Hi, has anyone on here ever sent an e-mail to an online mtg store making an offer on a bulk (not bulk bin rare, but a rare bought in bulk) rare and ended up doing some kind of deal with them? For instance: asking a store to give you a percentage off for let's say- 10 antiquities milltones? Thanks ahead of the time for any replies.
I tried to buy 12 foil Unhinged Forests at once, about a year and a half, maybe two years ago at Channelfireball. At the time they were $34 each. I asked that if I took all 12 of them would they drop their price to $31 apiece. Essentially it would have saved me $36, which would roughly have translated to me buying 11 and getting the 12th free. They turned me down, and while I wouldn't say they were rude about it, they were kind of short or curt with their tone. I thought it was a bit short-sighted on their part, the chance to make a make a customer happy, still complete an order for over $370, and the potential to move 12 cards at just one shipping cost to them, I'd think that savings would have made up a considerable part of the discount had it been granted. I ended up passing.
I have done this succesfully, but it was a while ago. 7 years to be exact. I bought a nm alpha Underground Sea and got it for 500$ + shipping, which was a fair price at the time. The store had just got the card and wanted to move it. To put this into perpective, I had picked the other three alpha Seas for 300-350$ just a month earlier.
When I contacted the store I was polite, pointed to latest ebay sales and offered over the going eBay value. For a pile of certain single card, I have few times asked the seller to make an offer for whole pile (99 AN Deserts for example) and been happily surprised to get discounts.
Selling on MCM I also offer discounts to people buying a lot from me. Usually dealers filling their stock for cards that are in demand. As long as the offers are reasonable I wont be offended, but I really dislike people agressively low balling me, so remember to be polite and have no hard feelings if they disagree to your offer. It's always easiest to get discounts on cards that are hard to move. 300 Goblin Games, 12 Judge Karmic Guides, 12 Antiquities Millstones or 42 Beta Hill Giants all should be OK.
As a last tip, it's much harder to get these dicounts over emails. If possible visit their booth during an event and talk to their manager or buyer when they have a moment. Tell them that you are collecting Aq Millstones and ask if you could buy them all. If the card is something that's hard to move, usually you don't even have to tell you want a discount, before you are offered something like 5% payback as store credit for future purchases. And yes, real discount would be much better for you as a buyer, but store credit is much better for the store. You can even use the credit to buy the following lot of cards they restock at some point.
Yes - I have done this numerous times (making an offer to an online store). However, the quantities probably have to be worth their. OP's particular example does not seem to be a high-$ transaction so feel free to try - the odds of getting a deal are probably fairly slim.
I suspect this might depend quite a bit on the store in question. Channel Fireball is huge, has a well-established brand, and likely has little motivation to haggle. For one thing, they probably expect that if you don't buy from them, someone else will at their asking price. For another, their employees are part of a large company and likely have very little autonomy to negotiate prices.
A smaller operation, where you're more likely to be dealing with the owner directly, probably has more motivation to liquidate cards quickly and build customer loyalty, as well as more leeway to cut you a deal.
Edit: This wasn't intended as a criticism of CFB. I've had nothing but great experiences with them. Just saying that negotiating is likely not worth the time for them, if you even find someone who has the ability to alter prices for you. Better to look for a business where you can come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial if you don't want to pay the listed price.
I disagree with BlackLotus. Asking for a favour from a store will at worst get you a negative reply. At best they will be happy to help your collection and find a good outlet for their stock.
Even the big stores like to deal with collectors in my personal experience and from the stories I've heard. As long as the card is not too highly sought after by general population, the collector offers the store a good outlet for a card or type of cards. I know I'm happy to keep sending a part of my paycheck to a store that has bought some cards in with me in mind.
Whenever I need some really obscure card I usually shoot an email to few stores, including SCG to ask for availlability and possible price and always gotten very positive replies, even when the items have been pretty low value items. Last time I needed few traditional Chinese P3K Mountains... (None to be found at the time)
Here it seems that OP is interested in Aq Millstones in bulk. Asking the stores to get them for you is actually pretty reasonable, if you want, say 180 copies (9 pocket binder filled on both sides), of an older card. I'm currently at almost 300 of a certain english foil mythic and around the same number of AN Deserts on top of few other collections. And getting reasonable discounts (in store credit payback or as a cheaper shipping maybe) for building customer relations is pretty normal for any store. Again I suggest to build the relations in person if possible, but they are doable over emails too.
I find it quite rude to make offers to stores. They're not car dealerships–you take their price or you find somewhere else to go buy.
