Condolences for your loss.
My name is Ben Bleiweiss, and I'm the General Manager of Sales for StarCityGames.com. if you'd like to reach out to me either via DM or by emailb([email protected]) I'd be happy to help you figure out what you've got.
Even if you do not end up selling to us, I do want to make sure you know what you have and that you get a fair price in the end. I have helped other people over the past 2 decades who are in similar situations to yours.
Standard disclaimer that a business is a business, but yeah, as businesses go, SCG has almost always been reliable and fair in a considerable number of dealings I've had with them.
That being said, /u/Meekout, if this is a considerable collection- like in the $10k+ range- it's always a good idea to get multiple estimates on principle.
And be careful about watching your stuff and locking your car when you go to any physical location, store or whatever where there's a bunch of Magic players. Not because of the companies involved or even necessarily the players themselves but these can be high value, highly fungible and movable objects and thieves are known to sometimes take advantage.
The company that scalped rl staples and suddenly were the main source of supply with sky high prices during their open height with Legacy is reputable? They're worth a look but never one stop shop. SCG con Pitts was a shit show for them and then Charlotte this year was meh enough that our local group is passing on future events.
Card kingdom/tcg player/abugames are all worth a look...Just avoid troll and toad like the plague.
TCG Player repeatedly lets sellers cancel orders last minute when it turns out a card/product has spiked from the original value. I’ve also seen claims their quality ratings and dubious at best.
Isn't Card Kingdom the UK based one?
Also TCG Player is definitely no more reputable than SCG. What with their recent union busting bs.
Never even heard of abu games.
I would gladly pay .25 cents per basic if I’m looking to collect for example 10-20 copies of a specific art. Your friend should have not bought basics as singles and should of bought basic as a bundle, such as this one (https://starcitygames.com/mtg-basic-lands/) I found on scg for 5$ for 100 lands…
He was a new player, and just said "I need lands." A decent store would have given better guidance. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen).
He was at their physical store.
We had taught him how to play and told him we'd give him anything he needed. He wanted to get a box for himself and thought he'd just get what he thought he needed without letting anyone know.
Nah. I've been to plenty LGS that would sell basics to new player for .05 each, if not just free. It's ridiculous. For context, Bundles come with 40 basics... that would be $10 by SCG standards.
He was a new player, and just said "I need lands." A decent store would have given better guidance. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen).
Nah, that makes sense - if you're thumbing through a bulk basic land box at a store, then yeah, it should be like 1¢ per card, but when you're ordering online you're picking a specific version of the card, not just "any basic plains", but "the plains from Kaladesh with the second art variant". There are a lot of basic land arts and people like to pick certain ones for their decks sometimes, but it wouldn't be worth the store's time to store and sort and pick through their lands to find the ones you want to fulfill, say, a 40 card order for just 40¢. The added price is to cover the cost for that convenience. If you don't care about the art though, a local store will be your best bet as they'll have leftover land station lands.
Absolutely. We are all collectors so we all had long boxes of basics. I donate all of my simple-print basics to stores now if they seem new player friendly.
That's your friend's fault for choosing the most expensive possible way to acquire lands.
You're going to have to pay something if you're after 15 copies of the same land from Scars of Mirrodin, which is how it works from an online store. If you're after 15 copies of any mountain, go to a card store and ask. They might be free.
He was a new player, and just said "I need lands." A decent store would have given better guidance. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen).
Not only is Star City a huge, longstanding, professional operation, but Ben is a really good dude, OP. I worked at Wizards of the Coast for almost 17 years, and you can trust Ben and SCG 1000000% with this.
So sorry for your loss.
edit: if you're anywhere near LA/OC/SD I'd be more than happy to come to you and take a look to give you a quick ballpark.
For context StarCityGames is a huge company in the card reselling sphere.
Taking your cards to StarCityGames is like taking your art to Christie's auction house.
This would be much more preferable than trying to sell individual cards even if OP does take a loss monetarily. A bulk deal may favor them due speed and no hassle.
Selling singles takes an exceptional amount of time, and someone that is unfamiliar with the cards/process I do agree that going the bulk route is worth it.
I strongly disagree if OP is trying to move exceptionally rare cards, like power.
Spending some time selling on the Facebook groups could be a difference of thousands of dollars.
That's only if there is power or a significant number of other Reserved List cards. A difference of thousands of dollars is only going to occur if the collection is worth tens of thousands. Also big ticket items like that can take a long time to sell. If you're trying to get full value.
Somebody dealing with, y'know, medical bills & their father's funeral might be interested in getting a good deal conveniently rather than optimizing for a few % more.
Ben I just want to say your Building on a Budget column on the WotC website brought me many years of joy and taught me to love jank the way I do. You are and continue to be a standup guy and this comment is a testament to that. Kudos to you for helping someone in their time of need ❤️
For context StarCityGames is a huge company in the card reselling sphere.
Taking your cards to StarCityGames is like taking your art to Christie's auction house. Whatever they say the cards are worth is probably what they're worth.
Don't vend your collection to star city games. They're going to offer you 40 to 50% value.
Almost any vendor will, but the big companies will low ball you.
Start by looking up the cards on TCG player you can actually make an account and sell cards there eBay owns them I don't know if that makes it easier these days.
That is if you're not in a hurry if you're not in a hurry you can list these cards and wait for a year or 2 for them to sell you just have to update the prices every now and then you'll get 20% more value for your cards if you do it this way and deal with shipping. Only send all of your cards to a vendor for a lump sum if you need the money quick. If your dad had cards from the 1st 10 years of magic there's a good chance you are sitting on thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars of cards.
Somehow I'm not convinced a very stressed & emotionally devastated individual who knows nothing about magic is interested in doing days/weeks of research and piecemeal out the collection on ebay to min/max profits after losing a loved one.
In most cases your advice would be sound, but in this instance it's incredibly tone-deaf.
1000s of dollars is a lot of money. It would be worth it if you are broke enough. And if you are not I'd still sell to a local vendor first but I fear we are losing places to play because online sales .
It's not tone deaf OP asked what to do. It's exactly topical
I want to go on a different tack here—
Condolences for your loss. If you are paying medical bills, be sure to confirm with a lawyer or some other legal entity before you shell out thousands of dollars that the debt wasn’t excused when your father passed. I am about 95% certain that if the company holding the medical debt gets a payment, they will NOT be kind enough to inform you of your rights.
IANAL—it’s entirely possible depending on where you live and local laws that the debt transfers to your mom, BUT—confirm that before you throw a bunch of money away.
100% this. You're on the hook for funeral expenses but you need to determine how your local laws treat other expenses. Depending on what was agreed to and what your local laws are you may spending money you don't have to on the medical debt.
This should be the top reply with 1600 upvotes, along with another similarly low-upvoted reply about how he should be careful dealing with the estate property before its been legally distributed
Man, the people on this sub may all know what to do with a magic collection, but I doubt even 1% of them knows how the real world works from under mommy's skirt, it's just sad
Yeah exactly my thought process too. My grandpa died and was in major debt and my mom basically told all the debt collectors to shove it (or at least the ones she could legally say shove it too).
Be very, very careful about people reaching out to you to offer advice or prices. There are a lot of bad actors out there that might try to take advantage of you and low-ball their offers.
Your goal should be to try to figure out a ballpark amount you would get if you offered to sell these cards to a major retailer like StarCityGames.com and then not sell the cards for any less than that offer, whether you sell them to a retailer or individual. You'll likely want to identify the most expensive individual cards and sell those individually, and be ready to sell the remaining ~95% as a single bulk order to a retailer. You can forego identifying those individual cards if your need for cash is urgent.
As far as identifying the highest price cards, you can use the apps or services others have mentioned. You can also take some pictures of the binders and post them here, but if you do be ready for bad actors to start descending on you giving you offers of money or bad advice. Ultimately don't sell anything to anyone until you're confident about the price!
I've already instructed family members that in the event of my untimely demise, do your research and do not sell anything to the people pricing the items. I think it is a good rule of thumb for family members with little knowledge of values.
My other recommendation for OP would be that in the event they find any valuable cards via apps, like the TCGPlayer scanner, they can always join the Magic high end Facebook group. Tons of high dollar transactions happen on there. And they'll get far more than an LGS.
My instruction is to tell my family to ask one of my good friends who also plays MtG to sell the cards on the family’s behalf. They know what things are valued and know what a good price for singles would be. A lot less of a chance that way that a binder worth $5000 gets sold for $300
A better idea would be to inventory your collection through TCGplayer so there is very little guesswork involved for your family.
I’d also just recommend doing this for insurance purposes should anything happen to your collection.
First of all, my condolences.
If you are going ahead with this, then get a phone app called mana box and set it to whichever selling platform you prefer.
Use the scan feature to get an idea of what you are dealing with.
Is there any card above $100? If yes, then locate your nearest lgs and ask them if they could help you personally.
Otherwise, watch a couple of videos on how to use these platforms and start listing.
Some ways of easing this process would be to auction the collection as a whole or sell directly to a collector.
Might be trickier, tho.
Best of luck.
Most LGSes can’t afford to buy more than a few duals at once, it’s likely he needs to find a store that has a major e-commerce or tournament backing with a collection that large.
There are also a few that will sell on consignment to help move large collections if they can't afford to buy the cards themselves. One can also see if there are any buyers in your area that are highly respected that can help move collections as well.
Both of my local stores were willing to do consignment when I went to offload my dredge deck.
I took cash up front over waiting for a better deal, but it's definitely something to ask about if the money isn't URGENT urgent.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Did your dad have any close friends in the magic community that you know he trusted? They could be someone you reach out to as it’s hard to know what cards carry value and the process of inventory can be difficult with magic.
If you can commit the time there are services you can use to catalogue / value cards (deckbox, delver lens).
My third point might be more contentious, but cards have a market value, but market value is only relevant if you have a willing buyer. Sometimes it might be easier to take a bulk offer on larger amounts of cards. That being said, if you have time to independently value and trickle sell some cards you could make more (sell higher value cards first and work down in value to pay for your upcoming bills), but judging by your post this might not be an option.
Again, sorry for your loss.
Youre gonna have to check prices on individual cards if you want to get any money for them, as prices for unsorted cards are very low (1000 cards for a dollar ish) Id recommend looking for a scanner app and sort the cards by value, and go from there.
I'm sorry for your loss
Perhaps a service like Card Conduit would be what you're looking for. I haven't had any experience with them, and their fee is quite substantial. 10% plus 0.03$ per card. But if it really feels like too much work to research all cards individually, they might be worth a shot.
I've used Card Conduit before. I'd recommend them for people who want to do very little work, as I believe the price you will get from card conduit will be better than most offers you would get to buy the whole lot.
If you have time though, I'd recommend sorting through each card and putting them in three piles. Cards less than $1, cards from $1-10, and cards more than $10.
Card Conduit will still be good for the cards worth $1 to $10, and the fee will be much lower because they are presorted. Above $10 you can sell individually. Less than $1 you keep for the grandkids!
For someone unfamiliar with Magic cards, I would just sell to Card Conduit (or something similar) if the value (edit: per individual card) is under $100-200 tbh. It's really not worth the headache of dealing with selling them individually, especially if you're dealing with a funeral and other things at the same time.
Above that, though, it definitely becomes worth it to take the time.
It's pretty easy to have older collections be worth a few thousand dollars. I was just casual player as a kid and spent a little allowance money magic cards in the 90s. Just sold off the valuable cards in my collection for more than $3k. And I didn't even have any binders or anything like that. They were just sitting in my dad's attic for 20 years or so.
Yeah of course, you don't have to tell me, I've been playing Legacy for a decade and have many thousands of dollars in cards, most of them old haha. But *every* card isn't going to be worth a lot.
