Been collecting MTG cards on and off since the 90's I have not been paying them any attention for some time now and thought I might sell my cards. I have always collected to play, never considered their value. I entered my cards into the TCGPlayer database. This system gives some value estimates.
Question 1: How accurate are these prices? Can I expect these prices from my local dealer/shop?
Question 2: I have a mix of cards from the '90s (where many of the commons are listed as $0.05) and from recent years (commons are listed at $0.01) should I break these into two separate groups if I bring them into a shop? or should I organize them in a specific way?
1) The low is generally accurate, but particularly for older or more valuable cards the prices can be way off. The general best way to price a card is to find someone actually selling it. Ebay will show you what other people are selling and at what prices in what conditions. Your local shop will generally give you about 30% of what you might expect to get for it if you sold it directly to another player. This accounts for shop costs, transaction fees, storage, handling etc.
2)Organizing by set is the generally preferred way I've seen, but commons and uncommons tend to go for a bulk rate the same as bulk rares. If you have any particularly valuable ones you'd want to pull them out separately.
People have had good luck selling via facebook or craigslist which comes with the most money per effort, but face to face meetings have some issues. Ebay is probably the next best option, but with the cost of mailing your bulk commons/uncommons probably aren't worth it. Channelfireball and Starcity also buy cards at a better rate than local stores and the least cost effective option is your local game store.
Sort by mid. Take your top 4 cards (the only ones that reach double digits) and sell them as singles. The rest you want to bundle all together and say "Someone please take this!" Nothing else is worth breaking out.
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Question 1: How accurate are these prices? Can I expect these prices from my local dealer/shop?
Question 2: I have a mix of cards from the '90s (where many of the commons are listed as $0.05) and from recent years (commons are listed at $0.01) should I break these into two separate groups if I bring them into a shop? or should I organize them in a specific way?
Here is a list of my complete collection
https://store.tcgplayer.com/collection/view/942953
Any other advice on getting the best value out of these would be appreciated.
2)Organizing by set is the generally preferred way I've seen, but commons and uncommons tend to go for a bulk rate the same as bulk rares. If you have any particularly valuable ones you'd want to pull them out separately.
People have had good luck selling via facebook or craigslist which comes with the most money per effort, but face to face meetings have some issues. Ebay is probably the next best option, but with the cost of mailing your bulk commons/uncommons probably aren't worth it. Channelfireball and Starcity also buy cards at a better rate than local stores and the least cost effective option is your local game store.