Brainstorm Brewery #181- What Do You Call eBay in Canada?

 

Brainstorm Brewery #181- What Do You Call eBay in Canada?

The Eldrazi are great, but their names could be a lot more distinct. World Crusher? Reality Bruiser? I sometimes think the price of Thought-Knot Seer is so high because it’s the only Eldrazi people are able to identify and buy on purpose without trying to buy something else. The gang keeps getting tripped up on the names. Listen and laugh at them as they get confused. Come for their confusion, stay for one of the most insightful episodes in a long while. I figure like 10% of our total listeners read the show notes and those who do are the most dedicated. I don’t know why I preach to the choir. Still, I’m making the case for this episode whether you like it or not, so strap in. We discuss Standard and Modern and read some e-mails and make fun of Corbin and he tries to make fun of us back and we laugh at him and we even do Pick of the Week. Remember that segment? Well it’s back! You knew there was a reason this was your favorite podcast. It’s because it’s the best. Now stop reading like a nerd and put our audio entertainment in your head holes already. Brainstorm Brewery OUT.

 

  • Weird intro. It’s hard to know what will make the final cut.
  • Standard results!
  • Modern results!
  • E-mails! Send us your e-mails and we’ll read them!
  • Pick of the WEEEEEK! It’s baaaaack!
  • Support our Patreon! DO IT. You know this cast makes you more than $1 a week
  • Need to contact us? Hit up BrainstormBrew@gmail.com

 

Contact Us!

Brainstorm Brewery Website – E-mail – Twitter Facebook RSS iTunes Stitcher

Ryan Bushard – E-mail – Twitter Facebook

Corbin Hosler – E-mail – Twitter Facebook MTGPrice

Jason E Alt – E-mail – Twitter FacebookMTGPrice

Marcel White – E-mail – Twitter

 

PROTRADER: An Eye Toward the Pro Tour

It is very possible that Wizards got extremely lucky. We are one week away from Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch, and it is very possible that this Modern event does the one thing that none of its predecessors has ever done before.

This event might actually feature new(ish) cards.

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

The Bottom of BFZ

By: Cliff Daigle
@wordofcommander

So a new set is here, and while our eyes are immediately drawn to the new shiny things, this is the exact time that we want to be thinking ahead.

Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged are going to rotate in April, when Shadows over Innistrad arrives. This is the beginning of the new rotational schedule, 18 months in Standard instead of 24. What I want to look at today are the cards that are currently underpriced, since they are in Battle for Zendikar and the supply is just about at maximum.

My philosophy for years has been to trade for these types of cards now and then trade them away in six months or so, when demand is high and yet it’s no longer being opened. An example of this in action is Hero’s Downfall.

Capture

That low point, during Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx? That’s where we are with Battle for Zendikar. See that spike during the beginning of Khans of Tarkir? That’s my exit point.

I’m not skilled enough at deckbuilding to say with certainty what decks will be good and what won’t after rotation. What I do know is this: losing the fetch lands is going to hurt these four-and-five-color monstrosities, running twelve fetches and six or seven battle lands. If Shadows over Innistrad contains the enemy fetches (Scalding Tarn and the like) then I’m probably going to be super wrong and that’s going to be a mea culpa moment.

But let’s get to my current wants:

The Battle Lands (all $3 – $4 each)

This is the easiest call of all. Supply is at maximum, and everyone has all they need for their decks. The dirty little secret of the battle lands and the manabases right now is that you don’t need the full playset of each land. You need one or two, since fetches get you exactly what you need.

When there is no Windswept Heath, decks are going to need to draw their lands. Even if you want to run more pain lands (for the colorless) then you still have holes to fill and that means you’re going to increase the numbers of battle lands you’re playing.

Take a Jeskai Black deck or an Abzan Blue deck. Depending on the flavor, it’s running between five and eight battle lands of three or four types. No four-of on these duals, because fetches obviate that need. Take away the fetches and I think deckbuilders go back to three-of and four-of, which means the prices on these will conservatively double.

That’s right — I think even Cinder Glade will be in the $6-$8 range before we get the second set of Shadows Over Innistrad block.

 

Radiant Flames ($1)

It’s true that this is being overshadowed by Kozilek’s Return, and for the most part that’s merited. This is a sorcery, and colorless mana doesn’t help with converge at all. I think that Radiant Flames is super cheap for what it does, though, and it doesn’t seem unlikely for there to be a rise in decks that want to wipe the board of small things for three mana. Plus, the price to get in is so low that your risk is super low as well.

Stay away from the promo, though. Pick up one if you have to have the full collection of promo foils but this one doesn’t have much appeal to Cube or Commander. I can’t wait to trade these away at $3.

 

Planar Outburst ($0.75)

Speaking of cheap sweepers! This is a total flier. It’s almost bulk in price and while it’s five mana, there aren’t many cards ever that offer the same level of “kill everything but the one thing I want to live” around. Martial Coup did it, Phyrexian Rebirth did it. I’m picking up about ten of these and crossing my fingers.

