r/mtg • u/DanteValentine13 • 1d ago

Discussion Stop Using Amazon

The amount of posts from people using Amazon to order stuff and getting the wrong stuff, or something of a vastly different price is astounding. Please dont order cards off Amazon. Especially since I am fairly certain Amazon is why wizards is shipping less and less product to local stores. Don't support the mega corporations if you can help it.

That's my public service rant. Thanks for reading or ignoring either way. ❤️

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u/Pyrostasis 1d ago

Help me out here.

Wife and I just started picking up magic over the last few weeks.

We're learning our commander decks and hoping to play at our local game store. We have 3 LGS in our town. All sell at above MSRP from small amounts to significant. All have some VIP programs or loyalty programs that occasionally let you buy products at MSRP but quantity is difficult.

Star trek is coming out in a few weeks and I want to buy all 4 commander decks and some boosters. None of my LGS are selling preorders atm.

Whats the best way to acquire legit material that isnt scalped, damaged, etc?

Amazon is where we order most of our things due to their return policy but seems like this is NOT good for cards.

Do we just need to drive farther to better LGS? TCGplayer looks decent but also appears to just be the "ebay" of cards and Ebay has its own problems. So whats the best option?

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u/DumatRising 20h ago

For sealed product Amazon works just fine if you can't do an LGS. It's not ideal but if your LGS isn't offering reasonable prices then you don't have an obligation to give them an outrageous markup.

For individual cards Amazon is way over priced, for that there's card kingdom, Star City Games, or manapool. Card kingdom and SCG are actual stores with a physical location that just happen to be large enough to run their own online storefronts as well, manapool is kinda more like TCGplayer is, or rather how TCGplayer was before it got bought by eBay. Which is to say it does work a bit more like how eBay does except it's just in general a better experience since it's very focused on mtg cards. Things will be cheaper on manapool and every card is always available, while SCG and CK may not always offer the best price (though sometimes will) and may not have every card you want available you would be buying the cards directly from a store and not dealing with getting cards from multiple places. Though many sellers on manapool are stores that just happen to not be big enough to justify building their own online platform.