I wish to submit a suggestion for SCG "Advanced Search".
For the field "Sets", please implement the previous set system.
Eg. Separate the sets into their block levels or groups and then descending order, starting with the most recent Standard sets.
I'll definitely pass that along for you! If it helps, you can currently isolate your search to Standard only by using the Format field, but I can see how your suggestion would be helpful in other ways so I'll pass it along for you.
I wanted to share an experience that I have had with SCG. I am currently building EDH decks for me and my GF and just finished one for my friend over these past two weeks. Whenever I do a large order I order from both SCG and Card Kingdom. I love SP and MP cards, the money you can save on them is crazy especially if you just plan to play them. Because of this on large orders I just buy the card from whichever site is the cheapest. First of all, if the cards are of the same condition SCG is cheaper 90% of the time. Sometimes SCG will only have NM cards and CK will have sp or mp so I buy those there. SCG always takes a lot off of their SP and MP cards and their SP should honestly be rated NM 9 out of 10 times. I do not think I have ever actually gotten a MP card from them even when I chose that condition.
The main reason I am posting is because in this past week I have ordered 2 different orders from SCG and Card Kingdom each doing what I explained above. I am in California. CK is in Washington and SCG is in Virginia. On one order, SCG came 1 day before CK and on the other they arrives 2 days earlier. Both orders were ordered on Monday. I know 1 day isnt long to wait but time is everything. I can get half of the things on Amazon the same day if ordered before 11 am.
Because of this I only shopped at SCG for my third order for my friend's Rakdos EDH deck.
I wanted to share an experience that I have had with SCG. I am currently building EDH decks for me and my GF and just finished one for my friend over these past two weeks. Whenever I do a large order I order from both SCG and Card Kingdom. I love SP and MP cards, the money you can save on them is crazy especially if you just plan to play them. Because of this on large orders I just buy the card from whichever site is the cheapest. First of all, if the cards are of the same condition SCG is cheaper 90% of the time. Sometimes SCG will only have NM cards and CK will have sp or mp so I buy those there. SCG always takes a lot off of their SP and MP cards and their SP should honestly be rated NM 9 out of 10 times. I do not think I have ever actually gotten a MP card from them even when I chose that condition.
The main reason I am posting is because in this past week I have ordered 2 different orders from SCG and Card Kingdom each doing what I explained above. I am in California. CK is in Washington and SCG is in Virginia. On one order, SCG came 1 day before CK and on the other they arrives 2 days earlier. Both orders were ordered on Monday. I know 1 day isnt long to wait but time is everything. I can get half of the things on Amazon the same day if ordered before 11 am.
Because of this I only shopped at SCG for my third order for my friend's Rakdos EDH deck.
Starcitygames is the best and I fully recommend checking them out if you're going to a GP or Open to buy/sell/trade. They always have great deals on played cards and offer top dollar on cards. I had an issue that they were fully within their rights to ignore and they chose to rectify it. A+
I have been a MtG player since the game began(my DCI card says I have been a member since Sep 92'). Over the last several years I have been selling off my collection piece-meal either to friends or on EBay. I have probably made a hundred sales on Ebay of some very valuable cards and have never had a problem. No one has ever accused me of selling fake cards or lying about their condition, or anything else for that matter. I did have one customer who accused me of being rude to him in a response and left me neutral feedback. I think the actual problem was that he wasn't a native English speaker and he misinterpreted my comments to him. You are welcome to look at my EBay feedback, member name elric132.
Anyway I had gotten tired of selling cards this way. While it is true you can get a better price selling cards individually, it is also time(and effort) consuming. I decided to try selling my collection in large lots to a store or dealer. I spoke to friends and looked online for referrals. I was looking for someone both honest and able to make large purchases. I also realized selling in this manner I was going to take a hit on my return profit so I compared prospects buy lists to see who would offer the most. SCG seemed to fit the bill. From what I could find online and what I heard from friends they appeared honest. I understood they were one of the biggest online retailers of MtG (if not the biggest) so it seemed likely they would have the capitol to make large purchases. Finally in regard to their buy lists, their prices were at, or near the top among their competitors.
SCG requested I grade my cards using their online tool and place them in that order for shipping, which I did. For grading I used their card conditions page as well as a couple of other sites. Regardless, all of the sites grading criteria were almost identical and included scans/pictures of cards in each condition. You can see SCG's page here:
The cards I sent to them were roughly speaking 4 of every card in beta, minus duel lands and the power nine. Also there were only 1 of cards that had been restricted(again generally). Their offered price(using my grading) was 28,130.20$. I was fully cognizant that the total could and probably would change when they graded the cards themselves. My eyesight isn't what it used to be(I wear reading glasses), plus I expected there would be cases we simply disagreed on. In the end I expected their final offer to probably be a little lower than the one my grading had produced.
When I got their response I was shocked. Their offer was 16,923.80$. They had graded many(maybe even a majority) of the cards lower than I had. In some cases, much lower. As I already stated I expected their might be some adjustment of the total, but almost 40%? This didn't make sense to me. They had posted their grading evaluations along with notes for cards that had specific issues. Since they had possession of my cards I couldn't literally look at their results and categorically dispute them going by memory. But I had the original list with my conditions to compare it to. I looked for an extreme case where the grading was far apart and I had some memory of the card's conditions. In the lot were 4 copies of Mana Short. I had graded 3 as m/nm and 1 as sp. They had graded all 4 as mp(their system doesn't allow gradings below this) with the following note:
Please decide for yourselves how accurate their evaluation was. To be fair, one of the cards has an indentation on the back as if it was underneath something being written on. The scan does not show this, you need to hold the card at an angle to a light source to see it.
