Terms of Service

1. Agreement

By accessing or using The Card API ("the Service"), operated by Thompson Data Products, LLC ("we," "us," or "our"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

2. The Service

The Card API provides programmatic access to trading card transaction data, including sales records from eBay and major trading card auction platforms and marketplaces. The Service is provided for informational and development purposes only and is not intended as financial or investment advice.

3. API keys and accounts

• Your API key is personal and non-transferable. Do not share it publicly.
• You are responsible for all usage under your key.
• If you believe your key has been compromised, contact us immediately to have it revoked and reissued.
• One account per person or organization. Creating multiple free accounts to circumvent rate limits is prohibited.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Resell or redistribute the underlying transaction records as a standalone dataset or competing data product without a written agreement with us.
• Expose our data through your own public API in a way that allows third parties to extract it in bulk.
• Reverse engineer or attempt to extract our underlying data sources or infrastructure.
• Use the Service to violate any applicable law, including intellectual property rights.
• Attempt to circumvent rate limits or access controls.
• Use the Service in a way that degrades performance for other users.
• Use the data to build, operate, or populate a competing data API, data subscription service, or data product whose primary commercial function is to license trading card market data to third parties.
• License, sell, or make available to any third party a machine learning model trained substantially on our data as a substitute for, or competing alternative to, our data — use of trained models within your own product is permitted.

4a. Permitted uses

The following uses are explicitly permitted under all paid plans unless your plan agreement states otherwise:

• Building and operating commercial applications, SaaS products, and internal tools powered by API data.
• Caching and storing API responses locally in your own database to serve your users, subject to the storage limits of your plan (see Section 5).
• Creating derived analytics, fair value estimates, price indexes, premium/discount models, portfolio valuations, and similar products — these are your intellectual property.
• Displaying card prices, transaction history, and market data within your own product interface.
• Using the data to power valuation algorithms, price indices, and scoring systems within your own product.

Incorporating our data as training input for machine learning models requires a separate written agreement. Contact hello@thecardapi.com for Enterprise licensing.

Free tier usage is limited to personal, non-commercial, and evaluation purposes only.

5. Rate limits, tier restrictions, and data storage

Each pricing tier includes specific limits on daily requests, rows per request, and data lookback windows. These limits are enforced automatically. Exceeding them will result in rate-limit errors (HTTP 429) until the limit resets. Upgrading your plan increases these limits immediately.

Local data storage limits by tier:

• Free: No persistent local storage of API responses. Query results may be held in memory for the duration of a user session only. Non-commercial use only.
• Starter: Up to 500,000 transaction records stored locally to power a single commercial application.
• Builder: Up to 5,000,000 transaction records stored locally.
• Pro: Up to 25,000,000 transaction records stored locally.
• Enterprise: Storage rights, bulk delivery options, and multi-application licensing are defined in the applicable Data License Agreement and Order Form. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Upon cancellation or termination of your subscription, all locally stored records must be deleted within 30 days.

If you are unsure whether your use case falls within your plan's storage rights, email hello@thecardapi.com before building. We would rather clarify upfront than have a conversation later.

6. Payment and billing

• Paid plans are billed monthly or annually via Stripe. Prices are listed at thecardapi.com/pricing.
• Paid plans include a 7-day free trial. You will not be charged until the trial ends.
• You may cancel at any time via the billing portal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• We do not offer refunds for partial billing periods.
• We reserve the right to change pricing with 60 days' notice to active subscribers, effective at the start of your next billing period.

6a. Free trial terms

• The 7-day free trial is available to new subscribers on any paid plan. One trial per person or organization.
• No charge is applied during the trial period. Your card is authorized at signup but not billed until day 8.
• You may cancel at any time before the trial ends with no charge. If you do not cancel, your paid subscription begins automatically at the end of the trial.
• We reserve the right to revoke trial access if misuse or multiple trial accounts are detected.

7. Data accuracy

Transaction data is provided "as is" from public marketplace sources. While we strive for accuracy and completeness, we make no warranty that the data is error-free, complete, or current. Do not rely solely on this data for financial decisions. We are not responsible for decisions made based on data accessed through the Service.

Specific data fields — including condition, grade, grader, cert, player, image URLs, and thumbnail URLs — may be absent or unpopulated for individual records, depending on the data source, listing type, or platform. We do not warrant that any specific field will be populated for any given record, or that the set of available fields will remain constant over time.

We make no representation that your receipt or use of this data complies with the terms of service of eBay, any auction house, or any other third-party marketplace from which underlying data originates. You are solely responsible for assessing your own compliance with any such third-party terms.

8. Intellectual property

The compiled database, API design, and associated software are proprietary to Thompson Data Products, LLC. Your API key grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access the data for your own applications. No ownership rights are transferred.

9. Termination

We may suspend or revoke your API key immediately and without notice if you violate these Terms. We may also terminate the Service at any time with reasonable notice. Upon termination, your access to the API will cease.

10. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Thompson Data Products, LLC is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from your use of the Service, including but not limited to loss of revenue, data, or business opportunity. Our total liability shall not exceed the total fees paid by you in the twelve (12) months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim.

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, without regard to conflict of laws principles. Any disputes not resolved informally within 30 days of written notice shall be resolved by binding arbitration administered by JAMS under its Streamlined Arbitration Rules, with proceedings in King County, Washington.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms at any time. We will notify active subscribers by email of material changes. Continued use of the Service after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

13. Export restrictions

The Service is operated from the United States and is subject to U.S. export control laws and regulations. You may not access or use the Service if you are located in, under the control of, or a national or resident of any country subject to U.S. economic sanctions or trade embargoes, including those administered by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). You also may not use the Service if you appear on any U.S. government list of prohibited or restricted parties. By using the Service, you represent and warrant that you are not located in any such country and are not on any such list.

14. Contact

Questions about these Terms: hello@thecardapi.com