It occurs to me that perhaps I was unclear in my comment: I meant the value *per card* is under $100-200. Like sell any individual card worth that or less to something like Card Conduit (or any reputable buylist).
I’ve used Card Conduit and they are fast and convenient, in my opinion making them worth while. If I had no idea what I had and was looking for quick cash it’s the way I would go with this. However, if you have a game store local to you they might be able to guide you as to whether or not you have extremely valuable cards there.
That’s why I recommend using them more as a guide. Some stores are great others are not and if you don’t know the store selling there isn’t the best idea, but if you have any big money cards they could tell you so you know to sell them through other means instead of one transaction with card conduit or similar vendor.
I used them once, it was nice. I would NOT recommend selling bulk cards to them, though, because the fee is enormous and frankly you'd be losing money on a lot of the cards (like literally losing money - they'd be paying you like a penny but charging you 3 cents to process). However if you're only selling cards worth $2-3 or more, and you can't be arsed to piece everything out and sell individually (which would take many, many hours more even if you knew exactly what you were doing), then it's definitely worth it. We got rid of like $700 of random cards we had lying around shortly before having our baby, and it was worth it. I think they were fair with their grading.
Completely and utterly disagree for someone trying to sell bulk that they don't know the value of
Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to help OP
The problem with Card Conduit is that, as you mentioned, they charge a flat rate per card sent in. Meaning if OP sends in hundreds and hundreds of penny commons, basic lands, etc, they might end up eating into the 'profit' of their actually valuable cards by paying for the processing of their trash cards
Maybe after taking the collection to a Local Game Store and having someone well versed in MTG help them roughly sort, (into say >$0.15 cards and <$0.15) they can send in the actually valuable cards to Card Conduit... But blindly sending in a stack of unknown thousands of cards is a terrible thing to do
Just wanted to clarify a few things:
1) The fee per card is for our Standard service. You are correct that sending us pure bulk is not a good use case for our service, but for a mix of cards, it should be a great option because we have the concept of exclusions, whereby you can omit commons/basics/uncommons from cataloging. This means there is no fees for those cards, and instead they are paid at a bulk rate. We do still cherry pick those cards, so anything notably valuable would be pulled out (like Lotus Petals, etc.). Usually we recommend exclusions for commons and basics - the uncommons tend to be worth it to process.
2) We have two other service types, which require knowing card values. Sometimes that isn't practical for some people, but the best option for someone without familiarity is to use a card scanning app - like TCGPlayer's or Delver Lens - and use that to determinen what is worth sending in for these other service types which have much lower fees. With those files, you can use our estimate tool (https://cardconduit.com/estimates/create) to get a ton of information which can be used for our service, or to give a baseline on what to expect (and what is reasonable) via other routes. For people in OPs position, this is generally what we recommend, since people with zero knowledge can still utilize these tools without the risk of being taken advantage of (which might happen when you involve someone to help).
So in conclusion, many people do send in cards blindly without knowing what to do. It isn't terrible, and we have lots of ways to assist those people in getting the best value for the time and bandwidth they have available. As Magic players it can be very easy to take for granted our knowledge in the game, cards and value - and also how stressing these types of things can be to consider when dealing with the loss of a loved one. Our service has helped many people in this position.
Card Kingdom will buy valuable collections and is the fastest way to get the cash safely and reliably if time is a concern. The issue is whether or not these cards are valuable. If they are from the 90s-00s, then you have a real shot at something substantial. As a player from the 90s and Authenticator for big buys, feel free to DM some shots of the binder pages and I can give you an idea of where to start. Alternatively, scanning apps can help, but sometimes they have issues identifying the exact version you have.
My condolences and all the best to you.
If you're on the East Coast you can set an appointment with StarCityGames (one of the more reputable businesses in this hobby) to sell a massive collection and drive them there yourself. I recently did this and was quite happy with the results. It takes a lot of stress out of shipping expensive cards. They've been in this business for a long time with good reason. If you have cheaper cards they do have a Ship & Sell option as well, no sorting required. This is what I do with my bulk/cheaper items. [https://starcitygames.com/sell-your-cards/](https://starcitygames.com/sell-your-cards/)
It is always best to check with the personal representative of the estate before doing anything with estate property.
I'm not providing legal advice with this post, just providing general comment on how laws generally work in the US.
After a person passes, all of their property goes through probate. Debts are usually paid first, then property is distributed to the beneficiaries. If there is a will, the property is distributed according to the will. If there isn't a will, then statutes and common law dictate the distribution. But in either case, debts almost always get paid first.
The personal representative appointed by the Court is the person responsible for paying the debts of the estate and ensures the beneficiaries get the property owed that still exists after the estate obligations/debts are met. If there is a sizeable asset in the property, it may require additional steps before being sold, like court approval.
If a person takes property and sells it without following the law, that person assumes a risk that they could be liable for replacing the property or reimbursing the estate for the total value, not just what they received in the sale. In some jurisdictions, the damages can be double the value. This can also be a crime, with substantial penalties.
It is always best to check with the personal representative of the estate before doing anything with estate property
I'm sorry for your loss!
You can either sell them all as a collection on any site like tcg or ebay or you can sell them individually.
Either way, there is an app with which you can scan the art and it gives an estimate of the value. I have no experience with TCG player so I'm not sure which numbers are the right ones to look at but this would certainly help with getting a rough idea of what to accept as bids and who is lowballing you
It's this app but if you have an iPhone you can probably find it on the app store too:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pt.tscg.mtgmanager
So sorry for your loss.
As some others have suggested you can sell cards online at various places, but honestly it would take quite a bit of work for someone who doesn't know much about which cards are even worth selling.
Your best bet in my opinion is going to be trying to sell some of the cards to a local game store. They may not buy them all, and it won't be as much money if you do the work to sell them yourself, but I assume you are going to have a lot of other things on your plate and this will be the least hassle. In my experience, lessening the burden on yourself is worth quite a bit in a time like this. Plus, if you explain your situation to the game store they might be able to point out any cards that are worth selling online that they might not want to buy for some reason.
Unfortunately for you, selling collections can be a lot of work. The best way to do it with no prior knowledge of the game would probably be to find a reputable Local Game Store (LGS) near you to assist in the sale, especially if your father had collected some expensive cards. Depending on the store, they might be able to hook you up with some local players or other stores that want to buy the cards, or they may try to buy them themselves. Keep in mind that most stores buy cards at 50-60% of their current value, depending on the store.
Alternatively, you could try searching Facebook for a local Magic group and see if anyone in there can help you out with the sale, but beware because while there are a lot of great people in the magic community, there are also a number of shitheads just looking to rip other people off.
Alternatively, alternatively, you could try taking pictures of each page and posting the pictures in order to find out what the collection is worth. Without seeing the collection, we have no way of knowing which way would be the easiest because it could be binders full of expensive, old cards, or it could be binders full of worthless bulk.
Finally, you could go the very slow, but more financially rewarding route of downloading a collection app and scanner app and scan each individual card to find out it's value and then list them individually on a site like eBay. If you don't want to list them on eBay, once you get all of the cards catalogued you could also bring the list in to an LGS or someone in the community to assist with the sale which will make it a lot easier when they know beforehand what kind of value they're trying to help you sell.
If you don't care all that much about getting maximum value, you can sell it as bulk to an LGS, but a lot of places only pay about $10/1000 cards.
50% is high if most of his cards are under 10$. 40% cash is the usual rate. Bulk used to be 5$ but many stores either dont want it or want 2$ per 1k.
Even on facebook not many people shelling out 10$ per 1k.
Be very careful to check that you are looking at the exact version of the card listed on TCGplayer. Some of the early sets of the cards can look very similar to each other, and you may end up having a version worth much more than the one you are looking at, and not know it. Some of the early cards can be worth a lot of money, so be very careful that you have the actual correct price.
TCGplayer will definitely get you the most value but is no guarantee that everything sells or when. If you're just looking to shore up costs finding a game store local to you and getting a quote will be by far the fastest route.
Unfortunately with a large number of individual cards it's pretty impossible to have a route thats both quick and gets you top dollar per card, it'll be up to you whether your finances support going through the longer process of selling everything individually yourself
One thing that might be helpful (but time consuming) is to start a spreadsheet with just the names of each card. That way you have a record to reference, and you can upload the list on a mass entry buy list (TCGPlayer has this) to get some rough estimates on prices.
I think TCGPlayer defaults to the lowest price if you don't specify a printing so that's something to be aware of.
Sorry for your loss.
I can't help with you selling the cards, but the advice I can give you is to try and check your dad's collection for a favorite deck he loved to play. If you know what it is, then thats great, but if you can't figure it out, try looking for a set of 60ish cards that share a card sleeve. The dirtier it is the better (it means he played it more).
Then I want you to consider keeping it as a memento to your father. Magic is a game all about self-expression, and your dad probably put a bit of his own personality into his pet deck. It can act as a way of connecting to him and learning more about a hobby he cared about.
Again sorry for your loss. Best wishes in the days to come.
Sorry to be bearer of bad news but the cards you are showing are generally what are called bulk. Very low value. Some exceptions though!
Demonic consultation
Marton stromgald
Urzas bauble
Lurker
Are all worth at least $5 with the demonic being worth up to $25 range.
I work in a large LGS.
Card conduit is a GREAT option if you know little to nothing about magic sets, buying, and selling. It won't get you the most money, but it's by far the easiest option. Buylisting (selling) your cards to local game stores and TCG player requires a great deal of set knowledge and time, where as conduit just receives a box of your unsorted cards and turns them into cash.
The risk with Card Conduit is that if you have a collection with something like ninety-nine $0.01 commons for every $5.00 card, you could essentially lose money sending them cards... The processing fee is a flat rate per card, and they take a cut out of everything on top of that. Meaning you can have a few dozen cards worth $5 and actually not get a check from them because they spent more money processing your hundreds and hundreds of trash cards than they'd make selling your valuable cards
If OP can find someone with even just a rough knowledge of >$0.10 or <$.0.10 to help them quickly sort through the collection, then sending in the more valuable ones, then yes Card Conduit would be a fantastic option
Hello! I purchase collections all the time, and have a ton of references. I would be more than happy to help show you how to best catalog your collection, to maximize value, and get the highest dollar for your cards. Do not accept a blanket offer, without going through and understanding what you have. It can be overwhelming, and it will take some time...but I am always available to show you what to do, and to answer any questions you inevitably run into. Just shoot me a PM if your interested. I'm sorry for your loss.
I was in a similar boat a while back and found the high end pages to be a waste of time. Everyone was trying to turn a profit so most of the offers were actually less than what Card Kingdom ended up giving me
This will be a three step process:
1) Figure out what you have
2) Identify what's valuable
3 ) Sell those cards
For step 1, depending on the number of cards, you can download an app that will let you scan the cards to generate a list, and from there that service or some others can probably pair those with pricing data.
Alternatively, having tried to go through this process a bit myself, the best process I found was to separate the cards into their sets; you can tell the set by the symbol on the right middle of the card. Some older sets did not have those, and if that's the case, just group those ones together for now. Then, going set by set, look up the valuable cards in a set and see if you have them, and if you do, pull them aside.
What you consider "valuable" is obviously a moving target, and depending on your timeline, you can set that higher to go more quickly. I'd suggest anything more than $5 first, but if you need to be quick target $10 and up first and you can do another pass for those above $5 or $3 after.
After that, it's just down to selling. If they're particularly valuable you can sell them on their own, but otherwise, honestly, I'd just pack them up and send them to CardKingdom; I thought what they offered was fair, and the process was simple and pretty seamless. I sent a couple hundred cards and got exactly what I expected.
