Customer Reviews

of our Magic collection selling service

We're sorry to hear you had a bad experience with our service. It is extremely disappointing for someone who has done so many shipments with us (more than 10) to have such a bad experience, though in this case you have frequently complained about our service in the past – despite continuing to use it. In August we asked you why you keep sending shipments when you are not happy with the service, and you simply said "honestly I don't know" and that you'd find another vendor to send the cards to. We have gone very far out of our way to explain our processes and grading to you, and each time the assumption is "another shipment is coming in, so they must understand/agree with the service now." You are consistently receiving the same service from us – one which the vast, vast majority of our customers and reviews praise – and it is okay to say the service is not for you.

We go to great pains on our site to explain our service to potential customers because we want everyone to ha ... Read more

We're sorry to hear you had a bad experience with our service. It is extremely disappointing for someone who has done so many shipments with us (more than 10) to have such a bad experience, though in this case you have frequently complained about our service in the past – despite continuing to use it. In August we asked you why you keep sending shipments when you are not happy with the service, and you simply said "honestly I don't know" and that you'd find another vendor to send the cards to. We have gone very far out of our way to explain our processes and grading to you, and each time the assumption is "another shipment is coming in, so they must understand/agree with the service now." You are consistently receiving the same service from us – one which the vast, vast majority of our customers and reviews praise – and it is okay to say the service is not for you.

We go to great pains on our site to explain our service to potential customers because we want everyone to have their expectations met or exceeded. We offer both a price check tool and an estimate tool so that people know what sort of pricing to expect – and to know what is considered bulk, and what is not. We are the first to admit that our service isn't for everyone, and also that using the service primarily for low-value items and then comparing to retail (like TCGPlayer Low) is a recipe for disappointment.

The shipment in question at full NM using our service would be valued at $532.24; the value as graded was $436.07 before fees. The TCGPlayer Low value on this shipment was $926.26, but the missing link is that cards worth ~$1 retail are overinflated in "value" on TCGPlayer because a ~$1 price tag is less about the card's inherent value and more about the costs of selling – marketplace fees, supplies, labor and most notably, shipping cost. Buylists tend to reflect the true value of the card better for low value items; in this case, our payout after fees was a whopping 32% higher than the next single buylist – and so it is unfortunate you are disappointed with the results. It is also worth noting that we opted to keep your fee structure as Curated even though the shipment did not qualify as that shipment type, which resulted in savings of $50+ in fees through our service.

Lastly, to touch on the grading comment – as noted above, you have utilized our service many times, and you are familiar with how we grade. You have complained in the past and received detailed information about grading and why it isn't meeting your expectations. While we can empathize with the frustration you experienced when many of your more expensive cards are not in Near Mint condition, you have repeatedly not taken suggestions we've made regarding shipment holds which would allow us to provide you specific and detailed information for items you've deemed to be misgraded. Instead, you continue to vaguely suggest that you don't like our grading, and are unwilling to understand why a card received the grade it did. At the end of the day, we must grade the cards accurately in the condition they are received – but we are always willing to share that justification and go out of our way to ensure the customer understands our process.

We’re very sorry you were disappointed with the service; we do our very best to not just meet or exceed customer expectations, but also ensure customers trying our service know what to expect coming into it. When it comes to value expectations, customers expecting to receive full retail value for their cards – especially when “retail value” is applied to cards which are actually bulk (little or no buylist value), as the “retail price” for these cards reflects the cost to actually ship a card, not just the card’s value – will be disappointed. The prevalence of collection valuation tools that use retail values creates a challenge in folks understanding the actual value of their cards. To that end, we offer our own robust pricing tools and collection estimate tool to facilitate customers understanding the types of values to expect from our service prior to actually sending cards in.

In the case of the shipment in question, the full retail value was $250. However, th ... Read more

We’re very sorry you were disappointed with the service; we do our very best to not just meet or exceed customer expectations, but also ensure customers trying our service know what to expect coming into it. When it comes to value expectations, customers expecting to receive full retail value for their cards – especially when “retail value” is applied to cards which are actually bulk (little or no buylist value), as the “retail price” for these cards reflects the cost to actually ship a card, not just the card’s value – will be disappointed. The prevalence of collection valuation tools that use retail values creates a challenge in folks understanding the actual value of their cards. To that end, we offer our own robust pricing tools and collection estimate tool to facilitate customers understanding the types of values to expect from our service prior to actually sending cards in.

