Before a card I buy ships anywhere, I decide where it will live. If it comes home, it pays import fees. The biggest is VAT, at 17% to 27% depending on the country, and since July 2021 it’s been charged from the first euro. If it goes to my forwarder’s Oregon address, it pays no sales tax, because Oregon has none.
This is Part 2 of The European View, a four-part series on what collecting from Europe costs. It’s about one question: where should a card live when its owner lives on the other side of the ocean?
What coming home costs
Shipping comes first. Sending a box home by FedEx, insured, costs me over $100. With about 15 cards in a box, that’s around $7 to $8 a card.
Then come the import fees. VAT is the big one: it’s charged on what you paid for the card plus shipping, insurance and any duty, so the shipping and insurance get taxed too.
Customs duty is where the €150 threshold comes in. Parcels below it used to come in duty-free; since July 1, 2026, small parcels from online sellers outside the EU pay a flat €3 for each type of item inside instead. Above €150, the normal tariff applies, and for cards it’s low: 0% if customs classifies them as printed pictures, 2.7% if it classifies them as playing cards. The carrier adds its own fee on top: FedEx charges a disbursement fee for paying the duty and tax on your behalf.
The trip takes seven to nine days with FedEx. The box usually reaches a hub in France or Belgium in two days and my country two days after that. The rest of the way is short, but it eats up the other half of the trip: customs clearance and the final stretch to my door.
Where my cards live
My collection comes home about once a year, in one FedEx box. Once a year is my compromise: storage fees stay small, the box is full enough to be worth the shipping, and I don’t wait years to see new cards.
My investment cards stay in the US. They sit in the vaults of the big online auction houses and get sold from there.
What staying costs
My forwarder, Ship My Cards, gives me two US addresses. Oregon costs $5 per package plus $2 a card and avoids sales tax; Arizona costs $2 plus $1 a card, but purchases shipped there pay 8.8% sales tax. So far, every purchase a seller has shipped to my forwarder has gone through Oregon; the tax it saves has been worth the higher fee.
Storage is free for 180 days. After that, it costs 10% of the intake fee every 90 days: 70 cents for a single card that came in through Oregon, so a full year there, intake included, stays under $10.
Collection cards I buy on Fanatics Collect sit in its vault, where storage is free, for about 90 days first. Taking a card out costs a fulfillment fee of 3% of its value before that and 1% after. Then they go straight to Arizona: moving a card I already own isn’t a purchase, so there’s no sales tax to save.
A card I pay for on eBay usually shows up in my forwarder’s inventory two to three weeks later, or later still if eBay sends it through its own authentication first.
What a $100 card costs to bring home
Here’s how it adds up for a $100 card bought on eBay and brought home in a box of 15, a parcel well over €150, at a 21% VAT rate:
That’s roughly 40% on top of the card. It’s an estimate built from the fees above, and it leaves out the seller’s shipping to my forwarder and FedEx’s disbursement fee, so the real number runs higher. Depending on your country’s VAT rate, from 17% to 27%, it lands between about $34 and $49.
A decision Americans don’t make
In May I bid on an Anthony Edwards card listed by a seller in China. Shipped to me in the EU, it would have paid import fees on arrival. Shipped to my US address, it would have paid the 10% US tariff the listing showed, which eBay collects at checkout.
I picked the US. I didn’t win the card, but the address had to be set before the auction ended. In that auction, the payment would have been charged automatically at the close, so I had to decide before I knew the final price.
What the vault doesn’t fix
The vault only postpones the import fees. If an investment card ever comes home, it pays them on the way in, so mine get sold where they sit. The vault also means the cards I buy as investments never reach my hands.
Rules for cards that live abroad
Decide where a card lives before you bid on it. With the Edwards card, the address decided whether I’d pay EU import fees or a US tariff.
Keep an investment card where it will be sold. On a $100 card, coming home adds about $40.
Wait 90 days before pulling a card out of the Fanatics Collect vault. The fulfillment fee drops from 3% to 1%.
Bring collection cards home in one box, not one at a time. A box costs over $100 to ship and insure, so mine come about once a year, around 15 per box.
Have you shipped cards home from the US?
What did the import bill look like?
Reply directly to this piece — I read every response.
Next in The European View 3/4: Time Zones — why I set an alarm for the auctions that matter.
— Geminded