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How to barcode raw cards so they scan at your table

By Justin Willmon · WTX Sports Cards · Updated September 2026

A cordless barcode gun is the fastest way to find a card in a case of four hundred. The problem is that most of your cards have nothing on them to scan.

If you have ever watched somebody work a table with a scanner, the appeal is obvious. Pull the trigger, the card comes up, quote the price, move on. No typing, no scrolling, one hand still holding the card.

Getting there takes about an evening. Here is the part nobody tells you first.

Only PSA slabs actually scan

This is the thing to know before you buy anything.

• PSA prints a real barcode on the label. A gun reads it straight off the slab. Nothing to do.
• BGS and SGC print a cert number, but not a barcode. A scanner cannot read a number printed as text. You will be typing it, or putting a sticker on.
• Raw cards have nothing at all.

So "graded cards scan" is not true. PSA cards scan. Everything else in your case needs a sticker, and depending on what you deal in that can easily be most of it.

What goes on the sticker

Any number, as long as it is unique to that card and you never reuse it. Ten digits is plenty. It does not have to mean anything — it is a handle, not a description.

Print them on Avery 5160 address labels: 2.625 by 1 inch, three across, ten down, thirty to a sheet. They are cheap, every office supply shop has them, and the sleeve of a card is about the right size.

Where the number has to live

This is the part that decides whether the system survives contact with real life.

Put the number in the Notes field of your tracker — Card Ladder, Market Movers, whatever you use. Not in a separate list, not in a spreadsheet beside it. In the record itself.

The reason is that Notes travels inside your export. Every time you download a fresh CSV, the code comes with the card, permanently attached, and nothing has to remember which sticker went on which card. A number kept anywhere else is a second system you have to keep in sync, and you will not.

Blank labels beat named ones

The obvious way to do this is to print a sheet of labels with each card's name on it, then match them up. Do not.

Thirty printed labels with names on them means standing at a desk matching thirty labels against thirty slabs, one at a time, and getting it right. It is slow and it is exactly the kind of job where one mistake stays hidden for months.

Print the numbers on their own instead, with no names. Then any sticker goes on any card, and you record which is which afterwards — or scan the sticker and tell your system what it just went on. The labels become interchangeable, which turns a matching exercise into a sticking exercise.

What to buy

A cordless barcode gun that pairs as a keyboard. That is the whole specification. It types the number as though you had typed it, so it works with anything that has a text field — which means you are not buying into anybody's ecosystem, and if you change software later the gun still works.

They cost less than a decent single card. Do not overthink it.

Doing it once

1. Print a sheet of blank numbered labels.
2. Stick them on sleeves — any label on any card.
3. Scan each one and note which card it went on, or work through the pile afterwards.
4. Put each number in that card's Notes in your tracker.
5. Export. The codes are in the file now, and they stay there.

An evening for a few hundred cards, and you only do it once. New cards get a sticker as they come in, which is thirty seconds each and happens while you are entering them anyway.