Enforce proposed order?

100%

Make it mandatory to propose the buy, since this is not our only selling platform for most

Just to chime in and play some devils advocate here.

I can certainly understand both your platforms here, however firstly it is a part of the sellers responsibility to manage their stock. Personally I don't sell things here and I only sell on eBay occasionally, but it then becomes my responsibility to make sure what I am selling on eBay is still mine; and yes eBay is very good about being able to cancel transactions due to lack of stock and such. So what you are suggesting is sort of like how we have with a trade on the site. I think that would be a good step to be honest if -- and a big IF here -- you are locking in the everything as is and this will dovetail into the next point.

Secondly: Sellers are responsible for managing their stock doesn't mean just inventory, it means prices as well. If you advertise something for a certain price, at least in this country, you are required to sell it at that price. I walk into a Target lets say a TV is on sale for $500, Target is required to sell me that TV for $500. They can't turn around and say "well Best Buy has it for $700 and Walmart has it for $697.96 so we won't sell it to you for $500, but we will sell it to you for $697.96 and match Walmart" That is actually illegal and that is why rainchecks are a thing for when stock is out and the price needs to still be honored. I know that this business isn't like having a few 100 TV and more like having 1 to 2 pieces of cardboard, but it is still the same principle here. It is very anti-consumer.

Just going by your profile, Sandra, by your rules if a card is up for a sale for you for $5 and you look and the price is $6 then you reserve the right to cancel the sale. That is a 20% increase in price you are within your "right" to not sell it. You are seeing things from a seller standpoint, look at it from a consumer standpoint. I see a new card I never saw before and I look at the prices and see it is $6 so I go look at TCG player, I got to eBay, I go to Card Kingdom, I go to Troll and Toad, I go to CoolStuff and then I come to deckbox and see you selling it for $5. I just saw this card 5 minutes ago. I don't know that it spiked overnight, I don't know that when you initially put it on your sell list it was more like a $3.75 card and the price finally caught up (and passed) to what you are selling it for. All I'm thinking is I found a card for 17% off and I want to get the best deal I can.

Just imagine if you walked into an LGS and saw a card for $20 in the case and you tell the store owner you want to buy it. So it pulls it and says "hey wait a minute" and goes and checks TCG and sees that the price has jumped to $35. So then the guy at the counter comes back and says "Okay I'll sell it to you for $35" and then when you refuse to buy it and claim it was for sale for $20 he just walks away and puts it back in the case for $35. You'd be rightfully pissed. You are the LGS when you sell cards everyone who sells on here is an LGS and everyone on here should be honoring their prices.

Now I don't know what transaction has gotten this guy mad at you or what card it was or how big the spike was or anything, but honestly I think you should be honoring the price you set it at. It is bad for your business when you change cancel an order because you could get more money for it and you don't want to honor the price you set. It is bad for deckbox's business when transactions are cancelled because people will get the impression that the sellers on here are not trustworthy enough and will take their business elsewhere and thus bad for EVERYONE's business that sells here when consumers know to steer clear.

You think deckbox isn't set up correctly to allow you to do something like this. I think deckbox is too lax and a little too laissez-faire when it comes to trading and selling. Not selling to someone because the price you set isn't within the appropriate window of variance or not trading to someone because you aren't making a 25-35% profit off the trade is not the way to go about things.

And now to circle back to the first point. If you can lock in everything about the transaction so stock can be checked I don't think it is a bad idea, however then you hit the proverbial "slippery slope" when it comes to cancelling an entire order because one or more of the cards spiked in price and then you can have someone come along and see the change figure then can get more if they just relist. I'd venture to guess that this is exactly why the sales go in right away so this kind of thing can't happen.

I mean I get having one inventory for more than one location and the logistical nightmare that can have however that burden is on the seller. If this was a brick and mortar store and you had your online inventory and your physical inventory on separate systems you could easily sell out of something online and during that time when you are also selling out in store something has to give. Actually if you follow Alpha Investments this sort of thing happened to them where they took in way too many orders than their inventory and they had to go out and get more inventory to fulfill their orders (and it caused a lot of phone calls and price increases from distributors to make sure everything was correct).

Really honestly you probably should be keeping some stock here and some stock there so you don't run into a problem of selling the same thing twice, but I can understand even me with trading has agreed to a trade and found out afterwards that I didn't have the card or I put the wrong version of it in the system and I had to go back and fix the trade, but overall it kinda seems like something that just can't happen because it gives people an easy opportunity to not fulfill their end of a transaction which again is bad for everyone.

