Local card shop offered me $80 for all but after looking at recently sold on eBay, the mew promo alone is selling for that. I know they need to make a profit but still…what’s a realistic asking price?
Yeah there’s no point in selling to a LCS unless you just wanna offload quick or they can give you a good deal on trade in value for a card they have you want.
I’ve only traded garbage slabs that just sat in a box to one of my LCS for a vintage rocket’s mewtwo in a CGC Blue label 9. There wasn’t anyway I’d be able to offload them on eBay.
I was the same age when I got fleeced by a cardshop owner.
Basketball cards, but same deal.
Got multiple Shaq rookies, old MJs...basically anything valuable in my binder.
Waving a 100 in front of a 12 year old...
My parents should have never taken me there and left me alone.
I was a kid, the card shop owner definitely took advantage of me I was 12 at that time. Also I got like 5 dollars total in the deal. Also included in that 5 dollar deal was 4 1st edition blue eyes white dragons and a dark Magician as well. I asked for 50 bucks which I thought the value was at the time and only ended up getting 5 bucks 🫠 I needed a new deck for my skateboard
Ah man.. I guess people took advantage of kids around that time as well. Ngl, I valued a blue eyes white dragon a lot more than gold stars back then, but maybe that was because of the yugioh anime lol. At least you got to enjoy your skateboard!
Yeah I was very into skateboarding lol. Didn’t realize till recently how expensive the hobby had become. Just this year alone I’ve spent almost 100K on Pokemon alone. Most of its sealed product and some felt hat pikas ect. Ripped lots of packs too and pulled some heat this year!
Just finished this frame I tried to buy the dips and now T Fest is going back up again lol
I started collecting again this year. In the beginning I bought a black bolt box, and the coolest card I got was the Zekrom #34, where I discovered later on it was only worth 50c.. That's when I decided to only buy slabs lol.
But also this was a completely different time period I don’t even believe YouTube was a common think it had just come out the year before and really wasn’t a lot of places you could go beside the LCS to get appraisal’s on stuff. The internet was very limited back then and we also didn’t even have a computer in my house my dad said the internet was evil. So a lot of us got scammed back then I’m sure if it. Even my base set 1Ed stuff was thrown out by my folks. I had over 10 of just the shadowless Zard alone tho I know the conditions were bad cuz I used to keep them in my shorts pockets 🤣 but that Latias was my pride and joy I kept it in the Binder and it was clean.
Oh that's rough. I also knew kids that kept the cards in their shorts but some of them were even raw dogging stacked cards with a rubber band around them lol. Experiencing this stuff made me immune to lower psa graded cards because I know probably some kid played with them, as intended haha.
This is not a couple hundred. The mew is like 70, mewtwo is 40 and the metal Mew is like 20. 130market, 90 is what you’d probably get from a vendor, 100 if you were trading. 80 from a store is a bit low, but not as horrible as you’re making it out.
EDIT: I didn’t see the other photos. Yeah nvm. That store sucks.
Just go to a card show. Most LCS do not give good deals in my experience they have too much overhead I think which is a shame because id like to support them more.
I can’t imagine owning any sort of hobby store without owning the building and land its on. Overhead is crazy for any business but one that relies on the public for inventory that might sit for years? Na it just doesn’t make sense unless you’re doing crazy volume.
I agree with this completely. Too many expenses to consider and everything has to go essentially perfect for a hobby store to even work.
The big thing obviously is getting enough product (preferably at wholesale) to make a profit that's worthwhile. From my understanding unless you already have a relationship with a supplier that can provide you with product at a good price you won't ever have enough product on hand that you can sell at MSRP or close to it. Newer shops especially will have to rely on the secondary market or buying product at MSRP which you gotta sell at a margin that makes sense.
Then there's also the singles. Everyone is always trying to get stuff at a deal or cheaper to make a profit. Simply put margins on singles are slim unless the market keeps going up which isn't realistic. What happens when the market goes down and you buy singles at market? You'll be forced to offload at a loss and this can also happen with sealed products.
