How long does scanning 100 cards actually take?

Plan for one sitting rather than a number of minutes. The scanning itself is the quick part; what sets your pace is card handling, sleeves, and how often you stop to decide something. Setting up the table properly and batching the ambiguous cards to the end are the two changes that make the difference.

Should I scan bulk commons too?

Not in this session, and usually not card by card at all. Bulk is priced and moved as a lot, and individually entering it eats hours for value you will never quote from inventory. Get your case and mid-range singles in first, then decide how to handle bulk as a separate job.

What if I already have a spreadsheet?

Import it rather than retyping it. CSV import is free, so bring in whatever you already track, then scan only the cards the sheet is missing. Check that condition and cost carried across before you start adding to it.

Do I need an account before I can start?

No. There is no account, no email, and no password. Your inventory lives on the device and syncs to your own private iCloud, so the first card you scan is the first thing that happens.

Scanning Your First 100 Cards

The hardest part of moving a card business into an app is the first hour. Here is how to spend it so you finish with a hundred cards that are actually worth having in there.

Most dealers install an inventory app, scan four cards, hit a shoebox of bulk, and quit. The app then sits on the phone half-full of nothing, and the next show still runs off a binder and a mental price list.

The fix is not discipline. It is picking a smaller job. One hundred cards is enough to see your real inventory value, enough to run a table from, and small enough to finish in a single sitting. This is the order that gets you there without a second pass to clean up.

Start with the hundred you actually sell

The instinct is to start at the beginning: the oldest box, the first binder, the stuff at the bottom of the tote. That is the wrong hundred. Those cards move once a year, and you will burn your whole session on them.

Start with the cards that come out of the case every show. In practice that is:

The case singles. Anything you keep behind glass because it is worth keeping behind glass. These are the cards buyers ask for by name, and the ones you most often price by feel.
The mid-range binder. The ten to forty dollar band that does most of the actual volume at a table. This is where guessing costs you the most money over a weekend, because you guess so often.
Anything you bought in the last month. You still remember what you paid. Cost basis you can recall is cost basis you will enter correctly, and it stops being recoverable fast.

Leave bulk out entirely. Commons and playables are a different job with a different method, and mixing them into your first session is how the session dies. There is a separate approach for that in pricing bulk commons without losing hours.

Takeaway: your first hundred should be the hundred a buyer is most likely to point at this weekend.

Set the session up so it goes fast

Scanning is fast. Handling cards badly is slow. Before you open the app, spend five minutes on the table itself.

Good light, no glare. Overhead light straight down bounces off a holo and off a sleeve. Light from the side, card flat, phone straight above it.
Sleeves off, or at least matte. A glossy penny sleeve is the single most common reason a card will not read cleanly.
Three piles, not one. To scan, scanned, and needs a look. The third pile is the important one: the moment a card is ambiguous, it goes there and you keep moving. Batching the hard ones at the end is faster than solving each one in the middle of a rhythm.
Phone propped, both hands free. Anything that lets you hold the phone still and feed cards under it with two hands roughly doubles your pace.

There is no account to make and nothing to sign up for, so there is no setup step between installing CardOps and scanning your first card. Your data stays on the device and in your own private iCloud.

Takeaway: the physical setup decides your pace far more than the software does.

Scan first, type only when you have to

Point the camera at the card. On-device recognition matches it against a catalog of more than 20,000 Pokemon cards and attaches a live market value, so the identification and the pricing happen in the same motion. Nothing waits on a network round trip, which matters more than it sounds like it does: it is what lets you keep a rhythm going instead of watching a spinner between cards.

When to enter a card by hand

Scanning is the default, not a rule. Type the card in when:

The card is damaged in a way that obscures the art or the set symbol. The scan is reading the card the way a person does, so if you cannot tell what it is at a glance, neither can it.
You are holding a printing the scan is likely to confuse with a near-identical sibling, like a reverse holo next to a plain holo, or a reprint that shares its art with the original. Confirm the set and the card number yourself before it lands in your stock.
It is a slab. A graded card in a case is a different object with a different value, and it belongs in the inventory with its grade attached rather than as a raw copy of the same card.

Pokemon is what the catalog covers today, with more TCGs coming. If your table runs other games too, scan the Pokemon side now and keep the rest in whatever you use currently rather than half-migrating everything.

Takeaway: a card you had to squint at deserves thirty seconds of manual entry, not a fast guess.

Set condition and cost as you go, not later

This is the step people skip, and skipping it is what turns a full inventory into a list that cannot answer any useful question.

Condition decides which price applies. Market value by set and condition is not one number, it is a spread, and a near mint copy and a lightly played copy of the same card are two different products at your table. Setting condition at scan time takes a second per card because the card is already in your hand. Setting it three weeks later means picking the card back up, and you will not.

Be honest and be consistent. Whatever line you draw between near mint and lightly played, draw the same line every time, and use the words buyers already know rather than a private shorthand. There is more on that in the condition language buyers trust.

Cost is the number that turns inventory into a business. Market value tells you what a card is worth. Cost tells you what you made, and only one of those pays a booth fee. For cards from a collection buy where you paid a lump sum, split the cost across the cards proportionally to what they are worth rather than trying to remember a per-card figure that never existed. Approximate and consistent beats precise and absent.

If you already keep a spreadsheet with cost in it, do not retype it. CSV import is free, so bring the sheet in and scan only what is not already on it. Moving your card data in and out by CSV walks through the column shape.

Takeaway: a card without a condition and a cost is a photograph, not inventory.

What a hundred cards is enough to tell you

Finish the session and the dashboard has something real on it: total inventory value, and a base to sell against. That figure alone tends to be the first surprise. Dealers routinely carry either more or less value in the case than they thought, and both directions change what you buy next.

A hundred scanned cards also gives you three things a binder never did:

A price you can quote without stalling. Search the inventory, read the number, answer the buyer. The line does not build while you check your phone against a marketplace.
A record of what you paid. Which means per-show profit is arithmetic instead of a feeling. See reading a show's real profit for what to do with it.
A list you can count against. At the end of a show, what should be in the case and what is in the case are two comparable numbers.

The free tier holds up to 250 cards, so the first hundred leaves real room to keep going before any of that becomes a decision. Your first show also runs in full on the free tier, Show Mode and per-show P&L included, and stays that way until you close that show out.

Takeaway: stop at a hundred and look at the dashboard before you scan anything else. The number will tell you what to add next.

Where to go after the first sitting

Do not immediately start a second marathon. The next hundred should come from what the first hundred exposed.

Clear the needs-a-look pile. Ten minutes, with the set symbols in front of you. These are usually your oldest and most valuable cards, so getting them in correctly matters more than getting them in fast.
Add anything a buyer asked for that is not in there. The gap between what you stock and what people ask for is the most useful list you own, and it only shows up once your inventory is real enough to compare against.
Scan the new buys the night you make them. This is the habit that keeps the app accurate. A card entered on the drive home costs nothing; a box of unentered buys three shows later is another marathon.

Then take it to a table. An inventory that has never been used at a show is a spreadsheet with better handwriting. Your first week with an inventory app covers what the first live show actually feels like, and the free and Pro comparison lays out where the free tier stops if you get there.

Takeaway: the first hundred is not the migration. It is the proof that the migration is worth finishing.