Where do I sell my cards?

This is an introductory flowchart for another one of Reddit’s endlessly asked questions.

For the purposes of this article, a card’s “worth” or “value” is defined as its TCGplayer low price -10%.

For instance, a NM Revised Tundra is listed for $435, so its value is $392. If you try to sell this card on your own, that’s likely about what you’ll get in the end. You can sell it to a store like Cardkingdom for $295, which would mean they are giving you 75% of this card’s value.

Selling is about turning your time, effort and risk-taking into money. There’s different levels of this depending on what you choose to do with your cards:

LEVEL 0- You have no clue what you have and you don’t care, you just want out.

Someone gifted you these “Magical” cards and you have no idea what they’re worth or where to even begin answering that question. Use an app like DelverLens or look up the price of the cards at a store: https://www.cardkingdom.com/
Familiarize yourself with how to recognize an older / rarer card here: https://draftsim.com/mtg-cards-value/

But realistically if you just show up to a store with a huge box of unsorted cards and tell them to make you an offer, they’ll give you a quick offer based on what they can see. Likely 50% or well below the value of what you have. If you want to exit then and there for near zero time/effort/risk, go right ahead. At the very least get that first quote then post your collection on Facebook Marketplace ( or whatever local platform ) with good pictures and see what interest you have and if they’ll pay more then the store. The main thing you want to avoid here is the (pretty unlikely) scenario where you are somehow sitting on very expensive desirable cards and let them go for pennies on the dollar because you don’t know any better.

LEVEL 1- You have tons of unsorted/ unlisted cards and only know the value of some of them and you want to sell as a lot.

You probably won’t get ripped off too bad since you’d know if you have a bunch of expensive stuff but you also can’t sell your cards too easily because stores and serious buyers will only make offers on what they know you have. The first step is to separate out the “bulk”. Put the rares, foils, vintage ( before rarity symbol were introduced) and mythics in one pile. The rest is “bulk” which, when unsorted, goes for 3-5$/1000. If your collection is old and large enough, it’s very likely there’s many cards in this pile worth 1-5$ so you are definitely leaving some money on the table but if you aren’t knowledgeable enough to spot these cards at a glance, it’s probably not worth it to enter all this into a tracking software, especially if you have no interest in selling single cards online.
As long as you have all your most valuable stuff in one little pile/binder, it makes it easy for people to give you better offers and you also hopefully know enough that you didn’t leave 300$ cards sitting in bulk boxes.

LEVEL 2- You have most of your collection in a spreadsheet/ tracking software and sell it all as a lot.

Good, you will get the best value for your collection if you list it or buylist it to a store with a full list of the cards. This also lets you know a starting price from which to negotiate upwards with people locally. You can decide to list your bulk / suspected bulk as well but know that common/uncommon 25c and under are known as “true bulk” and really just not worth selling or listing in any way. They’re worth about 3-5$/1000 cards. If you have 1000 cards worth 25 cents in your collection tracker, expect to get 3-5$, not $250.
Offers on the .25-5$ range varies but expect to get 5-30% value, at best. If you have lots of junk rares, know they’re usually worth 8-10c each as unlisted bulk. Mythics 10-25c in bulk.

LEVEL 3- Sell the bulk as a lot and sell the remaining cards yourself in person.

Higher value cards have better buylist% but you can still get a lot more money selling on your own so it might be worth your time. From the Tundra example above, you see that you can get $100 more by selling it yourself. If you have tons of such cards it could be well worth your time. You might be tempted to sell lower value cards because the buylist might be 30 cents for a card you can sell for $2. However it’ll take longer to find buyers for such cards and you’ll also spend the same amount of time making that extra $1.70 as you did making the extra $100 from the Tundra. Yeah you got almost 7x the value for your 2$ card but “got paid” 50 times less per hour worked…

With that in mind, separate out what you feel is worth selling individually from the rest. Take good pictures of your cards, check the buylist /tcgplayer pricing and then see what you can get. You can also join the many Facebook groups for buying/selling magic cards, such as: MTG Sick Deals, or MTG Old School 93/94. Maybe someone there is willing to travel to you if you have a large enough collection / item.

LEVEL 4- Sell all your cards as singles online.

There are many places where you can list your cards for sale: TCGplayer, Cardmarket ( for Europe), Cardsphere or Ebay. You’re also venturing into time-wasting territory if you decide to sell your bulk this way. You really need to start dealing with large numbers of sales before platforms become worth it, but if you have lots of time and a really massive collection with tons of cards in that 1-10$ range, maybe this is something you want to do. You can always sell what you can as singles and get rid of the rest as a lot later on. If you’re patient you can also list your cards “above value” and maybe eventually sell them.
You’ll also introduce more risk and effort here because now you have to deal with scammers, lost/damaged mail, disputes, payment processing fees and potentially even income/sales tax. This is just not something worth doing unless you really enjoy it or have nothing better to do with your extra time.

Hopefully this guide has shed some light on what your best option is for liquidating your Magic collection! This is not a detailed or exhaustive guide of course, just something to get you started. Don’t yell at me if I didn’t cover something.
You can also check out my guide to buying collectibles or maybe just read about whether or not buying collectibles is dumb!