Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a binding agreement between you and Cardhouse Ventures LLC ("cardhouse", "we", "us"), a California limited liability company operating the website at cardhouse.live and any related services (together, the "Service"). By creating an account, purchasing tokens, or opening a pack, you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the Service. Cardhouse Ventures LLC operates from California, United States.

1. What cardhouse is, and what it is not

cardhouse is a retailer of collectible trading cards. You buy tokens; you spend tokens on a pack; the pack delivers real, individually identified trading cards to your account. Every pack delivers cards. There is no outcome in which you spend tokens and receive nothing.

This is not gambling and it is not a sweepstakes. Those words have specific legal meanings and cardhouse is structured so that neither applies. Section 13 sets out the reasoning in full rather than asking you to take it on faith.

cardhouse is not a bank, a money transmitter, an investment service, a securities broker, or a marketplace between users. We do not hold money for you, we do not pay interest, and we do not offer any product whose value we promise will rise.

Card values shown on the Service are estimates of secondary-market price drawn from third-party sales data. They are informational. They are not appraisals, not guarantees, and not an offer by us to buy or sell at that figure except where an explicit buy-back offer is displayed and accepted.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter contracts where you live. cardhouse is intended for residents of the United States. We do not knowingly permit accounts held by minors.

Age is declared at sign-up and again before your first deposit. We may require documentary proof of age, identity, address or source of funds at any time and at our discretion, and may suspend access to an account, to deposits, or to shipping until it is provided.

One account per person. Accounts are personal. You may not sell, rent, share, transfer or grant anyone else access to your account, and you are responsible for everything done through it. Notify us at support@cardhouse.live immediately if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

We may refuse service, close an account, or decline a transaction where we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with law, to prevent fraud or abuse, or to protect the Service or other customers.

3. Tokens

Tokens are a closed-loop store of value that can be spent on cardhouse packs and nothing else. They are not money, not currency, not a security, not a deposit and not a stored-value instrument redeemable in cash. 100 tokens are sold for US$1.00.

Tokens cannot be withdrawn. They cannot be transferred to another person or account, exchanged for cash, redeemed for their purchase price, or moved off the Service in any form. Nothing you do on cardhouse — opening packs, selling cards back, reaching any level or achievement — produces money you can take out. There are no cash prizes.

Because tokens are usable only for goods sold by us and cannot be redeemed for cash or transmitted to anyone else, we operate them as a closed-loop system outside the scope of the California Money Transmission Act (Financial Code Division 1.2). We are not licensed as a money transmitter and do not act as one.

Tokens do not expire while your account is open and in good standing. We do not charge inactivity, dormancy or maintenance fees against a token balance.

Tokens are not refundable. Once purchased, tokens are not returned to your payment method in any circumstance, including where your account is closed or suspended, whether by you or by us. Promotional or bonus tokens that you did not pay for likewise carry no cash value.

Token purchases are final once tokens are credited. Tokens that have already been spent on a pack cannot be refunded, because the pack has been fulfilled and cards have been allocated to you.

4. Buying tokens, prices and payment

Prices are shown in US dollars and are set by us on the Service before you pay. The price you are shown on the confirmation screen is the price charged. Card payments are processed by Stripe; we do not receive or store your full card number.

You authorise us and our payment processor to charge the payment method you provide for the amount displayed, including any applicable tax and any shipping fee you separately approve.

We may require additional authentication for a payment, including 3-D Secure verification through your card issuer. A declined or unauthenticated payment is not a fault in the Service and does not create an obligation on us to supply anything.

Chargebacks. If you dispute a payment with your card issuer after tokens have been spent or cards have been shipped, we may suspend the account, reverse the corresponding tokens, and recover amounts owed. Filing a dispute in bad faith — for a transaction you authorised and received — is a breach of these Terms.

5. Memberships and automatic renewal

A membership is optional. Everything the Service does — packs, published odds, the Vault, buy-back, shipping, levels and adventures — is available to a free account, and a membership never changes the odds of any pack.

A membership renews automatically. If you join, you are enrolled in a recurring monthly subscription. We will charge the payment method you provide the then-current monthly price, once per month, on the same day each month, until you cancel. The price and the monthly allowance for each tier are shown on the Membership page before you pay, and again on the checkout page. There is no minimum term.

You can cancel at any time, in two clicks, from your account. Sign in, open Membership, and press Cancel. Cancelling takes effect at once in the sense that no further charge will be made; your membership then runs to the end of the period you have already paid for, and you keep everything it has already given you. We do not require you to telephone us, write to us, or give a reason. If the button does not work for you, writing to support@cardhouse.live is equally effective and we will action it on the day we receive it.

