Last updated October 2026.
The Ricoh fi-8170, sold as the Fujitsu fi-8170 before Ricoh took over Fujitsu’s scanner line, is an office document scanner that a lot of eBay card sellers use as a card scanner. You drop a stack of raw cards in the feeder and get a front and back image of every card in one pass. Ricoh now lists “Trading Card Scanning” among the fi-8170’s features on its US product page.
This page covers whether it’s worth it at your volume, what it can and can’t feed according to Ricoh’s own specs, the PaperStream settings that suit cards, and the workflow from scan to live listing.
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Verdict
Buy it if you list hundreds of raw cards a month or more: bulk eBay stores, breakers working through base and hits, consignment sellers taking in other people’s collections. It turns photographing cards from the slowest part of listing into one of the fastest.
Skip it if you list a few dozen cards a month, mostly sell slabs, or mostly sell thick patch cards. A phone or a flatbed is cheaper and handles those better.
Price: $1,445 on Ricoh’s US store (October 2026), including a three-year Advance Exchange warranty. Check the current price on Amazon.
Still comparing machines? See our best scanner for sports cards guide.
Why card sellers use a document scanner
Most people searching for a card scanner want a phone app like CollX that identifies a card and tells them what it’s worth. That’s a different job. An app looks up one card. A document scanner produces listing images for hundreds of cards at a time.
Where the fi-8170 beats phone photos:
- Speed. Ricoh rates it at 70 pages per minute, or 140 images per minute in duplex, on A4 paper at 200 or 300 DPI. Cards are much smaller than a sheet of paper, and loading and restacking take time too, so treat that as a ceiling, not a cards-per-hour figure. Card Dealer Pro advertises the fi-8170 at “up to 70 cards per minute.”
- Fronts and backs in one pass. It scans both sides at once (duplex), so every card produces a matched front and back image with no flipping.
- Consistent images. Every scan has the same light, angle and background, so one listing photo isn’t warmer, darker or skewed compared with the next.
- Listing software supports it. Card Dealer Pro lists the Ricoh (Fujitsu) fi-8170 as its “Most Recommended” auto-feed scanner. Our guest authors used a scanner and Card Dealer Pro to list thousands of cards; their experience is in our Card Dealer Pro review.
The trade-off is risk. A phone never touches the card. A feeder pulls it past rubber rollers. The next section is about managing that.
Can the fi-8170 handle trading cards?
Yes for most standard raw cards, with caveats. No for slabs. Ricoh doesn’t publish limits for trading cards specifically, but its limits for plastic cards and thick documents are the closest guide.
Thickness, sleeves, toploaders and slabs
Card thickness is measured in points, where 1 point is 0.001 inch. Ricoh’s numbers converted to points:
| Ricoh spec | Limit | In points |
|---|---|---|
| Plastic cards, normal feeding | 1.4 mm (0.055 in.) or less | About 55 pt |
| Plastic cards fed as a stack | Up to 10 at 0.76 mm or less, or up to 5 at 1.4 mm or less | About 30 pt / 55 pt |
| Booklets (Manual Feed Mode) | Less than 7 mm (0.276 in.) | About 276 pt |
| Paper weight | 20 to 465 g/m² (5.3 to 124 lb) | n/a |
Standard paper-stock cards fit a 35pt toploader and most chrome stock fits 55pt, as our toploader sizes guide covers. So most cards sit inside Ricoh’s 1.4 mm plastic-card figure, while patch and relic cards at 100pt and up don’t. Trading cards are card stock, not PVC, so these figures are a guide, not a promise. Ricoh’s own guide also warns that “Rigid cards may not be fed properly.”
- Raw paper-stock cards (Topps flagship, Score, most Pokémon): the main use case.
- Chrome and refractor stock (Prizm, Chrome, Optic): test a few first. Glossy stock can slip on the rollers and tends to scan darker than it looks. A guest seller on our Card Dealer Pro review found their older Fujitsu fi-7030 “will get stuck on almost any glossy cards.”
- Thick patch and relic cards: over the plastic-card limit in normal feeding. Ricoh’s Manual Feed Mode takes documents up to 7 mm, one at a time, with multifeed detection off. A flatbed is still the safer choice for anything you care about.
- Penny sleeves: Ricoh says nothing about sleeved items. Open sleeve ends can catch, and plastic adds glare. Test a few before relying on it.
- Toploaders and graded slabs: use a flatbed. Ricoh’s card figures are for flat cards the size of a credit card, and a feeder is the wrong tool for a rigid holder.
If a card is too thick, too valuable or too fragile for the feeder, scan it on a flatbed. Plenty of sellers own both: the fi-8170 for volume and a flatbed like the Epson Perfection V600 for slabs and high-end raw cards.
