Dumping my Magic cards

I haven't played competitive Magic in years and I doubt I'm going back so I dusted off my collection and prepared it to be sold at a boardgame site, thinking someone would give me an 1825 or Republic of Rome for some of them.

Guess they weren't interested.


So I'm stuck with a bunch of cool, expensive cards (City of Traitors, Trinispheres, Smokestacks and other cards from an Armaggedon Stax deck) that I don't know how to sell. Last time I sold my collection I lost ludicrious amounts of money and a signed Japanese Yawghmoth's Will and going into the local flea market is a waste of time, most people want to trade, not buy cards.

So yeah, any ideas on how to handle this?

Trade them in to coolstuffinc. They usually pay well (though sometimes a card or two I try to sell is too low and I hold on to it) and if you choose credit, they give you their list price +20% in credit. They are also very generous with condition and have very rarely knocked my cards down to the "played" price (which is 75% of list, though still at +20%)

If you're trying to sell bulk use craigslist, I sold over 20K bulk commons/uncommones last year for over $200 on there and they sold in days in lots of 3000.

It would be a good idea but I'm in Europe and I don't know of any local alternatives. They must exist, though, so I'll look into it.

It's round about, but you could probably sell CSI credit pretty easily here or on BGG for 90-95 cents on the dollar.

Edit: since I don't know where you live I don't know what your economy is like or how good or bad of a deal selling for USD would be.

Yeah, the "I'm in Europe" issue messes with any advice I might give you, which would all be US-centric.

If you lose money off this it'd be tragic. I've found that unless you're a Standard player, it's pretty hard to lose money on having had a deck full of valuable cards. Assuming you bought those City of Traitors a while back, those'll probably cover any losses from other cards. The big way to lose money is with a bunch of low-value cards, since shipping and the pain-in-the-neck of just spending the time to find a buyer for each $3 card sucks up whatever value your cards might have gained.

For me: I sell primarily on eBay. For the low-value stuff I use buylists; Coolstuffinc has one of the best, and mtg.gg checks nearly every other buylist for the best price as well. But those are US-centric. For Europe, the website I mainly hear about is www.magiccardmarket.eu . I know nothing about it, but that's what the European buyers/sellers are always talking about.

You can also check out magictraders.com . I see people in Europe selling stuff there a lot; the benefit is that you don't have to pay eBay fees or Paypal fees, since everyone just uses Paypal gift. The drawback is obvious, you've got probably a hundredth of the eyeballs.

Is it pretty much just that Stax deck?

dragonstout wrote: Is it pretty much just that Stax deck?

Pretty much. I have a couple worthwhile cards here and there from other decks (City of Brass, Gemstone Mine playset, Sundering Titan, etc) but most is jank or artifact lands.

I do have a couple worthwhile but not expensive cards like Thirst for Knowledge, Armageddon and Fabricate. Selling those online seems a pain for such a small amount of money so I've looked into local shops.


I've found a couple, they are well-known shops and while their buy prices may be decent, I don't expect anything great. They are known for being overpriced and store credits gets less interesting if I have to pay so much for their boardgames. They also don't have common/uncommon sets which is a shame.

I'm going to call them and see what they offer me. But I'll probably be dissapointed.

Erik Twice wrote: I do have a couple worthwhile but not expensive cards like Thirst for Knowledge, Armageddon and Fabricate. Selling those online seems a pain for such a small amount of money so I've looked into local shops.

The trick with cards like that is to sell them in playsets of 4, if you have them. Otherwise, yeah, that's the exact kind of card I lose money on. My personal requirement is $5; I don't like to eBay a card or lot of cards for less than that. I'm also willing to take a dollar less to use a buylist rather than eBay; saves time.

You know, the truth is...if you're not getting much money for your deck...don't sell it! When you DO get an opportunity to play your deck, does it bring you joy? Because if you ever end up missing it, it will certainly cost more to replace than what you got for it, guar-an-teed. All Magic players, if they at some point "sell all their cards", should keep *one* deck that they like.

dragonstout wrote: When you DO get an opportunity to play your deck, does it bring you joy? Because if you ever end up missing it, it will certainly cost more to replace than what you got for it, guar-an-teed.

It never brought me much joy, which isn't surprising given it was never complete.

Nah, man, I know what you mean. But I won't go back to constructed play, it's very expensive and I don't really like it too much, the classic proxy decks I have are enough for me and they are fun to play with my friends. And I'm going to keep some draft collections, I think I'll do ok.

BTW, I called. One shop was unavailble, one doesn't trade old cards but the third gave me some prices.

I can get 20€ per City of Traitors, 5,75€ per Ancient Tomb. Trading all my Tombs and two Cities get me my boardgame which seems a fair deal to me.

They aren't buying my Crucible of Worlds though and there's not much else I would want to buy from them since they don't really have common sets.

I'll call the unavailble shop but I'm going to get a similar response. I may be able to get RoR for cheaper and perhaps they'll buy my Crucibles but there's not much I can buy from them other than RoR and sleeves.

If you don't like it then yeah, sell that shit. I loooooooooooove Stax-style decks. Nothing I like more than my opponent sitting there crying unable to do anything

That's a good price for the Cities and Tombs, comparable to US prices at least.

Is your Crucible of Worlds the Fifth Dawn version? I'm actually looking for one of those, if the version is right. I have common sets, but they're probably prohibitively expensive to ship overseas.

Haha, what I meant is that I could never enjoy the deck because I never got all the neccesary cards not that I didn't like it. Just the face of Tempo players when you play Chalice of the Void or the constant ramping of Smokestack makes it an amazing experience. (I played with proxies, borrowing cards or online).

T

I called the previously unavailble shop and they are very open to trading cards for boardgames, I'm going to talk with them in person tomorrow and see what they can give me since they have some stuff I'm interested in.


My Crucibles are indeed Fifth Dawn if you want one of them. Shipping across the pond isn't expensive per se, what is often expensive is shipping to/from the US. Now, it's just a letter so who knows how expensive it is.

Erik Twice wrote: the constant ramping of Smokestack makes it an amazing experience.

Just in case, because I've seen it misread many times: Smokestacks ramps at your command and your command only. I'm not sure I've ever seen it go up to 3, and I usually see it left at 1.

dragonstout wrote: Just in case, because I've seen it misread many times: Smokestacks ramps at your command and your command only. I'm not sure I've ever seen it go up to 3, and I usually see it left at 1.

How high you raise depends on the situation. You have 56 permanents so leaving it at 1 requires no support. With Crucible you can leave it at 2 so they are the most common numbers.

3 and 4 are used to wipe out the board so they aren't as common. But it's important to know when to do it instead of waiting for it to do its job.

Hey, I went and sold most of the cards getting The Republic of Rome (60€), a core Netrunner box (40€) and a bunch of sleeves in return. I still have two Ancient Tombs, the Trinispheres and all other cheap rares but I think I did well.

I could have gotten a good chunk more had I went to the second shop first since they had RoR at a lower price and I didn't take the second store somewhat higher prices into account. Oh, well.