Ebay

EBay

When collecting unusual Magic cards, the largest obstacle is finding those cards.  If you could grab them at any Card store you went to they would not be as valuable.  We are lucky enough to live in a time where buying and trading cards in person is not your exclusive venue for collecting cards.  EBay can become a collector’s best friend.

EBay has some huge advantages to collecting in person.  While browsing the selection of cards in the auction house, there is access to any number of price comparison tools.   EBay has the largest selection of foil, foreign, and alternate printings of cards.  EBay usually has better prices than online card shops and brick and mortar card shores.  EBay allows the use of specialized buying techniques to get greater deals. 

Collectors can use trading websites, online price guides, and online stores to help ensure they get a fire price on their EBay purchases.  I personally suggest using the price guides from www.magictraders.com , www.apathyhouse.com, and www.starcitygames.com.  No price guide is perfect, but these sites will help when looking for deals.  Magic Traders of MOTL, bases prices on the site off of actually sales and trades made through the site.  Apathy House bases the prices on the trade evaluator using EBay sales.  Star City Games uses some sort of algorithm for their prices.  Star City is not known for being the cheapest site online, but they have the one of the best selections of cards online.

Most people think of discounts when they think of EBay.  People who sell cards on EBay are looking to sell them at a higher price than they can get from a selling to a store and get rid of the cards quickly.  Buyers on EBay are looking to pay a price less than if they went directly to a card store.  When a seller wants to liquidate their collection on EBay, they make sure to price the card just below the lowest listing for the card.  Each seller will undersell the previous sellers, until the lowest priced cards have been bought.  The more in demand a card is, the quicker the cards listed at lower prices will be bought and the higher the price will stay.  If a card is high enough demand that the online stores are sold out, there can be a discrepancy between the store price and the eBay price.  This week I made a trade that is a great example of this.  I traded someone my Scalding Tar for their Foil Zendikar Foil Island and a FTV: Relics Strip Mine.  If you use Star City to evaluate the trade, I traded away a $13 card for 2 $5 cards.  Sadly, Star City is sold out of FTV Strip Mines. On EBay these Strip Mines sell for $9.  Scalding Tarns also sell for $9 on eBay.  I am not going to guarantee that there will be the exact card you are looking for up for sale, but it is a great chance.  EBay has a constantly rotating selection of cards.  When you perform your searches, it helps to be as broad as possible.  It’s common for people to misspell card names, neglect to put proper descriptions, or place a card in an incorrect category.  When you do find a card that was listed improperly, it will normally be at a huge discount.  The discount is a result of a shortage of EBay buyers being able to find and bid on the particular item.

There are a few techniques that can be used while shopping on EBay to increase the chance of success.  They can be used to get deals, or block people from getting items.  A common style of bidding on auctions is sniping.  Sniping is my preferred style of bidding.  You use sniping to either grab an item at an incredibly low price, or to give yourself a higher chance of winning the auction.  They both work in the same basic way.   I make no bids on the auction until seconds before the auction is over.  Then, I make a large bid that no one else has time to respond to.  Personally, I keep 2-5 windows of the auction open preset with different bid amounts.  I arrange my screen so I can see all the windows at once.  When I bid with one (5 seconds before an auction ends), the others automatically refresh.  If I see a rival sniper is trying to outbid me, I shoot off a second bid in one of the other window.  I keep more than one extra window, because you never know how high the rival sniper will bid.  Another function on ebay to remember is the “Best Offer” button.  If a seller is “Buy it Now” or “Best Offer”, they are willing to settle for less than the listed price.  If the price is already fair or more than fair, I will offer the seller the price listed minus the shipping cost.  I would suggest using all the tools available for use on EBay.

This week I have purchased 6 cards on EBay:

·         Scarecrone (Foil Chinese)

·         Ancient Tomb (Korean)

·         Forbid (Korean)

·         Mishra’s Factory (BB German)

·         Artificer’s Intuition (Foil)

·         Fabricate (Japanese Foil)

The best buys here were the Scarecrone (4x .99$) and the Ancient Tomb ($15).  The Scarecrone looks like the guy forgot a decimal place and I sniped the Ancient Tomb.  Korean Ancient Tombs normally sell for 25-35 on eBay.

I have collected 24 of the 100 cards I need.  I still have 76 cards on the list remaining.  EBay will be a tool I will be using constantly over the course of this hunt.  That’s all for this installment, I will update again as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading,

Sean