A lot of us use the TCGPlayer site to buy and sell cards, frequently reselling cards on that site that we bought from them. Their fees are not unreasonable, and while some of us are exclusive to eBay for selling, it’s generally true that the more people who see your item, the more likely it is to sell. (Presuming that it’s priced at a level where it would sell, anyway.)

However, TCGPlayer has made some specific choices in their user interface that lead to less people seeing your item, and we need to be aware of these cases. Not just because it costs money, but because these might be cases where selling on a different platform is a much more profitable choice.

I’m not saying this to denigrate TCGPlayer or the service it provides. I use them a lot, both for buying and selling, and I appreciate the task they are facing. Hundreds of thousands of cards, frames, foiling, and conditions, plus the vagaries of shipping, taxes, and the Direct service…it’s a tremendous logistical challenge! I also really like their new data, for 1M/3M/6M/12M and knowledge of copies selling per day. These are things I wish they would improve, for everyone’s sake.

So let’s get into three big things you need to be aware of with TCGPlayer, which might be costing you profits.

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Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

It’s the end of the year, and so it’s time to look at a year’s worth of written predictions and see how I did. 

I do this with grace and humility, because I have to be kind to myself when I do badly, and not overly celebrate when I get it right. 

I’m focusing just on the things I picked in my articles, because we’ve got a whole separate show on MTG Fast Finance where we talk about our picks this year. 

Let’s get into it!

On 1/12/24 I wrote about Ravnica Remastered, and some things I liked long-term. I did pick Guardian Project to go all the way down to $5, and the regular versions are up to $8. They would be higher, except for the Fallout reprint that I didn’t see coming. (One of my takeaways this year: All bets are off when it comes to reprints!) Brudivac almost got down to my pick of $10, but he did get to $13 and now he’s back up to $25, a solid profit. I would unload if you got in cheap. I was also right about Cyclonic Rift going under $35, it went all the way to $26, and there’s multiple versions between $30 and $40. Crypt Ghast got some borderless reprinting, but the base version did sink down to $5, and is now $8.

Then on 03/01/24 I put together a list of Assassin-related specs, and those have mostly done very well. I identified the SL version of Thraximundar (He Who Paints The Earth Red!!) to double up, Callidus Assassin surge foils to go higher ($3 up to $11) and Unliving Psychopath foils in NM condition were $2 and are now $10. Garza’s Assassin did not grow, that half your life is a whole lot, and Kiku, Night’s Flower has ticked up just a little to $8. If she gets reprinted she’s going to drop like a rock, so I’d be hesitant about holding on too long.

Next up, on 03/29/24, I wrote up a whole a bunch of Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds specs. Seemed like it would be a popular commander, because token themes are big and Naya likes doing stuff like that, but Ghired has only 2500 Commander decks on EDHREC, good enough for 12th place from OTJ. Obeka was the big winner of that set, people registered four times as many decks for her!

A similar pattern on 04/19/2024, where I thought Gonti, Canny Acquisitor would take ‘steal your deck’ decks to new heights, but nope, missed there too. Deck theft is a theme I enjoy, with Gonti and cards like Tasha, Witch Queen, but the greater public has no appetite for that as yet. 

The writeup for the first Miku Superdrop came along, and this was a mixed bag. I was right about the Miku drops, as the EN lairs are going for $90/$70, while the JP versions are near the original cost still. The rest of the drop I felt better about, but none of them have been solid growers in the time since.

When Modern Horizons 3 came out, I wrote up a list of early specs on 6/14/2024, most of which have shows growth since July but non better than Fanatic of Rhonas, which has doubled up since that writing. Things like Springheart Nantuko, Medallions, and Wight of the Reliquary have gone up by a dollar or two, forecasting good things for that set as time passes. 

The Summer Superdrop has a writeup I published on 06/21/2024, where the Miku drops have done the same (English go up, JP at cost) and the rest of the drops in that group have not had the same growth. I’m okay being patient with SLs at this point, I’m rarely in a hurry to resell at minor losses after taxes and shipping. 

On 7/12/24 I planned out what a Zinnia, Valley’s Voice deck would want, because copying value creatures sounds like every Commander player’s dream, but she’s turned out to be middling as these go, with only 6900 decks. Bello, Bumbleflower, and Baylen were all bigger hits, and Bumbleflower is the biggest surprise to me, as Commander players generally hate giving other players cards. 

After that, Monty Python was previewed, and on 07/26/24 I wrote up why you should buy. Hope you did, that’s done very well and it still might grow. If they make a vol. 3, 4, or more, this first one should go off like a rocket.

One of my biggest misses of the year was in the D&D Superdrop on 08/23/24, when I was middling on Astarion and Karlach. The other drops seemed more appealing, and I vastly underestimated what these two characters would do for a drop. 

