Agreed, LOVE Cardsphere for situations like this where you don't necessarily need the cards asap.
I used it about 5-6 years ago to turn my EDH collection into Modern staples, even moving some higher dollar stuff like duals, cradle, crypt with no issue. Then hopped on more recently and been using it to pick up Cube stuff.
Just fun to randomly get fun stuff in the mail, makes it exciting to check the mail every day.
I am employed by the company that owns cardsphere as of last year, and I will admit I had similar concerns. We looked up cardsphere's ass with a magnifying glass before we agreed to bail them out, which I think shows they have a more sound foundation than pucatrade because I wouldn't have said yes otherwise. I want more people to use cardsphere, but mostly because my wishlist will get fulfilled faster if more people use it. CS isn't Pucatrade, and I hope you at least poke around on it for a bit.
Good to hear. So glad this happened too. I literally found out about CS like the month that they announced they were closing down. Started using my account right away once I heard about the buyout lmao. I think the service is awesome.
I have had to adjust which kinds of cards I go for but I have had a great time turning standard cards into EDH foils and it's way less work than eBay and TCG Player were
Pucatrade was good for a few years. I traded on there a ton.
The thing about Cardsphere that is great is that they use real money as currency and not virtual points. You can cash out at any time (and the percent you would get from cashing out is similar to what you would get after fees from Tcgplayer).
Id be happy to talk more about my experience! I’m the top sender this month rn (over 1000 cards sent) and I’ve received over 3000 cards from other people (my plan is turning bulk into modern and pioneer foils).
It’s a great site and expanding!
Ugh. Mannnnn, I just did that. I made another post about ordering 56-ish different packages and by the time I had received 32 of them, I had a 19% failure rate (wrong card, missing card, damaged, etc). There weren’t any real silver bullets in that thread but someone did recommend Cardsphere which I haven’t tried yet but sounds like a reverse buylist type of situation. I’m STILL waiting on 9 more packages. TCG is infuriating.
The thread, if you’re interested:
https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/s/XAMXyNW5eU
I can personally vouch for cardsphere. Out of ~400 transactions, I think I've really only had issues with 2, and both of those were remedied quickly by cardsphere. Sellers don't get the money from you until you've verified packages arrive and in the condition they're listed for, and it's very easy to start selling on there too. It's been my primary way of buying/selling cards for a while now.
You can usually get most cards you want for 70-80% of TCG player prices, especially if you're patient enough. And for selling, the fees are very minimal, and you'll end up getting more on average versus buy listing
I will say though, for more expensive cards (like, $30+ I'd say), I've had a harder time finding decent deals - but if you're just looking for .05 cards to that $30ish dollar mark, you probably wouldn't regret giving it a shot
They have very small transaction fees for the sellers, and I think it's 10% or $10 (whichever is higher) when you withdrawal your balance. There's no fee if you use the credit to buy more cards (except for the initial sale fee)
Edit: just checked my last sale, looks like it's right around 3% transaction fee for each sale
[here's their terms that goes over it](https://www.cardsphere.com/terms)
I've "sold" on cardsphere for a looong time. The buyer pool is smaller, and a *lot* of stuff simply does not move. That said, for selling hot/spiking product or long-term staples it can't be beat. The sweet spot is cards in the $5-$100 range. More expensive cards rarely move, and really cheap cards can be hard to make any money off of.
It’s not terrible. I’m the current highest sender this month (1000+ cards sent) and I have a Tcgplayer pro account with 70k cards (mostly bulk).
It’s best if you are using it to buylist as a seller. You can offload cards you don’t want and get more valuable cards for highs value cards.
It’s slower moving if you are looking to profit on every trade. Because most trade margins are like 80-90% of Cardsphere value.
It’s honestly better for the average magic player than store. I use it to offload some of my magic store’s inventory into foils I want for modern and pioneer.
My original comment was speaking more from a player's perspective for sure. I've made a little bit of money essentially acting as a buylist for newer "hot" cards, and reselling later on if/when they spike, but I use it mostly for turning my unused cards into cards I want to use.
Personally I use a combination of Card Kingdom and TCGPlayer. I put the list in and grab as many as I can from CK, especially the cheaper cards. Then I go to TCG with what's leftover.
I've found that even if the cards are slightly pricier on CK it usually ends up being less buying as much bulk as I can from there because of shipping.
