Margins

Economics forum

Posted on May 20, 2019, 10:51 p.m. by Evry1sfavteddy

Just getting into buying cards with the intent of reselling them rather than using them so I have a question for those of you with a considerable degree of experience in this area: When you buy cards what percentage of the cards value do you offer the seller on average? (I'm aware there's variance based on the cards desirability and such)

Boza says... #2

Well, that depends - if you are a reseller you have to consider a few things:

• What are you offering that other resellers can't?
• What margin do you want to achieve - what percentage of your gross is COGS, what % is other expenses (shipping, packaging, etc.) and what is left after is profit (before interest and taxes).
• MTG has a stock-like behavior. So, spikes and drops in price are quite rapid most of the time. It is buy low, wait, wait some more, then sell high, type of thing.

However, none of the investments (outside of the RL) are actually safe and market fluctuations can make or break a reseller, depending on investment.

May 21, 2019 4:03 a.m.

Evry1sfavteddy says... #3

Boza COGS?

I usually only have around 2,000 or so invested in MTG outside of the reserve list and rarely ever deal with standard (outside of buying collections and even then only if the price is right) so a market fluctuation might hurt but it won't break me.

May 21, 2019 6:07 a.m.

Boza says... #4

COGS is cost of goods sold, or the amount you paid for the cardboard you are dealing. For example, if you bought fist of the suns for 3 bucks a week ago (your cogs), add in a 1,5 dollars for individual S&H and add in a total of 0,5 of extra for your profit, you would be happy selling an individual card for 5 bucks or more. You would see a 500% increase in its value.

I really recommend echomtg.com. I input my Legacy deck to track it after I sold it - it actually lost 20% value over 3 years. I use the site to setup individual price alerts for cards that I want to sell or buy. For example, Tarmogoyf is now an all-time low price with a downwards trend. Once it gets to the sixties, I would scoop up a handful of all printings, and wait for an increase in demand.

May 21, 2019 6:38 a.m.