Bulking Up Ep #4: “Put the Fear of God in Us”
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Something that I do at my shop is I never list anything as NM. I simply don't. Everything is LP, I don't care if it just came out of a pack. This eliminates an entire section of grading, eliminates some "wasted time" by getting rid of an entire conditioning section, etc. I know it sounds really weird to do, but it's saved us a lot of headaches and time. Plus, never had any one person complain about prices when they're trading stuff in either. Especially with the handy-dandy option in the app on your phone where you can switch it to scan "trade in high" prices and give them that number. Anyways, just something we do at our shop that's streamlined things a little.
At the end of the day all that matters is cards are selling. So if they still do at LP and it's easier to avoid NM then I think it's a sound strategy. I also think it reflects favorably on stores when their MP is basically LP. The customer feels like they got a good deal. But I know some buyers actively avoid MP cards so it can be risky to list them.
You can still get hit for sending in NM as LP if im not mistaken. I could be qrong though
If everyone did that though, you'd end up with the same problems as with Near Mint; because it's not like there's even an option to sell Mint condition cards on TCGplayer.
TCGplayer pro tip ✅
I’ve been thinking about doing this. Have your sales gone down?
Can you show some of the more common things on condition you got hit with or share the notes you printed for your employees
Honestly it sounds like a scam. They can make more money with less work by just claiming whatever cards you sent in didn't meet their standards so they can charge you the difference "to replace the card you should have sent it." Instead of keeping the allegedly lower condition card for the next sale of that type they send it back to you giving them a second bite at the money apple claiming it's the wrong condition again if you send it back in.
Imagine they're charging sellers $2 per card they reject for "replacement cost differences" and the average seller gets 100 cards rejected a week and let's say there's 1,250 sellers. $2 per card x 100 cards x 1,250 sellers = $250,000 a week by having a few $10 an hour employees say a card is in worse of a condition than it truly is.
Is there any transparency to the process like a small sample of the rejected cards get sent back with scans showing why it wasn't actually the condition you submitted it as or is more of a "trust us, other than easy money we have no reason to lie" type of deal?
Mason, I figured it's just like sending in your cards to grade. All depends on who is going through the direct orders(turns out i was right). We have sent in so many NM cards that meet their standards according on THEIR conditioning guide. However they got sent back as LP or even "damaged" .... once we got several of those cards back, I rechecked them personally, verified our original conditioning was correct, then just reposted them.
EVERY SINGLE CARD cleared the second time.
Let's say your cards go to an extremely detailed autistic kid who thinks every flaw is a major one.
VS the laid back guy who had been there for 10 years.
That little knick in the corner is still NM as you can have up to 3 small flaws.... Employee 1 says LP when Employee 2 agrees with the original NM conditioning.
Yes, our numbers as stores still need to be good, but it's not like their system is flawless by any means.
I run a store in NY, we are also direct. Just so you know, 99.9% you have correct conditions. What we practice is NM is LP, LP+ is MP. If we post NM its gotta be very very good. Direct is a little ridiculous and way too strict
About the band if cards option one maybe have employees initial what’s set they put away for the day to help check behind workers and give more tips on grading or it was the person grading the cards when it came in at TCG.
Problem is most buyers don’t even know what NM means
Many sellers don't either; I've had "Near Mint" cards arrive with water damage, hundreds of scratches, scuff marks deep enough to expose the white underneath the surface of the card, indents where someone clearly pushed their fingernail into it as hard as they could, and/or literally bent in half. One even came covered along one edge in an "unidentifiable white substance", which I'm really hoping wasn't cocaine. When I get even one example of theses sorts of "Near Mint" cards, I see little point in tolerating "one to three slight flaws (which is a whole argument in and of itself as to what counts as a "slight flaw"; as I've had a seller insist a bent corner counts)" throughout the rest of the order.
@@terthna7186 true, there can be bad actors on the selling side too but less than the ignorance of buyers id say
@@terthna7186agree. I’d go as far as saying 1/2 of the NM cards I get off TCGplayer are true LP-MP condition. It’s ridiculous. And no I’m not trying to grade them and know what NM is. Not expecting perfection/near perfection. Just had a card with hundreds of scratches, water damage, dent or two, heavy edge wear and whitening and I message the guy and mention it. He says “could you please provide photos. I did…explaining all the spots over multiple photos along with the general rough surface. His response is “I will honor the condition difference, but I really think this is NM. This falls in the parameters.” 😂😂😂 People selling really have no clue.
Your video is an everlasting wellspring of motivation! - "Every setback holds a precious lesson in disguise."
These bot comments are so weird.
Solution: unless you open it, list everything as LP
Hope you can create a better grading system! It’s so subjective, we shouldn’t have to do a psa grading for bulk.
Also does the phyzbatch help much with Amazon packs? Do you have another machine or all by hand?
you can't beat condition issues because TCGPlayer's Graders will always have a problem with what you send in.
Feels like a wrong condition key in Roca is fairly likely given what you said. Crazy thing to manage with all the cards all the people touching so many aspects of the process too. You got this.
In the end though, aren’t his employees still grabbing them and agreeing with the conditions?
Yes, employees verify condition along the way.
For my operation i usually swap to LP for any whitening/edge wear etc. price difference isnt enough to warrent the replacement fee
Yet customers still complain and win..
@@GiggityGiggity_Jawn we can only control what we can control
Gratz on the serialized ulamog! The shiny borderless is like $250 right now. I can imagine what you could get for a serialized version🎉
I feel like the condition discrepancy is on tcgolayer lol
Love the videos
As someone that did QC work for years, I wonder if anyone is checking each individual's work. A regular spot check of the days work could show the problems. I am sure you are doing something like that.
I got that email as well, But they gave me another 30 days since my numbers has improved. Hopefully you guys will get that chance as well.