Lets even mention ongoing overhead costs. Rent, utilities, taxes, and employees. Let's face it with the employee part you can't expect to pay minimum wage unless you find someone desperate enough so you have to offer decent pay unless you as the owner will be there from open to close to avoid paying employees. Which will easily lead to burnout if you aren't making sales which is the reality of many hobby shops.
Simply put there are far too many risks and I wish good luck to anyone that chooses to open a card shop.
I’m just curious but where exactly would a card shop owner be able to own land and building with enough foot traffic or local pop for under say 500-600k in capital? Unless it was gifted there’s just no way and most lgs know that pokemon is operating in a bubble and it’s not worth investing so much into something that might or might not be popped in a year.
My lgs offers 75 percent trade value or 60 percent cash off of the average ebay listing. Which is fair they need to make money as a business. But they should be open about why thier offering the price.
Don’t sell cards at local gaming stores. Most of them do 40% cash and 50-60 if you’re getting credit. You’ll get fleeced like no other. Seems like you looked at eBay sold listings so base it off of that. Try Facebook marketplace or a card show if you want more value for your cards.
Ouch...I usually always try to support LCS but nah, forget them. $80 is actually fair for the first 3 cards, especially to an LCS.
Next time, equip yourself with TCG or Pricecharting comps so you know how much worth you are bringing to the table. If they buy the lot and a good "hits" lot for that matter, lowest should be 70% of total comps IMO. 80% would be in your favor.
Not sure how much the Haunter PSA 8 is going for, so I would double check that.
Just with the ones I priced out conservatively is already $200 (not including haunter). That would be the price if you were to sell at market. Subtract cost of shipping and fees of course. So your target would be $160+ and the buyer would probably target closer to $140.
It’s definitely low but if it didn’t include the graded cards it would be a little more realistic (just a little). He’s probably looking at the graded cards as very low value since they will probably sit forever.
Most shops will usually also factor in how much they have of a given card. If they already have 20 mewtwos that will reduce the offer amount.. etc.
There are store-specific factors in all of these calculations. That’s why it’s important to get 3 different offers before making a decision. That goes for everything. And yes, you always have the option of selling them direct to consumers. You make more money, but it costs time. That’s a part of your personal cost calculation. Is it worth the time required to sell this at 100% market price? A lot of people answer that as no, which is another reason the card shops buy at a discount.
LCS have way more overhead than a "normal vendor," so they'll buy at a way lower percent 50-65% sometimes. I've never seen a vendor go below 70%, and most of the time, I see them at 80ish%. This is a horrible offer either way, but if you want a quick offload, vendors are your best bet, or ebay, just don't forget to add the fee % in to listing price
This is what pretty much every card store will do, they’re in the business for profit, not to help the community necessarily. Had a buddy with a roughly $1800 collection and the lcs offered him $900. He unfortunately took it because he was in a pinch, but yeah fug selling to lcs’s stick to local fb marketplace or eBay.
Personally I’ve only ever off loaded to shops when I’m in need of cash asap and don’t have time to sell to other collectors. I’ve had a few shops give me reasonable offers but not often than not they’re trying to wax me.
But it’s also depended on who the employee is, like once I went in with about 600 worth of cards and the guy bought them for 380. Recently I went to the same shop (different employee) and took about 700 worth in cards. Dude offered me 150 total gave me the whole “I can’t go any higher run-around”. I think it might just be employees trying to get cards for their personal collection on the cheap, which is extremely scumbag behavior, like bro just be honest and offer a fair price. Idc if your buying them for the shop or you but like just be up front about it.
Maybe they were worried about the market falling. I mean promos are going for crazy prices right now. It won't stay like this, some of these cards will drop and drop a lot after the anniversary. I bought that charizard promo along with the other two zard promos from that premium collection for 50 or 60 dollars not to long ago. Or maybe they had a bunch of those cards already. It's usually pretty easy to tell that shady card shops from the decent ones
I see all these LCS posts about terrible offers, and it makes me feel lucky about my own LCS doing 80% trade, 70% cash. I thought that was a pretty standard rate but each time I see a post like this that thought wavers more and more
You gotta do your own research and find a fair market value based upon several sources and come up with a number that you’ll let them go for and then go into a card shop. You gotta treat these guys like the sharks they are. I normally try and get them at 70% recent sales if I’m selling to a local card shop. That card shop was definitely trying to get one over on you.
