TCG Card Shop Simulator

TCG Card Shop Simulator

51 ratings
Guide for a steady (And increasing) income
By Necrobern
I keep seeing a wide number of very different do tips and don't do tips. And after trial and error, this is the safest method to obtain big money.
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About The Guide
This game is chill, cozy, and basically an open pack simulator in the endgame. However, sometimes things can get stressful depending of how you manage your shop, because that happened to me way too many times.

I checked several guides and tips, and some tells you what do, others to avoid said what do, back and forth. Some failed miserably, others became way too slow to make money.

This is not a guide about the card market, rarity pulls, and all that math nonsense. This will narrow down a few points to make sure you keep earning good money.
Keep a Base Budget


First and foremost, try to keep a base budget at the start and end of a day. You have to pay for bills, tournaments, and whoever you hired. If you just started probably just bills, but they'll gradually increase as you expand your shop.

Look on your phone, check whatever you need to pay your workers and tournaments, and try to keep your wallet arround that number. If you struggle, you might have to fire workers, as if you manage tournaments properly will be steady income in the long run. Later on this won't be a big issue, but if you just opened a shop, always keep it on mind.
Avoid Single Card Selling (In Late Game)


At the very start, rare cards are a solid choice to get some good income. Unfortunately, there's several flaws in the long run:

- Workers can't restock cards, so you have to constantly keep an eye for open slots. Customers WANT the shop full of items to buy, and empty slots will make them either stall or no buy at all. Which brings us to the next problem.

- Cheap rare cards aren't a solid income in the long run. Filling the slots with cards that cost 10s-20s of dollars (Or 1000-3000 Yen and similar currencies) fills your entire shop with junk. Customers have gullible AIs, and thus if they see cheap stuff will go for that instead of the most expensive products. You'll end with days where ten customers buying cards that costs $8 at most, and just a handful burning money into expensive stuff. Which also bring us to.

- RNG Card hell. Some players will get a super expensive card in their ingame Day 2, others almost never. If your source of income is pulling packs can become an absolute waste of time and money, as you could've earned the same from a big pack of products rather spending dunno how long to get that card. Try to keep pack opening as a collector goal, specially if future updates will let you make a deck with Ghost cards and whatnot.
Priority Purchases


While is fancy to have a variety of products arround, there's some things you must prioritize purchasing whenever your budget allows it.

- Deodorant and Auto Scent machines: As someone who went to several locals, people can get quite stinky, and this might be the main complain of your customers. Deodorant is clearly a must, but will soon become annoying to keep track of whichever nerds that haven't showered for a month. So try to get TWO machines for the entrance (two more if you open the second entrance), as the second machine will spray whoever enters if the first one is in cooldown. While you can sell the deodorant, is recommended to keep a stash ready to reload the machines whenever you can.

- Tables: Try to go for ten tables on average, as they'll become a passive source of income the moment you unlock the expensive tournaments. Sure the tourneys are costy as can go up to $700, but might give you thrice the amount in return. Players also tend to make purchases once they're done playing, so will give you more money before leaving the store.

- Checkout Counter: Get this only when you are able to hire two workers, preferably the fastest ones available. Checkout is probably the worst part of the game, specially giving change, so even a slow worker can remove that burden in the early game. But if you get a speedy worker, customers will leave and enter quickier, thus making more revenue. HOWEVER, be aware that fast workers also tend to leave as fast, so you might have to deal with a few customers at the end of a day.

- Shelves: While selling single cards can become a strong source of income in early game (Specially if you're lucky with pulls), later on isn't as reliable and even might become a problem. I will go further in the following section, but for now focus on shelves to place products on.
A Single Item For Sale


In combination with tournaments, selling a single item can be the better method to gradually obtain tons of money.

It sounds weird, but along checking several guides and personal experience, the customers' AI tends to consume often with a single item, and the more expensive said product is (As base price +10% up), the more money you'll get as often they'll buy several of them.