Could I have made a mistake, absolutely. But there is no way I could accept I was this far off, and on so many cards. In a nutshell their response was that every site used their own grading system. Since I had used their page for grading(as well as two others which were virtually identical) this response made no sense to me.
They were never rude to me. They were responsive to my emails and phone calls. I chose not to sell any of my cards to them and they did return them in a timely fashion.
I leave it to you to decide in regards to how honest they were, and what their intentions were.
NOTE: I am having a problem uploading the 2 scans. I am getting the message: "The file provided is too large. Please provide a file less than 1 GB." I examined the files, one is 12.3mb and the other is 11.1mb. I don't know what is happening here. If anyone has a suggested solution for this I would appreciate a response. I will post the scans as soon as I find a solution.
I wasn't able to upload the images(and I still don't know why). Here are links to the images on Imgur:
Honestly I have to agree with SCG on this one. Those cards are definitely MP (Moderately Played) condition by most strict condition guidelines. SCG in particular also is one of the most strict graders out there when it comes to making sure their cards are in the best condition possible that they sell and thusly, that they buy as well. I will admit that I have never sold cards to SCG before, however I have bought plenty of cards from them over the years, and by far SCG offers the best conditioned cards out there versus the condition they state the cards are in. And while I know it often cannot be helped with standard scans, its best not to take pictures of cards with a white background when trying to show the condition of the cards, it can make it harder to see the full extent of edge whitening on cards. In this case though there is a lot of edge whitening on those cards, and if as you said one of the cards has line indentations in it, then that would tend to automatically move it down the condition grade as a result. Its true that many buyers may not care about minor imperfections to cards, or even shrug off the condition being slightly off of what they may expect, but strict collectors, especially when it comes to older cards like alpha/beta are going to be much more picky I suppose you would say, about that sort of thing, so all the more reason why SCG would be careful in their grading.
For the pictures above, the one in the bottom left corner would be the best looking one on the overall, as it has the least edge whitening, however that bit of white above the mana symbols coupled with the edge whitening it has (Assuming no other flaws) would put it in the SP/MP category range. The others have quite a bit of edge whitening, far more than would be typically considered okay for SP conditioned cards, and thusly would push them into the MP range.
To me, a M/NM card should have zero edge wear and at the very most, only the tiniest bit of whitening at all on the edge of the card, M/NM cards should look pack fresh or close to it.
An SP card can have some edge whitening/surface scuffing, but only a small amount on the overall, many would consider it close to NM but with just enough wear to warrant the downgrade.
An MP card can have more significant edge wear, or other more significant flaws like slight edge indentations, minor creases or some noticeable but not significant shuffle wear, more surface scuffing, that sort of thing.
And of course below that is below that (HP/Damaged) will be worse and encompass most everything else.
It can be tough selling cards as a result, because though you may look at the cards and think, well honestly that doesn't look that bad, you kind of have to assume that you are dealing with picky buyers for most of your sales to avoid any condition issues, especially on higher end items. Heck, a lot of the time when I buy sealed product of various kinds, many of those cards aren't even NM/M, and I have to filter out the cards with minor flaws to them. Not everyone is as strict with conditions as I may try to be, and as SCG is, but that's part of why SCG's buy prices can be higher than most is because of how strict their grading system is. Anyhow, I wish you the best of luck with selling your beta collection, just keep in mind you may need to adjust how you determine your card conditions especially when it comes to selling to online stores and the like.
I am going to try and address your points in order.
In regards to grading. SCG posts their grading scale on their website, I posted a link to it. I also looked at 2 other websites grading scales. There didn't appear to be any difference to me. If they are "strict graders" why do their samples look the same as everyone else? Are you suggesting they don't use their own published scale? You also suggest that SCG grades older cards differently then newer cards, again there is no mention of this on their site that I could find.
I've never heard of a white background in a scan as problematic. In my own sales no one has ever complained. In addition the cards were scanned at 600dpi. You are looking at an image ~2 and a half times the size of an actual card, brightly illuminated. Any imperfections are greatly magnified under these conditions. If you had the cards in front of you, in normal lighting conditions the only card you would see any edge wear on is the one on the lower right. Lastly, please look at their image of a card with moderate border wear. If you see that wear on any card other than the one in the lower right corner, then I guess I simply disagree with you.
You list your interpretation of conditions. You are certainly entitled to have your own criteria but I don't see how they are relevant to this sale. I was selling to SCG. I used their descriptions and images to determine condition.
Finally you didn't directly mention their note: "Heavily played, major bends, edge wear". Even if I concede to your view of edge wear for sake of argument. They make 2 other claims. First, that the cards are heavily played. Please take a look at SCG's descriptions and sample images of heavily played cards. Once again, if you think those descriptions and images match those of my cards above, then again I simply disagree with you. In regards to their second claim that their are major bends I am not sure how to prove they are wrong. Beyond the indentation on the back of one card (which I readily admitted to) there are certainly no creases of any kind, and the cards lie as flat as any card I own. Not only is there no "major bending" there is no bending what so ever. If you know of some neutral party in my area (Houston, TX) that would look at the cards I would agree to a personal inspection.