What happens to what you have received. Tokens already credited to your account are yours to spend and are not taken back when you cancel. Cards already in your Vault are yours whether or not you are a member. Cancelling a membership does not close your account.

Part months are not refunded. A membership month is charged in advance and its allowance is credited in full the moment it is paid, so cancelling part-way through a month does not produce a refund — you keep the allowance instead. If you believe you have been charged in error, write to support@cardhouse.live and we will look at it.

If a renewal payment fails, we do not end your membership immediately. Our payment processor retries over the following days. During that time your account stays open and everything already in it stays yours, but no new monthly allowance is credited until a payment succeeds. If none succeeds, the membership ends.

If we change the price, we will tell you before the change takes effect and you will have the opportunity to cancel first. A price change never applies to a month you have already paid for.

A membership is for personal use by the account holder, and one membership applies to one account.

6. Packs, allocation and ownership

A pack is a purchase of goods in which the specific cards you receive are determined by a randomised draw from a published pool. The pool, the possible outcomes and their probabilities are published on the Odds & Fairness page before you buy, and the draw is verifiable after the fact under the commit-and-reveal scheme described there.

When a pack is opened, the cards drawn are recorded to your account in your Vault. You obtain beneficial ownership of each identified card at that moment. cardhouse holds the corresponding obligation and, on request, sources and ships the physical card to you.

cardhouse does not hold standing inventory of every card in every pool. Cards are acquired on demand when you ask for one to be shipped. Where we are unable to source a card you own within a reasonable period, we will tell you, return the card to your Vault, and offer to buy it back at an enhanced rate. We will never substitute a different card without your agreement.

The condition or grade of each card is stated when it is allocated. Where a card is described as being in a specific graded holder, the card supplied will match that company and grade. Where a card is described as ungraded, its stated condition is the condition supplied.

Risk of loss in a physical card passes to you on delivery to the carrier's stated recipient address, subject to the shipping terms in Section 8.

7. Selling cards back

You may offer any eligible card in your Vault back to cardhouse. Where we make an instant offer, that offer is displayed in tokens before you accept. Accepting is final: the card leaves your Vault and the tokens are credited immediately.

Buy-back is paid in tokens only. It is not a cash sale and does not convert anything into money. Cards above our automatic ceiling, or with insufficient market data to price confidently, are not offered instantly and are referred for manual pricing rather than being underpriced.

We may decline to buy back a card, and are never obliged to make an offer. Declining is not a statement about the card's market value.

8. Shipping

Shipping is requested by you, for cards you own, to an address you provide. Shipping is charged separately from the pack price and the fee is displayed and approved before it is taken.

We ship within the United States. Delivery estimates are estimates, not guarantees. You are responsible for the accuracy of the address you supply; we are not liable for a shipment correctly delivered to an address you gave us.

Once a shipment has been dispatched it cannot be cancelled and the associated fee is not refundable, because the card has been purchased and the postage incurred. Where a shipment is lost in transit and the carrier confirms the loss, we will work with you in good faith on a replacement or a credit.

Sales tax is applied where required by law on shipped goods. You are responsible for any import duty or other charge that arises if you subsequently move goods outside the jurisdiction they were shipped to.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to: use the Service if you are under 18; open or control more than one account; use another person's payment method without authority; use automated means to interact with the Service; interfere with, probe or overload the Service; attempt to manipulate a draw, a price, a balance or an offer; resell access to the Service; or use the Service for money laundering, sanctions evasion, or any unlawful purpose.

You agree not to misrepresent the Service to others — including describing it as a lottery, a sweepstakes, a casino, or an investment.

We may suspend or close an account, reverse transactions obtained through prohibited conduct, and withhold shipping where we reasonably believe these rules have been broken.

10. Intellectual property

Pokémon and all associated names, characters, card designs and marks are the property of their respective owners. cardhouse is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by The Pokémon Company International, Nintendo, Creatures Inc., GAME FREAK inc., Wizards of the Coast, or any grading company including PSA, BGS, CGC or SGC.

cardhouse sells authentic secondary-market trading cards. Card images are used to identify the specific product being sold. All rights in the underlying works remain with their owners.

The cardhouse name, site design, text and software are ours. You may not copy, scrape or reuse them except as permitted by law.

11. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free, or that displayed market values are accurate.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under California law, including liability for fraud, or your rights under the Consumers Legal Remedies Act (Civil Code § 1750 et seq.).

Subject to the paragraph above, our total aggregate liability to you for any claim arising out of the Service is limited to the greater of (a) the total amount you paid to cardhouse in the six months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) US$100.

We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost opportunity or the change in market value of any card, however arising.

12. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Cardhouse Ventures LLC, its members, officers and agents from any claim, loss or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of your breach of these Terms, your misuse of the Service, or your violation of any law or third-party right.

13. Why this is not gambling, and not a sweepstakes

We set this out in detail because the distinction is structural, not cosmetic, and because you are entitled to understand what you are buying.

Every pack delivers goods. California defines gambling around risking something of value on an outcome in which you may lose it. On cardhouse there is no losing outcome: every pack delivers real trading cards, individually identified, which become yours. What varies is which cards you receive — as it does with any sealed trading card product sold at retail. You are buying goods with randomised fulfilment, not staking money on a contingency.

Nothing pays out in cash. Tokens are a closed-loop store of value spendable only on packs. They cannot be withdrawn, transferred or exchanged for money, and neither can anything you pull — selling a card back to cardhouse pays tokens, not dollars. There are no cash prizes and no mechanism by which the Service pays money to a customer.

The price and the odds are disclosed before you buy. Pack prices are fixed and shown up front, and every outcome in a pool is published with its probability — so the distribution you are buying is on the page, in full, before you pay for it. We do not imply that a pack is worth more than it costs.

It is not a sweepstakes. A sweepstakes awards a prize by chance without requiring purchase. cardhouse has no free-entry route, no prize pool, no drawing, and no entrant — it has customers who buy goods. We do not operate, and will not describe ourselves as operating, a sweepstakes.

California Assembly Bill 831 ("AB 831"), in force since 1 January 2026, prohibits online sweepstakes games that combine three things: a dual-currency structure, simulation of casino gambling, and awards of cash or cash equivalents. cardhouse meets none of the three limbs. There is one currency, not two — a single token with no separate redeemable coin. Nothing on the Service simulates a slot machine, a card game against the house, or any casino game. And nothing awards cash or a cash equivalent, because tokens cannot leave the closed loop and cards are goods, not instruments.

A battle does not change any of the above, and Section 14 sets out why. A battle is still a purchase of packs at a fixed, disclosed price from published odds. It still delivers goods: every paying seat receives an identified trading card whatever the result, so there is still no outcome in which you pay and receive nothing. It still pays nothing in cash — a winning seat is credited closed-loop tokens by cardhouse, not money, and not another customer's money. No consideration passes between customers at any point, and there is no entrant, no prize pool and no drawing. The one thing a battle adds is a comparison between two sets of packs after they have been opened, which decides how the Value already delivered is credited — not whether anything is delivered at all.

This section explains how the Service is built. It is a description, not legal advice, and it does not bind any court or regulator. If you are in doubt about the law where you live, take your own advice before using the Service.

14. Pack Battles, community packs and group openings

What a battle is. A battle is a set of packs opened simultaneously for every seat in it. You pay an entry equal to the sum of the prices of those packs and nothing else — there is no battle fee, no rake and no rounding in our favour. Every seat opens the same packs, from the same published odds, at the same moment. The rule that decides it is stated on the battle before you join: normally the higher total Value wins, and on Opposite Day the lower total wins.

Nobody receives the cards drawn in a battle. The cards opened during a battle are not delivered to anyone. What they were worth is pooled, and that pool is settled in tokens: the winning side is credited the pot, a group opening splits it equally to the cent, and if the sides tie exactly then each player is credited what their own packs were worth and nothing moves between them. Cards cannot be divided evenly between people; a number can.

Every player receives a real card, whatever the result. At the end of every battle and every group opening, each paying seat receives one identified trading card, worth between 30 and 50 cents, added to your Vault and yours to keep, sell back or have posted like any other card. Its cost is taken out of the pot before the shares are worked out, so it is funded by the battle rather than by us. This is why Section 1 remains true in a battle: there is no outcome in which you spend tokens and receive nothing.

Opening a pack on your own. A group opening with one seat has no opponent and nothing to divide, so it settles differently and more simply: the cards drawn go straight to your Vault and no tokens are paid. What you pull is what you get.