Can't you sell single cards and other products then? Yes and no. If you get a very expensive card is worth selling it, but you might end filling the card slots with cheap cards (Becoming very weak single purchases), or leaving it empty as customers will lose interest to buying something. Customers' AI will keep checking shelves until the RNG makes them buy something, so other products will be not as favorable compared to whichever most expensive item you can get.

For example, you have four shelves: An empty one, one with packs, one with plushies, and other with dice. The customer will RNG through those four, and you want them to buy dice since are your most expensive item. However, either loses interest by seeing the empty shelf, gets a pair of cheap packs, or gets a plushie and a pack. If we make all four shelves be nothing but dice, the weakest outcome will most likely be that they buy one set of dice, while the best is getting several.

The booster boxes is usually the prefered pick, specially if you wanna pull cards in between ordering more boxes. The main goal in every level tier is to be able to buy the biggest bundle of said boxes as you can save on shipping costs, fill your store with as many as you like, and let the money come to you.
Final Boss: Reviews


This was implemented in an update, where some customers will start hard countering this strategy. There are two things to keep on check:

- Check your reviews periodically and see what items you were missing
- Check customers entering and saying things like "I want X"

The good news is that usually is a minority, and if you had the tables and the single product tactic set you'll still make plenty of money. The bad news is that income might start slowing down in the long run, so you should slowly replace shelves with that single item with whatever they're asking. Fortunately you might already have a big load of savings to start changing your inventory, so take this chance to pretty up the place.

What can be quite tedious is that you can only remove big items one by one, often needing to be sent to the trash, and at times workers might run towards the empty shelf to restock it. Personally I only buy the cheapest shelves, and if you box and sell it whatever was in that shelf will be deleted (SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BE VERY CAREFUL WITH RARE CARDS INVOLVED). So the fastest way to change items is to delete a shelf and buy a new one to stock with whatever item customers are looking for.
The Win Condition (Epilogue)


If you do things with proper management, the combination of the most expensive tournament available and the single item for sale trick will keep the money coming. Soon enough you can hire one or two workers to restock said item perpetually all over the store, leaving you free to open packs all day. If you end having way more money than you can spend (Mostly due low level), order a big ton of boxes so there's always stock available 24/7, as well a hoard of packs to keep RNG through rare cards. Lastly, keep on track whenever the next tier of booster boxes becomes available, so you can move to that one and keep racking cash every day.

If anything the major negative is that your shop might look that it sells nothing but Funko Pops, something way worse than death. So once you have plenty of money to use, buy personal use shelves and place toys and other products you want for display.

As stated in the previous section, some updates will try to counter or potentially destroy this strategy. I'll try to keep this guide on check, but if things go south you'll see a big fat OBSOLETE in the title.
8 Comments
TheMightyMush 25 Oct @ 1:09pm 
I hope the dev adds some sort of multiplier based on variety of inventory. Seems ridiculous to have to adhere to a strategy like this to get good returns.
Doozy 23 Oct @ 8:22pm 
I dunno man just sell whatever highest 2 boxes you have for the majority of your product for revenue and also sell a bit of the 3 highest boosters you have to get lots of exp as well. Im sitting at 1.1 mil with 4 workers profitting 20K per day
axxry 21 Oct @ 7:27pm 
if u play stupid silly games like this i hate u
Maimes 21 Oct @ 5:07pm 
thanks for the info i appreciate it
Necrobern  [author] 16 Oct @ 1:39pm 
Already updated with that. It affects very little at the beginning, but you should steadily diversify your inventory as you check reviews.
Chicken Liver 16 Oct @ 1:22pm 
strat was working great, but i think the most recent update made it so you get negative reviews for not having certain products
BAEBLADE 14 Oct @ 4:07pm 
single product got me finally making money thanks
The_Jinxer 13 Oct @ 12:34pm 
You don't save by buying over 3 items in one checkout. The delivery fee per item is the same for 3 items or for 300. Buy whenever you're ready and have 3 or more in cart.