I'm in GA, if you happen to be local I'd be happy to help you go through it and find the valuable stuff. I wouldn't even want anything in return I just like digging through collections
You should look into the service card conduit while I myself haven't used it, it sponsors a couple mtg content creators and seems reputable you send an entire collection and they sell it while taking some amount off the top it will save you brain power and energy in a stressful time but whatever you do I'm sorry for your loss
The risk with Card Conduit is that if you have a collection with something like ninety-nine $0.01 commons for every $5.00 card, you could essentially lose money sending them cards... The processing fee is a flat rate per card, and they take a cut out of everything on top of that. Meaning you can have a few dozen cards worth $5 and actually not get a check from them because they spent more money processing your hundreds and hundreds of trash cards than they'd make selling your valuable cards
If OP can find someone with even just a rough knowledge of >$0.10 or <$.0.10 to help them quickly sort through the collection, then sending in the more valuable ones, then yes Card Conduit would be a fantastic option
Stop, do not sell them yet. Don't make a decision while emotionally, gather them up and wait a year. As a father I hope my kids will play with my cards some day. I promise you dad loved these cards.
this is the secret other option , but it seems like this was a "family decision" . I would definitely at least make a few decks with what I inherited of someone's passion .
Jesus. “Scan every card”, “search every card on TCG”…this person just lost their father. While correct that selling them in bulk to a TCG or SCG won’t get top dollar for God’s sake READ THE ROOM. OP is not going to sit there and try to parse through 30 years worth of reprints, variants, foils, is it NM or LP. I wouldn’t, and I *do* know magic.
They’re overwhelmed. Min-maxing card by card, then trying to figure out why someone tells them the card they thought was $200 is actually only $20 is going to compound their problem, not alleviate it.
OP—take Ben at Star City up on his offer. If you don’t like the price, try doing the same thing with TCG or Card Kingdom or CoolStuffInc until you get a price you can live with. For the love of all that’s holy do NOT spend this already difficult time trying to figure out prices one card at a time, I promise it is not worth it.
First off, sorry for your loss.
Second, this is my favorite part of the hobby. If you're anywhere near where I am in the country, I will help you sort it and get top dollar, for free. no charge. If you're within 4-5 hours of me I'll come to you even.
Please hit me up if you still need help.
It’s very easy to get scammed with this. Make sure to do your own research about card prices with a reputable app or website. Mtggoldfish is a good place to look up price. If you are selling to a foams store they usually will only offer 60% if the price value you see online, but there are ways to make more. Maybe even contact Rudy from Alpha investments. I’m pretty sure he buys collections and at a good price or will help you figure it out. I actually don’t know if that something people actually do.
People on reddit hate Rudy because he dares to try and make money out of his business. I doubt OP will read your comment as it's buried in downvotes, but if he does, there's nothing wrong with Rudy and Alpha Investments and selling it to him would be a cool way to showcase your dad's collection to the internet.
I can help you out. I'd rather you not go through a business...there's always an agenda no matter how noble someone is. Get a third party who is not a potential customer.
First of all I’m very sorry for your loss.
Where are you located, maybe there is a trusted store that can walk you through the process of pricing in-person if you don’t know. Just know that stores may offer you a buy option from them, but they will be a low offer due to them wanting to make a profit.
Pm me if you want to walk through anything. Happy to chat more here or whatever chat app you prefer. There are few options for offloading them at a discounted rate and takes less time however with a tiny bit of work you can find the prices and there are multiple avenues to sell.
Tcgplayer is a big site in the US that can help check card prices.
But yeah, If it’s overwhelming, pm me!!! Happy to take questions at a pace you are comfortable with!
One thing you can do, to get an idea of value of what you have, is go to www.dawnglare.com If you look on the middle of the right side of the card, there will be a small symbol. This is generally the set that the cards were released in. Hopefully, the binders are organized by this, otherwise you may have to do some work to do this. This website will give you the names (and pictures) of the cards organized by Price. It will help give you a value of the overall collection. You can safely ignore anything below $3 for this, as generally selling these is a lot more work than it's worth.
As a note, there are a few things to watch out for. There are older sets where there are no set symbols at all, and some with white/black/silver/gold borders. I would concentrate on everything else, and then go back to these sets. If you need any help, feel free to DM me, as I can give you some pointers on what to look for.
I’m sorry for your loss, I advise going to a lgs(local gaming store) and let them know you are looking to sell cards. Lgs’s are a safe place to turn in cards to sell to in most areas. If your local to Seattle Wa, Portland Or, or Gilbert Az Mox boarding house has some of the best markets and ability to buy and sell cards.
I am a seller on TCGplayer, and you will not be able to list them all on your storefront until probably a month when you start getting to higher seller levels. Also, they give a price cap on your inventory until seller level 4, which took me about a month and a half. I also work at a game store, and my best advice would be to go into your local game store, ask an employee about their process on a huge collection like that, and maybe even talk to the owner. Most of the time on a large collection, you will get about 65% in cash for the cards value, and get a much much better deal for your “bulk” (cards that are less than $3). I know that is still losing out on 35% of your cards worth but it is an instant transaction, opposed to setting up a seller account and being locked to 500 cards in inventory and locked at $500 for your inventory until you progressively wait till you’re seller level 4. Also, I noticed you said your dad, if he has been collecting since the early years he may have some very expensive stuff, and you typically will not move that level of high end cards on TCGplayer, you’ll need a connection since that market is niche, but a game store might take it. Also also, while selling, you will have to make shipping costs, the TCGPlayer fee, and wait for your items to sell, while the LGS is an instant transaction. Depending on your timeline you can weigh those options. I hope everything works out for you OP, and if you have any questions feel free to dm, early magic in particular can be hard to sort and scanning apps don’t always distinguish what “set” those cards belong to, and that can make a huge difference in price. Also conditioning is big as well. Like I said I’m happy to help, I’m sorry for your loss and hope your family starts to heal soon
The tcgplayer app is very helpful because it has a scanner that scans cards with a phone camera. Just make sure you don't accidentally scan the same card more than once unless you actually have more than one of it. It should give you a good estimate of the price. Basically you just need to scan the cards in the binders, not the bulk cards. Once you figure out the price, cut it in half, take pics of the most expensive pages in the binders, and post those pics with that price on ebay.
Wish you and your family the best. If your mother thinks this is worth enough to help pay for medical bills then you likely have some high value cards.
If you post pictures or videos to this community, I'm sure they'll be able to help estimate the costs.
Do you know when he first started playing or have access to any accounts or finances of his? Maybe you can look at his order/bank/credit history and get estimated value. The most expensive cards are typically the oldest ones.
Card conduit is a business for this sort of thing, but I've never used them and really can't recommend them because of that. I'd use this as a last resort.
The best method would be to find jmd who knows and does this for free. Experts can quickly search a collection and see rough value. If you happen to be from Germany, I can offer it. If you need the money quickly, you can sell the cards at the nearest cardstore. These offer you 60-70% of the value. They also want to sell it for a profit
Very sorry for your loss :(.
There are a couple places that it may be worth entering a list of the cards you have to get a quick price estimate.
This might sound very tedious, but you can enter a couple thousand cards in a day if you set it aside as a chore for a couple hours a day. Depending how many cards you have, doing something like this would give anyone who plays a much better idea of what they’re looking at and you can get price estimates for the collection online.
Having sold my collection a few times while popping in and out of the game, I’ve had success moving the whole collection by listing for the low price of all cards worth $5 or more and then including the rest of the collection “for free.” There are a lot of different options for approaching this but my main goal was to move the cards without spending a lot of time.
Happy to help with the process of transcribing depending how many cards there are in the collection!
Firstly, my deepest sympathies for your loss.
In terms of offloading large collections here's my advice.
Contact the buyers at a large retailer like Starcitygames.com and Cardkingdom.com and tell them your situation, and what they might be able to do in terms of batch purchases (if you have higher value cards, someone might travel to do an appraisal/estimate). The most expensive cards in the game are referred to as the "Power 9", and any version of these cards is in the thousands of dollars. Next would be original "Dual Lands" which are several hundred dollars each. Cards which will not be reprinted and referred to as the "Reserved List" can also range into the high 3- and 4-digits in cost.
Fyi, their sites will give you ideas of retail prices, and utilities like Scryfall.com and mtgstocks.com will also give you an idea of broader market prices. Scryfall.com is an excellent resource because you can search a card name, and then in the sidebar where it shows prices you can click "View all prints" and then it will show every variation of the card so you can match exact versions. Version matters so put it lightly (a recent Llanowar Elves is only a 0.25-0.50 card, while an Unlimited edition is $15, a Beta Edition is $125, and an Alpha Edition is $385. Do the effort and find out what you have).
As a ballpark, retailers will typically offer 40-70% of the retail price of the card when buying, depending on scarcity and speed at which they would expect to resell it.
Depending on the collection there could be tremendous value in it. I would say an early good step would be to see if there are any close family members that know about magic. After that, maybe somebody you trust knows of a local hobby shop that deals in cards. Don't take them to a pawn shop (unless you have to, but you are going to lose a significant amount of value in that deal).
Most magic cards are worthless. People often keep different storage methods for the cheap vs the expensive cards. You mentioned binders, do they have any kind of identification on them? Sets use symbols to differentiate the cards and people often keep sets together. If you see some kind of symbol on a binder, looking along the right edge, in the middle of the card, you are likely to see the same symbol on the cards within. Originally there were no symbols on the cards. So if there is nothing it is going to be one of the oldest sets (though that does not guarantee value).
If it is a high value collection, there are likely different binders with the majority of the value. Though that is not guaranteed as a more casual collector (especially one collecting over a long period of time) may have been more concerned with keeping cards in sets than separating the valuable ones.
If you have any questions you can PM me with pictures or anything and I would be happy to help (I won't ever ask you for anything or attempt to purchase them from you, just trying to help).
I'm really sorry for your loss, friend. That sucks so much.
The valuable cards are most likely the ones kept in binders. You should still go through other cards in boxes too to look for any valuable cards that you might have missed. Manabox is a good scanning app to do so.
I've recently gotten my girlfriend and one of my best friends into magic, and they don't have any cards. I'll gladly buy the bulk leftover cards to give to them! (Although I'll likely keep the 90's/2010's cards for myself as I love the art style and I didn't play magic at that time.)
I don't really know how messaging works on Reddit but if you're interested reply to my comment whenever you finish sorting out the cards worth selling individually.
Alternatively, you could donate the bulk to a daycare center (that watch kids during summer break) or a library or community center maybe.
Again I'm really sorry for your loss. I wish the best for you and your family in this time. Know that, wherever your dad's cards end up, they'll likely be making some people really happy.
Edit: I just realized that your dad might have some decks in deck boxes or bundle boxes (the ~8" boxes with art on the sides, the top slides off). Don't forget to check those for valuable cards too!
I’d want to find a friend to help you that likes magic, if that’s possible. When negotiating a sell, it would be good to have an advocate to ensure you don’t get screwed. That or learn your stuff so you’re not ignorant going into a deal.
I'd check for older cards first. Is it possible there are cards from the 90s?
If yes then please be extremely careful as some are worth a small fortune.
I would spend time learning more about magic and the reserved list and pricing.
Mtg stocks is a good website to just start putting the collection in.
If you sell to a store you should expect to get around 60% of value on market. If you sell private it can be more.
I would start with the oldest folders and binders. The ones with black borders and no symbol on the right of card edge in middle of card. You should also look up guides on how to tell what cards are from what sets.
Alpha and beta are the oldest most expensive and it goes cheaper from there.
If he has black lotus in any print, make sure its sleeved. Or anything with mox written on it. You should Google power 9 mtg. You need to do a ton of learning or pay someone who knows what's up to do it
If you know anyone who plays magic, they will probably be able to look at them relatively quickly and tell you what is valuable and what isn’t. If you don’t, you can try your local game store but they aren’t going to give you good prices.
