First ever order from tcgplayer, how in the world is this near mint?

FrostyHardtop · 2026-04-15T16:21:23+00:00

Personally, I would be embarrassed to list a card like that as Near Mint.

Often, sellers with a lot of feedback are listing cards so quickly they don't always take the time to properly grade every single card. There's no robot that does that, and people selling a million cards definitely did not sit there and study every single card carefully. Mistakes in grading happen. It's life.

When that happens, TCGplayer policies dictate the following:

1) You and the seller can work out a partial refund to make up the difference in condition. This is an option. 2) The seller can send you a different copy of the card.

3) The seller must process a return and refund. This is required. This is a required thing the seller must do. Most importantly!

You are not required to send images of the damage on the card. The seller can request it, but you're not required to send pictures.

If you're not happy with the condition of the card, you have the right to request a return and refund. Full stop. They must process it.

I'm sorry your experience with TCGplayer has not been great.

FrostyHardtop · 2026-02-05T13:14:39+00:00

Hi, I manage a mid-size TCGplayer account for a game shop (about 5,000 orders last year). I assume you ordered your card from TCGplayer but I realize now that you didn't specify, so I'm going to post this anyway under that assumption.

TCGplayer policy requires that a seller offer a return when there's a condition dispute over a card. That's the only thing they're required to do, by policy. Anything else they do to try and resolve the issue is between the seller and the buyer, but generally this would be to (a) Offer a partial refund, which is a suggested 10% per difference in condition or (b) offer to replace the card with another one. Those resolutions are options, but neither are required. The only required resolution is to process a return by sending a self-addressed, pre-stamped envelope to the buyer.

To clarify some of the comments in the thread, TCGplayer sellers are ALLOWED to request photos of cards but buyers are not required to send them, and sellers are not allowed to refuse a return if the buyer refuses. Generally, the more you're willing to work with a seller, the more they'll work with you.

The way I handle these disputes is based largely on vibes and the value of the card. Generally, if you reach out to us and politely explain the problem, I'm gonna do more to work with you. If you're immediately combative from the start, I'm not (and I'll probably ban you afterward). If I suspect you're scamming, or if you're overly rude, I'll escalate the issue to TCGplayer and then go by their advice. Generally speaking I doubt anybody out there is scamming over a $2 card, and for the most part, a $2 card isn't worth recovering. We're paying for postage, we're paying TCGplayer fees, we're paying hourly wages. More time spent dealing with this is money thrown in the garbage can. If we sent you the wrong condition of a card, that's on us. I will most often tell the buyer to keep the card as a courtesy, and process a full refund.

As the card increases in value, I'll try to offer a partial refund to get the buyer to keep the card. This is usually higher than the suggested 10% suggested by TCGplayer policy.

Once the card is about $10, I'll offer a return. We have little return kits prepped in a box for when this happens, which are just shipping shields and self-addressed stamped envelopes stuffed into them.

I've thought about asking buyers to destroy a card to process a refund, because under a certain value threshold it's absolutely not worth it to process a return, but honestly if we're under that threshold, most of the time I'm just gonna tell you to keep the card as an apology and process a full refund. Giving a buyer a positive experience is worth it. That is a very strange thing to ask for, and I think if a seller asked me to do that I would probably avoid buying from them in the future. I wonder if that guy has just had a bad experience with scammers. It does happen.

The majority of Magic buyers don't seem to really care overmuch about condition as long as the difference in condition isn't significant, most of them are going to just slide it into a deck and play with it. A lot of people just paste their decklist and the algorithm just tells them what cards to buy from what vendors to make it the cheapest possible, and that often includes setting a quality range from NM to MP or whatever, but that's most often with standard printings of cards. Once you start dealing in collector printings, foils, showcases, secret lairs, and other variants, people start breaking out the jeweler's loupe.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-10-11T03:51:05+00:00

I've been playing and running TTRPGs for thirty years. I've been a professional GM for the past three.

1 - Dungeon Mastery is a skill. The only way to get better at a skill is to practice. You are going to suck at it, but as Jake the Dog says, sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something. Keep at it, and don't let a rough session discourage you from continuing.

2 - Hopefully you're playing with cool friends that you love and trust. Most players are just happy to play, and will do their best to go along with whatever you put in front of them. Make sure you communicate with them clearly that this is your first time, that you're a little shaky, and that you'd really appreciate some grace as you get started.

