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 just want the spoiler up so I can figure out the rarity breakdown of this set, so I can also figure out approximately how many of each Rare/Mythic we'll be able to preorder by cracking product - it's unclear what the C/U/R/M count will be based on 210 cards!
Is SCG getting out of the misprints & rarities market? I noticed that they recently ebayed off almost all the misprints & rarities they had that were worth something.
Hey there:
Not at all! We're just looking to cycle out the rarities/misprints we have on our website on an annual basis, to keep the rarities/misprints section fresh on our website. I'd expect to see a ton more rarities/misprints going up around February/March, and then get added monthly through December of next year!
It's now May, and I haven't seen any new rarities/misprints added to SCG yet this year. Is there still any plan to start adding them again?
Yessir! We just went through a hiring spree (Careers.starcitygames.com) and one of the positions is a person who will be getting misprints/graded cards up on our website. This person should be in-house by end of month, at which point you'll start seeing misprints hitting the website regularly again.
Just sold a bunch of cards to them and will never repeat that mistake. They downgraded most of the higher-end cards I was selling them from NM to SP (most of which were from pack to sleeve and I'm VERY careful with my stuff) and most of the lower end cards (which I expected to be quoted as SP) remained NM. Very disatisfied with the situation, but as a foreign country seller, didn'T want to pay for return shipping. Had to bite the bullet and take the loss.
I must however admit that they usually are the one to keep every kind of card listed. That makes them a great reference when trying to price a pile of cards for a trade.
Hey there:
I took a look at the cards you had sent in. I then had two other people look at the grading on the cards. The majority of your cards were in SP condition, including the fetches you sent in.
With that said, we never want someone selling us their cards unless they are comfortable selling them. So let me offer a couple of options here that you weren't offered :
1) We would be happy to send you scans of the higher-end cards that we graded SP, so you can see the reason they were graded SP or
2) We can mail you back all of the cards that we didn't feel were NM, and ship you back the rest (cost would be $5).
Also, the return shipping cost on this package would be $10.35 (against $51.25 in deductions due to condition), so If you wanted us to keep $8 in cards (25% trade credit would make this $10) and have us ship back the rest, this is also an option.
I'm going to hold off processing payment on this order until we hear back from you. I'm sorry you were dissatisfied with the experience so far, but I personally reviewed the grading on these cards (and had other people review the grading as well), and the majority of these cards were not NM.
You can't play him in Legacy / Vintage, he's only legal in Commander.
Incorrect. All black-bordered cards are legal in Vintage and Legacy, including new ones that are printed in ancillary products like Conspiracy, Commander, ARchenemy and Planechase.
So, I have a minor issue with an order I got from SCG, it's not exactly their fault, but I'd like to know who I talk to about this kind of thing.
I bought their only copy of the Japanese Commander 2011 Political Puppets deck, box looked fine on inspection, I opened it up, box with the cards looked fine.
Once I opened that box, and opened the shrinkwrap, I noticed that a small chunk of cards was damaged.
Luckily, it wasn't horrible, just about 8 islands were damaged, but part of the reason I bought the deck was for the basics (I'm a foreign card lover, I can't help it)
I can't exactly call up Wotc customer service, since the deck is out of print.
I can't blame SCG for not opening a sealed product, they didn't make the cards and unopened is typically more desirable.
Just kinda disappointed I can't use the Islands.
Overall, a very pleasant experience (came VERY quickly as compared to previous priority mail packages)
Just wondering what my avenues look like. I can't exactly afford to buy another Japanese Commander deck. I haven't had any luck finding foreign basics on the website either.
I've attached a pic for clarity, the top lefthand corners are bent and creased. The pic is in the spoiler
Send me an e-mail with a list of the 8x Islands that were damaged, and I'll do my best to keep my eye open for for them. No guarantees about how long it might take, but I'll eventually be able to get you replacements
I appreciate your comments, Ben, but I think you're missing the fact that your large profit margins create a relentless price pressure upwards. While you sell Verdant Catacombs at $70, your buylist is $35. The rest of us get to buy and sell between those two values, with smaller margins. Eventually everyone willing to sell at $35 dries up. If you raise the buylist to $40, do you raise the sell to $75? No, you raise it to $80 to maintain your margin. Higher prices means lower velocity of sales. This is in direct opposition to your stated desire to have lower prices and higher volume.
Rainforest and Tarn: We were at $100 sell / $70 buy going into GP Richmond (about a month ago now) - 30% margins. We got in a lot at $100 / $70, dropped to $100 / $60. Kept getting them in at $60, and rate of acquisitions outpaced rate of sales, so we dropped to $90 / $50 - but these are both cards that had the lowest margins veyr recently.
Verdant Catacombs - These were in the 2012 Vampire Event Deck (for whatever reason a mono-black deck needed a fetch land) so our supply is artificially increased beyond that of the other 5 fetchlands. If this weren't in the Vampire deck, it'd probably be at the level of Rainforest/Tarn.
Arid Mesa / Marsh Flats - Sales are outpacing acquisitions, hence the lowest current margins.