I wrote up my thoughts for the third Miku drop on 9/27/24, and after the zeitgeist did so well for Monty Python, I was convinced that Ghostbusters and Chucky drops would sell like hotcakes. I was tremendously wrong about that. Miku’s planeswalker drop should grow over time, but in the three months since, it hasn’t done much. The other drops have really languished, but perhaps they will grow over time. I think my takeaway is that even if something is popular, it’s not always collectible. The Ghostbusters hit me in the nostalgia, and Chucky movies have always been marketed at the same group of people, over and over. 

Most recently, on 10/25/24, I wrote up the Marvel superdrop, and I’ve been right about those cards, the order the drops were in, and most of the picks for the decks have seen a little uptick as well. Marvel is also likely to keep paying off into the summer, as more MCU cards are released and people want to build The Avengers deck, or some variation thereof. 

Hits and misses, to be sure, but if I was perfect I’d retire from everything else. The things I’ve been right about were easily able to pay off the misses, and that’s why we diversify. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

On Monday, September 30th, there’s a new Secret Lair dropping, with a wide range of cards, art, and Intellectual Property (IP for short, the term used when you want to use the fandom/art/characters/lore/etc). It’s mostly Halloween based, but there’s still a few more cards coming, I think, so today I want to focus on an idea that Secret Lairs have been using: Does the card quality matter more than the fandom? 

I used to be a strong believer that the cards matter. We can find many examples of this, but the core principle for me was that the cards in a drop have to be at least playable for people to give a crap. 

And then Hatsune Miku came along. 

I broke down the prices for these when they came out back in May, and I was expressly clear about the IP being the draw and not the cards. Nothing in this drop is more than $4 in its base version, this is incomplete sets of niche lands, cards that have been power crept out of wide usage, and in English foil, the sealed drop is pushing $100 four months later. 

I think there’s opportunity in the other sealed Miku drops–I’m expecting all four Miku drops to hit a peak when the fourth lands near the end of this year and they can be sold as four-volume sets–that are under $50 with shipping and taxes, but be wary of trying to hold forever, holding out for something like $200. That price can happen (see Princess Bride and Evil Dead) but I like turning cards over and getting your profit reinvested into your next moves. 

I did not know who Hatsune Miku was. I knew I’d missed out on other drops because I underestimated the artist, or the genre, or anything like that. I’d even under-ordered things I knew I’d like but I didn’t think would be big, like the Princess Bride or Evil Dead. That is the core question of Secret Lairs now that they have moved to an IP/theme model: Which themes are going to resell best?

For example, the Spookydrop 2023 is the one that had Evil Dead, Princess Bride, and some other things like Doctor Who’s Weeping Angels and Creepshow. They were bundled together, but this is from the model of Secret Lair that did not sell out–they printed to demand. That’s been a huge change, but even so, for drops that happened at the same time, we’ve got a giant gap in pricing. Evil Dead and Princess Bride are over $150, nearing $200, and Creepshow is at half that price, as is the Dr. Who.

So the question of the moment is: Will Ghostbusters be Princess Bride or will it be Creepshow?

My inclination is to think that Ghostbusters (both the cartoon SL and the Slimer SL) will sell well. Both because the IP is strong and nostalgic, very important in this age of Magic pandering to the folks in their early 40s, but also because it’s going to sell alongside the next Miku installment, and that will be gone quickly. 

I recognize that the cards in the Ghostbusters drop are not Field of the Dead-level inclusions, and that’s okay. Not everything needs to be powerful reprints. I could wish for more iconic scenes, like the hallway, but I get what they are going for. It’s also okay that they went for one set with Slimer in 1984, and then one set with The Real Ghostbusters, the animated version. (Ever wanted to know why it wasn’t called just ‘Ghostbusters’ as the movie was? Do you remember some show with a ghost-faced car and a giant talking gorilla? Here’s the explainer you want.) They are trying to tap a wide net of nostalgia, adding a Chucky drop that I’ll address next week when I go through the drop set by set.

The core point here is that it’s okay if the IP of a drop ‘isn’t for you’ because they aren’t trying to make each one be for everyone. They are casting a wide net and eventually they will get to the things you like. Slimer represents one of their favorite things to do lately: Choose a commander, give that commander sweet art, and then add in several cards that are popular in that commander’s deck. Sometimes that’s an IP of Ghostbusters for The Mimeoplasm. Sometimes that’s a bubble-lettered Zaxara, the Exemplary and a bunch of Hydra accessories. 

Strong IP means that the cards can be weak and people buy the cards just to be collectors, not as much for the playing. I know I have a binder just for SL leftovers that I couldn’t fit into a deck, and flipping through those pages makes me happy.

The core lesson, though, is simple: The IP has to be evaluated on its own merits, not just through the lens of your own enjoyment. James and I talked about the D&D superdrop before it landed, and we thought that the Astarion and Karlach drops were solid, if not great. We did not give proper respect to the number of people who love these characters, and they caused the drops to sell out quite rapidly. 

To put it another way, this doesn’t have to be for you, it just has to be for enough people. Creepshow was a little too niche and hasn’t popped off. Evil Dead, Princess Bride, those are much more widely loved and their prices have gone up. 

I’m going to make purchases as though Ghostbusters will sell out quickly, and I encourage you to do the same.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.