Announcing a Data Sharing Agreement with Star City Games

Hello traders!

I’m coming to you today with an exciting announcement about a data sharing partnership between Cardsphere and a titan in the Magic: The Gathering space: Star City Games.

There’s a lot to cover here, so first a quick TL;DR:

• We’re thrilled to announce that Cardsphere, via our parent company, Space Cow Media, has entered into a data sharing agreement with Star City Games in order to improve the accuracy and completeness of our card data.
• Through this agreement, Cardsphere will receive regular, programmatically delivered card info as well as price data for both cards and sealed product from one of  Magic: The Gathering’s largest and most reputable stores.
• SCG will be contributing to our existing pricing methods, card name and image data, and sealed product info. Our pricing will remain dynamic with the market.
• No Cardsphere user data will be shared as part of this agreement.

We Are Aware of the Missing Cards

“As soon as our price sources have them.” It’s been a staple reply from Cardsphere staff from day one. Because of the nature of Cardsphere’s pricing mechanism, which attempts to accurately follow price trends to create a reliable index price for our users, we have always needed at least a minimum amount of data before we can add cards to the site for our users to trade.

While this was reliably sufficient for most Magic cards, it often came with delays, and some of the rarer and more chase cards have simply never been added due to a lack of reliable pricing info. Times where we've tried to force these cards onto the site without this info has failed and has led to many cards appearing on Cardsphere with an n/a price, making them untradable and causing pollution to areas of the site, like the Best Offers page.

This agreement will help to plug many holes in our price data which will not only allow us to get newly released cards up in a timelier fashion, but also allow us to start working back through the many missing items in our database to finally add those items for trade. This will take time and will likely be a steady trickle of missing items added over the course of the next few months, but it will eventually lead to a more complete set of tradable cards on Cardsphere.

Perhaps the most welcome and impactful change for our users will be the use of this data to set an index price for sealed products, which has notoriously been pegged to MSRP since sealed was first added to Cardsphere. The way we priced cards just didn’t work for sealed, and pegging it to MSRP as our only solution has not worked well and takes a lot of manual effort to make happen.

Now that we have reliable pricing data from one of the most reliable sellers of sealed product in the game, that can all change.

What Comes Next?

Our engineers are already at work to make of all of this happen, but it's important to note that we learned in the very early days of Cardsphere that immediately bringing on a new source of price data can lead to chaos in the index price, and cause a lot of headaches for our users. This will not be happening! It will be a gradual process that'll be thoroughly tested before the data affects our production site. But we do ask that you please notify us through any of the normal channels if you do happen across any abnormalities.

From here, with industry leaders like Star City Games making this commitment to fair and open price and card data, we'll be making every effort possible to bring more stores and vendors into the fold, both within the United States and abroad, in order to continually improve our card and price data set to better serve you, the user and Magic: The Gathering player.

Okay, but What’s in It for Them?

If you’re at all like me, then hearing the news that websites I use are sharing data with one another would immediately set off privacy alarms in my head. Any user that’s interested enough in the Cardsphere community to be reading this update certainly remembers the promise that was made to the community back when the original founders agreed to be acquired by EDHREC/SCM: Protect the privacy of our users and do not sell or share their data.

It would be the obvious ask of a massive Magic: The Gathering store, but truth be told, upholding this promise was never an issue because it was never asked of us.

What is actually in it for Star City Games is knowing that they're helping to make a meaningful, positive impact for a trading community in the larger Magic: The Gathering space. Since Star City Games already had an ongoing and positive relationship with both Cardsphere and other SCM properties, it took only an explanation of our long-term struggles and how this partnership could help our users, and they were more than willing to do so, asking nothing in return.

A Heartfelt "Thank You"

First and foremost, I have to thank our users for their constant and unwavering support and trust that everyone working behind the scenes at Cardsphere is doing so with their best interests in mind. You have been incredibly patient over the last eight (!) years and we really can't thank you enough for all of your continued support.

And on behalf of our 65,000+ users, I want to sincerely and wholeheartedly thank the folks at Star City Games for their grace and belief in Cardsphere. Although small, it would be easy to consider the size of our parent company and see Cardsphere as an enemy to kill before it grows, and allow further consolidation of the ways that players get the Magic: The Gathering cards they need.

We take the trust that we’ve been given by our partners just as seriously as the trust of our users, and we look forward to all the exciting ways this partnership will help Cardsphere and Star City Games alike.

Thank you and happy trading!

xoxo,
efren