FAQ

Quick answers to the questions we hear most, grouped by topic. If your question isn't here, try troubleshooting or email [email protected].

Getting started

Do I need an account to look around?

No. You can browse the Marketplace, the Library, the public social feed, profiles, posts and hashtags, seller shops, the wanted board and the Leaderboard while logged out. You only need to sign in when you do something that changes data: add an item, post, like, comment, follow, make an offer, buy, or message.

Two things do need a (free) account either way: viewing another member's collection, and your own Inbox.

Do I need to pay to start?

No. The free Hobbyist plan needs no card. Your collection is not capped on it, buying and selling are both included, and selling costs 0%. Paid plans add capability, not permission, and come with a 14-day free trial. See Plans and billing.

How do I sign up?

Register with email and password, or use Continue with Google. On the iOS app you can also use Sign in with Apple. Then verify your email and choose a username. The full walkthrough is in Account setup.

How do I make my account more secure?

Turn on 2FA (an authenticator app, with backup codes), and add a passkey on the web or biometric unlock in the mobile app. Details in Security.

Plans and billing

What do the plans cost?

There are three tiers. Hobbyist is free, Collector is £5/month or £50/year, and Enthusiast is £15/month or £150/year.

	Hobbyist	Collector	Enthusiast
Price	£0	£5/mo or £50/yr	£15/mo or £150/yr
Items	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Photos per item	10	Unlimited	Unlimited
Storage locations	3	Unlimited	Unlimited
Marketplace selling fee	0%	0%	0%
AI identifications / month	20	60	200
AI condition grades / month	3	20	100
Aggregate analytics	—	Yes	Yes
Bulk operations	—	—	Yes
Data API	—	—	Yes

Buying, selling, trading, social features and data export are on every plan, including the free one. See Plans and billing for the full comparison.

What do I actually get by paying?

Capability, not permission. Collector adds aggregate analytics, unlimited photos per item and unlimited storage locations, and raises the AI allowances. Enthusiast adds bulk operations, the Data API, priority listings, custom branding and priority support, and raises the AI allowances again.

No plan buys a cheaper selling fee, a larger collection, or the right to have more listings live at once. None of those are limited on any plan.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. A 14-day free trial on Collector and Enthusiast, with no card required. It's available once per account, for first-time subscribers.

What currency am I billed in?

GBP, whatever display currency you've chosen for the app. If a checkout or upgrade screen shows an approximate figure in your local currency, that is a conversion for information only. The charge itself is in GBP.

On the Android and iOS apps you pay through Apple or Google in-app purchase instead of Stripe, and their own currency and tax rules apply at the store.

Can I change or cancel my plan?

Yes. Upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time from your subscription settings. If you subscribed through an app store, manage it there. See Plans and billing.

Adding items and the collection

What can I catalogue?

Six categories: Computer, Console, Handheld, Game, Accessory and Other. Each item holds condition, professional grade (PSA, WATA, VGA, CGC, BGS, RTCG or Other), serial number, purchase price and date, value, photos, storage location, a description, notes and related items. Every category has a description field, not just games. See Managing your collection.

What's the fastest way to add an item?

Open Add and pick a method: Snap a photo (RTC Bot identifies the item and pre-fills the details), Scan a barcode, Search catalogue, or Enter manually. See Adding items.

What is RTC Bot?

RTC Bot is our AI assistant, built into the app. Take a photo of an item and RTC Bot reads the labels, box art and model numbers in it, works out what the item is, and matches it against the master catalogue. Anywhere the app says RTC Bot found or identified something, that's what did it.

RTC Bot can make mistakes, so check the match before you save.

What happens if RTC Bot finds something the catalogue has never seen?

You can still add it, and it won't arrive blank. Choose Add with RTC Bot details and the form opens with the name, maker, model number and year RTC Bot read, plus a description and a reference photo looked up from an online reference source. That reference photo comes from the source, not from the picture you took, so your own photos still go on afterwards.

The description arrives with a short line saying where the wording came from. Keep it while you keep the borrowed text, and delete it once you have written your own. See Photos.

Is photo identification limited?

Yes, by a monthly allowance, and it is available on every plan including the free one. The allowance is 20 a month on Hobbyist, 60 on Collector and 200 on Enthusiast. Condition grading with RTC Bot has its own separate allowance: 3, 20 and 100. Both reset at the start of each calendar month (UTC), and the app shows the reset date when you run out.

Quests, streaks and community goals pay out in extra AI identifications, which stack on top of your plan's allowance for the month they're granted.

Barcode scanning, catalogue search and manual entry are unlimited on every plan and don't touch the allowance.

Is there a limit on how many items I can have?

No. Every plan holds an unlimited collection, and wishlist ("Want it") entries don't count towards anything either. What is capped on the free plan is photos per item (10) and storage locations (3).

Can I import or export my collection?

You can import from a CSV file. The importer recognises PriceCharting and VGCollect exports as well as a generic spreadsheet layout, and shows you a preview to check before anything is written.

Export works on every plan, free included, as JSON, CSV, Excel, a printable PDF or a printable insurance appraisal. See Import and export.

Library and values

Is the Library free to browse?

Yes. The Library is the master catalogue: 40,000+ items across 150+ platforms, enriched from IGDB, Giant Bomb, Wikipedia, the RTC Wiki, LaunchBox and PriceCharting. You can browse all of it without an account. Keeping a Want it wishlist prompts you to sign in. See The Library.

Where do prices come from?

Market values come from PriceCharting, shown at five condition points: Loose, CIB, New/Sealed, Box only and Manual only. Each item has a price-history chart, and values can be displayed in your chosen currency. See Price tracking.

