Meet The Team

The Collectors Behind The GraveYard

You can tell a lot about a card shop by who's running it. Some shops are run by accountants who saw a market opportunity and decided collectibles were the next dropshipping trend. Some are run by influencers who want to flip product between content shoots. The GraveYard TCG is run by collectors. Real ones. The kind that have personal collections older than some of the kids buying from us. The kind that have spent enough money on cardboard over the years that admitting the total out loud would require professional help. The kind that turned an obsession into a livelihood because they couldn't imagine doing anything else.

This page is about us. Not because we want to make this about us — frankly, we'd rather the cards speak for themselves — but because trust matters in this hobby. If you're going to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on collectibles, you deserve to know who's on the other side of the transaction. So here we are.

Where We Come From

The GraveYard team is based in South Gate, California, working out of our facility at 9320 California Ave. We're a Southern California crew, which means we've grown up surrounded by one of the densest collector communities in the country. Los Angeles and the surrounding areas have produced more card show legends, vintage finds, and grail-level collections than almost anywhere else. We've been to the shows. We've stood in the lines at midnight booster box releases. We've haggled at swap meets and traded in parking lots. The hobby is in the DNA of this region, and it's in ours too.

The Roles That Make It Work

The GraveYard isn't a one-person operation. It can't be. Authenticating cards, photographing inventory, packing shipments, answering customer service — every part of this business requires expertise, and no one person can do all of it well. So we built a team. Here's what each part of the team actually does, every single day.

Product Authentication Team

This is the engine room of the operation. Before any card hits our website, before any sealed product gets listed, before any graded slab is photographed — it goes through authentication. The authentication team sits at workstations equipped with magnification, UV lights, weight scales calibrated for sealed product, and reference libraries that span decades of trading card releases.

What do they actually look for? Counterfeit indicators are evolving constantly, and so is our process. For raw cards, we check print quality under magnification (real cards have specific dot patterns; counterfeits often miss the mark), card stock (the feel and weight should match factory specifications), texture (modern cards have specific holographic patterns that fakes struggle to replicate), and edge color (a thin layer of dark card stock between two white layers is a hallmark of authentic Pokémon cards from certain eras, for example).

For graded cards, we verify the cert number against the grading company's database. We inspect the slab itself for tampering — cracks, reseals, replaced inserts. We check that the card inside matches the certification details (set, year, number, grade). If anything is off, the slab gets pulled and sent back to its source. We don't relist questionable items hoping someone won't notice.

For sealed product, we weigh boxes against published factory weights. We inspect shrinkwrap for resealing indicators. We check seal stickers and wrapper textures. Sealed Pokémon booster boxes from major sets have known weight ranges. If a box weighs significantly less than expected, it's been opened and resealed — we don't list it, no exceptions.

The authentication team's job is the most important job in this entire operation. Get it wrong, and our reputation collapses. We've spent years building trust, and one fake slipping through could destroy it overnight. So we hire carefully, train thoroughly, and we never cut corners on this part of the process.

Customer Support Team

The customer support team is the face of The GraveYard. When you email support@thegraveyardtcg.shop or call +1 (323) 835-5989, you're talking to people who know what they're doing. We don't outsource this. We don't use bots that pretend to be humans. We don't have an offshore call center reading from scripts. The person on the other end of the line is sitting in our South Gate facility, looking at the same systems, the same products, the same orders.

Why does this matter? Because trading card customer service is hard. The questions we get aren't "where is my package" — though we do get those. The questions we get are things like:

• "I'm looking at this Charizard and the listing says PSA 9, but I notice the centering is off-center to the left. Can you tell me the actual centering measurements?"
• "This Black Lotus listing — is it Unlimited, Revised, or 4th Edition? The image isn't clear enough for me to tell."
• "I want to buy this graded card for my son for his birthday in three weeks. Can you hold it and ship closer to the date?"
• "I received my order and the toploader is fine, but I think the card inside has a corner crease that wasn't in the listing photos. What do I do?"

You can't answer these questions with a chatbot. You need someone who knows the difference between Unlimited and Revised Magic cards, who understands grading subjectivity, who can pull up an order and physically check on a hold request. That's what our support team does. Email response time is within 24 hours, usually faster. Phone support is real-time during business hours.

