Mage
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Mage Market (legally Mage App Inc., originally Snapcardster) was a Y Combinator W19 company that built an authenticated bid/ask marketplace for Magic: The Gathering trading cards. Starting as a mobile card-scanning app, it evolved into a real-time bid/ask platform — matching buyer bids with seller asks automatically — where in-house experts verified card authenticity before shipment, a model explicitly patterned on GOAT's sneaker-resale business.
02 / Mage FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Mage's model — authenticated physical goods with centralized warehousing — needed infrastructure its ~$880K funding could never support. The North American warehouse stalled on visa issues and was paused; when COVID-19 cut revenue 60% in March 2020, the company had no buffer and no path to raise more. Eight months of failed acquisition talks followed; Mage formally dissolved in December 2020.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Peer Richelsen and Malte Delfs build Mage Market in Kiel, Germany — a marketplace for Magic: The Gathering cards that began life as the Snapcardster scanning app — joining Y Combinator's Winter 2019 batch.
- Closure announced
CEO Peer Richelsen announces a controlled shutdown on March 29, 2020, after COVID-19 causes a 60% revenue decline; remaining funds go to extended employee severances.
- Operations ended
After eight months of failed acquisition negotiations, Mage formally dissolves in December 2020.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Authenticated bid/ask marketplace for Magic: The Gathering cards
- 02
Real-time bid/ask matching; in-house authenticity experts
- 03
Capital-intensive warehousing model on ~$880K funding
- 04
COVID causes 60% revenue drop; shutdown Mar 2020; dissolved Dec 2020