As far as difficulty in selling the cards. I started playing and collecting MtG from it's inception. I have bought, sold, and traded cards, both online and in person, for 25 years and have never had even the smallest problem until this. Not even once. Again, I offer my EBay rating(elric132) as evidence of this. I have sold 80 beta dual lands, 4 beta BoP and several other valuable beta cards whose names I don't remember at the moment, on EBay. Finally, as I said above, I have also sold parts of my beta set to friends locally (including a beta P9 set). No one has ever complained and I have never had a dispute in regards to grading. After this interaction with SCG I again started selling the cards locally. I found a buyer who has since bought about 7,000$ in cards from me. Before he started buying from me I told him what had happened with SCG. At first he was incredulous. He said he had dealt with them on several occasions and never had a problem. At this point I produced the SCG evaluation list and let him look through the cards. He was stunned. He consistently couldn't understand their grading of the cards. He could offer no explanation.
I am sorry if I have come across as defensive, it wasn't my intention when I started writing this. Every time I think about this transaction with SCG I find myself getting angry. While I may not agree with your views, you were polite and reasoned in making them. I am sorry if I allowed my anger to be directed at you.
No store would ever grade the 4 Mana Short as 3 NM/M and 1 SP. Sorry to burst your bubble. I highly doubt any If this was sold on eBay and graded as NM/M and I am bidding NM/M prices on it, you would be getting an item not as described dispute and a negative feedback from me should you not resolve it. The bottom left card is badly scratched at the top right corner, and a small portion even have the black border coming off and you can see the white card stock beneath it. Fits correctly into their MP classification. The other 3 cards have enough edge wear, and surface wear to be graded as MP. I don't think this is an issue with harsh grading from Starcitygames, but an issue resulting from your incorrect grading of the 4 cards (at the very least for these 4 cards). I'm sorry if that isn't what you would want to hear, but that is the truth.
I am going to try and address your points in order.
In regards to grading. SCG posts their grading scale on their website, I posted a link to it. I also looked at 2 other websites grading scales. There didn't appear to be any difference to me. If they are "strict graders" why do their samples look the same as everyone else? Are you suggesting they don't use their own published scale? You also suggest that SCG grades older cards differently then newer cards, again there is no mention of this on their site that I could find.
I've never heard of a white background in a scan as problematic. In my own sales no one has ever complained. In addition the cards were scanned at 600dpi. You are looking at an image ~2 and a half times the size of an actual card, brightly illuminated. Any imperfections are greatly magnified under these conditions. If you had the cards in front of you, in normal lighting conditions the only card you would see any edge wear on is the one on the lower right. Lastly, please look at their image of a card with moderate border wear. If you see that wear on any card other than the one in the lower right corner, then I guess I simply disagree with you.
You list your interpretation of conditions. You are certainly entitled to have your own criteria but I don't see how they are relevant to this sale. I was selling to SCG. I used their descriptions and images to determine condition.
Finally you didn't directly mention their note: "Heavily played, major bends, edge wear". Even if I concede to your view of edge wear for sake of argument. They make 2 other claims. First, that the cards are heavily played. Please take a look at SCG's descriptions and sample images of heavily played cards. Once again, if you think those descriptions and images match those of my cards above, then again I simply disagree with you. In regards to their second claim that their are major bends I am not sure how to prove they are wrong. Beyond the indentation on the back of one card (which I readily admitted to) there are certainly no creases of any kind, and the cards lie as flat as any card I own. Not only is there no "major bending" there is no bending what so ever. If you know of some neutral party in my area (Houston, TX) that would look at the cards I would agree to a personal inspection.
As far as difficulty in selling the cards. I started playing and collecting MtG from it's inception. I have bought, sold, and traded cards, both online and in person, for 25 years and have never had even the smallest problem until this. Not even once. Again, I offer my EBay rating(elric132) as evidence of this. I have sold 80 beta dual lands, 4 beta BoP and several other valuable beta cards whose names I don't remember at the moment, on EBay. Finally, as I said above, I have also sold parts of my beta set to friends locally (including a beta P9 set). No one has ever complained and I have never had a dispute in regards to grading. After this interaction with SCG I again started selling the cards locally. I found a buyer who has since bought about 7,000$ in cards from me. Before he started buying from me I told him what had happened with SCG. At first he was incredulous. He said he had dealt with them on several occasions and never had a problem. At this point I produced the SCG evaluation list and let him look through the cards. He was stunned. He consistently couldn't understand their grading of the cards. He could offer no explanation.
I am sorry if I have come across as defensive, it wasn't my intention when I started writing this. Every time I think about this transaction with SCG I find myself getting angry. While I may not agree with your views, you were polite and reasoned in making them. I am sorry if I allowed my anger to be directed at you.
Firstly I can understand why you would be frustrated. Honestly I don't make it a point to sell to stores simply because I know I can get more selling on ebay or otherwise than I could to them, and I don't have to worry about other people's interpretation of condition when I am not there in person to be able to discuss it with them and be able to go over individual card conditions in case there is a disagreement (part of why selling locally as well can be so attractive, it allows for that sort of interaction and for both people to be able to hold the cards themselves and discuss any condition disagreements.