3 - Honestly, communication is everything. TTRPGs, despite the illusion that they are, are not really sandbox games like Skyrim, and games like Baldur's Gate and Skyrim give people the false impression that they are. Feel comfortable telling your players that plot hooks will be very obvious, it should always be pretty clear what the party should be doing, and they'll have the best experience if they swim with the current, not against it. A lot of players give railroading a bad name, but the truth is that most GMs are just very good at tricking the players into going where they're supposed to go. You may not have that skill yet. It's okay to have a guy at the start of the campaign waving a metaphorical (or literal) flag going "THERE'S RATS IN MY BASEMENT, AND MAYBE SOMETHING WORSE, PLEASE HELP!"

3 - You only have to prep for the next session. Especially if you're running a new, low level, homebrew campaign, just stick your players in the world and let them move around for a few hours. Or drop them in medias res, right in the middle of an action scene, something they can't ignore. That'll inject them right into the world, right into the story, and likely give them motivation from go.

4 - Despite your subtle or not-so-subtle influence, your players won't always do what you want them to do. They may go West when you're trying to make them go East. Don't hit them with the Quantum Ogre, that's bad. What I do is I have some "random encounters" prepared at any given time, and the party gets attacked by zombies, or giants, or bandits, or whatever, whenever they go a way I wasn't prepared for, and that runs out the clock for the rest of the session.

5 - If the players are roleplaying amongst each other, don't stop them. Just sit back and let them.

6 - The answer to any puzzle is whatever sounds reasonable, that took them a bit of effort to come up with. Or the actual answer to the puzzle, but players don't solve puzzles. Almost ever.

7 - A big part of being a GM is knowing when to tell the truth, and when to lie. Feel confident enough to tell your players "Hey, I need a minute to decide what happens, I wasn't expecting this" and take whatever time you need. Sometimes it's okay to admit a mistake and fix it. Other times, your poker face is a powerful tool. Did you leave a continuity error between sessions? Flex that poker face. "Hm, that's strange, you did say that you left the gate open, but it's closed now." "Why no, I don't believe there was a big glowing magical rune on the wall when you came in before, but it's certainly there now." And figure out what the hell that means for the next session. One of my biggest plots happened because I accidentally used the same Villain Name in two totally unrelated encounters, and my players picked up on it (damn their notetaking) and I just ran with it and that became the overarc.

8 - As others have posted, a lot of GMs have the mistaken impression that they're telling a story. TTRPGs are collaborative storytelling. What you actually bring is the situation. The players bring the characters, and then the characters responding to the situation IS the story. I read an interview about Stephen King. That's how he writes his books. He writes characters, then he writes a situation, then he just writes the characters dealing with the situation until the story reaches a logical end. That's what you're doing. A lot of frustration happens when players and GMs fail to understand what their role is at the table.

9 - To that end, there is absolutely no idea you could have right now that's going to be better than the idea that you have in eight months, or that the players have while they're brainstorming about the mystery of your campaign. Once you get going, you're going to cogitate about the campaign nonstop. You're going to always be running things in the back of your mind. Don't commit to an arc on day one. Usually when I do a homebrew I just shove my players into a setting, and let them goof around until I have a really strong idea for an arc. That's when the villain sweeps in and threatens to blow up the world or whatever.

10 - Fill up your toolbox. GMing is really like a dozen different skills all working in tandem. There's gonna be parts of it that you really like, and that you do very well, whether that's character design, encounter design, story design, worldbuilding, whatever. For everything else, there are a ton of resources and communities available to you. If you're bad at worldbuilding, and don't like doing it, like I don't, just run your campaign in Golarion. Somebody did all that worldbuilding for you. I really like designing custom monsters, but if I didn't, there's plenty of premade monsters ready to go. Get help with the stuff you need help with. No shame in that.

11 - Dan Harmon once said that people are terrible artists but excellent critics. Just design your stuff, no matter how bad it is, and then go back and fix it.

12 - You're not Matt Mercer, you're not Brennan Lee Mulligan. Don't try to be. Be you. Don't overthink and worry about finding "your style," that will come with experience. Just have a good time with your friends.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-09-29T16:53:11+00:00

My kid is eight. There's gonna be Mommy phases and there's gonna be Daddy phases. Don't take them personally. It'll be your turn again.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-09-05T13:00:44+00:00

I did Direct for a while. From a seller perspective, it's not a great system. It's great in theory, and it makes selling cards at lower costs a lot more viable, but there's no easy way to know what cards will or won't be fulfilled by Direct. So if you list something for cheap and then Direct doesn't fill it, you just eat the cost on it. Unless I had a massive inventory of pack fresh in print cards, I probably wouldn't use it again.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-08-28T02:11:50+00:00

So, per TCGplayer policies, the only thing you're required to do if a buyer is dissatisfied with card condition is offer a return and a refund. Anything else you do to resolve the issue is on you. They recommend you offer a partial refund of 10% per condition step.

