I have a set of Tropical Island that I'm looking to get rid of. While the mid price is $215, eBay is typically seeing $160-$170 at the lowest so I'm losing roughly 25% of the trade value for every Trop I sell. I'm thinking about trading them at mid for other cards that don't see much of a difference between the sell and trade price. Any ideas?
I have a set of Tropical Island that I'm looking to get rid of. While the mid price is $215, eBay is typically seeing $160-$170 at the lowest so I'm losing roughly 25% of the trade value for every Trop I sell. I'm thinking about trading them at mid for other cards that don't see much of a difference between the sell and trade price. Any ideas?
You lose quite a bit on trade value on pretty much everything, because most people trade at TCG mid and sell at under TCG low. I can't think of anything that sells anywhere close to TCGmid, unless it's incredibly rare.
Almost every popular card is like this, i.e:
Abrupt Decay - $9.50 mid, but you'll probably only get buyers at around ~$7.
Force of Will - $97 mid, but again, probably only going to get bites or offers around $80.
TCG mid simply does not equal cash value. Even on TCG...if you sell at TCG mid you will net 11% less because of fees, more if you pay for postage. But, think of it from a buyer's perspective, do you voluntarily pay TCG mid when you could pay TCG low?
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From a buyer's perspective, there's always (haven't seen one otherwise) a diff between mid cash prices, usually sizeable when talking about large-$ cards. If you want to you can pull all the values from tcgplayer and do an analysis on which ones have the smallest % difference, but not sure that's going to be worth the time. Btw, at least 24 trops in varying conditions have sold on eBay under 125 ea within the last couple of weeks so there's a sizeable diff between 'cash' and 'mid' prices for this card.
I've done a fair number of trades and sales before and one thing I've always noticed is that duals tend to command a premium when trading and lose massive value when selling due to grading. Standard and Modern cards get better cash value since they're assumed to be NM. However, I've traded duals at 10%-20% premium above their mid prices for Standard/Modern and traded for them at those premiums, yet I could buy them for maybe 60% of those prices. That's why I made this thread- I figured someone else knew this too and had some advice to share about what "hot" Standard/Modern are best to unload right now.
Although to be honest, if I had that information I'd keep it to myself.
You're not losing any trade value! If you trade at mid, the other guy is trading at mid, so it's a wash. It's not like you can turn around and sell that LP card you traded for at TCG mid and get a TCG mid price for it; as you say, it will sell for closed to TCG low on eBay. To get TCG mid you generally either need a NM - MINT card, or you need a low-volume card that's recently spiked so everyone is around the same price (the TCG mid and low are nearly the same), or you need to be a seller with a great reputation for quality with customers willing to pay a higher price for.
But easiest to convert to cash is a card that you can easily sell, for above market. And I would say those would be Revised dual lands. While you may see a lot of playsets cheaper on eBay, remember they could be worse condition. Also check out the sold listings and I'm sure you'll find some that went for more. So scan pics of your tropical islands and list them at a price somewhere between mid and low that you've seen similar playsets actually sell for. Or put them up for auction and set a reserve price you're happy with.
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You lose quite a bit on trade value on pretty much everything, because most people trade at TCG mid and sell at under TCG low. I can't think of anything that sells anywhere close to TCGmid, unless it's incredibly rare.
Almost every popular card is like this, i.e:
Abrupt Decay - $9.50 mid, but you'll probably only get buyers at around ~$7.
Force of Will - $97 mid, but again, probably only going to get bites or offers around $80.
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Although to be honest, if I had that information I'd keep it to myself.
But easiest to convert to cash is a card that you can easily sell, for above market. And I would say those would be Revised dual lands. While you may see a lot of playsets cheaper on eBay, remember they could be worse condition. Also check out the sold listings and I'm sure you'll find some that went for more. So scan pics of your tropical islands and list them at a price somewhere between mid and low that you've seen similar playsets actually sell for. Or put them up for auction and set a reserve price you're happy with.