Do any of you remember what it was like buying from TCGplayer before TCGplayer Direct? How about selling on TCGplayer before then?
It was a little different, a little weird and a little sub-optimal, though we didn’t know that at the time. All we knew was that when TCGplayer Direct came along, things were going to be different. Now, all of a sudden, when we ordered a whole deck worth of cards or bought a significant number of copies of a card for a spec from multiple sellers, we started getting one package. Sellers would send the cards they wanted to sell in to TCGplayer and TCGplayer would package the cards and send them to buyers, eliminating the need for four sellers to make up four packages to go to one person who would receive those four packages. This is known as “stream-lining” (I mean, I assume, I’ve never taken a Business course in my life) and, like in non-metaphorical streamlining, it reduces drag.
We can agree, then, that TCGplayer has a little bit of experience streamlining the buying and selling process. They have created a marketplace where people who aren’t gigantic stores but rather are individuals trying to get rid of some cardboard can participate. It’s the eBay model but tailored specifically for our specific game. It’s been working pretty well so far. The TCGPlayer marketplace is often a go-to for buying cards, and is often referenced as the going price of a card.
So now that we’re all caught up, do you remember how TCGplayer Direct changed things? Because it’s about to happen again.
The Future
In the exact same way that TCGplayer Direct changed the way people bought and sold cards on TCGplayer, TCGplayer Direct buylist is going to change the way people, wait for it, buylist. That is, to say, it’s going to change the way some people buylist, or sell their cards to stores. I think there are a lot of advantages to this method, but I also think this is likely to be a supplement for a lot of us rather than a complete sea change to how we do business. This does have one distinct advantage over all of the methods I currently use, and that is convenience.
Current Methods
The first buylisting I ever did involved bidwicket.com. If you’ve never been to bidwicket, it’s a confusing place. Once you figure out how to navigate it, though, it ends up being worth it – at least it used to before there were alternatives. Bidwicket was useful because it had a lot of buylists from vendors accessible. You would type in the name of a card and it would take you to this page.
You could click the “sell to store” link down where it lists the buylist prices. You filled up a “shopping cart” for each vendor, and when you finished and checked out, you would process the order separately for each vendor. You would mail the cards to the vendor and the vendor would pay you. Usually. That’s another story, and it’s not really bidwicket’s fault. The point is, this worked fine. A lot of the times, the online price was better than the in-person price and I found myself using bidwicket a lot in between Grands Prix. It wasn’t fast or particularly convenient, but at the time, it seemed worthwhile.
Then websites began to take the next step, with MTGPrice and others developing ways to connect sellers to stores that want to buy their cards.
The big revelation here is allowing you to search both the retail price as well as the buylist price and the website taking you to each dealer’s webpage. These services all work with the goal of not forcing you to go to each dealer’s web site and punch in the card five times. With some offering the ability to fill your cart once and then have that list populated to vendors’ sites, it becomes very easy: you search once, then send them the cards you agreed to sell them (in the order they specify) and you get paid when they get cards. It couldn’t be simpler. Or could it?
While convenient, there are some shortcomings with all these services. Selecting condition is one of them, as are bugs or bad links when trying to tie together so many individual web sites. Some stores only accept NM cards but others grade down for condition but would like to be apprised that they’re getting less-than-NM cards. Another issue is that it’s no fun trying to balance getting less money for the cards and paying more money for shipping because you’re sending out a ton of packages. It’s hard to know how to balance that, and when you’re sending the quantity of cards I was sending, a $12 flat-rate USPS box didn’t always cut it, meaning sometimes it cost $24 to add a new vendor. How many times does that vendor paying a nickel more per card add up to cover the additional shipping? Why do I have to choose which way I’m losing a lot of money in non-free transaction costs? It felt pretty bad.
So what exactly will TCGPlayer offer in this field?
The Basics
The premise is simple. Much like an account for selling cards on TCGPlayer, there is a level associated with your account for selling cards to TCGPlayer, and as you complete orders and send the cards in you move up. Top stores in the TCGPlayer Direct program will have the opportunity to be part of the buylist program, and it will essentially create a marketplace for buylists similar to what is currently available. Searching for a card will bring up the marketplace with the current highest offers by stores buying the card.
There are a few key notes here.
Stores pay the fee associated with buying the cards from you. Money is deposited directly to you when the order clears.
Because the stores buying from you are part of TCGPlayer Direct, you only ship once. No matter how many stores you’re actually selling to, you only ship to TCGPlayer. One package, one tracking, one insurance – you don’t have to ship to multiple stores.
However, by that same token, “stores involved in TCGPlayer Direct” is not everyone. There are plenty of stores with great buylist prices that you’ll find going through MTGPrice or the dealers’ own sites – Card Kingdom and a few others come to mind – that you won’t find on TCGPlayer.
Takeaways
I have monkeyed with TCGplayer Direct for a few days and I think it has a few very distinct advantages over both in-person buylisting that doesn’t let you sell cheap cards or large quantities, and online buylist aggregates which all come with their own set of challenges.
TCGplayer Direct is very simple. Sellers will go to the TCGplayer website. Players used to selling cards on TCGplayer will recognize the seller portal but now there is a new option – buylist. You type in the name of a card, search for it, and it will bring up a list of the vendors buying the card for each condition and for foil and non-foil. You will populate the appropriate field corresponding to the number of copies for each condition and edition you are selling and then you submit the offer. It will tell you how much money is coming to you based on the combination of dealers buying that many copies.
If three dealers are paying between $3 and $5 on Night of Souls’ Betrayal and that’s acceptable to you and those two dealers are buying 10 copies total and you want to send that many, put “10” in the field for NM non-foil and submit. You’ll be offered the total of what each dealer is paying for each copy. You’re still splitting 10 copies over multiple dealers only now you aren’t sending in multiple orders. You will drop all 10 copies in the same envelope and send them in to TCGplayer. TCGplayer will verify the order is complete, the conditions are correct and will pay you and give the cards to the dealers.