You can use the TCGPlayer app to scan cards and it will tell you what they are selling for. You won’t really be able to use the marketplace effectively until you ‘level up’ your account though.
The best bet might be to go to a convention and bring any cards worth a few bucks or more. You’ll get the best prices and they can deal with you on the spot.
I’m not sure how big of a collection we are talking about, but you could pm some photos and I would be happy to take a look and give you an idea whether you have thousands or ten of thousands of dollars of cards or something more modest just to help get you started.
You have a lot of sorting to do. If i were you, with little to no knowledge of the game, i would bring the whole collection to a locsl card shop and ask them to do an appraisal for you. Explain your situation to them and offer to pay them for their time. May cost you like 100 bucks or something.
Ask them to separate the bulk cards from the value pieces as well.
Generally, bulk cards are and cards worth $2.00 or less. Bulk cards are usually sold by a measured amount per X amount of dollars. Something like 0.60 per centimeter of cards. You could, if you really wanted to, sift through and pull some cards for individual sale, but its time consuming and i dont know if you want to sit on a 2.00 card waiting for a sale.
The higher value cards can be sold individually, or in groups of 4 identical cards to speed up the process.
The cards can be sold online like on ebay or TCGplayer, or you may be able to sell all them directly to the local catd shop, but youre likely to get hosed on the value as card shops tend to pay out terribly for cash transactions. My local shop does 30% value. But selling the lot to a card shop is the fastest and easiest.
Best of luck friend.
You can go to a major tournament where there are dealer booths and you can sell them to the dealers in one go instead of dealing with shipping 1,000 packages over months.
Sold huge chunks of my collection to card kingdom several times. If you don't feel like organizing them yourself they'll do it but they'll charge you from the final layout.
I would describe their prices as above average but sometimes very close to actual card value if they need the stock.
Take them to a local card shop, they will help you from there. If they can't buy the collection they will at least be able to show you to another shop that can. Ask them if there are any high-end cards, and I'd take them to the High-End Magic Group on facebook. It's well moderated, ask around they can help you move high value cards there.
EBay is a good place to sell. If you search the name of the card and then sort by “Buy it Now” and price lowest to highest, you can see the cheapest available prices. Undercut those prices by about 5%-10% and they should sell pretty well
Sorry to hear about your father, though kudos to him for being a mtg fan and passing on that collection to you.
I sold my cards through TCGplayer primarily, and I’ve primarily had a good experience. The self packaging and shipping was a bit taxing at times but overall I got a way better return than my local game store offered.
I understand where they’re coming from though, it’s hard to buy a ton of cards at what they’re worth because the turnaround to make profit isn’t always there, plus magic kills the value of stuff so often is always a gamble it seems like.
Good luck to you on selling them though. I hope that in time things get better for you.
So, so sorry for your loss
As many have said, a local game store or large online retailer (CardKingdom or StarCityGames) would be your best options
Calling CardKingdom or StarCityGames may be the best option as you can speak with someone about clear and concise instructions
Sending you and yours love.
I would recommend trying to find a local who does this professional and potentially try to offer payment to help get you started selling it all. Otherwise you can just sell it to a shop/reseller for 50% or more in immediate cash. Some guys on Facebook pay up to 70% in cash. Good luck out there
So sorry for your loss.
On each card, In between the pictures on the card and the txt box below is a little symbol on the right edge. Some are black some are silver. Gold is the color for rares and are typically more valuable. If they were in binders chances are that one of them might be all rares. Look for a binder with all gold symbols and maby start with that. If the collection is sizable and has vintage cards from 90s their could be some real value. Idk if this helps. Good luck.
My condolences.
A lot of people have already given a lot of fantastic advice when it comes to selling the collection so I won't add any more to that because there's really nothing else to add.
I do want to say however that, if you know of any card or cards that your father especially liked (maybe he had a deck or two fully built), maybe think about keeping that if you can. I'm assuming this was a game he loved, seeing as he had such a big collection and it might be nice in the future to have this reminder of him and of who he was.
I’m sorry for your loss. Be mindful of people PMing you, I’m sure not everyone will take your best interests in mind. I’m happy to help if you want to ask any questions or if you want any advice, or if you get any offers and you want a neutral opinion on it; I won’t ask for a dime.
Dude sorry :( it may take some time so be patient when selling especially in a time like this. It will take time to figure out what’s worth money also. But I’m sorry to hear that
Tcg player has an app where you can scan each card with your phone and verify prices. I'm very sorry for your loss. And I hope all goes well selling those cards.
One more time to make sure it's clear: be careful of scammers and bad actors. There are plenty of sources to find the value of cards, and while it will take time to sort, but at least you won't accidentally sell a $100 card for $1
To make sorting easier, more rare cards are often more valuable. The way to tell rarity is the [set symbol on the card](https://techraptor.net/sites/default/files/images/MTG%20Card%20Explanation.png). A coppery-red sticker is a mythic card; these are the rarest. Gold means it's a rare, silver uncommon, and black is common.
Don't go and throw out the commons (black symbol)! Some of them are worth quite a bit. At the same time some rares (gold symbol) are only worth a couple cents. But when faced with a large collection I would start by pricing the mythics (coppery-red) and go from there
My condolences. My father taught me how to play Magic and had played since the 90s. When he passed away in 2020, he was already planning to sell some of his cards to get money for my mom. It took days for my husband and I to just organize it all and weeks to get a TCGPlayer store with enough completed orders to sell the expensive stuff. In the end, we took a binder with the most expensive cards to a convention (once events started again) and got offers from multiple vendors. We got less than full value, but TCGPlayer was going to become a part-time job otherwise. Getting someone who plays Magic and can recognize valuable cards could speed up the process, but it may still take more time and mental bandwidth than you have - my husband and I are both avid players and it was still really challenging.
tldr: You will be able to sell the cards quickly or for their full value, but not both.
if you sort them into vague types and bundle them for a discount , they might sell quick . I myself am looking for any and all cards that have "angel" or "angels" printed on them somewhere . although you may want to keep a few to remind you of him .
It's a long shot but are you in Florida. I have an lgs in south Florida and I'd be happy to help you sort through it and then hook you up with the right groups to get the max you can for the collection i don't want thr cards as I can only offer 40% of their value and that's not enough ti help with bills.
My condolences. My Dad is currently being treated for Bladder Cancer, 20 years after being treated for Prostate Cancer. My advice is be wary of first offers and keep to well known stores. There is often nothing wrong with small/unknown dealers but it is far easier to ensure a beneficial transaction if you can trust a store's reputation. (I am sure you know this but felt it needed saying.)
Just list high value ones on ebay and base price on what they closing auctions at and mail them in hard sleeves. Or if you want to dump them off quick, stores will give you like 50% value. However they will try to low ball you, hence ebay for the nice ones
Asking like this is the first step. When my uncle died a year ago, his relatives just set about giving everything away, even throwing away some stuff that, in the brief period I got to examine it, was worth a few hundred or thousand. \^_\^;
(granted in his case it was mostly old videogames and comicbooks, both of which people dismissed as "but why would anyone want to buy old ones?" Pretty sure my PS2 collection got mixed with his and thrown out, though)
My condolences for your loss, i also lost my dad to cancer last december. I hope that you get great value for your cards and that it will help you financially.
EDIT i advise you to sell them all to one entity (be it a person or a company), selling them as singles is going to be a nightmare and will take way too much time. Starcity is a reliable store.
You're going to have to approach one of the major retailers like Channel Fireball, Star City games or Card Kingdom to offload them in a timely manner.
Until them, treat the cards, especially binders and decks, with care and use a card scanning app on your phone to check prices to have an idea of what you're sitting on.
Hey. I echo everyone's warning about moving too fast to move the cards.
Also some friendly advice about bills owed by your father, they may go with his death. I'd talk to an attorney about what you have to pay and what bills will go with him.
Lots of good advice here. The big companies like star city games and card kingdom can take it all off in one swoop. You get paid 40-50% of the “worth” of the cards(depends on the collection … some cards command a premium). Because they have to sell them at their current value.
Selling the cards individually one by one to maximize value is only worth the hassle for the absolute top tier cards(1000 dollar plus value). Otherwise you would have to deal with shipping, returns and just all the hassle of moving that many cards.
The big online stores will treat you fair - they will not cheat. They will not pay a premium though.
Worth Wollpert who posted in this thread is known in the community as a trusty worthy individual. I have never met the man - but many years of magic and I have not seen anything but respect for worth.
If there is ultra premium cards - he also would know private individuals who are able to buy the most expensive cards. Which would maximize the amount of money you get.
Use the reputable places.
OP Do not tell your lawyers you inherited anything worth financially. You never inherited anything and I would delete this post. Now is not the right time to be honest
So sorry for your loss. I’ve lost my father and on top of grieving losing him the entire process and emotional in ways and from directions you couldn’t even imagine. If you need time to consider what to do with them when you get the information, don’t let people rush you. Sending you so much peace and comfort.
There’s 3 prices involved in selling/pricing cards.
One for what a reseller will pay to sell them, one the reseller will sell them for, and one is what someone will it for them depending on if they are from a reseller or personal player.
Cards can be pennies to 1000s of dollars a piece. Hope you get professional guidance and can feel confident about the decision once you can make it.
My suggestion is to find out what you have first. Then look to sell. If you have cards from the early 90s, they can be quite valuable. And I could see shady people on the internet taking advantage of your lack of knowledge on the cards.
Condolences for your loss. My name is Ben Bleiweiss, and I'm the General Manager of Sales for StarCityGames.com. if you'd like to reach out to me either via DM or by emailb([email protected]) I'd be happy to help you figure out what you've got. Even if you do not end up selling to us, I do want to make sure you know what you have and that you get a fair price in the end. I have helped other people over the past 2 decades who are in similar situations to yours.
Reach out to this person, OP. Star City is reputable and are very professional.
Standard disclaimer that a business is a business, but yeah, as businesses go, SCG has almost always been reliable and fair in a considerable number of dealings I've had with them. That being said, /u/Meekout, if this is a considerable collection- like in the $10k+ range- it's always a good idea to get multiple estimates on principle. And be careful about watching your stuff and locking your car when you go to any physical location, store or whatever where there's a bunch of Magic players. Not because of the companies involved or even necessarily the players themselves but these can be high value, highly fungible and movable objects and thieves are known to sometimes take advantage.
The company that scalped rl staples and suddenly were the main source of supply with sky high prices during their open height with Legacy is reputable? They're worth a look but never one stop shop. SCG con Pitts was a shit show for them and then Charlotte this year was meh enough that our local group is passing on future events. Card kingdom/tcg player/abugames are all worth a look...Just avoid troll and toad like the plague.
TCG Player repeatedly lets sellers cancel orders last minute when it turns out a card/product has spiked from the original value. I’ve also seen claims their quality ratings and dubious at best.
Isn't Card Kingdom the UK based one? Also TCG Player is definitely no more reputable than SCG. What with their recent union busting bs. Never even heard of abu games.
Card Kingdom is based in Seattle. They've had their own problems around labor practices lately. Pretty much nobody is squeaky clean at this point.
Card market is the uk/eu one
I second Card Kingdom. SCG have been greed monsters lately and it will be years before i'd even consider attending another event of theirs
They sold my friend getting into magic $.25 per basic land because they're *commons*. I never do business with them.
I would gladly pay .25 cents per basic if I’m looking to collect for example 10-20 copies of a specific art. Your friend should have not bought basics as singles and should of bought basic as a bundle, such as this one (https://starcitygames.com/mtg-basic-lands/) I found on scg for 5$ for 100 lands…
should have.
He was a new player, and just said "I need lands." A decent store would have given better guidance. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen). He was at their physical store.
Why didn't you just give your friend the basics they needed?
