I'm quite confused why people even do this. You lose so much money.
If I want to unload some cards...this is the order I do it in.
1. Try to trade them away at my local FNM
2. List them on Ebay.
3. Put a bunch of cards together as a lot and list them on Ebay or Craigslist for cheaper.
That's usually as far as I have to go. Buylists suck. I can't understand why people use them. Magic cards are popular right now and any decent card will get you 80-90% of the listed price on Ebay....some higher. Premium cards in demand are easily getting 95% of retail on Ebay. Even with the Ebay fees, the return is much better than buylists.
As for bulk rares..or even 1-2 dollar rares...yes they are harder to move on Ebay....but the buylists from stores are even more brutal on those.
Well, like everything in life, you "pay" for convieniance. Some people, esp younger folks, like the quick and easy cash of the process... or as you said... getting rid of "jank" they aren't going to use or be able to trade off easily.
But yeah, it's pretty easy to see it's a losing battle here. But for many people, setting up an ebay account, posting pics and dealing with strangers over the internet is just too much hassle and time. I do sell things at larger events, esp if I need the cash then and there to pick up something for a deck I'm using or someone has a killer deal on a card I can't find for cheaper... my wife prefers I do it that way as well, so I'm selling cards to "support the hobby." Since most of the cards I buy are from trades or Limited, it's not to bad of a loss in the end.
A lot of stores offer a very hefty store credit bonus if your selling cards, there are no fees and it's very convenient and you know your not going to get ripped off if you sell to a store with a good reputation. Ebay fees are 12% and paypal is around 2.5% for the average user.
A lot of stores offer 20% trade in credit so that is a 34.5% swing now. Add with the convenience of being able to sell and buy everything at one place without dealing with multiple buyers/sellers. Oh yeah I forgot packaging costs which for the average seller would add around .50 per package.
To me it doesn't seem that bad of a deal after all because for most working people time=money.
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Mmm people can just sell on forums (MTGS+MOTL = nuff said), it's pretty quick if you have decent prices (and pics? if you don't have $50+ card the pics shouldn't come into question), and MOTL rounded down still beats buylist prices by a whole lot. There's also many 'middle-men' buyers or small dealers who can buy a list of $cards at values approaching MOTL so there really is absolutely no reason to sell to stores. Then add to this the collectors out there who are willing to buy jank rares for much better than the bulk $0.13 rate, there's sufficient demand to just get rid of things on forums.
The 20% store credit many stores offer...doesn't hardly compensate for the generally 30%+ markup from MOTL values that stores sell cards at, combined with the 40% discount stores buy cards at, so the only reason to sell to stores is pretty much just laziness. Even a simple craigslist posting should lead to a better deal than stores.
The time = money part makes sense in a fashion, but if you think about it - for a person is making sufficient money, the entire concept of ever selling, to stores or anybody else, is not anywhere on the priority list Conversely, if money is of importance (i.e. need a few hundred for christmas gifts, a couple thousand to pay rent, etc.), well, it is entirely likely the person in question does not have a high $/hr pay rate, and as such, the time involved in selling on forums probably beats said rate. Anyway, in the end, there are sufficient people in the world who want 'money now', see the entire payday loans industry, so somebody somewhere will always do this, that's why there's so many mtg stores out there ^^
I have to agree with Heath on this one. I have also used their buylist twice (CapeFearGames.com) for a total of around $270 worth of stuff. I sold a bunch of cards to one place. There was no hassle involved. I got a 20% bonus for taking store credit (I was turning physical cards into MTGO credits).
What I have done with buylists is package a bunch of .50 - $2 cards together. After fees and shipping it is really not worth the hassle to ebay this kind of stuff. I actually was extremely pleased with my experience using the buylist at Capefear.
I have also used Channelfireball's buylist twice. Once I did the same as with Capefear and sent a pile of Standard cards of small to medium value. The other time, I sent them a huge pile of old commons that they were valuing between .02 each and $1 each. Basically I turned a pile of bulk into a check for $70. It was a time consuming process, but other than time spent it was a 'money for nothing' situation for me.
