Selling your MTGO Collection on eBay

When the time comes to liquidate your MTGO collection, there are a variety of options, of which eBay can be of great help to those looking for an exit from the game.

Many people quit the game for various reasons. Some need the money to finance a wedding, a baby on the way, a new car etc. Others find that the habit is becoming too costly to support and decide to sell out in order to force them to quit. A few gradually start playing lesser as other distractions occupy their time and attention and eventually they decide to give up MTGO.

(As a side note, most of these people end up coming back to the game, but that's not the focus of this guide!)

Once again, I will offer advice to the different groups of collection owners on what could be the best ways to turn their digital cards into cash. But first, let me start off with a few basic tips which could be helpful to everyone.

Wizards of the Coast: MTGO Code of Conduct (CoC)

This is a very important point to note. It is against the CoC to sell accounts. WoTC does look at eBay auctions when enforcing this; I have known of at least one case whereby a seller had his entire account banned because he was trying to sell his account. That means everything in the account is lost; which could be very substantial and painful for some.

That is not to say that you cannot sell your collection on eBay. When typing out your listing, be very clear about what you are selling: the contents of the account, not the account itself. Make it clear that you are only looking to sell your collection. Also, avoid including any information that is account-related, especially DCI ratings of your account. Almost no one who is looking to bid on your auction will be interested in your limited rating; providing that information only makes your listing look more like you are attempting to offload the account, not the contents.

Delivery Options

Having said that, WoTC generally turns a blind eye if you offer to provide someone with your account name and password and a week or two for them to clear out your account. If its a small collection (<3000), meeting online to complete the trade may be a good idea, but when it involves larger ones (>10,000), it will take some time before everything is traded over, given the limited trading mechanism ingame.

I cannot speak for all buyers, but for myself and a few others I know, we are perfectly happy to complete the transfer of cards on our own. This saves time (not having to arrange a time convenient for both parties), and speeds the process up.

As long as you make sure to be clear about the sale being only about the contents, and that the winner will be given a limited amount of time to complete the transfer, you will not be getting into any trouble with WoTC folks.

Scams

Another danger to look out for are scams. Basically, any requests beyond that of asking for a CSV file or the contents of the account should be viewed with suspicions. If someone asks that you log in via a link, please do not do so. There is no such thing as an 'expert mode' to the game.

All in all, apply caution when responding to queries which are dubious in nature. The standard questions should not be any more than what I have just listed out above.

CSV Files

A CSV file is a complete listing of all your collection's contents and can be obtained via the following method:

(To create a CSV file, simply go to your Collection tab of the MTGO client, and switch the view to a text list view. Then, right click on any card and pick Select All, then right click on any card again and pick Export As CSV)

Many bidders have scripts with which they can valuate a CSV file and arrive at a price quickly; hence it is an essential. Furthermore, the character limits of eBay means that it can be difficult to list entire contents of a moderately-sized account in a single listing. Have the CSV file ready so that you can provide it to potential bidders.

In Pieces or Bulk

The main question that most sellers face is whether to strip their collection of the valuables then auction the rest, or simply to keep them together in a single lot. There is no single method which will maximize the value you recover from your collection. Very often, sellers who sell off the chase rares find themselves unable to interest buyers in buying the remainder in bulk; resulting in a loss compared to what they would have had if they did not strip the collection, not to mention the time wasted.

A good rule to follow might be this: separate the stuff that are sought after by only a certain subset of buyers. These include complete sets, common or uncommon sets, specific foil rares, promos, avatars, booster packs and many others. If the bots are not looking for it and it has value, you can piece it out and sell it separate from the main collection on eBay. Keep the choice standard rares together; if they are paying X for your Wrath of God, they will price it as X within your collection as well, as long as you make sure to advertise it sufficiently to allow people to know its there. Which brings us to...