If that sounds complicated, it doesn’t need to be because all you need to know is that you will type in a card, select as many copies as you want to send in and then mail them to TCGplayer and TCGplayer will take care of the rest. Sending one package is incredibly convenient and you will have access to a much larger number of dealers than you ever did with another service. This saves money on shipping costs and packaging, which is not only valuable in itself but also saves you a lot of time on the front end.
If you aren’t happy getting $3 for your copies, the list will tell you who is paying the most and how many copies that dealer is buying. Just submit that many copies and get the best price, or submit the max number of copies being asked for and take a combination of all prices. You don’t sacrifice any degree of control over the amount of money you get versus other systems and you get additional convenience in the form of only sending one package.
Ultimately, I think this is likely to be a supplement to how I buylist. I still plan to use a combination of the different tools available along with TCGplayer Direct or at least verify that I’m getting the best prices and not losing too much to shipping fees (buyers, not sellers pay all of the fees associated with TCGplayer Direct buylisting so shipping is your only expense as a seller) and I’ll be happy to switch over entirely if TCGPlayer Direct buylisting turns out as good as it looks like it could be.
It will only get better for people as more dealers add TCGplayer Direct as an avenue to get more cards sent to them and more dealers means more competition which means higher prices for players selling to them. Having monkeyed around with the site a bit, I found it easy-to-use and very similar to other TCGplayer services and I’m excited to see how many dealers add their buylists in the coming weeks. This has the potential to completely change the way I buylist and I don’t see a ton of downsides. All of my criticisms of it were pretty minor (you have to click the search icon instead of clicking on the card name to get the page to come up) but we’ll have to see how the first few weeks go before we can make final pronouncements. As far as a first look at the site goes, I’m hopeful and I think this could be big news for the community, finance or otherwise.
Douglas Johnson @Rose0fthorns __________________________________________________
Welcome back, friends. I spent the last weekend moving into a new apartment, so I didn’t have a whole time to spend on Magic. Thankfully I’ve still got some decent ideas leftover from last week’s article, so we’re going to talk about customer service in this industry a bit more. I’m sure you all want to hear about Craig Berry and the whole Reserved List buyout, but Corbin has already covered that extensively in an interesting interview with the man himself. I’d really recommend checking that out.
Last week we went over a couple of the scenarios where things can go wrong in the process of buying or selling a Magic card, and the proper procedures for both the buyer and seller to resolve things as peacefully as possible without resorting to insults and witch hunts. I’d like to start this article on a brighter note, and provide sellers with some ideas that can be used to really brighten a buyers’ day and earn those coveted five-star reviews that we all want to secure. As such, this article will be a bit more “seller focused” because that’s where I have more experience.
Freebies
Maybe this is getting to be more common practice, but I don’t buy enough singles online to personally know whether or not that’s true. What I do know is I’ve really started to enjoy shipping small little tokens of appreciation with my orders, often in the form of literal Token cards. While I’m not about to become Santa Claus and start throwing in the Wurm tokens for Wurmcoil Engine, a single Plant token for their Nissa, Voice of Zendikar can go a long way.
Seriously, these things are $3 each.
On a similar note, how many of you ship out the appropriate checklist card when you sell a double-faced card? While they only go on TCGplayer for pennies, you save someone from having to pay $.25 or $.50 at their LGS if you just throw in the appropriate checklist card. While someone purchasing an Archangel Avacyn is probably playing with opaque sleeves at a competitive event, there are a non-zero number of people who prefer to avoid the judge call entirely and just use checklist cards in their opaque sleeves while reserving the actual card in a clear sleeve in their deckbox for an easy flip back and forth.
My favorite card to ship with the matching checklist is definitely Startled Awake. Do you know who’s casting this card? I’ll give you a hint; they probably don’t play with opaque sleeves, if any sleeves at all. That person will be ecstatic that they don’t need to hunt down the checklist card. Now that we’re on the subject, I’m absolutely fine with holding Startled Awake at the $3 they’re at now.
It’s not quite at the point where I’d actually feel comfortable listing it on TCGplayer, because that flat .50 fee per transaction makes selling cards under $5 less than appetizing to low level sellers. Remember that there approximately the same number of these in the market right now as there are Archangel Avacyn. This is a casual all-star with ridiculously low supply, which helps beat the test that Breaking // Entering fails to pass. Being a launch promo during Dragon’s Maze kind of kills all of the potential that one had. Anyway, where were we?
Wrong Address
Oh, right. Customer service stuff. Now here’s a situation that’s never happened to me and I’m very thankful that I haven’t had to deal with it. Every now and then, human error gets the best of us and two orders get shipped to the wrong addresses. The Modern player who ordered four Life from the Loams gets sent a foil Kaalia of the Vaast, and vice versa for the aspiring Commander player who just wants to bash with dragons and angels. Just great. So what do you do? Do you ask them both to ship the cards back to you? You could just ask them to ship to each other…..
WRONG.
Do not do this. Ever. Nope nope nope nope nope. Do not ever put yourself or the buyer at that kind of risk. You don’t want to be giving out other people’s addresses, and you don’t want buyer A screwing up the shipping process while they end up getting their card safe and sound, while buyer B is screwed over. You also shouldn’t be sending them money to cover the cost of the PayPal shipping label. Here’s what you need to do to make this right on both ends: It will cost you a decent chunk of money, but it’s your fault multiplied by two in the first place.
1. Print out a total of four shipping labels to start with. One of these is going to buyer A, and one is going to buyer B. The other two shipping labels are addressed to you as the seller.
2. Place the necessary shipping materials inside each of two bubble mailers. That includes one other bubble mailer, the necessary sleeves, toploaders, and/or a team bag. Whatever is needed to safely package the card and return it to you.
