SAJA advertises 100% expected value and a 100% buyback. That leaves no margin anywhere
It also has the best structural disclosures we have read — third-party card values, ownership at the pull, a free vault with no deadline, and the only valuation-dispute remedy in the category — in the same document that lets it confiscate your cards on suspicion alone.
- Odds published
- Expected value published
- Pays cash, not credit
- Third-party valuations
- Can confiscate your cards
Every other platform we track with a ~100% expected value takes its margin on the buyback. Every platform with a 100% buyback posts an expected value below 100%. SAJA claims both at once, and names no fee, spread or cut in between. The money has to come from somewhere, and the terms — not the marketing — are where you can see the candidates.
Collected from the saja.com marketing pages and the SAJA Terms of Use (last updated 15 September 2026) on 2026-10-23. SAJA is an iOS app; we have not opened a pack.
Where everyone else's margin sits
| Platform | Posted EV | Buyback | Visible gross margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAJA | 100% | 100% | None stated anywhere |
| SwishX | 100% target | 85–90% | 10–15%, on the sell-back |
| Gotya | ≈100% (we measured 100.5%) | 90% | 10%, on the sell-back |
| LastPack | 95% posted | 100% | 5%, on the pack |
| Courtyard | ~85% measured | 90% advertised | Both ends |
This is not a gotcha, and it is not an accusation. A company can run at a loss deliberately, and several in this category plainly are: buying market share with venture money is a normal thing to do, and if that is what SAJA is doing then a customer today is getting a genuinely good deal. What we object to is nowhere in that paragraph. It is that 100% / 100% is presented as a sustainable product rather than as a growth subsidy, and a reader has no way to tell which it is.
From the terms, four places the money can come from are visible, none of them disclosed as such on the marketing pages:
- A deposit playthrough. “Deposited funds must be used in the Service once before they can be withdrawn.” Money cannot be parked and retrieved; it has to pass through a pack. That produces float, and it produces breakage from balances nobody comes back for.
- The vendor spread. SAJA describes an “exclusive vendor network” where cards held in the vault attract verified bids that “often run 90% of value or better.” If SAJA buys at 100% and places with vendors at a different number, the difference is the business.
- Cards nobody sells back. The 100% offer is good for seven days. A card you keep, ship or forget costs SAJA nothing further.
- Fees at the edges. An instant-payout fee, shown in the app; flat-rate shipping; the grading and storage SAJA absorbs while a card sits in the vault.
Those are reasonable ways to run a business. They are also the answer to “how can 100% and 100% both be true,” and that answer belongs next to the claim, not nine screens into a contract.
The odds it does publish add up to 99.1%
SAJA's Silver Pack page carries a seven-tier rarity table. It is the only odds disclosure we could find outside the app.
| Tier | Chance |
|---|---|
| Common | 54.5% |
| Uncommon | 24.5% |
| Rare | 12.0% |
| Epic | 5.0% |
| Legendary | 2.5% |
| Grail | 0.5% |
| God Pack | 0.1% |
| Total | 99.1% |
It sums to 99.1%, short of 100% by 0.9 of a point. On its own this is almost certainly rounding or a tier left off the public page rather than anything meaningful — SwishX ran 100.04–100.64% and LastPack landed on exactly 100.0%, so neither direction is unusual. We record it because an odds table that does not total 100% is the one check a reader can run without trusting anyone, and because the pack is labelled “PACK EV 100%” directly above a table that cannot produce that figure, or any figure.
What is missing is the value ranges
Percentages without value bands cannot be turned into an expected value. LastPack, Rare Candy, Packz, CatchBack and SwishX all publish both, which is why we could check their numbers and cannot check this one. SAJA's terms say the odds shown in the app at the moment you buy are the odds that apply to that purchase — a real commitment, and more than most platforms make — but a commitment to a number we cannot see from here.
Split the Difference
This is the genuinely new thing, and it deserves credit on its own terms. If SAJA has priced a card above the market, you can ask for the difference back in cash and keep the card. Its worked example: market $512.60, SAJA price $550.80, refund $38.20.
No other platform we have read has anything like it. Across twenty-four sets of terms, the house valuation is final everywhere else — Chalkboard states outright that its fair market value is not appealable, and Rip Station does not publish its valuations at all. A mechanism that pays the user when the platform's own pricing is wrong is the opposite instinct, and it is worth more than any percentage on the marketing page.
