot also be sold on eBay. A live eBay listing must be ended before its unit can be moved.
For a show that is not a technicality, it is the whole point. The cards in the box on your table are not available to anyone online while they are in that box, and the system agrees with reality rather than needing to be corrected afterwards.
Card shows FAQ
- Does it work without a signal at the venue?
- Not yet. Selling at a show runs in the same web app as the rest of your stock, so it needs a connection. Offline recording is built on the server side and waiting on the mobile app — until that ships, plan for signal at the table. The groundwork is done on the server — a show’s stock can be handed to a client as a snapshot, and sales sync back with a client-generated reference so a replay can never double-settle — but the app that would use it offline is not shipped, and we are not going to describe it as though it were.
- What should I do if the venue has no usable connection?
- Treat a show like any other day where the till is offline: take the details on paper and enter the sales when you are back on a connection. Allocating stock to the show beforehand still pays off, because you know exactly what you took and what should come back.
- Can a card be at a show and on eBay at the same time?
- No. A unit sits on exactly one channel at a time. Moving it to another channel reassigns it rather than copying it, which is what makes overselling impossible — a card allocated to a show cannot also be sold on eBay. A live eBay listing must be ended before its unit can be moved. That is what stops you selling a card at a table that a buyer has already paid for online.
- Do collectors see which shows I am attending?
- Yes, automatically, while the show is upcoming or running and your shop is approved and published. Only the event details and your shop name are shown — never your stock levels, your costs or anything else private. A show that has finished drops off on its own; there is nothing to tidy up.
- What happens to stock I did not sell?
- It stays allocated to the show until you move it back. Nothing expires or is written off automatically — the stock record is the same one it always was.
Try it on one event.
Allocate a single box of stock to your next show and see whether coming home reconciled is worth it before you change how you do anything else.