New year, new inventory management practices! (That’s how the saying goes? Or is it New year, new me? I never remember.) As Megan touched on last week, the beginning of the year is a great time to go through your inventory and make sure everything is in order, accounted for, and ready to start selling. This could even mean going through all that inventory that you’ve been meaning to upload to your TCGplayer account, but just haven’t gotten around to doing. We all know that uploading inventory isn’t always the fastest process, and it can be daunting, so I want to talk about one of the more efficient ways to go about it: using .csv files.

Before we jump into how to use them, let’s answer a quick question: What is a .csv file? A .csv file is a plain text file, containing data separated by commas. This file can be displayed as a spreadsheet in programs such as Excel, Sheets, or Numbers. The .csv files that you utilize on TCGplayer contain information regarding the items in your inventory, such as card name, price, and quantity. 

On the Pricing tab of your Seller Portal, you will see a few options for .csv exports. You can export your live inventory or do a filtered .csv export, to only export a specific set, game, condition, or combination of those. For adding inventory, I recommend utilizing the “export a filtered .csv” option, and work through your inventory set by set. 

Using .csv files is incredibly helpful when you are cracking open sealed product during a new set release, and need to upload a large number of cards from one set. Once you’ve opened your product and sorted it properly, download a filtered .csv from your Pricing tab for that set. When you open the file, all of the necessary headers will already be there. Don’t change these, as they need to be there in that order for you to be able to upload your inventory.

Once you have opened the file, type the number of each card you are adding in the appropriate cells in the “Add to Inventory” column. Next, fill in the TCG Marketplace Price column with the appropriate pricing. With these columns filled in, save your .csv, and head back to your Pricing tab. Click on the “Import to Staged” button and select the file you just saved. Click “Upload” and the file will be checked for proper headers and to make sure all the columns are filled out correctly. From there, you can send your inventory to Staged for one last review, or immediately move it live. 

That’s all there is to it. When you have a large quantity of cards from a few sets, utilizing .csv files will make updating your inventory so much easier. If you have questions about this, or other inventory management techniques, reach out to our Customer Success Management team at success@tcgplayer.com or book a meeting with us here.