MTG Salvation

So I went into a store that I'm pretty fond of, but have never bought singles at before. I pulled a couple of copies of Isolated Chapel, and went to ring them up, only for the price to come out at $10. When I explained (and showed via iMTG) that this was the high and not the mid, the owner said that their cards are taken directly from the pack to their sale binders, hence the high price being used.

I didn't buy the cards.

My understanding of the meaning of TCG's Low-Mid-High pricing is that Low represents the least expensive price that the card is being sold for on TCGPlayer, High is the most expensive, and Mid is the median price of all the sellers on the site and represents what one can reasonably expect to pay for a near mint to slightly played copy of the card.

I was told this is not correct, but I'm pretty sure it is. It's how every other store I've ever been in does business. I don't want to act in a way that negatively affects businesses, but I also don't want to overpay.

Also, apologies if this has been addressed in another post. I used the search tool, and nothing came up, but we all know the search tool isn't always reliable.

AFAIK you are correct.

Did the store say that they were charging TCG prices? That's an online market and totally different than a store (even for stores that sell in person and on TCG it can be different). While the seller was charging way more than I would ever pay for the card, there is nothing linking his/her prices to a virtual marketplace.

While you have the general idea of how it works, the system can be gamed...one store can say "Herbal Poultice is worth $100,000.00" and try to break the averages.

The Low-Mid-High shows what different stores are selling for and those stores choose their price point based on what other stores are selling the same card for and then adjust for condition. Since condition can be a pretty subjective point in some cases, the amount that stores set their price can fluctuate which sets the high and low end. The Mid is calculated based on all the stores prices averaged out (regardless of condition).

Since it is in the best interest of the store to sell a card for as much as they can to keep liquidity, they do not want to go too far off the mid, but may charge more depending upon demand.

tl;dr, Economics something something, supply vs. demand, etc.

Quote from pokerbob1 »

tl;dr, Economics something something, supply vs. demand, etc.

Right. People often confuse an "Isolated Chapel 3 days away via postal system" as "Isolated Chapel 30 seconds away via dude behind the counter" as being the same product. They aren't.

Inevitably its up to the store to decide what they price their cards at. Just as it is up to the customer to decide whether to buy the cards at the prices the store is trying to sell them for. Stores that price their cards too high, will not sell them, and they will sit on inventory that they cannot move which is detrimental to their business.

That said, its understandable that shops will naturally charge more for their cards than what the cards may normally sell for online (lower end of ebay/tcgplayer buy it nows, or what they have sold for looking at ebay completed listings), because shops do have larger overhead to deal with than your average online seller. For example, if that Isolated Chapel went for $2 online normally, I would say that $2.50-$3 would be perfectly reasonable for the shop to charge. However if they are trying to sell the cards for 2x+ of their normal online price, then yeah, unless I desperately need them right then and don't have time to wait, then I'm definitely not going to buy the cards from the shop. It also could be a matter of a price memory thing for those running the shop. Isolated chapel used to sell for a lot more than it does now (before getting hugely reprinted with a playset in every modern event deck, massively increasing supply, and tanking the price). I know a lot of shops that wont regularly update their prices (or may only update them to raise the price on something that has gone up.

Many shops as well may only deal in singles as secondary to the rest of the shop, so their efforts or concern with singles sales there are much lower, even though it can end up just being dead inventory sitting there reducing their potential cash flow and prospects for the business.

One should never assume though, that shops are basing their prices on some specific online price guide, whatever it may be. Shops will price there cards at whatever they feel is fair, or what they feel they might be able to get away with selling them for while making the maximum profit possible.

I would however be curious to hear what their cash/trading offering is for cards sold to/traded into the shop. If they flatly don't do that, then there is little use to bothering with singles there. If they do have a reasonable policy there, and their prices are sky high, perhaps you could make use of their higher prices on certain cards to be able to pick up some more valuable stuff after buying some cards online for cheaper via trading, or buying online for cheap and then selling to them for more in cash to make a few extra bucks for whatever they might be looking for that such would be viable with.

Anyhow, just a few thoughts.

As for tcg low/mid/high. TCG low includes non-NM prices and is the lowest of the prices you can find the cards for on tcgplayer (though I think damaged or HP/MP cards might be excluded from that) and obviously that does not include shipping costs. TCG mid is the average or middle value that the card is going for on tcgplayer, which can be affected by people pricing copies of the card much higher than others. TCG high is the highest listed price on tcgplayer for the card (non-foil). Inevitably I recommend looking at none of those three numbers. If you want to see what the card is really going for, manually look the card up, and see what the price + shipping is for the lower end of the NM condition versions of the card on there. Allow for a reasonable shipping charge (say, $1/$1.50), and look for sellers that have multiples of the cards available to so that the shipping doesn't end up adding a huge percentage to the single-card price. Basically I look at the cheapest the card can be reasonably bought for online in a reasonable amount of quantity that I would need, and with the proper condition I would be looking for, and from a reasonably reliable looking seller based upon their feedback.

He specifically referenced the High price as the basis for their price. I also was given the previously given justification that it was due to the condition of the card and the meaning of the scale when, to the best of my knowledge, that isn't what it represents, hence my question about what those values are supposed to mean.

I get that stores have their choice of basing their selling and purchasing off of whatever factors make the most sense. As a consumer, I can also choose not to purchase there, as I did in this case. I have paid a little more for a card at a store I liked or when I was under the gun, but triple the regularly paid price in any other store is a bit much.

I'll continue going to this shop for new product and events, as well as other things they sell in the store, but I'll go elsewhere for singles.

Oh, and no, I'm not comparing it to online sellers as that would be asinine. I'm comparing it to what any other store I would walk into would (and has) sold the same card to me for.

Quote from Chalupacabra »

He specifically referenced the High price as the basis for their price. I also was given the previously given justification that it was due to the condition of the card and the meaning of the scale when, to the best of my knowledge, that isn't what it represents, hence my question about what those values are supposed to mean.

I get that stores have their choice of basing their selling and purchasing off of whatever factors make the most sense. As a consumer, I can also choose not to purchase there, as I did in this case. I have paid a little more for a card at a store I liked or when I was under the gun, but triple the regularly paid price in any other store is a bit much.

I'll continue going to this shop for new product and events, as well as other things they sell in the store, but I'll go elsewhere for singles.

Oh, and no, I'm not comparing it to online sellers as that would be asinine. I'm comparing it to what any other store I would walk into would (and has) sold the same card to me for.

Sounds like someone who is used to using beckett or scrye price guides to determine what to price cards at their shops (as often people will view the range of prices as reflective of the condition of the card, which may be why he felt that his MINT cards were worth the high price even though that's not actually how it works. Either way your plan to how to deal with the shop in the future sounds like a good one, if their prices are reasonable for sealed product/events then yeah, sticking to those and looking for cards elsewhere sounds like a plan. Eventually the owner may get the hint that the singles prices are too high and perhaps run a sale or lower them (speaking of sales, I know that's a common way for a business to sell inventory that they may know is prices too high to sell very well, so they will run a 50% (or something) off sale in order to get people to come in and think they are getting a deal on something based on the prices in the shop, even if that 50% might not even be worth it even then. Its a gimmick and it often works, but its hard to say whether that shop does sales like that or not without knowing the shop better.