3. Ask each buyer to safely and securely package the order just as it came, and then reseal it in the bubble mailer they received, taping the pre-paid shipping label to the envelope. Those mailers go back to you as the seller, so that you can then re-ship the correct orders to the correct buyers.
None of this can be done without tracking, because this gives buyers an opportunity to lose or even steal cards without you being able to provide evidence of what happened. Cover yourself every step of the way, and take the loss like an adult.
Of course, the exact method listed above can easily cost you $10 in shipping materials alone. For this reason, it’s only really worth it for you to do if the cards shipped to each party are valuable enough to care about being tracked. In the case of smaller orders (think $4-5), it might just be easier and cheaper to just purchase a replacement copy of each buyer’s order, and ship it directly to them via PWE, then tell them to keep the misplaced order as compensation for the trouble.
Endgame
So what’s the end goal here? As a seller, I’ve technically given you a bunch of ways to lose money in the past two articles. Paying buyers for condition discrepancies, lost orders, and throwing in free cards? Who would want to do that? If you ignore the whole “hoping for repeat customers” reason, there’s still tangible benefits for having a high feedback rating on TCGplayer.
If you start selling a decent number of cards on TCGplayer, you might want to work your way up to “Gold Star Seller” status. I’ll let you read TCGplayer’s description of what that entails.
That middle statement is the really relevant part to us. When you’re looking to buy on TCGplayer, you can set a filter so that you’re only looking at “Gold Star Seller”s.
Alternatively, you can use positive feedback from eBay or TCGplayer as references when starting to sell via Facebook or Twitter. One of the downsides of trying to start out selling on social media is a need for checkable references for accountability. Being able to prove your reputation and connect it to a “tangible” online store that can receive feedback and be named in case of trouble can help get you started in the market of Facebook and Twitter, which is where I always recommend trying to pick up singles at less than TCGplayer low prices.
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Editor’s note: We’d like to thank Matt Nafa for his coverage of Grand Prix Albuquerque, and hope to follow with more floor reports in the future.
Hey guys! Floor reports have become increasingly popular and I noticed not as many #MTGFinance peeps went to Grand Prix Albuquerque as usually go to GPs so I took it upon myself to write this!
GP Albuquerque was a great event to go to if you were looking to play some Limited Magic with Shadows over Innistrad. The same may not be said for the weekend of trading. Since I wasn’t trading, I had a lot of time left to myself to walk around. I gathered a ton of information. The vendors were out in force and looking to buy, with great buy prices on a lot of modern cards and standard alike. Nine vendors at the event meant a lot to see and a lot of research to be done. Let’s jump into it!
MTG Deals
The first table you saw walking into the room, accosted by their bright yellow table cloths and just past the score keeper stage. MTG Deals may have not always been a big name in GP vending, but they have decided to make a change to that and a change they have. Appearing at quite a few events these days they usually run a pretty tight ship and have very competitive prices, and this weekend was no different.
They had the highest buy price on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy at $68, and among other notables they were also buying Voice of Resurgence at $27, Linvala, Keeper of Silence at $30, and Noble Hierarch at $30 as well, buy prices either the highest or tied for highest in the room.
They left the played case at home this time in favor of bringing staples from Legacy to Standard, both foil and non-foil, and they had quite the foil case! They had some crazy low prices, almost everything in their case was priced to sell and the crowd in front of them surely showed it. Between rounds and on Friday there were at least five people browsing the case at a time, many stopping to hand an employee money for around TCG Low on most cards.
I was on the hunt to grab some playmats as a collector and for some friends back home, and when I asked about it I was given the personal number of an employee and told to text them periodically to see if they had bought some mats for me to purchase. This was also the booth that multiple different vendors stopped by to check buylists, and change prices accordingly (Tales of Adventure sent over people multiple times).
I was able to buy a set of World Magic Cup Qualifier Thalia, Guardian of Thraben at $35 and walk over to another vendor to sell them at $40. Who doesn’t love some good ol’ arbitrage?
As good as MTGDeals was, one of my biggest problems of the GP came from them.
I was waiting behind a store owner who was selling the bulk of his magic supply. I’m talking four full binders, five small 2×2 binders and a box of high end cards. Because of the swarm of people MTG Deals had only one buyer and it was the owner himself sitting down to buy cards, I waited in a growing line for two hours. And then I noticed another person waiting to sell had been seated at another table attached to the adjacent Dex Protection space and an employee from MTG Deals was buying from him. I waved down another employee to let him know that I had been waiting and was not with the man currently selling and I should be next in line. I then watched as another two people were seated to sell cards while I still waited.
It took over two hours for me to finally sit down and sell cards. Thankfully I will say that the owner was very apologetic and extremely nice about the whole ordeal. He didn’t mind chatting with me while he pulled cards out and bought everything I expected him to without a hassle, and though it was worth the wait I did feel a bit slighted watching multiple people essentially cut ahead of me.
Overall I would say I had a great experience with MTG Deals minus the little hiccup.
Brainstorm Games
Being from Texas and having only attended GPs within that general area before this, I had never had a run-in before with Brainstorm Games. They had a lot of smiling faces and were very approachable. Despite the smaller booth they definitely had a lot to offer, showing off many foreign foils, and foreign cards in general. They did not have the best prices but were able to be talked down to some degree on most things. This is where I ended up buying the bulk of a legacy Death and Taxes list after haggling with the owner on many prices. Overall things went smoothly purchasing cards from them and I was able to leave happy.
I did not sell anything to them though as their buy list prices weren’t close enough to my asking range. They also had a few foreign Mirrodin Besieged-era boxes that were quick to sell.
Amazing Discoveries
I have seen these guys at a few events, but they never seem to have the highest buy prices on cards I am looking to sell. Nor do they have great sell prices on random cards.