Feed capacity and card size
- Feeder capacity: 100 sheets of 80 g/m² paper. For plastic cards Ricoh says up to 10 at 0.76 mm or less, or up to 5 at 1.4 mm or less. Card Dealer Pro advertises batches of up to 100 trading cards. Thicker stock means fewer cards per load.
- Minimum size: 48 x 50 mm (1.9 x 2 in.). A standard card is 63.5 x 88.9 mm (2.5 x 3.5 in.), comfortably above it.
- Loading: Ricoh’s guide recommends placing plastic cards face down.
Cards are small for a document scanner, so close the paper guides snugly to the card width. Loose guides let cards skew, and skew is where most jams and edge-scuff complaints start.
Surface wear and roller marks
Every card that goes through a feeder is pressed against rollers. Dirty or worn rollers are the bigger risk: dust and residue can leave faint lines, especially on glossy and dark-bordered cards. How to keep that risk low:
- Clean on Ricoh’s schedule. The operator’s guide says to clean inside the feeder “approximately every 5,000 sheets scanned,” with Cleaner F1 or Ricoh’s pre-moistened Cleaning Wipes. It also says not to use water or mild detergent. You can set a cleaning reminder counter in the Software Operation Panel.
- Replace rollers on time. Ricoh rates the pick roller and brake roller at 200,000 sheets each, or one year. The ScanAid kit (part CG01000-302801) bundles replacement rollers with cleaning supplies and was $89 on Ricoh’s US store in October 2026.
- Keep grading candidates off the feeder. A roller mark is invisible in a listing photo and very visible to a grader. Scan those on a flatbed.
- Feed short stacks of glossy cards, so the bottom card isn’t under the weight of a full hopper.
- Knock off debris first. Card dust, wax residue and bits of pack foil end up on the rollers.
Ricoh (Fujitsu) fi-8170 setup for card scanning
PaperStream IP vs PaperStream Capture
The fi-8170 comes with two pieces of PaperStream software that do different jobs. They were Fujitsu products first, and older guides and forum threads still call them Fujitsu software.
- PaperStream IP is the scanner driver (TWAIN and ISIS). It controls how the scanner captures: resolution, color, cropping, deskew, blank page detection and multifeed detection. Scanning programs talk to the scanner through it.
- PaperStream Capture is the scanning app included with the scanner. It runs saved batch profiles and names and saves files. PaperStream Capture Pro and Pro Premium are paid versions.
Download both from Ricoh’s fi-8170 download page. Downloads are listed by model name, not brand, and Ricoh said when it took over the line that “the model names, specifications, and functions will remain the same as before.”
If you use Card Dealer Pro, it has its own free desktop app, Trading Card Scanner, for Windows and Mac. On Windows its setup has you install PaperStream IP (TWAIN) first.
Windows 11
Ricoh supports Windows 11 and Windows 10. On Windows 11 ARM PCs, Ricoh says only the 32-bit PaperStream IP (TWAIN) driver is supported. The fi-8170 connects by USB 3.2 or wired Ethernet.
Install PaperStream IP before you plug the scanner in, then restart and connect. If Windows set up a generic driver first, remove that device in Device Manager and reconnect. Do a single test scan in PaperStream Capture before you set up any listing software.
Mac
Ricoh’s Mac driver is the “Image Scanner Driver for macOS,” which works through Apple’s Image Capture (ICA), not TWAIN. Ricoh lists macOS Monterey 12 through Tahoe 26, and on a Mac the fi-8170 works over USB only. Ricoh also warns that the Mac and Linux drivers may not offer every function PaperStream IP has.
Card Dealer Pro’s help center tells Mac users to install the Ricoh driver and use its free Trading Card Scanner app, which has a native Mac version.
Best PaperStream settings for cards
These are starting points. Card stocks vary, so scan a few cards from each product line you sell and adjust from there.
DPI for eBay listings vs grading submissions
A standard card is 2.5 x 3.5 inches, so the image size at each resolution is easy to work out:
| DPI | Image size (px) | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| 300 | 750 x 1050 | Bulk base and commons. Fast, small files. |
| 600 | 1500 x 2100 | Hits, autos, numbered cards, anything a buyer will zoom on. Also your condition record before grading. |
| 1200 | 3000 x 4200 | Surface and print-defect checks on a single card. Too slow and large for bulk. |
eBay’s minimum is 500 pixels on the longest side, and it suggests about 1600 x 1600 for the best results, so 300 DPI clears the minimum and 600 DPI gets close to eBay’s suggestion. Use 600 for anything worth more than a few dollars.
Grading companies don’t ask for scans with a submission, but a 600 DPI scan before you ship lets you check centering and keeps a record of the card’s condition. See how to select cards for grading and how to prepare cards for grading. Scan grading candidates on a flatbed, not the feeder.
