PWCC has ‘enabled’ people for over 10 years, changing their policy hurts their business, I doubt they did it because of any ethical reason which is why I was curious about US exports & tax.
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@pierce it feels like someone in the customs office, tax office or someone in law enforcement must have caught wind of it and threatened to take some higher ups away in cuffs, because honestly I think they could have. As you say it isn’t out of the kindness of PWCC’s hearts that they are deciding to start conforming to tax law. Nor is it a smart business move that will help them as they will certainly realize lower prices from international customers.
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Agreed, I was just responding to your comment saying as much. They were probably dodging some high value export fee, it would be fairly obvious if that were the case if they were audited.
I doubt it Gary, they had nearly 18,000 lots last block and I believe they collect a portion of the postage payment as insurance. Let’s just say it’s $5 per lot (the amount is variable based on domestic/international and the the percentage changes based on the sales price so I feel $5 is conservative) … that would be $90k insurance collected in just one months auction block, multiplied by 12 blocks a year and they’re collecting over a mil in their insurance pot per year.
I don’t think they’re losing a mil in cards through the post per year, even if they lost a 100k card that loss could be covered pretty easily. The amount they’re potentially going to lose due to less international bidding would be far too much to make a policy change over a lost order.
You’re right though, I think this change is going to affect items end prices, I know some international MTG bidders that aren’t going to be bidding with them anymore and they spend a lot.
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2 more weeks till the start of the next block and another one till it ends.
I doubt prices will drop drastically this block as the information isn’t as widespread yet but after a few months, once many international orders have been shipped with the proper value declared, we might see a downtick; however after some months, prices on some higher end pieces might naturally go up, thus canceling out the lower prices from bidders pulling out.
All in all, we might see prices stay the same moving forward.
Kind of hoped this would all blow over and it wasn’t true, but just got my import bill for the last auction.
Kind of glad I did not win that many cards now, lol.
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I got stung by this change this month. Will unlikely be using them again going forward as a result.
Yeah, seem a bit like an end of an era. I had to pay an additional 25% in fees (Norway) to receive my cards from last auction block and my package got delayed by 1 week due to this. Considering that PWCC already use very expensive shipping, most of the time it will probably not be worth it to bid on their auctions as an international buyer. E.g. cheaper stuff was already inherently expensive due to shipping prices and expensive stuff will be even more expensive due to import fees.
I got this message from them and as was pointed out here, it seems like they want people to use their new vault service. I wonder if it will become popular. I told them I had zero interest in their vault.
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No way I’m using that vault. I want to open the package with cards after waiting for it eagerly for a week or more. I want to look at them, sort them and then neatly put them away.
Sad 
.
I couldn’t believe this either. I actually messaged them a few months ago and they said they would mark down prices. I never purchased anything though as I still find auctions cheaper in the UK. I can imagine prices getting cheaper for US buyers now from less worldwide bidets.
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Not going to purchase from them anymore since the already high shipping costs and now the ~+25% additional import charges just simply makes it not worth it unless it’s some item I really need. Not a huge deal tho, but surely sucks for a lot of Europeans who purchased from them often
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Shipito is a thing.
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Maybe it was like @chok speculated and nothing to do with any legal pressure @gottaketchumall … looking at that response they’ll still under declare (technically the owner under declares freeing them of any responsibility of fraud) but only when posting items out of the vault which they take a fee for.
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Declaring value on parcels is a good way for said parcels to be stolen.
So dumb.
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Good point…
That’s why you send valuable things signed for and tracked. The delivery driver would not only have to claim it was delivered, but they’d also have to forge your signature. In the UK, most delivery companies (even the shitty ones) have GPS tracking in their vans, so they’d also likely have to drive to your location before claiming it was delivered.
Not declaring correct value is fraud.
It‘s fraud by the government charging 20%+ VAT for importing a collectible.
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You might not like it, but it’s not fraud.
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Lmao at Americans who think their store will get more traffic from Europeans who will now be happilly paying the additional 27%.
All it means is that their sources to potentially buy from without hassle shrink.
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American buyers can now expect less competition on PWCC auctions from international bidders.
American sellers who properly report export value can now expect foreign buyers to not flock to PWCC for the unfair advantage they were holding and now are playing on level terms with PWCC.
American sellers who don’t properly report export value now have more of a stranglehold on the market for tax dodgers so can expect to earn more of a premium with international buyers.
Americans win out. PWCC and foreign tax dodging buyers lose.
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