Magic & Monsters — Local services in Mission Viejo

*Update: The Cases are now NOT EMPTY. They seem to have made a genuine effort to keep singles stock in the store. Im going to leave my review in the original form for context but please be aware I have bumbed the score to a 4/5 due to the recent adjustments on inventory. Im still a little loose on Customer service, but it does appear to be improving as well.

Here's what you need to know.

Staff: Incredible mixed bag some of the staff are cool as hell some of them act like they dont want to deal with me its like going to a mcdonalds in a bad neighborhood.

Singles Prices: Weirdly this also relies on the staff. Sometimes I go in and the price goes up because they check market. THAT. IS. FINE. Its very hard to run tcg store and maintain perfect pricing. Whats terrible is when I go in there and they adjust the price up just for no reason. I went in there recently got a card that should have around 15$ on the website the card was priced at 17$ and the guy just randomly spouted 20$. Now on the opposite end the previous time I went in there the guy was super helpful checked every card and brought an 80$ card down to the proper 50$ marked price.

Product: Magic is great, Yugioh is Great, Lorcana is great, Ironically pokemon is awful. They have these awesome binders full of great stuff but theyre gone every other day to some convention and they never ever process inventory into their cases theres the same 20 base set two cards and then just stacks of cards that COUUULD BE in inventory but never end up there. I understand if they make a ton on conventions but they should keep a real mass of inventory in the shop for pokemon.

Sealed Product Prices: Not bad not great, which is honestly fine different stores have different models expecting every store to be as low as amazon is ridiculous and Ive seen other store pricing at much much worse. That being said they are not "nice" aboiut their pricing they maintain the margin no matter what. I can't blame them they seem to be staffing like 6 different people through the week. You can find better prices but its only like a 10$ difference and it helps out a local business. Please buy here instead of amazon but you can get cheaper ETBs down the street.

Events: Events look solid theres always players playing something. Ive been there a coupole times and its always commander, lorcana, or yugioh.

Extra: Be warned on weekends there are kids EVERYWHERE. If you cant stand children avoid the shop on weekends till at least 4PM Id say. The staff do actually tell the kids to stop behaving badly even if their parents don't.

Conclusion: Its a decent shop with good inventory. Ill keep going and Ill update the review should anything really change. I doubt it will though.That being said from now on Im not going to buy singles unless specific people are working. 3 stars not the best...

SELLER BEWARE! Please give this a read if you are considering trusting these people with your collectibles.

Before I start, all this happened about 2 years ago but it still bothers me to this day. I was back in CA for break at the time while in college out of state and wanted to get a valuation on my collection; I didn’t even necessarily have intentions to sell. I dropped off probably around 2,000-3,000 pokemon and magic the gathering cards with the intention of getting a value on them and having my parents pick them up after that was done. The magic cards weren’t anything special, mostly coming from recent sets, but just because of the sheer number I am sure they were worth at least $500 (likely much more). However, I do know for a fact my Pokemon collection was pretty valuable, including many first edition base set cards, a fair amount of the original Japanese cards, many holographic (non first edition) base set cards including a holo shadowless charizard and blastoise, other foreign cards, gym heroes cards, e-cards, and many more. The few valuable cards I knew of were worth over $2,500 at the time ungraded. I got these cards as a Christmas present from my grandmother who passed not too long after so they held a very special place in my heart in addition to their monetary value. After I dropped the cards off, I didn’t hear from them and needed to go back to school at which point I pressed them several times for either a valuation or to return my cards. I was told by the two or three different people who answered the phone that the owner/manager was not in at the window of time that they told me I would be able to reach him. A little while after that, I was told the shop was “broken into” and my cards were lost. I sent them an email to resolve the matter while still trying to get in contact over the phone and never heard anything. I would still very much like to get this resolved as once again, not only were those cards valuable but they were also...

Edit: I went in end of April 2025 and I had a very pleasant experience. An employee that has only been there for a few months, Bryce, gave us an amazing experience. He was very personable and made sure he took his time with us. On top of it the owner, Kevin has always made the shop a great experience. I do recommend coming to this card shop, as over the past few months they've been working on ALL of the key points I have listed here. The prices are good again, not overcharge for EVERYTHING. What I was pleasantly surprised about was that most items did in fact have price tag stickers on it which is a huge improvement. Thank you for caring so much about the business Kevin, keep it up.

Everything below is original review ----‐--- I've been coming to this card shop since 2016. It was always my favorite card shop until late 2024. Recently there are three things plaguing this business.

Prices - I travel around many card shops in the area and out of every card shop from santa ana to mission Viejo, this is the most expensive. They used to have great pricing, but ever since the pokemon scalping surge of 2024 they have gone horrendous with their prices. (Not just pokemon prices)

Customer Service - There is one employee there that is rude EVERY SINGLE TIME I go in. He's always wearing a hat and he's bald for pointing fingers. There is no reason at all that I should be paying $10 extra for every product when the employees can't even give me a smile. They all seem miserable and the past 10 times I have gone in, it's like they aren't even allowed to enjoy their job.

Organization - They're a huge store and this has always been an issue, but most product on customer accessible shelves do not have sticker prices which causes even more delay.

Today was officially my last time going in, not going to hurt my wallet just to be insulted by employees. Sad to see my favorite card shop...