Buying used Magic: The Gathering cards locally: fakes, proxies and fair prices

Fake MTG cards: the checks

The most reliable method is comparison: put the suspect card next to a genuine card from the same set and era, and run several checks. A card that fails one is suspect. A card that passes all of them is very likely real. Counterfeits have improved, so no single test settles it.

1. The light test. Hold the suspect card and a real one in front of the same bright light, such as a phone torch. Real Magic cards have a layered stock that lets a soft, even glow through. Many fakes are noticeably brighter or completely dark next to the real one.
2. The rosette pattern. Under a 30x to 60x jeweller’s loupe (cheap online, or a phone macro lens), real cards show a tidy, repeating flower pattern of coloured dots in the artwork, with black text and borders printed as crisp, solid ink on top. On many fakes, the black text is built from the same coloured dots as the art and looks fuzzy.
3. The green dot. On the back, find the green circle in the ring of mana-coloured dots. Under the loupe, genuine cards show a small pattern of red dots inside the green. Collector guides note that better counterfeits now copy this, so a missing pattern is a strong warning but a present one isn’t proof.
4. Fonts and symbols. Compare the card name, type line, rules text and mana symbols with the real card or Scryfall’s image. Wrong weights, spacing or symbol shapes give away cheaper fakes.
5. The holofoil stamp. Rares and mythics from Magic 2015 onwards have a small oval holofoil stamp at the bottom centre. On a real card it shimmers as you tilt it; on fakes it is often flat, the wrong shape or missing.
6. Border and back colours. Compare the black or white border and the blue-brown back with a real card. Fakes often run slightly too light, too dark or too saturated.
7. Foiling. Real foils have an even, consistent finish; fakes can look glittery, cloudy or have foil where the real card has none.

Skip the bend test. Bending a card to see how it snaps back can crease a real one, and the loupe tells you more.

Proxies vs counterfeits

Magic has a long tradition of proxies: stand-in cards players use for testing or casual games. Wizards of the Coast’s 2016 statement draws the line. It says it has “no desire to police playtest cards made for personal, non-commercial use”, while counterfeits made to pass as real are something it pursues. Only authentic cards are allowed in sanctioned events.

For a buyer, that means:

• Proxies show up in collections. A player’s commander deck may include a few printed stand-ins for cards they never bought. That’s fine for them, but a proxy is worth nothing on the secondary market.
• Ask directly. “Are all the cards in this deck real, no proxies?” gets an honest answer from most players, and the answer is in writing.
• Block the words. If you only want real cards, block proxy, proxies, playtest, custom, orica, "not real" and "fan made". Add alter only if you don’t want altered art; altered real cards are a separate niche.

Pricing singles and collections in Canada

Magic prices are set by a few big markets, mostly in US dollars and euros. Here’s how to turn them into a fair local price.

• Scryfall shows each printing of a card with its TCGplayer price in USD and its Cardmarket price in EUR. Pick the exact printing: set, foil or non-foil, borderless or regular.
• MTGGoldfish shows price history, so you can tell whether a card is spiking after a tournament or slowly falling after a reprint.
• Canadian stores such as Face to Face Games list singles in CAD. Their sell price is the ceiling for a local private sale.
• Store buylists are what a store would pay you for the card, well under their sell price. A fair private price usually sits between buylist and store retail.
• eBay sold on ebay.ca shows what the card has actually sold for, often in CAD.

What holds value: Reserved List cards (Wizards’ policy not to reprint them makes them scarce and the most-counterfeited), commander staples that see play in many decks, and cards from older sets in good condition. What doesn’t: most commons and uncommons, which stores buy as bulk by the thousand.

Pricing a collection:

1. Ask for a list or photos of the binder pages. A seller who knows what they have usually knows the big cards.
2. Pick out the cards over your threshold (say CA$5 each) and price each from recent sales.
3. Value everything else as bulk. Commons and uncommons are worth a small amount per thousand; rares a little more each.
4. Offer on the total, less a fair discount for buying in one go and the time to sort it.

Where Magic cards turn up locally

Magic collections appear when players leave the game, move, or downsize. They show up as:

• magic cards, mtg, mtg collection, magic the gathering lot
• commander deck, edh deck, binder, trade binder
• cartes magic, collection magic in Quebec
• Old cards described by era: 90s magic cards, revised, old magic cards

Game-store bulletin boards and Discord servers still matter, but most local collections end up on Marketplace and Kijiji. Block "pm for price", "dm for price" and ISO to keep the results to listings with prices.

Meetup checklist

1. Meet in public, at a game store if you can: good light, tables, and other players who know cards.
2. Bring a loupe and a common you know is real from a similar era.
3. Take the high-value cards out of their sleeves and run the checks above, especially on anything from the Reserved List.
4. Count the collection against the photos or the list.
5. Check condition on the valuable cards: corners, edges, surface scratches, whitening on the back.
6. Pay last, once you are satisfied. No deposits to hold a collection you haven’t seen; see our guide to deposit scams.

Alerts for collections

Good collections go fast. Save mtg collection, commander deck and magic cards as searches on both sites. Kijiji’s own alerts arrive once a day by email (how to set them up), and Facebook’s saved-search notifications arrive when Facebook decides to send them.

On a computer, Sift watches up to 10 Kijiji searches as often as every 15 minutes and up to 5 Facebook searches no faster than every 30, and runs new listings through your filters first, so proxies and “PM for price” posts don’t wake you up.

With Sift

Sift is a free extension for desktop Chrome, Edge and Brave. Its Cards kit covers Magic.

• Recognises Magic listings. Titles with Magic the Gathering or MTG switch the Cards kit on, and the details card is headed “Trading card”.
• Price links first. “Prices on PriceCharting” and “Search TCGplayer” open with the card’s name, with condition and grade words (NM, PSA 10, lot, bulk) stripped from the search. Then eBay sold prices, Google Lens on the photo, Google Shopping and the same search on the other site. PriceCharting and TCGplayer prices are in US dollars.
• Start a hunt: Cards. One click saves a Cards preset that hides “message for price”, “PM for price” and “price on request” listings.
• Check this. Red flags when a seller wants a deposit or e-Transfer first, asks you to move to WhatsApp or text, or prices far below the rest of the page.

Sift doesn’t detect fakes or proxies. It reads the listing, not the card.

Magic: The Gathering is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast. Sift is independent and not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast, TCGplayer, PriceCharting, Scryfall, Meta or Kijiji.