I don't have an issue with selling I do have an issue if a cart spikes over 100 something percent, it's known that people are going to find a card that used to be a dollar and now the cards 20 bucks I can't take a hit like that. And it's known to people that there are snipers out there that are looking for spiked cards to flip. And that's why I would really like it if they had you to discuss the order so that you can check to see what the prices are, I don't really care about a buck or two I do care when it's over five dollars or more that's just ridiculous.

Again I get where you are coming from. I didn't doubt you could take a hit on a $1 increase. In fact I figured it was much bigger price difference or your wouldn't have posted, I just used $5/$6 for easy math. Two take-aways here.

Firstly if there is a card that you put up for sale for a $1 that means at some point you were happy to sell that card for a $1. The fact that it is no longer worth a $1 is the real issue here. Like I'd venture to guess if you sold it for a $1 and then didn't look at the current price you'd be happy to sell it since it is a $1 in your pocket you didn't have before the frustration really comes from not having $19 more in your pocket. And again I get that. I sold a Lion's Eye Diamond back after Dragon's Maze when I thought I'd be out of Magic for good and I got something like $70-$80 for it. I was like a pig in shit for that price since it was a card I cracked out of a pack. I look today and ... ... ... I actually don't want to look at the price because I am now a Commander player that would LOVE a LED and I know it is much more than $80 now. I had multiple borderless first edition base set Charizard cards that I sold around the same time. I could have put a down payment on a much better house if I still had them today. So trust me I do get the sting of loss of potential, but I do still have to look at these transactions as positive since I was very happy at the time I sold these.

The next point would be: How do you expect deckbox to react to the change in prices? For instance you have a Omnath Locus of Rage from Battle for Zendikar and you put one up for sale. Do you want deckbox to automatically set the price to TCG Market price? Because I hate to tell you, you'd never sell that card right now. Its Market is $11.60, Its Median is $9.60 its Low is $3.31 and it still is beat ZRC edition which is Market $2.90. So would you propose deckbox set the price for you and/or adjust as the price changes?

First off that will never happen since deckbox used to have TCG prices until they added the market place and TCG cut them off because why would they help a competitor. This is the reason deckbox prices are off because the deckbox does some calculations for its prices instead of pulling from the TCG API. My SDCC Nissa, Voice of Zendikar is not worth $75 it is closer to $35 for instance. These prices are off and I would love to find another website that has both an inventory that you can have unlimited cards, easy inventory management, and a direct link to tcg prices. I can get two I want all three.

Having deckbox automatically set prices would stop you from setting your own prices which means you couldn't sell for less than TCG. If you can't set your own prices your prices will be no better than TCG prices and thus there would be no reason to come and buy from here because TCG would just be more convenient (unless apparently you are in Canada). Every time I have bought off deckbox it is because the prices were better than TCG for a card I was looking for. Those sales do not happen if the prices are the same.

And if you are just looking to just see a side by side of what your prices are compared to what TCG is you can already do that. I mean I have a spreadsheet for trades that pulls price data off Goldfish which is a lot more up to get than deckbox is for prices. I know MTGJSon is a thing, but damned if I know how JSon files work. And there is just looking the cards up manually and adjusting. And yes that is slow and not huge on the easy of use, but it is possible. Then again if a spike is happening you might not be able to adjust prices fast enough so doing it programically would be better, but then you are cycling back up to the top of this argument.

There is also a bit of an ethical argument to be had if you are setting the price automatically to a price aggregator like TCG and then not contributing the data to said aggregator. You end up being immune to the changes their end like price spikes while reaping the benefits. For instance if a $1 spikes to $20 that is because it was bought out on TCG player meaning dozens have sold it for $1 while you are over here on another site automatically using the new $20 price point.

I do have a question: Can you not use TCG Player to sell from Canada? Or is the shipping to the US just not economically feasible?

No other site has a proposal before selling.  When I put something in my cart on TCGPlayer, Card kingdom, StarCity Games, MagicCardMarket, etc, and I click buy, you have agreed to sell me the card.

You have to monitor your inventory.  You shouldn't get the option to cherry pick which selling price somebody buys at on any of your sites just because you think you should be able to do that.

totally valid point, until deck box has a better option for price guide and massive database management sellers here are kinda behind an 8-ball, unless someone has a solution to manage massive databases or card stock.

My main point is that I sell on ebay and it's technically going through to make sure all the items are still properly in stock. I really don't want negative feedback or people not getting what they ordered. It's hard to react in real time when you make online sales unfortunately. If i sell on one platform, I have to remove it from the other (or take down a listing). It's a grind, yes. I know it's the seller's responsability and all that, but we're not all tcg player, starcitygames, etc. We're small time just trying to side hustle, make extra money, etc. Everyone thinks we're these greedy rich people making infinite money off of this which just isn't true.

