The short version
- A card rip is a digital pack that reveals a real card, usually a graded one, held in the platform's vault. You can keep it, have it shipped or sell it straight back.
- The two biggest by sales are Courtyard and Collector Crypt, which between them made about 85% of the pack sales across the five biggest on-chain platforms in July 2026. Rips by Triumph has the biggest app audience.
- Big brands piled in this year: GameStop in April, Underdog in September, PrizePicks and OG.com in October and Crypto.com this week. Fanatics has run its own since 2025.
- On average, platforms pay back roughly 85% to 95% of what's spent. The rest is their margin, and the typical single pack returns less than the average.
We haven't used these platforms for this post, and we don't link to any of them. Everything below comes from the companies' own announcements, published research and news reporting.
Card rip cost calculator
Set a pack price and a number of packs, then pick a payback rate the platforms have reported, or set your own. It shows what the platform keeps on average.
Payback rate
What a card rip actually is
The idea borrows from repacks, a long-running corner of the hobby where a seller puts cards they already own into new packs and sells them at a fixed price. A digital rip does the same thing on a screen. You pay for a pack from a pool of cards the platform has listed, an animation plays, and one card is revealed with an estimated market value next to it. The card itself is real, almost always graded by a company such as PSA, and sits in an insured vault.
Then you choose. You can keep the card in your account, have it posted to you, list it on the platform's marketplace, or take an instant buyback offer for a share of its estimated value. That last option is what most people pick. Collector Crypt's chief executive told Barron's that up to 98% of cards opened on the site are sold straight back.
That buyback is what separates rips from opening a booster box. A Pokémon pack's odds are measured by people counting thousands of packs, as in our guide to Pokémon pull rates. A rip platform chooses which cards go in each pack, sets the odds and decides what it will pay to buy a card back.
The biggest platforms
There's no single ranking, because the platforms don't report the same numbers. Crypto-based sites settle every pack on a public blockchain, so their sales can be counted. App-based ones mostly don't publish sales, so app store ratings are the best public guide to their size. Barron's counted 52 sites offering digital repacks in August, and more have launched since.
| Platform | Launched | Run by or backed by | Size signal | Packs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Courtyard | Before 2025 | Venture-backed start-up, on Polygon | $85.3M of pack sales in July 2026; says it's on pace for $2B a year | Sports, Pokémon, One Piece, comics, watches |
| Collector Crypt | By late 2024 | Crypto start-up, on Solana | $433.5M of pack sales in Q3 2026; $1B sold by August 2026 | Pokémon, One Piece, sports |
| Rips by Triumph | Not stated | Triumph Arcade; DraftKings' venture arm has invested | About 262,000 App Store ratings | From $1; sports and Pokémon |
| Fanatics Instant Rips | Mar 2025 | Fanatics, owner of Topps | Not published | Graded repacks on Fanatics Live and Fanatics Collect |
| Arena Club | Before 2025 | Co-founded by Derek Jeter | Not published | $25 to $5,000; sports, Pokémon, One Piece |
| GameStop Power Packs | Apr 2026 | GameStop with PSA | Not published | $25 to $2,500; Pokémon and US sports |
| Underdog Rips | Sep 2026 | Underdog, powered by Phygitals | Inside an existing fantasy sports app | $5 to $2,500; sports |
| PrizePicks Packs | Oct 2026 | PrizePicks | Inside an existing fantasy sports app | $1 to $2,500; basketball, football, Pokémon |
| Crypto.com Rips | Nov 2026 | Crypto.com | Launched this week | MLB, NBA, NFL and Pokémon |
On-chain sales figures are from Blockworks Research and Collector Crypt's quarterly report. Other details are from company announcements, app store listings and reporting by Barron's and Sportico.
