FAQ
Questions, answered straight
How pack contents are decided, why you can verify every single pack, and what happens to the cards you pull.
What exactly am I buying?
A digital pack tied to real cards. You rip it on your phone, and every card you pull is yours: we buy the physical card on the open market and ship it to you, or you trade it back for coins instantly and keep ripping.
What does “verifiable pack” mean, in plain words?
It means the outcome of your pack is decided and locked BEFORE you pay, and you can check it afterwards. Think of a sealed envelope: we write the result, seal it, show you the sealed envelope, and only then you decide to buy. After you open the pack we hand you the envelope so you can confirm nothing was swapped.
How does SHA-256 decide my cards?
When your pack is prepared, our server generates a secret random seed. Your cards are derived from that seed with fixed math, like shuffling a deck with a specific starting position. Before you pay, we publish the SHA-256 fingerprint of the seed (the “commitment”). SHA-256 is a one-way function: the fingerprint reveals nothing about the seed, but any change to the seed changes the fingerprint completely.
How do I verify a rip myself?
Every pack's outcome is locked by a SHA-256 commitment the instant you buy it, and the commitment is shown on the sealed pack before you rip. After the reveal, the seed is disclosed in your rip history. Run SHA-256 on that seed (any online hash tool works) and compare: if it matches the commitment, the contents demonstrably existed before you opened the pack, and nobody could have changed them after.
Could Gemma swap a card after seeing what I pulled?
No. The cards follow mathematically from the seed, and the seed is locked by its SHA-256 fingerprint before payment. Changing even one card would require a different seed, which would produce a different fingerprint and break the verification.
Are the pull rates real? Where do they come from?
Yes. The pull rates you see are the real probabilities of pulling each card from actual Pokémon and One Piece packs, collected from the declarations published online. Cards carry a Gemma list price that tracks live market data refreshed daily — it includes our sourcing and insured-shipping margin, so it sits above the bare Cardmarket quote — and pull rates are recalibrated as prices move so the mix of cards in a pack stays consistent. Sometimes — in sets like One Piece — ripping on Gemma actually works out better value than the physical packs.
What happens to the cards I pull?
They are yours, card by card. Instant buyback converts a card back to coins at the published rate (up to 90% depending on value), or move it to your vault and request home delivery: we buy the exact physical card and ship it to your door.
Which countries do you ship to?
We currently ship to: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
How much does shipping cost?
The base fee is €10 and covers up to 3 cards worth €10 or more; from the 4th such card onwards it's €5 per card. Cards worth less than €10 are billed €8 each and never count toward the 3 included — every card we ship is a separate market purchase, and a small card costs almost as much to source and send as a valuable one. Example: shipping a €20 card and a €5 card costs €10 + €8 = €18. Shipping to the US? The €10 base covers up to 5 cards worth €10+ — and once you've topped up more than €99.99 in total, US addresses get one free shipment of up to 3 cards every 30 days, whatever their value (US only; all other destinations pay the published rates).
How does delivery work once I order?
When you request a shipment, we use your shipping address to place orders with our suppliers on your behalf. Your cards travel directly from the supplier to your door: if they can't all be sourced from the same supplier, you may receive more than one parcel or letter. Delivery usually takes 7 to 10 business days.
Who can buy on Gemma?
You must be 18 or older, since purchases are made by card and physical cards ship to the EU, the United Kingdom and the United States. Packs are digital packs whose card contents are random and independently verifiable, and every purchase, pack and shipment stays in your account history.
What if a bug gives me the wrong coins or values?
Software can occasionally get a price, a pull rate or a coin balance wrong. Any coins or value that appear because of a bug or system error aren't a real balance, even if you did nothing wrong, so we may correct or reverse them and restore your account to where it should have been (see Terms, Section 13). That includes cards, orders and shipments generated by the error, at any point before they are delivered. What we commit to, every time: we tell you plainly what happened, we refund in full anything you paid that was affected, and where we reasonably can we add something as an apology. What we can't do is leave incorrect value in place. Spotted something odd? Tell us at support@gemmacards.com or on Telegram (t.me/gemmacardsHelp) — we'd rather thank you than surprise you.
Chase potential, in plain words
Every pack in the shop carries a 1-to-5 lightning rating. It tells you how big the top end of that expansion is — not how much card value a pack holds.
- Very low — most packs land close to their average. Few blanks, few fireworks.
- Low — the occasional dry pack, the occasional good one.
- Medium — real swings, but a good pull stays within reach in a normal session.
- High — long stretches below average, paid back by rare big pulls.
- Very high — most packs hold well under the pack price in card value; the big ones are real, but far apart.
What do the lightning bolts on a pack mean?
They rate the top end of an expansion, from 1 to 5. Two numbers, both from the market prices you can check yourself: what the whole expansion is worth added up, and what its single most expensive card is worth. We combine them with a geometric mean and place the result on a fixed logarithmic scale — each extra bolt is roughly three times more weight. Both numbers are needed: an expansion bloated with reprints but no card worth chasing gets fewer bolts than its total suggests, and so does one with a single expensive card floating over bulk. Same maths for every expansion, fixed thresholds, no editorial choice.
Do more bolts mean more card value?
No. For standard-price packs (500 coins) the average card value inside a pack is about 80% of its price; premium expansions with a doubled pack price hold a smaller share of their price in average card value — the higher price is always shown upfront on the pack. The rating does not change that average, only how evenly it is spread. Five bolts means many packs below average and, once in a while, one far above it. One bolt means the opposite: fewer disappointments, fewer big moments.
Which rating suits me?
If your budget is small, a low rating treats you better: over a handful of packs the spread dominates, and a five-bolt expansion can run through your coins before the big card ever shows up. A high rating makes sense when you are chasing one specific card and can sit through long stretches without it. Either way the guarantee is the same: never more than 10 packs without a card worth at least €5.00.
Is the rating computed on the pull rates I can see?
It is computed on the card prices shown across the site, refreshed daily — not on the pull rates. Be clear on what it is: it measures how big the best card in that expansion can be, not how evenly your packs will run. One bolt does not mean safe, and five bolts does not mean worse pull rates. It exists to compare expansions with each other, not to predict your next pack — a one-bolt pack can come back empty, and a five-bolt pack can hit on the first try.