Last updated: October 14, 2026
Consignment is where card dealers lose the most money to bad bookkeeping. Not to theft, to a spreadsheet that never gets updated, a split done wrong in your head at 11pm, or a consignor paid for a card that later refunded. Good consignment software fixes one thing above all else: the amount you owe each person is calculated from real sales, automatically, so it is always right. This guide covers what that software has to do, how the pieces fit, and how it works in SportsCardNetwork, where roughly 1,300 dealers run their businesses today.
Selling your own cards is simple: cost in, price out, profit is the difference. Consignment adds three moving parts a spreadsheet handles badly:
The failure mode is always the same: the owed number lives in your head or in a cell you forgot to update. The whole value of real software is that the owed balance is derived from the orders, so it cannot drift.
Set a default commission for each consignor, then override it on a specific card when you cut a one-off deal. In SCN the rate is the dealer's commission off the net sale (sale minus platform fees), so the math matches what actually hit your account, not the gross.
This is the one that matters. SCN computes what each consignor is owed straight from their sold cards minus payments already made, every time you open the page. A card that refunds drops back out of the balance on its own. You are never reconciling a running total by hand at the end of the month.
Some consignors expect you to eat the label, some agree to share it. SCN has a per-consignor "shares shipping" setting: off by default (you pay the label out of your cut), or on, where the label comes out of the sale before the split so the consignor shares it. One setting, so you can honor different handshake deals with different people.
A printable, emailable statement per consignor: each sold card with its sale, fees, net, and payout, the payments you have made, and the reconciled balance. When you hand someone a few hundred dollars, a one-page statement that ties out beats a text that says "trust me."
Each consignor can get a private link to a read-only "Vault" page showing only their cards: listed, sold, and their payout on each. No password, no login for them to forget. It kills the weekly "did anything sell?" messages and makes a small operation look professional.
If you front PSA or SGC fees to grade a consignor's cards, that money flows the other direction. SCN tracks grading invoices as a charge against the consignor and nets them against payouts owed, so the statement shows one true balance instead of two separate totals you have to subtract in your head.
A consigned card might sell on eBay, in person through Square, on Shopify, or in a grouped invoice at a show. The payout has to attribute to the right consignor no matter where it sold. SCN books the consignor's share on the sale itself, so a mixed invoice with cards from three different consignors credits each one correctly.
The flow is short on purpose. Add a consignor with their default commission and shipping arrangement. Assign cards to them, either one at a time or by selecting a stack from your inventory and bulk-assigning. List and sell those cards like any others. As they sell, each consignor's owed balance updates itself and their Vault portal reflects it in real time. When you pay someone, record the payment and the balance drops. At any point you can print or email a full statement. There is no month-end reconciliation step because there is nothing to reconcile, the numbers were right the whole time.
SCN is flat monthly pricing and never takes a percentage of your sales, which matters a lot for consignment where your own margin is already a slice of a slice.
If you only sell your own cards, the lighter Starter plan is enough. The moment you are holding other people's cards and owing them money, the Dealer tier's consignment tools are the reason to move up.
It is the tool a dealer uses to sell other people's cards and keep the money straight: it stores each consignor, the commission split on their cards, what they are owed as cards sell, and a clean payout statement at the end. The whole point is that the owed balance is calculated from real sales instead of a spreadsheet you update by hand, so you never shortchange a consignor or pay one twice.
In SportsCardNetwork the rate is the dealer's commission, taken off the net sale (sale price minus platform fees). So on a $100 card with $13 in eBay fees and a 20 percent commission, net is $87, your cut is $17.40, and the consignor is owed $69.60. You can set a default rate per consignor and override it on individual cards for a special deal.
Your choice, per consignor. By default the dealer pays the shipping label out of their commission. If you turn on "consignor shares shipping cost" for a given consignor, the label comes out of the sale before the split, so the consignor shares it. It is a per-consignor setting so you can run different arrangements for different people.
Yes. Each consignor can get a private "Vault" portal link, no password, that shows only their own cards: what is currently listed, what has sold, and their payout on each sale. It cuts the "what sold this week" texts and makes you look buttoned-up to the people trusting you with their cards.
Yes. If you submit a consignor's cards to PSA or another grader and front the fee, those grading invoices are the charge side of a two-sided ledger. The statement nets what you owe them for sold cards against what they owe you for grading, so the final balance is the real number, not two separate running totals.
SportsCardNetwork includes unlimited consignors on the Dealer plan at $59.99 a month, flat, with no cut of your sales. That covers the splits, live owed balances, payout statements, the consignor portal, and grading charges, alongside the full inventory, listing, and accounting suite. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial.
Want the broader picture first? The sports card dealer software guide covers the full toolset, and consignment for card dealers walks the setup in more detail. For anything else, email support@sportscardnetwork.ai.