Courtyard
Courtyard runs what it calls vending machines: shelves of digital packs, each with a published list of possible cards and their odds. It goes wider than cards, with comics, coins and watches too. Each item is recorded on the Polygon blockchain while the physical item sits in a vault, and in July 2026, its record month, Blockworks counted $85.3 million of pack sales. Its chief executive, Nico le Jeune, told Barron's in August that the company was on pace for $2 billion in annual sales and called the product "gamified shopping". Blockworks put the share of Courtyard's July sales paid back to buyers at 75.6%, the lowest of the big on-chain platforms.
Collector Crypt
Collector Crypt is the biggest by blockchain-tracked sales. Its gacha machines sell packs of graded Pokémon, One Piece and sports cards priced in a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency, from $25 up to several thousand dollars. It reported $433.5 million in pack sales for the third quarter of 2026, a record, though monthly sales peaked at $212.2 million in June and fell to $134.5 million by September. It paid out 94.1% of pack sales as buybacks and redemptions, keeping about 6 cents of each dollar.
The spending is very concentrated. Pine Analytics found that 548 wallets that each spent at least $100,000 made up 83% of third-quarter sales, out of about 21,900 wallets that bought packs. Collector Crypt also supplies its machines to other crypto apps, such as the Solflare wallet and Jupiter, so its cards turn up under other names.
Rips by Triumph
Rips is an app, not a website, from the mobile games company Triumph Arcade. DraftKings doesn't run its own rips product, but its venture arm, Drive, has invested in Rips. It doesn't publish sales, but it has by far the biggest app store presence of any dedicated rip app, with about 262,000 ratings on Apple's App Store this week. Packs start at $1, and its listing promotes cashing out by debit card, bank transfer, PayPal or Venmo.
Fanatics
Fanatics, which owns the card maker Topps, launched Instant Rips on its Fanatics Live streaming app in March 2025 with a series of $250 graded baseball repacks. Cards go into the Fanatics Collect vault, and the buyback is an offer of 90% of market value paid in site credit, not cash, valid for 48 hours. In August 2026 it added Instant Packs, digital packs of new Topps releases with exclusive parallel cards. A Fanatics spokesperson told Barron's: "Instant Rips is not gambling."
Arena Club
Arena Club, co-founded by Derek Jeter, sells what it calls Slab Packs of graded cards, from $25 to $5,000, alongside a grading service and a marketplace. It got a boost this month when FanDuel started sending free Arena Club credits to frequent sportsbook customers through its rewards club, though FanDuel says it's only "tracking" rips for now.
GameStop Power Packs
GameStop launched Power Packs to the public on 15 April 2026 with PSA, one of the leading card grading companies. Packs run from $25 to $2,500 across Pokémon, football, basketball and baseball, and every card is held in the PSA Vault. GameStop also sells physical versions to open in its shops.
Underdog, PrizePicks and the newcomers
The fastest change this autumn has come from fantasy sports and prediction market companies. Underdog added Rips to its app in September, with Phygitals running the vault and cards. PrizePicks launched PrizePicks Packs on 21 October in all 50 states and Washington DC, with tiers from $1 to $2,500 and a buyback it describes as 100% of fair market value. OG.com followed eight days later, and Crypto.com launched Rips on 9 November with five free packs, odds shown before purchase and a two-day window to sell back or ship. Coinbase has said it's coming soon.
How much comes back
Every platform is built on the same maths. The cards in a pack pool are worth, on average, less than the price of the pack, and the gap is the platform's margin. Sportico reports that packs are typically priced so the average card value is 5% to 15% below the entry fee. The on-chain numbers agree. Across the five largest crypto platforms in July 2026, Blockworks counted $284.3 million of pack sales and $249.4 million paid back, about 88%.
Two things make the average misleading for any one person. First, the average includes the rare big hits. A pool with a few cards worth thousands lifts the average, so most packs return less than it, sometimes much less. Second, the buyback is usually a share of the card's estimated value, and the platform does the estimating. Courtyard's terms say its fair market value for buybacks is set by the company, not agreed with the buyer. Fanatics pays its 90% in credit, which can only be spent on more cards.
