I apologize in advance if I've not put enough effort into searching for this information if its readily and easily accessible in the forums.
I've been inactive in playing for 2+ years now and I'm getting out of magic. I'm thinking about selling off my collection. I have a relatively decent amount of time to devote to sorting and selling but also don't know what the current landscape is like for buying/selling cards.
I've used Cardshark in the past to sell, i've also done ebay. I'm wondering though if it makes more sense to use a forum here on MTGsalvation to advertise and sell my collection. I'm planning on inventorying my collection this weekend using a spreadsheet. Before I do it, is there a good template or format that would be advantageous to use? I ask in case there is some sort of tool or method that i can that i can automate looking up card values.
I'm familiar with MOTL, are their Price lists helpful or misguided?
Do you recommend any other sort of price list?
At this point i've only really held onto rares probably ~2500+, and i have stuff from Revised and forward. I've also kept my important useful commons etc. I have playsets of Jaces, fetches, and quite a few duals etc. No Alpha/Beta or P9. Lots of EDH staples. I only share that information to give you a rough estimate of what i'm dealing with here. Also, how important is it to list the condition of every card? id say all my cards are in good or better with the majority of them at NM. I don't really want to spend the time to go through condition of 2500+ cards. Is there a price value of an individual card you'd recommend that i make a cut off for determining the condition?
I wouldn't worry about conditions at all initially, not worth the time. People who want to know will ask you and you can check when there's actually an offer on the table, less wasted time for you. I believe the MOTL price engine has stopped working, but if not, going by those prices is probably a quick way to liquidate your collection. Depends on your timeframe too, I guess. You can use tcgplayer, deckbox or whatnot to parse prices as well. Good luck with your listing!
Thanks for replying. I appreciate the tip on MOTL.
I'm probably not interested in liquidating the cards, but would move them all at a discount in bulk if there is a good way to do it.
However, i am most interested if there is a way i can pull the TCG player prices, Deckbox, SCG prices etc as a database or spreadsheet. Is there a way to get a database of their prices? From there i could do some simple look up tables etc to value my collection.
there are simply too many cards to do an individual search on their websites.
I believe there are sites out there that do this, not sure which ones since I've never used them. Also not sure if they can distinguish between editions but some price on a card is better than none I guess.
You might try the TCG Collection feature (under My Account). It doesn't have the ability to accept a bulk upload, but since you have to type the cards up once anywhere, you could do that on the tool pretty easily with the search function and drop downs. From there, all cards are priced and it would be pretty trivial to copy and paste into Excel if desired. I believe you can also share your collection so others can view.
One drawback is that it doesn't record condition. Also, please note that the low and average prices include BOTH LP and NM copies. And that there is about 10 pct sales cost, so anyone buying directly from you would likely want to pay no more than 90 pct of the lowest price.
Deckbox was asked to stop using TCG as their pricing scheme when they went live as a sales site, not just for trades. Now they are using an "average" pulled from a variety of places. I love Deckbox for keeping track of my collection, but I would not currently use their pricing on my cards. Just use TCG/SCG/eBay and find your averages.
You're probably not going to sell (much, quickly) at tcglow because...tcgplayer offers free shipping for sales after a certain amount. So there isn't much incentive to shop from your list vs getting cards from tcgplayer directly.
If you want to move all of your cards at a discount in bulk, and you don't want to take the time to actually sort and grade them, then your best option is to put them up as a single lot on eBay and auction the collection off. Use TCG low to get a rough idea of how much the cards are worth (you could use mid if you graded and new they were generally NM), then set a reserve price at 50% of that value. You probably won't get much more than 50% of what the collection is worth, but that's the price you pay for not doing the work to sell each card individually.
If you want the most for your collection relatively quickly this is what I would do.
First I would sort your collection by set and color. You don't have to sort further at this point. Then I would look to selling to your smaller cards and casual cards to an on-line shop buylist. Use two or more. I have been using two shops, Cardkingdom and Toad and Troll and have been happy with them Cardkingdom pays very fast and Toad and Troll many times beat ebay prices for foils and casual cards. Going through a few buylst you will quickly learn what is bulk and what is not. Now you have left is your high end cards and bulk. Sell the bulk rares to a buylist or ebay them. Bulk un/commons that are draft cards, throw away or give to someone.
With the high end cards.. sell them here.. MOTL, ebay or if possible at a big event. Don't expect to get 100% retail on your high cards. If you get 80% when you are cashing out you are doing fine.
Selling your collection to a local buyer isn't the best if you want to max out. A local buyer will more than likely will value anything under $5.00 as zero and give you a quote for your collection at 80% of your high end cards.
There are pros and cons of every method of selling. A random Joe like me isn't going to pay full price on a collection full of cards I don't care about. I'd be interested in Jaces and Fetches and whatever, but once you start adding on $$$ for random fifty cent rares, and pricing every uncommon at ten cents, I'm going to lose interest. A buyer does not want to be nickel and dimed, especially if they're paying several thousand dollars.
