The Easiest Way to Sell Magic Cards? Part Two — Card Conduit Review
Last year we reviewed Card Conduit as the "The Easiest Way to Sell Magic Cards." Since then, Card Conduit has launched an additional "Curated Service" which aims to reduce fees for players willing to do some "pre-filtering." Today we're going to take a look at the Curated Service to see if it's worth it and also provide an update on the Standard Service as well.
As a disclaimer, Card Conduit sponsors the MTGGoldfish Podcast but didn't pay us to write this review. This contains our honest opinion, and we've included actual order data for you to draw your own conclusions. If you do use our links or coupon code (SCOOPS to waive Curated Service fees in October) to use Card Conduit, we do receive a small kickback. We also received anonymized order data from Card Conduit of actual collections, which we used to numerically analyze whether the service is worth it. You can find the data at the end of the article.
Standard Service
You should check out our previous review of Card Conduit's Standard Service, but the summary is you send the cards you want to sell to Card Conduit, they sort out your cards, buylist them to vendors, and you receive the proceeds. This service costs 10% of the final shipment value plus $0.03 / card. You save time sorting your cards, comparing prices on various vendor websites, compiling multiple shipments, and paying shipping costs to each vendor.
The New Curated Service
In our original review, we stated that if you have a small number of cards to sell that are highly valuable, the fees may outweigh the benefit of using the service. Enter the new Curated Service, which lowers the fees to 5% (from 10%) and eliminates the $0.03 / card fee. There is a minimum $5 fee and a ~150 card limit to ensure that you're only sending small valuable batches. (Note that you can go above the 150 card limit; see the Card Conduit FAQ). This is very similar to buylisting, except you don't have to sort, send multiple shipments, or do comparison shopping between vendors. You still get all the benefits from Card Conduit such as price optimization and the best customer service. This is well worth the 5% fee in our opinion, and this should be the default buylisting experience.
So which service should you use? We tried breaking down some common scenarios:
| Scenario | Recommended Service | Reason |
| Selling a popular Modern Deck | Curated Service | Modern decks are expensive so you will hit the minimum fee requirement . |
| Selling some cards to buy a new deck | Curated Service | For example, you want to swap your rotating Standard staples for some Commander cards. You can pull out the valuable cards from your Standard collection and send them off to Card Conduit. |
| Selling your entire Magic collection | Standard Service | Sorting an entire collection can be time consuming, but also requires a lot of knowledge of which vendors have the best prices. Knowing which cards are valuable is hard in a large collection. What you think is a bulk rare could be a Commander staple, or maybe an inflated Reserved List card. It's best to leave it to Card Conduit to sort it out. |
| You are not up-to-date on Magic but have a collection sell | Standard Service | Maybe you find your old Magic collection from childhood, or maybe you inherit a collection from someone. The Standard Service is perfect to get fair value from the cards while not knowing much about the actual cards. |
| Selling one or two cards | Buylist | If you're selling just a single card or playset, a quick Google search will net you the cheapest prices and sorting/shipping time is negligible. You might as well save on the fees and use the buylist service directly. |
| You need to get maximum value from your collection | Buylist | If you have the expertise to buylist and need to get maximum value of your collection at the expense of your time, you can use buylist services directly. Very few people have the patience and expertise to do this, but it is an option. |
Sample Curated Orders
Here are some anonymized randomly selected order data to see how people are actually using the service and what the fees are. The discount column shows any promotional discounts applied. Note for that the month of October, if you use coupon code SCOOPS, you get the entirety of your fees waived.
| Order | Total Cards | Total Proceeds | Fee | Discount | Fees | Contents |
| 1640-YM | 133 | $105.16 | $5.26 | 0 | 5% | Overview, Detailed Breakdown |
| 1616-XI | 169 | $5,653.14 | $282.66 | 0 | 5% | Overview, Detailed Breakdown |
| 42B-LE | 240 | $1,843.60 | $92.18 | $9.22 | 4.5% | Overview, Detailed Breakdown |
* For Standard Service samples, please refer to our previous review.
Conclusion
If you're looking to sell a handful of valuable cards, the new Curated Service from CardConduit is fantastic. It's an optimized version of traditional buylisting. If you're selling a large collection or don't have much Magic knowledge, the Standard Service is your best bet. This is the "full service" option.
That's all we have for today. If you've had experience buylisting or using Card Conduit, please leave a comment with your experience below!
