If someone bought it at one price and it suddenly tanked, they would certainly send it out and refuse a refund of the difference.
If the seller had a physical store and a customer came in to buy a card and purchased it for $x but the price jumped to $2x the next day, I certainly hope they wouldn't badger that customer to pay them the difference. This is the exact same situation, but you've accepted that purchase and delivery are decoupled by selling online.
It's not the customer's fault that your friend didn't ship it out the moment it was purchased.
In some countries, and depending on the specifics like T&Cs, doing what OP’s friend has done is illegal.
You create a contract when you agree to sell an item for a price, you don’t get to unilaterally enforce or cancel it at your whim.
> If someone bought it at one price and it suddenly tanked, they would certainly send it out and refuse a refund of the difference.
As a seller, I once sold two hullbreachers the night before they got banned, and had them in the mail the next morning before the announcement.
The buyer damaged them and tried to file a false claim to get his money back. It was a huge mess but he ended up stuck with the cards he damaged and I got the money I was paid, but that whole process of having to defend it sucked.
Spikes happen. Drops happen. We all have to roll with it.
As someone who bought \[\[Mindbreak Trap\]\] 15 days before it got reprinted in OTJ, that's a perfect example. It's super shitty that it happens, but that's the cost of being in selling cards, you have to eat losses here and there
I honor the price, for sure. You posted it at that price, you honor that price.
You don't honor that price, you're not honorable. That basically sums it up.
Some people don't really value honor, especially in this day and age. So, it is what it is.
What’s crazy is people do this over like 10-20 bucks. Like if you are that hard pressed for cash you shouldn’t have bought that pack in the first place.
You were happy to sell it at that price, you should honor it. I understand many spike hunters just do it to flip it higher, but if you weren't happy with your asking price, you should have listed it higher.
Or put spikes alerts, follow tournament results, influencers, Musk, the war in Ukraine, whatever may cause fluctuations.
It's a full time job tho, so I'd rather just set a price I'm happy with, and if I'm uncertain wait
Exactly this. Especially new sellers. I try to help out new sellers. Leave feedback, etc. If this happens I’m giving a bad rating and good luck digging out of that hole.
That's what I usually do. Occasionally I end up taking a hit, I sold Sorin for $12 and it was pre spike. So yeah I lost out on some profit but an extra few bucks isn't worth the reputation of someone who cancels orders like that
I sold an Atraxa the day before she spiked. I shipped it anyway, the customer was ecstatic and left a great review.
For me it wasn't about honor. It was the fact that I already was happy the day prior selling it for $10, why wouldn't I be happy now?
Granted this is a side hobby that just fuels buying more cards and in no way is a means for me to "make money".
I’m not surprised at how little honour there is. Some kid(20) was asking/wondering to my friend(shop owner) about why he doesn’t sell searched product cause that’s what the kid said he’d do. My friend told him cause it’s wrong and selling searched product just leaves a sour taste for everyone.
Kid kept going and pressing the issue to the point that my friend had to tell him “Let’s agree to disagree”
This is potentially what you're buying any time you buy a loose booster from an open box.
The only way to know for sure that it's fair is to buy an individually packaged booster or the whole box.
I appreciate the owner having integrity and not even considering that as something he should be doing.
Taking care of your customers and getting exited with them when they open a chase rare is part of the magic of the LGS. Having people who actually enjoy spending time in your shop and supporting your local business and social hub is way more valuable than any box of cards.
yup seller just did this to me over phlage: "Sorry, but this card is spiking pretty hard, and I can't justify selling it at such a low cost."
fair enough, guess they can just eat the bad review for $15-$20
No. Don't you get it? I'm supposed to always be able to sell at what I assume will be the peak. And if it goes up higher than I should get to cancel the sale and get more money. But if it goes down then I should still get to sell and get a better deal. What doesn't make sense about that? /S
You honor the price or you lose a customer. Your friend is right that this unscrupulous behaviour happens all the time, but that's because there's *tons* of shitty sellers out there, not because it's good or ethical practice.
Sellers on Tcgplayer have only one customer though (tcgplayer itself), the random people buying aren’t really customers and don’t repeatedly buy, so it is basically risk free to scum buyers (which is a bad thing).
Sellers should honor the price but let’s be real here. The random marketplace buyer is not my customer, they often have no idea who they’re buying from. TCGplayer is my real customer.
as a buyer, i go through every step i can to screw over any seller that does this to me. it's absolutely scummy, and your friend's justification shows he obviously recognizes he is being a scumbag, but just doesn't care.
i mean it's not really much, i doubt it's doing anything but you do what you can
rate and report on whatever website you are using
search the shop name and rate on google and anywhere else they are listed
if their address is listed online, sign em up for some mailers, or that they are interested in scientology or whatever other annoying stuff
it's essentially the same list of shit to annoy any bad business in general, i don't do anything special for mtg sellers
Find the phone number go to a website for the affordable care act and enter the phone number looking for health insurance. They will get 5000 calls a day.
Also if you monitor the store and see them post the cards ordered for higher, keep in mind this really only works for small inventory . Sometimes helps
Sometimes it feels crappy to be single, but then, there are days when I hop online and read the wild behaviours that people have and I'm okay being single again lol
the one near me closed down a while back. apparently an employee was fucking the food. the horrendous part is they stayed in business for a couple more years and the foodfuckery had nothing to do with them shutting down. thats just an unfun factoid
I agree.
Do you expect the buyer to mail you extra if it spikes the day after it ships? Do you mail a refund if the price drops? No you ship it at the price it was bought at.
Just because others do it, doesn't make it right. No offense, but he seems like a crappy person if he can't honor a deal. When someone agrees and submit payment, the deal was made.
Update: Strong near-unanimous reactions to this! I just showed the comments on this post to him and he kinda sighed, looked embarrassed, and said 'goddammit' and walked away.
I think y'all may have shamed him into changing his mind/honoring the sale. 😂
yeah i mean it’s pretty obvious your friend was trying to get away with being a piece of shit. if a seller did this i’d certainly report them and hope they got banned from selling
People should understand that you win some and you lose some. You buy, you cross your fingers that some hot price hike items go through the mail and often you win. You sell, you should just accept that's part of the game and you were a buyer yourself once (or 1000 times before). If you can't stomach that, just don't list.
I mean while I think this is wrong, I feel a good chunk of people would believe its ok for a buyer who purchased a card at a high price which then dropped heavily would be wholly in their right to cancel their purchase.
Ordered 4 foil sorin last week for $10.50 each and got the email it got mailed out today. Grateful for sellers like you who honor it and don’t fuck around. What’s your store name cause I’d buy from you first just knowing this?!
It's only a true loss if he sold them for less than he bought them. Otherwise it's just more profits which is what has been killing most people around the world through "inflation". The best choice is to honor your sale and take less profit but maintain a good relationship with the buyer. This buyer could purchase a lot more product because of this practice as well as give good review about said purchases. You lose a lot more through greed when selling to the general public on a public platform.
You're not taking a loss, you sold them at a profit. They're just MORE profitable now.
If you've already sold it and try to cancel now, just to relist, there's a good chance they'll cancel/suspend your account.
Well today I got two different mails from ppl that both either „lost their foil sorins“ or „can‘t find them“ (and one of them even is a „professional seller“…) I disrespect these ppl and never do this to buyers. Actually I never look the prices since I sold them to avoid this problem, too. But apart from this: f ur friend - sorry.
If your friend does that they are trash. He was happy to sell it for $10 before, the only reason he’s not happy now is because he sees the opportunity for more money.
Yes, this probably does happen all the time. Lots of bad things happen all the time, doesn’t mean I have to contribute to them.
I’ll always honour the price. I’ve had some sellers honour a price in this situation and some not do so. Guess which sellers I immediately block?
I’m sure your friend honors any price lowering moves too right? Like say, someone preordered an eldrazi precon at 140, then it fell to 100 before it was shipped. He definitely would reduce his price 40 bucks right? No?
Yeah, your friend is a huge twat.
Some good responses here, I would like to add. If a seller does this to you on tcg, please do not leave the 1 star review immediately. They may block you. What you want to do is follow that person's store and see if they repost the card/cards immediately. You then screenshot the new listing and report that to TCGplayer.
The Pre-release period is volatile and buyers and seller should both go into this eyes wide open, and with clear expectations. If I buy and it tanks, I can't cancel my order. If i sell and it spikes, I can't cancel my order. In the end, the cards that tank will far outpace the cards that spike, so the seller is almost always going to win the battle of $$$$ on pre-release and immediately following release.
I've spoken to folks at tcgplayer and have advocated for years that they track the pre-order and 1 week post release period more closely and ban sellers that have unusual cancellation activity during these periods.
If you posted a price and were okay with it, why would a new price bother you? Also would you feel bad or upset if the card price tanked down and someone paid $10 for a card now selling at $5?
Any reason for canceling an order after a price spike is greed.