Rather than having a row of cases they show up with a shelf of 5k’s. There is something to be said about them having just about any card if you are willing to pay their asking price [Editor’s note: can confirm this was great]. A lot of their prices are firm on many things, however they do have a played or signed case that they usually show up with and a hefty supply of recent foreign product and more accessories than you could imagine. Their buyers were always busy however with someone in front of them. I imagine it was due to their Standard buy prices on Friday being so high, but those quickly came down by Saturday afternoon. They were paying the highest on playmats however, at $10 and selling them at $20.
MetaGaming NW
I had never seen these guys before, like I said. They had a moderately sized table at the back of the room right underneath a Jace banner from the venue. Their own personal banner was larger though. Their prices on some things were quite odd, however they had quite the collection of older cards and had them very accurately priced. No one batted an eye when I very thoroughly inspected some dual lands before purchasing them. Additionally, their playmat game was on point, with very competitively priced popular playmats such as Delver of Secrets from GP Tacoma and a Christopher Rush playmat with some hand drawn Lotus art added to it. They also had some adorable hand-drawn tokens up for sale, as well as a free lifepad with any purchase.
That being said, their lack of any sort of written buylist and strange pricing did drive me away from buying anything else.
Channel Fireball
I feel there might be some stigma against the big dog in the room, assuming that their buy prices are going to be lower than anyone else’s — and sometimes that is true, though not always and not in this case.
They had one of the largest tables at the back left of the room. With my research done ahead of time and reinforced by their paper buylist at the venue, I was ready to sit down in front of my favorite buyer at the venue and catch up since we had last seen each other at GP Houston. I made sure to start with telling him there is still a standing invite to meat on swords (Brazilian Steakhouse), what has now become a GP tradition. He went through the usual of pulling cards out of my binder and I won’t bore you with the yes-no details. He was always very upfront on why they were buying at what price and what they sold them at and my numbers worked out. I sold off over $500 worth of items to Channel Fireball and sat in the chair for around an hour making small talk. I left a happy customer confident in the decisions I had just made.
On their retail side, things were a bit odd but expected. All Standard cards were still at presale prices and they were shying away from paying too high on buylist for most things in Standard.
The prices on Legacy staples were priced to sell however, with duals at close to prespike prices: Tundras were $180 when they were $230 at Houston, the same spread for the rest of the duals and it was a bit off-putting. I didn’t spend much money here except for taking home two boxes of CFB Ultra Pro sleeves. For some reason they are a hit amongst my playgroup and I got a good enough deal on them from the manager of the booth.
Tales of Adventure
With a table that could rival CFB but slightly less organized, Tales of Adventure showed up at yet another GP. You seem to see these guys everywhere “Buying Pokemon to Power” as they like to say.
This time they were buying a humble amount of cards at very reasonable prices, but also had a paper buylist ready to go Friday morning. I sat down to sell a few cards I had replaced with foils and had a pleasant experience. I was helped right away, as it looked as if they had been very light on people selling to them — their prices may not have been competitive enough for the room they were in.
They did, however, have a lot of great foils, and good enough pricing on many staples. They also brought along a huge selection of playmats, which didn’t surprise me (they are usually my main competitor with playmat sales on eBay), as well as the usual happy-to-help smiling faces you come to expect from someone who has been at this as long as they have.
Q&A Magic
They didn’t get up a buylist until late Friday and by that point everyone had made their way to other vendors to sell. However these guys did have a nicely sized table with lots of pretty cards in their cases. They laid out a not-so-humble foil selection and quite a few legacy and vintage cards. Their prices weren’t the most competitive but they were one of the few vendors in the room with the kind of card selection they were offering.
I did not spend any money here as I was not in the market for power and would have liked to get things a bit cheaper to help along my margins. I would like to hear how their weekend went as most of the time it looked as though it was employees sorting cards, and waiting to help someone.
CoolStuffInc
This is another big store that had higher-than-necessary prices on most cards. They did not need to be as competitive with others due to taking the SCG approach. That’s not to say the employees weren’t friendly or that they didn’t have an amazing selection of cards. But they are definitely an online giant and act like it. They did not deviate from their printed and online buylist all weekend nor did they change many prices in their case.
That being said, they were friendly and quick to help you purchase any cards you were looking to buy. They also had their new playmats with them as well as some other popular playmats up for sale that seemed to be selling quite well. They did have a damaged and foreign binder but it was absent of any “coolstuff.”
Hi De Ho Comics
Not a stranger to GP’s but definitely an odd one to see. The booth was run most days by a one-man team but I believe there was another employee hiding behind their wide sign. These guys had a prime space at the front of the hall on the far end. And they looked to be quite busy. This was the only seller in the room with WMCQ Thalias at $60. They also didn’t have the greatest buylist on many cards so the only thing I sold to them were Thalia’s. They did have some attractive cards in their case and some good pricing but I didn’t spend any money here.
Cascade Games as TO
I feel like something needs to be said about Cascade Games as the tournament organizer for this event.
And it is that they did a fantastic job.
They started off Friday morning with an entirely free Mini-Master, anyone was allowed to play in it as a thank you to maxed-out attendance. They ran multiple Friday morning events. I played in one, other friends played in several. I traveled up to New Mexico with a group of judges and heard a lot about behind the scenes with Cascade. From what I heard and what I saw they handled the event phenomenally. When the main event sold out they made accommodations including hiring more judges last minute, adding a Saturday morning event that was as much value as the main event at half the price.
The only catch was you weren’t playing for anything more than prize tix, but to the people I saw in that room playing that was all that mattered to them. They paid $40 for a playmat, a promo, and six packs and to a lot of them that was more than enough; the prize tickets to them were just an extra bonus.
They also opened two more ballrooms for the venue to put On Demands and the Saturday Morning Special in as the main event hall was full to capacity. Cascade handled any issues that arose very professionally. Their prize wall was stacked with great prizes from UltraPRO to Dex Protection. The only complaint I can imagine is that the chairs in the venue weren’t the best, and side events were cash only. There were a few scheduling errors but they were handled as best as they could be. I would love to return to a Cascade Games event and hope that they continue to run GPs close enough for me to attend.