The higher dollar the card is, the lower the margins tend to end up being, especially on high-demand cards.
When SCG, or anyone else, buys out the internet, they are trying to corner the liquid supply of a commodity. This tends to work only with extremely rare cards, like Masques/Uzra/Judge foils, ABUR, and random old set rares. And they can absolutely sit on the cards at the higher prices, because since they control most of hte liquid supply, they aren't in danger of the market beign flooded by sellers at the new higher price.
The problem is that I feel your basic premise is flawed. Our business model is selling Magic cards, not sitting on Magic cards. Cards that don't sell are tying up money we could use to buy other cards. If you look at the cards that we have been aggressive on (Fetchlands, Force of Will, etc), they are among the most played cards in their formats, and are among the most recognized "staples" in the game. We are not interested in "pump-and-dump" - taking marginal cards, cornering the market on them, and then artificially raising the price.
I think it's sometimes easy to paint us to be the bad guy when it comes to Magic prices, but some of the assumptions (like card hoarding) are just flat out untrue. We've been pretty consistent in stating things like:
1) Please abolish the reserve list, so the cards on it can be reprinted to make Legacy/Vintage more affordable
2) Please reprint Modern cards more aggressively, before they go too high in value, so more people can play Modern
The more affordable the game is, the lower the barrier to entry, and the more people that are able to get into the game. Jeff mentioned this earlier in the thread, but it's true: I'd rather be able to sell 4x Verdant Catacombs to a player for $70 than sell 1x Verdant Catacomb to a player for $70. The profit margin on both is likely to be the same, so I'd rather do a higher volume on lower-dollar cards and enable more people to play Magic; that's better for the long-term health of the game as a whole.
tl;dr - we buy what we can resell, we aren't into long-term speculating as a company, and we'd rather have lower prices and higher volume than higher prices and lower volume, if all other things are equal.
General theory of budgeting is that you want to enter the metagame at a creative angle with a functioning deck no one has experience playing against. What you don't want to do is make a much worse version of an existing deck. Mono-black really isn't where you want to be. Between Desecration Demon, Thoughtseize, Hero's Downfall, and Mutavault in both variants it really isn't affordable.
What you want to do basically is create some interesting interactions that are not currently around. Ben Bleiweiss spotlighted an interesting prison-type enchantment deck combining Blind Obedience+Pacfism+One Thousand Lashes+Sphere of Safety+Liliana of the dark Realms+Debt to the Deathless. Basically you lock down your opponents board, chipping away at their life and finish with a fat Debt to the Deathless.
Also keep in mind that both Hero's Downfall and Desecration Demon were printed in the event deck, so their price should steadily drop over the next few weeks.
SCG and pretty much all speculators/hoarders are a cancer on the game. They do little to nothing for the game and instead take and harm it for personal gain. It's these people that stop staples from getting reprinted in reasonable quanities, or keep the reserved list going. The game would be a thousand times better if they ceased to exist.
The day SCG goes out of business is the day I throw a party.
For what it's worth, we would love to have the reserve list abolished, and have actively campaigned to have WOTC do so. I'd rather sell 4 Polluted Deltas at $25 each to players (so the game is more affordable to a wider range of players), than to sell one Delta for $100. (Or Dual lands, etc - I just used Delta as an example right now because I think it's likely that the Onslaught Fetches will be reprinted within the next 2-3 years, and I would applaud them dropping to 1/2 to 1/3rd of current value)
Russian > Korean > Japanese > Chinese & German & English > French & Italian & Spanish & Portuguese
The reason Chinese cards are staying at about English values right now (with only a few outliers for the really high-end staples) is because MTGmintcard has infused the US market with a ton of Chinese cards.
For cards older than this:
Russian > Korean > Japanese > Chinese & German > English & French > Italian & Spanish > Portuguese
As far as I know, they haven't had NM UL Power in stock in a *long* time.
This. If we couldn't keep NM UL power in stock for more than minutes (literally) at the old prices, and nobody was selling to us at the old prices, it's time to raise our prices (both buy and sell). If you look at our buy prices, the margins on UL NM Power are some of the smallest margins we take on our website.
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You're welcome!
I'd just bring it and we'll count it by sizing it up in a 4 or 5-row longbox!
Yessir! We just went through a hiring spree (Careers.starcitygames.com) and one of the positions is a person who will be getting misprints/graded cards up on our website. This person should be in-house by end of month, at which point you'll start seeing misprints hitting the website regularly again.
Hey there:
I took a look at the cards you had sent in. I then had two other people look at the grading on the cards. The majority of your cards were in SP condition, including the fetches you sent in.
With that said, we never want someone selling us their cards unless they are comfortable selling them. So let me offer a couple of options here that you weren't offered :
1) We would be happy to send you scans of the higher-end cards that we graded SP, so you can see the reason they were graded SP or
2) We can mail you back all of the cards that we didn't feel were NM, and ship you back the rest (cost would be $5).
Also, the return shipping cost on this package would be $10.35 (against $51.25 in deductions due to condition), so If you wanted us to keep $8 in cards (25% trade credit would make this $10) and have us ship back the rest, this is also an option.