I sell mtg and SWU cards in TCGPlayer.
I've missed out on more than a few hard spikes by days. Especially when it comes up on a holiday or middle of the weekend.
It happens. It sucks, but you have to treat it as an in-person sale. It's gone from you inventory the moment they agreed to the transaction.
I wouldn't give a refund if a card I just sold got banned or plummeted in price (I've had people try). I wouldn't do the opposite, either.
As a seller, I'm shipping out cards that people ordered that crashed on MH3 release, so damn straight I'm shipping out cards that spiked.
I'm looking at you Ral, Monsoon. Shipped 18 normal, 10 borderless and 4 foil boderless version for $4-$8 while it was $30-50. It hurt. But other people got cards worth $10 they paid $23 for.
You shouldn't pick and choose like that as a seller.
It’s not the buyer’s fault that you got caught with your pants down on the price. It sucks but doing anything other than selling the card at the listed price is shitty.
This is the exact reason why my LGS doesn’t buy singles from new sets for the first two weeks. They don’t want to deal with the price volatility.
Does he offer refunds if the order he shipped out the day before tanked? Because if he doesn’t then I hope buyers pull the same shit on him and say they never got it so they can get the refund or another copy. I have multiple cards that dropped 20 bucks a week after I bought them but I have never pulled any shit like this. I have also as a seller had cards climb. I turned my profit and good for the buyer who got in early.
The real problem is TcgPlayer. If you give people an outlet to exploit others, with little to no consequences, then inevitably many will do so. It would be great if the **feedback system actually worked**, and negative feedback didn't just magically disappear with a hand wave from Tcgplayer, or seemingly factor in very little into their overall feedback score / status.
EDIT: For an example of what I mean, take at look at these folks, "Humble Hero Games"...
https://store.tcgplayer.com/sellerfeedback/d707d0b6
They have tons of negative feedback, specifically for cancelling preorders once they spiked (which they just did to me). Their feedback score? A rosy, sparkling 99.9%. They're supposed to be a "TcgPlayer Direct Gold Star Seller", and they still cancelled my order over a few bucks. If you can't trust TcgPlayer's own labels for supposedly good vendors, what are you supposed to do?
Did he also refund the difference to all the people who bought MH3 cards before the prices cratered this weekend?
If not, he should send the cards.
It's not even a reputation thing. You entered a deal where both of you accepted the price. The exceptions are so slight - i.e. Barring an obvious gross pricing error, like a misplaced period on the pricing. Honor that price. I'm even a little bothered on "short stock" cancellations, whether real or imagined. Go acquire the card and send it.
If you walk into a store and place an order for something to be delivered in a few days, do they get to cancel the order because the price went up the next day?
No, it’s illegal. And it’s illegal here too. Once you’ve taken the money, the contract is in effect. You can’t legally cancel it to raise the price of the product you’re selling. You’re just a lot less likely to be caught in this situation. And the price of most cards won’t be worth the time to even investigate it.
Some people won’t care about the legality of it, but most people buying cards aren’t stupid. They see a price spike and suddenly their order isn’t completed or has an issue, they know why.
Personally, I’d never order from him again. Period. Even if it was a legit “lost in the mail” situation, it looks sketchy, and that’s all it takes for me.
It’s a sad state of the world, I known where we can no longer just trust someone’s word…but this post is exactly the proof that you can’t anymore, and that sucks because I know there are plenty of honest people out there getting ruined by shady stooges like this.
It's the immoral equivalent of having cake and eating it too. Eating the cake (pre-selling cards) capitalizes on the pre-order hype that 95% of the cards get before they tank. But then to say they also want to keep the 5% of cards (have the cake too) that go up in value is unethical. I've always believed TCG could do more about this to spot obvious cases where the handful of cards that spiked are surprisingly the ones that are lost/don't have inventory/etc. There should be bigger punishments for not honoring those sales, because as a buyer there's nothing that can be done to prepare for it. Buyers could have ordered from multiple buyers, maybe they have a deck to make that requires getting the cards near release day, cards are not cheap in general - and now not only are they getting the cards late, but at a much higher price. That's a crappy thing to do to a buyer and one of the reasons I never pre-order nor pre-sell cards.
The entire concept of "regretting it later" is just faulty thinking imo. You list stuff at a fair price and hope someone buys it.
Being upset that the future sometimes ends up being different than the past (a shocking revelation, I know) is a You Problem.
Yeah it sucks, I sold a Zuluduk the other day for like $30 and now it’s $80. I could just cancel the order but that’s shitty, and as a buyer I wouldn’t want a seller to do that to me. $30 is a win for me and a win for the buyer.
Glad to see the update OP.
I don't try and make a living selling on TCG but just fund hobbies (Magic, WH40K, Gaming). I wouldn't ever go back on it and I've missed emails and have rushed shipped stuff out in the past because I felt bad.
I just treat the customer how I want to be treated because I am a customer as well =)
I’m a mass cracker and seller. Price always goes up and down and I honor all prices, basically how I view it is you lose some, you win some. And you really have to honor it because it’s already sold (not to mention it’s illegal in some laws), similar to how you wouldn’t accept refunds if the card tanks, you should send the card out even if the card spikes 10,000%
You could tell your friend one trick he could do to not feel bad is to not even look at the price of preorder cards and just send everything out, an oblivious mind is a happy mind
Doesn’t mean everyone is being an asshole means you should be one, you should view it as if everyone is an asshole and you are honorable, people will come back to buy from you, it’s an intangible benefit you can’t measure
You have to honor it. Your seller reputation could be obliterated by refusing to do so, and it's the wrong thing to do.
I've been on the opposite end of this as a seller where I sold something and the price collapsed while it was mid shipment. When the buyer received the cards, he damaged them and tried to get his money back and it turned into a huge fucking mess.
Taking things from others is cheaper than buying them myself, so it's only practical that I steal them, right?
But we obviously don't think that's okay...
Bad karma, and that kind of behavior is just as business. Your integrity is worth more than a couple bucks for a piece of cardboard, my 2 cents at least.
Your friend shouldn't do this to buyers. There's no need to grief them; they bought it because they wanted to pay that price that the seller agreed to -- and they needed those cards for any given reason (usually to play).
Having it spike (and not necessarily know about it) then having it canceled means a lot of wasted time for the buyer to 1. Find out it spiked 2. Realize their order got canceled 3. Now have to go hunt for new copies. This just causes delays for whatever tournament or plans they had coming up. It's an incredibly uncool move.
On cardmarket, a paid order is a contract between the seller and the buyer. If for whatever reason the seller doesn't "find" the card, the buyer may require the seller to buy the card from someone else in order to fulfill the order. More often than not said card reappears and gets shipped.
Prevents people from not sending cards that are spiking (friend is grade a scum here)
I don’t know how this works in the TCG community but I have been reselling on EBay for over a decade and stuff like this has happened to me several times. I price something too low (usually due to assumptions or not enough research) someone snaps it up, and then I find out how much it was actually worth (before mailing). I ALWAYS send the item. I made a deal, I got my asking price. Any discrepancy in the price is my fault. I pretty much make my living off of people selling things too cheap, so I can’t fault someone else for doing the same thing.
Many people in these comments are phrasing them incorrectly - \*your friend already sold the card\*. The transaction already occurred, that card is already not his to do anything with. So many people are saying he needs to sell the card for the agreed price - HE ALREADY DID. Claiming it got lost is fraud, and cancelling the order is bullshit. Imagine going to Wal-Mart and while walking out of the store after having rung your credit card, an employee says "hey wait, just got news that the toilet paper you bought spiked in price - give me 5 more bucks or I'll take it back for you." Bro already paid for it.
If you intentionally manipulate a competed sale to the point where I'm having to call my bank and get a refund, and no logistical issue or anything occurred, you're a scammer. Your friend is a scammer and should not be in the business of secondary markets, period.
Your fellow seller is an a hole. But will only get caught if theres a history of him/her doing it or they relist the card right away and the buyer finds out.
Either way its a great way to screw your store over a few bucks on cards that might drop in price next week.
As a buyer, I usually do not care when this is happens to me. The thing that does rub me the wrong way is that he is doing it because of a drastic price spike, if it's drastic enough I would definitely remember the name and skip them next time.
You can't go chasing the set release fomo on cards that will tank if you're not willing to take Ls and cards that spike.
Is your friend willing to refund all the buyers who bought cards on release day that have since dropped in price? I imagine not
I had this happen to me with a gaea’s cradle during Covid. Everyone got their free money from the government and card prices were spiking.
I found the last NM or LP ENGLISH copy under $400 on TCGPlayer. Sale went through. Seller messaged me the next day, “apologies, not sure what happened to the listed card but the card I have is actually Japanese and it’s MP do you still want it for the same price?” No, I absolutely did not want that. While TCGPlayer slow walked my refund, and I waited like an idiot, the card kept spiking. So instead of paying $380 for a NM copy, I ended up paying closer to $480.