There are definite advantages to buylisting over Ebaying. The ability to send a bunch of stuff, for which there might be little individual demand, to one place is a great option to have in turning cards to cash.
In summation.....Star Trek wins a prolonged naval battle against superior, yet less technologically advanced, numbers, with Picard leading the assault, while Kirk takes your soul by laying out Solo and probably his manservant Chewy as well, before impregnating and ditching your Princess.
I don't normally sell high-value cards to stores, because that way, I miss out on a ton of money. For example, lets say that Jace TMS is $50. A store is only buying him for $25. So I have to pretty much lose $25 if I want to sell him? No way. The only way I sell cards with value is if I need the quick cash, or if I see that stores are buying them for more than usual.
Otherwise, I prefer to just unload bulk on stores. I sold a stack of bulk rares once and got around $125 for it. Like other posters have mentioned, you get pretty good deals if you opt to get store credit. Hell, if I really needed cash, I would still have no problem unloading bulk. You're trading something that is pretty much worthless for something that you can actually use.
I believe that I have enough social competence to slip into a party or two, potentially wooing some attractive females that would not mind spending the evening performing the booty dance on me.
Every few months or so, I'll dig through my cards and pull out ~100 or so cards that CFB will buy for $0.10-0.50 that no one else wants (and isn't worth it to sell here or on eBay). There's no shame in selling decent commons/uncommons/bulk rares that no one else takes into a store and end up with some decent credit. My last sale to CFB gave me ~$80 in store credit, which I used to buy some of their fairer priced staples. I would never be able to turn my extra junk lying around into good cards anywhere else, and definitely not in one step like this.
To summarize:
My bulkiest of bulk usually just goes onto Craigslist to newer players (just unloaded a box of commons for $10 last night), and the more popular cards go on here/eBay. Stores (some) are good for the in-between.
Just to give an example of what I mean I looked up a hot STD card such as snapcaster. Right now some dealers are paying around 15 for him. After store credit trade in that is 18. If you were to sell him on ebay right now you would get around ~22 which works out to around $18.7 bucks after fees. All the ones getting 22 are offering free shipping so after you pay to ship the card your at $17 not including your packing materials.
Now lets say you did all of this to get Geist. Geist runs for around $14+ shipping on ebay or 15+shipping at most dealers. Most dealers now offer free shipping at $50 where as if you want free shipping with ebay you will have to pay around 15 for the card.
This does not include using coupons, etc at stores which most of them do offer. My point is with hot STD cards I think it's an even better deal if you play the system right. Use coupons, use free shipping, get the store credit bonus, etc. Dealers margins are way less on hot STD cards which can make them a better card to trade in.
Just my 2 cents but I'm of course biased just like the rest of us.
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I sell to stores all the time; it's just about being selective. I rarely sell to the bigger stores like SCG because they're prices are low across the board, to account for overhead. But a smaller store will often have competitive prices on cards of which they are low in stock. A Standard card you have 1-3 of that you want to sell while it's hot, or commons that newbies don't see on ebay and buy from stores are perfect for unloading in this way.
Ebay's fees make selling all but playsets of chase Standard or hard to find older cards uneconomical. Auctions are really hit or miss unless you have a huge supply (like kidicarus2000, who has a playset of Standard listed at all times) and the listing fee of $0.50 per buy-it-now is ridiculous. If you're not running a store of your own then ebay is actually fairly abysmal in most cases.
A list on forums such as this one will only take you so far, since the visibility is so small. I'll have things listed here for weeks and no one will see them, then I'll check a random store's buylist and they'll be paying more than what I've been asking.
I'm pretty sure most people who sell to stores with bad buylists are doing so for the guaranteed dollar amount. No hoping your auction gets bids or your BINs get sold, just money in the bank, even if it's a little less than you could get elsewhere. Like I said, the bigger the store the worse the buy prices on average, but with that comes better service and a greater assurance that you'll get your money.
It's better than trading because you get exactly what you want from the store (if you do store credit) and they're not trying to game you anymore than value traders (i.e. the only ones with good binders) are. A lot of Channel Fireball's buylist prices are quite fair and they're stickier than actual prices, so if a card's no longer popular/tradable it's easy to cash in with reasonable success. No, you're not going to want to get rid of your higher end stuff for buylist prices, but everything short of that, sure.
