As collectors and investors in trading card games, we often wonder where is the best place to sell Magic cards. There are so many different ways to sell your cards, whether they’re old, new, graded, ungraded or even if they’re non-Magic cards like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh or even MetaZoo.
The idea is to get the most bang for your buck so you can reinvest those new found dollars into MORE cards, right? So here’s what I would consider the top places to turn your cardboard into cold hard cash on the different MTG cards market!
The places I would point you to in order to sell your Magic cards online and offline are eBay, TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom, Channel Fireball, Facebook, Craigslist, Local Game Stores, Card Shows/Conventions and finally Auction Houses. All of these places are great to try and sell your Magic collection whether you’re trying to sell them online or at a local store or convention.
Let’s jump into each of these a bit further.
WHERE TO SELL ONLINE:
1. eBay
So the most obvious website to sell your Magic cards is eBay. With close to 160 million active users, eBay is by far the best place to not only sell cards but to buy them. Setting up an account is super easy and fees are not terribly high, averaging about 13-15% of your sale.
And recently eBay released their super duper high tech computer vision technology that allows you to scan your cards with your smartphone, making the listing process much more streamlined.
What used to take 10-15 minutes to set up an auction or Buy It Now listing is now much faster since the scanning technology pre-fills much of the listing data for your card.
EBay is easily the number one place when it comes to selling Magic cards online and the proof is in the listings. It doesn’t matter if you have uncommon and rare cards or expensive vintage and mythic cards, eBay is a great place to start.
I just did a quick search on eBay for the keyword “Magic” in the “CCG INDIVIDUAL CARDS” category and I’m showing 930,000+ listings! And searching for SOLD items, there are currently over 180,000 so that tells me people are listing and people are definitely selling their cards.
2. TCGPlayer.com
I really like using TCGPlayer.com to sell MTG cards online. They offer a really easy listing process and the fees are about on par with all other online outlets. Over the years TCGPlayer has become one of the premier online marketplaces for the trading card game industry and it now boasts itself as the ‘largest online marketplace for trading card games.’
Although there is no fee to list your item, when you sell a card the fees will range from 8.95% to 10.25% of the sale (depending on what level seller you are) and they also add on a payment processing fee of 2.5% plus $0.30.
When you compare TCGPlayer to eBay, the fees are very comparable so I would say one is not better than the other when it comes to selling costs.
You can tell that TCGPlayer is one of the better places to sell Magic cards purely from looking at the stats the company just released a few months ago.
From the period of Black Friday through Cyber Monday 2021 (which is only 4-days), TCGPlayer had $10 million in gross merchandise value sold through its website!
That is a ginormous amount of cards being sold in a short period of time which proves that there are a lot of people using TCGPlayer to sell cards.
And did I mention how easy it is to list your cards? This scanning technology that all of the big boys are starting to use these days is incredible and super fast. Gone are the days of typing in the name of the card, searching through listings, trying to find the specific card you’re trying to sell.
Now all you have to do is scan your card with your smartphone and in milliseconds you’ll see it pop up and be ready for listing. It’s really cool and it’s actually fun to list cards using the scanning tool that TCGPlayer offers.
3. CardKingdom.com
If selling directly to other collectors or players is not your cup of tea and you don’t like dealing with the time required to sell on these other platforms, then CardKingdom.com could be for you.
The difference between CardKingdom and sites like eBay and TCGPlayer.com is that you’re selling directly to CardKingdom, not individual buyers.
CardKingdom buys hundreds of thousands of cards every day and it could be a great option if you’re looking to sell your collection in bulk or even just one or two cards.
If you’re not particularly interested in cash for your cards you can also trade them in for store credit.
For instance, if you have a NRMT Magic Unlimited Scrubland, CardKingdom is offering $750 cash or they’ll add a 30% bonus and give you $975 store credit to use in their online marketplace. Not a bad deal, huh?
CardKingdom is not for everyone. You have to understand they’re in this to make money so you probably won’t get top dollar for your cards.
But knowing you are selling to a reputable business and that you can sell them either singles or bulk collections make CardKingdom a great option to sell your Magic cards.
4. ChannelFireball.com
I’m mentioning ChannelFireball.com as an option for selling mainly for those that are wanting to sell cards as a business and not so much as a private collector or investor.