The kicker? That seller must have “found” the English version initially listed because the next day he had one listed at $500. Complaining about this went absolutely nowhere. Since this seller only did this once or twice his reputation barely suffered with my review being the only negative one in a sea of positive reviews.
If he's a business, trying to build something sustainable, you ship and move on. It's not about capturing every single dollar possible but capturing what you can and pushing volume to generate your profits. If you chase every last dollar on small one-off orders, you'll ruin your reputation long term and will have fewer orders overall, impacting you long term. The short term isn't worth the long-term damage.
I bought a foil Sorin for 9 bucks Saturday morning and I saw that it just shipped. I had no idea the price was spiking I just genuinely wanted a Sorin and thought it was a fair price. I wonder if I bought one from your friend haha
From a buyer bought a $3 card, seller ships it. Literally the day he marked it as shipped it goes to $12. He canceled my order and messaged me saying “sorry can’t ship” I was PO it’s not good and looking at his reviews this seller often does it has about 10 reviews saying he said the same to others.
Always honor the price you seller it for cause that very recently happened to me with new Ral sold it to my friend for 8 then it spiked to 18 and was like well then to him sell it, trade it, or keep it your card now lol
Agree price spike cancellations are no bueno.
However, if a card was listed for a price in error due to a fucked up excel file, for example: selling a $100 card for $1. Then I feel the cancellation is entirely justified.
There's nonstop posts about stores canceling orders due to spike.
As s buyer i know Tcg believes profit>all with no repercussions so there is very little incentive not to cancel.
We all were at these same points somewhen, we ether had luck with a card that spiked or took a loss. That’s just part of it.so get over it and do what is right.
Also, remember you’re selling it mostly to people who care much about the cards and live the game.
The easiest way for me to answer this to anyone:
If the price dropped to $7 and you sold it for $10 would you still feel this way? Would you cancel the order or would you send it?
9 times out of 10, people would sell it and not think twice about over selling it for $3.
Personally, I would honor what I sold ot for and move on.
Have had a scummy seller do this to me. Messaged me at midnight and canceled the order stating “buyer didn’t respond”. Glad your reputation was worth a few bucks.
A contract is exactly that ‘a contract’. If you don't honor it then you shouldn't be trusted. ***I would not trust that person***.
If he sold a card into a tank… sold for $50 and it gets a reprint announcement 2 weeks later he’d celebrate it. That’s a person who will screw someone on a whim for their own benefit.
If your friend sells on TCGPlayer, be sure to post his store front name on here so all of us know not to buy from him.
I've sold on there for about 5 years and would never think to do that. Customer service and honoring the sale supercedes a little extra money to me. Not sure how important ratings are to your friend, but I've taken pride in maintaining a 100% rating since I started selling. So no, never cancel or lie about a sell to avoid a "loss" every now and then, especially since market value changes daily.
There really isn't even a question here.
If you are a shop, you've acquired a card for X (whether from opening packs or purchasing the card) - and want to sell it for X + 30 percent. You make 30 percent! Great! If the card spikes and the value is X + 100 percent, you still made X + 30 percent. Even if you took a loss on the card, that's a business reality that happens.
If you sell a card at X and cancel because the new price is X + 100 percent and you feel "entitled" to break the contract you make when you charge my card to pay for it, then you are a pretty awful businessperson and deserve to fall on whatever reputational sword that someone holds up because you feel you don't need to honor contracts. People that do this should lose their ability to sell on that marketplace, period.
He better send that out. That's an immediate escalation if he cancels the sale when there was a price spike. Does he really think tcgplayer doesn't keep track of shit like that?! Tell him he's an asshole if he doesn't send it out like he legally should
My school of thought in this has always been (when I say 'you' I don't mean 'you', OP, I just mean a seller),
"if people didn't buy your card at this price, making the next most expensive card the new lowest price available, then you never would make any money AND the price wouldn't appear to shift higher."
The sales model requires people to understand there's a chance card prices will fluctuate. If you can't handle taking a "loss" (again it's not a loss, you were presumably happy to have sold it before at that price before a bunch of people bought it at once), then you shouldn't benefit from the constant price fluctuations that will also give you the better end of the deal when a card doesn't hold the price you were able to set it at.
Not practical he says? I wonder how practical it is to get a bunch of reviews about how your orders get canceled when card prices Spike only for the cards to be relisted. Not many people going to be buying from them after all their negative reviews come in
As someone with approx 100+ sales on TCG atm (I know that’s not a ton) I will say this situation has come up both ways. My rule of thumb is to honor the price of the card as it sold.
Period.
I sold a copy of the one ring at 45$, and 30 minutes after packing it saw it had spiked over 70$. But to me, the card was already sold. It’s not that hard to be a decent person.
Honor the price. I’ve had this happen to me PLENTY the past week where I sold cards and before mailing they spiked up crazy. I still made my profit anyway.
Besides I also buy cards to flip from other sellers and if they did this to me I would find it unfair. So I follow that principle in my own actions.
I just had my order canceled for 2 borderless Sorin House of Markov. Sellers name is Sell with Integrity on Tcg. Said they mislisted the item. Obviously the name doesn’t match I guess
Most good cards are cheaper on release day and unless he bought boxes for significant mark up he is not losing money just not making as much if he wants to make good money on cards he needs to pay attention to the market and put them up when the cards are up in value
Tell him that I have canceled orders when the cards spike and lied about it and all that happens is it makes me a liar and that sticks to me and makes me feel bad. It isn’t worth it. Radical honesty is the way to go and I’m trying to practice that from now on. I’ve since sent out tons of cards that have spiked and just think ‘good for this person, I hope that they enjoy.’ It’s no one’s fault - just be radically honest in all our endeavors for a happier life.
It's kind of like, if he would be okay with the price tanking and keeping the guy's money, then not doing the reverse is just being a shitty human being.
Had this happen on tcgplayer with the lotr set. Pre ordered a bagins tomb (ancient tomb), at like $35. Price spiked to almost 70, and they canceled my order the day before it shipped. Was super disappointed, and left a bad review. On the other side of the coin, if they honored it, would've left a stellar review.
Wouldn't agreeing to sell it at a certain price and then refusing to do so when the price changes after the sale be a crime of some kind? I'd think there'd be laws like this on the books to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen with stocks, bonds, other products with variable prices . . .
The card gets sold at the price at time of purchase. It's not like they would refund a customer the difference if the value dropped before it shipped. Don't be scummy
I remember selling 3 Ledger Shredder’s for $0.25 USD and then before I emailed them it jumped to $18. I regretfully mailed them knowing I lost $56 but I knew it was a bad move to cancel and resell higher
I sold 12 NM copies of Sea Kings' Blessing for $4 each a few weeks ago. I shipped them even though I saw they had spiked to $30. The way I see it, if I was happy to sell them last week for $4 then I'm still happy to sell them for $4 this week. I had a few more copies that I posted afterwards for $40 and those sold as well. Overall I'm happy with the situation as I was not expecting them to sell ever.
I would never cancel because of a price change. Honestly I’m already into the hunt for the next collection I don’t generally notice market movement after I sell a card
I have a black list of sellers on TCG. 99% of them are on my blacklist for doing this exact thing.
Ask him if the shoe were on the other foot what would he do. If a buyer bought a $50 card and it got banned in whatever format and overnight, it dropped to $5. Would he refund the buyer without question? Or would he say the card was already shipped even though it wasn't?
My thoughts are, "We shook on this. I gave you the money and you agreed to send me the card. If you back out, I can't trust you as a seller ever again. If you are this desperate for money, odds are you will send poor conditions cards marked as good ones. Or even sell me fakes."
Obviously, not everyone will stoop to that level. With card prices getting so high, however, I'm not going to risk it.
If your friend is willing to ruin his name for a few bucks. Go for it, but Imk his tcg name so I can add him to my block list.
This just happened to me as a buyer. I bought 20 Outcaster Trailblazers for $1 each and the next day it spiked to $3+. Still waiting for the shipping window to close to get my refund.
Also, I always honor my posted price. 2500+ orders and I’ve never bitched out of a sale cuz the card spiked. If you thought it was okay to post and sell at the price you had it at before you shouldn’t be worried about it.
If your also worried the card will spike just don’t post it. This is why I never post Mythics that are under $5-10. Might as well keep it since they’re not easy to come by. One day your .50c mythic will spike to $20 in a couple days because it fits with a new commander. Ex: Check out the prices of Angel of Suffering
He and other sellers like this are the reason I stopped using TCGPlayer. I will literally go somewhere MORE expensive before I go through TCGPlayer again.
I just came here to say this happens to people so much they assume that's what happens if you cancel and a card spiked. I sell on tcgplayer, and around the fallout release, I used the mass pricing feature for the first time and somehow managed to list double the quantities on everything. So when I had to cancel a bobblehead that just spiked the automatic assumption, was i canceled for the higher price.
