Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

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nscc
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Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by nscc »

Hey,

I am going to be selling alot my buddys magic cards for him. He has... maybe 8-10k worth of cards from various sets. I am gonna put em up on ebay (which will take forever!), but I told him I would help him out since he just moved home and figures he may as well get rid of them before his wife gets *SQUEE* and cuts them all up (she already cut up maybe... $1,000 worth in a fit of rage :o)

Anyway, what I am wondering is, has anyone had any experience shipping them? What should I package them in, just bubble envelopes or even regular envelopes if the card is in a hard case?

This will be a long term project I think due to the volume of cards. I am going to go take a look soon at them but will take forever to sort them out. All are NM as he is a fiend, and only keeps NM unplayed cards and a bunch are pretty valuable, he has a small binder with about 5k in it, which is where the real money is as they are all $20+ cards (according to starcitygames)

I expect to get maybe 70% of the star city price or so on ebay and will probably end up listing them with buy it nows for what I want (full-ish price) and accept offers.

Any advise on liquidating this many items? I know the easiest way would be a massive lot, but since the sets are so varied, the price would be pretty low I am sure.

If anyone on here is interested in any, when I get a list made up (I am NOT looking forward to it) I will put it on here and we can talk. He doesn't have anything crazy from alpha and beta, but he has a *SQUEE* load of just about everything else.

We are also gonna crack open a box of modern masters sometime this week too. He already has the most expensive stuff from it though, a foil tarmagoyph, the swords, etc.

Thanks for looking and any advise you might have from previous buying and selling experience on ebay. Myself, I have no feedback as I have not sold on ebay, so I expect to not get a bunch of sales right away due to that, but by putting the biggest in demand stuff up, it might help it sell anyway.
Where are we going and why am I in this hand-basket?

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paradise
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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by paradise »

joel, we have a very long and thorough experience selling single magic cards on ebay, with result being.... we don't sell single magic cards on ebay :)

Ebay is a marketplace where what you get for an item is directly related to how many other copies of that specific item are up online at the same time. someone is always low balling your price because they don't need to "make money" they are just getting rid of cards.

MTG card category has the lowest percentage of completed, paid transactions after Buy Now than any other category we have sold in.

MTg card category had the highest amount of people buying from certain european and latin american countries that were fraud purchases.

Eventually we just got tired of all that and stopped.

On your specific questions:

Shipping is easy. get envelopes and good quality cardboard. cut cardboard to size so that two pieces, with a card or a few fit between the two boards, and still fits perfectly snug inside the envelope. Put cards in a good quality sleeve, make sure it's in the middle of the envelope not touching edges, and tape that way. good to go, don't put stamps, take to post office and have them postage it. or get a postage service with a scale.

MANY cards are worth close to nothing, even if there is a nominal value. they just don't sell. mtg is a game of constantly changing values on cards due to a very active professional tournament circuit that determines what decks and cards are played. You always have to adjust prices and pay attention to what is being played.

do not do "best offer" you will just get 100s of low ball offers from people who then will not pay for the items. kids looking at cards, bidding and not paying. their parents emailing you telling you their kids "accidentally" bid and since it's the parents account, please remove the bid. NOT worth it.

A good way to sell is to sell sets of 4 but that only works on cards that are in high rotation with players and are played in decks in max quantity of four. mtg players are quite lazy and will pay MORE for 4 copies rather than look for 2-4 different auctions and pay lower prices plus shipping. the internals of mtg play allow you to do this, but you need to know what you are doing. Listing 4 copies of a card that gets played rarely or only 2 per deck will make sure that your 4 pack just sits there.

pictures are very important to mtg players, including pictures of front and back, pretty high rez, and showing the "play" on the cards, corners, borders and everything else. if the cards are unplayed, make sure that word is in the title. Many of the mtg players will pay premium for that word.

Also a general ebay advice. every time you want to list an item, search for it, and then click on the "Sold' button on the left side, and examine what the people who've got the MOST done differently. sometimes it's their title, how it's written, which keywords are used. Sometimes it is the right category while others are doing wrong, sometimes it's the right type of photos. Learn from that.
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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by Jace »

Wholeheartedly agree with what Ed says. Ebay is the worst place to sell MTG cards. The best place is to go to a big tournament with cards in hand and sell to the players directly. The market for cards is VERY volatile and prices vary greatly from week to week. If you are not in an area where tournaments are played regularly or the tournaments that are held in your area are very small. Consider taking a day trip to a big pro tour event or qualifier. Alternatively create an inventory list on DECKBOX.com and then advertise at the big MTG forum websites like MTG Salvation. Best of luck whatever you decide.

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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by depluto »

I sold some dual land cards last year ... those were a breeze to sell. I checked the recent sales, set my price pretty high and they were all gone within a week or two. Seven cards paid for our plane tickets to SDCC. But other cards were kind of a pain and only a few bucks here or there. I still have a bunch but don't know if I'll bother listing them.

For shipping, just put a top loader between two pieces of thick cardboard and you're good. I sent a couple priority mail since they were pricier.

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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by nscc »

Thanks for all of the advise everyone.

Since I read him Ed's post, he has changed his thoughts on this a little... :lol:

This one sentence had the most impact I think since you mentioned before you have at least one employee doing your online stuff. If it's not worth it for you guys...
paradise wrote:
joel, we have a very long and thorough experience selling single magic cards on ebay, with result being.... we don't sell single magic cards on ebay.

Ebay is gonna be our last resort.

We are gonna compile a really big list, and send off to you first Ed to see if he has anything you would be interested in.

There are no big tournaments around here, but there is a pretty healthy amount of players in our area, so we are gonna start there. We may end up going to Halifax since it is the closest city, and there is a lot more interest there for a tournament and see if that will work out.

He does have a bunch of popular stuff from standard, so that is what will hopefully move Ed/locally, if not we will move on to mtg salvation and then... ebay I suppose and try it there.

On the shipping info, that is perfect :)

Thanks again guys, much appreciated. You turned a HUGE project for me into much less work, which is awesome, although my buddy isn't as happy as he was :lol: :clap: :thumb:
Where are we going and why am I in this hand-basket?

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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by cjv »

I wish I hadn't sold my cards about 15 years ago. :(

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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by Tim »

cjv wrote:I wish I hadn't sold my cards about 15 years ago. :(
My parents threw mine away because they were "the devil".

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Re: Going to be selling some magic cards, need some advise.

Post by depluto »

Haven't thought about this in a while ... just checked the eBay sold prices on some of the dual lands. Wow! Some of those are well over $100 now.


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