Animal spirits.
152 2014-07-17 23:46:14
Re: Regarding Cancelling Orders (10 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
Yeah, I get that. I was just thrown by the language of the cancellation page, which I saw as outlining a set of circumstances under which cancellation would result in negative feedback... but those circumstances weren't the ones at play here. Maybe "sketchy" cancellations should be treated the same way as non-sketchy cancellations in terms of feedback, but I don't think the cancellation page makes it clear that that's the case.
153 2014-07-17 19:19:28
Re: Regarding Cancelling Orders (10 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
If this does get opened up for discussion, I'll dial back a bit and say that I honestly do see why cancellations on spiked prices could be defensible... but the rules as is do not seem to allow this, and if "cancellation for any reason" is to be the policy then this should be more clear.
I'm also a bit salty/amused at having faced the exact same scenario ("eff that guy" may be too strong, but I think the lying is worse than the initial cancellation) Most people selling cards here are still pretty casual and would be unhappy if say a card came off the banlist and it turned out that someone had bought up their playset a few minutes afterwards. So I'd actually have a slight preference for a "cancel for any reason" policy, where individual sellers could make more-stringent promises on their profiles if they wished. Again, I just think the stated rules need to reflect this.
154 2014-07-17 17:30:19
Re: Regarding Cancelling Orders (10 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
Maybe I shouldn't butt in, but... as someone who just sold a Nissa on here and watched it spike before shipping it but shipped it anyways because the order had been paid and I had the card (https://deckbox.org/orders/2803), eff that guy. The terms don't say that sales can be cancelled for "any reason", they outline a bunch of conditions that make specific performance of the sale difficult for the seller - conditions where a seller may "need" to cancel the order, which clearly was not the case here. The guy cancelled the sale because the card spiked in price, and I've seen traders dinged for similar behavior in the past (eg. saying you can't ship a card that you have several copies of in your inventory, or saying you can't ship a card while negotiating over it with other people at the same time.)
I understand there's an argument for allowing sellers to cancel orders on cards that have spiked in price. However, the rules as is do not seem to allow or at least envisage cancellations for this reason. Granted, I realize you can't stop people from claiming that they just don't have the card(s), but you can stop some of the more nakedly-abusive behaviors like canceling a card and then immediately relisting it at a higher price. If the cancellation policies intend to allow this I feel as though they should be more-clear, because when a seller on here does something like this it lowers trust in the entire system, which in the end affects me as well.
155 2014-07-16 13:50:39
Re: Magic 2015 Core Set (6 replies, posted in Announcements)
Just a tiny note, not related to M15 but to database additions in general... there's no FNM version of Magma Spray (the July promo) available yet.
156 2014-07-10 17:34:36
Re: How many people use deckbox prices vs. just looking up on TCG? (5 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
On here I use Deckbox prices. irl I use tcgmid because that's what the app I use to pricecheck uses. There's not much reason to switch unless the prices diverge substantially, and I can't think of many cases where that occurs.
157 2014-07-08 15:58:34
Topic: Suggestion: Prices and Vacation Mode (1 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
So today I noticed that the "lowest Deckbox price" for Eidolon of the Great Revel was at $1.47. Which is pretty low. So I click on the link to see who's selling it, and... the user is on vacation.
Obviously this seems like a problem. I could screw with a lot of Deckbox prices by listing cards at $0.01 and then setting my account to vacation mode. Obviously I don't think this guy was doing this on purpose, but it means that there's significant deviations between the quoted price and the actual price you can buy cards at when the low users are on vacation, and that's probably bad.
158 2014-06-18 19:29:21
Re: v3.5: Purchase opportunities, Trading op. improvements, Security (12 replies, posted in Announcements)
Ah, okay, I never knew various promos had their own sets... I'm guessing that's a new feature (it makes the promo toggle on most cards obsolete?) Issue solved.