Bots, and battles we open ourselves. Empty seats may be filled by cardhouse bots. A bot is always labelled as a bot, on every screen, and its name always begins with "Bot" — no arrangement of the Service presents a bot as another customer. Bots pay no entry; cardhouse funds those packs. When the lobby is empty we may also open battles ourselves for people to join; those are labelled as cardhouse tables, are bylined cardhouse rather than a customer, and every other seat in one is a labelled bot. They are ordinary battles in every other respect.

Community packs: you choose the cards and how the odds are shaped. Any customer may build a pack from cards in our catalogue. A creator never types an odds figure or a price. No part of the Service accepts a weight, a probability or a price from a creator. What a creator may choose, besides the cards, is one position on a dial we define, which decides how steeply the odds fall away from the dearest card. It has ten fixed positions and no others; a creator supplies a position, never a number of their own. At one end the cheapest card takes nearly all the odds and the pack is cheap; at the other every card is equally likely whatever it is worth, and the pack is priced accordingly. From that position and the cards' Values when the pack is published we work out everything else: a card's chance falls as its Value rises, and the price is the pack's expected Value divided by the target return, so every position returns the same 83% and only the spread across the cards, and what the pack costs, changes. Once a pack is published, its odds stay as published. We re-check its cards' Values every night and move its price so that it keeps returning about 83%, but no card's chance changes unless a new version of the pack is published. The odds table on each pack's page is always the table its openings are drawn from. A creator may only use a graded card in a grade cardhouse itself stocks.

Creator royalties. The person who built a pack earns 5% of its price on each paid seat that opens it, credited in tokens automatically when the battle settles, once the creator's account has made at least one deposit. There is nothing to claim and no minimum. A creator earns nothing from their own seats. Royalties are paid by cardhouse out of its margin; they are not added to the price you pay.

This is not a marketplace between users, and no user pays another user. You buy from cardhouse and cardhouse settles with you. Tokens credited at the end of a battle are credited by us, from us, inside the same closed loop described in Section 3 — they are not another customer's money, they cannot be withdrawn, and no payment, transfer or consideration passes between customers at any point. A creator's royalty is likewise paid by us, not by the people who open the pack.

What you should expect over a run. A community pack returns about 83% of its price in card Value on average. That is a statement about many openings, not about yours, and it means that over a long enough run most people will hold Value worth less than they spent — the same as opening sealed product anywhere. In a battle, winning is close to a coin flip whichever side you are on; what the return decides is what a loss costs you over time, not how often one happens. Odds & Fairness sets out both figures and how to check them.

Cancellation and refunds. A battle waiting for players may be cancelled by the person who created it, and every seat that was paid for is refunded in full, automatically. If a battle cannot be completed for a technical reason, every paid seat is refunded in full. A battle that has started cannot be cancelled by anybody, including us, because the cards have already been drawn.

Removal. We may take down a community pack, refuse a card or a grade, or withdraw the feature entirely, at our discretion and without notice, where we reasonably believe it is necessary to comply with law, to prevent abuse, or because we cannot stand behind a price. Taking a pack down never affects a battle already fought with it: what it cost and what it contained are recorded permanently at the time it was used.

15. Dispute resolution

Please contact us first. Most problems are resolved quickly by writing to support@cardhouse.live. We ask that you give us 30 days to resolve a dispute informally before starting formal proceedings.

If we cannot resolve it, you and cardhouse agree that any dispute will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered by a recognised arbitration provider under its consumer rules, seated in California, rather than in court — except that either party may bring a claim in small claims court if it qualifies.

You may reject arbitration. If you notify us in writing at support@cardhouse.live within 30 days of first accepting these Terms that you opt out, arbitration will not apply to you and nothing else in these Terms changes.

Disputes are brought individually. Class actions, class arbitrations and representative proceedings are not permitted to the extent the law allows that restriction. If that restriction is held unenforceable as to a particular claim, that claim proceeds in court and the rest of this section still applies to the remainder.

Nothing in this section prevents you from reporting a matter to a regulator or from exercising any right that cannot be waived by agreement.

16. Changes, governing law and contact

We may change these Terms. Material changes are posted here with a new effective date and, where a change affects money already paid or cards already owned, it will not be applied retroactively to your disadvantage.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of California without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and the state and federal courts of California have exclusive jurisdiction over any matter not subject to arbitration. Nothing here removes a right you have under consumer law that cannot be waived.

If any provision is held unenforceable, the rest remains in force.

Questions, complaints and legal notices: support@cardhouse.live — Cardhouse Ventures LLC, California, United States.

Questions about anything on this page: support@cardhouse.live