4 Places You Can Buy and Sell MTG Arena Accounts

Dark Bargain | Illustration by Tyler Jacobson

Huh, this is neither my usual subject matter, nor my area of expertise. We’re covering buying and selling MTG Arena accounts, which is a touchy topic because, well, you’re not supposed to do that. I’d encourage you to avoid engaging with this process at all, but I also want to make sure there’s somewhere you can get factual information about this topic, should you seek that.

My goal here is purely informational, not persuasive. If you’re curious like me and simply want to know what’s going on, maybe I can quench that curiosity. My whole-hearted advice is to avoid this altogether, but for those who have made a calculated decision on the matter, feel free to read further.

Are You Allowed to Buy and Sell MTG Arena Accounts?

Squirrel Dealer – Illustration by Bram Sels

No, an MTG Arena account holder isn’t allowed to buy, sell, or otherwise exchange Arena accounts, as explicitly stated in MTGA's terms of service. This all boils down to making sure personal information stays safe and intact, especially since Arena and your Wizards account are usually linked to emails, passwords, credit card information, etc.

So if it’s not allowed, why bother highlighting different marketplaces that let you do this? For one, the only thing that concerns me more than someone having their Arena account deactivated is finding out they were scammed trying to sell their account. If nothing else, I’d like to at least expose scammers by looking into this subject. Those of you with no intentions of bartering Arena accounts need not worry about anything. And those of you who are looking into it (against my better recommendation), at least I can help you avoid a potential disaster scenario.

Where to Buy MTG Arena Accounts

PlayerAuctions

PlayerAuctions calls itself the “Leading Marketplace for Gamers,” which might be true as far as MTGA is concerned, given the competition is about two other websites and a guy in his basement cramming Arena tutorials to make a quick buck every other month.

This website specializes in player-to-player (P2P) trading across all sorts of games, from World of Warcraft to Runescape. It has this funny flow chart that describes how the trading process works, though it reminds me more of the mazes you’d find on the back of a kid’s cereal box.

Since this is the most referenced place where people attempt to buy/sell Arena accounts, I’ll go into more detail here and just point out notable differences with other websites. I’m also learning about most of this, so excuse me if I don’t explain the technical mumbo-jumbo well.

First thing to mention is that these websites all have seller fees. A percentage of the money you’d theoretically get from selling an account goes to the platform you’re using. That’s to be expected from basically any P2P marketplace. Here’s a general look at the fees you could expect from PlayerAuctions, at least as a litmus test for what it looks like in general:

There are additional fees for using things like PayPal or NetTeller/Skrill, but since you’re not actually doing this (right?), we don’t need to spend time breaking it down.

The picture below gives you an idea of how Arena accounts are posted here. They’ll usually list details about the account like number of wildcards, available gold and gems, Arena packs, set completion, etc.

One of them advertises an “Exclusive account!” which sounds a lot like those “Luxury Apartment!” signs outside new housing developments (read: it doesn’t mean anything). Four of the six accounts in this image are all listed from the same person, presumably that basement guy farming Arena accounts for roughly $50-100 a pop.

The account's Arena rank isn’t really used as a selling point, since rank depreciates every month and maintaining your rank is correlated to your play skill. Buying a fully-kitted Arena account won’t make you better at the game.

You know what will make you a better Arena player? Draftsim’s very own Arena Tutor! Instead of buying bootleg black market Arena accounts, why not invest your time and energy into something that’s free and easy to use, and that makes you a better Magic player in the long run? Get useful deckbuilding assistance, Draft support, and best of all, be in complete control of your own account without the shady dealings.

For all intents and purposes, PlayerAuctions looks like a legitimate marketplace. At the very least it doesn’t seem to be scummy or dangerous to use, since everything goes through the website directly.

EpicNPC

EpicNPC is a dip in quality as far as the user experience is concerned.

That said, this site has quite a few listings for Arena accounts, from people selling accounts to users putting out feelers for accounts to buy. Asking prices are mostly arbitrary, with some sellers doing a sort of conversion rate based on the monetary value of items from the MTGA store.

They also handle the transfer of accounts with an automated “middleman.” It seems that some sites use actual, physical middlemen to hold a sold account and conduct a trade, maybe making a commission off the sale, but that’s replaced with EpicNPC’s “Trade Guardian.” It looks like this is a sort of mark of authenticity that can be added to an account.  You know what, I have a Trade Guardian, too. He’s a six-foot tall guy named Steve who stands behind me menacingly while I conduct business.