I always have stuff for trade, eventually you end up with the chaff that "nobody" wants. How many people do you know that are looking for Phyrexian Vatmother's? Probably the same as in my area, zero. So when I can take all the cards like the Vatmother and trade them in for X+25% and get something that I need/want I consider that a win.
This is in fact currently happening, and I guess that with the past of the time most of the stores will be low in stock in cards worth more than 30$, they will only have those from boosters, and the rest would be only avaiable in the secondary market, or from collections bought.
A 2$ card can be sold to an store for 1$, and the store can sell it even for 3$, but few people will sell a 30$ retail card for 15$, neither for 20$, and that makes life hard for store owners when dealing with high priced cards.
It's all supply and demand, if the store can buy the 30 dollar card for 15, they will, and will sell it for 30, if they can't sell it for 30, they lower it. If they can't buy it for 15, then they raise the buy price, until they hit the point where they are moving the cards like a river. There is no fixed percentage that they have to buy and sell. Fluctuations happen due to demand and them realizing they can raise the price or decrease the buy price, which people don't like. But they also have to lower prices and raise buy prices, but that doesn't get flak, and therefore doesn't get noticed as much.
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I think like other international mtg players, things are a bit more difficult for us. Standard cards here go fast and if you miss that window of opportunity for only a day or two, your window to sell or trade goes out the window.
Case in point, I had 4x Primeval Titans and the players around here needed one or two but were undervaluing it (at 15 bucks). A week later, it shot up to 20 and while it was smart for me to hold onto it at face value, it really wasn't. Nobody wants them anymore, the players here grab playsets within a few days after a deck hits qualifiers or any big event. Instead of losing a few bucks on them, I might possibly lose everything on them since they are in such low demand.
If I miss my window and I don't think the card will hit another peak again, I sell cards to a seller that'll at least be able to profit off of it (and help me out in the process) than for it to waste away in a bin for edh or casual trade fodder.
I use the store buylists because it's the least hassle for best return for me. I have sold cards to them that I would be happy to move via forums, but can't due to various factors. I'm really not interested in trading, as I prefer to open packs, so my main interest is selling my extras to afford booster boxes.
However, I refuse to sell on E-Bay or take payments via Paypal as I'm against their methods of operation. When I need to send money online I use Amazon payments, but the rest of the world hasn't caught onto this yet.
When you add in the store credit bonuses from stores, it becomes the first option when I want to sell cards.
When I sell to dealers, it's generally out of convenience.
First, as Heath astutely pointed out, there are a lot of "hidden" costs in doing business on eBay. It's also very time consuming. I value my time very highly, so it's not really worth it to me to spend 2-4 hours (sorting cards, setting up the listings, getting the packing materials, going to the post office, etc.) just to grind out like $13 in return.
Second, it's actually not very different than trading with another person. If I'm trading a bunch of $5-$7 cards for a Sword of War and Peace, then I would expect to have to value my cards a bit lower than normal to account for trading up. You're going to take a hit on value either way.
Third, in the above example, how many people would actually trade you a Sword of War and Peace for a bunch of $5-$7 cards? How many people at your LGS even have a Sword of War and Peace for trade in the first place? Sometimes you have no recourse unless you want to fork over the cash. If you play Vintage or are really into EDH, it can get extremely hard to find the cards you need.
Fourth, when I play FNM, the prize payout is always in packs. This means that I have a ton of bulk rares sitting around, just taking up space. Why not trade these in to the dealers? 200 bulk rares for a Snapcaster Mage is a trade that I'll happily make.
This is not to say that there's no downside to selling to dealers. You'll generally need to compare a few buylists to make sure that you're not giving up value (example: back in September, dealers were buying Birthing Pod for anywhere from $3 to $7), and you may need to ship the cards by mail. And you will probably give up a little bit of value in exchange for the convenience. But I think so long as you understand how the game is played, you'll have a pleasant experience.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
On that thread, which buylists do you usually check? At some point(depending on the person, natch), it doesn't add anything to check, say, a 6th, 16th, or 116th buylist. Which would everyone say are the major buylists, and is there an easy way to check/compare them all at once? I seem to remember seeing (a few months or more ago?) someone's thread where he compared 5-7 store's buylists, making it easy to compare; I'm not sure where it went, though.
