Friend of mine recently got in touch with me and told me someone had bought him a shoebox full of magic cards for $800. I told him I very highly doubted it was worth even 1/4 of that. Just finished looking through it and this was what I came up with (all number close, but approximate)
860 lands
1090 commons
340 uncommons
21 Rares (all worth no more than $1)
All from the previous block, as well as M13 and M14.
Why would someone who obviously doesn't know the value of the cards spend $800 on them?! If someone was like, "Hey I've got a hot deal on these collectible cards. They're worth a ton, but I'll sell 'em to you for just $20 because I need the cash!" That's worth a gamble. Replace $20 with $800 and you've got to be kidding me! Who would just drop that kind of money on an unknown box of cards?
I'm sorry...but if someone who knows nothing about the value of these cards pays hundreds of dollars on a box of them without doing any kind of research...they deserve what they get.
These days with phones and computers it's just too easy to look these kinds of things up.
I think $10-$15 for the box would be the top of what it's really worth. I wouldn't even pay that much for the cards personally though.
A lot of cards in a box are usually worth WAY WAY less than the single cards.
I mean, nobody would seriously buy basic lands in such high number.
If at all, you want "special" ones, and if these are Alpha/Beta Basics or Unglued/Unhinged, the value is much more realistic, but still ...
If someone just wants to get rid of lots of cards, they usually have to sell for a lot less.
Especially random commons/uncommons are worth pretty much nothing, if you find a buyer at all.
Given you want a complete set of commons/uncommons of a set, you can look up the price for such packages. They are usually quite cheap.
A complete set of rares is even fairly cheap, if it doesnt contain really high value cards like fetchlands.
Mythics vary a lot aswell, but something is expensive in every set.
That said, buying boxes with very cheap cards is rarely worth it, unless you get them tremendously cheap.
*If you buy even larger numbers of cards, its even a lot of work to simply unpack/check all the cards, so that all has to be taken into account.
Considering I am this close to just throwing away anything worth less than a dollar because I've run out of uses for commons and can't find any more ways to get rid of them, $0.
The actual value of a box like that is generally close to $15 on eBAY. If you break it down to all of it's components it actually ends up being worth about $20, but people are willing to take the "hit" monetarily just to get rid of all the cards they don't need.
Without looking through it, just knowing what you told me, I'd pay $10.
I wouldn't say someone got swindled unless they were misled though. And really who spends that much on a shoe box full of cards w/o doing at least a little bit of research first?
Unless all of those uncommons and commons were stuff like serum visions, remand, and other valuable commons and uncommons I wouldn't pay a dime for it.
Without looking through it, just knowing what you told me, I'd pay $10.
I wouldn't say someone got swindled unless they were misled though. And really who spends that much on a shoe box full of cards w/o doing at least a little bit of research first?
Bulk rares are worth $0.10 each. This lot doesn't sound like it's worth more than $10. The seller made out like a bandit.
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Friend of mine recently got in touch with me and told me someone had bought him a shoebox full of magic cards for $800. I told him I very highly doubted it was worth even 1/4 of that. Just finished looking through it and this was what I came up with (all number close, but approximate)
860 lands
1090 commons
340 uncommons
21 Rares (all worth no more than $1)
All from the previous block, as well as M13 and M14.
How much would you have paid for such a box?
Without knowing what's in the box, except that it's a little bit more than 2000 cards, I'd probably pay around $50-$100 for it if it was someone's collection.
There are a lot of other things that I factor in including how old the cards might be, and whether or not the same seller is selling similar lots.
on another note, do you know who the seller is, your friend might be able to get in touch with a lawyer and see if he can peruse some sort of fraud case.
Without looking through it, just knowing what you told me, I'd pay $10.
I wouldn't say someone got swindled unless they were misled though. And really who spends that much on a shoe box full of cards w/o doing at least a little bit of research first?
Bulk rares are worth $0.10 each. This lot doesn't sound like it's worth more than $10. The seller made out like a bandit.
Sure, seller did great. Doesn't mean someone got swindled. If seller misled the buyer then sure, but if they just asked a ridiculously high price and someone was dumb enough to pay it then that is on the buyer.
Sure, seller did great. Doesn't mean someone got swindled. If seller misled the buyer then sure, but if they just asked a ridiculously high price and someone was dumb enough to pay it then that is on the buyer.
