TCDB Scraper - Trading Card Database Catalog

Scrape trading-card catalog data from The Trading Card Database (tcdb.com) — one of the largest community-maintained catalogs of sports and non-sport trading cards, covering hundreds of thousands of sets and millions of individual cards.

Search by set (e.g. 1986 Fleer Basketball) or point the scraper at specific set URLs / IDs, and get clean, structured card records: player/subject, set, year, card number, team, attributes (rookie cards, variations), image, and canonical URLs.

What it extracts

For every card in a matched set's checklist:

Field	Description
title	Full card title, e.g. 1986-87 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan
subject	Player / subject name
cardNumber	Card number within the set (57, NNO, AR-1, ...)
setName	Set name
year	Set year (1986, 1986-87, ...)
sport	Sport / category (Basketball, Baseball, Football, Non-Sport, ...)
team	Team / franchise (where present)
attributes	Inline flags: RC (rookie), SP, SSP, VAR (variation), AU, RELIC, MEM
isRookie	Convenience boolean derived from attributes
setId / cardId	TCDB internal set (sid) and card (cid) identifiers
imageUrl	Card thumbnail image URL
cardUrl	Canonical TCDB card page URL
setUrl	Canonical TCDB set page URL
searchQuery	The input query this record came from
scrapedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp

Input

{
    "searchQueries": ["1986 Fleer Basketball", "2009 Donruss Gridiron Gear Football"],
    "maxResults": 200,
    "scrapeDetails": true,
    "proxyConfiguration": { "useApifyProxy": true, "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"] }
}

Option	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	array of strings	["1986 Fleer Basketball"]	Set queries (year + set name + sport), full set URLs, or sid/<id> references
maxResults	integer	200	Max card records per query
scrapeDetails	boolean	true	Follow pagination to capture entire large sets; disable for first-page-only (faster)
proxyConfiguration	object	RESIDENTIAL	Proxy settings (residential recommended — see below)

Query formats

• Free text: 1986 Fleer Basketball — the scraper detects the year (1986) and sport (Basketball), browses that sport/year on TCDB, matches set names containing the remaining keywords (fleer), and scrapes each matching set's full checklist.
• Set URL: https://www.tcdb.com/ViewSet.cfm/sid/2067/1986-87-Fleer
• Set ID: sid/2067

Notes on Cloudflare

TCDB is protected by Cloudflare's managed challenge. This Actor uses a real headless browser (Playwright/Chromium) and a residential proxy by default to clear the challenge, retiring the browser between requests to keep the challenge state fresh. Datacenter proxies typically get stuck on the security interstitial — keep the residential setting unless you have a reason to change it.

Example output

{
    "title": "1986-87 Fleer #57 Michael Jordan",
    "subject": "Michael Jordan",
    "cardNumber": "57",
    "setName": "1986-87 Fleer",
    "year": "1986-87",
    "sport": "Basketball",
    "team": "Chicago Bulls",
    "attributes": ["RC"],
    "isRookie": true,
    "setId": "2067",
    "cardId": "12345",
    "imageUrl": "https://www.tcdb.com/Images/Thumbs/Basketball/2067/...",
    "cardUrl": "https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/2067/cid/12345/1986-87-Fleer-57-Michael-Jordan",
    "setUrl": "https://www.tcdb.com/ViewSet.cfm/sid/2067",
    "searchQuery": "1986 Fleer Basketball",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-07-03T06:40:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• Build price-guide / arbitrage tools by combining card checklists with market data
• Populate collection-management apps with accurate set checklists
• Research player card catalogs across years and manufacturers
• Feed card metadata into search, matching, and grading pipelines

Pricing

Pay-per-result: you are charged a small fee for each card record returned, plus a tiny per-run start fee. No monthly subscription.