On that thread, which buylists do you usually check? At some point(depending on the person, natch), it doesn't add anything to check, say, a 6th, 16th, or 116th buylist. Which would everyone say are the major buylists, and is there an easy way to check/compare them all at once? I seem to remember seeing (a few months or more ago?) someone's thread where he compared 5-7 store's buylists, making it easy to compare; I'm not sure where it went, though.
It's a lot of work. I think at one time that was something QuietSpeculation.com had on thier premium membership.
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I sell all my cards to one store who offers a 30% increase in total price if you chose store credit. I don't mind losing out on the money. My magic habit supports its self as I sell cards to buy cards
I sell all my cards to one store who offers a 30% increase in total price if you chose store credit.
Well, the thing is that even with the 30% bonus you're often paying well above market for the cards you want. Sure it basically saves a step, but it's not really gaming the system so much as simply paying for convenience.
I pulled some random, non-Standard cards from Channel Fireball to demonstrate:
So as you can see, if you were to sell the cards to CFB and opt for store credit, you'd still need $28.29 to buy the cards you want, assuming roughly equal markups across the board. However, if you were to just take the cash, you'd only need $17.96 to buy the cards at MOTL price. It's not really that much, but you're still spending money.
That's not to mention that trading with fellow players would get you equal value, which makes that seem like the best option.
You lose a lot going to a vendor.. you can simply test it out by selecting a batch of random cards and comparing (like what was done above).
For example if I ChannelFireball buylist the following cards for store credit:
Angelic Destiny, Hero of Bladehold, and Mox Opal
And then buy these cards:
Thrun, Karn, Elspeth, and Batterskull
It will cost me $23.6 more to still get the cards I want (I didn't include shipping or tax).
If I, instead, use ebay, even accounting for fees and shipping, it will cost me $13 to get my cards and that's being reasonable and using buy it now.
Now obviously people don't want to deal with the hassle but its 13$. That's a big percentage in this case and I haven't even accounted for tax and shipping on the first order where I did with ebay. Furthermore, you buy playsets of cards on ebay and you get a discount and you can sell the lots of junk rares, foils, and commons/uncommons at better rates than the vendors will offer.
But ultimately trading is going to be superior - so trade all the tradables and ebay all the junk and then vendor sell the remnants.
Just curious for those of you who get store credit. Is it only towards singles, or does the store let you buy into drafts et with that money? I understand your store may vary, but I would think stores that heavily discount tournament packs would be less likely to do this.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
You lose a lot going to a vendor.. you can simply test it out by selecting a batch of random cards and comparing (like what was done above).
For example if I ChannelFireball buylist the following cards for store credit:
Angelic Destiny, Hero of Bladehold, and Mox Opal
And then buy these cards:
Thrun, Karn, Elspeth, and Batterskull
It will cost me $23.6 more to still get the cards I want (I didn't include shipping or tax).
If I, instead, use ebay, even accounting for fees and shipping, it will cost me $13 to get my cards and that's being reasonable and using buy it now.
Now obviously people don't want to deal with the hassle but its 13$. That's a big percentage in this case and I haven't even accounted for tax and shipping on the first order where I did with ebay. Furthermore, you buy playsets of cards on ebay and you get a discount and you can sell the lots of junk rares, foils, and commons/uncommons at better rates than the vendors will offer.
But ultimately trading is going to be superior - so trade all the tradables and ebay all the junk and then vendor sell the remnants.
imho..
I did the same math on these cards using my site and came up with a 2.25 difference including all shipping/fees/etc on both sides. The one thing you might of forgotten was to include free shipping since at $50 you hit free shipping on most sites. At $2.25 I don't think the risk vs. reward is worth it IMO but of course I'm very biased.
What are you counting ebay/paypal fees at anyways? Just want to make sure we are on the same page fee wise.