Secondly I took a closer look at SCG's condition guide and while I agree that my own interpretation of condition would appear to be more strict than theirs even (surprisingly enough), I also know whenever I have bought cards from them in the past, anything bought in less than NM condition always seemed to arrive a grade higher (or darned close to it) than what was purchased), so in part on that basis I have always tended to assume that they were some of the most strict graders out there to account for that sort of thing. As you say though, their condition guide is their condition guide, so that is what it is. Though perhaps part of the problem (which is why I hate condition guides that don't show 100% complete cards in the exampled conditions rather than just parts of cards to show different aspects, could be the amount of spots of edge whitening that could be where the interpretation could come into play. Also though their note said Heavily Played, they did for the purposes of the estimate put them at MP instead, so that is something to keep in mind.
The reasoning I brought up the white background really is a simple one, and that is simply that having a white background with black bordered cards tends to inadvertently hide the full effect of the edge whitening because of the white background, it makes it harder to see even with the picture blown up and as someone who used to own/run the magic collection for a local brick and mortar store for 6 years, as well as have been buying and selling on ebay for the last 15 years, you tend to find out quickly just how picky condition wise some players/collectors can be, so in order to account for that I have tended to be a bit more strict than perhaps even I would prefer to be in order to assure that I don't run into any issues either in store (before I left due to health reasons) or on ebay (Which I still continue to this day). I'm not saying you have to switch from a white background if you don't want to, especially if you haven't run into any issues using that, It was just simply an observation as a way to make it easier for people to see the full effects of any edge whitening/wear on the cards more specifically.
As for SCG's condition evaluation of your cards, then for that, using their own condition guide, and assuming for the moment, and they don't care how much of the border is whitened as shown for their SP/MP condition guides, then I would put your 4 Mana Shorts at 3 SP, and 1 MP. The one in the bottom left would honestly be darned close to NM if not for that white spot on the border in the front of the card and the couple of spots of edge whitening on the front of the card as well as previously mentioned, as the border wear is fairly minimal (for the record, I use border whitening and border wear as meaning the same thing, as typically border whitening is caused by use and thusly wear on the cards, just in case there was any confusion there). Your initial assumption of 3 being NM/M and 1 being SP was definitely a bit off though, as stated looking at the cards extra closely and comparing to SCG's condition guides, none of those would qualify as NM/M as NM/M by their guide cannot have any border wear/whitening to speak of, they are effectively or close to it Mint condition cards (basically pack fresh cards). SP cards from their condition guides would seem to cover quite a wide range of edge whitening among other things, from a very small amount to the more solid amount as shown in their picture of edge/corner whitening in the examples. Thusly in your favor I would call three of them SP with one of them being a nicer looking SP (aside from that white spot on the border above the mana cost), and the other two more solid/worse SP's due to the greater instances throughout the front and back of the cards of border whitening. The final one, in the bottom right corner would be a solid MP conditioned card by their guide. I am sure you discussed some of that sort of thing with them through emails and over the phone though so you would have likely heard back from them more concrete examples of their grading interpretations in such regards as to what may not be explicitly spelled out 100% in their condition guide.
Basically I can see your point that putting them all into the MP category (or worse) would seem to be a bit of heavy handed grading on their part, but at the same time I can also see why they may have chosen to consider them as such, if they were to, say, take the sheer amount of the borders of the card that show whitening to be an additional negative that may not be explicitly mentioned. Condition grading basically is a very subjective thing, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and really unless you are dealing with such things in person it is almost impossible to come to 100% agreement when it comes to cards that have been previously used and thusly do show some amount of wear to the cards from play use (whether border whitening or otherwise).
I never meant to suggest that you didn't have proper experience selling cards, as you said you have sold some very high end beta cards on ebay over the years and have some nice feedback to show for it to be sure, though in total still only 237 feedbacks received from selling things on ebay and a total feedback score of 739, in my case I have over 25,000 feedbacks received as a seller alone, though admittedly my experience with alpha/beta cards is rather minimal (I started with Fallen Empires/Revised myself), you were one of the lucky ones that started out at the beginning and thus has likely seen some crazy appreciation in your collection over the years ). As before, a lot of buyers tend to not be overly picky when it comes to condition and yes using standard condition scales I imagine your grading may well have been fine for most of what you have sold in the past anyway, in the case of those Mana Shorts though, putting my own interpretation of conditions aside (from my first reply post), and looking strictly at SCG's condition guide, as I said, giving the nod to you, I would put what you had at 3 SP and 1 MP, though up for interpretation on SCG's side depending upon what other wear not easily seen from a scan there may have been (such that can only typically be seen more readily at an angle in the light, or to which the lighting itself may play a factor in the condition interpretation (more or less light can certainly make it easier or harder to see certain types and amounts of wear on a card), or whether the amount of the borders of the cards that had whitening could play a factor in their condition decisions (as it would for me anyway).
The commentary about the Beta cards being graded more strictly, was more about how collectors tend to encompass more of those looking for such cards as alpha/beta and thus can be more strict in their own condition grading and what they will accept in any particular condition grading setup, versus those that may simply be wanting the cards to use to play with and thusly the condition really wouldn't matter as much to them as a result as simply having cards they could sleeve up and play with. I did not mean to suggest that SCG had a different scale of grading for such cards, but more of trying to use logical reasoning as to what could factor into condition discrepancies between a store buying cards vs a player/collector selling their cards.