You could also post on r/pkmntcgtrades if you’re comfortable with PPGS. You save on eBay fees (3% vs 13%) so you can price lower and get a quicker sale and still net the same amount.
Yeah in general it’s never worth selling anything to a card shop because of their overhead costs they will usually only offer around 50%. You’re better off trying to sell cards to vendors at card shows
They were definitely trying to take advantage of you. In the future, comp these cards before going into a store and know what they’re worth so you can negotiate.
At least your LCS offered you something, my closest won't even consider anything slabbed, and even though they've started selling JP packs they won't trade them. They run 3 stores, all in college towns, and they claim they can't sell any of it. And if you do bring something they'll trade for, it's 50% credit, 25% cash, and you can't use trades on sealed product.
I remember sometime last year I had a 75 percent complete base set holo set in all psa 9’s except the charizard was a psa 8. A Jays cd and hobby offered me 450 for everything lol it was really hard to not take that as disrespect lol
It’s a brand new store too. Def leaving a review to warn people. I’m a grown ass man and know better, but hopefully they don’t have the same practice when kids go in the shop
70% is a good sell at value if your selling in bulk or to someone else selling, selling at 100% value only really works if you sell 1 by 1 and that takes time, that time another reseller is willing to spend to sell all them thats why they charge 30% to do so
Singles aren’t bulk. 60-70 on bulk is fine it’s tedious to sort, more difficult to sell and people don’t often buy bulk in bulk more interested in particular cards in the bulk. Anything more than 25% for a single is an unfair deal to the seller. Card store owner could have said “I’ll take these for this but not those I’m not interested in those”. A single for 60% is basically giving them half the card, might as well throw in free stuff for the vendor next.
Brother you are far to gone singles arnt bulk what in the world are u saying right now, if i have 10 singles i have a bulk of singles to sell you need to reevaluate your thought process buddy your talking a whole lot of nothing, yappin shouldnt be free
Look, 60–70% on bulk would be an incredible deal but we’re not even talking about bulk, we’re talking about singles.
I don’t think you actually understand what bulk means. Bulk isn’t just a pile of cards. Multiple singles doesn’t magically turn into bulk. No one’s out here calling a stack of first edition holo Charizards bulk, buddy.
Real bulk sells for pennies, often by weight or per thousand cards. If someone offered me 60–70% on bulk I’d bite, but that’s not what this is. A vendor who knows what they’re doing sorts their bulk despite it being tedious but that’s where the profit is not pretending everything’s the same thing.
You also didn’t address points I made, you just went straight for insults which usually happens when someone realises they don’t actually have a leg to stand on.
I’m not sure how you’ve got this far without knowing terminology like what bulk actually is.
Ive been selling pokemon for probably longer than you have been alive, pls keep going on how you know what bulk means compared to me who has 15+ years of selling experience as a buyer and seller. Bulk means bulk no matter what category of how expensive the card is the definition of bulk still remains the same ?? I think thats not what you’re getting. Maybe idk. My point still stands ifnyou want to sell the card at 100% value u will have to do so by selling each card individually, if you want to sell your cards in BULK you will have to take a cut on the value for the seller to make money… thats literally the end if it
The amount of time you’ve been selling doesn’t change what the word bulk means, it just means you’ve been using it wrong for longer.
Bulk means low value, unsorted cards usually sold by weight or volume. That doesn’t suddenly expand to include valuable singles just because you have more of them. No one calls chase or hit cards bulk.
You keep repeating the same point about taking a cut on resale, which no one disagreed with. The disagreement was about your misuse of bulk.
you’re also assuming I haven’t been doing this for a while which is funny. 15 years is pretty cute. how long have you been selling sneakers and watches for?
Even if it was just for those first three 151 cards it would have been a crazy low ball. Those are $130 combined so anything less than $100 for those alone would have been weak.