I also dug into some reviews for these websites, and the reviews for EpicNPC are generally positive. Take from that what you will.

PlayerUp

And now we’re here. Dropping off a cliff hard and fast and demonstrating why this isn’t a part of the Magic ecosystem that’s worth engaging in.

PlayerUp’s website looks fine enough. Maybe a little busy, but nothing egregious. And there’s an MTGA page with quite a few listings. But A, the price gouging is strong with this one, and B, the reviews don’t paint a pretty picture of this platform.

Most accounts (plenty of which look like they’ve actually successfully sold) are being marked in the 100s of dollars. Please don’t spend a car payment on a MTGA account, folks. Please, for me.

And there are quite a few reports calling this website out as a scam. From what I can gather, it’s not that the platform is actually straight-up stealing money, just that there seems to be a ridiculously long period between when you “buy an account” and when you actually get what you paid for. From the seller’s end, people have reported waiting on money for excessive periods of time and being unable to contact the middlemen for this site. If it’s not a scam, they at least engage in poor business practices, which is enough to disengage altogether.

Chicks Gold

Mentioning Chicks Gold at all is a testament to just how muddy this topic gets once you dig even remotely below the surface. Despite advertising MTGA accounts for sale, there are literally zero active posts. There’s nothing here to engage with, and this is maybe the fourth or fifth site on a Google search for selling accounts.

To be fair, it looks like Chicks Gold is a hub for buying and selling accounts from tons of different games, so I can’t speak to its credibility with other titles, but I also wasn’t trying to ante up my Apex Legends profile just to test it out. I’m assuming most games have similar policies as Arena insofar as transferring personal accounts is concerned, but this clearly isn’t an active market for Arena.

Can You Sell MTG Arena Cards?

No, there isn’t currently any way to sell individual MTGA cards. The platform just doesn’t have any trading capabilities like Magic: The Gathering Online, and that’s not changing any time soon.

If you’re asking this question in the sense of, “Can I give someone real-world money and have them give me cards on Arena,” the answer is still no. Again, there’s no way to transfer cards from one Arena account to another, so anyone attempting to sell you cards on Arena is 100% trying to scam you.

Can You Have Multiple MTG Arena Accounts?

Yes, you’re allowed to have as many MTG Arena accounts as you’d like, with some stipulations. First, each account needs a different username associated with a different email. Second, since there’s no way to transfer game objects between accounts, there isn’t any sense in trying to use a dummy account for the purposes of building up one larger account. You can’t take the beginner gems from a new MTGA account and transfer them to your “main” account, for example.

Why would you want multiple Arena accounts, then?

If you play enough to grind Arena's daily quests on multiple accounts, that means you’ll acquire enough gold and gems across multiple profiles to participate in events more often. You can use your main account to do the majority of your Arena-related activities, and farm coins on your burner account just to get an occasional extra Arena Draft in.

Also, you might consider a second account if you have a well-known main account. Streamers, for example, might want to switch to a lesser-known username when they’re playing casually to avoid recognition.

I also know several people who maintain a second “smurf” account. The goal is to keep that account’s rank especially low to have easier competition in ranked events. They’ll grind the ladder on their main account, but once they hit Diamond or Mythic rank, they revert to their secondary account and start playing in the little leagues again. I find this distasteful, but it happens. If you made it to the top ranks, I say embrace the challenge and get better at the game.

Wrap Up

Dark Deal | Illustration by Scott Murphy

I understand the irony of persuading people not to take part in the buying and selling of Arena accounts, then listing off places where you can do that. It’s like telling people not to eat red meats then cooking them a steak dinner.

I get the skepticism, but the point is that there’s nothing much to gain here. At most you’d make a quick buck at the expense of selling an account you probably put years of effort into, and at worst you run headfirst into a scam that’s now siphoning money into an untraceable overseas bank account (I don’t know how these things work). Even worse, you could end up with nothing and have your Arena account deactivated for breaking the terms of service.

I learned a little bit by writing this, and it scratched an itch I’ve had. But it’s nothing more than a curious part of online Magic that makes me raise an eyebrow. Bottom line: It’s okay to look if you’re also curious, but don’t try to buy or sell Arena accounts.

Being well-informed helps me do my best to keep others out of trouble. If you have anything to add to the conversation here, or can expand on any of the details, let me know in the comments below or over in the Draftsim Discord.

Thanks for making Draftsim your #1 stop for all things Magic!