Surge Cards wasn't supposed
to become this.

At its core, Surge Cards is a ledger built for Pokémon card traders. It combines live eBay comp searching with buy and sell tracking — helping you price cards, estimate profit, and follow every deal from purchase to payout.

Simple enough.

But that's not how this started.

Like a lot of people in the hobby, I was drawn in by nostalgia and the craft. By 2024 I was buying and selling graded Pokémon cards. Sourced sealed boxes through a reseller in Japan. Learned quickly that eBay fees, shipping costs, and competition are ruthless teachers.

There's something strangely addictive about the hobby when you're trading. Finding a ripper deal. Hearing that eBay "your item has sold" notification. And honestly, there's something special about holding a card of a Pokémon you befriended as a kid.

But I realised something. Flipping Pokémon cards is harder than people think. Good deals were rare. Keeping track of buys, sales, margins, and stock quickly became painful.

So I built something for myself.

I dusted off an old Mac Mini and set out to build the tool I wished existed. I wasn't a software developer. I'd never built an app before. I just had a problem I couldn't let go of.

As someone buying and selling Pokémon cards, I wanted a way to scan listings, compare them against recent sales, and spot opportunities after fees and shipping were taken into account.

Simple idea. Not simple reality.

Sellers don't use consistent naming conventions. eBay sold data is messy. Listings bundle cards together, use vague titles, or contain words that completely distort pricing. If a listing says "set", does that mean one card or three?

It only exists because I refused to settle for the tools that were already out there.

Every feature had to be imagined. Every workflow designed. Every bug tracked down. Every screen refined until it felt right.

Eventually the app started working. Telegram notifications began arriving with potential deals and links to listings. Then one alert caught my eye — a card that looked undervalued. I bought it, listed it on eBay, and tracked it in the ledger. A week later: sold.

Meanwhile, another part of the app quietly became my favourite. A tracking system I called Ledger. Originally it existed purely for me — a clean, organised way to track purchases, sales, fees, profits, and inventory.

Essentially: a card flipper's spreadsheet that didn't feel like a spreadsheet.

And that became the foundation of Surge Cards.

Over time I rebuilt everything around that idea. I stopped thinking about what I wanted and started thinking about what other collectors and traders might enjoy using. That probably comes from hospitality — I work in guest service, and I care deeply about experience. Software should feel enjoyable. Clear. Smooth. Not frustrating.

Some people assume the building is the hard part. After hundreds of hours on Surge Cards, I don't think it is.

The hard part is knowing what collectors actually struggle with. Deciding which features matter. Obsessing over the details that make software feel intuitive. Caring whether the final product is genuinely useful.

Surge Cards exists because I loved the hobby, got frustrated by the tools available, and couldn't stop thinking about a better way to do it.

So if you've got an idea sitting in your head and think you can't build it — you might be surprised by what's possible today.