159 2014-06-18 14:57:25
Re: v3.5: Purchase opportunities, Trading op. improvements, Security (12 replies, posted in Announcements)
sebi wrote:
It *is* worth 10$.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KMHI99K
http://sales.starcitygames.com/search.p … of%20Worth
That's the foil version of the regular card. The release promo (what I assume we're talking about here) is at $3 or so:
160 2014-06-18 01:56:36
Re: ongoing trade for to months with DaRedKomm his last logging was Jan 11 (1 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
You should probably open a thread in the Bad Trade Report forum.
161 2014-06-17 19:47:53
Re: v3.5: Purchase opportunities, Trading op. improvements, Security (12 replies, posted in Announcements)
One obvious issue with the purchase opportunities feature right now is that if someone has insane prices for cards on your wishlist, they'll be at the top of your list. I noticed this because the person who was second of my matchlist was selling 2 cards for $400, and I thought "huh, I don't think I have any $200 cards on my list", and it turns out that it was just 2 massively-overpriced VoR copies.
I'm afraid that this really could ruin the "purchase opportunities" feature, if it just ends up showing a list of the most-overpriced merchants. It could also potentially be abused - just find a card on a lot of wishlists and price it at a million dollars, and then people will see your name first under "trading opportunities". Sure, they won't buy *that* card and might think you're a jerk, but maybe it'll work?
I know it's more work, but I guess this illustrates why TCGPlayer has its trade optimizer as it is.
[Edit]
Also, for the promo MoW... I don't know what the deal is. I have the only copy available right now, but it's overpriced because Deckbox thinks its market price is $10 and I'm too lazy to correct this every time I use the "update all prices" feature. So is it really fixed? Or is this just something weird about Deckbox's price algorithm on certain cards? I noticed that each time I update it the market price drops because I price at 95% and then it sets the 95% as the new market price, but... it'll be a while before it's at the $3 or so it should be, eh?
162 2014-05-29 20:51:08
Topic: Feature Suggestion: Escrow (1 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
I've been involved with almost 15 or so trades here now and 2 of them have had some sort of serious issue. Even though Deckbox has been great for me I realize that a single instance where I send out cards but a partner doesn't reciprocate could wipe out most of the value I've received from this site. Now that we have Paypal integration, however, it's possible that an escrow system could be developed to help protect traders. Just make it so that we can give some amount of money to the site to be held in escrow until we choose to withdraw it, and then trades can be backed by this money is the parties choose to do so.
Maybe this is too complicated (maybe Paypal isn't good for an escrow platform since scammers can just chargeback their escrow commitments, and it might expose Deckbox to liabilities if the procedures underlying escrow penalties are seen as faulty), but I think trust it crucial to this site's functionality and anything that can be done to promote it would be a good idea. One bad experience can drive people away, but mitigating these losses could be valuable.
163 2014-05-13 00:44:14
Re: Flagged as Important being Important (3 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
It'd also be nice if you could find trade matches based only on the cards you have flagged as important on your wishlist. I'm actually reluctant to put some cards on my wishlist because they'll make it harder to find the cards that I specifically have flagged as important. I'm pretty sure it'd break site rules, but it's kinda tempting to just make a second profile with the same inventory and a more-limited wishlist just to find trades based on that wishlist.
It sounds like some of this may be implemented in the planned inventory tagging changes, however.
164 2014-05-12 19:45:40
Topic: Suggestion: Don't list users on vacation under Trading Opportunities (4 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
Title says it all. Presumably they aren't available for trades (even if they've been logged in recently), so why have them show up as possible trade partners at all?
165 2014-05-05 14:09:44
Re: [Request] Site Currency? (9 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
Interesting. Guess it's a money laundering thing. There goes my plan to funnel the proceeds of my blood diamond operation through dual land purchases..
166 2014-05-02 17:01:29
Re: [Request] Site Currency? (9 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
You won't have to use the virtual money if you don't want to. It's up to you.
Introducing the market meant iirc that the rules were changed so that cash offers aren't allowed. Because obviously they could easily be used to circumvent the site fees.
In the setup I described, no fees are avoided if you're buying cards directly using Paypal. otoh if I were to just buy using site currency I wouldn't incur Paypal fees, unless I had to buy the site currency using Paypal. But insofar as site currency circulates once created each transaction won't require additional Paypal fees.
167 2014-05-02 15:08:03
Re: [Request] Site Currency? (9 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
Your suggestion is to turn it into this:
1) Buyer pays through Paypal.
2) Paypal transfers funds directly to Deckbox minus fees (3% + 30c), and seller gets DB bucks of equal value.
3) Seller is free to choose when to cash in DB bucks for real money minus DB fees (6.9%).
Nah, I have in mind something like:
Your suggestion is to turn it into this:
1) Buyer pays through Paypal.
2) Paypal transfers funds directly to Deckbox minus fees (3% + 30c), and seller gets DB bucks of equal value less DB fees. (6.9%)
3) Seller is free to choose when to cash in DB bucks for real money minus DB fees (6.9%, or perhaps some other rate. Maybe 0%. Paypal would take another 3% cut though).
Obviously if a seller wants to avoid the second charge when cashing out (if it exists) they could opt to avoid the currency entirely. The most-neutral (relative to the status quo) fee structure for this currency would be to make it cost 0% in DB to buy/sell currency for USD, but 6.9% is deducted whenever it's transferred. If you plan on immediately cashing out you should avoid the currency; otherwise it would probably be better than Paypal.
And I know there are dev issues which reasonably prevents this from being a high priority. I'm just saying that if the Market catches on and the devs are looking to weed out unnecessary transaction costs this would be a way to do it. And yes, the devs would essentially have to keep cash onhand but if people didn't trust the site they could choose to avoid the currency. Maybe there's some broader regulatory reasons why this would be difficult but I kinda doubt it.
168 2014-05-02 14:00:37
Re: [Request] Site Currency? (9 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
It wouldn't be beneficial for people who trade only on Deckbox, it'd be beneficial for anyone who:
a) Engages in *both* buying and selling on Deckbox, as it would prevent you from hitting Paypal transaction fees repeatedly.
b) Wants something close to a currency that can be used for trades - right now trading is limited by the classic double coincidence of wants problem.
A seller who just wanted to dump all his sales directly into cash would not need the currency, but that user could easily be accomodated by just giving him an option to immediately convert out any currency he receives whenever a transaction includes it. It could be fundamentally indistinguishable from getting a Paypal transfer. It should be easily convertible to cash so that users aren't locked in to Deckbox - they'll just have to pay a small transaction fee to Paypal in order to get out of it.
Also, one additional issue that could arise is the abuse of Paypal chargebacks against sellers. A site currency could help insure against this risk if that would be a prudent thing to do.
169 2014-05-01 03:29:37
Topic: [Request] Site Currency? (9 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
Okay, I just sold my first card via the new seller system. Great. Obviously it's a bit less-exciting to have to pay various transaction fees, but the Paypal ones are more-annoying because I think more can be done to minimize their impact... which isn't huge to begin with, but a few percentage-point margin is probably pretty big in a competitive environment like this one.
My suggestion: Introduce a site currency which is pegged to the USD. You can buy currency units using Paypal and sell them back to the site for USD using Paypal. But transactions done using these currency units within the site will not incur Paypal fees, obviously.. the regular 7%? Fine.
You can do this very conservatively. Buyers/sellers who don't want to use the site currency would still be able to use Paypal directly if they wish (and there are legit reasons to be wary of it, mostly trust-related.) But sellers should also be able to indicate that they accept the currency units.
Having a standard site currency would also confer a couple other advantages:
- It would encourage people to keep their wealth within the Deckbox system, which would increase transaction volume.
