+ I've been thinking to buy something between $25k to $30k. My idea is to buy a nice collection, not single cards nor bulk commons/uncommons. It should be something Legacy/t1/EDH oriented.

+ I would be probably have to buy that from a person in the USA or Canada so instead of spending a lot in fees and shipping i would rather go there and buy it in person. In order to do this I would like to know a few things first.

+ Are there any kind of events there that make collections that big easy to find?.

+ In case I find someone from MOTL willing to sell. The way to go to assure that when I go there to pick the collection would be through third party or do you think it can be any other method?.

+ Is there a time of the year in which collections easier to find?

+ The big question, price: I have experience buying collections but not that big, should the price reduction in opposition to single cards be higher or lower than smaller lots?. (nice collections tend to be around 80%, so collections this big should be closer to 70% or to 90%?)

Any other suggestion would be nice!.

but as for advise, you might wan't to be more specific in what you're looking for. Alot of stuff is going to be just bulk crap. And you're always going to want to look through a collection before you buy it, because someone will try to sell you a vintage/legacy collection, with two FOW a LED and 10,000 bad rares that are vintage/legacy legal.

__________________
Joz - can we ban Leshrac for not fixing the Chrome PM issue?

Could you be more specific about what kind of collection you are looking for? If you are throwing around that kind of money and are just trying to find a one stop destination to have an instant good collection I would assume you would have to find someone who is not looking to get out of magic, but would sell their full collection at a premium. That should be easy to find as many high end collectors/traders are generally looking to gain value on everything and at the right price I am sure they would be willing to start over.

But if you are looking to find someone who is trying to just move a collection of that size because they no longer want it, I say good luck to you sir as that sounds like an unlikely find.

quote:

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Originally posted by Timmyhill:
A guy with this user name (john brozovsky) over on cardshark.com was trying to sell me his collection for 350k... says it contained a playset of every core and expansion set printed.

I dont know if he still has it or not but if your intrested I can try to find his email again.

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Once it gets over $5000, it:

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Originally posted by stu55:
$350k seems awful?

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+1

if anyone had $350k and bought cards with it, he should be struck by lightning and die.

First (more likely) is the collector who collects a lot of old stuff early on and has seen his collection exploded in value tremendously. His collection will be focused and slim, with relatively few junks or bulks. Likely a prime Donna who checks out those high BIN offerings on eBay and thinks you are scamming him

quote:

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Originally posted by Timmyhill:
A guy with this user name (john brozovsky) over on cardshark.com was trying to sell me his collection for 350k... says it contained a playset of every core and expansion set printed.

I dont know if he still has it or not but if your intrested I can try to find his email again.

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Preciously the kind of "prime donna" seller who over-inflates his MTG holdings' value that I was talking about.

Assuming his stuff are NM, 4x of these sets are:
Alpha - 80000
Beta - 80000
UNL - 40000
AN - 5000
LEG - 6000
ANQ - 3200
3rd - 3000
$217,200 to date

FE - 100
HL - 80
Chronicles - 100
IA - 320
Alliances - 440
Mirage - 440
Visions - 260
Weatherlight - 240
Tempest - 800
Stronghold - 400
Exodus - 400
Urza Saga - 1400
Urza Legacy - 300
Urza Destiny - 280

As background, I converted to collector after running out of time and opportunities to play. So I started "collecting" around 1998. I was an active accumulator of cards and collections through ~ 2005, but never tried to pick up anything still in rotation, so my collection is basically 2001 or 2002 and earlier. I was always better at buying cards and collections than I was with selling them.

I don't have enough time to work on my core collection, and I have even less time to completely organize my extras. My extras are probably on the order of 100,000+. And while many are organized, many others are not. I know most of the extra big money cards I have, although anything newer than Unlimited or Antiquities that has spiked in the last 4 or 5 years might still be buried in the bulk piles. I am torn between putting in the time to finally organize everything versus just selling most of the extras as bulk to clean up the mess and eliminate a massive undertaking. So far neither view has won out.

Which brings me to recommendations to answer the original post.

1. Collections of larger than ~ $10,000 aren't that common, especially if you are looking for hidden gems. Most collectors (and all dealers) will know pretty much what they have. If you buy a completely organized, set based collection, you need to expect pretty close to set pricing.

2. You may be able to bargain a bit more with collectors on price. Dealers typically base everything off actual list price, and are familiar with maximizing sales price, since it is their profession. Collectors typically understand "list price", but are more flexible. Like me, they might not be as comfortable or interested in selling at retail, and their floor price would be dealers buy price. The bottom line is that you are hoping to buy at dealer buy prices. One limitation is that collectors know how liquid key cards are. So you can't expect to bargain dual lands down much, no matter how big the buy.

3. If you are coming to the US to buy large quantities of cards, make sure you do a lot of homework first.

- The US is huge, and extensive traveling can eat up a lot of money.
- Your best deals will probably be sprawling collections lacking organization. These will require more time from you to evaluate and sort. Even if you can scan 20,000 or 30,000 cards per day, that means a 100,000 card collection might take 3 to 5 days to evaluate and (assuming you are successful) pack for shipment. If the collection is already organized you spend less time but probably pay a higher price because of the organization.
- Take into consideration the cost of shipping. Cards weigh quite a bit. To hand-carry the key cards while shipping the bulk cards implies completely sorting each collection. Otherwise you are paying a lot more for insurance on the shipments to protect your investment.