Eh, it's not rude to propose a deal, but it's also not rude for them to ignore you. You got to remember, larger stores do a ton of business in very small transactions. If a staff member spends 10 minutes negotiating a deal, changing the inventory and bookkeeping systems to reflect the deal, and all that, they've lost money.
This isn't true with very high-ticket items; I would expect even big stores to feel differently if you're buying a set of Power Nine, for example. But for your run-of-the-mill orders, it's really not in their business model to haggle with the masses.
It's not rude to make an offer to a store. A store makes money by moving product, not by having product collect dust. For example, a store could have 115 Black Lotuses that are valued at $5,000 each. Storing them costs around $5 per month and let's say that they don't sell them. Even getting something like $4,000 could be well worth it. Now if people are willing to pay $5,000 every once in a while, then it is worth it to stick to that price or very close to it.
I offered starcitygames, yes, "evil" starcitygames $225 each for 3 Foil Future Sight Tarmogoyf when they were worth $250 a few years back. They did it and it really made me respect starcitygames much more. Channelfireball has done it only 1 out of the 3 times that I have asked and some were very inconsequential, like me asking for $2 off each on 3 Foil Shadowmoor Kitchen Finks. So although they've been very good in the past for me, it gives me a bit of a sour taste. On Ebay, I do it all the time. The worst that they can do is turn it down. Quite often, I still end up buying the item because the reason that I am interested in the first place is a somewhat better price than most.
(I will admit that often it isn't worth their time, because emailing customers takes time and money, to make deals with too many people. So, it is a delicate balance of giving some customers a slight deal in order to increase customer satisfaction while moving stock.)
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Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
I never got the point of haggling with the big guys. If I don't like the price of a card on SCG of CFB, I usually just buy it cheaper on TCGPlayer or Ebay. What's the point of asking for $2 off a really popular card when it's > $5 cheaper at other places?
The only times I've ever heard of stores being open to haggling was for (1) super high $$ purchases (like >$2k) or (2) incredibly hard to move product (e.g. 100 loose homelands boosters.)
I find it quite rude to make offers to stores. They're not car dealerships–you take their price or you find somewhere else to go buy.
I completely disagree. A store is a business. Any rudeness is a product of your own mind. The store has no feelings.
What often comes off as rude in making offers is lowballing a person. People seem to get offended by lowball offers.
But if you were to lowball a store in the worst case, you would get a lack of response or a No.
I expect a degree of professionalism in the transaction. When making offers at stores, you usually don't deal with the owner of the cards.
I once made an offer to SCG for a discount on a large purchase. (in the thousands of dollars)
They took it, and I'm really glad I went out of my way to offer. On the other hand, had they not been willing to negotiate with me, I simply would have walked away entirely.
It's nothing personal, it's just business.
On the other hand, because of how personally people take lowball offers is precisely why I don't trade with people.
It usually goes something like this.
What? How dare you only offer me $900 for my playset of underground seas!!! They're selling for $1200 on Starcitygames!!
-Yeah but...I can just buy a set of BGS 9 underground seas on ebay for like $1250...and the seller is reputable!!! :/
Well...that doesn't matter, we're trading by SCG prices right?
-I'm offering you cash so I don't think the SCG valuation is as applicable here.
What are you talking about? It's 1200 or no deal.
-Ah ok, thanks never mind.
I find it quite rude to make offers to stores. They're not car dealerships–you take their price or you find somewhere else to go buy.
I completely disagree. A store is a business. Any rudeness is a product of your own mind. The store has no feelings.
What often comes off as rude in making offers is lowballing a person. People seem to get offended by lowball offers.
But if you were to lowball a store in the worst case, you would get a lack of response or a No.
I expect a degree of professionalism in the transaction. When making offers at stores, you usually don't deal with the owner of the cards.
I once made an offer to SCG for a discount on a large purchase. (in the thousands of dollars)
They took it, and I'm really glad I went out of my way to offer. On the other hand, had they not been willing to negotiate with me, I simply would have walked away entirely.
It's nothing personal, it's just business.
On the other hand, because of how personally people take lowball offers is precisely why I don't trade with people.
It usually goes something like this.
What? How dare you only offer me $900 for my playset of underground seas!!! They're selling for $1200 on Starcitygames!!
-Yeah but...I can just buy a set of BGS 9 underground seas on ebay for like $1250...and the seller is reputable!!! :/
Well...that doesn't matter, we're trading by SCG prices right?
-I'm offering you cash so I don't think the SCG valuation is as applicable here.
What are you talking about? It's 1200 or no deal.
-Ah ok, thanks never mind.