 

Painful Truths ($2.80)

There’s a little more risk on the buy-in here but the card already has pedigree. It’s too much life to be played as a four-of, and that is going to count against it.

However, this card is starting to pop up in Modern lists and that makes it an appealing target indeed. I really like trading for cards that have a wide appeal, even they aren’t used in full playsets. I think that this will climb to about $5, if not higher.

 

Ruinous Path ($1.31)

Holy Hero’s Downfall! It’s the same spell! A little worse, but a little better. What sent Downfall high was the rise of Mono-Black Devotion, but there’s a lot of reasons to go heavy black at rotation. The mana will be easier, and you’ll get this plus Grasp of Darkness. If you’re looking to kill creatures early and late, that seems like an awesome starting point. Path, Grasp, a couple of Flaying Tendrils…yeah, I like that plan.

This is another card that won’t have to try very hard to get up to $5, or even more, depending on the decks being built.

 

Ob Nixilis Reignited ($6.50)

So if killing things is good, let’s stay on that path. This is a very powerful planeswalker who is seeing very little play. He’s amazing when ahead and great when behind, and I’m in for this climbing to at least $10.

 

 

Shrine of the Forsaken Gods ($1.25)

In the decks that want colorless, this is phenomenal. In the decks that want to get a lot of lands and land successive haymakers, it’s really good.

In other decks, it’s pretty lame. But most importantly, it’s cheap and it won’t take much for this to be $3 in trade. This is one of my PucaTrade positions, getting them at 100 points and hoping to send them back out for 250-300 points in a few months.

 

Sanctum of Ugin ($1.50)

If Shrine gets good, so does this. Shrine is actually best friends here, as the loss of a land needs to be made up. The same principles apply.

 

From Beyond ($1)

This isn’t a flier for three months from now. This is pure, unfettered, delicious speculation. Awakening Zone is up to $6 or so, though its last printing was five years ago. This is a better card, even for costing a mana more. I love picking these up and just putting them away, and the foils are sweet at $3-$4 too. Free tokens every turn are great, and using them to cast big things is amazing.

I don’t intend this to be a comprehensive list, just the things that have caught my eye. Are there others I’ve missed out on? Comment away!


 

Shotcalling a Shopcrawl

I don’t travel a lot.

Deranged Hermit

While several of my friends and co-writers across the country have the opportunity to travel to multiple Grands Prix and Star City Games events on a semi-regular basis, I generally only get the chance to travel to two large-scale events a year at the most. Being tucked into upstate New York way over in the corner of the United States does have its disadvantages, since Wizards of the Coast and SCG only feel the need to drop into my neck of the woods once in a great while.

Thankfully, our relatively isolated ecosystem means that I’ve been able to grow a stable, small-scale setup in my college town of Oswego, where I can help buffer my school expenses and foil Commander decks through buying and selling locally. A mix of Facebook, TCGplayer, and Twitter sales help move some of the larger stuff that my local budget customers don’t want to touch, but that leaves me with a pretty sizable pile of bulk picks from the commons and uncommons to $1 to $3 rares that end up stagnating in the display case. Normally, the correct out for this type of stuff is a long buylist order to a single store to help save on shipping, but alphabetizing and set sorting cards is basically torture to me. I just don’t have the patience for it.

This year, I’m planning on doing something a little bit different.  Have you ever heard of Thomas Dodd? He’s the proud father of Card Advantage, and has been a frequent face of northeastern Grands Prix for a while now. Just five months ago, Card Advantage put the finishing touches on its gaming center, and Thomas and friends have been living the ultra-glamorous full-time LGS life ever since.

Untitled

I’ve sold to Card Advantage a few times at previous events, and the experience has always been great. They’ve always given me excellent numbers on bulk rares, and I haven’t gotten to travel since Vegas in May. Slowly, the idea formed in my head. I could take a trip down to check out the new gaming center, sell a bunch of cards, and turn the trip into a mini-vacation of sorts with the fiancee, where I could also shopcrawl on the way there and back.

Shopcrawl?

If you don’t know what shopcrawling is and you still clicked on the article, I appreciate your daring bravery and thirst for knowledge. In essence, my plan is to carve a swath of destruction down Interstate 81, buying out every card store from Oswego to Athens. I want to create the next Dust Bowl across the eastern coast of the United States, only with Magic cards. All joking aside, the goal is to explore and visit several local game stores along the way, hopefully buy a bunch of bulk that the stores don’t care about (and maybe even the whole Magic inventory of a lower-tiered store if I’m extremely lucky), and then unload my treasures to Thomas when I reach the Peach state. It’s something I’ve never actually done before, but I’m excited to try before my springtime of college youth is over.

EN MTGHOP Cards V3.indd

Of course, phase one of this operation was clearing the operation with my lovely fiancee, Emily. While she’s always been supportive of my… unique source of income, she’s understandably apprehensive when it comes to me spending hundreds of dollars on piles of cardboard. If I wanted to put Operation Sowing Salt  into action, I had to convince her that this would be a fun adventure that probably wouldn’t involve me spending a ton of money. In fact, the goal of the trip was to sell a bunch of cards once I got to Georgia.

