Not sure of any details or how legit this is, but it was interesting all the same. The TL;DR is that a guy was buying/selling cards online in Germany and an online retailer is suing him now.
What motive could the store possibly have for raising this? Seems like the legal fees would vastly outweigh whatever marginal gain they stand to make.
I understand WOTC going after small companies when there is a breach of their IP, but here? No idea.
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What motive could the store possibly have for raising this? Seems like the legal fees would vastly outweigh whatever marginal gain they stand to make.
Generally, it's done to create what's called a chilling effect. Small, individual sellers generally don't have the resources to fight a business in court, so this essentially just scares off competition. An individual seller would look at a case like this, think "I don't want to get taken to court too so I'll just stop selling," and that'd be their lot. It's a bad-faith business practice and obviously shady as hell, but I can't speak to whether the plaintiff in this case has any legal standing as I don't know enough about the case (having only seen one side of it) or about German law to comment.
German law distinguishes between privat sellers and commercial sellers.
Bingo. This seems like the key issue to me. If this is true then the commercial seller has a fair complaint about being potentially undercut unfairly. Next step seems like determining the threshold that separates a private seller from a commercial. Clearly the guy was buying/selling purely to try and make profit, like a commercial operation would. But how much "business" does he have to be doing to qualify?
“Buying, selling and speculating on Magic: the Gathering cards is an essential, necessary and unexceptional part of the trading card game Magic: the Gathering. Collections get expanded and improved this way.”
I'll add that I disagree with his final statement about speculating being a necessary part of the game. Up until relatively recently it was very rare, and even now I'd wager that only a tiny fraction of the player base does it at any kind of meaningful scale (i.e. beyond picking up an extra playset here or there). It is just a way for people to make money. The fact that many of them do so with the goal of expanding a collection in mind is meaningless in this context, as functionally it is no different than a part time job or any other way you generate resources to put into the hobby.
If I scalp soccer tickets to pay for my own so that I can afford to see the game that doesn't really make it an essential part of the hobby does it?
Maybe they just want to win this case to set a precedent to go after much bigger fish if they win. Those other fish might be more legal cost to fight.
I don't know what the law -does- say, but I think that in the case of Magic singles that are not available to order as a guarantee item for a retailer to vend, that you shouldn't be able to restrict private sellers like this. I don't know if Wizards will sell you a set, I don't think they will sell you one of those either. This means that all singles are inherently "used products", and if you over-regulate the market for reselling them then there can begin to become no way for individual buyers to buy from individual sellers who have the used products they need, and there's not even a way for stores to directly stock singles to increase supply and meet that demand.
I think someone selling packs should still be treated with scrutiny, even if they won them from their draft and its part of their hobby and they still take a loss and blah blah blah. Because those are items with an MSRP and a barcode and a manufacturer to order from that stores and big sellers can order and meet demand for.
I don't know anything about German law so I can't speak to that. I certainly think it's unfair for this person to face legal fees and all that here. On the other hand, I don't consider speculating a necessary part of the hobby: to the contrary, I despise the practice. Sure, speculating can be fun, but fundamentally I want to play the game and having to watch the MTG stock market is more of a hindrance than a help.
My girlfriend is a German law student, and since we were selling parts of her video game collection via Ebay and Amazon as private sellers, we looked into this stuff quite a bit. Also, this is interesting for me as well as I sell on MKM, however on a really small scale and I don't speculate.
Now, as far as I can tell, he can relax concerning the charge. His actions were not substantial damage and there is no law whatsoever prohibiting speculating by buying from a commercial seller and later reselling. And even if the judge has no knowledge of Magic cards, it is completely irrelevant if this is about Magic cards or cars. The scale is just smaller, but they should be treated the same before court. This is the civil case situation.
And then there is another side to the story: By selling in such huge quantities and by speculating on the price of cards, he isn't a private seller anymore, but a commercial one ('Gewerblich'). Against common believe there doesn't even have to be a intention to make profit. Even large enough quantities can be interpreted as being commercial. There is a rather famous case in Germany of a woman who sold on Ebay in a rather small time frame the old baby clothes of her daughter, something like 100 pieces. It was clear that the clothes had belonged to her daughter and that she couldn't make any profit out of it, since she bought most of the stuff as new, but the court still verdict that she was a commercial seller... So, he will probably has to get a commercial license for selling again and will probably be charged for tax evasion. But this is the public or common law side of that story and has nothing to do with the civil case.
tl;dr He will most likely not be charged for TCGDiscount's case, but for tax evasion.
As to why TCGDiscount did that: On reddit some argued that maybe the seller is already broke and tries to get some money out of it. Even if he loses, he just can't pay. But I don't know if this is true...
