UPDATE 1/25/24
Star City Games has re-opened their bulk buylist! Below is the contents of the original article detailing the company’s pause in purchasing bulk cards.
Star City Games, one of the industry’s best outlets for bulk Magic: The Gathering cards, is pausing its bulk buying. A new message on the store’s buy list page states,
“We are currently in the process of reorganizing our bulk and have paused buying bulk collections until this project is done. We anticipate being able to resume purchasing bulk towards the end of the month.”
Let’s hope SCG’s reorganization allows buying to resume. Losing yet another prominent bulk buy list sets a grim message for the future of bulk cards.
Last year saw another major card shop, Card Kingdom, halt its bulk buying operation altogether stating they, “have an abundance of bulk and have temporarily suspended buying bulk cards.” The notice on their website also stated that they will resume buying in the future, but after more than a year with no update, it seems unlikely.
Bulk buy lists are an important part of the magic selling ecosystem as they set a floor for what a magic card is worth. Until recently, any random rare held a buy list price of around $.07 while a random mythic held a buy list price of around $.25. A basic land would get a bulk price of .01 and commons and uncommon sold for around $5 per thousand. We have already seen foil-heavy collector boosters topple the market for bulk foils and now, the uptick in magic releases seems to be eroding the market for non-foil bulk as well.
The largest online card shop still buying bulk MTG is Florida’s Cool Stuff Inc.
The retailer purchases Rares at a rate of .06 (.15 for foils) Mythics at $.25 (.35 for foils, but excludes commander Mythics). Cool Stuff also buys a mix of commons and uncommons by the thousand (with stipulations as to the composition) for $5.