If you are truly serious about the idea, perhaps you can take it to the forums and see if someone else is willing to help? I'd hate to help develop the idea and then leave you hanging, but I need to keep my commitments to a minimum right now, especially with others' assets.

Perhaps in time this is something we can revisit 🙂

1. True, but I suppose main focus should be singles anyway. You could say (if interested in providing this service = singles only)
2. You are the guy who can really state exact costs (and profit) for this. What does it cost to ship 10 cards? 20 cards? 100? 1500? … etc 🙂
3. I would like to create my own account, using the "provider" address. The way I see it : I order with the account that has your address. I provide details of the order via mail. You get package and check quality of cards. Let me know via email. I provide feedback to shop. That's part 1.
Part 2 would be to gather all orders and ship them once in a while. DC only (I assume). I provide via paypal the total cost to handle the shipment. Only after I received all cards I'll provide you your profit.
4. See above. Part 1 is between shop and me. Part 2 is between you and me and I have a reference number of the shipment. If I would do this, I believe I would like to opt to provide all details about the orders, amount, … on the forum, so everyone can follow and I can provide a kind of feedback via the forum. This will allow you to grow in the service and I give it more visibility and lower the risk 🙂

I propose to discuss the idea and really let it mature.
Try to find any pitfalls, discuss liability, … Let's give it a shot to work something out.
I am willing to take it a shot anyhow!

1. Legality (for singles I can't see any moral dilemmas, but for sealed product I could see possible pushback)
2. True cost
3. I don't know how easy it is to receive someone else's mail at my address. This could be tricky. You may have to have the cards shipped in my name so there are no issues with the post office sending mail back and what not.
4. Discussion of liability (lost/damaged cards, periods of time where I would be busy and couldn't make it to the post office for a given week)

Overall, this is such an interesting thought exercise, but I just don't know how practical it is. I wish someone else would chime in with some perspective. 🙂

😀

I was somewhat joking when I suggested that (I realize that may not have been entirely clear). Not that it would not be an interesting option, however it feels like too much to trust somebody with whom I've never met. To make it worthwhile for the person doing it I'd have to spend thousands of dollars as well to get it started, I am not that rich. If MTGO keeps usable logs of transactions it might be more interesting to go in that direction anyway. I have been thinking how trading towards entire sets for redemption purposes might be interesting as a replacement for me buying boxes, however fanatically trading on MTGO is out of the question for me due to Carpetal Tunnel risks (already have a mild form, don't want it to increase). If I could fund a grinder there, bounce ideas off of each other and on the whole make it cheaper to get my cards it could be very interesting. The problem remains that I would still be trusting somebody with a lot, however at this point they could be based anywhere in the world which might make things easier.

I might take you up on your offer for reshipping cards. You might also consider if you would be willing to do it for sealed product: prices here are higher in euro than the dollar prices in the US, however Wizards does not want US suppliers to sell outside of the US. It's a logical extension I suppose but it might need a little more consideration. Let me see how long it takes before I again consider making a purchase only to find shipping costs are excessive :).

Yeah, but to maximize profits, you shouldn't hold sentimental value to most of your cards anyway. They are all replacable, after all.

So you could touch the cards, but you could enjoy keeping track of them all in a spreadsheet or something. It'd be like trading stock through a broker. When we buy shares of a company, we don't hold paper certificates. But we still get paid the dividends and we can still buy/sell the stock at our discretion for a small fee.

I could be a Magic Card broker!

Wow, we just broke into a whole new level of the game. Paying someone to grind out your collection! For a small percentage, these people go to the large events in the U.S. and value trade as much as possible. Then when they cash out on MOTL or with dealers, they get to keep a certain percentage. They take on much less risk and don't have to put in any initial capital, and you profit abroad. Love it!

Of course, there's NO way I would have the time to support such an endeavor. Not sure how many people would.

In terms of buying cards from U.S. sellers, having the cards shipped to a contact in the U.S., and then having those cards shipped to you for a cheaper price….this seems less time consuming. Especially for someone like me who is going to the post office frequently to mail orders anyway. And again, a tiny incentive (like $1 per shipment to you, for example) would be all it takes to buy my commitment :-).

Having someone you can trust is very key here. I'd wager people on this site would be trustworthy, but I couldn't sign people up of course.

What you're proposing is basically the opposite of what was suggested on the forums for magiccardmarket.eu, which is apparently unavailable for US based buyers. However I am able to buy from US based shops just fine, it's just that a few charge far too much for shipping. I have in the past frequently paid only about $4-$10. Not exactly cheap, but given the exchange rates and cheaper cards in general a lot more interesting than getting it here in Europe. Not that it's always bad to buy here, I frequently find underpriced cards at shops that are slow to update their prices. I even know some cards on the buylist of that 1 shop that are listed at higher buy prices than US sell prices…

The problem I found with TCGPlayer's shops is something that seems to have started recently. 2 months ago just about any order I tried went just fine with shipping costs in that $4-$10 range depending on volume. Maybe many new shops joined that don't like to sell overseas? I was thinking about suggesting some kind of shipping cost filter to TCGPlayer.

Btw, an interesting extension of your suggestion would be to fund a US based grinder. Why have a second collection just sitting there doing nothing, right?

Just a suggestion, do with it what you will 🙂

Unfortunately in The Netherlands there is only 1 online shop that has a buylist. I regularly trade in cards and do make sure to negotiate a bit (he's generally willing to come down a bit on price of what I am trading for unless I've caught him on something that has already exploded in price on other sites). Fortunately this shop is quite close to me. I understand that WeQu is going to put online a buylist for his Belgium based shop, but that is still in the testing phase. I might consider shipping some cards to him at some point. Sending cards to the US is just not worth it unless it's a few expensive singles because otherwise shipping will kill any profit, similarly to how I am frequently disappointed at TCGPlayer, picking out some nice and cheap cards at one of the shops only to discover they charge $40 to ship my $10 order.

I guess what I am saying is that you're very fortunate to have many shops to choose from :-).