In your example, there is a very large difference between cash and cards (trading vs. buying). And while its true that some people will fail to grasp that fact, most will tend to understand it, especially from the perspective of how shops offer less in cash than they do in trade 99.9% of the time. All one can do in such situations is walk away though if they don't like the deal.
I know some people who would come into the shop that I used to own/run the magic singles product/sales for, that were so used to shops with higher prices that would always negotiate or offer sales, that they would try to negotiate the price of what I was selling with me (when my prices already matched the low end of ebay buy it nows), when I refused to go lower, some would choose not to purchase (their right and choice to do so), others would shrug and buy them anyway (because my prices were lowest). It never bothered me though. In the end, it generally never hurts to ask, just try to be reasonable with your offer and you may be pleasantly surprised. I just preferred not to have to deal with sales or negotiating/haggling and priced my stuff as low as I could to begin with, most shops don't do that though, so there is usually room to haggle.
It's not rude to negotiate for anything. In fact, Americans overwhelmingly think it's rude, and don't have any concept of what's negotiable. Sometimes just asking the question is enough to lower the price.
Sometimes the price is the price, but many many times stores will give people a break to move some type of product.
That said, if you ask and the store declines, then you should likely move on. I wouldn't get offended if the store declined my offer, but I would still be happy to make other offers to that store.
I never got the point of haggling with the big guys. If I don't like the price of a card on SCG of CFB, I usually just buy it cheaper on TCGPlayer or Ebay. What's the point of asking for $2 off a really popular card when it's > $5 cheaper at other places?
The only times I've ever heard of stores being open to haggling was for (1) super high $$ purchases (like >$2k) or (2) incredibly hard to move product (e.g. 100 loose homelands boosters.)
Actually their price was the same as the Ebay price at the time. I, myself, was shocked to see this. But it also made me realize that sometimes a store actually has prices cheaper than Ebay or tcgplayer. Since then, I've found an estimated 5% of cards can be cheaper if you have the time to check several online stores.
Since SCG sold them to me for a $25 discount per foil fs Goyf, it ended up being a better deal than Ebay. Also I only saw sellers with no more than 1 of the card, so I really didn't want to haggle with 3 different sellers. (although the 4th one was bought on Ebay after a slight haggle)
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When I contacted the store I was polite, pointed to latest ebay sales and offered over the going eBay value. For a pile of certain single card, I have few times asked the seller to make an offer for whole pile (99 AN Deserts for example) and been happily surprised to get discounts.
Selling on MCM I also offer discounts to people buying a lot from me. Usually dealers filling their stock for cards that are in demand. As long as the offers are reasonable I wont be offended, but I really dislike people agressively low balling me, so remember to be polite and have no hard feelings if they disagree to your offer. It's always easiest to get discounts on cards that are hard to move. 300 Goblin Games, 12 Judge Karmic Guides, 12 Antiquities Millstones or 42 Beta Hill Giants all should be OK.
As a last tip, it's much harder to get these dicounts over emails. If possible visit their booth during an event and talk to their manager or buyer when they have a moment. Tell them that you are collecting Aq Millstones and ask if you could buy them all. If the card is something that's hard to move, usually you don't even have to tell you want a discount, before you are offered something like 5% payback as store credit for future purchases. And yes, real discount would be much better for you as a buyer, but store credit is much better for the store. You can even use the credit to buy the following lot of cards they restock at some point.
Set to default
Even on sealed merchandise, stores have established a bulk discount -- most sell packs for something more than 1/36 the price of a box.
My guess is that you will have more success with the smaller sellers than with the big sellers.
A smaller operation, where you're more likely to be dealing with the owner directly, probably has more motivation to liquidate cards quickly and build customer loyalty, as well as more leeway to cut you a deal.
Edit: This wasn't intended as a criticism of CFB. I've had nothing but great experiences with them. Just saying that negotiating is likely not worth the time for them, if you even find someone who has the ability to alter prices for you. Better to look for a business where you can come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial if you don't want to pay the listed price.
Rancored Elf will cancel your order if prices go up. Read about him and other shady vendors here.
My Trade Thread!
Even the big stores like to deal with collectors in my personal experience and from the stories I've heard. As long as the card is not too highly sought after by general population, the collector offers the store a good outlet for a card or type of cards. I know I'm happy to keep sending a part of my paycheck to a store that has bought some cards in with me in mind.
Whenever I need some really obscure card I usually shoot an email to few stores, including SCG to ask for availlability and possible price and always gotten very positive replies, even when the items have been pretty low value items. Last time I needed few traditional Chinese P3K Mountains... (None to be found at the time)
Here it seems that OP is interested in Aq Millstones in bulk. Asking the stores to get them for you is actually pretty reasonable, if you want, say 180 copies (9 pocket binder filled on both sides), of an older card. I'm currently at almost 300 of a certain english foil mythic and around the same number of AN Deserts on top of few other collections. And getting reasonable discounts (in store credit payback or as a cheaper shipping maybe) for building customer relations is pretty normal for any store. Again I suggest to build the relations in person if possible, but they are doable over emails too.