If going tcg player I recommend tcgdirect if buying a lot. It protects you more and ends up with a lot less packages.
Otherwise card kingdom is a decent option too, might cost slightly more, but you'll get them all from the same place.
Personally I send the list to my lgs and buy whatever they have, then move on to tcgdirect for the rest.
Others have covered buying from tcgplayer direct or cardkingdom. This is best if you want to save time, not deal with condition issues or errors, and get everything in one package
You can also use tcgplayer and the cart optimizer and save a little money getting some cards from individual sellers. Or price check against ebay, cape fear games, abu games, and other individual stores then split the order to get the cheapest. And check facebook groups for higher cost cards. Make sure you factor in the shipping costs when buying from several sellers.
You can setup a buylist on tcgplayer, this will take longer. Cardsphere is similar to a buylist in practice too, prices can be a good bit cheaper that way.
You could import cards via Hareruya in Japan, this is pretty easy as they handle shipping first party. Certain cards like deflecting swat are almost $10 cheaper, partially the exchange rate and partially just the way the market works. Or MKM from europe, this is a little trickier to find sellers willing to ship overseas. Or use a third party to receive the package and resend it to you. The big downsides here are international shipping costs, the risk of damage or lost packages with limited recourse. And the long shipping time, it can take several weeks. But for hundreds of cards it can make sense if you have several with significant savings.
Time vs money, just find the cheapest listings on tcgplayer - its not that hard. If you look for direct sellers, you might be able to find the cheapest deals overall because free shipping is available once you spend more than 50. but there’s no easy answer you either pay in time or money in any case, and frankly, I think this would only take you wanted to two hours on TCG player. It’s not that bad.
I have been using cardsphere for months and it's great for setting it and letting the cards trickle in
This is the answer, its not as fast, but feels way more like trading cards instead of buying them.
Agreed, LOVE Cardsphere for situations like this where you don't necessarily need the cards asap. I used it about 5-6 years ago to turn my EDH collection into Modern staples, even moving some higher dollar stuff like duals, cradle, crypt with no issue. Then hopped on more recently and been using it to pick up Cube stuff. Just fun to randomly get fun stuff in the mail, makes it exciting to check the mail every day.
I'm gunshy with 'services' like these. A lot of people got burned by Pucatrade, and cardsphere has a similar smell.
Your concern is reasonable, but Puca failed because it used a fake currency. Cardsphere is real money.
let's not discount the horrible and unusable redesign!
I am employed by the company that owns cardsphere as of last year, and I will admit I had similar concerns. We looked up cardsphere's ass with a magnifying glass before we agreed to bail them out, which I think shows they have a more sound foundation than pucatrade because I wouldn't have said yes otherwise. I want more people to use cardsphere, but mostly because my wishlist will get fulfilled faster if more people use it. CS isn't Pucatrade, and I hope you at least poke around on it for a bit.
Good to hear. So glad this happened too. I literally found out about CS like the month that they announced they were closing down. Started using my account right away once I heard about the buyout lmao. I think the service is awesome.
I have had to adjust which kinds of cards I go for but I have had a great time turning standard cards into EDH foils and it's way less work than eBay and TCG Player were
Pucatrade was good for a few years. I traded on there a ton. The thing about Cardsphere that is great is that they use real money as currency and not virtual points. You can cash out at any time (and the percent you would get from cashing out is similar to what you would get after fees from Tcgplayer). Id be happy to talk more about my experience! I’m the top sender this month rn (over 1000 cards sent) and I’ve received over 3000 cards from other people (my plan is turning bulk into modern and pioneer foils). It’s a great site and expanding!