At the end of the day though, the best people to discuss all of this with (as it would seem you have to some extent already), would be SCG themselves, as they would be able to explain a whole lot better than I possibly could about how their specific buying policies are handled.
Once again though, I don't work for SCG or anything like that, I was simply trying to offer up some thoughts as to what may have happened on the condition side of things on the cards. And once again, if the Mana Shorts are any indication, where you had 3 of them at NM/M and 1 of them at SP, then I would say a full condition downgrade would certainly be warranted on those or any other similar cards from your collection based upon the previously mentioned commentary therein. At least in this case you did the right thing for you and decided to take all the cards back and handle the selling of the cards your way and in a way that you would be comfortable with, and at the end of the day that's the most important thing. I'm sorry things didn't work out with SCG, but honestly with as nice a collection of beta cards as you have (Even with what you have already sold off), selling them off more slowly or in person to maximize your gains would likely be the best route for you anyway, even if it will take a good bit more time and effort in the long run.
First, I want to apologize again. I saw your 1st response just before going to bed and rather than waiting til' morning I answered hastily. When I looked at my response this morning I was not happy with the tone of it.
In regards to your 2nd response..
I never had a store on EBay, I was just a collector/player.
In regards to dealing with dealers, shops, etc. I have consistently run into problems, although a discrepancy in grading had never occurred before.
One example I remember was a local magic shop owner about 7 or 8 years ago. At that time I had not started selling off my beta collection so it also included 8 copies of each duel land, a p9 set, and 8 of cards I used a lot (i.e. BoP, Wrath, etc.). We met repeatedly(over a period of several weeks), he got to examine the cards repeatedly, we haggled a bit and we finally agreed on a price (I think it was about 16K at that time). The day comes for him to pay and receive the cards and he tries to cut his offer in half. I walked away.
On another occasion (this was in NJ) a store owner offered to sell some of my cards where he would take an agreed % of each sale. I had been playing at his store on and off for a while, I decided to give it a try. I gave him a boxed collector's edition set to start with. One day I come to the store and it is closed and vacant. He was gone, along with my cards.
On another occasion at a show a dealer was looking at my trade-ables (which I kept in plastic card boxes by set). It was a father and son if I remember correctly. While I was talking to the father, the son was slipping cards out of the other boxes. I was fortunate that I knew many people at the show and one of them noticed what was happening. In the end I got my cards back.
There are more stories but I think you get the idea. In hindsight, perhaps I came into this transaction with a bias against retailers because of my past experiences. Regardless, other players (and at least 1 dealer) have seen the cards in question in person since this purchase/sale fell apart and I have consistently seen the same reaction. When I tell them about my experience they are surprised at the grading overall. And I guess you could say some of them have put their money where their mouth is. Several of them have happily purchased from this lot at the prices SCG refused. I think this is part of the reason I decided to post my grievances. I was not alone in my views.
So SCG is having a sale on all MP cards for the next day or so, and I'm curious -- does anyone have any personal experience with picking up MP cards from SCG that can provide a little more detail on their condition? I know their SP cards are basically NM- anywhere else, but I'd like to hear a little more about what their MP cards look like before I pull the trigger on a few cards I am interested in. Thanks again for any information/guidance!
I wonder if pre-orders of Unstable will include all the variant cards? (i.e. all 6 versions of Very Cryptic Command)
I suppose I ordered without knowing that they existed, but it would be cool if they were included.
If you ordered a full set, you'll get each variant. If you ordered a single card, you'll get the displayed version - what was in WOTC's original spoiler.
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Along with many mods, I've moved shop over to MTGNexus. Come check us out!
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I wish to submit a suggestion for SCG "Advanced Search".
For the field "Sets", please implement the previous set system.
Eg. Separate the sets into their block levels or groups and then descending order, starting with the most recent Standard sets.
I'll definitely pass that along for you! If it helps, you can currently isolate your search to Standard only by using the Format field, but I can see how your suggestion would be helpful in other ways so I'll pass it along for you.
Thanks for the feedback!
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540 Peasant cube- Gold EditionSomething SpicyI wanted to share an experience that I have had with SCG. I am currently building EDH decks for me and my GF and just finished one for my friend over these past two weeks. Whenever I do a large order I order from both SCG and Card Kingdom. I love SP and MP cards, the money you can save on them is crazy especially if you just plan to play them. Because of this on large orders I just buy the card from whichever site is the cheapest. First of all, if the cards are of the same condition SCG is cheaper 90% of the time. Sometimes SCG will only have NM cards and CK will have sp or mp so I buy those there. SCG always takes a lot off of their SP and MP cards and their SP should honestly be rated NM 9 out of 10 times. I do not think I have ever actually gotten a MP card from them even when I chose that condition.
The main reason I am posting is because in this past week I have ordered 2 different orders from SCG and Card Kingdom each doing what I explained above. I am in California. CK is in Washington and SCG is in Virginia. On one order, SCG came 1 day before CK and on the other they arrives 2 days earlier. Both orders were ordered on Monday. I know 1 day isnt long to wait but time is everything. I can get half of the things on Amazon the same day if ordered before 11 am.
Because of this I only shopped at SCG for my third order for my friend's Rakdos EDH deck.
Thanks again guys, keep up the good work!
You're welcome!