The seller took advantage of someone's ignorance in order to get a highly inflated price. Whether that person is naive or not it still counts as swindling in my opinion, even if it is not technically stealing. You should always research stuff before you buy these days but I get the feeling that the seller must have misrepresented what they were selling in order to get that high price. Although I have never been swindled quite like that I remember trading away a couple dual lands as a kid because the person lied about their value and I've always felt pretty cheated especially when looking at the price they demand these days. That guy was definitely a swindler IMO.
Sure, seller did great. Doesn't mean someone got swindled. If seller misled the buyer then sure, but if they just asked a ridiculously high price and someone was dumb enough to pay it then that is on the buyer.
The seller took advantage of someone's ignorance in order to get a highly inflated price. Whether that person is naive or not it still counts as swindling in my opinion, even if it is not technically stealing. You should always research stuff before you buy these days but I get the feeling that the seller must have misrepresented what they were selling in order to get that high price. Although I have never been swindled quite like that I remember trading away a couple dual lands as a kid because the person lied about their value and I've always felt pretty cheated especially when looking at the price they demand these days. That guy was definitely a swindler IMO.
You might as well call most stores in the malls swindlers by that definition. Their mark-ups are insane, especially if you aren't getting your stuff on "sale" (and their sales are really their real prices for the most part). As soon as you walk out of that jewelry store with your $500 purchase you have maybe $50 in your hands. And that is even optimistic on most items that aren't heavy gold.
The title is misleading. Your friend didn't get swindled, he just chose poorly to purchase something while not properly looking at it.
To the other question: I'd pay 20$.
Copies of Monastery Swiftspear among the uncommons would help somewhat. Were there any?
I don't want that many cards hanging around, so I won't buy such a box. I recently paid $60 for a small collection that included a prerelease foil Dig Through Time and a KTK Windswept Heath among various other cards above $1, and even that was pretty poor deal in retrospect. (The non-bulk cards added up to about $60. Not terrible, but now I've got stuff that'll probably still in a trade binder for while or forever.)
In terms of cosmic balance, I guess seller-wins sales like this make up for the legendary buyer-wins stories we've all heard. One person at my LGS claims a friend of his spent $10-20 on what turned out to be roughly $20,000 worth of old cards at a yard sale. MTG prices are silly.
You might as well call most stores in the malls swindlers by that definition. Their mark-ups are insane, especially if you aren't getting your stuff on "sale" (and their sales are really their real prices for the most part). As soon as you walk out of that jewelry store with your $500 purchase you have maybe $50 in your hands. And that is even optimistic on most items that aren't heavy gold.
Sales and swindling indeed blur. Most folks trying to sell you something are trying to take advantage of you.
on another note, do you know who the seller is, your friend might be able to get in touch with a lawyer and see if he can peruse some sort of fraud case.
My ex-husband was the idiot who bought the box Eavath is talking about. He bought it as a birthday gift for a mutual friend of ours. (He bought it 2 years ago, I just recently got ahold of Eavath to check the box for our friend.) While my ex had been playing the game for many years, he wasn't up to date on values. He didn't even bother to look at any of the cards just took the seller's word for it on the amount of sets and rares in the cards. He paid $200 for the land alone.
Since we are now divorced, I just sit here and laugh at how stupid my ex was to not look at the cards. I haven't decided if I want to tell him or not. I had no say in my ex's decision to buy the box. I wouldn't have bought it.
Think in this thread someone suggested hiring a lawyer (thousands of dollars) to recover $800 and at least 3 people asked about the set and pontificated on possible value if the cards are older when the OP specifically stated the cards are from theros block and M13 and M14.
The rest are defending the actions of the seller who obviously has no sense of morals or compassion much like the people defending him.
Those cards are worth negative money since it's the kind of stuff people spend time/money to dispose of. I don't understand how you can spend $800 without any notion of the value of the purchase. You could literally gather that from a months worth of draft leftovers for free.
860 lands
1090 commons
340 uncommons
21 Rares (all worth no more than $1)
All from the previous block, as well as M13 and M14.
How much would you have paid for such a box?
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These days with phones and computers it's just too easy to look these kinds of things up.
I think $10-$15 for the box would be the top of what it's really worth. I wouldn't even pay that much for the cards personally though.
I mean, nobody would seriously buy basic lands in such high number.