Looks like the store responded. The whole thing comes across like they just wanted a pretext for bullying Tobias while keeping a veneer of legitimacy on the whole thing. "He said, he bought chromanticores to resell them for a higher price....well, that’s acting like a reseller, and making profit was the intention. He also buys cards for speculating, so he wants to make profit out of the cards he thinks are available too cheap." A large number of Magic players do that. It's normal speculation, and yet TCGD outright compares it in a later post to robbing a bank. They're playing up some moral issue where one doesn't really exist, and I think it shows their intentions quite well.
Looks like the store responded. The whole thing comes across like they just wanted a pretext for bullying Tobias while keeping a veneer of legitimacy on the whole thing. "He said, he bought chromanticores to resell them for a higher price....well, that’s acting like a reseller, and making profit was the intention. He also buys cards for speculating, so he wants to make profit out of the cards he thinks are available too cheap." A large number of Magic players do that. It's normal speculation, and yet TCGD outright compares it in a later post to robbing a bank. They're playing up some moral issue where one doesn't really exist, and I think it shows their intentions quite well.
The problem here is many of the people this Reddit post got to were Americans. There's no law here prohibiting our ability to do so. Sure, if we start making enough money, we get taxation on our incomes from this kind of selling, but it's not illegal at all.
In Germany, however, there are laws defining the difference between a private seller and a company seller. The problem here lies that TCGD is proclaiming that the amount of money and cards Tobias is selling is enough to warrant him as more than a private seller, and he should therefore have to follow the practices of a company. However, since Tobias is claiming that he is only a private seller, despite the amount of cards he is selling (and yes, he was selling a lot of cards), he should only have to follow the rules of a private seller. Germany doesn't have the same capitalist laws Americans or Canadians do. They have a much more strict and defined role you have to play, and if you go beyond a certain measure, you have to follow the rules. I honestly side with TCGD now that I've looked into this a bit more, because while they're easily wrong from a morals standpoint, they are in a much better position legally. Tobias, in Germany, is doing the equivalent of tax evasion for Americans. However, since the law doesn't well cover things like selling cards online, it remains to be seen how a judge can rule on this case. In any case, TCGD suing seems wrong, yes, and while I'm sure there's a much less extreme route of all things, TCGD has their right of doing so. It's not the same laws many of us who saw and commented on that thread are accustomed to.
The way I see it is that there's a difference between doing something legal and doing right. TCGD's in the same space as patent trolls and the like: Acting legally, but also being colossal jerks, especially since they're almost certainly not going to go hunting around for the other such sellers on MKM to turn them in despite that bit of "it's about transparency and fair and honest competition" self-aggrandization (and I think this fact speaks to TCGD's intentions quite clearly here). The more attention one draws to their altruism, the less actual altruism there is in one's actions. I just want to know what their real motivation is for this instead of the PR spiel they gave.
In any event, while TCGD will probably win the legal battle, I can't say in good conscience that I could ever side with them.
I don't really support the extent or even really what TCGD are doing. I just know that they're the side to win. Which really does suck, but Tobias just stirred a pot for no reason by trying to tell Americans about what was going on when German law clearly says Tobias is in the wrong. The only thing I'm rather angry about is the amount of hate that has come about for a company that hasn't really done anything wrong. Is it moral? God no, and if this was in America, I'd be happy to watch them fail. But it's Germany, and legally, TCGD is in the right. The only fault here was bringing this to light for countries that don't have the same laws because everyone will substitute the set of rules they know instead of the ones actually in play.
Honestly, I am on TCGD's side. No matter what some people here believe, speculating in terms of just buying and immediately reselling without the cards ever being used by you is what a professional seller does. Yes, maybe everybody is doing it on a small scale, but that's also not what Tobi did. Daily sales and a stock almost larger than a small shop can be considered reasonably as commercial selling, so he just needs to declare it.
By the way, all the fines handed to him are for the courts and such, TCGD won't see a single cent of that.
I'll add that I disagree with his final statement about speculating being a necessary part of the game. Up until relatively recently it was very rare, and even now I'd wager that only a tiny fraction of the player base does it at any kind of meaningful scale (i.e. beyond picking up an extra playset here or there). It is just a way for people to make money. The fact that many of them do so with the goal of expanding a collection in mind is meaningless in this context, as functionally it is no different than a part time job or any other way you generate resources to put into the hobby.
If I scalp soccer tickets to pay for my own so that I can afford to see the game that doesn't really make it an essential part of the hobby does it?