I'm going to hold off processing payment on this order until we hear back from you. I'm sorry you were dissatisfied with the experience so far, but I personally reviewed the grading on these cards (and had other people review the grading as well), and the majority of these cards were not NM.
Incorrect. All black-bordered cards are legal in Vintage and Legacy, including new ones that are printed in ancillary products like Conspiracy, Commander, ARchenemy and Planechase.
Send me an e-mail with a list of the 8x Islands that were damaged, and I'll do my best to keep my eye open for for them. No guarantees about how long it might take, but I'll eventually be able to get you replacements
We do - somehow it just fell off the graphic design of the main page. Thanks for pointing that out - getting our Graphic Dev. guys to fix that asap!
Bruce:
Arid Mesa: $60 Sell, $40 Buy (33% margins)
Marsh Flats: $60 Sell, $40 Buy (33% margins)
Misty Rainforest - $90 sell, $50 Buy (45% margins)
Scalding Tarn - $90 Sell, $50 Buy (45% margins)
Verdant Catacombs - $70 sell, $40 Buy (43% margins)
To examine each of these more in-depth:
Rainforest and Tarn: We were at $100 sell / $70 buy going into GP Richmond (about a month ago now) - 30% margins. We got in a lot at $100 / $70, dropped to $100 / $60. Kept getting them in at $60, and rate of acquisitions outpaced rate of sales, so we dropped to $90 / $50 - but these are both cards that had the lowest margins veyr recently.
Verdant Catacombs - These were in the 2012 Vampire Event Deck (for whatever reason a mono-black deck needed a fetch land) so our supply is artificially increased beyond that of the other 5 fetchlands. If this weren't in the Vampire deck, it'd probably be at the level of Rainforest/Tarn.
Arid Mesa / Marsh Flats - Sales are outpacing acquisitions, hence the lowest current margins.
The higher dollar the card is, the lower the margins tend to end up being, especially on high-demand cards.
- Ben
The problem is that I feel your basic premise is flawed. Our business model is selling Magic cards, not sitting on Magic cards. Cards that don't sell are tying up money we could use to buy other cards. If you look at the cards that we have been aggressive on (Fetchlands, Force of Will, etc), they are among the most played cards in their formats, and are among the most recognized "staples" in the game. We are not interested in "pump-and-dump" - taking marginal cards, cornering the market on them, and then artificially raising the price.
FWIW, I view the "Pump-and-Dump" people as the ones who are truly doing harm to the game. They are the ones who drive Autumn Willow up to $5 on TCGPlayer (http://store.tcgplayer.com/magic/product/show?ProductName=autumn willow&newSearch=false) when there's absolutely no reason for Autumn Willow to be a $5 card.
I think it's sometimes easy to paint us to be the bad guy when it comes to Magic prices, but some of the assumptions (like card hoarding) are just flat out untrue. We've been pretty consistent in stating things like:
1) Please abolish the reserve list, so the cards on it can be reprinted to make Legacy/Vintage more affordable
2) Please reprint Modern cards more aggressively, before they go too high in value, so more people can play Modern
The more affordable the game is, the lower the barrier to entry, and the more people that are able to get into the game. Jeff mentioned this earlier in the thread, but it's true: I'd rather be able to sell 4x Verdant Catacombs to a player for $70 than sell 1x Verdant Catacomb to a player for $70. The profit margin on both is likely to be the same, so I'd rather do a higher volume on lower-dollar cards and enable more people to play Magic; that's better for the long-term health of the game as a whole.
tl;dr - we buy what we can resell, we aren't into long-term speculating as a company, and we'd rather have lower prices and higher volume than higher prices and lower volume, if all other things are equal.
- Ben
For the record, the link to that article is here: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27991_Building-On-My-Budget-Enchantbomb.html and it's the second deck in my new budget Deckbuilding series.
Also keep in mind that both Hero's Downfall and Desecration Demon were printed in the event deck, so their price should steadily drop over the next few weeks.
For what it's worth, we would love to have the reserve list abolished, and have actively campaigned to have WOTC do so. I'd rather sell 4 Polluted Deltas at $25 each to players (so the game is more affordable to a wider range of players), than to sell one Delta for $100. (Or Dual lands, etc - I just used Delta as an example right now because I think it's likely that the Onslaught Fetches will be reprinted within the next 2-3 years, and I would applaud them dropping to 1/2 to 1/3rd of current value)
Russian > Korean > Japanese > Chinese & German & English > French & Italian & Spanish & Portuguese
The reason Chinese cards are staying at about English values right now (with only a few outliers for the really high-end staples) is because MTGmintcard has infused the US market with a ton of Chinese cards.
For cards older than this:
Russian > Korean > Japanese > Chinese & German > English & French > Italian & Spanish > Portuguese
This. If we couldn't keep NM UL power in stock for more than minutes (literally) at the old prices, and nobody was selling to us at the old prices, it's time to raise our prices (both buy and sell). If you look at our buy prices, the margins on UL NM Power are some of the smallest margins we take on our website.