PROTRADER: Blind Spot

October 14, 2015 Travis Allen 9 Comments

Lately, all we’ve been able to talk about is lands. Lands and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. Expeditions consumed the collective Magic consciousness ahead of Battle for Zendikar’s release. How rare would they be? How much could they be worth? Would they look cool? Are they ruining Magic? Then the set released, and the questions changed while the topic stayed the same. Are they more common in prerelease boxes? Why are they sometimes damaged? What do I do when I open one? Are they going to rise in price or drop?

For the most part, these have been fair questions. Expeditions lands are attention-grabbing. They’re visually exciting, get the people around you talking, and they’re worth enough to often buy you an entire second box of BFZ. Of course people are thinking and talking about them.

At the same time, Fat Packs have grabbed a lot of attention lately as well. When players realized that fat packs aren’t print-on-demand, but rather only have a single print run, big box store inventory dried up quickly and local stores were raising their prices. Star City Games was charging a whopping $80 for them—nearly the price of a booster box itself.

Quick aside: First of all, “price gouging” only refers to raising prices on essential goods and services, and almost always during an emergency situation where markets are extremely localized. Charging $30 for a $3 gallon of gas in the middle of a blizzard that prohibits travel to other vendors is price gouging. Charging $80 for a Fat Pack with an MSRP of $40 isn’t price gouging, it’s capitalism, for better or worse.

I had written a whole bunch more about this at first, but it was discussed very well on Monday in Sigmund’s article and in the comments. Go read it there.

Alright, where were we. Ah yes, the basic land packs contained within the contentious Fat Packs.

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Jason Alt

Enemy of the Fish Crabs

October 14, 2015 Jason Alt 9 Comments

Are you joining this series in the middle? That’s cool, but be apprised that you’re doing that. If you want to catch all of the references I’m referring to, you can always catch up really quickly if you are so inclined: part one introduced the series and talked about Orzhov and part two discussed Golgari.

Today, I get to talk about my favorite color combination: green-blue. This is going to be a real bummer, because Simic always seems to suck. It’s usually the worst of any given cycle and the mechanics we get are always seem disappointingly slow for Standard. Have fun dicking around with graft—Dimir just stripped your hand and then transmuted for its combo pieces. Still, there are some things that Simic does well, and Kruphix and his Prophet all but made up for the degree to which it seems like Simic has been pooped on. Besides, it’s not always bad: Pygmy Hippo is way better than Mundungu. Well, in EDH, anyway.

What is Simic good at according to the Wiki article I’ve been referencing these last few weeks?

I’m far from overwhelmed, here. Still, with a lack of probable effects to build a deck around comes increased certainty vis-a-vis the cards likely to be in the deck. The choice is literally almost just, “A +1/+1 counter deck that has card drawing, because of course it has card drawing—there’s blue in it.”

So what are we likely to see if these are the abilities that the deck is built around? Is there a Wurmcoil equivalent here?

+1/+1 Counters

A lot of these cards are pretty bad, frankly. I may end up retreading some cards I’ve already talked about, but we’re trying to judge them with respect to their likelihood to see a reprinting, so why not mention them again?

I don’t think Hangarback Walker is at all likely. The event deck took care of this reprinting and sent it “plummeting” to $15 down from $20. As much as this would be a solid card in a deck like we’re expecting, and as much as this might be an interesting Wurmcoil corollary, I have to imagine this is safe. Copies should be pretty stable moving forward.

I was always as bullish on this card as a person could possibly be, but I didn’t anticipate it hitting $5 this soon. This might be a nice card to reprint into mush and it wouldn’t hurt a deck with a counters theme, either. If you have these, I think you ship them if they start to tail down a bit more—quintupling up in a week usually means the growth is gassed, at least for a while. This card is going to make a small splash in Standard, but it would need to be a staple to be worth enough money that you regret shipping these for $5. If you got these cheap, shipping to a buylist for $2.50 seems fine and no one would blame you. I’m glad I got prerelease-stamped copies for personal use by trading for them, since everyone seems to be sold out of foils, which is odd to see when a Standard card spikes. That smacks of speculation rather than organic growth.

