Longtime Magic: The Gathering retailing powerhouse Troll and Toad will back off from Magic: The Gathering singles and sealed products as of January 1, 2024, after an almost 30-year run selling the line.
This is the end of an era. Troll and Toad, which has been in operation since 1994, was one of the first large-scale buyers and sellers of Magic: The Gathering cards. In October 2023, the decision was made to stop purchasing Magic singles. Today, owner Ben Burns told ICv2 that they will only take delivery on the next two rounds of Magic: The Gathering sealed product. They are also looking at running a sale in the near future to unload Magic singles and sealed product from their warehouse. This, for the moment, puts their almost 30-year relationship with Wizards of the Coast’s flagship product on ice.
The decision to stop buying Magic: The Gathering singles and sealed product was based on a number of factors, Burns explained. The primary one was that selling Magic was simply not as profitable as it once was for the company, and other TCG products, such as Pokemon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, and One Piece CG, were doing better. Another major reason cited by Burns was that the constant reprinting of valuable cards and the number of variants of these cards made buylist pricing difficult and sometimes resulted in buying cards at a loss as new reprints were announced. Troll and Toad management was also spooked by the reprinting of non-tournament-legal reserved-list cards in Magic: The Gathering – 30th Anniversary Edition, and decided to no longer take the risk that WotC may do it again one day by not carrying the reserved list singles (see “‘Magic: The Gathering – 30th Anniversary Edition’“).
“Magic is not profitable enough for our company to continue carrying right now,” said Burns to ICv2. “Sometimes it felt like I was only stocking Magic product because I loved the game so much.”
Troll and Toad will continue to buy (and sell) Pokemon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, One Piece CG, Digimon CG, and various WizKids miniatures as they have in the past.
Source: ICv2
