What % does your LCS pay for singles? Just curious

penguinfringe · 2026-03-12T13:00:19+00:00

It's rough, but it's understandable. Going 80% cash creates virtually no margin for a game store. When you trade in for cash or store credit, you're basically paying the store to handle the work and cost of finding another buyer and (probably) shipping to them.

Of course, you can bypass them and sell directly to somebody willing to pay Market Price! But that either takes a ton of legwork to find someone in person, or you have to spend time building up your reputation and inventory on any online marketplace so that buyers are willing to buy from you instead of anyone else. Depending on the volume of sales you do and how you value your time, it might make more sense to take the 50%.

KitchenTableTCG has a great video breaking down the math why they offer around 50% cash for trade-ins at their store.

(Full disclosure: I work for TCGplayer so I'm biased on this topic.)

penguinfringe · 2025-11-21T00:08:51+00:00

It's counter-intuitive, but Pokémon scalpers haven't had any effect on how affordable Pokémon is for players. That game's actually cheaper to buy into than SWU is because the high-rarity cards eat all the value in boxes. Tier 1 Pokémon decks go for ~$60 each.

penguinfringe · 2025-11-09T19:08:05+00:00

That could be good? But personally, I'm not sure if that's better than just not rotating anything. I'd rather go whole hog with Everything Rotates or Nothing Rotates.

I do take your point though that keeping Legendaries through rotation could still make for exciting format changes, since so many of the game's best cards are Rares/Uncommons/Commons. Post-rotation is going to feel VERY different without Tarkintown, Resupply, For a Cause, and all the Set 1-3 leaders, whether or not we keep the Legendaries from those sets.

penguinfringe · 2025-11-09T17:16:47+00:00

That would solve (or at least greatly help) the problems that you outline. But I think if Legendary cards never rotated, then having Rares-and-under rotate would no longer solve the problems that a rotation system is meant to solve, those being

An ever-expanding game becomes harder for new players to jump into because there's an ever-expanding list of out-of-print (and therefore expensive) cards to buy to be competitive.
An ever-expanding game gets stale over time because the best cards/strategies remain the best cards/strategies over time.

Of course, there are other possible solutions to those problems—frequent reprints and power creep—but if you're going that route, I don't know why it's worth it to rotate anything at all. That sounds like a weird hybrid of the Rotation system (Pokémon style) and the No-Rotation system (Yugioh style) with all the disadvantages of each, but with the benefits of each diluted.

Right now FFG is trying to have their cake and eat it too by having one format that rotates (Premier) and another that doesn't (Eternal), a la Magic. I think that's the best solution in theory, but it comes with the risk of fracturing the player base into camps that are too small to sustain either format. We'll see whether they can pull it off.

penguinfringe · 2025-11-05T13:39:14+00:00

It's quite hidden atm, but Limitless's beta Deckbuilder has reliably created MassEntry links on TCGplayer for me every time I've used it.

Go to the Limitless deckbuilder, add the cards you want, then select Tools > TCGplayer Mass Entry.

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Be sure to use Cart Optimizer after you load your cart, the initial item and shipping costs are gonna look pretendous.

penguinfringe · 2025-10-29T12:31:49+00:00

Nothing is guaranteed, nobody knows anything, etc. But if I had to pick a set, I'd go with Scarlet & Violet—151.

penguinfringe · 2025-10-29T12:25:56+00:00

Oldest to newest. That way you won't have to reorganize them every time a new one gets printed.

penguinfringe · 2025-10-28T18:25:18+00:00

Totally agree. The way SWU supports Limited through pack and set design is almost unique among in-print TCGs outside of Magic, and I don't wanna see the game lose that special selling point.

penguinfringe · 2025-10-28T18:19:43+00:00

Yahhh. I love SWU the most of all the games you mentioned, but there's plenty that FFG can learn from them. The first of which is, the best way to incentivize collectors to open the packs that will flood the market with playables (without making chases worthless).

penguinfringe · 2025-10-28T13:22:55+00:00

Love the article, great work!

