What a buyback rate is, and why ours is a number instead of a promise
Cards at 80% of the FMV on the day we receive them — it is our card coming home, so we pay far more for it than for one off the street. Lux at 70% of what you paid. Both for 12 months, both published before you pay.
A buyback rate is the percentage we will pay to take an item back, within a stated window, in stated condition. On cards it is a percentage of the FMV, never of our asking price — a rate quoted off what we charged would reward us for charging too much. The rate is what we fix; on cards the amount is recalculated from the market on the day the card reaches us, and the figure you see when you ask is an estimate. It is published on the product page before checkout rather than buried in terms, because a rate you find out about afterwards is not a rate, it is a surprise.
Graded cards are 80% of the FMV on the day we receive the card, for 12 months. The FMV is the market comparable adjusted by how strongly that card’s own sales agree with each other, and the card’s page prints both figures and the step between them. Where a card has no sample grade yet there is no FMV to apply, and it is paid on its market comparable. The RATE is fixed; the amount is not — a rate change applies to what sells after it, and a card carries the rate it was sold under. Whatever the FMV is on the day the card reaches us, you get 80% of it — if the card is worth more in a year you get more, and if it is worth less you get less. That is the trade for a buyback that follows the card rather than our old asking price. Where a card has no current comparable we cannot publish the figure, and we say so instead of inventing one.
Lux is 70% of what you paid, for the first 12 months. Fitness has no published buyback rate, so this store does not claim one for it.
Harmony Cash has a rate of its own: 90% of the FMV, against 80% in dollars. That spread is deliberate and we are not coy about why: credit keeps you in the store and cash does not, so we pay for the preference rather than pretending it is generosity.
The reason to publish any of this is narrower than it looks. A store that has to buy its own inventory back at a stated price cannot afford to be optimistic about what that inventory is worth. The rate disciplines the pricing.