Set to default
Eh, it's not rude to propose a deal, but it's also not rude for them to ignore you. You got to remember, larger stores do a ton of business in very small transactions. If a staff member spends 10 minutes negotiating a deal, changing the inventory and bookkeeping systems to reflect the deal, and all that, they've lost money.
This isn't true with very high-ticket items; I would expect even big stores to feel differently if you're buying a set of Power Nine, for example. But for your run-of-the-mill orders, it's really not in their business model to haggle with the masses.
I offered starcitygames, yes, "evil" starcitygames $225 each for 3 Foil Future Sight Tarmogoyf when they were worth $250 a few years back. They did it and it really made me respect starcitygames much more. Channelfireball has done it only 1 out of the 3 times that I have asked and some were very inconsequential, like me asking for $2 off each on 3 Foil Shadowmoor Kitchen Finks. So although they've been very good in the past for me, it gives me a bit of a sour taste. On Ebay, I do it all the time. The worst that they can do is turn it down. Quite often, I still end up buying the item because the reason that I am interested in the first place is a somewhat better price than most.
(I will admit that often it isn't worth their time, because emailing customers takes time and money, to make deals with too many people. So, it is a delicate balance of giving some customers a slight deal in order to increase customer satisfaction while moving stock.)
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)The only times I've ever heard of stores being open to haggling was for (1) super high $$ purchases (like >$2k) or (2) incredibly hard to move product (e.g. 100 loose homelands boosters.)
I completely disagree. A store is a business. Any rudeness is a product of your own mind. The store has no feelings.
What often comes off as rude in making offers is lowballing a person. People seem to get offended by lowball offers.
But if you were to lowball a store in the worst case, you would get a lack of response or a No.
I expect a degree of professionalism in the transaction. When making offers at stores, you usually don't deal with the owner of the cards.
I once made an offer to SCG for a discount on a large purchase. (in the thousands of dollars)
They took it, and I'm really glad I went out of my way to offer. On the other hand, had they not been willing to negotiate with me, I simply would have walked away entirely.
It's nothing personal, it's just business.
On the other hand, because of how personally people take lowball offers is precisely why I don't trade with people.
It usually goes something like this.
What? How dare you only offer me $900 for my playset of underground seas!!! They're selling for $1200 on Starcitygames!!
-Yeah but...I can just buy a set of BGS 9 underground seas on ebay for like $1250...and the seller is reputable!!! :/
Well...that doesn't matter, we're trading by SCG prices right?
-I'm offering you cash so I don't think the SCG valuation is as applicable here.
What are you talking about? It's 1200 or no deal.
-Ah ok, thanks never mind.
In your example, there is a very large difference between cash and cards (trading vs. buying). And while its true that some people will fail to grasp that fact, most will tend to understand it, especially from the perspective of how shops offer less in cash than they do in trade 99.9% of the time. All one can do in such situations is walk away though if they don't like the deal.
I know some people who would come into the shop that I used to own/run the magic singles product/sales for, that were so used to shops with higher prices that would always negotiate or offer sales, that they would try to negotiate the price of what I was selling with me (when my prices already matched the low end of ebay buy it nows), when I refused to go lower, some would choose not to purchase (their right and choice to do so), others would shrug and buy them anyway (because my prices were lowest). It never bothered me though. In the end, it generally never hurts to ask, just try to be reasonable with your offer and you may be pleasantly surprised. I just preferred not to have to deal with sales or negotiating/haggling and priced my stuff as low as I could to begin with, most shops don't do that though, so there is usually room to haggle.
Sometimes the price is the price, but many many times stores will give people a break to move some type of product.
That said, if you ask and the store declines, then you should likely move on. I wouldn't get offended if the store declined my offer, but I would still be happy to make other offers to that store.
Actually their price was the same as the Ebay price at the time. I, myself, was shocked to see this. But it also made me realize that sometimes a store actually has prices cheaper than Ebay or tcgplayer. Since then, I've found an estimated 5% of cards can be cheaper if you have the time to check several online stores.
Since SCG sold them to me for a $25 discount per foil fs Goyf, it ended up being a better deal than Ebay. Also I only saw sellers with no more than 1 of the card, so I really didn't want to haggle with 3 different sellers. (although the 4th one was bought on Ebay after a slight haggle)
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)