That could be an argument to just buylist all of your cards. Big stores have employees who will go through everything, regardless if its worth $800 or a penny, at a steady hourly rate. Their buy prices are based off their own current supply, as well as market price, so sometimes they won't pay anywhere near what you would expect for your $50 rare, but another site might. Doing it yourself to maximize your profits may make you an extra 25%, but at the cost of your own time
I'd be very, very leery of actually using tcgplayer to value a collection. Like I said before, no one is going to pay full retail for several hundred cards. tcgplayer is just going to give you a false sense of worth, especially since you are actually trying to sell - a big amount of the value is going to be padded by bulk and low-demand cards. Just don't get your hopes up too much. Take something like Scalding Tarn for example. CFB buylist is $45. TCGplayer mid is $85. But their only selling for $60 on ebay (and $66 is the lowest NM price on tcgplayer as I write this). So average is telling you one thing, but in reality, no one is going to pay more for a card than themselves can sell it for.
On that same note, you also don't want to be left with a box full of bulk. Sure, separating out all the lightning bolts and brainstorms and whathaveyou might maybe you an extra $50, but it's those kinds of cards that people would rather find themselves in a box, rather than just having a box full of useless cardboard. Selling staples yourself is the easy part, but it's one you start getting to cards with value, but no actual demand, is when you start getting problems. Having a playset of a $1 rare is going to be a hard sell for any meaningful amount of money, so they usually just get lumped in with the rest.
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I apologize in advance if I've not put enough effort into searching for this information if its readily and easily accessible in the forums.
I've been inactive in playing for 2+ years now and I'm getting out of magic. I'm thinking about selling off my collection. I have a relatively decent amount of time to devote to sorting and selling but also don't know what the current landscape is like for buying/selling cards.
I've used Cardshark in the past to sell, i've also done ebay. I'm wondering though if it makes more sense to use a forum here on MTGsalvation to advertise and sell my collection. I'm planning on inventorying my collection this weekend using a spreadsheet. Before I do it, is there a good template or format that would be advantageous to use? I ask in case there is some sort of tool or method that i can that i can automate looking up card values.
I'm familiar with MOTL, are their Price lists helpful or misguided?
Do you recommend any other sort of price list?
At this point i've only really held onto rares probably ~2500+, and i have stuff from Revised and forward. I've also kept my important useful commons etc. I have playsets of Jaces, fetches, and quite a few duals etc. No Alpha/Beta or P9. Lots of EDH staples. I only share that information to give you a rough estimate of what i'm dealing with here. Also, how important is it to list the condition of every card? id say all my cards are in good or better with the majority of them at NM. I don't really want to spend the time to go through condition of 2500+ cards. Is there a price value of an individual card you'd recommend that i make a cut off for determining the condition?
I appreciate any help, thanks.
I'm probably not interested in liquidating the cards, but would move them all at a discount in bulk if there is a good way to do it.
However, i am most interested if there is a way i can pull the TCG player prices, Deckbox, SCG prices etc as a database or spreadsheet. Is there a way to get a database of their prices? From there i could do some simple look up tables etc to value my collection.
there are simply too many cards to do an individual search on their websites.
One drawback is that it doesn't record condition. Also, please note that the low and average prices include BOTH LP and NM copies. And that there is about 10 pct sales cost, so anyone buying directly from you would likely want to pay no more than 90 pct of the lowest price.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=448210
For pricing it sounds like TCG is a reliable price guide? Sell prices Should be expected to be around TCG - Low?
If you want the most for your collection relatively quickly this is what I would do.
First I would sort your collection by set and color. You don't have to sort further at this point. Then I would look to selling to your smaller cards and casual cards to an on-line shop buylist. Use two or more. I have been using two shops, Cardkingdom and Toad and Troll and have been happy with them Cardkingdom pays very fast and Toad and Troll many times beat ebay prices for foils and casual cards. Going through a few buylst you will quickly learn what is bulk and what is not. Now you have left is your high end cards and bulk. Sell the bulk rares to a buylist or ebay them. Bulk un/commons that are draft cards, throw away or give to someone.
With the high end cards.. sell them here.. MOTL, ebay or if possible at a big event. Don't expect to get 100% retail on your high cards. If you get 80% when you are cashing out you are doing fine.
Selling your collection to a local buyer isn't the best if you want to max out. A local buyer will more than likely will value anything under $5.00 as zero and give you a quote for your collection at 80% of your high end cards.
That could be an argument to just buylist all of your cards. Big stores have employees who will go through everything, regardless if its worth $800 or a penny, at a steady hourly rate. Their buy prices are based off their own current supply, as well as market price, so sometimes they won't pay anywhere near what you would expect for your $50 rare, but another site might. Doing it yourself to maximize your profits may make you an extra 25%, but at the cost of your own time
I'd be very, very leery of actually using tcgplayer to value a collection. Like I said before, no one is going to pay full retail for several hundred cards. tcgplayer is just going to give you a false sense of worth, especially since you are actually trying to sell - a big amount of the value is going to be padded by bulk and low-demand cards. Just don't get your hopes up too much. Take something like Scalding Tarn for example. CFB buylist is $45. TCGplayer mid is $85. But their only selling for $60 on ebay (and $66 is the lowest NM price on tcgplayer as I write this). So average is telling you one thing, but in reality, no one is going to pay more for a card than themselves can sell it for.
On that same note, you also don't want to be left with a box full of bulk. Sure, separating out all the lightning bolts and brainstorms and whathaveyou might maybe you an extra $50, but it's those kinds of cards that people would rather find themselves in a box, rather than just having a box full of useless cardboard. Selling staples yourself is the easy part, but it's one you start getting to cards with value, but no actual demand, is when you start getting problems. Having a playset of a $1 rare is going to be a hard sell for any meaningful amount of money, so they usually just get lumped in with the rest.