Mason,
We have the same issues with tcgplayer. We don’t understand why or what is going on but at the rate of what I’ve seen this far I believe their system itself is going crazy. Last RI I had a missing card. I took the set and audit that set and everything was accounted for. I only sell on tcgplayer and no in person sales here at my house so how’d that card get into inventory? Same thing with conditioning. Random blocks of cards were logged wrong. I don’t have a sorter and I’m a one man show. How did I manage to load multiple sets in a row into the computer but put them in the right boxes? Something’s off here
-Clay
Very interesting. Thanks Clay.
2:20 TCGPlayer be on that shit. Bruh they really need to check their graders.
Incoming new hires!! 😂😂
If you dont fail, your not trying
What about his 'not trying?'
100/500 (assuming your usual is closer to something like 5-10% error) suggests some weird issue like a bit batch of cards got scuffed up by a roka machine or something. suggestion: do you do a double check when pulling the cards or just pull it from NM pile assuming whoever/whichever machine put it there was correct? (obviously this takes more time and maybe not a rigorous re condition but a quick double check). another idea i know a lot of card shops just throw cards without sleeves into boxes, maybe worth considering adding some more protection if you don't already, with how strict tcgplayer can be (and seems to be getting more strict), a NM card whcih is then sent through a sorter and then handled and thrown in a box and shuffled about without a sleeve could easily become LP by the time it gets sold
anyway good luck with your next 30 days
I'm curious; if tcgplayer were to offer a "bulk" condition would you use it? (i.e. a very lenient catch-all for everything that could be NM to MP) What price range would you consider listing bulk at? If the thought is appealing I would definitely bring it up to your Rep so tcgp knows Sellers would like that sort of thing.
I jumped out of Direct years ago and haven’t looked back. I didn’t enjoy getting worse cards back than I sent in.
I've had some RI come back 100% clean, and some get massacred. I had 30 days to get to 5%, so I just lowered my prices slightly and blew the % out on volume. Whew!
also, tcgplayer is out of stock on tons of cards, not sure how they are going to continue Direct if they kick everyone out
Companies like eBay really can put the hurt on small business owners. 3rd party platforms really can be a scary thing to rely on.
I understand cutting corners trying to save time and money but you cant have both fast and accurate. You will have to settle in the middle or this will not end well. Probably need to have a second layer of quality control setup. I am in a different business but we would NEVER rely on a single individuals judgement or machine without a QA check before releasing product anywhere. This would open the entire business to massive liability, all from a momentary judgement error from a single person.
Aye, new cards in 2023/2024 Magic often don't qualify as NM out of the booster any more. It's a tragic slope they are on, bad cutting, chips, dings, printing issues, offcenter cuts etc. etc. One would imagine for the asking price of a box the company would get proper QA for their product but the only assurance they seem to care about is their margins.
yeez thats a reality check that the business is that dependent of Direct, hope you and your crew get thru this, love these series!
My direct % is so high that i missed 7 cards in my last RI and wrote a note for each one stating they are missing. They didn't even mark them missing after they processed it. My direct accuracy is over 99.9% with over 300k cards in my invintory opperating from my kid's playroom😂. I hope you can get your issues fixed. You may just have to do the grading yourself. When you take the hits for discrepancies, you learn what they want super fast. But employees dont feel the hit like you do, so they won't learn as quickly, if at all. Or you could just ship me everything you want to list, and I'll grade and sort it for you properly, and send it back all neat and tidy, ready to list. But that may be a 3 week job, taking a week to ship to me. A week to sort and a week to ship back. Probably not the most efficient way to do things.... I'll keep thinking and get back with ya.
You’d be able to sort 50,000-100,000 cards in a week? Whoa
@chexnfx7161 i can sort, grade, list, and price about 3 or 4k a day steady if im not flooded with orders from a new release (about one 4 row box a day). And sorry if i came off rude. I should have been more polite. Hope you guys get back in the +98% soon.
@@YokoBeLoco dang. That would be nice to shadow and see your systems and way of doing it. Would be a good learning experience.
Thank you for having the courage to share the negative and embarrassing part of the business.
TCG is full of it. Their 'conditioners’ are half the problem. I bought an LP card off direct. I realized I already had it so I added it to my direct store. It sold and then was sent back to me as a discrepancy by them as MP. You will never win with them. I’m clearing out my inventory off direct, going back to customer only mailings
i meant. what if the LP card was indeed conditioned wrongly? many cards on TCGPlayers really conditioned better than they really were
Condition is in the eye of the beholder. I'm not sue how the heck they can expect you to grade at their standards when I bet their employees can't either. I know they gave those plastic guides to you but what is seen and interpeted can easily be different. Glad you guys are making a ton of money on it but it seems like TCG player will be losing most of their program members at this point.
You need to slow down if you want this to work. Being in a rush gets you nowhere.
Personally I think they're going to shut down direct. It's costly to own all these cards and sort them all the time. eBay makes money from fees and they're going to want tcgplayer to move to that model
But tcgplayer has fees also?
@@GiggityGiggity_Jawn correct, but if they eliminate direct they don't have to carry inventory
Right on the money, TCGplayer is being challenged by eBay to fix it or kill it, the fix it is what we're watching here and suffice to say, it isn't gonna cut it to keep the program running. Another gentleman in the comments talked about a general "bulk" condition listing, probably a good move forward for TCGplayer if they don't kill it. Vying to be the premier location for NM bulk is a race to the bottom.
@@John-et5wuwell said
This is why I left direct after about a week of seeing people getting kicked without warning. My discrepancy rate fine but their standards and explanations are just idiotic. Two different people are always going to disagree on conditions of certain cards - TCGplayer's own conditioning video says that multiple times. So I wouldn't be too tough on your guys...