I have been a MtG player since the game began(my DCI card says I have been a member since Sep 92'). Over the last several years I have been selling off my collection piece-meal either to friends or on EBay. I have probably made a hundred sales on Ebay of some very valuable cards and have never had a problem. No one has ever accused me of selling fake cards or lying about their condition, or anything else for that matter. I did have one customer who accused me of being rude to him in a response and left me neutral feedback. I think the actual problem was that he wasn't a native English speaker and he misinterpreted my comments to him. You are welcome to look at my EBay feedback, member name elric132.
Anyway I had gotten tired of selling cards this way. While it is true you can get a better price selling cards individually, it is also time(and effort) consuming. I decided to try selling my collection in large lots to a store or dealer. I spoke to friends and looked online for referrals. I was looking for someone both honest and able to make large purchases. I also realized selling in this manner I was going to take a hit on my return profit so I compared prospects buy lists to see who would offer the most. SCG seemed to fit the bill. From what I could find online and what I heard from friends they appeared honest. I understood they were one of the biggest online retailers of MtG (if not the biggest) so it seemed likely they would have the capitol to make large purchases. Finally in regard to their buy lists, their prices were at, or near the top among their competitors.
SCG requested I grade my cards using their online tool and place them in that order for shipping, which I did. For grading I used their card conditions page as well as a couple of other sites. Regardless, all of the sites grading criteria were almost identical and included scans/pictures of cards in each condition. You can see SCG's page here:
http://www.starcitygames.com/content/cardconditions
The cards I sent to them were roughly speaking 4 of every card in beta, minus duel lands and the power nine. Also there were only 1 of cards that had been restricted(again generally). Their offered price(using my grading) was 28,130.20$. I was fully cognizant that the total could and probably would change when they graded the cards themselves. My eyesight isn't what it used to be(I wear reading glasses), plus I expected there would be cases we simply disagreed on. In the end I expected their final offer to probably be a little lower than the one my grading had produced.
When I got their response I was shocked. Their offer was 16,923.80$. They had graded many(maybe even a majority) of the cards lower than I had. In some cases, much lower. As I already stated I expected their might be some adjustment of the total, but almost 40%? This didn't make sense to me. They had posted their grading evaluations along with notes for cards that had specific issues. Since they had possession of my cards I couldn't literally look at their results and categorically dispute them going by memory. But I had the original list with my conditions to compare it to. I looked for an extreme case where the grading was far apart and I had some memory of the card's conditions. In the lot were 4 copies of Mana Short. I had graded 3 as m/nm and 1 as sp. They had graded all 4 as mp(their system doesn't allow gradings below this) with the following note:
"Heavily played, major bends, edge wear"
I am attaching a 600 dpi scan of all 4 cards front and back so you can judge for yourselves. And again this is their conditions web page: http://www.starcitygames.com/content/cardconditions
Please decide for yourselves how accurate their evaluation was. To be fair, one of the cards has an indentation on the back as if it was underneath something being written on. The scan does not show this, you need to hold the card at an angle to a light source to see it.
Could I have made a mistake, absolutely. But there is no way I could accept I was this far off, and on so many cards. In a nutshell their response was that every site used their own grading system. Since I had used their page for grading(as well as two others which were virtually identical) this response made no sense to me.
They were never rude to me. They were responsive to my emails and phone calls. I chose not to sell any of my cards to them and they did return them in a timely fashion.
I leave it to you to decide in regards to how honest they were, and what their intentions were.
NOTE: I am having a problem uploading the 2 scans. I am getting the message: "The file provided is too large. Please provide a file less than 1 GB." I examined the files, one is 12.3mb and the other is 11.1mb. I don't know what is happening here. If anyone has a suggested solution for this I would appreciate a response. I will post the scans as soon as I find a solution.
I wasn't able to upload the images(and I still don't know why). Here are links to the images on Imgur:
For the pictures above, the one in the bottom left corner would be the best looking one on the overall, as it has the least edge whitening, however that bit of white above the mana symbols coupled with the edge whitening it has (Assuming no other flaws) would put it in the SP/MP category range. The others have quite a bit of edge whitening, far more than would be typically considered okay for SP conditioned cards, and thusly would push them into the MP range.
To me, a M/NM card should have zero edge wear and at the very most, only the tiniest bit of whitening at all on the edge of the card, M/NM cards should look pack fresh or close to it.
An SP card can have some edge whitening/surface scuffing, but only a small amount on the overall, many would consider it close to NM but with just enough wear to warrant the downgrade.
An MP card can have more significant edge wear, or other more significant flaws like slight edge indentations, minor creases or some noticeable but not significant shuffle wear, more surface scuffing, that sort of thing.
And of course below that is below that (HP/Damaged) will be worse and encompass most everything else.
It can be tough selling cards as a result, because though you may look at the cards and think, well honestly that doesn't look that bad, you kind of have to assume that you are dealing with picky buyers for most of your sales to avoid any condition issues, especially on higher end items. Heck, a lot of the time when I buy sealed product of various kinds, many of those cards aren't even NM/M, and I have to filter out the cards with minor flaws to them. Not everyone is as strict with conditions as I may try to be, and as SCG is, but that's part of why SCG's buy prices can be higher than most is because of how strict their grading system is. Anyhow, I wish you the best of luck with selling your beta collection, just keep in mind you may need to adjust how you determine your card conditions especially when it comes to selling to online stores and the like.
I am going to try and address your points in order.