Two caveats, both structural rather than suspicious. It only runs one way: it corrects prices that are too high, which is the case where a seller was already better off, and offers nothing when a card is priced too low. And the thing you are disputing against is a third-party market price SAJA does not name, so you are comparing one unnamed figure to another.
The disclosures that are better than the headline numbers
Three things in SAJA's terms are category-leading, and none of them appear in its advertising:
- Card values come from third-party market pricing services. The platform does not set the number its own percentage is a percentage of. Only Fanatics and Underdog can say the same, and both name their source; SAJA does not.
- Ownership of a pulled card passes to you when the pack opens. Not on shipment, not on request. LastPack passes title only when a card ships; several platforms never address it.
- No deadline on the vault. Free storage, graded and insured, in Oregon, with no auto-sell clause we could find. Inaction does not cost you the card. That is true of only two other platforms we track.
The terms are also, plainly, the best-written in this category — short sentences, no capitalised blocks, and an opening line telling you to actually read them. We have read twenty-four of these documents and this is the only one that reads as though it were written for a customer.
And then the discretion clauses
The same document contains the broadest reservations of power we have found anywhere in this category. Not the broadest in one clause — the broadest overall.
“we may hold, withhold, limit, or decline any use, withdrawal, or payout of your balance, in whole or in part, at any time, in our sole and absolute discretion, for any reason whatsoever or for no reason”
And, under the heading unwinding an account:
“If we suspect, on any basis and without any obligation to investigate or to prove it, that an account has been used fraudulently, abusively, or in violation of these terms, or for any other reason in our sole and absolute discretion, we may unwind the account… void every pack opening, pull, sale, buyback, promotion, and other transaction on it… confiscate the cards and other items in its vault and every sale proceed, credit, promotional value, and other gain (together, winnings), all of which you forfeit; and refund… only the amounts you actually paid us… That refund is your sole remedy.”
Read that against the clause four screens earlier saying ownership passed to you when the pack opened. Both are in the same contract. The forfeiture clause is the one that would govern.
Two further points worth having. SAJA's word for what you forfeit is “winnings” — its own vocabulary, in a document that otherwise carefully describes a retail purchase, and relevant to the question of what this activity legally is. And on errors: “Our determination that a malfunction or error occurred is final, and our records are conclusive as to what occurred absent manifest error.”
Clauses of this shape exist to stop organised fraud, and most platforms have some version. What is different here is the stacking: suspicion on any basis, no obligation to investigate or prove, any other reason at sole discretion, forfeiture of property the same contract says is yours, and the platform's own records conclusive as to what happened. Any one of those is ordinary. Together they mean the 100% / 100% promise is, as drafted, revocable at will.
SAJA's own competitor table
SAJA publishes a comparison putting Courtyard at 80%. Courtyard advertises 90%, and our reading of all 92 of its packs put the measured figure around 85%. We do not know where 80% comes from. We note it because a platform's figures for its rivals are a reasonable test of how it handles numbers generally, and this one is lower than both the advertised rate and our own independent estimate.
Platform facts
| Operator | Zodiac Games Company, Inc., a Delaware corporation dba SAJA; 52-16 Roosevelt Ave, Suite 2C, Woodside, NY 11377 (marketing page says Brooklyn) |
|---|---|
| Governing law | Delaware; AAA consumer arbitration, class-action waiver, 30-day opt-out, small claims preserved; liability capped at $100 or twelve months of fees |
| Terms dated | 15 September 2026 |
| Platform | iOS app only at the time of writing |
| Categories | Pokémon |
| Packs | Tiered, $1–$1,000 |
| Odds | Seven rarity tiers with percentages on the web, summing to 99.1%; no value ranges published; full odds shown in-app before purchase, and the odds at the moment of purchase govern |
| Posted EV | “PACK EV 100%” per pack; not calculable from anything published |
| Valuation | Third-party market pricing services, unnamed |
| Buyback | 100% of displayed value, locked at the pull, good for 7 days; paid to the SAJA balance |
| Dispute remedy | Split the Difference — cash refund of the gap when SAJA prices a card above market, card retained. Unique among the platforms we track |
| Cash out | Stripe; deposits must be used once before withdrawal; instant-payout fee in-app; every payout subject to discretionary hold |
| Ownership | Passes to you when the pack opens |
| Vault | Free, graded, insured, Oregon; no deadline or auto-sell clause found |
| Shipping | Flat rate |
| Forfeiture | “Unwinding an account” permits voiding all transactions and confiscating vaulted cards on suspicion, with no obligation to investigate or prove; deposits refunded as sole remedy |
| Age | 18+, one account per person |
| States | None published |
Why this page has no rating
SAJA is the hardest platform to place that we have looked at, because its best and worst features are both at the extreme end of the range. On disclosure of structure — who values the cards, when you own them, how long you can keep them, what happens if the price is wrong — it is the best in the category. On disclosure of numbers it is among the thinnest: a 100% claim with no value ranges published to test it against. And its contract reserves the power to undo all of it.