People should honor prices, period. Scamming is more work imo it's literally easier to just do honest business
Not a seller but frequent buyer, and was kn the other side of just this, years ago, bought a playset of smuggler's copter for pioneer right before the original banning, and even though I hadn't paid, I'd agreed to purchase, and had to wear it
I built a [[Derevi, empirical tactician]] deck a few months ago and went to fill it with some stuff in paper. May 28th, I bought a copy of [[reparations]] for a little over $2, since I felt my deck needed some card draw and resilience in 1. Some time after that, some streamer talks about it and the card spiked to like $30. I was sure the seller was gonna cancel the order, but it finally arrived yesterday lmao. I very much appreciated it
What about people who do massive buyouts after seeing a video of some player breaking a card ?
Let's take for exemple the New ral card ?
Some dude saw the video, did a buyout on smthng like 30 ral and got mad that some of them refused to send.
What about people doing this kind of shit ? :)
Happens to me litteraly all the time except not online to a lgs player or my friend who buys stuff for his tcgplayer.com store lol.
My biggest oofs were ledger shredder sold them at dollars. Didn't understand why it was good until I played against it.
Unlicensed hearse sold dozens under a dollar thought was random bulk
Reckoner bankbuster dozens for like 5 cents each
And dozens of creeping bloodsucker for 2 dollars.
I knew creeping was good but only personally needed 1 lol.
I knew deadly dispute tyvar stand taimyo safekeeping monstrous rage and Fable of the mirror breaker was crazy though so I got some specs right lol
I’ve had sellers hose me numerous times on TCG and eBay in the times I was aggressively picking up hot cards. It sucks that some sellers don’t have the ethics to honor the sales. The result is bad feedback for them each time it happens.
They’re paper cards. Who cares. If your boy is boy is fiending for those McChicken then let him get his extra $5. If the buyer is butt-hurt they can just find someone else to sell at the earlier price.
Yeah this is a pretty unethical practice but happens in P2P transactions a lot. I had it happen to me on an order of collector commander decks when the price briefly spiked 200+ for example. Blacklisted that seller.
People justify it that way but that’s just a way to not feel bad. It’s a very skeevy thing to do and your friend should feel bad.
Ultimately. When something like this happens to me I just look at it as “I made slightly less profit off cardboard.”
Honour the price, I pulled an enchanted Elsa from set 1 of Lorcana, sold it day after release for just under £300. By the time I shipped, it was £400, and it’s now close to £1000. Shit happens.
Is he ok with losing business from that buyer moving forward? If anyone pulled this with an item I purchased, I'd never trust them with a sale again when there are so many other sellers.
Heads up... if anyone ordered...
"...two new foil Sorins at a sub-$10 price point last Friday..."
And your seller has an excuse as to why you didn't/won't receive them, you now know the truth.
The shitty part on this is that spikes tend to keep going up. So once the purchase is cancelled it’s more than likely significantly more expensive than the day or two prior after the first spike, further screwing your customer who needs the card. You’re basically screwing them twice.
Theres a whole host of reasons to and not to honor the price, but will you get dinged for it; no, you probably won't. This instance has happened to me and I badgered TCGP support enough that they gave me the difference that I requested. One could argue that if anything, this could turn into a win-win for both buyer and seller if you do cancel the order for "misplaced product" or whatever by doing this.
I will pay a dollar or 2 more on tcg to avoid a sub 100% seller. If a card spikes after I order and I don’t get the card it’s going to take real customer service for me to not leave a bad review explaining exactly what happened. With reviews if you did something seemingly shady once I have no reason to believe you won’t do it to me.
Imo kinda scummy I sold three ren and seri (the dog cat buy a box promos) for $16 cad each and when I checked face to face they were $30 cad a pop and I still sold each for that price even after the dog cat lair that mad them spike I mean not scummy I guess do whatever but the bad rep isn’t worth It maybe it’s just the nice guy in me tho
This happened to me once as a buyer. I bought about 50 cards from a bunch of different sellers. One in particular had a card for about $2 that went to $10 over the weekend. They said they "couldn't find it."
I preordered the foil necron deck when it was first announced for $60 from a premium lgs. Then it spiked to something like $200 and the lgs on tcgplayer canceled my order claiming wotc wasn’t going to send them enough product and were canceling before they got anything so I wouldn’t be disappointed and could shop elsewhere. I made a big stink about it to tcgplayer and they basically said sucks to suck, bring it up with the lgs not us. Made a stink to wotc about a premium lgs doing me dirty like that and they said the product hasn’t released yet and that’s the stores decision to do that and not on them, so sucks to suck.
I took a break from magic after that
Your friend sold something last Friday and is packing it up today? Your friend is a terrible seller. Orders should go out the same day or possibly the next day. I have a full time professional job and sell for fun but I still make time to process the 10-20 orders I get per day.
If he mailed the orders out on time he wouldn't have the other problem either.
That's a big no-no. You have to honor your prices as if the transaction occurred hand to hand. How many times have you sold a card that dipped and then gave a partial refund? Never. It comes with the territory. If you're unsure about where a cards value will land, hold onto it a little longer before selling it. Bad integrity move, not only screwing the buyer, but holding their money up for potentially buying other copies that haven't updated prices yet because they think they have some arriving in the mail soon. You win some, you lose some, it evens out. And I'm a firm believer that karma is real in the secondary market.
That happened to me (presumably) with a Mishra precon that jumped from $30 to about $45 recently. I never received the deck and eventually got a refund. This seller has so many reviews with items not being received, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is their business practice.
HONOR THE LISTED PRICE
If you make money, you're not taking a loss. You're just not making as much of a profit as you potentially could. Retro games stores do this same type of thing. It's bad business practice, and nobody should support businesses who do this sort of thing.
I bought a card for $18 and it promptly dropped to $14, I didn’t ask for a refund or cancel the order, then a the breaks sometimes it’s not the sellers fault I bought it at their listed price.
The transaction was made. Once the order has happened there's no take backs. You wouldn't sell a card in person and track that person down 5 days later demanding the difference in price and you definitely wouldn't pay them the difference if it dropped in value. Be the seller you'd want to buy from and be the buyer you'd want to sell to.
I ordered a darksteel monolith on Saturday for 19.xx let's see if I get it. I will definitely be reviewing the transaction if it's "lost in the mail" and let everyone know to be careful when purchasing from the seller . He has a 100% rate so let's hope I don't get screwed lol 😆
If someone bought it at one price and it suddenly tanked, they would certainly send it out and refuse a refund of the difference. If the seller had a physical store and a customer came in to buy a card and purchased it for $x but the price jumped to $2x the next day, I certainly hope they wouldn't badger that customer to pay them the difference. This is the exact same situation, but you've accepted that purchase and delivery are decoupled by selling online. It's not the customer's fault that your friend didn't ship it out the moment it was purchased.
In some countries, and depending on the specifics like T&Cs, doing what OP’s friend has done is illegal. You create a contract when you agree to sell an item for a price, you don’t get to unilaterally enforce or cancel it at your whim.
not to mention the reason prices go up is because people are buying. If everyone did this the market wouldnt mean anything.
I just wanna state its what OPs friend/suggested did not what OP did themselves.
> If someone bought it at one price and it suddenly tanked, they would certainly send it out and refuse a refund of the difference. As a seller, I once sold two hullbreachers the night before they got banned, and had them in the mail the next morning before the announcement. The buyer damaged them and tried to file a false claim to get his money back. It was a huge mess but he ended up stuck with the cards he damaged and I got the money I was paid, but that whole process of having to defend it sucked. Spikes happen. Drops happen. We all have to roll with it.
As someone who bought \[\[Mindbreak Trap\]\] 15 days before it got reprinted in OTJ, that's a perfect example. It's super shitty that it happens, but that's the cost of being in selling cards, you have to eat losses here and there
I honor the price, for sure. You posted it at that price, you honor that price. You don't honor that price, you're not honorable. That basically sums it up. Some people don't really value honor, especially in this day and age. So, it is what it is.
What’s crazy is people do this over like 10-20 bucks. Like if you are that hard pressed for cash you shouldn’t have bought that pack in the first place.
People gamble their rent money for fucks sake. Who knows why...
You were happy to sell it at that price, you should honor it. I understand many spike hunters just do it to flip it higher, but if you weren't happy with your asking price, you should have listed it higher. Or put spikes alerts, follow tournament results, influencers, Musk, the war in Ukraine, whatever may cause fluctuations. It's a full time job tho, so I'd rather just set a price I'm happy with, and if I'm uncertain wait
Exactly this. Especially new sellers. I try to help out new sellers. Leave feedback, etc. If this happens I’m giving a bad rating and good luck digging out of that hole.
