How to ship trading cards in a plain white envelope

What a PWE is

PWE stands for plain white envelope. In card selling it means an order mailed as a regular First Class letter with stamps, instead of as a package with a shipping label. It is the cheapest way to send a few cards: a 1 ounce letter costs $0.82 with a Forever stamp, while the cheapest package label for a card costs several dollars. The trade off is that a stamped letter has no tracking number, so the marketplaces count it as untracked.

Packing one card, step by step

1. Slide the card into a soft penny sleeve, bottom first, so the corners don't catch. Standard sleeves fit Pokémon, Magic, Lorcana and sports cards alike.

2. Put the sleeved card into a toploader or a semi rigid card saver with the sleeve's opening facing down, so the card can't slide out of the top.

3. Seal the toploader in a team bag, or put a small piece of painter's or masking tape over the top of the toploader. Keep tape off the card and the soft sleeve.

4. Fold a sheet of paper or the packing slip around it, so the card doesn't slide around inside the envelope and nobody can see the card through the paper.

5. Put it in the envelope, seal it, address it along the long side, and add the stamp at the top right.

Mana Pool's own packing process for letter orders is the same, with one of each item for 7 cards or fewer and two of each for 8 or more. TCGplayer's guidelines add that a card should never go in an envelope without protection.

Which envelope to use

A #10 business envelope, 9 1/2 by 4 1/8 inches, is the standard. It fits a toploader with room to spare, its shape passes USPS's machinable test easily, and it's the cheapest envelope to buy in bulk. A #6 3/4 envelope, 6 1/2 by 3 5/8 inches, fits one toploader snugly and is also machinable. Window envelopes are fine, and they save printing an address if your packing slip shows through the window.

Avoid square envelopes, because a letter whose length divided by its height is under 1.3 is nonmachinable and costs $0.49 more. Avoid poly or plastic mailers for letters too, since a plastic outside makes a letter nonmachinable.

How many stamps a card mailer needs

The price depends on weight. A mailer counts as a letter up to 3.5 ounces, as long as it stays within 11 1/2 by 6 1/8 inches and no thicker than 1/4 inch. These are the stamped letter prices in effect since October 4, 2026:

One card in a sleeve, toploader and team bag in a #10 envelope weighs about 0.8 ounce. Mana Pool says orders of 5 or more cards usually need the extra ounce, depending on your materials. A kitchen scale settles it, and the letter checker works out the postage for any size and weight.

Keep it machinable so it gets scanned

USPS's machines sort a machinable letter at every plant it passes through, and each pass is a scan. A letter USPS calls nonmachinable is sorted by hand, costs $0.49 more, and usually gets few scans or none. Under section 101.1.2 of the Domestic Mail Manual, these are the things that make a card mailer nonmachinable:

• It is too rigid to bend around an 11 inch turn, which is what a toploader taped to cardboard, a stack of toploaders or a magnetic holder does.
• Its length divided by its height is under 1.3 or over 2.5, like a square envelope.
• Something inside makes it lumpy, like a coin or a loose pin.
• Its outside is plastic, or it closes with a clasp, string or button.
• The address runs along the short side.

Our guide to the nonmachinable surcharge has the full list and USPS's exact wording.

PWE or bubble mailer

Switch to a bubble mailer when the order outgrows a letter. That happens when it would be thicker than 1/4 inch, too stiff to bend, or worth enough that the marketplace wants carrier tracking: over $49.99 on TCGplayer, $20 or more for eBay Standard Envelope, and 15 cards or more, or $60 or more, on Mana Pool. A bubble mailer with a toploader inside is a package to USPS, so it needs a package label such as Ground Advantage, which costs $7.33 to $8.95 for up to 4 ounces bought online at commercial prices and comes with tracking.

Shipping Pokémon cards

Pokémon cards are the standard trading card size, so everything above applies as is. For a single card in a PWE, a penny sleeve, a toploader and a team bag in a #10 envelope is the usual setup, and it goes for one Forever stamp if it stays under an ounce. Holo and full art cards scratch easily, so the sleeve goes on before anything else touches the card.

Shipping Magic cards

Magic cards are the same size as Pokémon cards and pack the same way. If you sell on Mana Pool, its rules decide the envelope: an order of 1 to 14 cards under $60 ships as a letter, and the buyer pays $1.35 for shipping. Mana Pool also says letter tracking services cannot meet its requirement for tracked orders, which are the larger ones.

Adding tracking to a PWE

A stamped letter has no tracking number, but it can carry a USPS Intelligent Mail barcode above the address, and USPS scans that barcode each time a machine sorts the letter. Tools like PigeonTrail print it with the address, so for the price of the stamp you and your buyer can see the letter move from plant to plant and the day USPS expects it. It does not count as tracking for TCGplayer, eBay or Mana Pool, so it fits the orders under their lines.

For eBay orders under $20, eBay Standard Envelope is cheaper still and does count for eBay's protection, so use it there. Our eBay Standard Envelope guide explains its limits.