ChannelFireBall is not a selling platform for the common investor/collector so you’ll have to try one of the other guys above if you fall into that category.
However, if you have already set up a sole proprietorship, LLC or corporation, you absolutely can use the ChannelFireball platform to sell your cards.
The fees are right in line with TCGPlayer (8.95% plus the 2.95%/$0.30 payment processing fee) so it’s another really good option for the larger already established businesses like game stores and hobby dealers.
Again, I won’t go too much into that here because this post is more about the player/collector/investor, but still a great option for larger businesses or sellers.
5. Facebook Buy/Sell Groups
I think out of all the options above, Facebook is probably the most risky and requires that you do some homework when it comes to selling MTG cards.
There are a ton of Facebook groups solely dedicated to Magic: The Gathering as well as every other trading card game you can think of. Some of these groups are more informational and some of them are solely dedicated to bringing buyers and sellers together. Some do both.
If you want to sell MTG cards, the key is to not jump into these groups head first and start selling right away.
I would recommend searching for the groups that have a high number of members and starting there. Some of the groups are public and are easy to get into while others are private and require that the people running the group admit you to the group.
Find groups that have lots of followers, strict rules and that are private (my preference.)
A good example of a really good Facebook group that I think is one of the more popular places to sell Magic cards is MTG Savage Sales (Magic: The Gathering.)
They have over 12K members and the admins do a great job making sure the rules are being followed. You’ll always find some bad apples on the Facebook groups, but for the most part MTG Savage Sales is a good example of one of the better private groups.
6. Craigslist, OfferUp, LetGo, etc.
I’ll mention these two as options to sell your Magic cards, but honestly I wouldn’t spend too much time using these platforms to sell your Magic cards.
Places like Craigslist and OfferUp are well known to be virtual yard sales so people expect to get yard sale prices. If you’re looking to sell your high end graded Magic Alpha singles, Craigslist, OfferUp and LetGo (and sites like them) are not going to be a good option.
So I won’t talk too much about these sort of garage sale type apps and websites. Although they might be a good place to sell MTG cards near me, I just don’t use them too often. Unless you’re desperate and are willing to basically give your collection away for a fast buck, stick with the other guys I talked about above (eBay, TCGPlayer, etc.)
RUNNER UP:
Star City Games is definitely another place you should consider for selling your Magic cards. They’re are well respected in the industry and I would absolutely check out their website to see if they can help. Most times at the right price, they’ll be buying!
WHERE TO SELL OFFLINE:
1. Local Game Stores
Ok, this one is super obvious right? The very first place I would consider when selling my Magic cards would be my local game store.
For the most part, if they’re not buying Magic cards or singles, they probably know a lot of people who are. Game store owners, if they’re worth a hill of beans, have the pulse of the Magic card business and in most cases they’ll probably be interested in buying your cards if you have desireable stuff.
The ideal card shops to sell your Magic cards will most likely be the ones you see not just locally but also online.
Most larger card shops are heavily involved in Facebook marketplace groups, have an eBay presence, and often use TCGPlayer or other platforms to list their own singles for sale. Those are the guys I want to talk to when selling my cards.
If your game shop is super small, doesn’t have a big selection, looks like they could close down any day now and you never see people in there, then make sure you head elsewhere.
You’ll just be wasting your time and most likely won’t get a fair price. Stick with the guys who know what the heck they’re doing and run a nice busy shop (online and locally.)
2. Card Shows and Conventions
Local card shows used to be the place to offload your Magic cards, but nowadays you just don’t see as many of those big shows as you used to. Most big malls that were popular in the 90’s have shut down and you just don’t see as many shows as you used to.
However, there are still quite a few larger events across the country that are great places to buy and sell cards. Up here in Northeast Pennsylvania where I’m from, we just had a nice regional show at the Valley Forge Casino Resort in King of Prussia, PA.
Places like this are not only great to buy Magic cards and get involved in tournaments, they’re also great places to unload your extras and drum up some cash for your next big Magic card investment. Check out SCG CON as they host some of the big shows across the country and have a bunch already lined up for this year.