“Yeah, Sounds Like Fun!”

Oh. Okay. That was a lot easier than I expected. I had this whole persuasion speech planned, and… Nope. Not gonna question it.

So with phase one complete, now I had to start figuring out our plan of attack. Unfortunately, Wizards doesn’t exactly have an option on its website for “these are all of the stores that you should probably stop at from point A to point B,” so we have to improvise a little bit by combining Google Maps with the Wizards Event Store Locator.

Screenshot 2016-01-26 at 11.01.23 PM

This is our route. I’ve already visited pretty much all of the shops up to the northern Pennsylvania border, so let’s start our Wizards store search with the first large city that we’ll be passing through, Scranton.

Screenshot 2016-01-27 at 12.15.19 AM

Screenshot 2016-01-26 at 11.08.26 PM

Chances are, I’m not going to have any luck going to the biggest named stores in the area. The well-oiled machines will more than likely have their bulk processed or sorted, everything priced out perfectly, and have zero incentive to sell out of a bunch of cards at once. I’m looking for smaller stores that might want to clear out some room on the shelves for more enticing product, and places that might have a smaller total inventory. While I won’t be able to make an assessment like that until I actually walk into the store, I can still do a little bit of research to get a rough estimate of what kinds of stores I want to walk into.

5Ds collectables

This is the kind of store that I would be interested in stopping at: only a couple hundred Facebook likes, mostly evening hours (which suggests that the owner most likely has another “real” job and running this store is a secondary hobby), and not too far off my chosen path. While I highly doubt I’d be making offers on a bunch of high-dollar staples, I’d be happy to start a conversation about the bulk commons and uncommons or bulk rares that the store has been stockpiling for an extended period of time. Now to repeat this process for the rest of the fourteen-hour blue line on Google Maps…

While stores that focus primarily on games like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Force of Will, and tabletop games are fine choices for loading my fiancee’s vehicle with large quantities of cardboard, we’d really prefer to hit the Atlantis of shopcrawling. We want the dusty old binder from Arabian Nights and Legends that’s been sitting in the back of the store for longer than I’ve been alive. No store that’s focused even remotely on Magic as a business is going to have this legendary binder full of ancient cards, so we’re going to have to look to other types of stores that our fellow Magic players aren’t as likely to have already stripped clean.

baseball

Apparently, sports cards stores still exist. While I know essentially nothing about how to play a Derek Jeter in attack mode or what Michael Jordan’s ability is when you direct attack your opponent’s heart points, I do know that there’s a (slightly) higher chance of finding a shop owner who would love to get rid of  his mana and spells to make room for more sports memorabilia. The further we stretch away from the bigger cities, the more our luck increases. I highly doubt that those three shops located in a larger city like Scranton haven’t already been picked clean by savvy Magic players like ourselves. Basically, this is the store I’m looking for while shopcrawling:

grassy-butte36

To be honest, I’ll probably just pull out my phone and google “baseball card stores near X location” every half hour or so instead of planning out this huge expedition and targeting stores in advance. I’d rather wait and find the ones that are off the beaten path, but unfortunately Interstate 81 is a pretty well-worn trail. We’ll see where it goes, and I’ll report back on our results when I get back from our trip.

Preparing for Negotiations

Now, let’s actually get to the fun part. We’ll assume that Emily and I actually find a store that’s interested in selling a large chunk of their inventory, whether it be bulk or otherwise. How am I going to go about making an offer and actually buying? I’m a young city-slicker from out of town, and there’s no reason for this mom-and-pop store to trust I don’t have forked tongue. We need to be sure we are actually offering them a service that they’re interested in. Trying to bully or force someone to sell cards is not only obviously wrong, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. 

Starting the conversation will likely go something like this: “I see you have a lot of bulk commons and uncommons lying around. What do you usually sell them for?” Some stores are happy setting their customers pick through the bulk at five or ten cents per card, and make a surprising amount of money just from non-competitive players digging up decks. we’re not going to try to compete with that. We’ll be offering $4 to $5 per thousand, depending on a rough guesstimate as to the age and picked-ness of the bulk. Shopcrawling is one of the only scenarios in which I can see myself gambling and paying a little bit more than $5 per thousand, if I really wanted to lock in a purchase and it looked like the cards were from a prime time frame (say, 2003 to 2009). I’d be accepting a possible loss in that scenario should the bulk have been picked by someone who knows what they’re doing, but I’m willing to take a few more risks on this trip than I normally would otherwise. 

Our trip is scheduled for February 11 through the 16, so I’ve still got a couple more weeks of planning and preparing. While it’s definitely possible pretty likely that we won’t find any stores worth buying from, I’m still excited to make the drive. I don’t get to experience the “play the game, see the world” part of Magic nearly as much as I’d like to, so I’m getting a few last chances to travel before I have to settle down with graduate school next year. Until next week!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY