Arabian Nights are up!

Today I finished getting the cards from the Arabian Nights set all up in the Store. There's some truly impressive cards in there. I convinced Alan to try selling these individually instead of a complete set, since it should (in theory) net more when they sell that way.

I have also gone through and confirmed that the sets of Antiquities, The Dark and Legends are complete. He's got 2 complete sets of the first two, even! And, frankly, these are some of the most Mint cards I've seen in quite some time. Alan made the sets when the Expansions came out - he bought multiple boxes of each Expansion, and made the sets as he opened the packs. These cards have never been in decks, never been shuffled, barely been touched, even. I even felt guilty going through them myself!

I need to take some photos of the better cards to include with the listing, tomorrow, then they'll be up as well. There are other sets to go through as well. Hopefully I can get them all cleared and up tomorrow. Some of the sets may not be complete, however, and I'll need to look into acquiring the missing cards first. Hopefully not too many fall into that category.

I now own an Alpha Mox Pearl. Ye Gods!

Okay, last night I went over to my friend's house (howdy, Alan!) - the one who was interested in having me sell (or buy) his Magic collection. He had given me a figure that he would consider fair (and I agreed with him) to buy him out. An alternative was to sell them for him at 50% commission.

I wasn't sure I wanted to (or should) shell out his asking price all at once (while fair, it was a lot). But I knew I sure as heck didn't want to keep meticulous careful notes on thousands of cards, which would be necessary if I went the commission route.

When I got there last night, he proposed a compromise which I found nothing short of brilliant. He sold me the bulk of his collection for a certain amount (I won't disclose, but let's say I should have no problem making my money back and then some...in fact I've told him that if I end up making a LOT more than that - like 4x or more - I'd give him some more because I don't want to take advantage of a friend). And the rest of his cards, which represent complete sets of things, (like the 3 copies of the complete Collector's Edition, two of which are already up for auction or in the Store) I will sell for him at 50% commission. This means I'll only have to keep very careful track of ~100 items, which I don't find unreasonable.

So, anyway, this brings me to the title of my post today. One of the cards in the bulk of his collection is a Mox Pearl (one of the 9 most highly sought after cards in Magic, called collectively the "Power 9"). Not only is it a Mox Pearl, though - it's an ALPHA Mox Pearl.

Okay, okay. For some of you that was impressive. Others are left saying "wha, huh?"

Let me explain. Magic: the Gathering started with a print run which accidentally left out three cards, and had some other minor errors. This run is now known as the "Alpha Limited Edition" (or Alpha for short). Wizards of the Coast (the company that makes Magic) almost immediately fixed that problem and started a second run ("Beta").

This makes the Alpha cards quite, quite rare, and basically the oldest Magic cards in existence. Probably by itself it the Alpha Mox Pearl will bring in $400+.

I have a lot of work ahead of me - Alan had a LOT of cards. But I look forward to seeing what he owned (what I now own) and what the sales will bring.

Did someone say "Lot 3"?

Okay, yes, I did it again.

The same gentleman in Arlington, VA who sold me Lot 2 had a lot of 1700+ cards up on eBay, including lots of good rares which should do well in the Store. Initially I bid only $50 for the lot and was winning it at $10.50 for a while. Yesterday I got outbid, and then that person got outbid...

After some thought and further research on the expected sales values of the listed cards I decided I was willing to go up to $100. So, with barely 1 minute left today on the auction I bid $100. The high bidder had only bid $99, so away I walked with what will now be referred to as "Lot 3". The seller is going to be unavailable this weekend and most of next week, so instead of heading over to Arlington to meet with him, I've shelled out $20 (plus $3 for insurance) to have them shipped via USPS Priority Mail. He hopes to ship tomorrow morning, so I should receive them on Monday.

As for Lots 1 and 2, here's the current update. I have now taken into account the listing fees for these Lots (although I've not yet factored in the Final Value Fees, so the figures are still off a tad):

Lot 1: -16.63 (we're getting there)
Lot 2: -20.70 (not bad considering I paid $99 to begin with)

I'm still confident that a profit will be had...eventually.

Biggest order EVER!

Okay - I'm not sure why I didn't write about this yesterday (when the order was placed) unless it was just that I wanted to make sure the order was paid for before I started crowing about it.

Yesterday I started up my email to find 61 "eBay Store Item Sold" messages. WOW! A guy in Italy (howdy, Guido!) had put together quite an order. As I started to put together his two invoices (remember, eBay will only allow 40 on one invoice for some reason) I noticed that some of the "items" were actually multiple card orders, so the order was for more that 61 cards.

Then I noticed, as I prepared the second invoice, that it was for more than 61 items.

Huh?

A quick check back to the email revealed three new messages - and more coming in as I watched! Oy! He wasn't done yet!

A few hours later (I am NOT making this up) his order was complete. A total of 198 "items" had sold with a total of ~270 cards, for around $108! Yippeee!

Now I am printing out packing slips (it took 5 invoices for this order) and getting ready to go pull his cards. Fun, fun, fun! Many of the cards are from Lot 2, so I will have to update you on that later.

In other news, I finished identifying all my non-English cards, and got some German cards up in the Store yesterday. I hope to get the rest of the German ones and some Italian ones up later today.