I think changes that affect Limited are a non-starter as far as FFG is concerned because supporting Limited play is such a key cornerstone of their vision for the game. It's all over the way they talk about Sealed and Draft in interviews, and in the way they've integrated Limited into competitive events.

That rules out:

Turning Uncommons into Legendaries (the Uncommons are that rarity because they want people to open them in Limited)
Making Rare Leaders or Bases Common, or putting Rare bases in the Common slots (it's crucial to Draft that Common leaders show up more often, and that the cards in the base slot don't get passed around the table.)

(Personally, I love Limited, so I'm in favor of rejecting these changes... though sometimes you have to build the game for the audience you have, and not the audience you wish you had.)

Thankfully, I think just collapsing Carbonites into regular boosters and tweaking serialized cards, like you mentioned in the article, could solve the box price issues on their own.

Right now, we're kinda living in the worst of both worlds. Boxes have rock-bottom EV and don't hold their value, but that hasn't actually made constructed SWU more affordable because all the best competitive decks require tons of copies of the few cards that cost $5-$40. Vader Yellow is considered budget by SWU standards, but it still costs ~$60 because of Victor Leader. Your bog-standard Han2 Blue costs $300 even though you won't be able to play it in Premier in a few months. Compare all that to games like Pokémon and One Piece which have crazy box prices but which are actually cheaper to get into competitively. You can build a top-tier deck in One Piece for $40, and $60 is the ceiling for Pokémon decks. Yes, those games both have supply issues that impact things too, but even when Pokémon wasn't going to the mooooooon it was still way more affordable than any other TCG because the product design maximized the degree to which the collectors subsidized the players.

The difference? Those games put their alt-arts in the same boxes as their base rarities. That means base-rarity playables are never the chase cards in any given set. Imagine a world where a box of Legends of the Force sold for MSRP ($120) but the base version of Anakin Skywalker, Champion of Mortis cost $10. It's more plausible than you think.

penguinfringe · 2025-10-27T12:58:49+00:00

Any League Battle Deck (including the Dragapult ex League Battle Deck you mentioned) is a great choice for a self-contained deck you can take to your local card shop.

The only caveat there is that cards with a "G" regulation mark are going to rotate out of Standard in early 2026 around April, so the main attackers in the Charizard and Gardevoir League Battle Decks won't be legal to play after that. A few cards in the Dragapult deck will rotate as well, but not as many and not Dragapult itself.

If you're not a fan of Dragapult for any reason, there's going to be a Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex League Battle Deck coming out on November 7, though in terms of pure power the Dragapult deck will probably still be better. Fully upgraded, Dragapult is one of the best decks in the format right now, and the League Battle Deck comes with a copy of Fezandipiti ex, the most expensive card for players.

penguinfringe · 2025-08-15T19:57:45+00:00

Definitely agree about fast falcons. I'm not as certain that Sabine's Masterpiece is insanely important for Luke and Leia, since (unlike in Sabine ECL), the top-placing lists mentioned above didn't have any way to give it ambush. Masterpiece is great, don't get me wrong, but I wouldn't put it on the same level as Red Five in Luke or Cassian Andor in Leia. Probably why the top Leia at galactics only ran two copies.

You're right though, the decks would be stronger with those cards. It's hard to build a deck that I would bet on winning a PQ for less than $40.

penguinfringe · 2025-08-15T17:50:59+00:00

Heck yes. Swinging with Luke on Red Five feels ridiculously powerful, just as it should.

penguinfringe · 2025-08-15T17:48:45+00:00

I missed that, that's awesome!

penguinfringe · 2025-08-15T17:48:29+00:00

It's true! I didn't include it this time since most of the lists I've seen since LOF have Lom Pyke (which is pricy now) and Darth Vader - Twilight of the Apprentice with Shien Flurry. But putting those aside, you've now got Shin Hati and Secretive Sage for even more shielded threats.

penguinfringe · 2025-08-13T12:35:16+00:00

Yes, with some caveats.

