I've been thinking that it may be a decent idea to add more options to the pricing mechanic; specifically, I think it would be good to allow people using this site to have StarCityGames prices displayed if they so desire, instead of only TCGPlayer prices. Just a thought.

I like that idea a lot! StarCity is what I've always gone by :)

I don't think Star City has an API to give out prices for everything, let alone a referral program to pay for this site.

Personally I find SCG to be overpriced, especially when dealing with foils. It makes more sense to me to have TCG because it'll give a more accurate reading of what the general market is doing than what one specific store wants the market to do.

Nighthawk wrote:I don't think Star City has an API to give out prices for everything, let alone a referral program to pay for this site.

Personally I find SCG to be overpriced, especially when dealing with foils. It makes more sense to me to have TCG because it'll give a more accurate reading of what the general market is doing than what one specific store wants the market to do.

Interesting. I've had the exact opposite experience. I find TCG is generally underpriced, and I have to go digging to find listings for foils. By contrast, SCG lists their prices for foils right there with the normal versions.

Not only does SCG lack an API, they make it extremely difficult to screen scrape the data with JavaScript by using random images in the pricing. There's probably a way to crack it using OCR, but that's still a bit suspect as they could constantly change how they reference the images.

IMO, they should have an API - the whole Magic community knows that many LGS use their pricing. Seems to me it would benefit them to share it and stabilize prices for themselves.

SCG must have an API to their pricing data, though I can see not wanting to make it public. You could capture traffic from the SCG phone app if you wanted to figure out what they are doing.

sk00gle wrote: Interesting. I've had the exact opposite experience. I find TCG is generally underpriced, and I have to go digging to find listings for foils. By contrast, SCG lists their prices for foils right there with the normal versions.

TCG updated their site design a few months ago and now publishes foil min/med/max right next to the regular printing prices at the bottom of the page.

IIRC, their app just returns a blob of data that has all of the info in there. I would assume that they have some sort of API for that, but it's encrypted and likely uses auth or a token of some sort to keep you and I out.

Based on the amateur nature of their app, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they're just pulling pricing out of a DB. It would be nice to have an API, but I'd look to TCGPlayer for any of those needs.