Here is my question about promo prices: why are promo prices so much lower than "regular" prices on bots? Particularly for out of print/redemption period cards?
As an example, no bots will buy the MOCS promo Natural Order for even $1, yet they will buy the Visions version for $33. (link here) Yet in classifieds you can find the NOs for $12, but only because they are recent...old promos are impossible to find.
As a player, I would always rather have these promo versions because they are cheaper, but there is no market for them.
One card I've been looking at for awhile is Ajani Vengeant, and there are multiple promo versions out there, but they are always out of stock, because like me, everyone else will buy the low cost copies.
For things that are essentially equal "game pieces", for there to be such a differential from the law of one price seems absurd. Couldn't a "promo" dealer just make their buy price higher and make a better margin? Why doesn't that happen? Is it a software issue with the common bot software?
It's a liquidity thing, there isn't enough liquidity in the market - particularly for older promos - for the market to work correctly. Most of the cheap "prices" you see on websites very old and out of stock promos aren't real prices, they're just what the product sold for the last time it was in stock.
Promos, even for recent cards, can be really hard to track down. Sometimes particular promos have very high supply and you can find them available even years down the track, others are rarer and are basically impossible to find. You should generally expect that an alt art promo (especially if full art) would be more expensive than other versions of the card, but that's not necessarily true given various supply/demand factors. Your best bet for trying to sell promos that bots won't touch is classifieds, but it's very hard to offload them due to a thin buy market too.
I'm not aware of any bot or trader which specialises in promos (or rare foils). I imagine there's a market for such a service out there, but it may be very difficult to source inventory.
mayor bot chains do actually have almost every promo (beside foil ones, which some are impossible to find, but those arnt the ones you are looking for anyways)
there are some collectors/players/traders/ specialized in foil promos as well (i am that a bit and know at leats 3-5 others)
is there actually a bot chain called "mayor bots" or did you mean major? Because if the latter, I've frequently checked around the usual suspect major bot chains for various foils, from current store promos or other ones legal in standard to older ones which are listed on eg. the mtgotraders site as cheaper than regular ones and have frequently been unable to find what I was looking for.
If there are any chains or players that specialise in foils or promos, they should do a better job of advertising as such in the classifides - I've frequently searched for various combinations of PRM, promo, foilbot etc. with no success.
Just as an example of one which I unsucessfully tried to acquire late last year - Sylvan Caryatid alt art PRM non-foil. I haven't checked recently, but it's currently listed as out of stock on mtgotraders.com and when I was searching for it last year it wasn't available anywhere. Another issue I've found you run into is that bot chains either don't buy the PRM version, or if they do they offer a bulk or regular version price, even if the promo is more valuable. Nightveil Specter is another, I have 3 regular PRM and a foil PRM, I tried to find somewhere where I could pick up the fourth non foil PRM last year and it was completely impossible (I also couldn't find anywhere that would pay a reasonable price for the foil version). Other cards that I've had difficulty finding at the time, although they may be available now becuase I haven't checked, are izzet charm, sin collector, farseek and grisly salvage which were all basically impossible to find around the time that they were released.
Also, a few examples of the other category I referred to ("fake" prices on non-alt art Promo versions, which seems to be what the OP was after) are Emrakul, Enlightened Tutor and Gaea's Cradle. At least on mtgotraders.com, these promo versions are listed at much less than the cost of their non promo versions, but are never in stock.
I find most bots don't pay over bulk rates so people don't generally sell them. Even duel deck versions of some cards are hard to find. (MTGO Traders also has some promo versions that don't even exist even though they are in the client).
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As an example, no bots will buy the MOCS promo Natural Order for even $1, yet they will buy the Visions version for $33. (link here) Yet in classifieds you can find the NOs for $12, but only because they are recent...old promos are impossible to find.
As a player, I would always rather have these promo versions because they are cheaper, but there is no market for them.
One card I've been looking at for awhile is Ajani Vengeant, and there are multiple promo versions out there, but they are always out of stock, because like me, everyone else will buy the low cost copies.
For things that are essentially equal "game pieces", for there to be such a differential from the law of one price seems absurd. Couldn't a "promo" dealer just make their buy price higher and make a better margin? Why doesn't that happen? Is it a software issue with the common bot software?
Promos, even for recent cards, can be really hard to track down. Sometimes particular promos have very high supply and you can find them available even years down the track, others are rarer and are basically impossible to find. You should generally expect that an alt art promo (especially if full art) would be more expensive than other versions of the card, but that's not necessarily true given various supply/demand factors. Your best bet for trying to sell promos that bots won't touch is classifieds, but it's very hard to offload them due to a thin buy market too.
I'm not aware of any bot or trader which specialises in promos (or rare foils). I imagine there's a market for such a service out there, but it may be very difficult to source inventory.
is there actually a bot chain called "mayor bots" or did you mean major? Because if the latter, I've frequently checked around the usual suspect major bot chains for various foils, from current store promos or other ones legal in standard to older ones which are listed on eg. the mtgotraders site as cheaper than regular ones and have frequently been unable to find what I was looking for.
If there are any chains or players that specialise in foils or promos, they should do a better job of advertising as such in the classifides - I've frequently searched for various combinations of PRM, promo, foilbot etc. with no success.
Just as an example of one which I unsucessfully tried to acquire late last year - Sylvan Caryatid alt art PRM non-foil. I haven't checked recently, but it's currently listed as out of stock on mtgotraders.com and when I was searching for it last year it wasn't available anywhere. Another issue I've found you run into is that bot chains either don't buy the PRM version, or if they do they offer a bulk or regular version price, even if the promo is more valuable. Nightveil Specter is another, I have 3 regular PRM and a foil PRM, I tried to find somewhere where I could pick up the fourth non foil PRM last year and it was completely impossible (I also couldn't find anywhere that would pay a reasonable price for the foil version). Other cards that I've had difficulty finding at the time, although they may be available now becuase I haven't checked, are izzet charm, sin collector, farseek and grisly salvage which were all basically impossible to find around the time that they were released.
Also, a few examples of the other category I referred to ("fake" prices on non-alt art Promo versions, which seems to be what the OP was after) are Emrakul, Enlightened Tutor and Gaea's Cradle. At least on mtgotraders.com, these promo versions are listed at much less than the cost of their non promo versions, but are never in stock.