We also have not opened a pack. There is no web app, and every figure above comes from SAJA's own published material. The measurement that would settle this — displayed value against real sold prices — is the test we have not yet run on any platform.
Frequently asked
Does SAJA really pay 100%?
That is what it advertises, on both sides: “INDUSTRY HIGHEST — 100% EXPECTED VALUE” and “100% BUYBACK RATE,” with each pack page showing “PACK EV 100%.” We cannot check the first figure, because SAJA publishes rarity percentages but no value ranges, so there is nothing to compute from. The second is a stated policy rather than an estimate: 100% of the displayed value, locked at the pull, good for seven days. What we can say is that 100% on both sides leaves no margin visible anywhere in the pack economics — and a business does have to make money somewhere. The terms show where some of it can come from; the headline numbers do not.
What is “Split the Difference”?
The only valuation-dispute remedy we have found on any of the twenty-four platforms we track. If SAJA has priced a card above the market, you can request a split and SAJA refunds the difference in cash while you keep the card. Its own worked example: market $512.60, SAJA price $550.80, you get $38.20 back. Every other platform we have read treats its own valuation as the end of the matter — Chalkboard explicitly makes its FMV non-appealable. Note the direction, though: this pays out when SAJA has overpriced a card, which is the case where the buyer was already getting a higher buyback. It does nothing for a card SAJA has priced too low.
Who sets the card values on SAJA?
Not SAJA. Its terms state that “card values shown in the app come from third-party market pricing services.” That makes it one of only three platforms we track that does not mark its own homework — the others being Fanatics and Underdog, through Phygitals. It matters more here than anywhere, because SAJA's entire pitch is a percentage of those values. SAJA does not name the service, and we have asked which one it is.
Can SAJA take cards you already own?
Its terms say it can. Under “unwinding an account,” if SAJA suspects — “on any basis and without any obligation to investigate or to prove it” — that an account has been used fraudulently or abusively, “or for any other reason in our sole and absolute discretion,” it may void every transaction on the account, confiscate the cards in its vault and every sale proceed and credit, all of which you forfeit, and refund only what you actually paid. That refund is your sole remedy. This sits in the same document that says ownership of a pulled card passes to you when the pack opens. It is the broadest clause of its kind we have read in this category.
How long can you keep a card on SAJA?
As long as you like, as far as we can tell. The vault is free, the cards are graded, insured and stored in Oregon, and we found no auto-sell deadline in the terms — which would make SAJA one of only three platforms where doing nothing does not eventually trigger a forced sale, alongside Poke-Collect and Rare Candy. The seven-day clock applies to the instant 100% offer, not to the card. Compare LastPack, where storage is capped at five days, and Packed, where it is one.
Is there a catch on withdrawing money?
Two, both in the terms. Deposited funds “must be used in the Service once before they can be withdrawn” — you cannot put money in and take it straight out; it has to go through a pack first. And SAJA reserves the right to “hold, withhold, limit, or decline any use, withdrawal, or payout of your balance, in whole or in part, at any time, in our sole and absolute discretion, for any reason whatsoever or for no reason.” Payments and payouts run through Stripe, with an instant-payout fee shown in the app.
Who operates SAJA?
Zodiac Games Company, Inc., a Delaware corporation doing business as SAJA, at 52-16 Roosevelt Avenue, Suite 2C, Woodside, NY 11377. Its marketing page says Brooklyn; the legal address is in Queens. Delaware law, AAA consumer arbitration, class-action waiver, a 30-day opt-out and a liability cap of $100 or twelve months of fees. Terms last updated 15 September 2026. iOS app only at the time of writing.