FAQ
Questions, answered straight
How the draws work, 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 “provably fair” 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 shows its commitment before purchase. 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 shown before payment, the outcome provably existed before you paid, and nobody could have changed it 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 odds real? Where do the pull rates 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 odds recalibrate as prices move so payouts stay fair. 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.
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 play?
You must be 18 or older. Packs are digital packs with randomized, provably fair outcomes: rip for the thrill and the cards, never spend more than you are comfortable with. Spending controls and your full history are always visible in your account.
What if a bug gives me the wrong coins or values?
Software can occasionally get a price, an odds figure 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@gemma.cards or on Telegram (t.me/gemmacards) — we'd rather thank you than surprise you.
Volatility, 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 comes back.
- 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 come back well under the pack price; 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.
Does high volatility pay more?
Not by itself. For standard-price packs (500 coins) on average 80% of the price comes back as card value; premium expansions with a doubled pack price return a smaller share of their price — the higher price is always shown upfront on the pack. Volatility does not change how much, only how it arrives. 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 volatility should I pick?
If your budget is small, low volatility treats you better: over a handful of packs the swings dominate, and a five-bolt expansion can eat the whole budget before the big pull ever shows up. High volatility makes sense when you are chasing one specific card and can sit through long dry runs. 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 odds I can see?
It is computed on the card prices shown across the site, refreshed daily — not on the odds. Be clear on what it is: it measures how big a hit is possible in that expansion, not how erratic your packs will be. One bolt does not mean safe, and five bolts does not mean the odds are worse. 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.