Selling Old Magic Cards: Time Keeps On Slippin’…, Part Two

On the subject of actually selling my Magic: the Gathering collection, I have a few thoughts that have been tested somewhat and will continue to be tested over the next four-ish months.

• The most important three things to do: sort, sort, sort! (hur hur…)
• Keep now or forever hold your peace, or “Kill your babies.”
• eBay vs. selling to dealers
• auctions vs. storefront
• Plan for the end at the beginning

Sort, Sort, Sort!

I absolutely encourage you to do as much prep before you get into the actual activity of selling your cards. You want to exactly what you have, what you want, and what you can sell. Do not be surprised by the extra Force of Will hidden in with the Gaea’s Blessings from that time you were building a deck; find it before-hand. Yes, you can always sell a single X later, but playsets (that is, four of a card) are usually a better seller than singletons, so not finding that potential 4th copy can cost you money. There are a couple psychological reasons to, but I’ll get to that later.

“Kill Your Babies.”

Mel Brooks talks about writing a musical on a DVD I have that documents the recording of the soundtrack album for The Producers. I forget who he’s talking about, but he says he received very important advice to cut spoken words whenever necessary to make room for the songs, no matter how difficult the decision felt. “”Kill your babies,” he told me,” says Brooks. For some reason, this has always stayed with me as shorthand for “do the thing that needs doing when you don’t want to.” Pleasant, right? Point is, I’ve had to force myself not to hold onto cards just because I have fond memories of them or, perversely, BECAUSE THEY’RE VALUABLE. If I’m getting out, I’m getting out.

I am, actually, allowing myself to keep some cards around for decks. I’ve even met some new Magic-playing friends for the first time in years, so I’m playing more than I used to. However, I’m requiring my decks to be made of commons, uncommons, and “crap” rares exclusively; the only exceptions are for a few decks that I long ago decided are critically valuable to me. I’ll be writing about these decks in the coming weeks and months.

All that being said, with almost no exceptions I have to sell the cards I think I love; I haven’t looked at them in years, just how much can I possibly love them?

eBay vs. Selling to Dealers

This is a relatively short and sweet decision to make. Simply put, a dealer is not going to pay you for your cards even close to the same amount you can get for selling them yourself. On the other hand, they will take the whole lot from you at once, saving you who knows how much time and effort. So, ask yourself this - what’s your “spare” time worth to you?

For me, I actually kinda like scratching my mercantile itch, plus I feel like I have a pretty good system in place that keeps the tedium to a minimum. So, eBay totally makes sense for me, at least for now. I am absolutely keeping a box, however, where I place cards that I don’t think are worth the time to sell, cards that I see current auctions ending with sub $1.00 prices. Remember, eBay / PayPal have not-insignificant fees that brutalize small transactions. Every now and then a dealer like Star City Games will offer $.10 / rare for any rares. I’ll keep my eyes out for a deal like that and ship my Cheappy Box off then.

Auctions vs. Opening a Store

I suspect that my decision making on this point, being intuitive, may in fact be wrong, but it works for me. I opened a store (which I won’t link to again, ’cause I’m a good boy) and I also put up auctions. My decision-making goes something like this:

If the card is very popular, and a lot of auctions exist, I feel like I can get a consensus view of what the card is worth. In that case, I don’t auction the card(s). Instead, I cut 5-10% off the consensus price and put it up on my store. So far, this has worked like a charm - I’ve had almost instant sales on many cards, without the wait of an auction that was quite likely to yield that price or just a teeny bit more.

On the other hand, if the card is slow-moving and/or there’s no real data on it, I put it up for auction. I don’t have a good sense of what price to charge for it, so I let the market decide. Sometimes I’m disappointed in the outcome, but most of the time it has turned out just fine and, besides, if I’d set a too-high price for the market they just would’ve sat there.

Plan For the End at the Beginning

The first time I ever tried to sell a bunch of cards at once, a few years ago, I had no plan for dealing with the end-of-auction rush and it was utter chaos; I’m still amazed that I was able to apologize my way to a still-pristine 100% feedback rating. Be aware of what you’re going to need when it comes time to deliver the goods. If you’re selling larger items, have the right boxes ready. Buy postage if you’re selling things that can be mailed. Print address labels and prep your envelopes. For pete’s sake make sure you’ve got whatever padding or card protection you’re going to need.

This time around, I’ve got a table where all cards that are for sale or at auction are laid out, packed in sleeves and/or hard cases and ready to go. When an auction is over and payment is received, I just print the payment page to use as an invoice, address an envelope, stuff if with the cards and invoice, and seal it. Voila! So much easier than ever before, which keeps the hassle factor low, which keeps me willing to do more listings.

Hopefully this will help you if you ever decide to sell mounds of things via eBay. On the other hand, what tricks do you know that can help me?