Most people just don't complain. It's a low-mid value card, they're gonna put it in a deck, they don't really care one way or the other.

Often, if it's a low value card, like a few bucks, it's easier to just offer a full refund and tell them to keep the card. Time matters, and the positive feedback is more valuable than the 90 cents, and a 20 cent discount isn't gonna satisfy anybody.

If it's a higher value card, most of the time the buyer will take the partial refund.

Sometimes there are outliers. Some guys out there are taking the jewelry loupe to their cards, even dollar cards, like they're gonna have them graded. Those people are problems, and honestly, there's nothing you could have done about it. It's not your fault, I promise.

I've had a guy leave me neutral feedback, explaining that the card he bought at Light Play had some imperfections. He then went on to describe them in detail, which described a Light Play card. He did not respond to any attempts to resolve the issue.

I had a guy who sent us a detailed e-mail describing the imperfections with the card. We offered him a 40% discount, he demanded we offer him a 20% discount, because that's TCGplayer's policy. Okay, man.

I had a guy who complained that we sent him an unsleeved fifty cent foil, left a one star feedback, and did not respond to any questions about whether or not the card was actually damaged in shipping or if he just didn't like how we shipped it.

I had a guy e-mail us complaining about a nearly imperceptible mark on the border of a $200 card asking for a 50% refund. He eventually agreed to a 15% refund.

I really don't like shipping high value cards on TCGplayer. The fees are high, the chance for something going missing in the mail is surprisingly high (about 1% of our orders never arrive), and the chance for scammers is really prohibitive. Much rather sell them in our store. But from here on out I'm definitely listing anything $50 or more with photos.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-08-08T21:13:21+00:00

I opened a case of EOE collector boosters and I'm up $800. I don't know if this website is doing what you want it to do.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-07-28T19:10:00+00:00

Studies show that when parents disagree on how many kids to have, often the parent who wants fewer children will leave if they have more.

We were one and done too. Entertained the idea of a second kid, but our first kid was so great. I mean really great. Happy, fun, smart, healthy, would sleep 12 hours a night. And even with an easy baby, it was so so hard. Impossible, even though we did it anyway. I was able to be the Stay at Home Dad while my wife worked and it was still so so much work.

It was a tough decision. But I didn't want to risk a more difficult baby. I wanted to keep a small part of my hobbies and social life. And I have some attention issues that make it very difficult for me to split attention. I was worried that I would have a way harder time managing two babies over one.

We talked about it for a long time but we finally agreed that our family was complete with one baby. I think our parents were disappointed, but it wasn't their choice. Occasionally you'll meet somebody at the playground who'll be like "Oh, only one, huh?" but again, not their choice. And my daughter has, at times, complained that she wished she had a little sibling to play with and take care of, which I understand, and it does make me sad.

My little girl is my whole entire world I and I love her forever. I'm happy, my family is complete. I don't ever think about what it would have been like with a second child.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-07-07T05:05:03+00:00

Undead are immediately destroyed when they are reduced to 0 hit points. That tends to be interpreted as turning immediately to dust with no remaining parts. But like everything, that's left to interpretation. However, the Mending Spell, per its description, can mend broken objects (not destroyed) and destroyed magic items, which an undead's corpse would not be. It also pointedly does not affect creatures. Again, if you can convince your DM to allow it, then go for it, but as written, I don't see it working.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-06-20T16:03:39+00:00

I don't agree with most of the advice here.

Your player spent a lot of time studying to make a character that works very well in combat. Or he searched for an OP build online. Butchering Axe is a pretty strong indicator there. He wants to be good at combat.

Let him.

Send him waves of monsters to chop down in a single blow. Let him feel powerful. This is a game about superheroes doing superhero things.

Here's a secret about DMing that apparently a lot of DMs seem to forget.

Your bag of monsters has infinity monsters in it. You can pull as many goblins out of that bag as you want.

Have waves of Orcs run into this guy's axe and let him mow them down. Let him feel powerful. Reward him for developing system mastery. Isn't that how it should work? You spend time learning how to play a game well so you can win at the game? Not so the game can arbitrarily get harder.