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Take cryptic command. I can sell it to CF for $8, or press my luck on eBay. I saw a recent sale from a guy with less than 100 feedback, and he got $10 including shipping. After fees that's $8.75ish. With CF (or any highly regarded vendor) the likelihood of getting paid is 100%. I have no problem giving up 10% value for the surety and convenience of buy lists. Plus, if you buy boxes/sealed/specialty products, it can't be beat.
The only cards worth selling on eBay/mtgsalvation/motl are high end cards where the spread justifies it.
I sell quite a bit, and I have to say that I actually get better returns from buylists in some cases. Every time I'm selling cards worth less than $5, selling them as bulk to a buylist end sup with better profit than eBay. I'll often have something like this:
Low value of a card on TCGPlayer (How I evaluate card prices): 100%
Buylist buy price: 60%
eBay average price from recent sales: 75%
eBay buys below the lowest shops sell prices already. Then the shipping and fees cut into that. When you are done, eBay tends to be only marginally better in many cases. If I can get $3 per card on eBay after fees, or I can sell all of them at once to a buylist and get $2.5, it's often worth the time I save and reliability to just sell to a buylist.
It's a completely different story on expensive cards. eBay prices tend to approach seller prices as card value increases. Not only that, but buylist prices stay the same or get worse even on more expensive cards. I've found that the splitting point is around $20. Below that I get even returns from buylists and eBay or even more money from buylists sometimes. Once you break $20 though, eBay is often significantly more profitable and IS worth my time.
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In response to me defeating the town in a Perfect Scum Victory in Avatar Mafia:
If I want to unload some cards...this is the order I do it in.
1. Try to trade them away at my local FNM
2. List them on Ebay.
3. Put a bunch of cards together as a lot and list them on Ebay or Craigslist for cheaper.
That's usually as far as I have to go. Buylists suck. I can't understand why people use them. Magic cards are popular right now and any decent card will get you 80-90% of the listed price on Ebay....some higher. Premium cards in demand are easily getting 95% of retail on Ebay. Even with the Ebay fees, the return is much better than buylists.
As for bulk rares..or even 1-2 dollar rares...yes they are harder to move on Ebay....but the buylists from stores are even more brutal on those.
But yeah, it's pretty easy to see it's a losing battle here. But for many people, setting up an ebay account, posting pics and dealing with strangers over the internet is just too much hassle and time. I do sell things at larger events, esp if I need the cash then and there to pick up something for a deck I'm using or someone has a killer deal on a card I can't find for cheaper... my wife prefers I do it that way as well, so I'm selling cards to "support the hobby." Since most of the cards I buy are from trades or Limited, it's not to bad of a loss in the end.
A lot of stores offer 20% trade in credit so that is a 34.5% swing now. Add with the convenience of being able to sell and buy everything at one place without dealing with multiple buyers/sellers. Oh yeah I forgot packaging costs which for the average seller would add around .50 per package.
To me it doesn't seem that bad of a deal after all because for most working people time=money.
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The 20% store credit many stores offer...doesn't hardly compensate for the generally 30%+ markup from MOTL values that stores sell cards at, combined with the 40% discount stores buy cards at, so the only reason to sell to stores is pretty much just laziness. Even a simple craigslist posting should lead to a better deal than stores.
The time = money part makes sense in a fashion, but if you think about it - for a person is making sufficient money, the entire concept of ever selling, to stores or anybody else, is not anywhere on the priority list
P.S. I love stores, just...not selling to em ;P
What I have done with buylists is package a bunch of .50 - $2 cards together. After fees and shipping it is really not worth the hassle to ebay this kind of stuff. I actually was extremely pleased with my experience using the buylist at Capefear.
I have also used Channelfireball's buylist twice. Once I did the same as with Capefear and sent a pile of Standard cards of small to medium value. The other time, I sent them a huge pile of old commons that they were valuing between .02 each and $1 each. Basically I turned a pile of bulk into a check for $70. It was a time consuming process, but other than time spent it was a 'money for nothing' situation for me.
There are definite advantages to buylisting over Ebaying. The ability to send a bunch of stuff, for which there might be little individual demand, to one place is a great option to have in turning cards to cash.