In regards to grading. SCG posts their grading scale on their website, I posted a link to it. I also looked at 2 other websites grading scales. There didn't appear to be any difference to me. If they are "strict graders" why do their samples look the same as everyone else? Are you suggesting they don't use their own published scale? You also suggest that SCG grades older cards differently then newer cards, again there is no mention of this on their site that I could find.
I've never heard of a white background in a scan as problematic. In my own sales no one has ever complained. In addition the cards were scanned at 600dpi. You are looking at an image ~2 and a half times the size of an actual card, brightly illuminated. Any imperfections are greatly magnified under these conditions. If you had the cards in front of you, in normal lighting conditions the only card you would see any edge wear on is the one on the lower right. Lastly, please look at their image of a card with moderate border wear. If you see that wear on any card other than the one in the lower right corner, then I guess I simply disagree with you.
You list your interpretation of conditions. You are certainly entitled to have your own criteria but I don't see how they are relevant to this sale. I was selling to SCG. I used their descriptions and images to determine condition.
Finally you didn't directly mention their note: "Heavily played, major bends, edge wear". Even if I concede to your view of edge wear for sake of argument. They make 2 other claims. First, that the cards are heavily played. Please take a look at SCG's descriptions and sample images of heavily played cards. Once again, if you think those descriptions and images match those of my cards above, then again I simply disagree with you. In regards to their second claim that their are major bends I am not sure how to prove they are wrong. Beyond the indentation on the back of one card (which I readily admitted to) there are certainly no creases of any kind, and the cards lie as flat as any card I own. Not only is there no "major bending" there is no bending what so ever. If you know of some neutral party in my area (Houston, TX) that would look at the cards I would agree to a personal inspection.
As far as difficulty in selling the cards. I started playing and collecting MtG from it's inception. I have bought, sold, and traded cards, both online and in person, for 25 years and have never had even the smallest problem until this. Not even once. Again, I offer my EBay rating(elric132) as evidence of this. I have sold 80 beta dual lands, 4 beta BoP and several other valuable beta cards whose names I don't remember at the moment, on EBay. Finally, as I said above, I have also sold parts of my beta set to friends locally (including a beta P9 set). No one has ever complained and I have never had a dispute in regards to grading. After this interaction with SCG I again started selling the cards locally. I found a buyer who has since bought about 7,000$ in cards from me. Before he started buying from me I told him what had happened with SCG. At first he was incredulous. He said he had dealt with them on several occasions and never had a problem. At this point I produced the SCG evaluation list and let him look through the cards. He was stunned. He consistently couldn't understand their grading of the cards. He could offer no explanation.
I am sorry if I have come across as defensive, it wasn't my intention when I started writing this. Every time I think about this transaction with SCG I find myself getting angry. While I may not agree with your views, you were polite and reasoned in making them. I am sorry if I allowed my anger to be directed at you.
Firstly I can understand why you would be frustrated. Honestly I don't make it a point to sell to stores simply because I know I can get more selling on ebay or otherwise than I could to them, and I don't have to worry about other people's interpretation of condition when I am not there in person to be able to discuss it with them and be able to go over individual card conditions in case there is a disagreement (part of why selling locally as well can be so attractive, it allows for that sort of interaction and for both people to be able to hold the cards themselves and discuss any condition disagreements.
Secondly I took a closer look at SCG's condition guide and while I agree that my own interpretation of condition would appear to be more strict than theirs even (surprisingly enough), I also know whenever I have bought cards from them in the past, anything bought in less than NM condition always seemed to arrive a grade higher (or darned close to it) than what was purchased), so in part on that basis I have always tended to assume that they were some of the most strict graders out there to account for that sort of thing. As you say though, their condition guide is their condition guide, so that is what it is. Though perhaps part of the problem (which is why I hate condition guides that don't show 100% complete cards in the exampled conditions rather than just parts of cards to show different aspects, could be the amount of spots of edge whitening that could be where the interpretation could come into play. Also though their note said Heavily Played, they did for the purposes of the estimate put them at MP instead, so that is something to keep in mind.
The reasoning I brought up the white background really is a simple one, and that is simply that having a white background with black bordered cards tends to inadvertently hide the full effect of the edge whitening because of the white background, it makes it harder to see even with the picture blown up and as someone who used to own/run the magic collection for a local brick and mortar store for 6 years, as well as have been buying and selling on ebay for the last 15 years, you tend to find out quickly just how picky condition wise some players/collectors can be, so in order to account for that I have tended to be a bit more strict than perhaps even I would prefer to be in order to assure that I don't run into any issues either in store (before I left due to health reasons) or on ebay (Which I still continue to this day). I'm not saying you have to switch from a white background if you don't want to, especially if you haven't run into any issues using that, It was just simply an observation as a way to make it easier for people to see the full effects of any edge whitening/wear on the cards more specifically.
