Howdy! It’s been well overdue for an update on my trading cards Mini-Experiment since basically last month this time.
I still have not obtained in the present time my Pro Website, as I have not made the 50 sales necessary for it. I am close though! I currently sit at 40 completed orders, so I only need 10 more orders, which isn’t a lot compared to what I’ve done! So I do believe it will be done by the end of this month.
And while I do really want a Pro Website primarily for the purposes of being able to directly link people to my items for sale, I literally do not know what one looks like. I tried some Google-Fu and Reddit Truthseeking for some answers but alas, I was digging and digging and the deeper I got the more suspicious and possible phishing attempts I received. I hadn’t considered sending a message to the TCGPlayer team about it but as the thought hit my head to write out this sentence I realized it was a good idea and did so and sent a message to them requesting just some samples to get an understanding of the thing I really want.
And another thing to note is that though I really want the Pro Website bad (which isn’t good thinking – I should be thinking I HAVE the Pro Website, just not in the present time) I may not fully understand the consequences. For example, regularly selling on the TCGPlayer marketplace results in getting a 10% fee deducted from all transactions. This almost certainly goes right to the big dog running the market place which is fine. However when switching over to Pro from a little ol’ non-chad seller, I believe the effective fee rate is about 11% from my preliminary research. I believe you get a deduction from 10% to 9% for being a Pro Seller, but then it’s a 2-2.5% fee for being a Pro Seller. I believe the website is the cause of this.
So from old forum posts of what I’ve seen just sniffing around, the Pro Website may not be worth it for the increased operating costs unless you are of the higher volume seller. But I’m not sure I have to find out more information and venture further into the dark.
Additionally, I have now found the chart regarding seller fees and Pro fees on the TCGPlayer marketplace seen below:
have been absolutely hyperfixated on trading cards for the past few weeks now, even more so as you may have noticed I haven’t posted in a few weeks lol! And since I am trying to do everything I can in my power to get my Pro Website so that I can directly link people to my store and so that I can kind of calm down with what I am doing and move on to the next thing, I want to provide an update on the experiment!
Things were still moving a little slowly when I originally started a draft of this blog post, but since my last update I have made 29 total sales! And there have been not only multiple double sales days, but one or two three sales days! It makes me so excited to go to the post office bumbling with my lot of packages and making sure I don’t fk it up and plop them all inside the drop off and tell all my nice customers that their cards are on the way! I feel so abundant about the whole thing, and my goal is to hit 50 sales by the end of the month. I still believe I can do it. Just need 2 sales a day, and it’s not like I don’t have the inventory at a competitive price to do so.
So, as a curently Level 3 seller, TCGPlayer charges a 10.25% commission for selling on their marketplace. As far as fees go, that’s kind of a lot as a percentage. However, say the item is $1 (which can be typical, if not actually above average) then you are charged $0.10 to sell it. And I hope you charged for some kind of shipping because if you didn’t it will likely cost you at least a dollar alone, if not 2. And don’t even begin to consider tracking if you are not offsetting the cost elsewhere. Tracking alone costs approximately $5!
But let’s take a look at the effective rate I would have as a member of TCGPlayer Seller Marketplace and have a Pro Website, as shown above. It would be a 9.25%+2.5% = 11.75% fee. That’s almost a bonkers 2% more effective rate than just listing on the Marketplace! Okay, it is literally 1.5%, but still, I hope you get the point that it can start adding up to be a lot.
I suppose all I can do is now go out to find out if it’s really worth it once I get the option to open it. I really want it for the value of having a direct link to send to people so that I can backlink on multiple locations including here. It will also be awesome to customize it and make it my own. And it’s not like I’m a store with my own brick and mortar location, which would be a benefit. And that’s because it states that if an order is to be picked up in person then there’s no fee.
So, who knows. Maybe I’m just a silly goose getting myself in over my head more than I could’ve possibly imagined. I know this “industry” if you want to call it that isn’t exactly “profitable” as most cards cost cents to a quarter if you’re lucky. But, though I am partially in it for the monies, this is a perfectly valid excuse to go out and splurge on cards I love with fun artworks and learn about and play games I love that I probably would’ve wanted as a kid.
So I’m just spending money and time however I’d like, you know? I don’t see a huge deal with that.
Additionally, to follow up on my last post about this topic, I have uploaded just about 2500 cards for sale! Since last updating I may have splurged a bit on some Digimon Booster Boxes. Not the new one, Digital Hazard since it’s been delayed for 3 weeks now, and will be delayed for a whole month by next week. So I haven’t gotten my mittens on any of those neato Tamers cards. It’s too bad because the next regular booster Digimon is scheduled to come out by the end of the month which is only 12 days away from the typing of this on July 29th. So there’s basically a 1 week gap between the theme set and the regular set. Which I guess is cool, but it’s just unfortunate that I couldn’t get a tap on the early market for the Digital Hazard Box.
Anyway, I bought a Great Legend Booster Box and a Double Diamond Booster Box from a nearby store that I work near. They were just beaming at me for so long that I decided to pull the trigger on them. I always liked the pink box art for great legend and the cards and alternate arts always looked sick and I reallllly wanted a VictoryGreymon (mostly alt art ‘cuz it looks sick) but I was also looking for some Agunimons as they only appeared in this set and any other cards as I just simply enjoy the art, you know? I was also simply just taking whatever else from the box it granted me. And it granted me an AncientGreymon! Which was absolutely beautiful and went for $25!
Additionally, I was fiending for the Double Diamond booster box on the very slim occasion to get the Ghost Rare Omnimon that goes for like $800. I was also looking to cull the urge to open more packs, open another box, and get some more cards for inventory and to support my other decks I own a bit. It was a good box, but as of right now I don’t remember the biggest hits I got out of them, but I do believe it was two alt art cards, with one being Morphomon.
And this post is getting way longer than I intended and now my whole house is waking up causing me to frantically type faster, but I also bought a Premium Pack for $20 when I was buying some stuff from Amazon! I haven’t come across the special release boxes anywhere in stores except once and it was for a nasty price, so I didn’t buy it. But $20 to see some of the early cards? Yessir! And boy was it good, I got an alternate art Upamon ($20) and a regular Upamon ($8) among others! So it genuinely paid for itself and then some once I sell the cards.
But, like I said this post is getting out of hand with length so I will give some more breakdown later AND hopefully tell y’all that I am now a Pro Seller and show you the website you can visit 🙂
Anyway do you have a favorite card in your life? Whether it be digimon, pokemon, yugioh, sports or others? I’d love to discuss. Here’s my favorite from the premium pack box:
He just looks like a little goblin in a paintball match (a.k.a. just like me)
Anyway hope you have a good day.
Godspeed,
Colossicus