Introduction
Thank you for your interest in Trading Card Game Warehouse Club (TCGWC). My name is John (Heifinator) and I am the founder of TCGWC. As a high volume TCG collector and enthusiast, I have searched for access to distributor pricing for years. My unwillingness to open a brick-and-mortar store made securing this access challenging. Finally, I was able to secure solid distributor access. Initially I offered access to my distributor pricing to my friends and family, increasing our collective buying power and ensuring we could secure more allocation and better pricing from our distributor!
Over time the program has grown and now we have decided to build out some web systems and a commercial warehouse space to offer TCGWC to a larger number of community members!
One of the founding principles of the club is that myself or anyone else involved with the club do not make any money off the products you purchase through the club. Any markup on products is there to cover our costs, we only monetize the service through the club membership fees. ?
What follows is a run down of how the club and ordering process works with TCGWC.
We rely heavily on the messaging platform Discord to communicate club changes and announcements. Additionally, members will receive automated notification of distributor stock updates via discord.
You can join our discord with the following invite URL: https://discord.gg/86vfV7Hu9g
If you have questions about the service before subscribing, join discord and DM Heifinator
Brands
As of January 1st 2025, TCGWC only deals in Pokemon EN products. We are hoping to expand our warehouse capacity to support more games such a Magic, YuGiHo, Lorcana, and One Piece as early as Fall 2025.
Stay tuned on discord for more news regarding progress!
Product Availability
Pokemon has seen a massive spike in popularity since the pandemic. As a result product availability has been at an all time low. This issue extends all the way up to the distributors. As a result most distributors do not have much readily available product. Most products are distributed to accounts such as ours through pre-orders and a process called called allocation. For allocated products, distributors determine how much pre-order product to give to each of their clients (such as TCGWC) based on the previous 12 month total spend. This means the more we buy of in stock less highly contested product, the more pre-order allocation we will get as a club.
What we do receive of allocated SKUs will always be less than what we ordered. As a result we then do our own internal allocation or product to members who ordered it and refund the rest. This process is outlined in detail in another section.
Products on TCGWC's ordering platform will have one of four stock status' which all affect how your order will be fulfilled.
Limited (X) Products
If you place an order for limited products you will be placed in the queue to receive the products. We will order the maximum quantity available of those products each week and fulfil orders from the queue in the order they are received. You will find a link to the queue document in discord which shows your position in the queue. You can cancel these orders at any time and receive a full refund minus the CC processing fees.
As an example, if you find a product listed as limited (6) that means we can order quantity 6 per week. If there are 35 qty ordered already through TCGWC that means it will take ~4 weeks to fulfil the existing orders, meaning you'll be waiting 5-6 weeks to receive this product.
Pre-Order Allocated Products
If you place an order for pre-order allocated products your order will be bundled up with all other TCGWC orders for that specific SKU. The distributor will let us know how much of that product we will receive. This will almost certainty be less than what was ordered by our members. This means we must then decide how to allocate that product fairly to our members.
We allocate in a way that is fair for new members while also encouraging loyalty to the club and spending on in stock or less desirable products. As part of this you must be a member for 6 consecutive months or spend $1,000 on in stock products before they are able to place any pre-orders.
Half of our allocation will be distributed based on Member Contribution Factor (MCF) and the other Half based on Proportional Order Value (POV). More info on these metrics below.
- Member Contribution Factor (MCF) - is determined by looking at your total 12 month spend with TCGWC minus canceled orders compared to the clubs total order volume. (i.e. if you've bought $25,000 in the last 12 months and the club has done $850,000 then your MCF is 2940)
- Proportional Order Value (POV) - is a per SKU value that is determined by looking at your total pre-order spend on that SKU as a percentage of the clubs total spend on that SKU. (i.e. if you buy $5,000 of a SKU and the club bought $70,000 then your POV is 7.14% for that SKU.
As an example if we are allocated 200 boxes of a SKU that is $100 each ($20,000) then 100 boxes will be distributed by MCF and the other 100 boxes by proportional order volume.
If your POV is 7.14% then you will get 7.14% of the 100 boxes to be distributed by POV, rounded down to the nearest box. So 7 boxes in this example.
If your MCF is 2940 and the total MCF of all members who purchased this SKU is 52920 then you will receive 5.55% of the 100 boxes to be distributed by MCF, rounded down to the nearest box. So 5 boxes in this example.
If any boxes are left over due to rounding, those boxes are distributed randomly to anyone with unfulfilled quantities until we run out of boxes.
Payment and Fees
We accept both Paypal and standard credit card transactions.
All orders will be charged a non-refundable 3.5% transaction fee. We ask that orders be a minimum of $250.
For large orders over $1,000 we can accommodate wire transfer, ACH, or crypto transactions to prevent the 3.5% transaction fee. We strongly recommend this option for pre-orders as there is a good chance some of it will be refunded due to allocation. We do not refund transaction fees as the payment processors do not refund them to us! If you would like to use this option, select "invoice payment" at checkout and Heifinator will DM you with payment details.
We estimate shipping charges at checkout. If the final shipping cost is less than what you paid you will receive a partial refund.
Order Fulfillment
Orders are placed to our distributor in batches to reduce distributor fees and shipping costs. When you place an order with TCGWC it typically will not be sent to the distributor immediately.
If there is a product that is likely to go out of stock quickly due to demand you can increase your odds of securing the order by placing an order that totals at least $1,000. Any time the pending order volume with TCGWC exceeds $1,000 we immediately place an order.
Once orders are submitted they usually ship to TCGWC within 2-3 days. If we discover any damage, we will submit the claim to our distributor and refund your order immediately. If everything looks good, we re-pack orders for members and ship them, usually within 2 business days. We put extra urgency on pre-order products to ensure we do our best to get them to you before the street date!
We do not offer any precise shipping timelines and want to set the expectations that these orders will take longer to arrive than if you ordered on a retail website. An overview of a typical order timeline is available below.
Shipping Insurance
You can elect to add TCGWC shipping insurance to your order. We strongly encourage all members to use this service. If the order is lost in shipping from TCGWC to your address or is damaged, we will refund the entire order. This service costs 1.5% of the order total. All orders with TCGW shipping insurance will have signature on delivery.
While we do our best to ensure a smooth shipping process, if you decline TCGWC shipping insurance, we take no responsibility for the package being lost or its condition upon delivery beyond the standard $100 insurance included for free.
Membership
All markup or fees associated with ordering product through TCGWC are strictly to cover our costs. All of our monetization of the service comes through our membership fee. This is to ensure the best possible product pricing for our members. Our business model is similar to familiar companies such as Costco or Sams Club.
Memberships are fully refundable for 7 days or until you place your first order.
Monthly
Expires after 30 days
Quarterly
Expires after 90 days
Yearly
Expires after 365 days
Referrals
We are a private club and do not advertise, all new members are brought to us through our referral system. To create an account / join the program you will need a referral code from an existing member. All memebrs of TCGWC who have placed at least 1 completed order will receive a referral code to give to others.
Members who successfully refer anther membership conversion will receive $5 for each month of membership that person maintains. These are paid out in $25 blocks via Paypal.