u/FuzzyDairyProducts

Long post, sorry not sorry. I think it’s worth a read. 🤷

I just wanted to share my experience as I’ve recently invested time and effort into making things more efficient. This is finance related, but on the business side, not MTG-card specific.

PROBLEM:

I have 16k+ cards in my inventory. I have tried TCGPlayer (500+ sales), ManaPool (300+ sales), and CardTrader (~900 ‘sales’). I scanned every card with ManaBox, which led to oversight errors (showcase registering as regular and me not catching being primary). Any order that was from ONE, NEO, SNC, WHO, or a couple others pretty much resulted in a refund. Extremely frustrating. I avoided TCGPlayer because I hated the fees and having to hand-jam every PWE.

SOLUTION:

After 2 weeks of recurring issues in the sets mentioned above, I sort of resolved to eat the refund ‘costs’ in CardTrader because I was pissed about just doing full inventory rescan in February, making yet more errors.

So last week I decided to buy a TCGArchivist CSC100. (I swear I’m not sponsored, this is just my experience). I kinda gambled on it because I had seen their ads on social media, I had watched videos on YT but most seemed to be from the TCGA YT account, and all of the older stuff had middling reviews… “Nice, BUT…” type stuff. But I threw $200 down and gave it a try.

I’m a huge fan. It’s a little slower of a process because I have to manually verify the cards, which is new to me because using ManaBox and my card scan box it seemed quicker, but I’ve gained SO MUCH accuracy. Having confidence that every card I’m scanning will be the actual card, printing, and set, is a welcome change. Much of this issue is of my own making, not paying attention and rushing… but the new process is pretty smooth.

I pretty much know how many cards are in a stack based on where it hits my ring finger. I occasionally have to quote the rubber grips off, and you quickly identify which sets have slicker cards because the machine is a little less efficient with them since they’re smoother, but the vast majority of the 7700 cards I’ve scanned have been ‘fire and forget’. I start the scan and I walk away to write out divider tabs (I am transitioning from set-sort to CHAOS, and am a fan so far). I set each batch scan to the location I’m storing it (A-1, A-2, etc).

Once the scan is completed, the app populates the scan summary. It will identify any potential issues which can be isolated with the touch of a button on screen. I set-lock my scans and quickly scroll through the summary making sure the scanned card matches the system’s identified card. A high 90% accuracy rate so far. Many times it flags a card with a low “Confidence” but gets it right anyways. It may scan a card and not recognize it at all, and it’s a quick search for that card and manually select. Not super frequent, but occasional.

Once it’s finished I export the CSV and upload to the SINGLE BIGGEST TIME SAVINGS YET…

INVENTORY MANAGEMENT & CROSS-SALES PLATFORM:

I found out about TCGTracking last month. I absolutely love the service. You import orders from ManaPool and TCGPlayer (they’re working on CardTrader and eBay integrations now) and can print envelopes with business logos, integration with EasyPost saves you $0.05/stamp and you can print it with your home printer, don’t need a label printer.

You can set up a ton of different pricing rules to automatically push pricing updates to MP. They’re testing a desktop flow to automate TCGPlayer, but their API appears to be more finicky, so there’s a Chrome Extension that requires a tab opened to your seller portal (level 4 on TCGP required for some actions) or you can just export a CSV and do it manually.

Segmentation allows you to establish your pricing desires and whether you want volatility, profitability, or somewhere in-between to determine how many and which cards get split to MP and TCGP. It’s pretty customizable for what you want.

I upgraded to double-window envelopes so I can pre-print stamped envelopes using EasyPost integration, then I print the pack slip that has shipper and buyer address, my logo, and Informed Delivery ‘tracking’ for plain white envelopes.

This service can be used for free, but I pay $10/mo for their ‘Beta’ account which gives me arbitrage capabilities (not currently really a profitable service, but it’s interesting) as well unlimited tracking use. You can also add PIP insurance to your orders, super cheap and very easy to process refunds on orders if something happens during transit. One member in the Discord created a tool that auto-fills your insurance claim. A few members have recently remarked that they needed it and praised how quickly and easily the insurance claim process is.

I haven’t used the insurance but the tracking saved me $7 because a customer stated they waited 3 weeks for order arrival. MP sales support hit me up about it and I provided them the tracking link to prove it was “delivered” 4 days after shipment. MP refunded the customer but didn’t charge me anything. I was prepared to eat the loss, but they took care of both of us.

TCGTracking also allows you to create an inventory location, fill that location with cards, and then determine if that inventory location will sync with TCGPlayer and/or ManaPool. I started off with <$2 cards on ManaPool and >$2 on TCGPlayer. I created an inventory location for each, and turned off the ManaPool syncing for the inventory I only wanted on TCGPlayer. It’s pretty slick and hella convenient.

COMBINING FORCES:

All in all, using the scanner and setting my chaos sort locations in the TCGArchivist app, then transferring the locations and cards over to TCGTracking for inventory management and where I can import orders from both sites, print custom pack slips and print the postage directly on the envelope has saved me a TON of time and money.

Lastly, TCGTracking as an inventory management function, alone, is an exceptional tool. I can have 5 different locations with the same card and it tracks that and takes it into account when fulfilling orders. It prints the location of each card on the pack slip, but also has an “Assisted Pick” function at the order fulfillment window. It generates a QR code you can scan on your phone/tablet/device and it will pick the order in an efficient way (streamlined for chaos sorting, it’s not super efficient for Set/Alphabet sort). When you’re done picking it offers the ability to immediately sort the cards in reverse order into “stacks” that correspond to an order. So 1 card goes into a numbered pile and after all have been piled, you can quickly match those with your orders.

IN CLOSING:

This is just my experience as a hobby-seller who’s trying to maximize efficiency to grow the store without investing an insane amount of $, because I don’t make a ton. If you haven’t heard of TCGTracker, go check them out. Hit up the discord, it’s super active and the developer(s) are super active and quick to make changes that make sense. I proposed a method to split inventory based on price (value goes to TCGPlayer and bulk goes to ManaPool) and a few days later that solution was live on the site.

I’m not paid by either TCGArchivist or TCGTracker. I’m just a guy who likes to share experiences and information. I believe TCGA is a solid product, with a developer who cares a lot and has a great product. TCGT is a service that can be used for free but is 100% worth $10/mo to support as that service would be helpful for almost ANY store, but especially for anyone who prints labels and uses stamps and doesn’t like constantly setting their prices.