Otherwise, I prefer to just unload bulk on stores. I sold a stack of bulk rares once and got around $125 for it. Like other posters have mentioned, you get pretty good deals if you opt to get store credit. Hell, if I really needed cash, I would still have no problem unloading bulk. You're trading something that is pretty much worthless for something that you can actually use.
RUG Riku, Two is Better Than One
UB [PRIMER] Wrexial, Classic Control
RG Radha, Ramp's Theme Goes With Everything
To summarize:
My bulkiest of bulk usually just goes onto Craigslist to newer players (just unloaded a box of commons for $10 last night), and the more popular cards go on here/eBay. Stores (some) are good for the in-between.
Now lets say you did all of this to get Geist. Geist runs for around $14+ shipping on ebay or 15+shipping at most dealers. Most dealers now offer free shipping at $50 where as if you want free shipping with ebay you will have to pay around 15 for the card.
This does not include using coupons, etc at stores which most of them do offer. My point is with hot STD cards I think it's an even better deal if you play the system right. Use coupons, use free shipping, get the store credit bonus, etc. Dealers margins are way less on hot STD cards which can make them a better card to trade in.
Just my 2 cents but I'm of course biased just like the rest of us.
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Ebay's fees make selling all but playsets of chase Standard or hard to find older cards uneconomical. Auctions are really hit or miss unless you have a huge supply (like kidicarus2000, who has a playset of Standard listed at all times) and the listing fee of $0.50 per buy-it-now is ridiculous. If you're not running a store of your own then ebay is actually fairly abysmal in most cases.
A list on forums such as this one will only take you so far, since the visibility is so small. I'll have things listed here for weeks and no one will see them, then I'll check a random store's buylist and they'll be paying more than what I've been asking.
I'm pretty sure most people who sell to stores with bad buylists are doing so for the guaranteed dollar amount. No hoping your auction gets bids or your BINs get sold, just money in the bank, even if it's a little less than you could get elsewhere. Like I said, the bigger the store the worse the buy prices on average, but with that comes better service and a greater assurance that you'll get your money.
It's all supply and demand, if the store can buy the 30 dollar card for 15, they will, and will sell it for 30, if they can't sell it for 30, they lower it. If they can't buy it for 15, then they raise the buy price, until they hit the point where they are moving the cards like a river. There is no fixed percentage that they have to buy and sell. Fluctuations happen due to demand and them realizing they can raise the price or decrease the buy price, which people don't like. But they also have to lower prices and raise buy prices, but that doesn't get flak, and therefore doesn't get noticed as much.
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Case in point, I had 4x Primeval Titans and the players around here needed one or two but were undervaluing it (at 15 bucks). A week later, it shot up to 20 and while it was smart for me to hold onto it at face value, it really wasn't. Nobody wants them anymore, the players here grab playsets within a few days after a deck hits qualifiers or any big event. Instead of losing a few bucks on them, I might possibly lose everything on them since they are in such low demand.
If I miss my window and I don't think the card will hit another peak again, I sell cards to a seller that'll at least be able to profit off of it (and help me out in the process) than for it to waste away in a bin for edh or casual trade fodder.
However, I refuse to sell on E-Bay or take payments via Paypal as I'm against their methods of operation. When I need to send money online I use Amazon payments, but the rest of the world hasn't caught onto this yet.
When you add in the store credit bonuses from stores, it becomes the first option when I want to sell cards.
First, as Heath astutely pointed out, there are a lot of "hidden" costs in doing business on eBay. It's also very time consuming. I value my time very highly, so it's not really worth it to me to spend 2-4 hours (sorting cards, setting up the listings, getting the packing materials, going to the post office, etc.) just to grind out like $13 in return.
Second, it's actually not very different than trading with another person. If I'm trading a bunch of $5-$7 cards for a Sword of War and Peace, then I would expect to have to value my cards a bit lower than normal to account for trading up. You're going to take a hit on value either way.
Third, in the above example, how many people would actually trade you a Sword of War and Peace for a bunch of $5-$7 cards? How many people at your LGS even have a Sword of War and Peace for trade in the first place? Sometimes you have no recourse unless you want to fork over the cash. If you play Vintage or are really into EDH, it can get extremely hard to find the cards you need.
