The Magic Librarities

I received this mail this morning:

"LostShade Inc. will no longer be able to sell any Wizards of the Coast products outside of the USA as legal counsel for WOTC in Germany has claimed that our sales to European Union customers are made without WOTC's consent. WOTC so far has not disputed its lawyers' claims nor given us permission to sell outside of the USA. This includes singles and sets in addition to WOTC's previous policy forbidding the sale of sealed product outside of the USA. Again, we will not sell any WOTC product to anyone who does not live in the USA.

We want to thank all of our international customers for their past business. We are sorry that we will no longer be able to deal with you. Please do not bid on our eBay auctions as we will be forced to file for credit. Our auctions now state that we only ship to the USA; however, eBay informs us that everyone can still see and bid on them by mistake. We cannot sell to international customers from our Web site either."

For those who don't know, Lostshade is a big seller on ebay.com.

What'ss wrong with WOTC deutshland?
Do you think someday european buyers won't be able to buy from US sellers?   >:(

That's a already known and discussed topic  ;)

The reason is as always the money:

Display in Germany ~90 - 110 EUR ($110-$130)
Displays in US ~50 - 60 EUR ($60-$70)

So even with high shipping costs (weight) and custom fees importing from US to Germany was(is) a lot cheaper   ;)

Btw: Those letters where send to most international selling shops and powersellers.
But i never heard this includes singles, i did only know for sealed products.

It doesn't include them, they just decided to include them so that they can just say 'no one outside the US at all bid on any of our auctions' and they know that if the winning bidder shows being from Europe they can just File for a credit.

Just making their lives simpler..

Gryfalia

Why would WOTC preventing US sellers from selling to Europe make them also not able to sell singles?  All singles sales are really deamed as secondary sales and can't be limited by WOTC.  

I don't see how selling anything to anyone can be restricted by the manufacturer.  You bought the stuff from them, and its your property. Its not like WOTC takes the risk of unused inventory on your shelves (not that old product is generally an issue with Magic :)) or will replace it if it gets damaged (fire, flood ...).  I'd like to see one of these places keep selling the stuff to all comers, just to push it into the courts to show how WOTC's heavy handed practices are silly.

Now Blackborder.com too  >:(
http://prices.blackborder.com/cgi-bin/s ... policy.cgi

For me this policy is okay regarding inprint products, but for out of print products this is #*$%&  >:( >:( >:(

Where can we complaint to WotC ??

I mean, booster pack collector should be able to order sealed products outside his own Country or the collection will become extremely difficult >:(

I don't know if it will help, but:

While a few individuals that sell both sealed product and singles might stop international sales, they probably have other reasons for doing so.  Wizards cannot stop secondary market transactions without running into legal problems, and both Wizards, and most dealers will soon realize this.

As for problems getting new sealed product, I have had International members help me in the past.  I don't collect anything sealed, but I do live in the US.  If it is feasible, I would be willing to help out non-US members obtain US-priced sealed items by acting as a US shipping adddress for their successful purchases.  Depending upon the logistics, and how much this adds to the final prices, it might or might not be worth trying.  

If anyone is interested, just let me know.

Hammr7: I was actually about to bring up the same point. Thanks :) I agree.

If anyone overseas needs an amount of boosters, pre-cons, or even boxes, I can obtain them locally for fairly good (average) prices, and send them to you in Europe and Asia. Please realize of course that I cannot afford to buy a box and send it, for the price of the box. I would send you a shipping receipt. Last time I sent a small Package to a friend in spain, with just normal USPS airmail, it was over 30 dollars US.

So.. please feel free (foreign members) to message me with requests, I will do my best to help.

Thanks Hank and Dylan.

I am not too much concerned about easy-to-find products but about more weirdos items that sellers put on eBay from time to time. e.g. a German Revised WB Starter Deck.

If I have:
1- To find someone in the US who would accept to relay the product for me
2- To get agreement from the seller to ship this product to someone else than me
3- To pay for Item + shipping in the US
4- To pay for incurred shipping + time spent to the relay-guy

I end up with paying $20 of shipping for the starter deck and with having spent over 3 hours of e-mailing the whole planet.

So it's boring and annoying, that's all ...

Eric.

However annoying, WOTC does have some legal legs to stand on. The issue is very similar to the current brouhaha over U.S. residents ordering prescription drugs from Canada, where they're much cheaper.

All companies who sell wholesale to retailers enter into a contract with the buyer. These contracts often stipulate both pricing and market area. They're intended to protect retailers from having to compete with those outside their own immediate area, among other factors. If a retailer breaches these contracts, wholesalers can -- and often do -- stop selling to the retailer.

Such pricing contracts are routine. For example, you may notice that low sale prices for Pepsi products never coincide with those of Coke products; they alternate in a very orderly manner within a given area. All of these arrangements are contractual, and involve lengthy and costly legal proceedings when contested -- e.g., Microsoft.

WOTC's new policy is annoying, but quite normal for wholesale/retail markets. As the above postings suggest, there are still ways to work around it.

Hi Members.
Another Bad News is Sellers that won't send Anymore as a Gift and for a Minimum Value  ???
The Good News is that Sellers who will still do so will get All The Europeans and more for sure  :D ;)

I wouldn't call it so much a legal leg as not-found-illegal extortion, that happens to be widely practiced.  Its not like resellers can apply pressure to WotC by going somewhere else for cards (well, some can, but those are the ones who probably come up with stuff like this)