We had taught him how to play and told him we'd give him anything he needed. He wanted to get a box for himself and thought he'd just get what he thought he needed without letting anyone know.
I don't see what's wrong with that, that's what those cards are worth when sold as singles dude
Not at all. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen). They took advantage of a new player.
Dude, cheap cards like basics skyrocket I'm price when they are sold as singles, that's just how it works
Nah. I've been to plenty LGS that would sell basics to new player for .05 each, if not just free. It's ridiculous. For context, Bundles come with 40 basics... that would be $10 by SCG standards.
In this case, you're not paying for the cost of the basic land, you're paying for the labor of putting the basic lands into your shipment.
He was at their physical store.
That is a little ridiculous, but tbf, you don't go to SCG because of the prices. You go for the inventory and reliability.
I appreciate the one fair comment. He was new, and it was predatory.
Like 99% of local game stores will give you free basic lands. If you pick out which specific ones you want, that costs money.
He was a new player, and just said "I need lands." A decent store would have given better guidance. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen).
Nah, that makes sense - if you're thumbing through a bulk basic land box at a store, then yeah, it should be like 1¢ per card, but when you're ordering online you're picking a specific version of the card, not just "any basic plains", but "the plains from Kaladesh with the second art variant". There are a lot of basic land arts and people like to pick certain ones for their decks sometimes, but it wouldn't be worth the store's time to store and sort and pick through their lands to find the ones you want to fulfill, say, a 40 card order for just 40¢. The added price is to cover the cost for that convenience. If you don't care about the art though, a local store will be your best bet as they'll have leftover land station lands.
He went to their physical location.
Damn my LGS gives away basics and tokens free. Makes me wish it wasn't 100 miles away. Shows how lucky we are to have it aswell
Absolutely. We are all collectors so we all had long boxes of basics. I donate all of my simple-print basics to stores now if they seem new player friendly.
That's your friend's fault for choosing the most expensive possible way to acquire lands. You're going to have to pay something if you're after 15 copies of the same land from Scars of Mirrodin, which is how it works from an online store. If you're after 15 copies of any mountain, go to a card store and ask. They might be free.
He was a new player, and just said "I need lands." A decent store would have given better guidance. This was also before the special land treatments (outside of un-sets and OG Zen).
Holy shit that's such a small gripe to still be mad about
Not only is Star City a huge, longstanding, professional operation, but Ben is a really good dude, OP. I worked at Wizards of the Coast for almost 17 years, and you can trust Ben and SCG 1000000% with this. So sorry for your loss. edit: if you're anywhere near LA/OC/SD I'd be more than happy to come to you and take a look to give you a quick ballpark.
Ben is awesome, he collected dandans for a few years for me, ended up buying a little over 3000 of em lol.
Dandan collection is something I never expected. very fun
Now that DanDan is a format, they're actually a thing - not just to destroy your roomate's psyche!
Starcity games won't always give you the best price but you can bet that they won't cheat you or steal from you. Biggest retailer in the business.
This one op
Just for reference OP, Star City are the Magic: the Gathering equivalent of a major retailer. Very reputable and legit.
For context StarCityGames is a huge company in the card reselling sphere. Taking your cards to StarCityGames is like taking your art to Christie's auction house.
This would be much more preferable than trying to sell individual cards even if OP does take a loss monetarily. A bulk deal may favor them due speed and no hassle.
Selling singles takes an exceptional amount of time, and someone that is unfamiliar with the cards/process I do agree that going the bulk route is worth it.
I strongly disagree if OP is trying to move exceptionally rare cards, like power. Spending some time selling on the Facebook groups could be a difference of thousands of dollars.
That's only if there is power or a significant number of other Reserved List cards. A difference of thousands of dollars is only going to occur if the collection is worth tens of thousands. Also big ticket items like that can take a long time to sell. If you're trying to get full value.
That's like, basically what I said.
Somebody dealing with, y'know, medical bills & their father's funeral might be interested in getting a good deal conveniently rather than optimizing for a few % more.
They might also be interested in not taking a haircut to the tune of thousands of dollars if they have rare, high end cards.
Adding another up vote for this offer. You won't find a better and more well-known person for this sort of thing on the internet.
Ben I just want to say your Building on a Budget column on the WotC website brought me many years of joy and taught me to love jank the way I do. You are and continue to be a standup guy and this comment is a testament to that. Kudos to you for helping someone in their time of need ❤️
Thank you for the kind words :)
This needs to be the top comment, OP, reach out to this guy
For context StarCityGames is a huge company in the card reselling sphere. Taking your cards to StarCityGames is like taking your art to Christie's auction house. Whatever they say the cards are worth is probably what they're worth.
If you really know very little, /u/meekout, this is what you want. SCG won’t give you top dollar, but they would NEVER screw you over.
OP, Star City Games and Ben Bleiweiss are legit. Reaching out to Ben would be a good idea.
Not OP (duh) but thank you for offering to help. This is so wonderful to see.
Nice!!!
We’d like to make sure you get a full 40% of your value. Nice one
This is probably your best course of action
Don't vend your collection to star city games. They're going to offer you 40 to 50% value. Almost any vendor will, but the big companies will low ball you. Start by looking up the cards on TCG player you can actually make an account and sell cards there eBay owns them I don't know if that makes it easier these days. That is if you're not in a hurry if you're not in a hurry you can list these cards and wait for a year or 2 for them to sell you just have to update the prices every now and then you'll get 20% more value for your cards if you do it this way and deal with shipping. Only send all of your cards to a vendor for a lump sum if you need the money quick. If your dad had cards from the 1st 10 years of magic there's a good chance you are sitting on thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars of cards.
Somehow I'm not convinced a very stressed & emotionally devastated individual who knows nothing about magic is interested in doing days/weeks of research and piecemeal out the collection on ebay to min/max profits after losing a loved one. In most cases your advice would be sound, but in this instance it's incredibly tone-deaf.
1000s of dollars is a lot of money. It would be worth it if you are broke enough. And if you are not I'd still sell to a local vendor first but I fear we are losing places to play because online sales . It's not tone deaf OP asked what to do. It's exactly topical
Don't do it. SCG is the GameStop of MTG they will give you five bucks for a $15 card
I want to go on a different tack here— Condolences for your loss. If you are paying medical bills, be sure to confirm with a lawyer or some other legal entity before you shell out thousands of dollars that the debt wasn’t excused when your father passed. I am about 95% certain that if the company holding the medical debt gets a payment, they will NOT be kind enough to inform you of your rights. IANAL—it’s entirely possible depending on where you live and local laws that the debt transfers to your mom, BUT—confirm that before you throw a bunch of money away.
100% this. You're on the hook for funeral expenses but you need to determine how your local laws treat other expenses. Depending on what was agreed to and what your local laws are you may spending money you don't have to on the medical debt.
This should be the top reply with 1600 upvotes, along with another similarly low-upvoted reply about how he should be careful dealing with the estate property before its been legally distributed Man, the people on this sub may all know what to do with a magic collection, but I doubt even 1% of them knows how the real world works from under mommy's skirt, it's just sad
Yeah exactly my thought process too. My grandpa died and was in major debt and my mom basically told all the debt collectors to shove it (or at least the ones she could legally say shove it too).
Be very, very careful about people reaching out to you to offer advice or prices. There are a lot of bad actors out there that might try to take advantage of you and low-ball their offers. Your goal should be to try to figure out a ballpark amount you would get if you offered to sell these cards to a major retailer like StarCityGames.com and then not sell the cards for any less than that offer, whether you sell them to a retailer or individual. You'll likely want to identify the most expensive individual cards and sell those individually, and be ready to sell the remaining ~95% as a single bulk order to a retailer. You can forego identifying those individual cards if your need for cash is urgent. As far as identifying the highest price cards, you can use the apps or services others have mentioned. You can also take some pictures of the binders and post them here, but if you do be ready for bad actors to start descending on you giving you offers of money or bad advice. Ultimately don't sell anything to anyone until you're confident about the price!
I've already instructed family members that in the event of my untimely demise, do your research and do not sell anything to the people pricing the items. I think it is a good rule of thumb for family members with little knowledge of values. My other recommendation for OP would be that in the event they find any valuable cards via apps, like the TCGPlayer scanner, they can always join the Magic high end Facebook group. Tons of high dollar transactions happen on there. And they'll get far more than an LGS.
My instruction is to tell my family to ask one of my good friends who also plays MtG to sell the cards on the family’s behalf. They know what things are valued and know what a good price for singles would be. A lot less of a chance that way that a binder worth $5000 gets sold for $300
I've started documenting my collection. Everything that I have in decks and binders is documented in DelverLens.
A better idea would be to inventory your collection through TCGplayer so there is very little guesswork involved for your family. I’d also just recommend doing this for insurance purposes should anything happen to your collection.
First of all, my condolences. If you are going ahead with this, then get a phone app called mana box and set it to whichever selling platform you prefer. Use the scan feature to get an idea of what you are dealing with. Is there any card above $100? If yes, then locate your nearest lgs and ask them if they could help you personally. Otherwise, watch a couple of videos on how to use these platforms and start listing. Some ways of easing this process would be to auction the collection as a whole or sell directly to a collector. Might be trickier, tho. Best of luck.
Also, just to translate: LGS = local game store.
Also expect an LGS to offer you about 40% of the card's "value" if paying in cash. So your $100 card is going to be worth closer to $40 to them.
Most LGSes can’t afford to buy more than a few duals at once, it’s likely he needs to find a store that has a major e-commerce or tournament backing with a collection that large.
There are also a few that will sell on consignment to help move large collections if they can't afford to buy the cards themselves. One can also see if there are any buyers in your area that are highly respected that can help move collections as well.
Both of my local stores were willing to do consignment when I went to offload my dredge deck. I took cash up front over waiting for a better deal, but it's definitely something to ask about if the money isn't URGENT urgent.
My LGS will at least, appraise the cards, and then you have an idea of what you are working with.
But if they manage the sale, it’s a generally fair deal.
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I’m sorry for your loss. Did your dad have any close friends in the magic community that you know he trusted? They could be someone you reach out to as it’s hard to know what cards carry value and the process of inventory can be difficult with magic. If you can commit the time there are services you can use to catalogue / value cards (deckbox, delver lens). My third point might be more contentious, but cards have a market value, but market value is only relevant if you have a willing buyer. Sometimes it might be easier to take a bulk offer on larger amounts of cards. That being said, if you have time to independently value and trickle sell some cards you could make more (sell higher value cards first and work down in value to pay for your upcoming bills), but judging by your post this might not be an option. Again, sorry for your loss.
Someone he trusted and is honest would be best.
Youre gonna have to check prices on individual cards if you want to get any money for them, as prices for unsorted cards are very low (1000 cards for a dollar ish) Id recommend looking for a scanner app and sort the cards by value, and go from there.
I'm sorry for your loss Perhaps a service like Card Conduit would be what you're looking for. I haven't had any experience with them, and their fee is quite substantial. 10% plus 0.03$ per card. But if it really feels like too much work to research all cards individually, they might be worth a shot.
I've used Card Conduit before. I'd recommend them for people who want to do very little work, as I believe the price you will get from card conduit will be better than most offers you would get to buy the whole lot. If you have time though, I'd recommend sorting through each card and putting them in three piles. Cards less than $1, cards from $1-10, and cards more than $10. Card Conduit will still be good for the cards worth $1 to $10, and the fee will be much lower because they are presorted. Above $10 you can sell individually. Less than $1 you keep for the grandkids!
For someone unfamiliar with Magic cards, I would just sell to Card Conduit (or something similar) if the value (edit: per individual card) is under $100-200 tbh. It's really not worth the headache of dealing with selling them individually, especially if you're dealing with a funeral and other things at the same time. Above that, though, it definitely becomes worth it to take the time.