Shipping & Fulfillment Team

This is where the GraveYard philosophy gets put into practice on every single order. The shipping team treats your order like it's their own collection. Every. Single. One. Here's what that looks like in practice:

Single raw cards get a soft sleeve, then a top loader, then go into a team bag (or get taped into the toploader to prevent slippage), then into a rigid bubble mailer. We use stiff mailers, not the flimsy padded envelopes that get crushed in transit.

Multiple raw cards get individually sleeved, top-loaded, organized in a rigid box, surrounded by bubble wrap or air pillows, and shipped in a sturdy outer box. We don't cram cards together hoping they'll be fine. They get protection, separation, and structural support.

Graded cards (PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC) get wrapped in bubble wrap, placed inside a rigid cardboard insert, and shipped in a box. The slab itself can crack if dropped wrong, so we treat them like they're fragile because they are.

High-value items (over $100) ship with foam padding inside boxes, tamper-evident tape on the seal, and signature confirmation by default. We're not paranoid; we're cautious. The math works out — a few extra dollars in packaging beats a single damaged grail.

Sealed product gets wrapped in bubble wrap or air pillows, placed in a snug-fitting box, and shipped with "Fragile" and "Do Not Bend" labels. Booster boxes are notorious for arriving with crushed corners; ours don't, because we pack them right.

Every package gets tracking. Every package over $100 gets insurance automatically. The shipping team operates within our 3-business-day handling window, no exceptions. Authentication clears it, packaging gets done, label gets printed, package goes out.

Inventory & Sourcing Team

Where does the cardboard come from? Real sourcing, real relationships. The inventory team works with authorized distributors for sealed product, attends local and regional card shows, builds relationships with established collectors who are downsizing, and occasionally evaluates and acquires entire collections from estates and individual sellers.

We don't buy from random eBay listings hoping the cards are real. We don't dropship from suppliers we've never met. We don't list inventory we don't physically have on-hand. Every card on our site has been brought into our South Gate facility, inspected, authenticated, photographed, and catalogued. That sourcing discipline is what makes the 100% authenticity guarantee possible. You can't promise authenticity if you don't control the supply chain.

Our Combined Background

Across the team, we've got 50+ years of combined collecting experience. That's not marketing. That's the actual sum of how long the founders and core team members have been in this hobby. We've collected through the original Pokémon boom in the late 90s. We've watched Magic: The Gathering grow from a niche game into a billion-dollar IP. We've seen sports cards crash in the early 2000s and roar back during the pandemic. We've been around long enough to recognize patterns, spot fakes, and know what's worth chasing.

Specific expertise across the team includes:

• Vintage Pokémon (Base Set through Neo era), including identification of WOTC vs Nintendo era, 1st Edition vs Unlimited, and Shadowless variants
• Magic: The Gathering Reserved List, Old Border vs Modern Border, foreign printings, and grading subjectivity in vintage Magic
• Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and OCG, including the differences between English, Japanese, and Asian-English printings
• Sports cards across baseball, basketball, football, and hockey, with deep knowledge of vintage rookies and modern parallels
• Grading standards across PSA, BGS, CGC, and SGC, including how each grading service handles centering, corners, edges, and surface

Why We Do This

You don't open a card shop because you think it's an easy way to make money. It isn't. The margins are tight, the inventory is risky, and the customers are some of the most knowledgeable buyers in any retail category. You open a card shop because you can't imagine doing anything else.

That's where we are. Every member of this team would be collecting whether or not we ran The GraveYard. The shop just gives us a way to make a living doing what we'd be doing anyway. It also gives us a way to give back to the hobby that's given us so much. Every honest transaction we run is one that builds collector trust. Every authenticated card we sell is one less fake circulating in the wild. Every fair return we process is one more collector who knows there are still shops that play it straight.

Want To Join The Team?

The GraveYard is always looking for people who get it. If you're a serious collector, you have customer service skills, you pay attention to detail, and you want to work in the hobby rather than around it, we want to hear from you.

What we look for:

• Genuine passion for trading cards and collectibles (not just "interest" — passion)
• Strong customer service skills and clear written communication
• Obsessive attention to detail (cards live or die in the details)
• Integrity and honesty (we sell trust as much as we sell cardboard)

Contact: support@thegraveyardtcg.shop with the subject line "Careers"

Connect With The Team

The GraveYard TCG
9320 California Ave
South Gate, CA 90280, USA
Phone: +1 (323) 835-5989
Email: support@thegraveyardtcg.shop
Website: thegraveyardtcg.shop

We're collectors serving collectors. Thanks for being part of The GraveYard family.