Man, let me tell you, when I decided I needed the Tarot of the Sorceress deck, I didn’t just casually browse. This deck—you know the one, the one everyone is whispering about—it’s stunning. But stunning usually means ridiculously expensive, right? I hate paying retail price. I truly do. So I threw myself into a two-week deep dive, determined to figure out exactly where the hell I could snag this thing without having to take out a second mortgage.
My entire process began right where everyone else starts, which is exactly why it was so frustrating initially. I punched the deck name into the big search engine, expecting immediate answers. What I got back was a mess. A total, confusing mess of resellers, foreign sites, and prices that swung wildly from “maybe acceptable” to “are you kidding me, that’s highway robbery.”
Hitting the Standard Retail Walls
I started with the obvious stops. I hit up Amazon first. That was a laugh. They had it, sure, but the pricing looked like it had been set by an algorithm that saw how popular it was and just decided to add $30 for fun. I noted the price, but immediately crossed it off as a final purchase option. It became my price ceiling—the absolute most I would pay if I failed everywhere else.
Next, I checked the big spiritual bookstores online. You know the ones that advertise everywhere. They usually have decent stock, but they also follow MSRP religiously. Again, the price was high, but the killer was the shipping. It was like they wanted to charge me extra just for the privilege of receiving their package. I archived those tabs, knowing they were secondary options at best.
My first practice log looked like this:
- Standard Retail (Amazon/Big Box): Price too high, stock guaranteed, but no deal.
- Publisher/Creator Site: Sold out, or only offering expensive limited editions.
- eBay/Mercari (Secondary Markets): A chaotic mix. Some scalpers asking double, some random people selling slightly used copies for a slight discount. Too much risk, not enough savings yet.
I realized very quickly that if I wanted a real bargain, I had to stop looking where everyone else was shopping. The standard retail route was a dead end for deals.
Switching Gears: My Community Deep Dive
The real shift in my search came when I changed my approach from buying to hunting. I stopped looking for “new stock” and started looking for “people who wanted to sell.” This meant I had to burrow deep into the actual Tarot and metaphysical communities.
I joined three specific sub-forums and two Facebook groups dedicated entirely to deck trading and collecting. This is where the true value lies, because people are often just looking to clear space, not make a profit. They just want the deck gone so they can buy their next one. I set up specific alerts for keywords related to the Sorceress deck, making sure I would be notified the second someone posted an offer.
It took patience. Lots of it. I had to sift through countless posts about swaps and trades, ignoring the chatter, just watching for that magic word: “Selling.”
This phase taught me a ton about the deck itself. I learned that there were different print runs—the earlier ones were apparently slightly higher quality but often carried a collector’s markup, which I didn’t care about. I just wanted the deck to read with. This allowed me to filter my searches further, intentionally avoiding terms that would pull up those overpriced collector items.
The International Search and the Final Score
Once I exhausted the local community markets, I pivoted to international sellers. This is often intimidating for people because of import taxes and crazy shipping fees, but sometimes, the base price in a different currency is so low that even with the extra costs, you still win.
I checked dedicated European and Canadian spiritual shops. I found that one particular site in the UK had the deck listed significantly cheaper than the US price, even before conversion. I ran the numbers meticulously. Base price + international shipping + estimated duties. It still came out about $15 cheaper than the cheapest US retailer.
But that wasn’t the best deal I found. That came from being utterly relentless in the community groups.
After about a week of refreshing, I spotted a post late one Tuesday night. Someone was liquidating their collection quickly because they were moving overseas. They listed the Tarot of the Sorceress deck as “used once, like new,” and they bundled it with a couple of other smaller items I actually wanted. The combined price was a steal—far below what I would have paid for just the Sorceress deck alone in a store.
I jumped on it immediately, messaging the seller, locking in the price, and making the payment within ten minutes. That’s the secret to getting a bargain on a hot deck: speed and patience combined. You have to wait for the right opportunity, but when it pops up, you cannot hesitate.
My Takeaways for Finding the Best Price Deals
My practice proved that you cannot rely on algorithms to give you the best price for niche, popular items like this deck. They only show you what they want you to pay. To find the real deals, you have to dig into the trenches.
Here’s what I learned that you should do if you are hunting this deck:
- Use Standard Retail as Your Max Price: Note the highest price first. Now, refuse to pay it.
- Skip New; Look for Used: Focus 90% of your energy on community trading groups and second-hand platforms. People get tired of decks, and that’s your gain.
- Be Hyper-Specific in Search Terms: Exclude “Collector’s Edition,” “Signed,” or “First Print” unless you actually want to pay the premium.
- Be Ready to Pounce: When a good deal appears, it lasts minutes, not hours. Have your payment method ready and be prepared to commit instantly.
I saved enough money to grab a second, smaller deck I’d been eyeing, all because I refused to just hand over my cash to the big box stores. It was worth every minute of frustrating refreshing.