Color mode
Use 24-bit color, not grayscale or automatic color detection. Automatic detection can save a black-and-white card back as grayscale, which looks wrong next to a color front.
Glossy chrome cards often come out darker than they look in hand. Brightness and gamma in PaperStream IP can compensate. Save a separate “chrome” profile rather than changing your main one.
Auto-crop, deskew and background
Turn on automatic page size detection (the crop) and deskew. Together they give a straight image cropped to the card edge.
Cropping depends on contrast between the card edge and the background behind it. The fi-8170’s background is selectable, white or black, in the scanner driver. Black makes white borders and corner whitening easy to see and crops cleanly on white-bordered cards. If a card crops wrong, add a little margin rather than cropping tight. A crop that cuts off an edge hides exactly what buyers want to see.
Set the paper size to automatic, not Letter. Pokémon cards are the same 63 x 88 mm as sports cards, so the same settings work for both.
Duplex, blank pages and file names
Set the scan side to duplex. The scanner then outputs front, back, front, back.
Turn off blank page detection. In PaperStream IP it’s called Blank Page Detection, on the Page tab of the advanced settings, and PaperStream Capture has its own Blank Page Deletion setting in each job. A plain or mostly white card back can be judged blank and dropped, and from that point every front pairs with the wrong back.
In PaperStream Capture, build file names from a batch name, a counter and the Output Side option, which adds “F” for the front and “B” for the back on duplex scans. For example 2026-10-04_b03_0001_F.jpg and 2026-10-04_b03_0001_B.jpg. Sorted by name, each front sits directly above its back.
Multifeed detection
The fi-8170 detects double feeds with an ultrasonic overlap sensor and by length. Leave it on for raw cards. Two cards fed together is worse than a stopped batch, because one card goes unscanned and your pairs shift. If it keeps stopping on sleeved or thick cards, it’s sensing the extra layer. Ricoh’s Intelligent Multifeed Function can learn to ignore a repeated overlap pattern, but for cards it’s simpler to scan those few raw or on a flatbed than to switch detection off for everything.
Saved profiles
Save one profile per job so each batch is one click:
| Profile | DPI | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Bulk base | 300 | Duplex, crop, deskew, blank page detection off, black background |
| Hits | 600 | Same, at 600 DPI |
| Chrome | 600 | Same, with your brightness and gamma adjustment |
| Single card check | 600 or 1200 | Simplex, for centering and surface checks |
Workflow: scan, name, list
The scanner is fast. What slows sellers down is the paperwork around it, so set up folders and naming before the first batch. For the eBay side, see how to scan trading cards for eBay.
- Sort before you scan. Group by set or product so each batch is one card stock and one profile. Pull anything for the flatbed: slabs, thick cards, grading candidates.
- One folder per batch. Name it by date, batch number and contents. For consignment, put the consignor’s name in the folder name so their cards never mix with yours.
- Check pairs. Before listing, confirm each folder has an even number of files and the last front and back match. One dropped back shifts every pair after it.
- Keep the physical order. Stack cards in the order they came out and band them by batch. Card 0047 in the folder is card 47 in the stack, which makes pulling a sold card fast.
- List. Import the folder into listing software, which matches each card and builds the listing (see our Card Dealer Pro review), or use eBay’s own bulk tools. eBay’s “Multiple listings from photos” tool in Seller Hub turns a batch of photos into draft listings.
- Print and ship. A thermal label printer like the Rollo Wireless prints 4×6 shipping labels with no ink. Ibreak Cards’ listing desk in our Card Dealer Pro review has a thermal printer on the shelf above the scanner.
Scans/
2026-10-04_b01_2025-topps-s1-base/
2026-10-04_b02_2025-prizm-hits/
2026-10-04_b03_consign-jsmith/fi-8170 bundles: which one to buy
Ricoh’s US store sells the fi-8170 three ways. Listings on Amazon may say Ricoh or Fujitsu for the same scanner. See current fi-8170 listings on Amazon.
| Version | What’s added | Ricoh store price |
|---|---|---|
| fi-8170 (PA03810-B055) | Three-year Advance Exchange warranty | $1,445 |
| Premium Bundle (CG01000-303101) | Five-year Advance Exchange warranty | $1,514 |
| Deluxe (CG01000-310299) | Two-year subscription to PaperStream Capture Pro | $1,662 |
For card selling, the Deluxe bundle’s extra is the paid PaperStream Capture Pro, and the included PaperStream Capture already runs profiles and names your files with front and back markers. The Premium bundle swaps the three-year warranty for a five-year one for $69 more, which is worth considering if the scanner runs all day. Ricoh’s store pages aren’t consistent about the bundle warranties (the Premium page also mentions four years, and the Deluxe page lists one year), so confirm the terms before you buy. Either way, budget for the $89 ScanAid kit of replacement rollers and cleaning supplies, because feeding cards all day wears rollers out.
