Buyer how-to
How to buy a cycad
Seven short steps, from finding a plant to having it in your garden. Nothing here costs you anything to read, and you can come back to it any time from Help centre.
1
Find the right plant
- Open Browse cycads or the Market and filter by species and form, by plants, seeds or suckers, by province, by price, and by whether an expert has looked at the plant.
- Every listing keeps a permanent number in the form CC-XXXXX, so you can always come back to the same plant.
- Tap the heart on anything you like — it is saved under My favourites on your dashboard.
2
Ask before you commit
- Ask in the public questions thread on the listing so other buyers see the answer too, or message the seller privately.
- Ask for extra photos of the caudex, the crown and the leaflets, and ask where the plant came from.
- Where a listing shows an expert's finding, open the Cycad Certificate to see what was assessed and how confident the expert was.
3
Know what verification means
- Verification is optional and is done by independent cycad experts who have no share in the sale.
- Cycad Central connects you to those experts and keeps the record — we do not verify or certify plants ourselves.
- An unverified plant is not a problem plant. It simply means nobody independent has looked at it yet.
4
Buy, offer or bid
- Buy now pays the asking price straight away. Make an offer lets the seller accept or decline your number.
- In an auction you can place single bids, or set a maximum and let the app raise your bid for you up to that limit.
- A bid is binding. You are emailed and alerted when you are outbid, when an auction is closing, and when you win.
- A bid never takes money or card details up front, and nothing is held against your card while the auction runs.
5
Pay in two parts
- When a sale happens, an order with a reference number appears under My offers & orders.
- You make two bank transfers using that reference: the Cycad Central fee (5% on sales up to R5,000 or 2.5% on sales over R5,000 — paid by the seller out of the sale price) into the Cycad Central account, and the rest straight into the seller's account. Expert verification is free for now.
- Log each payment on the order as you make it, so the seller and our team can see it.
- The seller confirms the money reached their account and Cycad Central confirms the fee. Only then may the plant be released.
- Both invoices — ours for the fee and the seller's for the plant — are issued automatically and can be printed from the order or found later under Find my invoices.
6
Collect and confirm
- Arrange collection or courier with the seller once the plant has been released.
- Confirm on the order that the plant arrived, then rate the seller.
- If the plant is not what was described, do not confirm — raise a dispute on the order and our team reviews it before anything moves further.
7
Keep the record
- Your dashboard keeps your live bids with countdowns, your purchases, your favourites, your messages and any money owed to you.
- Certificates and ownership transfers stay attached to the plant, so its history follows it to the next owner.
- Permits are your responsibility as the buyer. Read the permit notes on the listing and the sale rules before you pay.