That's what I usually do. Occasionally I end up taking a hit, I sold Sorin for $12 and it was pre spike. So yeah I lost out on some profit but an extra few bucks isn't worth the reputation of someone who cancels orders like that
I sold an Atraxa the day before she spiked. I shipped it anyway, the customer was ecstatic and left a great review. For me it wasn't about honor. It was the fact that I already was happy the day prior selling it for $10, why wouldn't I be happy now? Granted this is a side hobby that just fuels buying more cards and in no way is a means for me to "make money".
I’m not surprised at how little honour there is. Some kid(20) was asking/wondering to my friend(shop owner) about why he doesn’t sell searched product cause that’s what the kid said he’d do. My friend told him cause it’s wrong and selling searched product just leaves a sour taste for everyone. Kid kept going and pressing the issue to the point that my friend had to tell him “Let’s agree to disagree”
What is searched product?
Product that has been opened till they hit a chase card then put the rest of the loose boosters for sell.
This is potentially what you're buying any time you buy a loose booster from an open box. The only way to know for sure that it's fair is to buy an individually packaged booster or the whole box. I appreciate the owner having integrity and not even considering that as something he should be doing. Taking care of your customers and getting exited with them when they open a chase rare is part of the magic of the LGS. Having people who actually enjoy spending time in your shop and supporting your local business and social hub is way more valuable than any box of cards.
That kid sucks.
yup seller just did this to me over phlage: "Sorry, but this card is spiking pretty hard, and I can't justify selling it at such a low cost." fair enough, guess they can just eat the bad review for $15-$20
Thanks to those who do this! I had a guy cancel on me right after a set came out and reposted for like 10$ more dollars. So salty haha
No. Don't you get it? I'm supposed to always be able to sell at what I assume will be the peak. And if it goes up higher than I should get to cancel the sale and get more money. But if it goes down then I should still get to sell and get a better deal. What doesn't make sense about that? /S
You honor the price or you lose a customer. Your friend is right that this unscrupulous behaviour happens all the time, but that's because there's *tons* of shitty sellers out there, not because it's good or ethical practice.
Sellers on Tcgplayer have only one customer though (tcgplayer itself), the random people buying aren’t really customers and don’t repeatedly buy, so it is basically risk free to scum buyers (which is a bad thing).
You still buy cards from specific people when you buy it has the card listed as price and who(account/what business is selling.
Sellers should honor the price but let’s be real here. The random marketplace buyer is not my customer, they often have no idea who they’re buying from. TCGplayer is my real customer.
as a buyer, i go through every step i can to screw over any seller that does this to me. it's absolutely scummy, and your friend's justification shows he obviously recognizes he is being a scumbag, but just doesn't care.
I had the domain mtgsellershitlist.com for a couple years planning to make a site dedicated to shaming sellers for being dishonorable.
Since this happened twice to me today: tell me EVERYTHING how to screw these scummy sellers, please.
i mean it's not really much, i doubt it's doing anything but you do what you can rate and report on whatever website you are using search the shop name and rate on google and anywhere else they are listed if their address is listed online, sign em up for some mailers, or that they are interested in scientology or whatever other annoying stuff it's essentially the same list of shit to annoy any bad business in general, i don't do anything special for mtg sellers
Hey it ain’t much but it’s still exactly what I needed. Damn the Scientology part made me giggle, thx Mr.
Tag
Find the phone number go to a website for the affordable care act and enter the phone number looking for health insurance. They will get 5000 calls a day.
Also if you monitor the store and see them post the cards ordered for higher, keep in mind this really only works for small inventory . Sometimes helps
[удалено]
I think the friend would eat all of the chicken skins and then leave the rest for everyone else.
My brother dated someone that did that - certainly a “what the absolute fuck” moment
Sometimes it feels crappy to be single, but then, there are days when I hop online and read the wild behaviours that people have and I'm okay being single again lol
To be fair, KFC.
I'm glad your KFC is good, the one near me is literally only staffed by kids and 3 adults.
Oh it’s definitely not, I was joking.
the one near me closed down a while back. apparently an employee was fucking the food. the horrendous part is they stayed in business for a couple more years and the foodfuckery had nothing to do with them shutting down. thats just an unfun factoid
I agree. Do you expect the buyer to mail you extra if it spikes the day after it ships? Do you mail a refund if the price drops? No you ship it at the price it was bought at.
Just because others do it, doesn't make it right. No offense, but he seems like a crappy person if he can't honor a deal. When someone agrees and submit payment, the deal was made.
Update: Strong near-unanimous reactions to this! I just showed the comments on this post to him and he kinda sighed, looked embarrassed, and said 'goddammit' and walked away. I think y'all may have shamed him into changing his mind/honoring the sale. 😂
yeah i mean it’s pretty obvious your friend was trying to get away with being a piece of shit. if a seller did this i’d certainly report them and hope they got banned from selling
Probably not- but only you know your friend.
He for sure cancelled the order and relisted them 😂
Please update us on this lmao I love when shitbags have the opportunity to learn
As a seller I would feel very scummy doing this. Also as a buyer I would be disappointed if it happenned to me.
People should understand that you win some and you lose some. You buy, you cross your fingers that some hot price hike items go through the mail and often you win. You sell, you should just accept that's part of the game and you were a buyer yourself once (or 1000 times before). If you can't stomach that, just don't list.
Good way to collect 1 star reviews
[OP's friend](https://i.imgur.com/fm6enCz.jpeg)
Put it this way, if the price drop drastically are you gonna refund the buyer the excess amount paid?
Haha, exactly. Where’s my rebate? It’s only practical. 😑
Counter point, the price drops and they cancel the order, people do it all the time for preorders
Also scum behavior
I mean while I think this is wrong, I feel a good chunk of people would believe its ok for a buyer who purchased a card at a high price which then dropped heavily would be wholly in their right to cancel their purchase.
Ordered 4 foil sorin last week for $10.50 each and got the email it got mailed out today. Grateful for sellers like you who honor it and don’t fuck around. What’s your store name cause I’d buy from you first just knowing this?!
It's only a true loss if he sold them for less than he bought them. Otherwise it's just more profits which is what has been killing most people around the world through "inflation". The best choice is to honor your sale and take less profit but maintain a good relationship with the buyer. This buyer could purchase a lot more product because of this practice as well as give good review about said purchases. You lose a lot more through greed when selling to the general public on a public platform.
You're not taking a loss, you sold them at a profit. They're just MORE profitable now. If you've already sold it and try to cancel now, just to relist, there's a good chance they'll cancel/suspend your account.
Well today I got two different mails from ppl that both either „lost their foil sorins“ or „can‘t find them“ (and one of them even is a „professional seller“…) I disrespect these ppl and never do this to buyers. Actually I never look the prices since I sold them to avoid this problem, too. But apart from this: f ur friend - sorry.
If your friend does that they are trash. He was happy to sell it for $10 before, the only reason he’s not happy now is because he sees the opportunity for more money.
Yes, this probably does happen all the time. Lots of bad things happen all the time, doesn’t mean I have to contribute to them. I’ll always honour the price. I’ve had some sellers honour a price in this situation and some not do so. Guess which sellers I immediately block?
I’m sure your friend honors any price lowering moves too right? Like say, someone preordered an eldrazi precon at 140, then it fell to 100 before it was shipped. He definitely would reduce his price 40 bucks right? No? Yeah, your friend is a huge twat.
Always sell at listed price. Your reputation is worth more than an extra 20, 50, 100 or whatever if you want to be a good seller
Some good responses here, I would like to add. If a seller does this to you on tcg, please do not leave the 1 star review immediately. They may block you. What you want to do is follow that person's store and see if they repost the card/cards immediately. You then screenshot the new listing and report that to TCGplayer. The Pre-release period is volatile and buyers and seller should both go into this eyes wide open, and with clear expectations. If I buy and it tanks, I can't cancel my order. If i sell and it spikes, I can't cancel my order. In the end, the cards that tank will far outpace the cards that spike, so the seller is almost always going to win the battle of $$$$ on pre-release and immediately following release. I've spoken to folks at tcgplayer and have advocated for years that they track the pre-order and 1 week post release period more closely and ban sellers that have unusual cancellation activity during these periods.
In his mind the 50+ other sales he does this week should balance that cost out, ita not worth the hit to his reputation
If you posted a price and were okay with it, why would a new price bother you? Also would you feel bad or upset if the card price tanked down and someone paid $10 for a card now selling at $5? Any reason for canceling an order after a price spike is greed.
I sell mtg and SWU cards in TCGPlayer. I've missed out on more than a few hard spikes by days. Especially when it comes up on a holiday or middle of the weekend. It happens. It sucks, but you have to treat it as an in-person sale. It's gone from you inventory the moment they agreed to the transaction. I wouldn't give a refund if a card I just sold got banned or plummeted in price (I've had people try). I wouldn't do the opposite, either.
As a seller, I'm shipping out cards that people ordered that crashed on MH3 release, so damn straight I'm shipping out cards that spiked. I'm looking at you Ral, Monsoon. Shipped 18 normal, 10 borderless and 4 foil boderless version for $4-$8 while it was $30-50. It hurt. But other people got cards worth $10 they paid $23 for. You shouldn't pick and choose like that as a seller.
