I started playing magic with simple drafts during Alara Reborn. I was hooked. I was 20, relatively late to start a new game, and broke and in college.

My first box was a simple booster, Magic 10; I think it was a fat pack, not an entire booster box. I needed basic land. It came with a handy box to put my cards in. I continuously purchased one booster box per set until Battle for Zendikar in 2015, when I upped to a booster case. As my finances improved, I improved my position. Dual lands, restricted lists, complete sets, power 9. Fast forward to Modern Horizons 2 with multiple booster cases. I had acquired over 180,000 cards, and it was an inventory and storage nightmare.

My wife and I had a hard discussion; I had too much, and it had to go. At this point, I hadn’t played a game of paper magic in three years. I still purchased four of every standard set upon release, as well as every commander product and collector case. I spent over 25k in a single year on MTG. I wasn’t even enjoying it; it was pure fear of missing out and what else I should do.

I committed to selling everything I wasn’t using. My goal is to get under 10,000 cards and two boxes. I might keep 10 odd decks lying around, 1-2 in every format (vintage included), but what do we sell?

Step One: Deciding its time to sell

Questions to ask yourself.

• What do I want from Magic?
• Do I still enjoy collecting?
• Space requirements?
• How much is it worth?

This is by far the hardest step: realizing that part of your collection no longer brings you joy or value. I had over 100 booster boxes lying around in my attic. I called my FLGS and sent him a list. He picked them up, and $24,000 later, my journey of selling the collection began.

Deciding to sell your precious cards, usually at a major loss, is a hard choice, especially for me. I have always been a collector. If you follow the full blog, you know I can field every 40k Age of Sigmar, Old World, 9th Age, Star Wars Legion, Star Wars Armada, Star Wars X-Wing, A Song of Ice and Fire, Black Seas, Flames of War, Bolt Action, Blood Bowl, Marvel Crisis Protocol, Necromuda, Lord of the Rings, Kill Team, War Cry, Shatterpoint, faction. Just that list is exhausting.

I also have massive forces for historics, napoleonics, ancients, battle tech, American Civil War, Dead Man’s hand. I like to collect. Magic was no different. I made the decision as I aged and had less time I wanted to be able to play any deck whenever I wanted. It started with standard, then modern, legacy, vintage, pioneer, and commander. It was awful. I was no longer playing; I just inventoried all day long. The fact that it took the threat of divorce from my wife to clean up my act was a wake-up call. I enjoy wargaming and hobbying far more than the gritty ness of magic; I love the universe, and love the game, but to stay current is a full-time job.

I wanted magic to be fun and relaxing. It just isn’t anymore.

I used to enjoy collecting. Saying I have every card from modern and up is tremendous. It also brings a burden. Suddenly, you are the supplier of decks. Every local player would ask if they could borrow a card and would get butt hurt when I always turned them down. I always bought the cheapest version and four of them. I never understood how cards would get returned with Cheeto dust.

I didn’t care about bling until one day, I did. I blinged out Modern Humans, the most expensive version of every card in the deck. Then the Cavern of Soul’s Boxtoppers and the inventions were released. It just kept getting worse.

I have already discussed space, so let’s discuss money. My wife and I would rather pay off our house than have 180,000 magic cards, which could tank in value any day. So that’s the goal. For you, it could be a car, a credit card bill, or a new TV. I asked the hard question: What is it worth?

How to sell?

There are many articles covering this very topic. Sell the whole collection on Facebook or eBay or to Cardhoarder or your FLGS? Piece it out? I used Cardhoarder to get a bottom valuation of $180,000 for everything. But it had to be sorted and ready to go; otherwise, the value was $115,000. I knew I personally could do better than that. A few people offered in the $140,000 range on Facebook, but as the process of selling, the collection became more real. I realized I did enjoy my black lotus and her 8 friends. What were just the items I didn’t want to look like? I decided to sell on TCG. It gave me control, and I could evaluate each card as listed.

A new seller gets 100 listings. I listed 100 premium box toppers, foil, and full art cards from various boxes I ordered. Within two weeks, I was a level 4 seller with unlimited listings. I determined I wanted to do no more than 30 to 40 orders per day, so I kept my inventory small in the 3000-4000 range.

How you want to sell your cards weighs in three factors.

• How much time do I want to spend listing and selling?
• How fast do I want the funds?
• How much value do I want?

The best way to get the most value is to sell piece by piece yourself on a medium like Facebook or to your local group. You can typically get 95% of TCG with very little fees. It is also by far the most time-consuming.

The fastest way is selling the collection in bulk as it sits to whoever takes the risk. It is also the worst way to extract value from your cards. Expect 50-55% of TCG.

Buylisiting is a medium where you sacrifice more value for convenience, 60-65%. TCG is on the other side of that medium with more time but also more value, 70-80%.

I chose TCG because I was already spending 4-5 hours per week on magic. It should work out if I took the same time to list and sell it. If you have less than 500 cards to sell, I would strongly consider a buy list of FLGS. I don’t see online working well for you. The more cards you have listed, the more people are looking at your inventory and the higher chance you have of a sale. If I drop below 2,500 cards, my sales and views drastically drop.

What to Sell?

There is value in every card in magic. Tokens and basic lands; you name it, and you can sell it. How much is it really worth? Most buylists don’t go under $2 unless there is a solid staple. Think fatal push or swords to plowshares. Local game stores typically offer a bulk rate of .15 per rare under $2 and $10/1000 of common and uncommon.