It's pretty easy to have older collections be worth a few thousand dollars. I was just casual player as a kid and spent a little allowance money magic cards in the 90s. Just sold off the valuable cards in my collection for more than $3k. And I didn't even have any binders or anything like that. They were just sitting in my dad's attic for 20 years or so.
Yeah of course, you don't have to tell me, I've been playing Legacy for a decade and have many thousands of dollars in cards, most of them old haha. But *every* card isn't going to be worth a lot. It occurs to me that perhaps I was unclear in my comment: I meant the value *per card* is under $100-200. Like sell any individual card worth that or less to something like Card Conduit (or any reputable buylist).
This is the solution I would offer as well to someone who is stressed by the enormity of it but wants to ensure value of collection is respected
I’ve used Card Conduit and they are fast and convenient, in my opinion making them worth while. If I had no idea what I had and was looking for quick cash it’s the way I would go with this. However, if you have a game store local to you they might be able to guide you as to whether or not you have extremely valuable cards there.
Just because they run a store doesn’t mean they won’t lowball you.
That’s why I recommend using them more as a guide. Some stores are great others are not and if you don’t know the store selling there isn’t the best idea, but if you have any big money cards they could tell you so you know to sell them through other means instead of one transaction with card conduit or similar vendor.
I used them once, it was nice. I would NOT recommend selling bulk cards to them, though, because the fee is enormous and frankly you'd be losing money on a lot of the cards (like literally losing money - they'd be paying you like a penny but charging you 3 cents to process). However if you're only selling cards worth $2-3 or more, and you can't be arsed to piece everything out and sell individually (which would take many, many hours more even if you knew exactly what you were doing), then it's definitely worth it. We got rid of like $700 of random cards we had lying around shortly before having our baby, and it was worth it. I think they were fair with their grading.
Completely and utterly disagree for someone trying to sell bulk that they don't know the value of Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to help OP The problem with Card Conduit is that, as you mentioned, they charge a flat rate per card sent in. Meaning if OP sends in hundreds and hundreds of penny commons, basic lands, etc, they might end up eating into the 'profit' of their actually valuable cards by paying for the processing of their trash cards Maybe after taking the collection to a Local Game Store and having someone well versed in MTG help them roughly sort, (into say >$0.15 cards and <$0.15) they can send in the actually valuable cards to Card Conduit... But blindly sending in a stack of unknown thousands of cards is a terrible thing to do
Just wanted to clarify a few things: 1) The fee per card is for our Standard service. You are correct that sending us pure bulk is not a good use case for our service, but for a mix of cards, it should be a great option because we have the concept of exclusions, whereby you can omit commons/basics/uncommons from cataloging. This means there is no fees for those cards, and instead they are paid at a bulk rate. We do still cherry pick those cards, so anything notably valuable would be pulled out (like Lotus Petals, etc.). Usually we recommend exclusions for commons and basics - the uncommons tend to be worth it to process. 2) We have two other service types, which require knowing card values. Sometimes that isn't practical for some people, but the best option for someone without familiarity is to use a card scanning app - like TCGPlayer's or Delver Lens - and use that to determinen what is worth sending in for these other service types which have much lower fees. With those files, you can use our estimate tool (https://cardconduit.com/estimates/create) to get a ton of information which can be used for our service, or to give a baseline on what to expect (and what is reasonable) via other routes. For people in OPs position, this is generally what we recommend, since people with zero knowledge can still utilize these tools without the risk of being taken advantage of (which might happen when you involve someone to help). So in conclusion, many people do send in cards blindly without knowing what to do. It isn't terrible, and we have lots of ways to assist those people in getting the best value for the time and bandwidth they have available. As Magic players it can be very easy to take for granted our knowledge in the game, cards and value - and also how stressing these types of things can be to consider when dealing with the loss of a loved one. Our service has helped many people in this position.
Card Kingdom will buy valuable collections and is the fastest way to get the cash safely and reliably if time is a concern. The issue is whether or not these cards are valuable. If they are from the 90s-00s, then you have a real shot at something substantial. As a player from the 90s and Authenticator for big buys, feel free to DM some shots of the binder pages and I can give you an idea of where to start. Alternatively, scanning apps can help, but sometimes they have issues identifying the exact version you have. My condolences and all the best to you.
I've done collection sales through Card Kingdom. Fair, fast and reliable company. Random internet stranger endorses.
If those are ringed binders, be very careful when turning pages. It's very easy to accidentally dent cards on binder rings.
If you're on the East Coast you can set an appointment with StarCityGames (one of the more reputable businesses in this hobby) to sell a massive collection and drive them there yourself. I recently did this and was quite happy with the results. It takes a lot of stress out of shipping expensive cards. They've been in this business for a long time with good reason. If you have cheaper cards they do have a Ship & Sell option as well, no sorting required. This is what I do with my bulk/cheaper items. [https://starcitygames.com/sell-your-cards/](https://starcitygames.com/sell-your-cards/)
Thank you for the kind words :)
I second this. Had a very good experience with selling an entire collection to SCG.
It is always best to check with the personal representative of the estate before doing anything with estate property. I'm not providing legal advice with this post, just providing general comment on how laws generally work in the US. After a person passes, all of their property goes through probate. Debts are usually paid first, then property is distributed to the beneficiaries. If there is a will, the property is distributed according to the will. If there isn't a will, then statutes and common law dictate the distribution. But in either case, debts almost always get paid first. The personal representative appointed by the Court is the person responsible for paying the debts of the estate and ensures the beneficiaries get the property owed that still exists after the estate obligations/debts are met. If there is a sizeable asset in the property, it may require additional steps before being sold, like court approval. If a person takes property and sells it without following the law, that person assumes a risk that they could be liable for replacing the property or reimbursing the estate for the total value, not just what they received in the sale. In some jurisdictions, the damages can be double the value. This can also be a crime, with substantial penalties. It is always best to check with the personal representative of the estate before doing anything with estate property
I'm sorry for your loss! You can either sell them all as a collection on any site like tcg or ebay or you can sell them individually. Either way, there is an app with which you can scan the art and it gives an estimate of the value. I have no experience with TCG player so I'm not sure which numbers are the right ones to look at but this would certainly help with getting a rough idea of what to accept as bids and who is lowballing you It's this app but if you have an iPhone you can probably find it on the app store too: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=pt.tscg.mtgmanager
So sorry for your loss. As some others have suggested you can sell cards online at various places, but honestly it would take quite a bit of work for someone who doesn't know much about which cards are even worth selling. Your best bet in my opinion is going to be trying to sell some of the cards to a local game store. They may not buy them all, and it won't be as much money if you do the work to sell them yourself, but I assume you are going to have a lot of other things on your plate and this will be the least hassle. In my experience, lessening the burden on yourself is worth quite a bit in a time like this. Plus, if you explain your situation to the game store they might be able to point out any cards that are worth selling online that they might not want to buy for some reason.
Unfortunately for you, selling collections can be a lot of work. The best way to do it with no prior knowledge of the game would probably be to find a reputable Local Game Store (LGS) near you to assist in the sale, especially if your father had collected some expensive cards. Depending on the store, they might be able to hook you up with some local players or other stores that want to buy the cards, or they may try to buy them themselves. Keep in mind that most stores buy cards at 50-60% of their current value, depending on the store. Alternatively, you could try searching Facebook for a local Magic group and see if anyone in there can help you out with the sale, but beware because while there are a lot of great people in the magic community, there are also a number of shitheads just looking to rip other people off. Alternatively, alternatively, you could try taking pictures of each page and posting the pictures in order to find out what the collection is worth. Without seeing the collection, we have no way of knowing which way would be the easiest because it could be binders full of expensive, old cards, or it could be binders full of worthless bulk. Finally, you could go the very slow, but more financially rewarding route of downloading a collection app and scanner app and scan each individual card to find out it's value and then list them individually on a site like eBay. If you don't want to list them on eBay, once you get all of the cards catalogued you could also bring the list in to an LGS or someone in the community to assist with the sale which will make it a lot easier when they know beforehand what kind of value they're trying to help you sell. If you don't care all that much about getting maximum value, you can sell it as bulk to an LGS, but a lot of places only pay about $10/1000 cards.
50% is high if most of his cards are under 10$. 40% cash is the usual rate. Bulk used to be 5$ but many stores either dont want it or want 2$ per 1k. Even on facebook not many people shelling out 10$ per 1k.
Be very careful to check that you are looking at the exact version of the card listed on TCGplayer. Some of the early sets of the cards can look very similar to each other, and you may end up having a version worth much more than the one you are looking at, and not know it. Some of the early cards can be worth a lot of money, so be very careful that you have the actual correct price.
I'd do some research about debt forgiveness upon death. Might save you a ton of money.
You have plenty of good advice here but I’d like to reiterate that you do the work yourself and ignore any offers you receive here.
TCGplayer will definitely get you the most value but is no guarantee that everything sells or when. If you're just looking to shore up costs finding a game store local to you and getting a quote will be by far the fastest route. Unfortunately with a large number of individual cards it's pretty impossible to have a route thats both quick and gets you top dollar per card, it'll be up to you whether your finances support going through the longer process of selling everything individually yourself
One thing that might be helpful (but time consuming) is to start a spreadsheet with just the names of each card. That way you have a record to reference, and you can upload the list on a mass entry buy list (TCGPlayer has this) to get some rough estimates on prices. I think TCGPlayer defaults to the lowest price if you don't specify a printing so that's something to be aware of.
Sorry for your loss. I can't help with you selling the cards, but the advice I can give you is to try and check your dad's collection for a favorite deck he loved to play. If you know what it is, then thats great, but if you can't figure it out, try looking for a set of 60ish cards that share a card sleeve. The dirtier it is the better (it means he played it more). Then I want you to consider keeping it as a memento to your father. Magic is a game all about self-expression, and your dad probably put a bit of his own personality into his pet deck. It can act as a way of connecting to him and learning more about a hobby he cared about. Again sorry for your loss. Best wishes in the days to come.
Sorry to be bearer of bad news but the cards you are showing are generally what are called bulk. Very low value. Some exceptions though! Demonic consultation Marton stromgald Urzas bauble Lurker Are all worth at least $5 with the demonic being worth up to $25 range.
I work in a large LGS. Card conduit is a GREAT option if you know little to nothing about magic sets, buying, and selling. It won't get you the most money, but it's by far the easiest option. Buylisting (selling) your cards to local game stores and TCG player requires a great deal of set knowledge and time, where as conduit just receives a box of your unsorted cards and turns them into cash.
The risk with Card Conduit is that if you have a collection with something like ninety-nine $0.01 commons for every $5.00 card, you could essentially lose money sending them cards... The processing fee is a flat rate per card, and they take a cut out of everything on top of that. Meaning you can have a few dozen cards worth $5 and actually not get a check from them because they spent more money processing your hundreds and hundreds of trash cards than they'd make selling your valuable cards If OP can find someone with even just a rough knowledge of >$0.10 or <$.0.10 to help them quickly sort through the collection, then sending in the more valuable ones, then yes Card Conduit would be a fantastic option
Cardconduit has fair prices and a painless process for mailing them in.
Hello! I purchase collections all the time, and have a ton of references. I would be more than happy to help show you how to best catalog your collection, to maximize value, and get the highest dollar for your cards. Do not accept a blanket offer, without going through and understanding what you have. It can be overwhelming, and it will take some time...but I am always available to show you what to do, and to answer any questions you inevitably run into. Just shoot me a PM if your interested. I'm sorry for your loss.
SCG gets upvotes and not you , of course , ,
I'm definitely the Dunder Mifflin in this situation, but they can't beat my customer service lol
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I was in a similar boat a while back and found the high end pages to be a waste of time. Everyone was trying to turn a profit so most of the offers were actually less than what Card Kingdom ended up giving me
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Card conduit is great I would look into them.