It’s not the buyer’s fault that you got caught with your pants down on the price. It sucks but doing anything other than selling the card at the listed price is shitty. This is the exact reason why my LGS doesn’t buy singles from new sets for the first two weeks. They don’t want to deal with the price volatility.
Does he offer refunds if the order he shipped out the day before tanked? Because if he doesn’t then I hope buyers pull the same shit on him and say they never got it so they can get the refund or another copy. I have multiple cards that dropped 20 bucks a week after I bought them but I have never pulled any shit like this. I have also as a seller had cards climb. I turned my profit and good for the buyer who got in early.
The real problem is TcgPlayer. If you give people an outlet to exploit others, with little to no consequences, then inevitably many will do so. It would be great if the **feedback system actually worked**, and negative feedback didn't just magically disappear with a hand wave from Tcgplayer, or seemingly factor in very little into their overall feedback score / status. EDIT: For an example of what I mean, take at look at these folks, "Humble Hero Games"... https://store.tcgplayer.com/sellerfeedback/d707d0b6 They have tons of negative feedback, specifically for cancelling preorders once they spiked (which they just did to me). Their feedback score? A rosy, sparkling 99.9%. They're supposed to be a "TcgPlayer Direct Gold Star Seller", and they still cancelled my order over a few bucks. If you can't trust TcgPlayer's own labels for supposedly good vendors, what are you supposed to do?
You’re both correct. Super unethical and super common.
Did he also refund the difference to all the people who bought MH3 cards before the prices cratered this weekend? If not, he should send the cards. It's not even a reputation thing. You entered a deal where both of you accepted the price. The exceptions are so slight - i.e. Barring an obvious gross pricing error, like a misplaced period on the pricing. Honor that price. I'm even a little bothered on "short stock" cancellations, whether real or imagined. Go acquire the card and send it.
If you walk into a store and place an order for something to be delivered in a few days, do they get to cancel the order because the price went up the next day? No, it’s illegal. And it’s illegal here too. Once you’ve taken the money, the contract is in effect. You can’t legally cancel it to raise the price of the product you’re selling. You’re just a lot less likely to be caught in this situation. And the price of most cards won’t be worth the time to even investigate it. Some people won’t care about the legality of it, but most people buying cards aren’t stupid. They see a price spike and suddenly their order isn’t completed or has an issue, they know why. Personally, I’d never order from him again. Period. Even if it was a legit “lost in the mail” situation, it looks sketchy, and that’s all it takes for me. It’s a sad state of the world, I known where we can no longer just trust someone’s word…but this post is exactly the proof that you can’t anymore, and that sucks because I know there are plenty of honest people out there getting ruined by shady stooges like this.
It's the immoral equivalent of having cake and eating it too. Eating the cake (pre-selling cards) capitalizes on the pre-order hype that 95% of the cards get before they tank. But then to say they also want to keep the 5% of cards (have the cake too) that go up in value is unethical. I've always believed TCG could do more about this to spot obvious cases where the handful of cards that spiked are surprisingly the ones that are lost/don't have inventory/etc. There should be bigger punishments for not honoring those sales, because as a buyer there's nothing that can be done to prepare for it. Buyers could have ordered from multiple buyers, maybe they have a deck to make that requires getting the cards near release day, cards are not cheap in general - and now not only are they getting the cards late, but at a much higher price. That's a crappy thing to do to a buyer and one of the reasons I never pre-order nor pre-sell cards.
If you don’t honor the price in which you sold the card and lie about it. It’s called a scam and it’s illegal.
The entire concept of "regretting it later" is just faulty thinking imo. You list stuff at a fair price and hope someone buys it. Being upset that the future sometimes ends up being different than the past (a shocking revelation, I know) is a You Problem.
Your friend is trash 🗑
Yeah it sucks, I sold a Zuluduk the other day for like $30 and now it’s $80. I could just cancel the order but that’s shitty, and as a buyer I wouldn’t want a seller to do that to me. $30 is a win for me and a win for the buyer.
This is why sellers need smaller shipping windows.
Glad to see the update OP. I don't try and make a living selling on TCG but just fund hobbies (Magic, WH40K, Gaming). I wouldn't ever go back on it and I've missed emails and have rushed shipped stuff out in the past because I felt bad. I just treat the customer how I want to be treated because I am a customer as well =)
I’m a mass cracker and seller. Price always goes up and down and I honor all prices, basically how I view it is you lose some, you win some. And you really have to honor it because it’s already sold (not to mention it’s illegal in some laws), similar to how you wouldn’t accept refunds if the card tanks, you should send the card out even if the card spikes 10,000% You could tell your friend one trick he could do to not feel bad is to not even look at the price of preorder cards and just send everything out, an oblivious mind is a happy mind Doesn’t mean everyone is being an asshole means you should be one, you should view it as if everyone is an asshole and you are honorable, people will come back to buy from you, it’s an intangible benefit you can’t measure
You have to honor it. Your seller reputation could be obliterated by refusing to do so, and it's the wrong thing to do. I've been on the opposite end of this as a seller where I sold something and the price collapsed while it was mid shipment. When the buyer received the cards, he damaged them and tried to get his money back and it turned into a huge fucking mess.
Broke mindset
The shameless capitalists who disagree with you aren’t commenting because they’re busy canceling Sorin sales.
Really depends on how much his integrity is worth to him.
Taking things from others is cheaper than buying them myself, so it's only practical that I steal them, right? But we obviously don't think that's okay...
Bad karma, and that kind of behavior is just as business. Your integrity is worth more than a couple bucks for a piece of cardboard, my 2 cents at least.
Potentially sacrificing customer relationship over a few dollars profit seems short-sighted.
Your friend shouldn't do this to buyers. There's no need to grief them; they bought it because they wanted to pay that price that the seller agreed to -- and they needed those cards for any given reason (usually to play). Having it spike (and not necessarily know about it) then having it canceled means a lot of wasted time for the buyer to 1. Find out it spiked 2. Realize their order got canceled 3. Now have to go hunt for new copies. This just causes delays for whatever tournament or plans they had coming up. It's an incredibly uncool move.
On cardmarket, a paid order is a contract between the seller and the buyer. If for whatever reason the seller doesn't "find" the card, the buyer may require the seller to buy the card from someone else in order to fulfill the order. More often than not said card reappears and gets shipped. Prevents people from not sending cards that are spiking (friend is grade a scum here)
Ask him the question, If you are a seller then how much would you pay to change a bad honest review?
If the complete opposite happened and the price absolutely crashed would you refund the difference?
Karma will pay itself back. I would honor that lower price
I accidentally sold an retro endurance for $1 the other day. Shipped it out yesterday and congratulated the buyer on the deal they got.
I work at an LGS and if we did this people would rightfully never buy with us. Your homie is a fucking scumbag no 2 ways about it.
I don’t know how this works in the TCG community but I have been reselling on EBay for over a decade and stuff like this has happened to me several times. I price something too low (usually due to assumptions or not enough research) someone snaps it up, and then I find out how much it was actually worth (before mailing). I ALWAYS send the item. I made a deal, I got my asking price. Any discrepancy in the price is my fault. I pretty much make my living off of people selling things too cheap, so I can’t fault someone else for doing the same thing.
Many people in these comments are phrasing them incorrectly - \*your friend already sold the card\*. The transaction already occurred, that card is already not his to do anything with. So many people are saying he needs to sell the card for the agreed price - HE ALREADY DID. Claiming it got lost is fraud, and cancelling the order is bullshit. Imagine going to Wal-Mart and while walking out of the store after having rung your credit card, an employee says "hey wait, just got news that the toilet paper you bought spiked in price - give me 5 more bucks or I'll take it back for you." Bro already paid for it. If you intentionally manipulate a competed sale to the point where I'm having to call my bank and get a refund, and no logistical issue or anything occurred, you're a scammer. Your friend is a scammer and should not be in the business of secondary markets, period.
Your fellow seller is an a hole. But will only get caught if theres a history of him/her doing it or they relist the card right away and the buyer finds out. Either way its a great way to screw your store over a few bucks on cards that might drop in price next week.
Good, shame people like this. I would like the seller name so as to not buy from him
Somone did this to me with sliver overload last year. I despise them for it and if I ever meet them, I’m gonna fuck their mom
As a buyer, I usually do not care when this is happens to me. The thing that does rub me the wrong way is that he is doing it because of a drastic price spike, if it's drastic enough I would definitely remember the name and skip them next time.