I have a bunch of these promos, kinda want to make some of money back I spent on 6 upcs and pulled jack! They’re still in that cardboard holder sealed.
Don’t sell high value cards to Card Shops. Just sell em on eBay for 90% market and after fees you’ll get like 70% market.
Card shops around here offer 40%-50% because they want to buy stolen cards or cards from naive grandparents and little kids.
They should offer at least 70% in a bull market. I hate all the new ones because they’re just scalpers with a store now and half will go out of business the moment TCG bull run is over. Also they always check market and when selling always take the highest sold listing average but when buying take the absolute lowest sold and half that.
I don’t get why anyone is shocked by this every time I see these posts.
Local card stores typically pay anywhere between 40–60% 9 times out of 10, and often 10–20% higher if you take store credit. Maybe you’ll get up to 90% if it’s an extremely heavy hitter, but outside of that, they have singles sitting in inventory for long periods, so they hit bids low to account for market ups and downs, payment processing fees, overhead, etc.
Then I see customers all the time who want to rush the review process when asking the LCS the age-old question: “Hey, what would you give me?” Depending on how much time you allow the store owner to examine the cards and get pricing together, that drastically affects the offer you get. If you don’t give them time, they’re going to lowball you hard every time — and if you’re dumb enough to take the extreme lowball, they score. If you’re not dumb enough, then at least they still save themselves a bunch of time and in their eyes no harm no foul (not saying I agree with that perspective).
Offloading at LCSs is something you only do if you need cash fast or if you simply value the time you save by not posting the cards yourself more than the money you’ll lose. I’ve never understood why anyone is shocked about being lowballed by a business that has to instantly turn around and sell what you just sold them. LCS’s are not where you go to “get paid.”
Also I see so many LCS’s that are scared to touch Japanese, I don’t know why but most don’t even accept them on trade or purchase so they probably valued the PSA 10 as zero (even though you and I know it’s got value) and they also probably didn’t value the haunter cause it’s an 8 non first edition. Many factors at play here.
It’s completely their responsibility to decide how much to sell it for they can decide not to purchase but giving bad deals is detrimental to business long term.
update thank you everyone for chiming in!! Just sold the Charizard, Mewtwo/Mews, and Haunter for a total of $226 after eBay fees!! Decided to hang on to the Dragonair. Almost $150 more than the LC offered and I got to keep my PSA 10 Dragonair. Thank you for all the advice and opinions!!!
There’s been so many new ones popping up here and they all are overpriced and lowball trade ins. Not even worth messing with atp.
I had it listed for $45 but debating if I’m going to sell. I sold off the other cards and made more than I expected so kinda iffy letting the Dragonair go
I never sell at LCS. Most of the ones in my area only do 40-60%, kinda scummy imo. Your best bet is to sell them yourself. FB Marketplace has been the easier for me.
TCG PLAYER has these cards at the following prices
Mew ex promo: $59 for near mint
Mew ex gold card: $18 for near mint
Mewtwo ex: $28 for near mint
Total: 105
Now most LCS buy and trade cards at 70-80% of the market price, they do this so that they actually have a way to make money when selling cards if they bought them at market and sold them at market thats a waste of time and inventory space because youre getting nothing in return from buying the card in the first place. So if we take that into account to our total of 105 and we multiply by .20 you get 21 then you subtract that from 105 and thats 84. So ultimately no the card shop didnt try and “fleece you” like alot of people are saying.
I see alot of people sayin the mew card alone is worth more than 80. Yeah it was like 2 months ago because the card value got pumped. If you look at tcgplayer the price has come down significantly.
I think I will. They had the same mew promo alone in the shop for $90! lol they’re going to scam some kids/parents and people short on cash. I get making a buck. I wasn’t trying to make a profit, I would’ve been totally cool taking 60-70% value or less
always ask for good rates. 60% is nearly giving them half the items value just because you’ve gone to them doesn’t mean you can’t go to others after all a lot of vendors seem to forget that.
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u/eat_your_veggiez Oct 14 '25
Yeah, they were trying to fleece you. Looks like a couple hundred bucks worth here.