Thanks for reading, these are my opinions on the event. I would love some feedback and to hear your experiences if you went to GP Albuquerque. Leave it in the comments below or you can reach me on twitter @MattNafarious
If there’s one topic that comes up repeatedly from listeners/readers/tweeters/sycophants, it’s how to sell a Magic card. It’s never so broad as “how do I sell this card,” rather, it’s always in regards to some component of the process. What’s the best place to sell my card? How do you package your cards? Why did I just pay $7 to ship a PWE? (PWE means Plain White Envelope, by the way. It’s a commonly used term in our niche community.)
Today, a comprehensive guide to choosing the best venue to sell your card, how to package it, and how to ship it. With this guide, you’ll be shipping like the pros! Or at least me. So maybe Pro-Am at best.
Where To Sell
There are several options when choosing to sell your card. Like so few things in life, there is no clear “correct” answer. However, some are definitely preferable to others depending on the circumstance.
Facebook/Locally
Selling via your local Facebook groups or word of mouth in your neighborhood is, in theory, the best way to sell a card. There’s no shipping, no fees, your customer receives the card immediately, and if nobody else in the area has the card for sale, you’re not exactly facing a “race to the bottom” situation akin to what you’ll see on TCGPlayer. With no fees, no shipping, little competition, and the ability to sell cards at basically SCG’s prices, you can’t beat it the profit margins.
However, not all is rosy. Selling through Facebook has a problem which is twofold: scale and demand. If you’ve got one single card to sell, finding a local buyer isn’t a hassle. If you’ve got 20, 40, or 300 cards to sell, trying to directly connect to that many people will become a massive time sink. Additionally, there’s the issue that there simply may not be someone within your area that wants a card. Archangel Avacyn is easy to find a buyer for. How about the foil Japanese Ardent Plea I picked up recently though? There’s probably only a few hundred people in the country that will buy that card. What are the odds they’re in my backyard, and they’re reading the city’s Magic Facebook page?
Pros: Absolute best profit margins short of running an actual store Cons: Only useful if you’re selling a small handful of high-demand cards
PucaTrade
This isn’t “selling” per se, but if you’re going to use the money you get from the sale to buy more cards, it may as well be the same. PucaTrade essentially gives you full value on the card’s worth, so long as you’re buying more cards with it. Your only overhead is shipping, as there are no fees by default, unless you want to trade for foils, in which case you’re signing up for Silver or Gold. If you’re just trying to turn that Avacyn into a couple of Thought-Knot Seers, this may be your best bet.
PucaTrade’s catch, of course, is that you don’t actually end up with any money at the other side of the transaction. Just Magic funbux. It can also be a pain to actually send your card, since it relies heavily on refreshing the “Send Cards” page vigorously and for extended periods of time. Then, after the card gets where it’s going, you’ve got to wait for people to send you what you want. It’s great for turning those Standard staples into EDH pieces you need, but if timeliness is important, this is the equivalent of travelling cross-country on a Stagecoach.
For more information on PucaTrade, you can check out my recent two articles on the topic, which cover the trustworthiness of the market and the best uses for the service. (And guys, if someone’s display name isn’t actually their name — if it’s “Wastes +15%” or something — check their profile for the correct name to put on the envelope.)
Pros: You get retail value for your cards… Cons: …so long as you’re buying more Magic cards. Also, not exactly fast.
Buylist
Nearly all vendors, such as Starcitygames, Channel Fireball, and whoever else, have what is called a “buylist.” This is what that vendor will pay you for your cards. For instance, today, April 18th 2016, SCG will pay you $27.50 if you send them an Avacyn. So long as it’s in good shape, it’s easy money. No arguing, no fees, no waiting for someone to click “buy.” Ship it off to Roanoke and you’re $27.50 richer, minus shipping.
The biggest knock on buylists is that they don’t let you maximize your greed. Why sell an Avacyn to SCG for $27.50 when you can sell it on TCGPlayer for $40? That’s an extra $12.50 you’re making! (Well, kind of. But we’ll talk about that more when we get there.) Buylisting will, in general, make you less money per card than other outlets. The tradeoff to this is how much faster and easier it is when dealing with a large volume of cards. If you just picked up a collection and have tens to hundreds to thousands of cards to sell and don’t want to deal with selling each individually, buylisting gives you an avenue with a reasonable rate of return, especially when you consider what it asks of you in time/shipping costs. Of all the options on our list, buylisting may be the best or second best overall option, especially since it scales up so well. Many of the writers here make heavy use of buylists on a regular basis.
There’s also the added feature that is trade-in bonuses. While SCG will give you $27.50 cash for your Avacyn, they’ll also give you the option of receiving $34.38 in store credit. How good the bonus is depends on the store, and it usually lands somewhere between 15% and 30%. In order to determine whether the trade-in bonus is worth it, you need to check whether or not the store actually has the cards you’re looking to pick up, and if they do, if it’s cheaper to buy them there with the store credit bonus than it is to take the cash and buy them elsewhere. The answer changes every time, so there’s no clear-cut solution other than “look it up.”
If you’ve only got a handful of cards to sell and don’t mind putting in a little extra time, or if you need to squeeze every last dime out of a card, this isn’t your best bet. The more cards you have, though, the more enticing buylisting becomes.
Pros: Far and away the fastest method of turning more than a few cards cards into cash, and often the best return rate when considering time invested Cons: Often not the absolute most money you can squeeze out of an individual card, rates for non-NM cards are abysmal, and your cards need to truly be NM
eBay
Ah, eBay. Once the face of the new millennium and a promise of what wonders the internet would herald for our society. Today, it’s a black hole of disputed transactions, missing packages, obnoxious fees, and grey-market surgical equipment.
eBay is essentially the poor man’s TCGPlayer. When you can’t find a local buyer for your single card, you want the most value possible for it, you don’t want to bother setting up a TCGPlayer seller’s account, and you’re willing to tolerate some of the worst people outside of Reddit, eBay is where you turn. Honestly, I rarely use eBay these days. The only time I list anything there is when I’m the only person selling that particular card, so that there’s no competition. Then you get to make up some ridiculous price and hope someone pays it. I’ve got a foil Korean Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx? Uhhh, how about $200? Nobody else has one, so who is going to say that’s too expensive?