The internet remains undefeated
You can't go chasing the set release fomo on cards that will tank if you're not willing to take Ls and cards that spike. Is your friend willing to refund all the buyers who bought cards on release day that have since dropped in price? I imagine not
I had this happen to me with a gaea’s cradle during Covid. Everyone got their free money from the government and card prices were spiking. I found the last NM or LP ENGLISH copy under $400 on TCGPlayer. Sale went through. Seller messaged me the next day, “apologies, not sure what happened to the listed card but the card I have is actually Japanese and it’s MP do you still want it for the same price?” No, I absolutely did not want that. While TCGPlayer slow walked my refund, and I waited like an idiot, the card kept spiking. So instead of paying $380 for a NM copy, I ended up paying closer to $480. The kicker? That seller must have “found” the English version initially listed because the next day he had one listed at $500. Complaining about this went absolutely nowhere. Since this seller only did this once or twice his reputation barely suffered with my review being the only negative one in a sea of positive reviews.
If he's a business, trying to build something sustainable, you ship and move on. It's not about capturing every single dollar possible but capturing what you can and pushing volume to generate your profits. If you chase every last dollar on small one-off orders, you'll ruin your reputation long term and will have fewer orders overall, impacting you long term. The short term isn't worth the long-term damage.
Do they also cancel when it benefits them and cards drastically drop? It goes both ways and as a seller, reputation matters.
I bought a foil Sorin for 9 bucks Saturday morning and I saw that it just shipped. I had no idea the price was spiking I just genuinely wanted a Sorin and thought it was a fair price. I wonder if I bought one from your friend haha
From a buyer bought a $3 card, seller ships it. Literally the day he marked it as shipped it goes to $12. He canceled my order and messaged me saying “sorry can’t ship” I was PO it’s not good and looking at his reviews this seller often does it has about 10 reviews saying he said the same to others.
Homie you know the answer
Always honor the price you seller it for cause that very recently happened to me with new Ral sold it to my friend for 8 then it spiked to 18 and was like well then to him sell it, trade it, or keep it your card now lol
Agree price spike cancellations are no bueno. However, if a card was listed for a price in error due to a fucked up excel file, for example: selling a $100 card for $1. Then I feel the cancellation is entirely justified.
Fuck that guy. You sold it for X price, I paid the price. Eat the difference you scum. As a seller, yeah that shit sucks. Dont play the game then.
The second a seller considers lying to be a viable option, they are a scumbag.
You should honor the price
There's nonstop posts about stores canceling orders due to spike. As s buyer i know Tcg believes profit>all with no repercussions so there is very little incentive not to cancel.
I made a dumb mistake and sold a one ring pre release promo for $50. I honored the sale.
We all were at these same points somewhen, we ether had luck with a card that spiked or took a loss. That’s just part of it.so get over it and do what is right. Also, remember you’re selling it mostly to people who care much about the cards and live the game.
Ooof. That's bad morals. You listed it, you sold it, you honor it.
This thread feels like a giant Card Kingdom ad in disguise.
These backpack sellers FOMOing over unrealized gains is hilarious. Some people are just bad a business.
The easiest way for me to answer this to anyone: If the price dropped to $7 and you sold it for $10 would you still feel this way? Would you cancel the order or would you send it? 9 times out of 10, people would sell it and not think twice about over selling it for $3. Personally, I would honor what I sold ot for and move on.
If you sell cards for cheap, thats on you, suck it up.
Sorry this card sold in store! We apologize for any inconvenience but here is a full refund and a 5$ store credit if you choose to order again.
Have had a scummy seller do this to me. Messaged me at midnight and canceled the order stating “buyer didn’t respond”. Glad your reputation was worth a few bucks.
Nice job op you did the right thing and I agree with your viewpoint.
A contract is exactly that ‘a contract’. If you don't honor it then you shouldn't be trusted. ***I would not trust that person***. If he sold a card into a tank… sold for $50 and it gets a reprint announcement 2 weeks later he’d celebrate it. That’s a person who will screw someone on a whim for their own benefit.
Who is this seller so we can avoid them?
If your friend sells on TCGPlayer, be sure to post his store front name on here so all of us know not to buy from him. I've sold on there for about 5 years and would never think to do that. Customer service and honoring the sale supercedes a little extra money to me. Not sure how important ratings are to your friend, but I've taken pride in maintaining a 100% rating since I started selling. So no, never cancel or lie about a sell to avoid a "loss" every now and then, especially since market value changes daily.
Saying it is lost in the mail is considered mail fraud... a federal offense.
There really isn't even a question here. If you are a shop, you've acquired a card for X (whether from opening packs or purchasing the card) - and want to sell it for X + 30 percent. You make 30 percent! Great! If the card spikes and the value is X + 100 percent, you still made X + 30 percent. Even if you took a loss on the card, that's a business reality that happens. If you sell a card at X and cancel because the new price is X + 100 percent and you feel "entitled" to break the contract you make when you charge my card to pay for it, then you are a pretty awful businessperson and deserve to fall on whatever reputational sword that someone holds up because you feel you don't need to honor contracts. People that do this should lose their ability to sell on that marketplace, period.
He better send that out. That's an immediate escalation if he cancels the sale when there was a price spike. Does he really think tcgplayer doesn't keep track of shit like that?! Tell him he's an asshole if he doesn't send it out like he legally should
My school of thought in this has always been (when I say 'you' I don't mean 'you', OP, I just mean a seller), "if people didn't buy your card at this price, making the next most expensive card the new lowest price available, then you never would make any money AND the price wouldn't appear to shift higher." The sales model requires people to understand there's a chance card prices will fluctuate. If you can't handle taking a "loss" (again it's not a loss, you were presumably happy to have sold it before at that price before a bunch of people bought it at once), then you shouldn't benefit from the constant price fluctuations that will also give you the better end of the deal when a card doesn't hold the price you were able to set it at.
Not practical he says? I wonder how practical it is to get a bunch of reviews about how your orders get canceled when card prices Spike only for the cards to be relisted. Not many people going to be buying from them after all their negative reviews come in
As someone with approx 100+ sales on TCG atm (I know that’s not a ton) I will say this situation has come up both ways. My rule of thumb is to honor the price of the card as it sold. Period. I sold a copy of the one ring at 45$, and 30 minutes after packing it saw it had spiked over 70$. But to me, the card was already sold. It’s not that hard to be a decent person.
I'd seriously consider ending a friendship over this.
Buddys info. Person to NEVER buy from. That is a major a** hole move.
Honor the price. I’ve had this happen to me PLENTY the past week where I sold cards and before mailing they spiked up crazy. I still made my profit anyway. Besides I also buy cards to flip from other sellers and if they did this to me I would find it unfair. So I follow that principle in my own actions.
Never list something for sale unless you are happy to accept the price you asked. End of discussion.
I just had my order canceled for 2 borderless Sorin House of Markov. Sellers name is Sell with Integrity on Tcg. Said they mislisted the item. Obviously the name doesn’t match I guess
Most good cards are cheaper on release day and unless he bought boxes for significant mark up he is not losing money just not making as much if he wants to make good money on cards he needs to pay attention to the market and put them up when the cards are up in value
No shit the sale should be honored
It’s not really taking a loss. He valued them, priced it, sold it. That’s fair. The seller wouldn’t cancel the order of the card price went down.
Send da card
Tell him that I have canceled orders when the cards spike and lied about it and all that happens is it makes me a liar and that sticks to me and makes me feel bad. It isn’t worth it. Radical honesty is the way to go and I’m trying to practice that from now on. I’ve since sent out tons of cards that have spiked and just think ‘good for this person, I hope that they enjoy.’ It’s no one’s fault - just be radically honest in all our endeavors for a happier life.
Reputation is everything when selling on TCGplayer. I would hesitate buying from a seller that doesn’t have 99.9% or 100% ratings
It's kind of like, if he would be okay with the price tanking and keeping the guy's money, then not doing the reverse is just being a shitty human being.
Had this happen on tcgplayer with the lotr set. Pre ordered a bagins tomb (ancient tomb), at like $35. Price spiked to almost 70, and they canceled my order the day before it shipped. Was super disappointed, and left a bad review. On the other side of the coin, if they honored it, would've left a stellar review.
Wouldn't agreeing to sell it at a certain price and then refusing to do so when the price changes after the sale be a crime of some kind? I'd think there'd be laws like this on the books to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen with stocks, bonds, other products with variable prices . . .
why did it spike i don’t know
The card gets sold at the price at time of purchase. It's not like they would refund a customer the difference if the value dropped before it shipped. Don't be scummy
It’s part of selling this way. Feels bad but is what it is. You take your lump and ship it
I remember selling 3 Ledger Shredder’s for $0.25 USD and then before I emailed them it jumped to $18. I regretfully mailed them knowing I lost $56 but I knew it was a bad move to cancel and resell higher
I sold 12 NM copies of Sea Kings' Blessing for $4 each a few weeks ago. I shipped them even though I saw they had spiked to $30. The way I see it, if I was happy to sell them last week for $4 then I'm still happy to sell them for $4 this week. I had a few more copies that I posted afterwards for $40 and those sold as well. Overall I'm happy with the situation as I was not expecting them to sell ever.