Totally agree with you there, since you cannot shortsell MTG cards there is also hardly any way to influence the price downwards. So speculating mostly increases the price, unless you buy a lot of cards for high and sell them for much lower, or open packs and sell them lower...
Even if TCGD is right, the way they immediately decided to try and extort money off of him is poor business practice. This is why it's hard to sympathize with TCGD's case, and why it's easy to take Tobi's side. They are right in that Tobi should be more clear about his position. If he, according to German law, does carry over into professional seller territory, he should register himself as such. I do think a simple letter at first - didn't need to go immediately through the legal channels - could've sorted that right out. Instead, TCGD chose to immediately hang fines over his head and came in guns blazing.
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My Commander decks:
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
No matter what some people here believe, speculating in terms of just buying and immediately reselling without the cards ever being used by you is what a professional seller does. Yes, maybe everybody is doing it on a small scale, but that's also not what Tobi did. Daily sales and a stock almost larger than a small shop can be considered reasonably as commercial selling, so he just needs to declare it.
The question then becomes what the distinction is between a private seller who dabbles in speculation and a business. Is it a specific revenue threshold? A specific amount of stock? A certain number of sales per day/week/month/year? "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" isn't really conducive to a healthy marketplace when someone in a similar situation to Tobias also gets hammered because of this. All it does is make sellers in a similar spot worry that they might be next. Hence why I see TCGD acting as a bully despite them doing the legal thing (their sanctimonious attitude doesn't help my opinion of them either). They singled a person out and in so doing set what could be a very ugly precedent.
They already have some kind of threshold on MKM, you can't buy more than 2 playsets of each card per seller. Apparently that wasn't in effect when he bought his 20 Chromanticores at once, nonetheless that's quite a high number for a rare card for private use.
Maybe there will be specific ceiling after this case gets through the courts, who knows. The playset rule should make it hard now anyway to speculate within MKM, since transport costs will eat your revenue.
if he would be telling the whole story, there would be no doubt about anything
and this this isnt the case, he doesnt tell the whole story
there is so much he could have done to prove his claims, yet he didnt
instead he decided to bring his girlfriend into this and blaiming TCGDiscount that she cant sleep anymore.
and then he goes on to milk money from total strangers that dont even understand the german laws and thus cant even know why what TCGDiscount did is totally legit
Yeah, the GoFundMe was just the last straw. Dunno what this guy is up to but I don't really care. It's all in Germany anyways, which some people can't seem to grasp. It has little bearing to what is going on in the States.
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Not sure of any details or how legit this is, but it was interesting all the same. The TL;DR is that a guy was buying/selling cards online in Germany and an online retailer is suing him now.
Thoughts?
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I understand WOTC going after small companies when there is a breach of their IP, but here? No idea.
u/ThisRedRock
Generally, it's done to create what's called a chilling effect. Small, individual sellers generally don't have the resources to fight a business in court, so this essentially just scares off competition. An individual seller would look at a case like this, think "I don't want to get taken to court too so I'll just stop selling," and that'd be their lot. It's a bad-faith business practice and obviously shady as hell, but I can't speak to whether the plaintiff in this case has any legal standing as I don't know enough about the case (having only seen one side of it) or about German law to comment.
Bingo. This seems like the key issue to me. If this is true then the commercial seller has a fair complaint about being potentially undercut unfairly. Next step seems like determining the threshold that separates a private seller from a commercial. Clearly the guy was buying/selling purely to try and make profit, like a commercial operation would. But how much "business" does he have to be doing to qualify?
“Buying, selling and speculating on Magic: the Gathering cards is an essential, necessary and unexceptional part of the trading card game Magic: the Gathering. Collections get expanded and improved this way.”
I'll add that I disagree with his final statement about speculating being a necessary part of the game. Up until relatively recently it was very rare, and even now I'd wager that only a tiny fraction of the player base does it at any kind of meaningful scale (i.e. beyond picking up an extra playset here or there). It is just a way for people to make money. The fact that many of them do so with the goal of expanding a collection in mind is meaningless in this context, as functionally it is no different than a part time job or any other way you generate resources to put into the hobby.
If I scalp soccer tickets to pay for my own so that I can afford to see the game that doesn't really make it an essential part of the hobby does it?
I don't know what the law -does- say, but I think that in the case of Magic singles that are not available to order as a guarantee item for a retailer to vend, that you shouldn't be able to restrict private sellers like this. I don't know if Wizards will sell you a set, I don't think they will sell you one of those either. This means that all singles are inherently "used products", and if you over-regulate the market for reselling them then there can begin to become no way for individual buyers to buy from individual sellers who have the used products they need, and there's not even a way for stores to directly stock singles to increase supply and meet that demand.