- The currency unit could basically be treated like a special card (it would just be another inventory item) and could be used in trades as well. Perhaps there'd be some special rule saying that when it's transferred 7% of it disappears to keep in line with current transaction costs.* It'd essentially be a way to add cash payments to the trading interface... which could also be done via Paypal, granted, but you need special infrastructure for that and you'd need to have everyone verify as Paypal users. Overall this would likely enhance the liquidity of the market.
* Ideally, I'd like to see the transaction cost of using tokens reduced to 0% and the site funded primarily through the transaction costs on Paypal transactions (whether we're talking about buying tokens or other cards using Paypal), but admittedly this might not be workable for the site's bottom line.
I wouldn't consider this a particularly high-priority thing, but it just seems like the impact of the Paypal transaction fees could be reduced and that a site currency could enable a lot of other nice features that would make both the trading and selling experience better. Some people might be skeptical of the site currency, but they wouldn't have to use it.
170 2014-04-21 22:51:40
Re: Add bid prices to the market (2 replies, posted in Site Discussion)
That's actually a neat idea. Once you have both bids and asks you could just clear the market automatically, almost.
171 2014-04-15 23:03:36
Re: Release 3.0: Deckbox Market (92 replies, posted in Announcements)
9700377 wrote:
sebi wrote:True @ Kammikaze, we're adding it this week.
I just bought into a seller account today. Once this is done, I'll put up all my cards. Until then, not having this feature means I'm only listing my cards that are worth $5 or more.
Any updated ETA on this feature?
172 2014-04-11 02:30:15
Re: Release 3.0: Deckbox Market (92 replies, posted in Announcements)
sebi wrote:
True @ Kammikaze, we're adding it this week.
I just bought into a seller account today. Once this is done, I'll put up all my cards. Until then, not having this feature means I'm only listing my cards that are worth $5 or more.
173 2014-04-08 18:33:26
Re: Update on Card Prices (28 replies, posted in Announcements)
jassi007 wrote:
Good news! A suggestion for you to help sellers. Some peoples prices are quite a bit out of line. Fore example, there is an Elesh Norn for sale, at $42, non-foil. While I respect peoples right to price cards as they see fit, nobody is going to buy Elesh Norn for $42 when it can be had elsewhere for $20-25. Perhaps some sort of alert can be made when a card price is a significant percentage over or under the deckbox price? Like "warning: this card is 105% above deckbox avg. price, do you want to continue?" It helps nobody when people price their cards much to high or much to low. To high and it doesn't sell, seller gets nothing, deckbox gets nothing, buyers go to other sources to find cards priced more in line with the general market. To low and seller gets taken, deckbox gets less than it probably should, encourages arbitage.
I think that tools to help buyers/sellers find/generate good prices are nice, but things like "warnings" reflect an unnecessary level of hand-holding. Plus, what if the Deckbox price is bad for whatever reasons?
174 2014-04-08 18:18:58
Re: Update on Card Prices (28 replies, posted in Announcements)
I just want to say that it seems like you guys have done a great job with this. You were caught off-guard but the turnaround on improving things has been pretty good. Here's hoping your hard work pays off.
175 2014-04-03 03:16:57
Re: Site-wide card pricing changes (197 replies, posted in Announcements)
buughost wrote:
P9CO wrote:9700377 wrote:So why not just scrape the TCGPlayer prices without using their API?
Here's a link to such an API that scrapes TCG. Please note I did not create this and have no affiliation with this. This is simply an informative post.
https://github.com/bedoherty/MagicTCGPriceAPI
You could hypothetically copy this to your own github account and let google manage the process. If TCG wants to disallow it they will have to block google.
cheers.
IANAL but this seems legally questionable AT BEST
That google app isn't questionable. Although it's not optimized for mass collection, since you have to query cards individually when you'd rather query entire sets. Anyone (even me!) could make an app that does this, though, and then Deckbox could just use that app. TCGPlayer could still threaten Deckbox over it, of course. They wouldn't have a chance of winning an actual case, but oftentimes the threat of costly litigation is a sufficient deterrent.