Fourth, when I play FNM, the prize payout is always in packs. This means that I have a ton of bulk rares sitting around, just taking up space. Why not trade these in to the dealers? 200 bulk rares for a Snapcaster Mage is a trade that I'll happily make.
This is not to say that there's no downside to selling to dealers. You'll generally need to compare a few buylists to make sure that you're not giving up value (example: back in September, dealers were buying Birthing Pod for anywhere from $3 to $7), and you may need to ship the cards by mail. And you will probably give up a little bit of value in exchange for the convenience. But I think so long as you understand how the game is played, you'll have a pleasant experience.
It's a lot of work. I think at one time that was something QuietSpeculation.com had on thier premium membership.
Thanks to SushiOtter at Hakai Studios for the awesome banner that is better than yours
Well, the thing is that even with the 30% bonus you're often paying well above market for the cards you want. Sure it basically saves a step, but it's not really gaming the system so much as simply paying for convenience.
I pulled some random, non-Standard cards from Channel Fireball to demonstrate:
1. Creakwood Liege
Buy - $4
Sell - $8
MOTL price - $6.34
2. Cryptic Command
Buy - $8
Sell - $14.39 (SP)
MOTL price - $12.49
3. Force of Will
Buy - $40
Sell - $70
MOTL price - $50.35
4. Kitchen Finks
Buy - $5
Sell - $10
MOTL price - $5.78
Total Buy - $57
Total Sell - $102.39
Total Buy x 30% - $74.10
Total MOTL price - $74.96
So as you can see, if you were to sell the cards to CFB and opt for store credit, you'd still need $28.29 to buy the cards you want, assuming roughly equal markups across the board. However, if you were to just take the cash, you'd only need $17.96 to buy the cards at MOTL price. It's not really that much, but you're still spending money.
That's not to mention that trading with fellow players would get you equal value, which makes that seem like the best option.
That's a little contradictory, unless you meant that the cards you sell help to offset the cost of buying new ones, rather than cover it completely.
For example if I ChannelFireball buylist the following cards for store credit:
Angelic Destiny, Hero of Bladehold, and Mox Opal
And then buy these cards:
Thrun, Karn, Elspeth, and Batterskull
It will cost me $23.6 more to still get the cards I want (I didn't include shipping or tax).
If I, instead, use ebay, even accounting for fees and shipping, it will cost me $13 to get my cards and that's being reasonable and using buy it now.
Now obviously people don't want to deal with the hassle but its 13$. That's a big percentage in this case and I haven't even accounted for tax and shipping on the first order where I did with ebay. Furthermore, you buy playsets of cards on ebay and you get a discount and you can sell the lots of junk rares, foils, and commons/uncommons at better rates than the vendors will offer.
But ultimately trading is going to be superior - so trade all the tradables and ebay all the junk and then vendor sell the remnants.
imho..
I did the same math on these cards using my site and came up with a 2.25 difference including all shipping/fees/etc on both sides. The one thing you might of forgotten was to include free shipping since at $50 you hit free shipping on most sites. At $2.25 I don't think the risk vs. reward is worth it IMO but of course I'm very biased.
What are you counting ebay/paypal fees at anyways? Just want to make sure we are on the same page fee wise.
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Paying extra 20% on paper cards for MTGOTraders credits.
The only cards worth selling on eBay/mtgsalvation/motl are high end cards where the spread justifies it.
Low value of a card on TCGPlayer (How I evaluate card prices): 100%
Buylist buy price: 60%
eBay average price from recent sales: 75%
eBay buys below the lowest shops sell prices already. Then the shipping and fees cut into that. When you are done, eBay tends to be only marginally better in many cases. If I can get $3 per card on eBay after fees, or I can sell all of them at once to a buylist and get $2.5, it's often worth the time I save and reliability to just sell to a buylist.
It's a completely different story on expensive cards. eBay prices tend to approach seller prices as card value increases. Not only that, but buylist prices stay the same or get worse even on more expensive cards. I've found that the splitting point is around $20. Below that I get even returns from buylists and eBay or even more money from buylists sometimes. Once you break $20 though, eBay is often significantly more profitable and IS worth my time.