Two top loaders sit side by side in a display case. Same sleeve, same holo, same centering. One is bare plastic. The other has a 0.75" x 1.77" printed tag across the bottom third carrying a shop mark, a card line, and the number 0047 in a sequence that belongs to one seller and nobody else.
The card did not change. The read on the seller did.
This post is about that tag: what it is, what the five layouts and ten backgrounds do, why the foil behaves the way it does, and what it costs. One thing first, because the name grading sticker invites a wrong assumption. Not affiliated with or certified by any third-party grading company. The tag is yours, printed with your text, and it speaks for nobody who grades cards for a living.
What a tag is, and what it is not
A tag is thin printed film with adhesive, die cut to 0.75" x 1.77", printed in full colour on holographic vinyl. It goes on the outside of a top loader, a slab case, or a team bag. It labels the thing it is stuck to. That is the complete list of what it does.
It does not close anything, certify anything, or keep anyone out of anything. This is the same candour we apply to our Serial Seals™, which are also thin film with adhesive, also not a lock, and can be peeled off and replaced like any sticker — an intact seal proves nothing by itself. The value is in what is printed and whose name is on it; with a numbered seal, specifically the number, logged and photographed with a date, because that record outlives the film.
It is also not a grading label, and you should not design it to look like one. A lookalike confuses buyers, annoys the companies, and makes your inventory look like it is pretending. The layouts are built around your identity: your shop name, your card line, your number.
The five layouts
There are five layouts and ten holographic backgrounds, and they split the same die three ways.
Card-forward layouts give most of the tag to text about the card: a name line, a set line, and a smaller third line for collector number or a note. These suit single-card listings where the tag does the work a handwritten sticker used to do. An invented example: "EMBERMAW — Frostfen Expedition — 041/198" reads cleaner than the same information in ballpoint on masking tape, which is the actual competition here.
Shop-forward layouts give the space to your mark: a logo box with one supporting line. These suit sellers whose case is the product. A Whatnot seller running as, say, Route Nine Cards wants every top loader crossing the camera to carry the same mark in the same corner, because the stream is the storefront and the tag is the signage.
Split layouts do both: mark on one end, card lines on the other, with variants that move the number slot around. These are the ones case sellers gravitate to, because one design covers the whole case with only the card lines changing.
All twelve are the same die, same stock, same price. You are choosing how to spend 1.3 square inches, not choosing between products.
The foil is the white
The tags print on holographic vinyl, and the press lays no white ink. Wherever your design is white, the raw holographic stock shows through instead. White text prints as rainbow foil text. A white background prints as a full-foil field. A dark background with knocked-out lettering gives you dark tag, foil letters, which is the highest-contrast thing this stock does.
This is a constraint worth planning around rather than discovering. Thin white hairlines become thin foil hairlines, and foil that small reads as noise. Bold shapes and heavy type come out looking intentional. A dark logo on a white ground sits on a foil field; a white-on-dark mark goes holographic itself, which is usually the better trade.
Note what this is not: the rainbow is commercially available holographic stock anyone can buy on a roll. The shift-with-angle effect is optics, not a feature we engineered. What is not commodity is your artwork on it in a run of four.
Where the tag goes
On a top loader, the two placements that work are the front lower third, below the card art, or the back, centred. Front placement is for camera-facing inventory: streams, show cases, eBay photos. Back placement is for sellers who want the front clean and the identity revealed on the flip.
On a slab, the tag goes on the case, never over the label the case already carries. That label is theirs; covering it with yours is the lookalike problem in adhesive form. The back of the slab, lower area, keeps both identities legible. The adhesive is on the case, not the card.
On team bags, the tag sits on the bag, which is disposable, so the placement decision is free.
Your numbering, not fandom art
Two patterns show up consistently in how card sellers actually use custom print, and both cut against what you might expect.
First, sellers brand with logos, not fandom art. Monster artwork on your tags is wrong twice over: it is artwork you do not own, and it advertises someone else's brand instead of yours. The sellers who reorder are the ones whose tags carry their own mark. Your shop name is the asset the tag exists to compound.
Second, sellers run their own numbering: a prefix that means something to you, FRP001 style, counting up, no repeats. On tags, the number is text you set per tag, which works at display-case scale. For sequential numbering laid down automatically across a run of hundreds, that is the seal product, with your prefix, from the 60-seal minimum at $30.00 — 50 cents each at list — stepping down to 45 cents at 120, 40 cents at 600, and 30 cents each at 4,200, which is the floor. Most sellers skip the optional QR and let the number do the work.
The tag and the seal are the same 0.75" x 1.77" die and the same holographic stock. The tag labels the front of the case. The seal closes the pack, the repack, the mystery box. Plenty of shops run both under one mark.
What it costs
Twelve stickers are $6.00, which is $0.50 per sticker; the rate falls to $0.40 at 600 and above.
At $0.50 a sticker you are not tagging a 5,000-count box of bulk. You are tagging inventory that faces a camera or a case light: slabs on the stream, top loaders in the show case, singles photographed for eBay. A tag on a thirty-dollar card is four percent of the sale. A tag on bulk is a hobby.
The twelve-pack exists because a display case holds about that many camera-facing cards, and one design across twelve tags makes a case read as a set instead of a pile.
Questions people ask
Is this a grading label
No. Not affiliated with or certified by any third-party grading company. The tag prints your text under your name. If you put a condition opinion on it, it is plainly your opinion, under your mark.
Can I put card character artwork on my tags
You can upload what you like, but artwork that is not yours is not yours, and it advertises someone else's brand. The sellers who get value out of these print their own mark. That is also the design that survives a trademark question you do not want to have.
Will the tag come off a slab cleanly
It is adhesive film on a plastic case. Place it where you mean it to stay, on the case and never on the card or over the existing label. We make no removal promises and you should not build a workflow that depends on repositioning.
A pack of twelve is $6.00, $0.50 a sticker, same die, same holographic stock, your text on every one. Pick a layout and set your lines at custom grading stickers. If what you actually need is sequential numbering across a few hundred closures, start with the builder instead.
Serial Seal is an independent printer. Not affiliated with or certified by any third-party grading company. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Nintendo, The Pokémon Company, Ultra Pro, BCW, eBay or Whatnot. Brand names are used only to describe the products they make. Card and shop names used as examples are invented. Nothing here is legal advice.
Read next: Pokémon seals: slabs, ETBs, repacks, breaks · Seals for graded slabs · Number your Pokémon slab collection · Where the seal goes on a graded slab