How much should a Store Pay for Magic or Pokemon Cards? 

I think this video will be eye-opening for a lot of people! And like you say, if it feels bad and the customer doesn't appreciate what you're offering, they can always try selling their cards online themselves and deal with all this🤷‍♂️

Such a good video idea. I love when merchants actually breakdown the background costs.

I literally do math on my uline boxes all the time. It’s such a nice medium lol - laughed my ass off when I saw you doin the same thing

players simply don't understand how much time it takes to sell cards, and how low the margins are.

This is a great video. Everyone who is thinking about sepending money on collectibles should watch this video. The value of your collection is usually about half what you think it is. I would like to see more videos like this!!

Louie the last thing I would add is that people typically overspend their store credit as well especially if it’s low. Imagine a customer having $80 store credit and “for only $40 more dollars I can get a play booster.” That phenomenon is very typical in retail…

I really appreciate this while I mostly deal with older magic it's good to see the base line and math behind it.

Its even less with damaged/lost orders. Shave off an extra percent. It all adds up and some customers really don't understand how slim these margins are

Another most excellent video on owning a LGS store.

Great video Louie! This is valuable content.

Best part of this video is you putting the $ in front of the dollar amount. So many people do 20$ and it drives me insane lol.

Good video. Good things to think about

Love this. Please do more. Also where do you buy the cardboard sleeves for PWE?

every collection seller should watch this. Would save me alot of breath at my store.

That room is massive my god 😮

Awesome video! Everyone (players, collectors, investors, etc.) should sell a few cards just to get a better appreciation of what it takes to convert cardboard to cash.

I think I would just risk anything under 50 being no tracking. That really eats into your margins, even if it does prevent scammers

This was really helpful thanks for breaking down all the math from a practical LGS perspective 😃

Really nice discussion!!! Louie, do you distinguish between cards that you have to sell on TCG player vs. from your display case (no shipping or TCG player fees)?

Also need to mention a certain % of cards just never sell at all. Especially if you buy everything. If I’ve got 11 copies of a $3 card already I’m not exactly excited to see 2 more come in the door even at 40%.. We do offer significantly higher % on Pokémon than MTG however because of the grading culture between the two games. Magic players don’t care about graded cards.. Pokémon cards can have huge premiums in high grades and be far more liquid than a graded MTG card. So we pay up to 75-80% on Pokémon cards over $30 that look like they are in grade worthy condition. The grade premium adds a TON of value at scale

Cardmarket charges 4% on big sellers and 5% on private ones. Shipping is paid by the customer, not the seller. This makes dealing with Shops in europe let you have 60-80% of CM low cardprices.

So that would mean if people buy cards in person. Your profit margin would be much higher?

How do you sell the cards that are below 50 cents?

TCG Mid - 6.9-% BTC price premium + foil multiplier

Good vid! ❤❤❤

Your forgetting interest on bound capital for cards while not moving.

Boom!

Cards under $3 are pretty pointless. But mostly, I agree.

Oof. My legs does 50% cash (which is ass) and 65% credit (also ass). Anything under $2 is considered bulk and is $1 for 1000 cards for bulk.

A lot of people do not realize all of your costs to run a store, especially kids. Thank you for the video Louie.

LOVE videos like this, more about business of MTG and LGS stuff :D

Even if they sold it themselves on tcg player or ebay, the average loss is still around 30%+ after shipping and it would likely take them years to sell through everything, if they even could at all, especially starting out with a zero sales rating......

Love your videos as a whole but really appreciate these more business-y, behind the scenes ones. Really great insight into the granularity of everything that goes into how costs and trades get built up.

Tcg fees are robbery compared to 5%Cardmarket fees in Europe.

Gotta love how clueless people are about business when they are flip cards.

We know he's serious about the single paper cost since he's using cardboard for this video instead of a piece of paper 😂

Great video, awesome explanation of cash vs credit for LGS buy lists

This video has been very eye-opening for me. I run a TCGplayer store and it feels like we’ve been bleeding for about six months. Our current cash rate was at 60%(if sorted and alphabetize) you gave some good points and made me think of some things that I never really thought of. Thank you

Just wondering if you sell cards at TCG low or market cause there is a big difference there and I’m not seeing you factor in that in your profit and TCG costs

The amount of Timmy’s that inevitably Go broke buying at 60-70% baffle me. They’ve ruined most buying and selling.

Do this video on sealed products trade in. I can think of a ton of different products to trade in.

You still get a profit. Not all your cards are sold online so you don't have to worry about shipping all the time.

More of this. It is better than rudy market analysis. Feed the TCG dinosaur 🤣

More like this.

how does selling cards in store factor in where there is no tcgplayer cut. What percentage do you sell in store and how do you treat those price negotiations differently?

I think this was easily one of your best videos to date. The information break down was quite clean and the behind the scenes information was fascinating. My only critique would be to use a whiteboard, the asmr from the pen on the cardboard was a little uncomfortable :P

It’s a simple concept that you illustrate well! Next time someone complains in store this should be mandatory viewing for them haha

That was a great video, thanks :) !

Great breakdown video Louie!