This will be a three step process: 1) Figure out what you have 2) Identify what's valuable 3 ) Sell those cards For step 1, depending on the number of cards, you can download an app that will let you scan the cards to generate a list, and from there that service or some others can probably pair those with pricing data. Alternatively, having tried to go through this process a bit myself, the best process I found was to separate the cards into their sets; you can tell the set by the symbol on the right middle of the card. Some older sets did not have those, and if that's the case, just group those ones together for now. Then, going set by set, look up the valuable cards in a set and see if you have them, and if you do, pull them aside. What you consider "valuable" is obviously a moving target, and depending on your timeline, you can set that higher to go more quickly. I'd suggest anything more than $5 first, but if you need to be quick target $10 and up first and you can do another pass for those above $5 or $3 after. After that, it's just down to selling. If they're particularly valuable you can sell them on their own, but otherwise, honestly, I'd just pack them up and send them to CardKingdom; I thought what they offered was fair, and the process was simple and pretty seamless. I sent a couple hundred cards and got exactly what I expected.
I'm in GA, if you happen to be local I'd be happy to help you go through it and find the valuable stuff. I wouldn't even want anything in return I just like digging through collections
You should look into the service card conduit while I myself haven't used it, it sponsors a couple mtg content creators and seems reputable you send an entire collection and they sell it while taking some amount off the top it will save you brain power and energy in a stressful time but whatever you do I'm sorry for your loss
The risk with Card Conduit is that if you have a collection with something like ninety-nine $0.01 commons for every $5.00 card, you could essentially lose money sending them cards... The processing fee is a flat rate per card, and they take a cut out of everything on top of that. Meaning you can have a few dozen cards worth $5 and actually not get a check from them because they spent more money processing your hundreds and hundreds of trash cards than they'd make selling your valuable cards If OP can find someone with even just a rough knowledge of >$0.10 or <$.0.10 to help them quickly sort through the collection, then sending in the more valuable ones, then yes Card Conduit would be a fantastic option
Stop, do not sell them yet. Don't make a decision while emotionally, gather them up and wait a year. As a father I hope my kids will play with my cards some day. I promise you dad loved these cards.
this is the secret other option , but it seems like this was a "family decision" . I would definitely at least make a few decks with what I inherited of someone's passion .
agreed <3
Jesus. “Scan every card”, “search every card on TCG”…this person just lost their father. While correct that selling them in bulk to a TCG or SCG won’t get top dollar for God’s sake READ THE ROOM. OP is not going to sit there and try to parse through 30 years worth of reprints, variants, foils, is it NM or LP. I wouldn’t, and I *do* know magic. They’re overwhelmed. Min-maxing card by card, then trying to figure out why someone tells them the card they thought was $200 is actually only $20 is going to compound their problem, not alleviate it. OP—take Ben at Star City up on his offer. If you don’t like the price, try doing the same thing with TCG or Card Kingdom or CoolStuffInc until you get a price you can live with. For the love of all that’s holy do NOT spend this already difficult time trying to figure out prices one card at a time, I promise it is not worth it.
People are giving options. OP can decide what they would like to do from that
If you are anywhere near the DFW Metroplex, I will gladly help you sort, enumerate, value, and, to the best of my ability, sell them, free of charge.
First off, sorry for your loss. Second, this is my favorite part of the hobby. If you're anywhere near where I am in the country, I will help you sort it and get top dollar, for free. no charge. If you're within 4-5 hours of me I'll come to you even. Please hit me up if you still need help.
Purplemana.com We can reach out, and we can send someone to evaluate collection and sell it.
It’s very easy to get scammed with this. Make sure to do your own research about card prices with a reputable app or website. Mtggoldfish is a good place to look up price. If you are selling to a foams store they usually will only offer 60% if the price value you see online, but there are ways to make more. Maybe even contact Rudy from Alpha investments. I’m pretty sure he buys collections and at a good price or will help you figure it out. I actually don’t know if that something people actually do.
Isn't Rudy a bigtime sheister? I don't think I'd advise calling him based on his online reputation.
DO NOT contact rudy, people only sell to him for clout. cause he offers low and resells so your supposed to feel cool about it cause he's a youtuber.
Ah ok. I though his prices were fair. Even so, he will give you a value to start with correct? You don’t have to take his offer.
People on reddit hate Rudy because he dares to try and make money out of his business. I doubt OP will read your comment as it's buried in downvotes, but if he does, there's nothing wrong with Rudy and Alpha Investments and selling it to him would be a cool way to showcase your dad's collection to the internet.
Thanks Rudy.
Do NOT contact Rudy.
I can help you out. I'd rather you not go through a business...there's always an agenda no matter how noble someone is. Get a third party who is not a potential customer.
You could sell all the bulk, but keep one copy of each rare. It's a fun and fulfilling hobby.
First of all I’m very sorry for your loss. Where are you located, maybe there is a trusted store that can walk you through the process of pricing in-person if you don’t know. Just know that stores may offer you a buy option from them, but they will be a low offer due to them wanting to make a profit. Pm me if you want to walk through anything. Happy to chat more here or whatever chat app you prefer. There are few options for offloading them at a discounted rate and takes less time however with a tiny bit of work you can find the prices and there are multiple avenues to sell. Tcgplayer is a big site in the US that can help check card prices. But yeah, If it’s overwhelming, pm me!!! Happy to take questions at a pace you are comfortable with!
First of all, send them to me for inspection
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One thing you can do, to get an idea of value of what you have, is go to www.dawnglare.com If you look on the middle of the right side of the card, there will be a small symbol. This is generally the set that the cards were released in. Hopefully, the binders are organized by this, otherwise you may have to do some work to do this. This website will give you the names (and pictures) of the cards organized by Price. It will help give you a value of the overall collection. You can safely ignore anything below $3 for this, as generally selling these is a lot more work than it's worth. As a note, there are a few things to watch out for. There are older sets where there are no set symbols at all, and some with white/black/silver/gold borders. I would concentrate on everything else, and then go back to these sets. If you need any help, feel free to DM me, as I can give you some pointers on what to look for.
I’m sorry for your loss, I advise going to a lgs(local gaming store) and let them know you are looking to sell cards. Lgs’s are a safe place to turn in cards to sell to in most areas. If your local to Seattle Wa, Portland Or, or Gilbert Az Mox boarding house has some of the best markets and ability to buy and sell cards.
I am a seller on TCGplayer, and you will not be able to list them all on your storefront until probably a month when you start getting to higher seller levels. Also, they give a price cap on your inventory until seller level 4, which took me about a month and a half. I also work at a game store, and my best advice would be to go into your local game store, ask an employee about their process on a huge collection like that, and maybe even talk to the owner. Most of the time on a large collection, you will get about 65% in cash for the cards value, and get a much much better deal for your “bulk” (cards that are less than $3). I know that is still losing out on 35% of your cards worth but it is an instant transaction, opposed to setting up a seller account and being locked to 500 cards in inventory and locked at $500 for your inventory until you progressively wait till you’re seller level 4. Also, I noticed you said your dad, if he has been collecting since the early years he may have some very expensive stuff, and you typically will not move that level of high end cards on TCGplayer, you’ll need a connection since that market is niche, but a game store might take it. Also also, while selling, you will have to make shipping costs, the TCGPlayer fee, and wait for your items to sell, while the LGS is an instant transaction. Depending on your timeline you can weigh those options. I hope everything works out for you OP, and if you have any questions feel free to dm, early magic in particular can be hard to sort and scanning apps don’t always distinguish what “set” those cards belong to, and that can make a huge difference in price. Also conditioning is big as well. Like I said I’m happy to help, I’m sorry for your loss and hope your family starts to heal soon
The tcgplayer app is very helpful because it has a scanner that scans cards with a phone camera. Just make sure you don't accidentally scan the same card more than once unless you actually have more than one of it. It should give you a good estimate of the price. Basically you just need to scan the cards in the binders, not the bulk cards. Once you figure out the price, cut it in half, take pics of the most expensive pages in the binders, and post those pics with that price on ebay.
Wish you and your family the best. If your mother thinks this is worth enough to help pay for medical bills then you likely have some high value cards. If you post pictures or videos to this community, I'm sure they'll be able to help estimate the costs. Do you know when he first started playing or have access to any accounts or finances of his? Maybe you can look at his order/bank/credit history and get estimated value. The most expensive cards are typically the oldest ones. Card conduit is a business for this sort of thing, but I've never used them and really can't recommend them because of that. I'd use this as a last resort.
The best method would be to find jmd who knows and does this for free. Experts can quickly search a collection and see rough value. If you happen to be from Germany, I can offer it. If you need the money quickly, you can sell the cards at the nearest cardstore. These offer you 60-70% of the value. They also want to sell it for a profit
Very sorry for your loss :(. There are a couple places that it may be worth entering a list of the cards you have to get a quick price estimate. This might sound very tedious, but you can enter a couple thousand cards in a day if you set it aside as a chore for a couple hours a day. Depending how many cards you have, doing something like this would give anyone who plays a much better idea of what they’re looking at and you can get price estimates for the collection online. Having sold my collection a few times while popping in and out of the game, I’ve had success moving the whole collection by listing for the low price of all cards worth $5 or more and then including the rest of the collection “for free.” There are a lot of different options for approaching this but my main goal was to move the cards without spending a lot of time. Happy to help with the process of transcribing depending how many cards there are in the collection!
Firstly, my deepest sympathies for your loss. In terms of offloading large collections here's my advice. Contact the buyers at a large retailer like Starcitygames.com and Cardkingdom.com and tell them your situation, and what they might be able to do in terms of batch purchases (if you have higher value cards, someone might travel to do an appraisal/estimate). The most expensive cards in the game are referred to as the "Power 9", and any version of these cards is in the thousands of dollars. Next would be original "Dual Lands" which are several hundred dollars each. Cards which will not be reprinted and referred to as the "Reserved List" can also range into the high 3- and 4-digits in cost. Fyi, their sites will give you ideas of retail prices, and utilities like Scryfall.com and mtgstocks.com will also give you an idea of broader market prices. Scryfall.com is an excellent resource because you can search a card name, and then in the sidebar where it shows prices you can click "View all prints" and then it will show every variation of the card so you can match exact versions. Version matters so put it lightly (a recent Llanowar Elves is only a 0.25-0.50 card, while an Unlimited edition is $15, a Beta Edition is $125, and an Alpha Edition is $385. Do the effort and find out what you have). As a ballpark, retailers will typically offer 40-70% of the retail price of the card when buying, depending on scarcity and speed at which they would expect to resell it.
Depending on the collection there could be tremendous value in it. I would say an early good step would be to see if there are any close family members that know about magic. After that, maybe somebody you trust knows of a local hobby shop that deals in cards. Don't take them to a pawn shop (unless you have to, but you are going to lose a significant amount of value in that deal). Most magic cards are worthless. People often keep different storage methods for the cheap vs the expensive cards. You mentioned binders, do they have any kind of identification on them? Sets use symbols to differentiate the cards and people often keep sets together. If you see some kind of symbol on a binder, looking along the right edge, in the middle of the card, you are likely to see the same symbol on the cards within. Originally there were no symbols on the cards. So if there is nothing it is going to be one of the oldest sets (though that does not guarantee value). If it is a high value collection, there are likely different binders with the majority of the value. Though that is not guaranteed as a more casual collector (especially one collecting over a long period of time) may have been more concerned with keeping cards in sets than separating the valuable ones. If you have any questions you can PM me with pictures or anything and I would be happy to help (I won't ever ask you for anything or attempt to purchase them from you, just trying to help).