Also, don’t just look for comic book shows or big COMICON conventions as your only choice. Keep your eyes open for those regional sports cards because many of the dealers setting up will also be heavy into Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and others.
There may not be a huge gathering of TCG dealers, but normally you’ll have a handful of guys who are buying and selling singles, booster boxes and packs.
The bigger the show, the better your chances of finding some non-sports dealers that would be interested in buying your single Magic cards or even your entire collection.
3. Auction Houses
There are a lot of auction houses out there that have quite a bit of experience selling TCG cards and I would absolutely consider using them. But, make sure you have highly desirable stuff if you’re thinking of using an auction house to sell your collection.
If you have very expensive vintage Magic cards, I would definitely look into the larger auction houses as they have the unique advantage of getting you you national attention.
In most cases, I don’t think a local auction house will get you top dollar for those primo cards so you have to consider a larger auction house that knows how to handle your specific collection.
In cases like that where you have high dollar stuff, I would suggest reaching out to one of these two auction houses below:
- Bodnar’s Auction, New Brunswick, NJ – If you check my previous posts you’ll see I wrote one back in February of last year talking about Bodnar’s humongous vintage Magic Card auction that brought in over $500K in sales of vintage cards. These guys did one heck of a job with that auction and if you have older Magic stuff (or even vintage Pokemon, comics, etc) I would definitely call them.
- Heritage Auctions, Dallas TX – These guys advertise that they’re the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer and judging from their auction history, there’s no doubt they are. They have tons of great auctions across all sorts of collectibles and they also are experts in the TCG world. If you’re not familiar with them, they have a fairly large trading card games auction coming up in March 2022 that might give you a good idea of how things work at Heritage. I would recommend that you check that auction out if you are considering using a large auction house to sell your Magic collection.
If you do not have a lot of vintage, high priced, graded or big dollar modern cards I think local auction houses might be ok.
I would definitely research them first to see if they’ve auctioned off Magic cards in the past because you don’t want to use them if they have no idea what Magic or Pokemon is.
The last thing you want to do is drop off your collection thinking you’ll get $500-1000 for it and it ends up selling for $100. Do your research and don’t trust just any auction house to sell your Magic collection.
Wrap Up
I tried to sum up the different options below to give you an idea of where to go to sell your Magic cards based on a number of different scenarios. Hopefully this sums up everything for you and guides you to the right place to sell your cards for the most money possible.
WHAT ARE YOU SELLING? | EBAY | TCG | CK | CF | FB | CL | LGS | SHOWS | AUCTION |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Graded Magic Singles | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||
High$ Vintage Magic | X | X | X | X | X | ||||
Modern High$ Magic | X | X | X | X | X | X | |||
Unopened Magic Boxes | X | X | X | ||||||
Bulk Modern Magic (commons/uncommons) | X | X | X | X | |||||
Bulk Vintage Magic (commons/uncommons) | X | X | |||||||
Complete Magic Sets (Vintage/Modern) | X | X | X | ||||||
Entire Magic Collection (Vintage/Modern) | X | X | X | ||||||
LGS or Business Magic Singles | X | X |
NOTE: Columns are eBay, TCGPlayer.com (TCG), CardKingdom (CK), ChannelFireball (CF), Facebook Groups (FB), Craigslist (CL), Local Game Store (LGS), Shows and Conventions (SHOWS) and Auction Houses (AUCTION)
Hopefully this gives you some direction on where to sell Magic cards is in your neck of the woods. I think how you handle selling your cards really depends on WHAT you have to sell and ensuring you choose places that will get your collection in front of the right buyers.
If you have a very large and expensive Magic collection dating back to 1993 with some Power 9 cards and lots of big-money graded cards, I definitely wouldn’t be hitting up Facebook Marketplace.
It’s just too risky in my eyes and I think you’ll need some professional dealers or auction houses involved to get you the most bang for your buck.
If your collection is more new stuff with a lot of low dollar cards, I think any of the other options above will work for you.
It’s just a matter of figuring out if you’re ok selling your cards one-by-one or if you want to sell in bulk to someone like CardKingdom. There are lots of options for sure.
As always, if you have any questions or would like some more advice, I’m always here to help. Just hit me up on the contact page or over at Twitter or Instagram. As always, keep collecting and investing in Magic cards! See you soon.