Start Collecting on Courtyard — Wallet, Packs, Vault Market

Courtyard sells graded physical trading cards held in its own dedicated Delaware vault — it moved off third-party vaulting in early 2025, per Courtyard’s transition doc and August 2026 coverage. (Its docs also cover graded comics for vault intake, and a watches product sells authenticated timepieces via disclosed-odds drops — this guide is about the cards.) Each card is represented 1:1 by a token on Polygon, the low-fee Ethereum sidechain the collectibles live on. The slab stays put while it trades online, and it ships to you if you redeem it. Signup needs no crypto knowledge: a digital wallet is created automatically and you can pay with ordinary payment methods. This guide covers the mechanics as of September 2026, from Courtyard’s own help docs and the infrastructure case study published with its wallet provider (August 2026). For the platform’s standing record see its registry profile.

Sign-up: a digital wallet is created for you#

Creating a Courtyard account provisions a Polygon wallet automatically — a non-custodial embedded wallet managed behind the scenes. Non-custodial here means you keep ultimate control of the assets it holds; Privy’s TEE infrastructure does the crypto plumbing, with signing and key material inside secure hardware per the August 2026 case study. No seed phrases — the recovery words that give full control of a wallet — and no separate crypto wallet to start. Collectors who already run their own wallet can link it in Settings instead, and Courtyard’s docs explain adding Polygon USDC — a US-dollar stablecoin on-chain — to either wallet, including the step-by-step Coinbase route for buying USDC and sending it on the Polygon network.

The eligibility gate is modest but real: Courtyard’s Terms of Service (last updated December 2024) require users to be 18 or older — or otherwise able to form a binding contract in their jurisdiction — and exclude sanctioned jurisdictions and restricted parties (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and the Crimea/Donetsk/Luhansk regions are named, plus government sanctions lists). Australian users are fine; a one-time KYC identity check applies before your first redemption, covered below.

Ordinary payment methods work too — the platform wires its marketplace to consumer payment rails (Stripe fiat pay-ins plus a crypto onramp per the same case study), so buying doesn’t require understanding which part is fiat and which part is onchain.

The custody trade-off sits on the physical side, not the token side: your slab lives in Courtyard’s insured US vault until you redeem it — insured at fair market value per the ToS — that’s the vault model in custody models explained. The token itself can move on-chain if you connect your own wallet. If the platform itself fails, the ToS commits to a three-month asset-return window on insolvency or business cessation — you cover shipping, and no monetary compensation is offered in place of the item.

Two ways to get cards#

The marketplace. Vaulted cards trade peer-to-peer — specific graded slabs (PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC) at listed prices, with bids and instant purchases. Courtyard advertises 0% marketplace fees on vaulted transactions — though its ToS still defines a ‘Courtyard Fee’, a percentage of purchase price deducted from the buyer’s payment on primary and secondary sales, whose rate is set at point of sale. Read the 0% as the current schedule, not a structural promise; credit-card purchases carry their own fee, so check the current fee schedule before sizing a buy. Sales settle into your Courtyard wallet balance.

Packs. New vaulted cards also enter circulation through pack openings — you buy the pack first, then see which card it contained. Pack contents and odds are published on the pack page before purchase; read them — that published disclosure is what you’re buying under. The digital side is instant either way: the card lands in your collection as soon as the transaction completes.

Redemption is a process, not a button#

Redeeming ships the physical slab and permanently burns the token — you can’t keep both. Per Courtyard’s redemption docs:

1. Hit the redeem button on your item, or open the tracker at courtyard.io/redeem.
2. Complete a one-time KYC identity check (Veriff — required before your first redemption, not again after).
3. Pay shipping and applicable taxes. US buyers pay state sales tax calculated on the item’s last-sale price; international buyers pay their own country’s customs/import charges — Courtyard’s import-tax table lists Australia at 10%, which is exactly the low-value-import GST regime covered in shipping vault cards to Australia.
4. US delivery generally lands within ~10 business days of invoice processing; international takes longer and includes tracking. A $2-per-card handling surcharge applies during high-demand periods.

Two limits worth knowing: you can’t redeem to a third-party vault address (your door only), and you can’t burn the token yourself via the contract — redemption goes through the site’s process.

Selling and vaulting your own cards#

Listing a vaulted card for sale happens inside the platform — no photos, packaging or shipping involved. Sending your own graded cards in is a separate service (“Vault Your Cards”) that is currently paused per Courtyard’s docs — US-only when it returns. When it ran, cards were authenticated and rendered into your collection about one to two weeks after arriving at the vault, with storage and insurance free. Check the current intake status before planning around it.

The pre-buy checklist for Courtyard specifically#

• [ ] Vault model understood — the slab stays in Courtyard’s insured US vault; the Polygon token is what trades
• [ ] Fee surfaces read — the 0% vaulted-marketplace claim checked against live docs; card-purchase and redemption shipping charges confirmed for your order
• [ ] Redemption cost estimated — shipping plus your country’s import position worked out before buying anything you intend to hold physically
• [ ] Eligibility confirmed — Courtyard’s ToS require users 18+ (or able to contract in their jurisdiction); sanctioned jurisdictions excluded
• [ ] KYC accepted — a Veriff identity check is required before your first redemption
• [ ] Pack odds read — contents and odds are published per pack; packs are chance-based purchases
• [ ] Intake status checked — “Vault Your Cards” is paused; don’t build a plan around sending cards in

Bottom line: Courtyard’s start needs nothing crypto-shaped — an account, an auto-created wallet, card payment or USDC — and its proposition is graded slabs that trade online while staying vaulted and insured. The real decisions are the cost surfaces (purchase fees versus the redemption shipping you’ll eventually pay) and the vault trust question. Re-check the registry record and run the platform evaluation checklist before spending real money.

Platform sources (checked September 2026): Asset Storage & Insurance · Asset Redemption & Shipping · KYC Process · Vault Your Cards · Vault Transition · Adding Funds · Terms of Service (December 2024 — age, sanctions and eligibility terms) · Privy “Inside the Stack” case study (26 August 2026) · YesPress Courtyard profile (14 August 2026 — early-2025 Delaware vault transition and the prior Brink’s arrangement).