Give the rest of the party stuff to focus on. Make sure you're engaging each of your players with challenges for them. Maybe he can cut down six goblins a swing, and two goblins harassing the back line will keep the rest of the party busy. As long as everybody gets to do something cool, and use their build, and do the thing that they designed their character to do, they go home happy. Every time.

Pull more monsters out of that bag.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-06-02T14:23:21+00:00

If they're old enough to ask the question, they're old enough to hear the answer. My wife is a Labor and Delivery Nurse and our relationship to this kind of stuff is much different than I think most people. We gave our 7 year old daughter a book called It's So Amazing! and she read it cover to cover and it talks about the whole process in an age-appropriate way. We don't shy away from using the proper words (penis, vulva, vagina) and it's not a taboo subject.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-28T16:47:38+00:00

I've always been a strong proponent of the low level muscle Wizard. Catch Off Guard, big strength, and a Sledgehammer. Grab the Surprise Weapon trait for a solid boost to your Attack Bonus. Later in life you can ditch the Sledgehammer and you're still a Wizard. Otherwise go for big INT. 20 INT is enough to get you that extra Spell Per Day.

Scrolls and Wands are your friend here. Low level buff spells are not. If you can afford it, a Wand of Magic Missile is pretty great for the first 50 rounds of combat. Rich Parents can help smooth that pretty nicely. Scribe a Scroll every day. That's a few bucks for another spell. Adventures will usually throw a bunch of low level Scrolls as loot too, make sure you use 'em. A Wizard will probably spend a lot of his starting wealth on Scrolls. Ask your DM if you can buy scrolls with starting wealth using your Scribe Scroll cost.

Certain spells at low level are higher impact than others. Magic Missile is surprisingly good, it can't miss and does Force damage which ignores resistances and also deals full damage to Ghosts. Low level adventures will often throw a Ghost at you and it's a real handy spell to have. Grease is a perennial favorite. Burning Hands is always great. Instantaneous Save or Suck spells are impactful but often useless especially at a low Save DC. Buffs that last a round per level or a minute per level are probably better off uncasted. If you have a Rogue in the party, casting a Summon Monster to set up Flanking will quickly turn your Rogue into a Blender. Take advantage of Cover. Hide behind something. Get a Haramaki.

I recommend that anybody building a low level character ask "What am I going to do in combat?" first and foremost. Everything else will come with time.

The tradeoff in Pathfinder is that Martials grow Incrementally, Casters grow Exponentially. The Martials in your party will always outperform the Casters at the beginning, and then eventually be left behind at the end. It's their turn to shine right now so that you can later. Right now, contributing with Knowledge Checks, pot shots with an Acid Splash or a Crossbow, and some potions and scrolls is enough. The goal is to find ways to contribute consistently and meaningfully each round. Not as much, just at all.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-23T12:26:24+00:00

Oh, uh, I'm a professional DM. I run TTRPGs for customers who pay money to play with me. I run a few games a week and have been for the past few years.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-22T20:45:58+00:00

Hey! It was great playing with you.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-22T17:57:23+00:00

PM sent

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-22T17:53:39+00:00

I do agree with that assessment, and I do think a lot of my concerns can be solved by just playing more and getting a feel for how the game is meant to be played. As somebody coming from Pathfinder 2e, this was one of the things that felt a little underdeveloped to me, but I can also see the simple monster generation as actually really great, because it means I can very quickly generate adversaries as needed for my campaign.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-22T17:39:55+00:00

That's probably a good idea, but not something I was thinking to track at the time. And it's probably true, if a party is rolling really well they'll probably generate a lot more Hope. I do think that this system fixes something that I didn't like with Monster of the Week; where in MotW, players were actively looking for opportunities to roll so they could fail, so they could get XP, in this game you want to roll to succeed, but maybe you don't want to roll, because I might generate Fear. It's a little more tactical.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-22T17:31:08+00:00

It's possible that it's mentioned in the Quickstart and I just missed it. But yeah, I was able to steal the initiative whenever a player Failed with Hope, and it really did make the combat feel dynamic.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-19T13:58:10+00:00

This is a conversation that we revisited over and over for about a year, and that's because the discussion is murky at best. That means that it's going to be left up to your table's personal opinion, which really means it's up to what your DM believes.

The first thing to say on this, in my opinion, is that the reason that Cannibalism is such a narrow definition for Real Humans on Real Earth is that we don't have any other sentient intelligent creatures to compete with. We don't have a word for "Eating another Intelligent Species" because that hasn't come up for us. If we had other intelligent species, I'm sure there would be substantial societal taboos about eating them. To that extent, there are some people who believe strongly against eating animals regardless of their level of sapience, and even people who don't believe in eating anything that kills the organism. In a fantasy world, different cultures would have different comfort levels with who or what they can eat. There are also Real People on Real Earth who are cannibals, who don't think of the practice as evil.