The calculator above shows what that means in dollars. At Collector Crypt's 94.1%, someone who spends $1,000 on packs should expect to end up with about $941 in cards and buybacks. At Courtyard's July figure of 75.6%, the same $1,000 leaves about $756.
Shopping or gambling
This is the argument hanging over the whole industry. The platforms say they're shops: every pack gives you a real card, and you can keep it. Courtyard and Collector Crypt both describe themselves to Barron's as "gamified shopping". Most of the big names also offer a free way to enter by post, which their lawyers say makes the product a sweepstakes under US law rather than gambling.
Critics point to the instant buyback. Leon Y. Xiao, a researcher who has advised governments on gambling policy, told Barron's that "the user spends money for a random chance to get a card that can be easily converted into real-world money", and that the sites he has seen are, in his view, offering illegal gambling. At Sportico's Invest New York conference, the auction house founder Ken Goldin put the industry's worst case more bluntly: "slot machines for kids". The sports business reporter Darren Rovell said the fate of rips will come down to state attorneys general and how hard they choose to go after the products. You can read the full discussion in Sportico's report on the debate.
Age checks vary. The big apps carry adult ratings, and the sports betting brands apply the same age rules as the rest of their products. Barron's found smaller sites that didn't ask for any age check before letting someone open a pack.
If you're thinking of trying one
- Look for the odds and value bands before you buy. Most of the big platforms show them on each pack, and if a site doesn't, that tells you something.
- Read how the buyback is paid. Cash and site credit aren't the same thing, and some offers expire within a day or two.
- Treat the price of a pack as the price of the experience. On average you'll get less back than you put in, and the typical pack does worse than the average.
- If you want one particular card, buying it outright is almost always cheaper than chasing it in packs.
- Check where you can use it. Several platforms are US-only or block some countries.
For the same idea without any money involved, Roblox has dozens of pack-opening games where every card stays inside the game. We looked at those in our guide to Roblox card pack games.
Sources and method
Sales and payback figures for crypto-based platforms come from Blockworks Research's July 2026 figures, Collector Crypt's third-quarter 2026 report and Pine Analytics' analysis of it. Courtyard's sales target, Collector Crypt's buyback comment, the 52-site count, the age check findings and the gambling quotes are from Barron's reporting in August 2026. The 5% to 15% range is from Sportico's reporting on FanDuel and Arena Club, and the conference quotes from Sportico's report on its Invest New York event. Launch dates, prices and buyback terms are from the companies' announcements and pages, and the App Store rating count was checked on 11 November 2026. The calculator applies each payback rate as a flat average. We haven't bought packs on any platform for this post, and Playqub has no connection with any of them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the biggest card rip platform?
By reported sales, Courtyard and Collector Crypt. Courtyard told Barron's in August 2026 that it was on pace for $2 billion a year, and Collector Crypt reported $433.5 million in pack sales in the third quarter of 2026 alone. By app audience, Rips by Triumph is the largest, with about 262,000 ratings on Apple's App Store.
How much of my money comes back on a card rip?
On average, most of it, but never all of it. Collector Crypt paid out 94.1% of its third-quarter pack sales as buybacks and redemptions, and across the five largest on-chain platforms in July 2026 the figure was about 88%. Sportico reports that packs are typically priced so the average card is worth 5% to 15% less than the pack. Most single packs return less than the average, because a few big hits pull it up.
Are card rips gambling?
It's disputed. The platforms describe themselves as shops selling real cards, and most offer a free mail-in entry route that they say makes them sweepstakes. Some gambling researchers say paying for a random card you can sell back straight away is gambling. US state regulators haven't settled it yet.
Do card rip platforms have age limits?
The big apps generally say they're for adults. Rips by Triumph and several others carry an 18+ rating on Apple's App Store, and PrizePicks and Underdog apply their usual age rules of 18, 19 or 21 depending on the state. Barron's found some smaller sites that didn't ask for any age check before opening a pack.
Facts in this article were checked against developer and store sources on 11 November 2026. Prices, versions and dates change, so confirm on the official page before you buy.