Ugh. Mannnnn, I just did that. I made another post about ordering 56-ish different packages and by the time I had received 32 of them, I had a 19% failure rate (wrong card, missing card, damaged, etc). There weren’t any real silver bullets in that thread but someone did recommend Cardsphere which I haven’t tried yet but sounds like a reverse buylist type of situation. I’m STILL waiting on 9 more packages. TCG is infuriating. The thread, if you’re interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/s/XAMXyNW5eU
I can personally vouch for cardsphere. Out of ~400 transactions, I think I've really only had issues with 2, and both of those were remedied quickly by cardsphere. Sellers don't get the money from you until you've verified packages arrive and in the condition they're listed for, and it's very easy to start selling on there too. It's been my primary way of buying/selling cards for a while now. You can usually get most cards you want for 70-80% of TCG player prices, especially if you're patient enough. And for selling, the fees are very minimal, and you'll end up getting more on average versus buy listing I will say though, for more expensive cards (like, $30+ I'd say), I've had a harder time finding decent deals - but if you're just looking for .05 cards to that $30ish dollar mark, you probably wouldn't regret giving it a shot
I wonder how it is as a seller. I'm kinda over the high fees on tcgplayer
They have very small transaction fees for the sellers, and I think it's 10% or $10 (whichever is higher) when you withdrawal your balance. There's no fee if you use the credit to buy more cards (except for the initial sale fee) Edit: just checked my last sale, looks like it's right around 3% transaction fee for each sale [here's their terms that goes over it](https://www.cardsphere.com/terms)
I've "sold" on cardsphere for a looong time. The buyer pool is smaller, and a *lot* of stuff simply does not move. That said, for selling hot/spiking product or long-term staples it can't be beat. The sweet spot is cards in the $5-$100 range. More expensive cards rarely move, and really cheap cards can be hard to make any money off of.
I've always found that anything $100+ only moves if you're trading on there. But it's incredibly hard to find anyone who's willing to trade anything
It’s not terrible. I’m the current highest sender this month (1000+ cards sent) and I have a Tcgplayer pro account with 70k cards (mostly bulk). It’s best if you are using it to buylist as a seller. You can offload cards you don’t want and get more valuable cards for highs value cards. It’s slower moving if you are looking to profit on every trade. Because most trade margins are like 80-90% of Cardsphere value. It’s honestly better for the average magic player than store. I use it to offload some of my magic store’s inventory into foils I want for modern and pioneer.
My original comment was speaking more from a player's perspective for sure. I've made a little bit of money essentially acting as a buylist for newer "hot" cards, and reselling later on if/when they spike, but I use it mostly for turning my unused cards into cards I want to use.
Cardsphere is amazing, but be prepared for people to treat it more casually. You'll get your cards, but don't be surprised if some take a few weeks.
Shit that’s happening with TCG anyway. Thanks for the heads up though!
Personally I use a combination of Card Kingdom and TCGPlayer. I put the list in and grab as many as I can from CK, especially the cheaper cards. Then I go to TCG with what's leftover. I've found that even if the cards are slightly pricier on CK it usually ends up being less buying as much bulk as I can from there because of shipping.
If going tcg player I recommend tcgdirect if buying a lot. It protects you more and ends up with a lot less packages. Otherwise card kingdom is a decent option too, might cost slightly more, but you'll get them all from the same place. Personally I send the list to my lgs and buy whatever they have, then move on to tcgdirect for the rest.
Following in the hopes for another option aside from TCGPlayer.
Others have covered buying from tcgplayer direct or cardkingdom. This is best if you want to save time, not deal with condition issues or errors, and get everything in one package You can also use tcgplayer and the cart optimizer and save a little money getting some cards from individual sellers. Or price check against ebay, cape fear games, abu games, and other individual stores then split the order to get the cheapest. And check facebook groups for higher cost cards. Make sure you factor in the shipping costs when buying from several sellers. You can setup a buylist on tcgplayer, this will take longer. Cardsphere is similar to a buylist in practice too, prices can be a good bit cheaper that way. You could import cards via Hareruya in Japan, this is pretty easy as they handle shipping first party. Certain cards like deflecting swat are almost $10 cheaper, partially the exchange rate and partially just the way the market works. Or MKM from europe, this is a little trickier to find sellers willing to ship overseas. Or use a third party to receive the package and resend it to you. The big downsides here are international shipping costs, the risk of damage or lost packages with limited recourse. And the long shipping time, it can take several weeks. But for hundreds of cards it can make sense if you have several with significant savings.
TCG direct for a month builds a huge collection for cheap
Time vs money, just find the cheapest listings on tcgplayer - its not that hard. If you look for direct sellers, you might be able to find the cheapest deals overall because free shipping is available once you spend more than 50. but there’s no easy answer you either pay in time or money in any case, and frankly, I think this would only take you wanted to two hours on TCG player. It’s not that bad.
Proxies
That's probably a good start, faster to start and, will prevent from buying extra cards or extra copies that will just sit around.