I strictly use the Buy It Now feature when I do make my rare forays into eBay. Auctions are unreliable, and in the face of so many other options, hardly ideal. I’ll list my card with a Buy It Now, forget it’s there, and every so often be pleasantly surprised when my phone dings and it’s an email from eBay telling me something sold. Listing in multiple locations is not a bad idea either. Especially on your more unique cards, stick the card on eBay with a BIN of $100, and then also list it for sale over on TCGPlayer for $90 or whatever the going rate is. You’ll probably sell it on TCGPlayer first, but you get the freeroll of possibly selling your cards at above market rates to someone that probably scammed their way into a handful of eBay bux and is using them to purchase Magic cards. Just make sure that you remember two things: if it sells in one location you remember to remove it from the other, and always ship with tracking when selling on eBay.
Pros: Gets you actual cash in an amount that’s probably closer to market than buylist, and if you’re lucky, above market Cons: Buyers will try to scam you, turnover is slow, the interface sucks, eBay is an obnoxious company
TCGPlayer
When you’ve got more than two or three cards to sell, TCGPlayer is often the best place to turn. Setting up a seller’s account is quite easy (no more difficult than eBay, I’d say), and it gives you access to a market that wants exactly what you’re selling. Fees are a tad on the high side but not backbreaking, the interface improves every few weeks, and you reach the most motivated customer base. Reaching an engaged customer base is especially important when you’re selling anything other than non-foil English format staples. Any foreign or odd foil cards are best sold here, as other venues either don’t allow for those items to be sold, or there’s very few people looking for them.
Turnover is also quite high relative to other venues, with Standard staples listed at TCG low often selling within minutes or hours. There’s no quicker way to turn your fresh Avacyn into cash money than selling it on TCG. Additionally, your clientele generally isn’t awful human beings. I’ve got around 500 successful sales on TCGPlayer at this point, and I think maybe one or two involved a cranky buyer.
Of course, nothing’s perfect. As mentioned, the fees aren’t ideal, especially on lower value cards. If the card is $4 or $5 or less, I generally don’t even bother to list it. It’s not that bad if you’re running a large inventory, but until you get to “this is my full time job” status, listing $.25 cards isn’t worth your time. For anything that small, you’re much better off turning to buylists. You’re also represented as a store, not just a dude with a card. This means the burden of customer service is squarely on your shoulders. List a card at $.90 instead of $9.00? It’s on you to eat that and put the card in the mail anyways. You need to ship in a reasonable amount of time, and you’re on the hook to cover the return if your customer decides they don’t want the card.
Perhaps the worst part of selling on TCG is the “race to the bottom” syndrome. With private individuals able to sell on TCG these days, everyone and their brother is listing the cards they cracked at the prerelease or wherever for sale. Since everyone wants their cards to actually sell rather than languish, they will price it at the lowest current market price, or even a few cents lower than that. Unlike SCG, which can say “we’re charging $10 for this card and that’s that,” the TCG price on newer cards just keeps dropping and dropping, often until it’s nearly at parity with buylist prices. This doesn’t happen as much with older cards that don’t have new supply entering the market, but you’ll definitely experience this with newer cards.
Quick aside: If you’re planning on using the cash from your card sale to buy more cards, I’d recommend making a point to check the card’s value against PucaTrade first. For instance, the cheapest Avacyn on TCG right now is $41.75. If you sold at that price, you’d pay 11% + $.50 in fees. (I’m excluding shipping because you pay that on PucaTrade as well.) Overall, you’re putting $36.66 in your pocket. That’s good for roughly 8 Prairie Streams. Over on PucaTrade, sending someone an Avacyn will net you 4,738 points, and Prairie Streams are 471 each. That means you can pick up 10 Streams for one Avacyn instead of 8.
This is only one example, and you probably don’t want 8 or 10 Prairie Streams anyways. The point to consider is that, because the TCG market and the PucaTrade market function similarly, but not identically, sometimes you can get more value out of a specific card in one place than another. If you’re planning on funneling all the proceeds back into cards anyways, it pays to do some quick math and figure out which will get you more cardboard for your trouble. This works in the other direction too — oftentimes it’s a better return to sell the card on TCG than it is to send it on PucaTrade. It changes on a card-by-card basis.
If you’re a mid-level seller, TCG is often your best bet. The time requirement is more easily managed than trying to sell everything locally. Returns are solid, and reaching the widest market possible for obscure cards is appreciated. In general, I’d say that TCG, along with buylisting, are the two best options for anyone selling more than one or two cards.
Pros: You reach your widest market, get to sell at retail prices or close to them, and your buyers find you, rather than you finding them. Cons: Fees could be better, you take on more responsibility as a seller here than elsewhere, payments are made on a scheduled timeframe, can’t provide photos of non-NM cards
Sleeving
You’ve chosen where to sell your cards, and you’ve hooked a sucker. They agreed to give you cash/points/blood for your cardboard. Now you’ve got to get the card to them. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t just stick a stamp on the card and go with that.
I’m sure it’ll ship.
Start by putting the card in a sleeve. I use leftover, play-grade sleeves for between one and three cards, and penny sleeves for four cards or more. Sleeves that you’ve been using awhile on your Standard deck and need to be replaced are great shipping sleeves. You should also be saving the sleeves and toploaders that the cards you buy come in, so that you can recycle those.
