Graded condition converted to credit, never cash

A trade-in slip, printed large across the back, torn along the top like it's been pulled off a pad. Three boxes: MINT, GOOD, PLAYED. Only GOOD is ticked. Under that, four ruled lines, each one labelled ITEM, all of them blank. At the bottom, ruled twice and heavier than everything above it: STORE CREDIT ONLY — NO CASH VALUE.

There isn't a number anywhere on it. That isn't an omission. It's the whole arrangement, stated once.

Why does the slip grade a copy before it does anything else with it?

Because the shop can't offer anything until it has a shared word for what state the thing arrived in, and a title alone doesn't tell you that.

Whether a copy works, whether the case is cracked, whether the sleeve of paperwork that came with it is still in the box — that's what actually moves the value, more than which game it is. MINT, GOOD, PLAYED is a three-word vocabulary built to settle that question fast, at a counter, with a stranger watching. The tick in the GOOD box isn't a compliment. It's the entire appraisal, made once and then acted on.

Why land on store credit instead of just naming a price?

Because a price is something you could take anywhere. Credit only works in the shop that wrote it.

That's the mechanism the bottom line is stating outright — not decoration, not a policy notice nobody reads, but the actual rule the whole slip exists to enforce. A shop that buys used copies has to turn them back into stock somehow, and the cleanest way to do that is to make sure the value it hands back can only be spent on more of its own stock. No number needs to appear on a slip like this one for that rule to be true; the rule is what the bottom line says, in words, instead.

What makes four blank ruled lines feel like a real slip and not a mock-up?

The fact that nothing is written on them yet.

A slip with the fields already filled in reads like an advert for the shop's fairness — look how reasonable our numbers are. One where the ITEM lines are still empty reads like paperwork mid-use, waiting on whatever gets handed across the counter next. The heavier double rule at the bottom does similar work without a total to underline: it's the accounting convention for "this is where the line ends," borrowed and printed even though there's nothing above it yet to sum.

Who owns the layout of a slip like this?

Nobody, as printed here — three tick-boxes, four ruled lines and a store-credit clause are functional paperwork, not anybody's registered design, and there's no shop name or mark on this one to clear.

A specific shop's own trade-in slip, with their actual name and their actual layout, is a different thing — that belongs to them the way any branded form does, and clearing it is part of the job if a real one is genuinely the point. The invented version is usually the better choice anyway: a recognisable slip from one particular chain is a slip a lot of people are already holding in a drawer. This one grades and settles without naming anywhere at all.

Does the same idea work outside a game shop?

Yes — anything priced by condition rather than by receipt runs the same way: a pawnbroker's ticket, a secondhand bookshop's buy-back slip, a music shop taking an instrument in part-exchange.

What they share is the tick-box vocabulary standing in for a full appraisal, and a value that settles as credit rather than cash. A different kind of paper trail tracks a used copy's price falling in stages instead — this slip is about what a shop offers to take a copy off someone's hands; that one is about what a shop still wants for a copy it's trying to move. Further back still, before there was a copy to grade at all, a different slip fixed a date for something that hadn't arrived yet — the two documents sit at opposite ends of the same object's ownership.

Isn't a tick-box system just there to make the shop look fair?

Not really — the boxes aren't for the customer's benefit. They're there so two different staff members, on two different days, grade the same copy the same way.

A verbal appraisal drifts from person to person and shift to shift. A three-word scale printed on the slip itself doesn't. That's a consistency tool for the till, not a reassurance for whoever's handing the copy over — the reassurance, if there is one, is a side effect of the same mechanism that keeps the shop's own numbers straight.

Does it print well?

Yes — a torn top edge and a ruled ledger are both hard-edged shapes to begin with, which is most of what survives fabric printing cleanly.

Keep the torn edge properly ragged rather than a clean scallop repeat — a pad tears differently every time, and a too-regular edge reads as a printed border rather than a sheet pulled free. The tick in the GOOD box wants to stay a plain crossed mark, not a rendered icon; a hand tick is quick and a little uneven, and cleaning it up loses the point of it. Charcoal holds the bone panel and rust orange ink well as a two-colour print, and two inks is all this one needs.

How do I get one made?

Describe the slip at JustOG — which box gets ticked, how the top edge tears, how many lines sit blank underneath. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

Four lines are still blank, waiting on whatever comes through the door next.