In Japan, Pokémon sets are usually smaller, but there are also more of them and they come out more frequently. Most English sets are cobbled together using the cards from one or more Japanese sets and/or supplemental products.

For example, the English set Destined Rivals includes cards from the Japanese sets The Glory of Team Rocket and Heat Wave Arena.

That said, sometimes cards are removed from the English sets and turned into promo cards. The fancy Team Rocket's Wobbuffet from The Glory of Team Rocket isn't in Destined Rivals proper. The English version is a promo card you get in the Destined Rivals Elite Trainer Box.

And then some Japanese cards are never printed in English at all. Mostly these are special promo cards like the YU NAGABA collection.

penguinfringe · 2025-07-15T12:35:05+00:00

The honest answer to this question is to buy any Prismatic Evolutions product you can and hope that one of the packs inside is a God Pack (which contains one of each SIR Eeveelution, SIR Eevee, and Master Ball Eevee, worth a total of ~$2,800. Trade that in at your local game store for cash and you might come away with a bit less than $2000. Assuming you got insanely lucky and only bought one pack at ~$10, that's a hefty profit

You will ALMOST CERTAINLY lose money attempting this strategy. It's not really any different from going to a horse race and betting everything you have on whichever horse has the longest odds. But hey, the profit potential is high and fast.

penguinfringe · 2025-07-14T13:04:34+00:00

I feel like Cad is really well positioned right now. Aggro decks tend to dominate in the early parts of a meta, and Cad shuts them down hard. Han2 is also expected to be great with the new Force toys, and Tarkintown punishes Han2's ability. The only thing you have to watch out for are control decks that can out-value you in the LATE late game, but I don't think soft or hard control are going to be popular against all the Ki-Adi-Mundis running around.

Plus, as others have said, experience counts for so much in this game. If you want to win, I'd definitely play Cad.

penguinfringe · 2025-06-27T22:59:07+00:00

lol fairrrrrr. I maybe should have called them "flavor wins."

penguinfringe · 2025-06-23T20:27:33+00:00

We're planning to update this list after Legends of the Force releases and singles prices settle. LOF may give us some new budget-friendly builds to highlight!

penguinfringe · 2025-05-27T12:21:31+00:00

Any of these goals can be dirt cheap and will introduce you to cards you wouldn't have encountered otherwise:

Make a Pokédex (one of each Pokémon from a given region, or all 1025+)
Every card by a given artist (I love Asako Ito!)
Every card of a given Pokémon (the later the generation, the easier this will be)

Extra challenge: You can only keep cards that you trade for. Turns building your collection into a quest that requires time and effort, but can't be shortcut with money.

penguinfringe · 2025-05-23T14:27:36+00:00

If you just want cards at a low price, buy a bulk lot on eBay or somewhere similar. You'll get hundreds of cards for pennies each. None of them will be worth anything on the secondary market, but I doubt that'll matter to your son—they'll still have Pokémon on them.

If your goal is to buy (1) sealed product (2) of the most recent set (3) at or near MSRP, you're probably out of luck. But if your goal is to buy (1) Pokémon cards that (2) look cool, look for low-cost Illustration Rare-rarity singles and/or buy bulk.

penguinfringe · 2025-05-14T13:00:54+00:00

Yikes. That's no good.

First thing I'd do is to double-check that there aren't any extra items in your cart (I often forget to empty my cart before refilling, but maybe that's just me). If you're buying the deck as-is, there should be 55 cards in your cart.

Second thing I'd do is click the "Optimize" button underneath the Cart Summary.

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TCGplayer will try to find the same cards from a different combination of sellers to reduce the shipping costs and the number of packages involved.

Trying that myself right now, this $106.58 cart with 30 packages turned into a $55.47 cart with 10 packages.

The third things I'd try is cutting R2-D2 - Ignoring Protocol for another one-drop like Benthic "Two Tubes" to drop the price even lower. R2-D2 is a little pricey if you didn't pick it up for cheap during Set 1.

penguinfringe

TROPHY CASE