Search "pirateship for card sellers" and the only page that actually answers the question is a Mana Pool support article, written for a different marketplace entirely. This is the TCGplayer-specific version: how the CSV workflow works, what it costs, and where it stops being enough.
Mana Pool, a different card marketplace, has documented its own CSV-import-to-Pirate-Ship pattern in a support article. Nobody has written the TCGplayer-specific version of it, even though the mechanic is nearly identical and TCGplayer sellers ask the same question constantly. That's the gap this page fills.
TCGplayer has no native connection to Pirate Ship. There's no button in your TCGplayer seller dashboard that hands off an order to Pirate Ship and gets a label back. That absence isn't a design choice by either company. It's just a connection nobody has built. The CSV export and import is the workaround that fills that gap, and it's the same reason the TCG fulfillment software guide exists at all: TCGplayer left the label-buying step for someone else to solve.
The mechanic is straightforward once you've done it once.
First, pull your orders in TCGplayer's shipping-info CSV export. This is a standard export TCGplayer provides for exactly this purpose, and it's the raw file the rest of the workflow runs on.
Second, open Pirate Ship and use its CSV import tool to bring that file in. Pirate Ship reads the buyer address and order details straight from the file, so you're not retyping anything by hand.
Third, review the batch inside Pirate Ship: package weight, shipping method, and any orders that need a different service than the rest. This is the point to catch a row that imported wrong before you pay for the label.
Fourth, buy the labels in bulk and print them. Pirate Ship buys discounted USPS and UPS postage, and there's no monthly fee to use the service. That combination, free to use plus real carrier discounts, is why it's become the default starting point for small TCG sellers rather than a paid label tool.
Once labels are bought, most sellers still need a packing slip in the same batch. Adding a packing slip to a Pirate Ship label run covers that step, since Pirate Ship doesn't generate one for you automatically.
If you use Hoard for pull sessions, the Orders tab's Labels control has an Export to Pirate Ship button that builds this CSV straight from your synced orders instead of running the manual TCGplayer export yourself. The export includes only Tracked and Expedited orders; PWE orders are skipped, and a fully refunded order is left out entirely.
Each row's Mail Class is pre-set: Tracked orders map to USPS Ground Advantage, Expedited orders to USPS Priority Mail. The Weight (oz) column comes from the order's card count: 4 oz under 20 cards, 8 oz for 20 to 39, 12 oz for 40 to 79, and 15.9 oz for 80 to 200 cards or any order of $1,000 or more. It's blank for an order over 200 cards or one with sealed product or accessories, so you weigh it yourself and enter that weight in Pirate Ship.
The export covers US addresses only; an order with a non-US ZIP format is skipped. See the full export walkthrough for the column-by-column detail. The same Labels control also offers ShippingEasy as an alternative to the CSV export. See how the ShippingEasy push and tracking upload work and Hoard's shipping automation page.
A CSV import only works if the order list feeding it is already correct: right cards, right condition, right quantities. That's a pull step, not a shipping step, and it happens before Pirate Ship ever sees the file. Hoard's Pull Sessions feature is built to sit exactly there, one step upstream of a Pirate Ship label run, so the order list going into the CSV is already clean instead of getting fixed after a label is already printed.
The CSV export/import loop works well at low order volume. It stops working well once volume climbs, because every batch means exporting a new CSV from TCGplayer, re-importing it into Pirate Ship, and re-checking the batch by hand. There's no live sync between the two systems, so nothing carries over automatically between batches. At high order counts, that manual re-export cycle becomes the bottleneck, not the label printing itself.
Pirate Ship also has no TCG-specific features, because it isn't a TCG tool. It doesn't pair a packing slip to a label automatically. It doesn't give any visual pick guidance for finding the card on a shelf. Those are things the dedicated TCG fulfillment tools build in specifically, and Pirate Ship was never trying to be one of them.
The honest read is that Pirate Ship is the free, correct starting point, not a permanent solution for every seller. It's the right tool for a store still importing CSVs by hand a few times a week. It's the wrong tool to lean on once order volume makes manual batch imports a daily time sink. How Pirate Ship stacks up against ShipStation, EasyPost, and Shippo covers that comparison directly, for a seller trying to decide whether Pirate Ship still fits at their current volume.
No. There's no button in the TCGplayer seller dashboard that hands an order to Pirate Ship. The connection is a manual CSV export from TCGplayer, then a CSV import into Pirate Ship, repeated for every batch.
Nothing beyond postage. Pirate Ship buys discounted USPS and UPS postage with no monthly fee, which is why it's become the default starting point for small TCG sellers.
No. Pirate Ship doesn't generate a packing slip automatically, so most sellers still need a separate step for that. See adding a packing slip to a Pirate Ship label run.
Once order volume climbs enough that the manual re-export and re-import cycle becomes the bottleneck, not the label printing itself. Pirate Ship also has no TCG-specific features, like pairing a packing slip to a label or visual pick guidance, since it isn't a TCG tool.
Hoard estimates weight from card count for orders up to 200 cards. Above that, or when the order includes sealed product or accessories, the Weight (oz) column is left blank so you can weigh the package yourself.
The refunded copies drop out of the card count Hoard uses for the estimated weight. A fully refunded order is left out of the export entirely.
Hoard's Pull Sessions feature cleans up the order list that feeds your Pirate Ship CSV, so the batch you import is already correct.
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