I use generic penny sleeves available at any card store or Amazon, and there are larger ones out there that are great for holding 10 or 20 cards at a time. They’ll come in handy when shipping to buylists. Finally, here are some solid toploaders. They’re standard fare, and exactly what you’d expect them to be. If you’re going to be shipping any amount of cards greater than zero, you’ll want spare sleeves and toploaders.
Normal Sleeve
Penny Sleeve
Toploader
If you’re shipping one to three cards, put them in a normal sleeve. If it’s four cards, put them in the penny sleeve. More than four cards and you’re using a second toploader. Once you’ve got them sleeved, into the toploader they go. Put them in upside down if possible, though depending on the sleeve and toploader, this may be too tight a fit. If you reach the point that you’re looking for another object to hammer the cards into the loader, perhaps reconsider your strategy.
Once you’ve got the cards in the loader, we need to seal it. I like to use a small memo pad and cut the sheets in half. If it’s a TCG order, I’ll write out the order number, what I’m sending, and my store name/Twitter handle. If it’s a PucaTrade card, I’ll write the trade number on the slip. If it’s eBay, I’ll write a derogatory message insulting the customer’s choice of card. For TCG orders specifically, I opt to use this rather than a packing slip. The default packing slips that TCG provides are garbage because the seller (as of April ‘16) isn’t immediately identifiable, and frankly, it’s a huge waste of paper. Go green and keep it small!
Chicken scratch optional.
Adhere your scotch tape to the bottom of the paper, and then use the rest of the strip of tape to seal the loader’s opening. This keeps the loader closed in transit while making sure that A. your recipient looks at who sent the card while it’s actually in their hand, rather than referring to the discarded packaging, and B. they can actually get the tape off the loader without potentially damaging the card.
Pull-tab packing slip
Make sure you don’t just stick tape over the opening of the loader. It can be nearly impossible to get it off, and will result in the recipient using scissors or a knife to cut open the loader, possibly damaging the card. Also, make sure you include the PucaTrade number somewhere inside the envelope! A PWE with a PucaTrade number written on the outside is asking to be stolen, since if the person recognizes the number, they’ll also know that they can pocket the letter and nobody on either end will be able to do anything about it. And don’t forget the number entirely either. While you’re just sending a single foil Wastes to that guy, he’s currently receiving six of them, and if yours doesn’t have a trade number inside, how is he supposed to know who it was from? Don’t make people do homework to figure out where a card came from.
If there are more than four cards in a sleeve, such as when buylisting and using the larger penny sleeves, I’ll start by sealing the sleeve itself with tape. Make sure to fold one end, so it’s easily peeled off, and pinch it shut, so that the cards don’t bump into the sticky tape in transit. Then, I’ll tape the sleeve to the outside of the loader for rigidity and protection. I may tape another loader over it as well if the cards are a little more valuable.
Make sure the cards won’t hit the sticky surfaceWhen shipping more than four cards
You can’t do this if you’re putting the cards in a PWE, but if you’re mailing that many cards, it should probably be in a bubble mailer anyways.
When buylisting more than 10 or 15 cards, simply stick them in the larger sleeves, tape the sleeves shut as outlined above, and toss those into a bubble mailer. As long as none of the cards are exceptionally valuable, I wouldn’t worry about them getting damaged.
As an alternative to taping any sleeves or loaders shut, you can always try team bags. You’ll see these most frequently when you order from larger, more established stores. I haven’t used them myself yet, but I’ve never had a problem when receiving cards packaged inside them. As long as they aren’t so expensive as to be prohibitive, I’m game.
Whatever you do, on behalf of everyone who has ever received a Magic card in the mail, I beg of you, please don’t attempt to suffocate the loader with tape. Don’t seal the entire opening. Don’t cross-hatch the thing with ultra-adhesive industrial grade sealant. Don’t hermetically seal it shut with tape whose edging penetrates and bonds to the loader’s surface, becoming one cohesive structure. It makes it a nightmare to get the cards out, and the loader either ends up with layers of tape stuck to it that can be used to identify its age akin to tree rings, or the tape is removed and the loader permanently coated with an adhesive film that attaches to any stray sleeve or card it comes in contact with. A single piece of tape, either folded over on one end or with a piece of paper attached, is all that is necessary.
For the most part, you’ll probably shipping one to two cards, and probably in a PWE. Those are easy. Stick the cards in a sleeve, the sleeve in a toploader, and tape the loader shut with a piece of paper so people know who sent it to them. One last thing: if you’re shipping in a PWE, you must use a toploader. Sandwiching the card between two commons is not going to cut it.
Packaging
Your cards are sleeved and ready to go. Now comes the pesky task of getting the card to them. What are your options?
Plain White Envelope (PWE)
PWEs are what most of your daily mail comes in. Simple, white, envelopes. They typically look like this:
I’ve been pleased with these envelopes. There’s a lot there, but if you’re selling at a decent clip, you’ll be glad to have them. They don’t spoil, so the only real cost to buying in bulk is space. If the link dies, they’re #6; 2 x 3.8 x 6.6in. Security envelopes aren’t necessary, and going any wider doesn’t get you anything you need. If you’re reaching the point where the volume of cards is enough that you need two plastic toploaders worth of cards, you should be using a bubble mailer anyways.
The industry standard among non-professional sellers is that cards under $20 go in PWEs, and anything over that is shipped in a bubble mailer. Here’s the rule of thumb: If you would be upset replacing the card, don’t ship it in a PWE. Nobody wants to replace any card, but it gets especially painful the more costly the card. At the same time, you’re weighing that against the cost of shipping the card with tracking, which as of April 2016 is $2.45. It’s not worth paying $2.45 to ship a $5 card, and it’s not worth running the risk of losing (or having claimed lost) a $50 card because you didn’t want to shell out two bucks to protect it.