Having an LGS at this point seems unlikely, especially how hard some of them got hit during COVID. Also, they now mostly have a policy were their prices are not stickered and are sort of online but not with an actualy e-commerce solution, so yeah, they sometimes just lazily go on tcgplayer and give the customer that price as the sales price. There's no perfect solution, tbh, you're gonna likely get sniped on some stuff that goes up(but it feels often enough that it's the more 'experienced' traders on here that do that vs. potential clients.)

Cards 'spiking' a bit and selling for like 3$ isntead of 4 is not the problem really. It's more like the ones that goes from 5 to 15$ and other crazy scenarious. You sadly just know that the sale is due to the spike vs. organic demand and it's a little frustrating when you're trying to give people a great card selection.

My thoughts:

Sniping, well unfortunately people game the system, it sucks, it's shitty, but you need to account for scammers the way other businesses account for fraud etc. It's a cost of doing business.

I would love to purchase off DB but the prices seem high and of course they are in USA/Euro's. By the time I add the conversion etc I FEEL like I am paying more than other options like say (Facebook sick deals pages) which isn't as good as it used to be but I digress.

Sellers on here should not be using a retail model to price their cards.  As independent sellers, you should all be offering larger discounts than retailers so that you people are the #1 source that buyers go to.

If I want to pay close to retail, I will just buy retail b/c I trust that business "X" will honor my order, it will arrive safe and in the condition stated. Any store who fails to do this, never gets a second chance.

As an example:

Uro is $50 USA on SCG and $50 CND on F2F (one of their cards well priced and not jacked up with 30% exchange rate)

However, on FB sick deals I can find Uro for $42 or LESS.

Why would I ever pay full price, USA price, or anything more than $42 for the same card.

If DB sellers can't beat that price...well you understand the rest...

Most players are looking for the lowest price, or at the very least (am I getting a deal). I am happy to support anyone who offers "deals"

@Islanzadi38 — The default condition for a list of cards is whatever you set the default to when entering them. The default doesn't have to be NM. I'd recommend setting your default to LP or even Played (MP on other sites). If you undershoot condition, you're less likely to have an issue with buyers. And you can still have a statement in your profile explaining this system, so people know cards will often be a better condition than listed.

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@Commander_Bacon — You said it yourself: It's the seller's responsibility. Opening yourself up to potentially greater profits by selling on multiple platforms simultaneously opens you up to the greater risk of selling out of inventory. If you desire the former, you'll unfortunately have to deal with the latter. And a misrepresented inventory that leads to a cancelled sale is, from a buyer's perspective, the very essence of a negative experience, so the negative feedback, while frustrating for you, is 100% accurate. If I need to order cards for an upcoming event, I'm going to avoid a seller who has a track record of having inventory issues and cancelled orders, because I need a reliable seller.

A couple options: 1) List only partial inventories on both platforms. If you have 20 copies of card X, list only 10 on Deckbox and 10 on eBay. This can also help with card spikes; see my response to Sandra below. 2) Give the buyer an option. Send them a message explaining the mixup, and offer these options: They can either wait for you to acquire the missing copies of the card to send them, or they can get a refund. Most buyers will be a lot more reasonable when they feel they have some amount of control in the situation, and you'll be earning their positive feedback by being willing to potentially take a loss to fulfill the order.

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@Sandra — A couple options: 1) A technique I've seen sellers use to hedge against sniping or card buyouts is to only list part of their inventory. So if you actually own 10 of card X, only list 2-4 of it. That way, if a card spikes when you're not looking, you'll only lose out on that extra profit for a couple cards, and can now list 2-4 more of your cards at the higher price. 2) Not all 90,000 of your cards need to have their prices checked and updated diligently. Only a small subset of those cards are likely to be prone to spikes. I would make a list of your rares/mythics, older foils, vintage cards, cards that have only had 1-2 printings a while ago, and the like, then keep that list up-to-date on a frequent basis.

Some other comments: In one of your posts, you stated that you "can't take a hit like that", referring to a $1 card becoming $20. But.... you're not taking a hit. Unless you bought the card for $5, then were forced to list it at $1 for a loss because the card went down in value, but now missed out on a spike that would have turned that loss into a gain.... unless that's the scenario, you haven't taken a hit. Presumably, you've still made money off of that card relative to your initial cost basis. @ic0n67 hit the nail on the head: If you were happy to sell the card for $1 prior to the spike, then for you, it's still a positive sale.