Common fi-8170 problems with cards
Misfeeds
Usually the guides are set too wide, the stack is too tall, glossy stock is slipping, or the pick roller is dirty. Close the guides to the card width, fan the stack lightly, feed fewer cards and clean the rollers. If one product line misfeeds again and again, it may be too thick or too stiff for the feeder.
Double feeds
Cards stuck together from static or from fresh packs, or chrome cards sliding together. Fan cards before loading and leave multifeed detection on. When it stops, rescan the two cards, then check your front and back pairs are still in step.
Streaks and color cast
Ricoh’s guide says “Vertical streaks may appear on images if the glass section is dirty.” Turn the scanner off, unplug it and let it cool for 15 minutes, then wipe both glass strips with Cleaner F1 or a Cleaning Wipe. For glossy and foil stock that still scans dark or tinted, adjust brightness and gamma in a separate profile, and compare the scan with the card in daylight.
Driver errors
Usually a generic Windows driver installed before PaperStream IP, or listing software pointed at the wrong source. Remove the device, install PaperStream IP, restart and reconnect. In your software, pick the source Ricoh names “PaperStream IP” followed by the model name. A source ending in “Net” is the network connection.
Alternatives to the fi-8170
- Ricoh (Fujitsu) fi-8040. Smaller and cheaper ($638 on Ricoh’s US store), with the same PaperStream IP driver, and Card Dealer Pro supports it. Ricoh replaced the fi-7030, the scanner in our Card Dealer Pro review, with it. It’s rated at 40 pages per minute with a 50-sheet feeder, its plastic-card limit is 0.76 mm (about 30 pt) one card at a time, and its background is white only. That makes it a lower-volume choice, not the pick for thick cards.
- ScanSnap iX1600. ScanSnap was a Fujitsu brand and is now Ricoh’s too. It’s cheaper, but Ricoh says ScanSnap “does not support TWAIN drivers or ISIS drivers,” so listing software can’t drive it directly. You scan to a folder and upload the images yourself.
- A flatbed like the Epson Perfection V600 or Canon CanoScan LiDE 300. Slow, but it handles slabs, toploaders and fragile raw cards, and nothing touches the surface.
Which one fits your volume is covered in our best scanner for sports cards guide.
FAQ
Does the fi-8170 scan toploaders or slabs?
Not through the feeder. Ricoh’s card figures are for flat, credit-card-sized cards up to 1.4 mm, and a rigid holder is the wrong thing to put through rollers. Scan toploadered and graded cards on a flatbed.
What DPI should I scan cards at for eBay?
300 DPI for bulk base cards and 600 DPI for anything a buyer will zoom on. At 600 DPI a standard card is 1500 x 2100 pixels, comfortably above eBay’s 500-pixel minimum.
Is the fi-8170 worth it for under 500 cards a month?
Usually not. At $1,445 on Ricoh’s store, the time saved over phone photos takes a long time to pay back at low volume. A phone or a flatbed is the better buy until you’re listing in the hundreds every month.
Does the Ricoh fi-8170 work with Card Dealer Pro?
Yes. Card Dealer Pro lists the Ricoh (Fujitsu) fi-8170 as its “Most Recommended” auto-feed scanner, and its free Trading Card Scanner app runs on Windows and Mac.
Will the fi-8170 damage my cards?
Any feeder carries some risk. Dirty or worn rollers are the main cause of marks, so clean on Ricoh’s 5,000-sheet schedule and replace rollers on time. Keep high-value cards and anything you might grade off the feeder.
Does the fi-8170 work on a Mac?
Yes, over USB, with Ricoh’s Image Scanner Driver for macOS (Monterey 12 through Tahoe 26). It uses Apple’s Image Capture rather than TWAIN, and Ricoh says it may not have every PaperStream IP function.
Can the fi-8170 scan Pokémon cards?
Yes, the same way as sports cards. Pokémon cards are the same 63 x 88 mm size. Holo and full-art cards can show the same glare and color shift as chrome sports cards, so test a few first.
Is the Ricoh fi-8170 the same as the Fujitsu fi-8170?
Yes. Fujitsu’s scanner maker, PFU, joined the Ricoh Group on September 1, 2022, and its scanners moved to the Ricoh brand from April 2023. Ricoh said the model names, specifications and functions stayed the same, so you’ll see the same scanner sold under both names.
How do I set up the fi-8170 for cards?
Install PaperStream IP before connecting the scanner. Then set duplex, 24-bit color, 300 or 600 DPI, auto-crop and deskew, a black background, and Blank Page Detection off, and save it as a profile. The settings section above has the details.
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