Roca by TCGplayer is our cutting-edge image recognition tool that saves you time and money. This technology solution quickly sorts and alphabetizes your Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, or Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and then compiles a spreadsheet for an easy data import.

The TCGplayer Authentication Center handles over 125,000 cards a day on behalf of sellers for our Direct by TCGplayer, Store Your Products, and Sort Your Products fulfillment services. To efficiently and accurately process such a large amount of cards, we rely on Roca by TCGplayer.

Here are the steps the Authentication Center follows when operating a Roca machine: 

Receiving
Immediately after obtaining shipments of cards, the Authentication Center performs what is called the receiving process:

  1. Inspect package(s) for any visible damage
  2. Match tracking number to shipment tracker
  3. Open package and inspect material for damage

Intake
The intake process is how we interact with the inventory and organize it in preparation for the Roca Sorter: 

  • Separate product by product line (e.g. Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!) and foiling type
  • Ensure all cards are face-up 
  • Gather weight of each foiling and product category to estimate quantities (Note: The Roca Sorter can sift 875 cards and sort 1,000 cards. The Roca Sorter Max can sift 3,000 cards and sort 3,250):
    • Collect a sample weight of each product line and foiling type 
    • Tare empty tray
    • Load cards into tray on scale
    • Use total weight divided by sample weight to estimate count
  • Label all estimated and staged runs by customer, foiling type, and count estimate

Organize
Once your cards are prepared for the Roca, you have the option to: 

  • Sift 
  • Sort 
  • Sift & Sort concurrently 

Sifting is a quicker process where the machine searches by a specific filter, i.e. price or rarity. Sort is a more intensive process of alphabetizing or organizing the inventory in a manner specific to your store’s needs. 

In our Authentication Center, this is the process we follow: 

  1. Sift & Sort
    During the sift process, the Roca machines scans the inventory and then sifts it. The algorithm separates cards into categories (the cards you want/the card you don’t want) and then sorts one or both of the categories. 

    Our Authentication Center sifts through bulk on behalf of a store for our Sort Your Products (Sort) program, which is a service provided through Direct by TCGplayer where our team of experts receives your unsorted Magic: The Gathering collections, and prepares them for sale on your Store Your Products (SYP) account. For Sort, we sift for cards above $0.25. The Roca machine then sorts by how our inventory is organized in the Authentication Center, which is reverse chronological order for mainline sets, followed by ancillary products grouped by type (also in reverse chronological order), with promos appearing at the end. 
    1. Load tray into Roca
    2. Run a sift and sort
    3. Use a unique identifier to name each run including customer, shipment date, foiling, “Sift”, and a number if running more than one of a foiling type

      Best Practices: At the start of each Sort, you should specify a Foil, Condition, and Language for the cards you are about to Sort. 

  2. Condition
    The Authentication Center uses the TCGplayer Conditioning Guide to evaluate cards and categorize them with a non-numeric quality label. Roca's image recognition technology best identifies cards in near mint condition, resulting in lower rejection rates.
      • Conditioning after sifting saves you time by ensuring you aren’t conditioning inventory you don’t want. If you expect your “desirable yield” –– percentage of cards sifted that you’re interested in listing ––  to be very high (over 80%), conditioning before a sift may be worthwhile.

    Best Practices: Separate conditions into piles to become their own Sort runs. With larger shipments, you can batch sections of your sifted runs to optimize sorts. For example, take the front ⅓ of each sift so that set groupings are more alike when you run your sorts, resulting in a more continuous finished shipment to make filing more smooth.

  3. Final Sift & Sort
    We do a final sift & sort following the initial one and conditioning. The purpose of the final sift & sort is to prepare the sifted and conditioned cards for addition into our inventory, both physically and digitally. Considering we’ve already run it once, the machine primarily just sorts; however, if any prices have changed significantly, it will catch some additional products to sift out. 
    1. Use a unique identifier to name each run including customer, shipment date, foiling, “Sort”, and a number if running more than one of a foiling/condition type
    2. Run on the appropriate condition
    3. Load each condition group into Roca.
    4. Run a sift & sort

      Best practices: Popular sift options include price and rarity. Popular sort options include set, name; name, set; set, collector number; color; rarity. 

Verify
The verification process is to confirm the sorted product matches the CSVs to ensure complete accuracy.

    • Validate final sorted product against output CSVs, with focus on cards that the Roca flags as being "lower confidence" during the image recognition step. 
      • Make adjustments to CSVs for any incorrect product

File and Upload
The final step is to either file the product into your physical inventory or to upload the CSVs to your digital inventory.

    • File product into physical inventory
    • Upload CSVs to digital inventory


Just like the Roca Sorter helps retailers to efficiently sift, sort, and list their cards, the TCGplayer Authentication Center uses the Roca Sorter as part of our internal processes. The Roca Sorter is key to enabling our Direct by TCGplayer, Store Your Products, and Sort programs, providing the fastest and most accurate service for our sellers.

Learn more about the Roca Sorter, or join one of our authentication and fulfillment services to grow your business and save time.