Marketplace listing prices are set by the seller in the seller's own currency, and are a different thing from the catalogue's market value.

What is RTC Wrapped?

A shareable recap of your collecting year, with a year and month picker and a public share link. There's also a platform-wide Community Wrapped with no personal data in it. See RTC Wrapped.

Marketplace

Is the marketplace free?

Yes. Browsing and buying are free for everyone, on any plan including Hobbyist. Selling is open to everyone too: you enable a seller profile and connect Stripe for payouts.

What are the selling fees?

Nothing. Selling costs 0% on every plan during the launch fee holiday, and that is the same 0% on Hobbyist as on Enthusiast. There is also no cap on how many listings you can have live at once, on any plan. See Fees.

What does a buyer pay on top of the item price?

Postage, where the seller charges it. There is also a buyer-protection fee of 3% of the discounted item subtotal plus £0.50, but only when you check out a basket of several listings from one seller as a combined order. The fee is never charged on postage, and never on itself. Buying a single listing outright does not add it.

Can I sell more than one of the same thing?

Yes. A listing can hold several units. Stock counts down as they sell, and buyers can see how many are left and choose a quantity. If you turn on combined shipping, the buyer pays full postage on the first unit and the smaller per-extra amount you set on each additional one. Leave that amount blank and the extra units carry no postage at all. See Selling.

Can one listing offer different versions of an item?

Yes, using options. You name the choices yourself. There is no fixed list to pick from, so Size, Colour, Capacity, Length, Region or anything else all work. Each combination (for example Large / Blue) carries its own price, its own stock, its own SKU and, if you want, its own photos. Buyers choose a combination before buying and are charged that combination's price, not the listing's lowest.

Condition and parcel size stay on the listing itself and don't vary per option. If you genuinely have mixed condition, split it into separate listings. That costs nothing, since selling is 0% and there is no listing cap.

Options attach to a saved listing. Save the listing first, then add them from its edit page.

Why can't I make an offer on a listing from our message thread?

Because an offer on a listing with options has to name a combination, and the message bar has no option picker. Open the listing and make the offer there. The offer is then attached to the combination you chose.

How am I protected as a buyer?

RTC Buyer Protection holds your payment until the item is delivered, and the seller is paid out then. If your item doesn't arrive, or arrives materially not as described, you can open a dispute within the protection window. See Disputes.

Can I trade instead of buying?

Yes. Trades are offers with an item on each side, and a dual-shipping tracker walks both parties through address, ship and confirm. See Trading.

:::info Buying and selling never need a paid plan The marketplace is open on every plan, including the free one, at the same 0% selling fee. A subscription buys extra capability elsewhere in the app, not marketplace access and not a fee discount. :::

Privacy and data

What is the "Discoverable on the public web" toggle?

It's a privacy setting under Settings → Privacy. When it's on, logged-out visitors and search engines can find your public profile, posts and shared collection. When it's off, only signed-in members can, and your content stays out of guest browsing and search results. See Privacy and data.

Can I export or delete my data?

Yes. You can download your data from your settings on any plan, and export your collection as JSON, CSV, Excel, PDF or an insurance appraisal, also on any plan. You can request account deletion from your settings too. See Privacy and data.

Are my messages private?

Direct messages are encrypted at rest on our servers, and they have read receipts, an offline queue and a block list. They are not end-to-end encrypted: the key is held by the platform, so our moderation team can read a conversation that has been reported. That is what lets us act on harassment or a scam attempt in a message thread. Don't treat a DM as a private channel for anything you wouldn't want reviewed. See Messaging.

Is RetroTechCollector VAT-registered?

No. The platform is not VAT-registered, so no VAT is added to fees or charged on your behalf. If you sell as a business, your own tax obligations are yours to handle.

Apps

Which platforms are supported?

RetroTechCollector runs on the web (installable as a PWA), Android on Google Play, and iOS on the App Store. See Apps.

Does it work offline?

Partly. Adding items, messages and show mode all queue up and replay when you reconnect. Most other actions need a live connection. Their buttons are disabled while you're offline, so nothing fails silently. On the web the app can also show your last-loaded collection from a local cache. See Troubleshooting for what to do when something hasn't caught up.

Is there a dark mode?

Yes. Light and dark themes, plus a choice of accent colour and a command palette (⌘K / Ctrl+K). See Preferences.

What version am I on, and what do the numbers mean?

Open Settings → About. It shows the release you are on, the exact build your device is running, and the date that release came out. The build is the one worth quoting if you ever write to us about a problem.

Versions are dated. A release number is the year, the month and then the fix number within that month, so 2026.09.0 is the first release of September 2026 and 2026.09.1 would be the next fix that month. You can tell at a glance how current the app on your device is.

Each generation of the app also carries a name from computing history. This one is Generation I, codenamed Macintosh, so the full name of the current release is RetroTechCollector 2026.09.0 — Macintosh. A generation changes only when the product genuinely moves on, not when the calendar does, so several releases share one name.

The codenames are historical references and nothing more. They don't imply any connection to, or endorsement by, the companies who made those machines.

Releases before this one keep the numbers they shipped under, so older version numbers in your app-store history or in our release notes are not renamed. You'll find the release notes for each version under Help → What's new in the app.

Why can't I see a feature I know exists?

Some destinations only appear in the navigation once there's enough activity for them to be worth opening: auctions, the bid/ask order book, group buys, local-pickup meetups, lending, shows and the Developer API. They stay reachable by direct link the whole time, and the moment you have your own data in one (a loan, a show, a bid, a campaign) it appears and never disappears again.

:::tip Still stuck? Browse troubleshooting for step-by-step fixes, or email [email protected] and we'll help. :::