I think someone selling packs should still be treated with scrutiny, even if they won them from their draft and its part of their hobby and they still take a loss and blah blah blah. Because those are items with an MSRP and a barcode and a manufacturer to order from that stores and big sellers can order and meet demand for.
That's my 2 cents.
Now, as far as I can tell, he can relax concerning the charge. His actions were not substantial damage and there is no law whatsoever prohibiting speculating by buying from a commercial seller and later reselling. And even if the judge has no knowledge of Magic cards, it is completely irrelevant if this is about Magic cards or cars. The scale is just smaller, but they should be treated the same before court. This is the civil case situation.
And then there is another side to the story: By selling in such huge quantities and by speculating on the price of cards, he isn't a private seller anymore, but a commercial one ('Gewerblich'). Against common believe there doesn't even have to be a intention to make profit. Even large enough quantities can be interpreted as being commercial. There is a rather famous case in Germany of a woman who sold on Ebay in a rather small time frame the old baby clothes of her daughter, something like 100 pieces. It was clear that the clothes had belonged to her daughter and that she couldn't make any profit out of it, since she bought most of the stuff as new, but the court still verdict that she was a commercial seller... So, he will probably has to get a commercial license for selling again and will probably be charged for tax evasion. But this is the public or common law side of that story and has nothing to do with the civil case.
tl;dr He will most likely not be charged for TCGDiscount's case, but for tax evasion.
As to why TCGDiscount did that: On reddit some argued that maybe the seller is already broke and tries to get some money out of it. Even if he loses, he just can't pay. But I don't know if this is true...
Whole thing makes me think TCGD is just going to say, "It's really just about ethics in selling Magic cards." Edit: Apparently they did decide to go that route.
The problem here is many of the people this Reddit post got to were Americans. There's no law here prohibiting our ability to do so. Sure, if we start making enough money, we get taxation on our incomes from this kind of selling, but it's not illegal at all.
In Germany, however, there are laws defining the difference between a private seller and a company seller. The problem here lies that TCGD is proclaiming that the amount of money and cards Tobias is selling is enough to warrant him as more than a private seller, and he should therefore have to follow the practices of a company. However, since Tobias is claiming that he is only a private seller, despite the amount of cards he is selling (and yes, he was selling a lot of cards), he should only have to follow the rules of a private seller. Germany doesn't have the same capitalist laws Americans or Canadians do. They have a much more strict and defined role you have to play, and if you go beyond a certain measure, you have to follow the rules. I honestly side with TCGD now that I've looked into this a bit more, because while they're easily wrong from a morals standpoint, they are in a much better position legally. Tobias, in Germany, is doing the equivalent of tax evasion for Americans. However, since the law doesn't well cover things like selling cards online, it remains to be seen how a judge can rule on this case. In any case, TCGD suing seems wrong, yes, and while I'm sure there's a much less extreme route of all things, TCGD has their right of doing so. It's not the same laws many of us who saw and commented on that thread are accustomed to.
In any event, while TCGD will probably win the legal battle, I can't say in good conscience that I could ever side with them.
By the way, all the fines handed to him are for the courts and such, TCGD won't see a single cent of that.
Totally agree with you there, since you cannot shortsell MTG cards there is also hardly any way to influence the price downwards. So speculating mostly increases the price, unless you buy a lot of cards for high and sell them for much lower, or open packs and sell them lower...
Chandra, Torch of Defiance - Oops! All Chandras.
Prime Speaker Zegana - Draw for Power.
Pir & Toothy - Counterpalooza.
Arcades, the Strategist - Another Brick in the Wall.
Zacama, Primal Calamity - Calamity of Double Mana.
Edgar Markov - Vampires Don't Die.
Child of Alara - Dreamcrusher.
The question then becomes what the distinction is between a private seller who dabbles in speculation and a business. Is it a specific revenue threshold? A specific amount of stock? A certain number of sales per day/week/month/year? "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" isn't really conducive to a healthy marketplace when someone in a similar situation to Tobias also gets hammered because of this. All it does is make sellers in a similar spot worry that they might be next. Hence why I see TCGD acting as a bully despite them doing the legal thing (their sanctimonious attitude doesn't help my opinion of them either). They singled a person out and in so doing set what could be a very ugly precedent.
Maybe there will be specific ceiling after this case gets through the courts, who knows. The playset rule should make it hard now anyway to speculate within MKM, since transport costs will eat your revenue.
Here you go.
Yeah, the GoFundMe was just the last straw. Dunno what this guy is up to but I don't really care. It's all in Germany anyways, which some people can't seem to grasp. It has little bearing to what is going on in the States.