Most air travel's weight limit is 25kg. Setting aside 2kg for the luggage case weight, you have 23kg left, or basically room for 11500 cards assuming you do not use any box/albums/toploaders to store them in. Maybe you can stuff another 2000 cards into your "laptop bag with no laptop", and another few thousands into your hand carry. But it will be difficult to carry anything more than 20000 cards, unless you have Bus/1st Class with much higher luggage limit.

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Originally posted by MTDetermine:
99% of the time, I offer more than "dealers buy price". The collectors I meet to date usually base their asking price on the "high side of ebay prices".....Basically, they want retail price. After a while, you know who you can work with, who you cannot.

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Any collector who won't budge from the high side of Ebay doesn't really want to sell, or wants to be a dealer. At a minimum, I expect that a face-to-face cash sale would discount by 20% off the combined Ebay price plus shipping, except in the case of the most desirable cards. Because even when a buyer pays final price plus shipping, the seller gets ~ 20% less after shipping, Paypal and Ebay fees.

quote:

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Originally posted by MTDetermine:
I did not know a "large collection" can have 100,000 cards. Mine is only 20,000+ cards though the value is pretty not bad.

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quote:

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Originally posted by stizkidz:
I'm reading this thread wondering why would a serious collector/player want to buy ANY amount of bulk other than to resell?

I would assume that anyone buying a large collection (not as a dealer) would only be interested in buying staples or even semi-playables in any kind of quantity, no?

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International deals are a different animal than domestic ones. We in the US don't appreciate how good we have it when it comes to English language cards. And While Japan and Western Europe have "developed" Magic communities, many other countries don't.

The original poster is from Argentina. If Argentina is like most South American countries, it is difficult to find any older cards (in any language). When I used to sell on Ebay, I was amazed how much higher prices were in some markets, simply because the players couldn't get any quantities of cards (and many Ebayers were afraid to ship to their countries). Some looked to buy bulk collections and had formats set up locally that purposely kept deck prices cheap (by using bulk cards) so that more people could participate competitively.

If you have a reasonable Magic community, local demand may support large purchases directly from the US. But International shipping / insurance costs can be a deal-breaker. In terms of final costs to get cards into the country, a visit like the one initially proposed is economically reasonable if done right. And it doesn't matter whether this is a large group purchase or an investment in a business.

quote:

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Originally posted by MTDetermine:
Mine is only 20,000+ cards though the value is pretty not bad.

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quote:

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Originally posted by stizkidz:
I'm reading this thread wondering why would a serious collector/player want to buy ANY amount of bulk other than to resell?

I would assume that anyone buying a large collection (not as a dealer) would only be interested in buying staples or even semi-playables in any kind of quantity, no?

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Take this into account : the ability of getting your card LIVE (Not having to wait for shipping, shipping fees, possibility of scam/loss) does command a premium.

Also, locally, you don't have access to all cards, and it takes times + physical movement to find what you want. Internet makes it very easy.

quote:

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Originally posted by stizkidz:
I'm reading this thread wondering why would a serious collector/player want to buy ANY amount of bulk other than to resell?

I would assume that anyone buying a large collection (not as a dealer) would only be interested in buying staples or even semi-playables in any kind of quantity, no?

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1. Many bulk cards turn into 10-20+ cards. Example, when Time Spiral was unbanned, I found 8 in my bulk rares.

2. Not all people just want staples. There are more casual players than serious players. Many times they want cards that serious players won't touch because they're not in a net deck. EDH players want cards that will never be playable in any 1 on 1 format.

3. People can do junk rare drafts for fun.

quote:

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Originally posted by rats60:

2. Not all people just want staples. There are more casual players than serious players. Many times they want cards that serious players won't touch because they're not in a net deck. EDH players want cards that will never be playable in any 1 on 1 format.

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EDH is more serious of a format than people realize. I've noticed some cards skyrocket in price simply because of EDH. I don't know if the format is really taking off yet as far as stores doing tournaments for it but more and more people around me are playing EDH just for fun. What I love most about EDH is that there really is no net decking and the way people win is not always the same way. In a way it kinda takes me back to the days when I first started playing and really loved the game before net decking came about.

to answer a few and to describe better what was my idea.

+ I said 25-30k$, NOT 350$k :-).

+ The fact that I'm willing to spend that on cards doesn't mean that I want to do an awful deal or that I'm an idiot :-). So please stop sending me offers with ridicously high prices to my email. Apparently I thought wrongly that there would be a few collectors that would be happy to move their collections at a reasonable price which brings me to.-->

+ My idea to buy a collection was because I thought that due to the increase of legacy and foil prices there may be some people willing to cash out their lots and moving them as a whole would demand them less effort, but again I may be wrong.

+ Like i said in my post. I wasn't looking for bulk, in case the collection i was buying contained that i would probably pick the decent stuff and give the purely bulk stuff away or put that in the trash. That's one of the reasons I'm considering going there instead of getting the cards shipped.

+ Looking at several comments It would seems easier to buy the staples at the actual price and look for lower cards in smaller collections.

+ My idea was to travel because in a 25$k collection the cost of sending the money+shipping = the cost of going there.

+ Magic scene here in my country is getting bigger every time and there are no large quantities of older cards available (those were sent from Argentina to USA and Europe 10 years ago when Argentina devaluated it's currency). Also Argentina is a very complicated country where for example cheap packs mean 5.15$ each. Also, market prices' here are completely deifferently of what you may see anywhere else.

+ Like MTDetermine said, I'm not going to carry bulk and 25kg is more than enough for cards. I didn't consider that as a problem. (I would eventually dispatch the rest if there was more).