In the case of the shipment in question, the full retail value was $250. However, the best buylist price for the entire shipment at Near Mint was $145 (before grading is taken into account). The difference between the two values is a result of the 830+ bulk cards, which do not have significant value to any vendor. With a roughly $114 payout prior to our fees, this is in line with expectations depending on the grading. Unfortunately, we can see even under the very best conditions (that everything is graded NM and zero fees), the potential return for this shipment was doomed to miss expectations of expected value in excess of the full retail value.

Grading is another point emphasized by the review here, and we can certainly understand and empathize with the frustration you experienced when many of your more expensive cards are not in Near Mint condition. One unique thing about our service is that we can use each vendor criteria to assess the cards to attain the best value possible, not just the best grade possible. One thing we stress to all of our customers is that you can always reach out to us after you get your report if you have any questions or need more information on any particular cards; we are always happy to provide pictures and detailed explanations for why cards are graded as they are, and that ensures everyone is on the same page and can feel confident that “coincidences” don’t exist. At the end of the day, we must grade the cards accurately in the condition they are received – but we are always willing to share that justification and go out of our way to ensure the customer understands our process.

Lastly, our fees and fee structure are set up to reflect the labor necessary to process a shipment. For shipments with a very high concentration of bulk cards, the payout for non-bulk cards will be quickly eroded by the effort (and fees) associated with processing the bulk ones. We have our Curated and Sorted shipment types which are available to customers who want to do a bit of the legwork ahead of time and pay less in fees. Of the nearly 1,000 cards here, just 30 of them qualify for those services (that is, they have an expected buylist value of $1 or more at NM condition); ultilizing our Sorted service here instead of the Standard would have resulted in a $104 payout for just those 30 cards, and our fee would have been a mere $2 and change. In addition, for our Standard service we offer “exclusions” which will result in the excluded card types (e.g. commons) not being catalogued, and also waive the fee for those cards.

In conclusion, we apologize again that we were unable to meet your expectations. We appreciate you taking the time to write a review, and we hope that the review in combination with our response will assist future customers in considering how to best utilize our service – and our willingness to work with any potential future customers to ensure their expectations are met or exceeded.

We're very sorry to hear you were unhappy with your latest experience with our service. Meeting or exceeding expectations for our customers is of utmost importance to us, and critical to that is ensuring our customers understand what our service is. We provide buylist value assessments -- so not retail prices; this is something we do our best to explain extensively in the shipment creation process and surrounding literature, and we are always open to suggestions on areas where that could be made more clear. We understand it can be frustrating to see a large gap between a retail price on TCGPlayer and the best buylist price available, but unfortunately that can and does happen - especially on foil cards that are not NM, where the markdowns on buylist are steeper than non-foil versions.

The cards from your shipment were priced at the best buylist prices for the grades assessed, and we feel they were fair given the condition of the cards and the respective offers among our vendor par ... Read more

We're very sorry to hear you were unhappy with your latest experience with our service. Meeting or exceeding expectations for our customers is of utmost importance to us, and critical to that is ensuring our customers understand what our service is. We provide buylist value assessments -- so not retail prices; this is something we do our best to explain extensively in the shipment creation process and surrounding literature, and we are always open to suggestions on areas where that could be made more clear. We understand it can be frustrating to see a large gap between a retail price on TCGPlayer and the best buylist price available, but unfortunately that can and does happen - especially on foil cards that are not NM, where the markdowns on buylist are steeper than non-foil versions.

The cards from your shipment were priced at the best buylist prices for the grades assessed, and we feel they were fair given the condition of the cards and the respective offers among our vendor partners. Each vendor can have specific criteria which may affect the grade - and so we are always seeking the top buylist price for your card, not the best grade. We know that it is disappointing to see cards downgraded, but we must consistently apply the appropriate grading criteria for each of our vendor partners.

Your report provides a full breakdown of the grading assessments. We are always willing to provide additional information (and/or photographs) explaining the grading of a particular card as long as you contact us shortly after your report is received (while the card is still in our hands), so please keep that in mind should you decide to give the service another try. At the end of the day, we want you to be a satisfied customer, and so we apologize again we were not able to meet your expectations on this shipment, as we were able to on the prior two.