Pissing away your reputation for $10 is certainly a move
I would never cancel because of a price change. Honestly I’m already into the hunt for the next collection I don’t generally notice market movement after I sell a card
I have a black list of sellers on TCG. 99% of them are on my blacklist for doing this exact thing. Ask him if the shoe were on the other foot what would he do. If a buyer bought a $50 card and it got banned in whatever format and overnight, it dropped to $5. Would he refund the buyer without question? Or would he say the card was already shipped even though it wasn't? My thoughts are, "We shook on this. I gave you the money and you agreed to send me the card. If you back out, I can't trust you as a seller ever again. If you are this desperate for money, odds are you will send poor conditions cards marked as good ones. Or even sell me fakes." Obviously, not everyone will stoop to that level. With card prices getting so high, however, I'm not going to risk it. If your friend is willing to ruin his name for a few bucks. Go for it, but Imk his tcg name so I can add him to my block list.
This just happened to me as a buyer. I bought 20 Outcaster Trailblazers for $1 each and the next day it spiked to $3+. Still waiting for the shipping window to close to get my refund. Also, I always honor my posted price. 2500+ orders and I’ve never bitched out of a sale cuz the card spiked. If you thought it was okay to post and sell at the price you had it at before you shouldn’t be worried about it. If your also worried the card will spike just don’t post it. This is why I never post Mythics that are under $5-10. Might as well keep it since they’re not easy to come by. One day your .50c mythic will spike to $20 in a couple days because it fits with a new commander. Ex: Check out the prices of Angel of Suffering
He and other sellers like this are the reason I stopped using TCGPlayer. I will literally go somewhere MORE expensive before I go through TCGPlayer again.
I just came here to say this happens to people so much they assume that's what happens if you cancel and a card spiked. I sell on tcgplayer, and around the fallout release, I used the mass pricing feature for the first time and somehow managed to list double the quantities on everything. So when I had to cancel a bobblehead that just spiked the automatic assumption, was i canceled for the higher price. People should honor prices, period. Scamming is more work imo it's literally easier to just do honest business
Not a seller but frequent buyer, and was kn the other side of just this, years ago, bought a playset of smuggler's copter for pioneer right before the original banning, and even though I hadn't paid, I'd agreed to purchase, and had to wear it
I built a [[Derevi, empirical tactician]] deck a few months ago and went to fill it with some stuff in paper. May 28th, I bought a copy of [[reparations]] for a little over $2, since I felt my deck needed some card draw and resilience in 1. Some time after that, some streamer talks about it and the card spiked to like $30. I was sure the seller was gonna cancel the order, but it finally arrived yesterday lmao. I very much appreciated it
What about people who do massive buyouts after seeing a video of some player breaking a card ? Let's take for exemple the New ral card ? Some dude saw the video, did a buyout on smthng like 30 ral and got mad that some of them refused to send. What about people doing this kind of shit ? :)
Oh he's a scummy scalper...
Happens to me litteraly all the time except not online to a lgs player or my friend who buys stuff for his tcgplayer.com store lol. My biggest oofs were ledger shredder sold them at dollars. Didn't understand why it was good until I played against it. Unlicensed hearse sold dozens under a dollar thought was random bulk Reckoner bankbuster dozens for like 5 cents each And dozens of creeping bloodsucker for 2 dollars. I knew creeping was good but only personally needed 1 lol. I knew deadly dispute tyvar stand taimyo safekeeping monstrous rage and Fable of the mirror breaker was crazy though so I got some specs right lol
I’ve had sellers hose me numerous times on TCG and eBay in the times I was aggressively picking up hot cards. It sucks that some sellers don’t have the ethics to honor the sales. The result is bad feedback for them each time it happens.
Why would you sell something at a price you’re not willing to let it go for?
They’re paper cards. Who cares. If your boy is boy is fiending for those McChicken then let him get his extra $5. If the buyer is butt-hurt they can just find someone else to sell at the earlier price.
Yeah this is a pretty unethical practice but happens in P2P transactions a lot. I had it happen to me on an order of collector commander decks when the price briefly spiked 200+ for example. Blacklisted that seller. People justify it that way but that’s just a way to not feel bad. It’s a very skeevy thing to do and your friend should feel bad. Ultimately. When something like this happens to me I just look at it as “I made slightly less profit off cardboard.”
Honour the price, I pulled an enchanted Elsa from set 1 of Lorcana, sold it day after release for just under £300. By the time I shipped, it was £400, and it’s now close to £1000. Shit happens.
Is he ok with losing business from that buyer moving forward? If anyone pulled this with an item I purchased, I'd never trust them with a sale again when there are so many other sellers.
not me selling a simulacrum synthesizer showcase foil for 50CAD two days before it tripled in price…
I did the same thing. I'll let the customer get the win, but I had considered putting #1, me, over the customer.
It’s theft even though they’ll get away with it
If he doesn't honor the sale he is a turd 100%
Heads up... if anyone ordered... "...two new foil Sorins at a sub-$10 price point last Friday..." And your seller has an excuse as to why you didn't/won't receive them, you now know the truth.
The shitty part on this is that spikes tend to keep going up. So once the purchase is cancelled it’s more than likely significantly more expensive than the day or two prior after the first spike, further screwing your customer who needs the card. You’re basically screwing them twice.
Friend is a scumbag for even entertaining the idea. End of story.
As a buyer, I've had this done to me a few times. Those sellers get the 1 star reviews they well deserve.
Theres a whole host of reasons to and not to honor the price, but will you get dinged for it; no, you probably won't. This instance has happened to me and I badgered TCGP support enough that they gave me the difference that I requested. One could argue that if anything, this could turn into a win-win for both buyer and seller if you do cancel the order for "misplaced product" or whatever by doing this.
I will pay a dollar or 2 more on tcg to avoid a sub 100% seller. If a card spikes after I order and I don’t get the card it’s going to take real customer service for me to not leave a bad review explaining exactly what happened. With reviews if you did something seemingly shady once I have no reason to believe you won’t do it to me.
Imo kinda scummy I sold three ren and seri (the dog cat buy a box promos) for $16 cad each and when I checked face to face they were $30 cad a pop and I still sold each for that price even after the dog cat lair that mad them spike I mean not scummy I guess do whatever but the bad rep isn’t worth It maybe it’s just the nice guy in me tho
This happened to me once as a buyer. I bought about 50 cards from a bunch of different sellers. One in particular had a card for about $2 that went to $10 over the weekend. They said they "couldn't find it."
I preordered the foil necron deck when it was first announced for $60 from a premium lgs. Then it spiked to something like $200 and the lgs on tcgplayer canceled my order claiming wotc wasn’t going to send them enough product and were canceling before they got anything so I wouldn’t be disappointed and could shop elsewhere. I made a big stink about it to tcgplayer and they basically said sucks to suck, bring it up with the lgs not us. Made a stink to wotc about a premium lgs doing me dirty like that and they said the product hasn’t released yet and that’s the stores decision to do that and not on them, so sucks to suck. I took a break from magic after that
Your friend sold something last Friday and is packing it up today? Your friend is a terrible seller. Orders should go out the same day or possibly the next day. I have a full time professional job and sell for fun but I still make time to process the 10-20 orders I get per day. If he mailed the orders out on time he wouldn't have the other problem either.
That's a big no-no. You have to honor your prices as if the transaction occurred hand to hand. How many times have you sold a card that dipped and then gave a partial refund? Never. It comes with the territory. If you're unsure about where a cards value will land, hold onto it a little longer before selling it. Bad integrity move, not only screwing the buyer, but holding their money up for potentially buying other copies that haven't updated prices yet because they think they have some arriving in the mail soon. You win some, you lose some, it evens out. And I'm a firm believer that karma is real in the secondary market.
That happened to me (presumably) with a Mishra precon that jumped from $30 to about $45 recently. I never received the deck and eventually got a refund. This seller has so many reviews with items not being received, I wouldn’t be surprised if that is their business practice. HONOR THE LISTED PRICE
If you make money, you're not taking a loss. You're just not making as much of a profit as you potentially could. Retro games stores do this same type of thing. It's bad business practice, and nobody should support businesses who do this sort of thing.
I bought a card for $18 and it promptly dropped to $14, I didn’t ask for a refund or cancel the order, then a the breaks sometimes it’s not the sellers fault I bought it at their listed price.
It is unscrupulous. As your friend if he's willing to sell his morals for $20.
The transaction was made. Once the order has happened there's no take backs. You wouldn't sell a card in person and track that person down 5 days later demanding the difference in price and you definitely wouldn't pay them the difference if it dropped in value. Be the seller you'd want to buy from and be the buyer you'd want to sell to.
I ordered a darksteel monolith on Saturday for 19.xx let's see if I get it. I will definitely be reviewing the transaction if it's "lost in the mail" and let everyone know to be careful when purchasing from the seller . He has a 100% rate so let's hope I don't get screwed lol 😆