I primarily sold my collection on TCG. I listed about 2,000 cards total when I realized there was a threshold of what I wanted to list. It was about 20 cents. I typically round to the nearest nickel.

I had listed a bunch of .05 cards, and I hated selling them. When you sell one card with shipping, I made about .07 after fees and shipping. If I sold the card for .05. I could do 30 orders in an hour, so when these cards came up, I made $2.10/hr. Completely worthless. At .20 a card I could make between $14-$15 and hour and they sold. It also reduced my inventory, my total number of orders, and how long it took me to fill orders because I wasn’t constantly thumbing through crap cards.

You can really make money with .02 and .03 cards. There is a market for those cards. I didn’t feel it was worth my time, but it’s up to you. Several YouTubers push bulk.

I had very negative experiences selling foils online. If you think back to my first 100 cards listed. These were pack fresh, I opened myself, doublsleeved into toploaders. NM/M cards. I had complaints about the quality of 17 of the 100 orders. People care deeply about foils, and if you are dropping $200 on a force of will foil, you want it to be pristine, minty mint. Anything else, and the buyers just wanted them as damaged. I took the rest to the FLGS, which gave me 60%.

I also had a negative experience with my sealed product. Every person seemed to think I “case mapped” and gave them the shitty box out of a case. Especially the master’s boxes. After three complaints in 5 orders, I took the rest to the FLGS, who gave me 70%.

Inventory Management

I think most people selling on TCG as small sellers struggle here. Knowing where your cards are selling and what you have is vital. Typically, if I have an order of 5 cards all .2 and am missing one, I just cancel the whole order. In my limited experience, if you are missing a card from a shipment, the buyer wants the shipping refunded. TCG has a tool that optimizes your cart to the lowest price at the condition you select, including shipping. If you are ordering those five .20 cards from the same seller on TCG. It is unliking that seller is the lowest listing, however they are the only seller with all 5 cards listed and paying $2.21 for one package is cheaper than $4.50 for 3 packages. That said, people must order an additional card and pay the full shipping fee if they are missing one. They don’t want to pay shipping twice and will complain if you do not get a refund. If you decide to ship those 4 cards you have, expect a loss on the order.

I organized my sell box as follows,

• By set
• By card number in said set

I use one 5k box. If you need more, you are pushing yourself timewise to still have a life and job. With my 5k box, I spend about 90 minutes per day shipping and listing. The set number is automatically organized by color and alphabetically.

Pricing.

There are dozens of ideas for pricing your cards. I wanted a fair price, so I rarely undercut the lowest TCG listing. Instead, I would go .05 to .25 higher than the lowest listing. This would allow me to move most of my inventory very quickly.

To decide what to sell, I would open where I kept my card inventory, deckbox.org. You can see pricing based on edition which based on how I organized my collection (by edition) worked out nicely. I would scroll through their pricing and only look at cards over .20. I would add them, price them to my inventory, and put them in my to-sell box. I could do a complete set of 4 of every card in a complete set in about 30 minutes. Then, as they were put into my sell box, they were already organized.

Everything that didn’t go into the sell box went into the bulk boxes to be sold to the FLGS at $12/1000.

Your pricing strategy is up to you. If you need the money and just want the cards gone, pricing 5% below the lowest is a surefire way to a quick sale. Remember that it takes about 2 weeks to get your funds from TCG. If you need the cash that badly, FLGS or Buylist are your options.

Many people use the market pricing tool which bases your pricing on the most recent card sold. This tool is nice and generally gets you more money for your cards but less overall sales. It doesn’t take into account people who offer free shipping or other promos.

Packaging

I actually found very few good resources not in Youtube on packaging your cards. My method of filling orders is as follows;

1. Open all the orders that day in individual tabs
2. Place my to sell box on my lap and being pulling cards from each order while going through the tab. So I fill each order as I open the tab, place the cards in a penny sleeve and stack on my desk.
3. Copy and paste the address to a label template to be printed.
4. Do as many orders as fill a label sheet (30) and stop.
5. Switch back to the first tab and begin packing orders.
6. All cards go into penny sleeves up to 6, and then that penny sleeve goes into a shipping shield. I put a maximum of 18 cards in a plain white envelope. More than 18 get premium shipping. There are lots of people who claim to put 60+ cards in a PWE. I don’t risk it.
7. I tape the shipping shield shut with scotch tape.
8. I put the order in the envelope.
9. Put the label on the envelope.
10. Stamp the envelope
11. Mark as shipped

I use the following supplies for 95% of my orders.

• I order prestamped windowless envelopes
• I use Avery labels from wal-mart
• I use card board shipping shields
• Penny Sleeves
• I buy stamps 10 rolls at a time.

More expensive orders ($25) get the special tracked shipping.

• Cards are placed into top loaders
• They are sent in a 5×7 envelope with USPS ground Advantage Shipping
• Shipping is purchased through USPS click and save
• I use a Polono 60 laser printer to print 4×6 labels

I hope this helps

I have spent about 6 months and am 70% of the way though selling my collection. It has been a lot of time and effort, but well worth it. I have recouped about 74% of the collection value based on the deckbox.org tracker.

Selling your collection is an emotional moment. I have also found it liberating. For some reason people have a strong attachment to possessions. I am one of those people. Hopefully this allows me to sell some of my excess Warhammer stock.