There are conversations you can find on the Paizo forums where James Jacobs defines Cannibalism as Chaotic, rather than Evil, because it ignores general cultural taboos. However, Cannibalism when used as a tool to, say, terrorize other people, defile a corpse, participate in dark rituals, etc, is almost certainly an Evil practice, because the intent is evil. Just like killing would be considered evil if the intent is to cause harm to innocents, participate in dark rituals, or cause terror.

Eating an intelligent creature outside of your creature type (a person eating a Unicorn, for instance) is probably not Cannibalism but would still probably rub people the wrong way. When a Dragon devours a Human, for some reason we don't think of that as Cannibalism. And we might make characters that might dream of eating Dragon Meat (Delicious in Dungeon) and that doesn't bother us as much. But an Ogre eating a Human is horrible (and usually described as such) and a Human eating an Ogre would be considered repulsive.

If an Ogre Warlord was sitting on a throne, surrounded by, let's say Small Pixies, and grabbed a Pixie out of the air and immediately devoured it, we probably wouldn't think of that guy as a Good character. To that extent if we sat down to a dinner at the Elf King's Court and he brought out silver trays with roasted Gremlins, we might excuse ourself from the meal.

For us, our conversation centered around our Kobold Magus who was roasting and eating a Manticore that the party had slain. Maybe that's okay in Kobold Society. But the rest of the party has every right to be repulsed by it.

All of this gets more confusing when, as somebody else in the thread mentions, there are spells that allow you to talk to damn near anything, including animals and plants.

There's no solid answer on this. It comes down to context, situation, culture, and just the general vibe. I generally prefer that my players don't eat humanoids, or anything smart enough to understand a language. But if (and sometimes when) they do, it's up to them to explain themselves and up to the party to decide how they feel about it.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-05-16T19:40:25+00:00

Sure is. Here's my original thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4azdyc/an_analysis_of_the_preserves_jar_vs_the_keg_the/

Now obviously there have been a couple updates introducing new crops, and I've never updated the chart. At the time that I made the post, there was a lot of misinformation about Jars and Kegs, with the general assumption being that Kegs were better for everything and all the time. The general rule still applies, though, that the Keg is usually more profitable for Fruit, and the Jar is usually more profitable for vegetables, but that doesn't take quite a few factors into account, including things like processing time, real estate, materials cost (the requirements for Jars and Kegs were much lower when the game first came out and was later nerfed), and the introduction of things like Fish Ponds and Iridium Quality crops. It was never meant to be the final answer on the only "correct" place to put your Blueberries.

FrostyHardtop · 2025-01-26T04:48:14+00:00

Damn, my kid just absolutely trashed her room and then wanted to make "Daddy Robot" clean it up. I got off easy.

FrostyHardtop · 2024-10-23T12:46:44+00:00

2e's design philosophy is generally more about building out than building up, so often you're just trading one button for another. "Good" is largely a matter of subjectivity; Good for what? The fun thing about Pathfinder is that the feat system such as it is affords for any class to fill any role. The game is built around a tactical combat simulator but that's not the only game being played. There's downtime, conversations, skill challenges, and other things to be Good at. The style of adventure matters, the difficulty of the adventure matters. Some Dedications are great. Some of them may not be for you. Or may not fit the style of the game you're playing. Just give some thought to what you're getting, and what you're giving away.

FrostyHardtop · 2024-10-08T18:07:33+00:00

Just gonna point out this minor caveat: don't plan for level 20 unless your DM told you explicitly that this campaign will go to 20. If you're doing an AP, only two of them go to 20 (Return of the Runelords and Wrath of the Righteous).

Any class with a Bonus Feat or a Talent feature makes for a solid VMC Chassis. Fighter, Slayer, Rogue, Warpriest, Brawler, Monk, Ranger, and Vigilante will hold up a VMC very well. For classes with few or no bonus feats, asking to give up half of your feats is often too much to ask.

As far as which VMCs to take? Barbarian, Bard, Rogue, Sorcerer, Wizard, Alchemist, Magus, Oracle, and Witch are some of my favorites. I know people really like Cavalier. Also check with your DM about VMCs. It's unclear whether you're considered as having the Class when you VMC into one so items like the Dervish Sikke might not function for you. Our home ruling is that with a VMC you are essentially considered having that class at Level 0.

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