As for SCG's condition evaluation of your cards, then for that, using their own condition guide, and assuming for the moment, and they don't care how much of the border is whitened as shown for their SP/MP condition guides, then I would put your 4 Mana Shorts at 3 SP, and 1 MP. The one in the bottom left would honestly be darned close to NM if not for that white spot on the border in the front of the card and the couple of spots of edge whitening on the front of the card as well as previously mentioned, as the border wear is fairly minimal (for the record, I use border whitening and border wear as meaning the same thing, as typically border whitening is caused by use and thusly wear on the cards, just in case there was any confusion there). Your initial assumption of 3 being NM/M and 1 being SP was definitely a bit off though, as stated looking at the cards extra closely and comparing to SCG's condition guides, none of those would qualify as NM/M as NM/M by their guide cannot have any border wear/whitening to speak of, they are effectively or close to it Mint condition cards (basically pack fresh cards). SP cards from their condition guides would seem to cover quite a wide range of edge whitening among other things, from a very small amount to the more solid amount as shown in their picture of edge/corner whitening in the examples. Thusly in your favor I would call three of them SP with one of them being a nicer looking SP (aside from that white spot on the border above the mana cost), and the other two more solid/worse SP's due to the greater instances throughout the front and back of the cards of border whitening. The final one, in the bottom right corner would be a solid MP conditioned card by their guide. I am sure you discussed some of that sort of thing with them through emails and over the phone though so you would have likely heard back from them more concrete examples of their grading interpretations in such regards as to what may not be explicitly spelled out 100% in their condition guide.
Basically I can see your point that putting them all into the MP category (or worse) would seem to be a bit of heavy handed grading on their part, but at the same time I can also see why they may have chosen to consider them as such, if they were to, say, take the sheer amount of the borders of the card that show whitening to be an additional negative that may not be explicitly mentioned. Condition grading basically is a very subjective thing, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and really unless you are dealing with such things in person it is almost impossible to come to 100% agreement when it comes to cards that have been previously used and thusly do show some amount of wear to the cards from play use (whether border whitening or otherwise).
I never meant to suggest that you didn't have proper experience selling cards, as you said you have sold some very high end beta cards on ebay over the years and have some nice feedback to show for it to be sure, though in total still only 237 feedbacks received from selling things on ebay and a total feedback score of 739, in my case I have over 25,000 feedbacks received as a seller alone, though admittedly my experience with alpha/beta cards is rather minimal (I started with Fallen Empires/Revised myself), you were one of the lucky ones that started out at the beginning and thus has likely seen some crazy appreciation in your collection over the years
The commentary about the Beta cards being graded more strictly, was more about how collectors tend to encompass more of those looking for such cards as alpha/beta and thus can be more strict in their own condition grading and what they will accept in any particular condition grading setup, versus those that may simply be wanting the cards to use to play with and thusly the condition really wouldn't matter as much to them as a result as simply having cards they could sleeve up and play with. I did not mean to suggest that SCG had a different scale of grading for such cards, but more of trying to use logical reasoning as to what could factor into condition discrepancies between a store buying cards vs a player/collector selling their cards.
At the end of the day though, the best people to discuss all of this with (as it would seem you have to some extent already), would be SCG themselves, as they would be able to explain a whole lot better than I possibly could about how their specific buying policies are handled.
Once again though, I don't work for SCG or anything like that, I was simply trying to offer up some thoughts as to what may have happened on the condition side of things on the cards. And once again, if the Mana Shorts are any indication, where you had 3 of them at NM/M and 1 of them at SP, then I would say a full condition downgrade would certainly be warranted on those or any other similar cards from your collection based upon the previously mentioned commentary therein. At least in this case you did the right thing for you and decided to take all the cards back and handle the selling of the cards your way and in a way that you would be comfortable with, and at the end of the day that's the most important thing. I'm sorry things didn't work out with SCG, but honestly with as nice a collection of beta cards as you have (Even with what you have already sold off), selling them off more slowly or in person to maximize your gains would likely be the best route for you anyway, even if it will take a good bit more time and effort in the long run.
In regards to your 2nd response..
I never had a store on EBay, I was just a collector/player.
In regards to dealing with dealers, shops, etc. I have consistently run into problems, although a discrepancy in grading had never occurred before.
One example I remember was a local magic shop owner about 7 or 8 years ago. At that time I had not started selling off my beta collection so it also included 8 copies of each duel land, a p9 set, and 8 of cards I used a lot (i.e. BoP, Wrath, etc.). We met repeatedly(over a period of several weeks), he got to examine the cards repeatedly, we haggled a bit and we finally agreed on a price (I think it was about 16K at that time). The day comes for him to pay and receive the cards and he tries to cut his offer in half. I walked away.
On another occasion (this was in NJ) a store owner offered to sell some of my cards where he would take an agreed % of each sale. I had been playing at his store on and off for a while, I decided to give it a try. I gave him a boxed collector's edition set to start with. One day I come to the store and it is closed and vacant. He was gone, along with my cards.
On another occasion at a show a dealer was looking at my trade-ables (which I kept in plastic card boxes by set). It was a father and son if I remember correctly. While I was talking to the father, the son was slipping cards out of the other boxes. I was fortunate that I knew many people at the show and one of them noticed what was happening. In the end I got my cards back.
There are more stories but I think you get the idea. In hindsight, perhaps I came into this transaction with a bias against retailers because of my past experiences. Regardless, other players (and at least 1 dealer) have seen the cards in question in person since this purchase/sale fell apart and I have consistently seen the same reaction. When I tell them about my experience they are surprised at the grading overall. And I guess you could say some of them have put their money where their mouth is. Several of them have happily purchased from this lot at the prices SCG refused. I think this is part of the reason I decided to post my grievances. I was not alone in my views.
I suppose I ordered without knowing that they existed, but it would be cool if they were included.
If you ordered a full set, you'll get each variant. If you ordered a single card, you'll get the displayed version - what was in WOTC's original spoiler.