What Do We Think of Magic Card Market Going Global?

You may have heard by now that Magic Card Market are opening up to the international community. A number of our users have had the same question for us: what does this mean for Cardsphere?

Well, we think it's great. Magic Card Market is loved and praised by their users. As the Cardsphere team has stated on many occasions, we believe that healthy and ethical competition is great for the Magic community at large. We're happy to coexist with a number of great platforms, and will continue to adapt to the changing needs of the community as competitors enter or leave.

We have a sizable number of European traders who use both Cardsphere and MKM successfully. We expect that to continue and expand. We believe that no single platform will ever statisfy all users and all use cases. Most people will continue to use a variety of platforms, with only very few dedicated to one.

Looking at how Magic Card Market operates, we think that our push model is a significant differentiator. Not everyone is ready for the heavy management demands of other markets like MKM or TCGplayer. We already see this from the uptake we've had from both of these communities. We've heard others say that Cardsphere is simpler to use, but can’t really speak to that because we aren't users of the other platforms.

An important point people have brought to our attention is that there is currently a price disparity between European and US markets with the US market being more expensive. We believe that after the European market opens up and this essentially becomes one global market the prices will inevitably level and go higher. Maybe not as high as US prices at the moment but there will be movement. Prices on Cardsphere will be affected as well and will eventually match and adapt to the new reality. It is difficult to predict the extent to which the shipping, old habits and price memory will play a role.

On the question of lower fees - MKM charges 5% but the reality is that the 3%+0.3 PayPal or credit card fee has to be paid by somebody, and it's not included in the 5%. We have yet to see how this will get implemented for the global market. It is yet to be determined how important the small difference in fees will matter. However, we know exactly that our 1% card-to-card trading fee is yet to be matched by any of our competitors.

With that in mind we don't think that anything on Cardsphere roadmap should change. We also trust our community to communicate when we need to take action.

On top of our existing differentiators, we will continue to roll out new features. As long as Cardsphere solves actual problems and does so in an ethical, sustainable, innovative manner there will be demand for the service and growth in our user base. Most likely the whole development will have no effect on Cardsphere. But we are ready for any outcome, even if it means tweaking and adaptation.

Let's wait and see.

-- CS team