Advertising: Keywords and Category

Putting up a good auction is vital to securing the right bid, and doing otherwise can cost you perhaps even a couple of hundred dollars. Use the right keywords. Potential buyers search for words like 'MTGO', 'account', 'collection', 'rares' etc. Try your best to cram in all these words into the main listing header. Think about how you could conduct a search if you were looking to acquire cards, and spend some time on the title; it can mean a difference of a few bucks or even more.

Most importantly, and this one I have to stress: use the right category! The correct category to use is
Toys & Hobbies > Trading Card Games > Magic the Gathering > Magic Online.

The worst mistake you can make is to use another category and missing important keywords. I have personally seen auctions like these, and they have gotten bids alot lower than what they are really worth thanks to poor visibility alone.

Auction Format

On the surface it seems like a Best Offer is a great idea. You get more control over the final price of your collection and do not risk selling it for less than what its worth.

However, I believe that auctions are still the best way to go; auction listings continue to get a better price compared to Best Offers. There are many reasons behind this.

1) For auctions, buyers only have one chance to get the deal. This means that buyers will be putting forward their highest price, often within the last few seconds of the auction ending (bid sniping, a common practice on eBay). On the other hand, buyers will always hold back on a Best Offer and leave some room to negotiate. Trouble is that it is not easy for sellers to know if the buyer is offering the best price, or is holding back.

2) While you need at least two bidders to place a fair value bid to get what your collection is worth in an auction, the market on eBay is such that a vast majority of collections sold do get their fair market value due to competition from the bidders. Any auctions which do not can be attributed to negligent listing, omission of important details, too short a time period of the listings and a number of other reasons.

3) It is common knowledge that auctions attract more attention and interest, especially those with no reserve prices. Therefore, it is a good rule of thumb to follow; you may find that there will be more interested bidders as a result.

Price Research and Expectation

It is very easy to overvalue your collection. After all, you know exactly how much you spent on it, and use that as a benchmark to estimate how much you should recoup. However, this is not always accurate.

Firstly, the market price will often differ from the expectation of a percentage of what was spent to be the sale price. Different people build up their collections differently. As an example: if you were a player who obtained cards purely from opening packs, the real market value will perhaps only be 15% to 20% of what you spent. If you were someone who purchased cards solely from dealers, expect to lose either 50% or $2 for each card that you purchase, whichever is smaller, since dealers charge a fair spread for their cards. If you were a really good drafter who goes nearly infinite, the market value of your collection would perhaps be more than what you spent for it. Hence, it all depends.

Card prices fluctuate a lot! Especially if you are a competitive standard player; the cards that you purchased a couple of months back may have dropped perhaps by half or even more. That is expected; cards command high prices when high in demand, but once they are no longer required for competitive play (often because of set rotation), their prices dive. A good recent (as at the time of writing) example is Tarmogoyf; a card which cost 30+ tickets before Shards of Alara was released. Once ALA was out, Tarmogoyf dropped to a range of about 10+ as it was no longer Standard legal, a loss of over 2/3s of its value.

When selling your collection, consider market prices, especially if your collection contains many recent powerhouses. As their prices are more volatile, it may benefit you to cash in on them sooner rather than later to avoid making a substantial loss.

Another common misconception sellers have is tickets versus cash. One event ticket does not equate to one US dollar; in fact, the exchange rate varies somewhat between $0.78 to $0.86, depending on the individual. Therefore, adjust any values that you have in mind accordingly when converting from tickets to cash.

A good point to start valuing your collection is from the website of established dealers. Some dealer sites do have an extensive pricelist which you can use to estimate the value of your more valuable rares. However, and this is very important, these prices are "sell" prices, which means that you should not expect the same price as the dealers. The reason is very simple. These dealers set up websites and bots and spend a considerable amount of time in order to be able to charge those prices and make a profit. For the casual player, knock off 50% or $2 off the card price, whichever is smaller, to get a reasonably good estimate (for big ticket items worth >20 tickets, you may like to take off $3-$5 to account for the spread).

Conclusion

In closing, I would just like to say that the MTGO market on eBay is efficient enough. If you follow the above steps when listing your collection, you should be able to obtain a price that is slightly higher than what the dealers will offer you. So list away in peace!