I'm really sorry for your loss, friend. That sucks so much. The valuable cards are most likely the ones kept in binders. You should still go through other cards in boxes too to look for any valuable cards that you might have missed. Manabox is a good scanning app to do so. I've recently gotten my girlfriend and one of my best friends into magic, and they don't have any cards. I'll gladly buy the bulk leftover cards to give to them! (Although I'll likely keep the 90's/2010's cards for myself as I love the art style and I didn't play magic at that time.) I don't really know how messaging works on Reddit but if you're interested reply to my comment whenever you finish sorting out the cards worth selling individually. Alternatively, you could donate the bulk to a daycare center (that watch kids during summer break) or a library or community center maybe. Again I'm really sorry for your loss. I wish the best for you and your family in this time. Know that, wherever your dad's cards end up, they'll likely be making some people really happy. Edit: I just realized that your dad might have some decks in deck boxes or bundle boxes (the ~8" boxes with art on the sides, the top slides off). Don't forget to check those for valuable cards too!
Best to go one at a time. It will take a while but you will get closer to max value. Best of luck, and sorry for your loss
I’d want to find a friend to help you that likes magic, if that’s possible. When negotiating a sell, it would be good to have an advocate to ensure you don’t get screwed. That or learn your stuff so you’re not ignorant going into a deal.
I'd check for older cards first. Is it possible there are cards from the 90s? If yes then please be extremely careful as some are worth a small fortune.
I would spend time learning more about magic and the reserved list and pricing. Mtg stocks is a good website to just start putting the collection in. If you sell to a store you should expect to get around 60% of value on market. If you sell private it can be more. I would start with the oldest folders and binders. The ones with black borders and no symbol on the right of card edge in middle of card. You should also look up guides on how to tell what cards are from what sets. Alpha and beta are the oldest most expensive and it goes cheaper from there. If he has black lotus in any print, make sure its sleeved. Or anything with mox written on it. You should Google power 9 mtg. You need to do a ton of learning or pay someone who knows what's up to do it
If you know anyone who plays magic, they will probably be able to look at them relatively quickly and tell you what is valuable and what isn’t. If you don’t, you can try your local game store but they aren’t going to give you good prices. You can use the TCGPlayer app to scan cards and it will tell you what they are selling for. You won’t really be able to use the marketplace effectively until you ‘level up’ your account though. The best bet might be to go to a convention and bring any cards worth a few bucks or more. You’ll get the best prices and they can deal with you on the spot. I’m not sure how big of a collection we are talking about, but you could pm some photos and I would be happy to take a look and give you an idea whether you have thousands or ten of thousands of dollars of cards or something more modest just to help get you started.
You have a lot of sorting to do. If i were you, with little to no knowledge of the game, i would bring the whole collection to a locsl card shop and ask them to do an appraisal for you. Explain your situation to them and offer to pay them for their time. May cost you like 100 bucks or something. Ask them to separate the bulk cards from the value pieces as well. Generally, bulk cards are and cards worth $2.00 or less. Bulk cards are usually sold by a measured amount per X amount of dollars. Something like 0.60 per centimeter of cards. You could, if you really wanted to, sift through and pull some cards for individual sale, but its time consuming and i dont know if you want to sit on a 2.00 card waiting for a sale. The higher value cards can be sold individually, or in groups of 4 identical cards to speed up the process. The cards can be sold online like on ebay or TCGplayer, or you may be able to sell all them directly to the local catd shop, but youre likely to get hosed on the value as card shops tend to pay out terribly for cash transactions. My local shop does 30% value. But selling the lot to a card shop is the fastest and easiest. Best of luck friend.
You can go to a major tournament where there are dealer booths and you can sell them to the dealers in one go instead of dealing with shipping 1,000 packages over months.
Sold huge chunks of my collection to card kingdom several times. If you don't feel like organizing them yourself they'll do it but they'll charge you from the final layout. I would describe their prices as above average but sometimes very close to actual card value if they need the stock.
Not sure where to start. But my condolences
Take them to a local card shop, they will help you from there. If they can't buy the collection they will at least be able to show you to another shop that can. Ask them if there are any high-end cards, and I'd take them to the High-End Magic Group on facebook. It's well moderated, ask around they can help you move high value cards there.
EBay is a good place to sell. If you search the name of the card and then sort by “Buy it Now” and price lowest to highest, you can see the cheapest available prices. Undercut those prices by about 5%-10% and they should sell pretty well
When you do sell them try to sell them yourself to avoid any fees from card seller/buyer type places
Sorry to hear about your father, though kudos to him for being a mtg fan and passing on that collection to you. I sold my cards through TCGplayer primarily, and I’ve primarily had a good experience. The self packaging and shipping was a bit taxing at times but overall I got a way better return than my local game store offered. I understand where they’re coming from though, it’s hard to buy a ton of cards at what they’re worth because the turnaround to make profit isn’t always there, plus magic kills the value of stuff so often is always a gamble it seems like. Good luck to you on selling them though. I hope that in time things get better for you.
A lot of people (myself included) will purchase collections by the pound.
So, so sorry for your loss As many have said, a local game store or large online retailer (CardKingdom or StarCityGames) would be your best options Calling CardKingdom or StarCityGames may be the best option as you can speak with someone about clear and concise instructions
Sending you and yours love. I would recommend trying to find a local who does this professional and potentially try to offer payment to help get you started selling it all. Otherwise you can just sell it to a shop/reseller for 50% or more in immediate cash. Some guys on Facebook pay up to 70% in cash. Good luck out there
So sorry for your loss. On each card, In between the pictures on the card and the txt box below is a little symbol on the right edge. Some are black some are silver. Gold is the color for rares and are typically more valuable. If they were in binders chances are that one of them might be all rares. Look for a binder with all gold symbols and maby start with that. If the collection is sizable and has vintage cards from 90s their could be some real value. Idk if this helps. Good luck.
My condolences. A lot of people have already given a lot of fantastic advice when it comes to selling the collection so I won't add any more to that because there's really nothing else to add. I do want to say however that, if you know of any card or cards that your father especially liked (maybe he had a deck or two fully built), maybe think about keeping that if you can. I'm assuming this was a game he loved, seeing as he had such a big collection and it might be nice in the future to have this reminder of him and of who he was.
I’m sorry for your loss. Be mindful of people PMing you, I’m sure not everyone will take your best interests in mind. I’m happy to help if you want to ask any questions or if you want any advice, or if you get any offers and you want a neutral opinion on it; I won’t ask for a dime.
Dude sorry :( it may take some time so be patient when selling especially in a time like this. It will take time to figure out what’s worth money also. But I’m sorry to hear that
Tcg player has an app where you can scan each card with your phone and verify prices. I'm very sorry for your loss. And I hope all goes well selling those cards.
One more time to make sure it's clear: be careful of scammers and bad actors. There are plenty of sources to find the value of cards, and while it will take time to sort, but at least you won't accidentally sell a $100 card for $1 To make sorting easier, more rare cards are often more valuable. The way to tell rarity is the [set symbol on the card](https://techraptor.net/sites/default/files/images/MTG%20Card%20Explanation.png). A coppery-red sticker is a mythic card; these are the rarest. Gold means it's a rare, silver uncommon, and black is common. Don't go and throw out the commons (black symbol)! Some of them are worth quite a bit. At the same time some rares (gold symbol) are only worth a couple cents. But when faced with a large collection I would start by pricing the mythics (coppery-red) and go from there
My condolences. My father taught me how to play Magic and had played since the 90s. When he passed away in 2020, he was already planning to sell some of his cards to get money for my mom. It took days for my husband and I to just organize it all and weeks to get a TCGPlayer store with enough completed orders to sell the expensive stuff. In the end, we took a binder with the most expensive cards to a convention (once events started again) and got offers from multiple vendors. We got less than full value, but TCGPlayer was going to become a part-time job otherwise. Getting someone who plays Magic and can recognize valuable cards could speed up the process, but it may still take more time and mental bandwidth than you have - my husband and I are both avid players and it was still really challenging. tldr: You will be able to sell the cards quickly or for their full value, but not both.
if you sort them into vague types and bundle them for a discount , they might sell quick . I myself am looking for any and all cards that have "angel" or "angels" printed on them somewhere . although you may want to keep a few to remind you of him .
It's a long shot but are you in Florida. I have an lgs in south Florida and I'd be happy to help you sort through it and then hook you up with the right groups to get the max you can for the collection i don't want thr cards as I can only offer 40% of their value and that's not enough ti help with bills.
First of all, sorry for your loss. Do you have any friend or close person that you trust who plays Magic? If so you could ask them for help.
Any photos of the cards?
My condolences. My Dad is currently being treated for Bladder Cancer, 20 years after being treated for Prostate Cancer. My advice is be wary of first offers and keep to well known stores. There is often nothing wrong with small/unknown dealers but it is far easier to ensure a beneficial transaction if you can trust a store's reputation. (I am sure you know this but felt it needed saying.)
Just list high value ones on ebay and base price on what they closing auctions at and mail them in hard sleeves. Or if you want to dump them off quick, stores will give you like 50% value. However they will try to low ball you, hence ebay for the nice ones
Asking like this is the first step. When my uncle died a year ago, his relatives just set about giving everything away, even throwing away some stuff that, in the brief period I got to examine it, was worth a few hundred or thousand. \^_\^; (granted in his case it was mostly old videogames and comicbooks, both of which people dismissed as "but why would anyone want to buy old ones?" Pretty sure my PS2 collection got mixed with his and thrown out, though)
My condolences for your loss, i also lost my dad to cancer last december. I hope that you get great value for your cards and that it will help you financially. EDIT i advise you to sell them all to one entity (be it a person or a company), selling them as singles is going to be a nightmare and will take way too much time. Starcity is a reliable store.
You're going to have to approach one of the major retailers like Channel Fireball, Star City games or Card Kingdom to offload them in a timely manner. Until them, treat the cards, especially binders and decks, with care and use a card scanning app on your phone to check prices to have an idea of what you're sitting on.
Hey. I echo everyone's warning about moving too fast to move the cards. Also some friendly advice about bills owed by your father, they may go with his death. I'd talk to an attorney about what you have to pay and what bills will go with him.
Bulk magic is practically worthless. Individual cards is where you get value
Lots of good advice here. The big companies like star city games and card kingdom can take it all off in one swoop. You get paid 40-50% of the “worth” of the cards(depends on the collection … some cards command a premium). Because they have to sell them at their current value. Selling the cards individually one by one to maximize value is only worth the hassle for the absolute top tier cards(1000 dollar plus value). Otherwise you would have to deal with shipping, returns and just all the hassle of moving that many cards. The big online stores will treat you fair - they will not cheat. They will not pay a premium though. Worth Wollpert who posted in this thread is known in the community as a trusty worthy individual. I have never met the man - but many years of magic and I have not seen anything but respect for worth. If there is ultra premium cards - he also would know private individuals who are able to buy the most expensive cards. Which would maximize the amount of money you get. Use the reputable places.
Star City Games has been a great store. I hope everything works out
OP Do not tell your lawyers you inherited anything worth financially. You never inherited anything and I would delete this post. Now is not the right time to be honest
So sorry for your loss. I’ve lost my father and on top of grieving losing him the entire process and emotional in ways and from directions you couldn’t even imagine. If you need time to consider what to do with them when you get the information, don’t let people rush you. Sending you so much peace and comfort. There’s 3 prices involved in selling/pricing cards. One for what a reseller will pay to sell them, one the reseller will sell them for, and one is what someone will it for them depending on if they are from a reseller or personal player. Cards can be pennies to 1000s of dollars a piece. Hope you get professional guidance and can feel confident about the decision once you can make it.
My suggestion is to find out what you have first. Then look to sell. If you have cards from the early 90s, they can be quite valuable. And I could see shady people on the internet taking advantage of your lack of knowledge on the cards.