This is the second in a series of blog posts discussing the trading card game Magic The Gathering (hereafter shortened to just “Magic”) and its connections to the world of sales.
I began playing Magic The Gathering during my senior year in high school and I enjoyed it so much that I haven’t put it down since. For the duration of my time here in college, I have been playing it competitively at Bell’s Comics and Cards and other card shops around the state, but for the past two years, I have also been been selling cards through my own small online business.
When I first began selling cards from my own personal collection, I really had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately though, a close friend of mine, who had previous card-selling experience , helped me get started, showing me how to price, list, and ship my cards through an online trading card marketplace known as TCG Player. TCG Player is sort of like eBay for trading cards, where individual sellers can create their own shops to sell cards from their collections, paying a percentage of the selling price to TCG Player for the privilege of selling there.
Despite the fees, I have found TCG Player to be a great way to make some money liquidating the cards I no longer need or want. Additionally, by selling the cards I pull from sealed packs that I will never use, I gain some extra cash to spend on cards that I do want. Allow me to explain why.
Magic The Gathering is a trading card game with a heavy focus on building specific decks of specific cards centered around one theme, not on owning every single card. So when I buy sealed booster packs and open them, more often than not, I don’t pull cards I actually need for the specific decks I am building. When that happens and the cards I pull have value, I list them on my shop on TCG Player, and then use the money when they sell to buy cards I still am missing for my specific decks.
It’s a win-win situation all around and it allows me to fund my hobby with my hobby, ensuring that I don’t overshoot my personal card budget.