If at all, you want "special" ones, and if these are Alpha/Beta Basics or Unglued/Unhinged, the value is much more realistic, but still ...
If someone just wants to get rid of lots of cards, they usually have to sell for a lot less.
Especially random commons/uncommons are worth pretty much nothing, if you find a buyer at all.
Given you want a complete set of commons/uncommons of a set, you can look up the price for such packages. They are usually quite cheap.
A complete set of rares is even fairly cheap, if it doesnt contain really high value cards like fetchlands.
Mythics vary a lot aswell, but something is expensive in every set.
That said, buying boxes with very cheap cards is rarely worth it, unless you get them tremendously cheap.
*If you buy even larger numbers of cards, its even a lot of work to simply unpack/check all the cards, so that all has to be taken into account.
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The actual value of a box like that is generally close to $15 on eBAY. If you break it down to all of it's components it actually ends up being worth about $20, but people are willing to take the "hit" monetarily just to get rid of all the cards they don't need.
I wouldn't say someone got swindled unless they were misled though. And really who spends that much on a shoe box full of cards w/o doing at least a little bit of research first?
Bulk rares are worth $0.10 each. This lot doesn't sound like it's worth more than $10. The seller made out like a bandit.
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Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)So you "literally" throw 800$ away ? ;P
Funny if you think about it that way ...
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Without knowing what's in the box, except that it's a little bit more than 2000 cards, I'd probably pay around $50-$100 for it if it was someone's collection.
There are a lot of other things that I factor in including how old the cards might be, and whether or not the same seller is selling similar lots.
Sure, seller did great. Doesn't mean someone got swindled. If seller misled the buyer then sure, but if they just asked a ridiculously high price and someone was dumb enough to pay it then that is on the buyer.
The seller took advantage of someone's ignorance in order to get a highly inflated price. Whether that person is naive or not it still counts as swindling in my opinion, even if it is not technically stealing. You should always research stuff before you buy these days but I get the feeling that the seller must have misrepresented what they were selling in order to get that high price. Although I have never been swindled quite like that I remember trading away a couple dual lands as a kid because the person lied about their value and I've always felt pretty cheated especially when looking at the price they demand these days. That guy was definitely a swindler IMO.
You might as well call most stores in the malls swindlers by that definition. Their mark-ups are insane, especially if you aren't getting your stuff on "sale" (and their sales are really their real prices for the most part). As soon as you walk out of that jewelry store with your $500 purchase you have maybe $50 in your hands. And that is even optimistic on most items that aren't heavy gold.
To the other question: I'd pay 20$.
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I don't want that many cards hanging around, so I won't buy such a box. I recently paid $60 for a small collection that included a prerelease foil Dig Through Time and a KTK Windswept Heath among various other cards above $1, and even that was pretty poor deal in retrospect. (The non-bulk cards added up to about $60. Not terrible, but now I've got stuff that'll probably still in a trade binder for while or forever.)
In terms of cosmic balance, I guess seller-wins sales like this make up for the legendary buyer-wins stories we've all heard. One person at my LGS claims a friend of his spent $10-20 on what turned out to be roughly $20,000 worth of old cards at a yard sale. MTG prices are silly.
Sales and swindling indeed blur. Most folks trying to sell you something are trying to take advantage of you.
My ex-husband was the idiot who bought the box Eavath is talking about. He bought it as a birthday gift for a mutual friend of ours. (He bought it 2 years ago, I just recently got ahold of Eavath to check the box for our friend.) While my ex had been playing the game for many years, he wasn't up to date on values. He didn't even bother to look at any of the cards just took the seller's word for it on the amount of sets and rares in the cards. He paid $200 for the land alone.
Since we are now divorced, I just sit here and laugh at how stupid my ex was to not look at the cards. I haven't decided if I want to tell him or not. I had no say in my ex's decision to buy the box. I wouldn't have bought it.
The rest are defending the actions of the seller who obviously has no sense of morals or compassion much like the people defending him.
Those cards are worth negative money since it's the kind of stuff people spend time/money to dispose of. I don't understand how you can spend $800 without any notion of the value of the purchase. You could literally gather that from a months worth of draft leftovers for free.
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I probably would have paid about $150 for it
I would have paid $0 - bulk rares/uncommons/commons have no value to me. And it costs money to ship to buylist...
Did he actually pay $800, or just claim to have provided $800 worth of cards as the birthday present?