Here’s an important point specific to PWEs: You can’t cheaply put any sort of tracking or insurance on them. This burns nearly every single person that sells a $20+ card the first time. They put it in the envelope, take it to the post office, and ask for tracking. After a protracted conversation, they found out that the only way to do this is going to cost like $6. This is because envelopes, in order to be tracked, can’t be sent as First Class, but rather need to be Priority Mail. Or something like that. Whatever. It’s not worth it to try and put tracking on PWEs, so don’t try. It’s much more expensive than buying a bubble mailer and putting tracking on that. Bubble mailers are considered packages, not letters, and are subject to different rules.
When putting the loader into the envelope, I like to use a small piece of tape to hold the loader in place. If the loader is sliding around in transit, it may rip the envelope. Affix the tape to the edge of the loader and wrap it over the edge as so. It can be mildly annoying to receive a loader taped to the envelope, but the alternative is far more unpleasant.
Keeps the loader from ripping the envelope open
Affix the shipping address, stamp, and the return address. At this point, you may choose to then write “non-machinable” on the front and back of the envelope. This technically costs extra postage; $.22 more, to be precise. I’ve never been charged for it, but it is technically something you’re supposed to pay for. I’ll probably stop doing it because I don’t want my letters to start getting returned to me.
As for the return address, I bought a bunch of cheap address labels on VistaPrint. That company is shady as hell but the labels are cheap and after the 20th time you’ve written your own address, you’ll be glad to pay for them. You can also get a custom stamp, which is probably what I should do the next time my label supply gets low.
Bubble Mailer
When the card is worth more than $20 or there’s more than four of them, turn to bubble mailers. Here’s the latest batch I picked up, and if the link is dead, they’re 4 x 8in self-seal Bubble Mailers. You can comfortably get about two 20-ish stacks of cards into a mailer of this size, which will cover you on nearly all sales, and most small buylist orders. On the rare occasions I ship more cards than that, I’ll suck it up and drive to the post office to buy the bigger package and ship it right from there.
There’s no special tricks here. Once the card is sleeved, dump it into the mailer, seal it shut, and you’re good to go. Don’t write the address on the package though! There’s an easier way we’ll explore shortly.
Shipping
Bubble mailer in hand, how do you actually get this card to your intended target customer? If it’s an envelope, it’s easy. Affix a stamp and then leave it inside the mailbox of your home. Yes, you can do that! If you leave a stamped envelope or mailer (with appropriate labeling) in your own personal mailbox, the carrier will pick it up for you. No need to stop by an actual blue mailbox on the way to work. If your office has a mail bin that you can toss stuff into by all means, go for it, but for those of you without that luxury, leaving PWEs and even bubble mailers in your own box is a godsend.
Stamps, like envelopes, don’t expire, so if you plan on shipping cards with any regularity, don’t hesitate to pick up a few sheets and toss them in a drawer. As for bubble mailers, there’s a great at-home solution for purchasing postage.
PayPal has a function called “multi-order shipping.” Most people don’t know it’s there, but it’s fantastically helpful for those doing the type of shipping we do. It allows you, from home, to purchase and print a complete shipping label for your packages. Between buying your stamps from the grocery store and PayPal’s shipping service, you’ll never need to go to the post office again! Even better, PayPal’s service gives you a discount over paying for shipping at the post office! Yowza!
Here is the link I use to access the service. Chances are if you’re reading this more than a few months after it’s been written, the link won’t work any longer, and the site’s interface may change too, so showing you a screenshot where the link is located isn’t any more helpful. What you’re looking for is called “Multi-Order Shipping,” and you can find it after logging into PayPal.
Once you’re in, you’ll want to choose “File,” and then “Create New Orders.” We’re printing a shipping label for a bubble mailer, so I choose “Package/Thick Envelope” in the “Service Type / Package” dropdown. For only a few cards, 1oz is a fine weight. I tend to skip insured value and signature confirmation until the card is over $100, and even then I’ll only insure it. I basically don’t choose signature confirmation, because receiving a package that requires a signature can be a massive headache for the buyer. The only time I recommend requiring a signature is if the package’s value is in the neighborhood $1,000. You can’t insure a package worth that much through this interface though, so purchasing signature confirmation at home shouldn’t come up often.
Fill out the “Ship To Address” section, and then if you’ve got another label to print, “Create Another.” Otherwise, “Save and Close.”
Once you’ve got all your labels in, click the green “Print” button in the upper left corner. You’ll see a list of all your labels and the total cost. Once you’re happy with what you’ve got, “Pay and Print” will charge your PayPal account and print the labels. You even get a handy pop-up window with all the tracking numbers that you can copy/paste to the appropriate buyers, including the “Add Tracking Number” button on TCGPlayer. Quick tip: if you don’t have funds in your PayPal account, it won’t let you pay for the labels. No charging directly to your bank account here. Make sure you keep a balance in your PayPal account so that you can print labels as needed, as it can take several days to transfer funds from your bank account to PayPal.
With the labels printed, simply affix them on all four sides to the mailer using packing tape. A simple device for dispensing packing tape such as this will make your life considerably easier. Finally, I like to put the label on the side with the seam to make sure everything is nice and snug.
There you have it! How to choose where to sell your card, how to package the card(s), how to choose your shipping vessel, and the easiest way to get those to your customer. Any regular in the Magic market has had to learn their way through this process, and I’ve found these strategies work great for someone shipping more than a few cards a week but not running a full store. I’m sure those guys out there that ship hundreds of cards a week may have refined things differently than I have, and I’d be curious to hear if there are better ways than what I’ve outlined here. Happy shipping!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
The premise is simple. Much like an account for selling cards on TCGPlayer, there is a level associated with your account for selling cards to TCGPlayer, and as you complete orders and send the cards in you move up. Top stores in the TCGPlayer Direct program will have the opportunity to be part of the buylist program, and it will essentially create a marketplace for buylists similar to what is currently available. Searching for a card will bring up the marketplace with the current highest offers by stores buying the card.