You also stated that this is your only source of income, which implies that you view it as a necessary means to bring in money, aka a job. Thus, it would behoove you to treat it like a job. Since you don't have any other job competing for your time, that gives you more freedom to spend the hours you would have spent at a job on this instead. Now, I'm not assuming you can spend 8 hours a day on it! Perhaps you have multiple kids, a house/garden/etc to take care of, an invalid relative you care for — I understand, as I have 5 kids and an 8 month old, we just started homeschooling all of them due to the pandemic, and at the same time as all that, I'm trying to work from home. What really flabbergasts me, though, is that, in your profile, you state that "updating the sell list daily or weekly simply isn't something I have the time to do" (emphasis mine). I get daily, but if you don't have the time to do it weekly.... then frankly, you have no room to complain about card spikes. The amount you earn at a job is directly proportional to the amount of time and effort you put in. The same is true as a peddler of cardboard. If I were to start selling my collection right now to make extra money, I know I wouldn't be able to treat it like a full-time job, so I'd resign myself to the fact that, if I missed out on some announcement or top 8 that made a card spike, oh well. I missed out. If I can't spend the time to ensure I run my cardboard-selling business correctly, then I deserve to experience losses.

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General comment to everyone asking for "sale proposals" — As @asrttyoxo said above, no other marketplace does this. And for good reason. How long is the buyer supposed to wait on you? Hours? A couple days? How long before they get the chance to cancel their order and ding you with negative feedback on that failed transaction due to nonresponse? And what if they wait 20 hours, only to be told, "Sorry, we don't have enough of that card in stock" or "Sorry, I had the wrong price listed"? If the card IS in the middle of a buyout, the buyer may have missed other opportunities with other sellers while waiting on you. Or if they were ordering for an upcoming game night, but then have to wait two days only to get their order proposal declined, they're gonna be rightfully annoyed with you. Yet in your proposed system, they'll have no means of leaving feedback that warns other buyers away from a slow seller. Honestly, I'd never again buy from anyone on Deckbox if this system were implemented, because I value the timeliness and dependability of the transactions.

It sounds like everyone just wants an extension of the trade functionality that allows trading money for cards instead of cards for cards. In this system, I could look through your tradelist, add some cards to a trade, see both the Deckbox-calculated price as well as your listed price you're asking, and make an offer along those lines, much like eBay's Best Offer feature. Trades could also be a mix of money and cards from my tradelist, if you've stated in your profile that you'll accept trades that aren't cash-only. Once I propose a trade of my money for your cards, you'll have the option to accept, reject, or counter my "best offer", just as you would with card-for-card trades.

Basically (and @BluePrecision), if it's a marketplace with sellers, then it needs to function like any other store; it's not a different business model from TCGPlayer or MKM. If I click a button to buy, then by the very fact that you have the card listed for sale, you've agreed to sell it to me at the listed quantity and price. It is 100% the seller's job to ensure that can happen.

The problem with this is that I will get less sales and make less money. First: A lot of people, myself included, only want to buy cards that are NM unless there are no other options and I really need the card. My first filter when looking for something to buy is to filter to English only and NM only. A lot of people I know do the same thing. Second: If I default everything to LP/MP then the sales I do make, people will expect to pay less because the card is listed in a lower condition. On high value cards that could be a lot of money lost, but even the few cents on junk commons/uncommons eventually adds up when you sell thousands of them. The whole point of having a deckbox account to sell is to make money. I would much rather a feature be put on the site that lets me verify orders then to have to take the loss in money (even if it’s a small amount).

That's an interesting point I hadn't even considered, because it's completely different from how I and a lot of people *I* know shop. I tend to focus on LP cards, because first, I don't have to pay the NM premium, and second, sellers generally grade condition very aggressively to avoid having to deal with returns/refunds, so LP cards are often borderline NM. It's very rare I've been unhappy with LP purchases. And a lot of people I know also tend to order LP unless there's a NM version at a cheaper price (happens once in a while on TCGPlayer).

Valid point. I'd personally not recommend MP (though I've seen people take that approach, so I mentioned it), but an aggressively priced LP can still sell. But you're right — you have to find your own thresholds that produce the sales volume and margins you're comfortable with.

Why not just verify orders as you prepare them for shipment, and if any cards seem to be off of the NM grade now that you've examined them more closely, message the buyer with scans/photos of the cards and ask what the buyer would like? I've had TCGPlayer sellers do this to me, saying shipment would be delayed until they hear back from me, and I was fine with that. Then the buyer can choose between a refund or accepting the cards as is. If they balk or insist, you could even offer a partial refund, with the buyer accepting the lower condition for a lower price (which keeps you from losing money due to seller fees you can't get back on a full refund). You'll still have buyers who'll bash you, but reasonable buyers will appreciate the choice and not fault you for whatever choice they themselves made.