Price Guide for Magic Cards

This article shows you how to look up what your Magic cards sell for online…see what they’re really worth.

You’ll need a few details:

  1. Enter the name of the card (found at the top)
  2. Enter the edition. The edition can be identified by a small symbol, printed on the middle-right area of the card. If you don’t know the edition, use this guide to to look up the edition by symbol or copyright date.


Looking up a Magic Card’s Value


If you don’t get any results…

Your card is probably worthless… It’s probably not worth someone’s time to sell a card worth $.01 online, so you don’t see any results. You can check to see if anyone has your card listed by clicking the “For Sale” link right above the search results… but remember that “for sale” prices aren’t what it’s really worth, just what someone is asking for it. If you still don’t see any results… try looking up cards that are the more playable (currently popular in MTG decks) or are rarer (red or gold set symbol).

If you get too many results…

Use the checkboxes! Look through the results and choose a few Magic cards exactly like yours… Mavin will show you an average price based on the ones you picked.

What to do next

Once you’ve searched through your cards and found the valuable ones, you have several options:

For the valuable ones: You can either hold onto the cards, perhaps get them graded, and see if they appreciate in value over time.

Alternatively, you could sell them to a local card shop knowing full well what they sell for online (because you searched for them on Mavin right?). Keep in mind dealers will buy them from you at wholesale prices… they have to make a profit after all, and selling a large collection takes a considerable amount of time and resources… so don’t expect (or demand) to get 100% of what you’d get online.

If you have the time and patience, you can sell it yourself on eBay and get a competitive price. Read our guide to selling on eBay.

For the worthless ones: Magic cards don’t have to be valuable to still be enjoyed. There’s probably a friend, a kid you know, or even a stranger who would still get a lot of joy from them. Give them away to someone who will enjoy them! Or sell them for a fraction of what you originally paid for them by dumping them on Craigslist.

Magic Card Set Symbols

Unlike other types of cards people collect, Magic cards don’t have a unique number printed on them. This makes it hard to look them up online.

To look up your Magic cards you need to know the edition name (not printed on the card). Look for the set symbol (middle-right area of the card) and use the following table to look up the corresponding edition name.

Continue reading “Magic Card Set Symbols”