The Modern Masters reprinting didn’t really make much of a dent in Doubling Season‘s price, did it? I realize this isn’t all that likely, but this would be a good way to bring this price down, provided that’s even something Wizards cares about. Primal Vigor seems even less likely to me, because there is no precedent for reprinting a card originally printed in a Commander deck in a subsequent one. However, I did say it wasn’t out of the question to see a reprinting of Scavenging Ooze in the Golgari deck so maybe this isn’t out of the question. There’s not a ton of money to be lost by not selling, because I expect the Simic one to be the worst-selling of the this year’s five decks—unless it gets a very good Legacy card (which is possible given how good blue is in Legacy). Thus, Doubling Season and Primal Vigor might be safe-ish price-wish, even if reprinted. There just aren’t a ton of cards that help the strategy. The bulk of the stuff is going to be creatures rather than spells.

This article talked a bit about similar cards and I feel like I’ve talked about hydras as well. There are cards worth mentioning, since we’re very likely to see a deck that has a new commander, has Vorel of the Hull Clade in the 99 and takes enemies to hydra town if we’re trifling with +1/+1 counters.

I have no strong feelings one way or another. This seems like a solid choice in a deck with counters, but it’s by no means the best hydra when you are trying to build a synergistic deck. I imagine Wizards will insert a few hydras, all of them around $5 now, or maybe one more expensive hydra. I’d like to see a lot of them, but that would take bulky hydras and make them true bulk, which isn’t necessarily good. Besides, there are a finite number of rare spots in the deck and they can’t all be hydras. Still, this is a fine inclusion that is very good and gets out of hand fast.

Kalonian Hydra seems like a better choice. Around the same price as Primordial Hydra, this doesn’t have multiple printings, but it does make your creatures with counters on them get huge. If this doesn’t end up in the precon, I would expect renewed interest in the card. This is a very, very good creature, and since it can buff the rest of your team, can get out of hand quickly. I would like to see this.

As much as a reprinting could nip this in the bud before it even got started, this would be a fine inclusion. This plays a lot like Taurean Mauler, which is an EDH staple, and also happens to benefit from having trample. While there is no real actual hydra commander for a hydra tribal deck, we could see that in this year’s Simic Commander deck—and that would make hydras more popular. I think this would be hurt by a reprinting, but I don’t think Wizards cares about that, and getting these out there in the deck would be fine. This is a solid card and seems a likely inclusion if the deck cares about counters.

There’s no money to be made or lost here either way, but how good is this with Hardened Scales?

Again, how likely is it that Wizards reprints a card that was originally in a Commander product? Last year’s at that? There seems like a zero-percent chance of this being in the deck, but I think this could get even more popular as people want to build decks where counters matter.

There are other cool hydras, and I am sure a few of them are decent candidates. However, hydras aren’t the only creatures that care about +1/+1 counters.

This card with a few counters on it soon gets pretty saucy. I have this in my Vorel deck, and I’m never upset to draw it. Adding extra counters because of Hardened Scales or Doubling Season feels even better. I don’t see a reason not to put this in the precon, so I guess it’s all a matter of which rares Wizards thinks need to go in. There isn’t much money to be saved by selling these now, but the reprint kills it as a spec, so be careful. I don’t see it getting a ton cheaper, so the time to buy these may be soon if this escapes a reprint.

If you can add counters and get rid of the persist counters, this might be a good inclusion. Will Wizards want a combo like that in its precon? Either way, this is a good card going forward, and while this would be a third printing, I don’t know that I want to 100-percent rule this out. This has room to grow if it’s not reprinted.

Right? This seems like a shoo-in to me, which is good since uncommons shouldn’t necessarily be this expensive. The spread has increased radically since I last wrote about this card, but I am still bullish about its long-term growth potential. This is a very good inclusion in the deck but should we not see it reprinted, I like it long-term. Set-specific mechanics like untap abilities narrow reprint potential, after all, but that wouldn’t exclude it from consideration in a Commander precon, so it feels a little unsafe right now.

I have written about a lot of these cards before, but in the context of a UG deck that almost has to deal with counters, some of these seem less safe than they did a few months ago. How would you build a UG precon deck if you had to? What would you put in it?

Card Drawing

How broad. Blue draws cards and every time green helps out it’s either based off of creatures or is a functional reprint of a blue card. The times they combined the two, we get a card like…

…Bulkomantic Mastery.

Are we going to see Shamanic Revelation or some other relatively color-specific card, or are we going to see cards that combine blue and green together to draw cards? There are some that aren’t terrible.

There’s no money to be made or lost with Fathom Mage, but this is a solid card that combines the elements of blue and green, draws cards, plays nice with +1/+1 counters, and is really fun to use.

Modern Masters reprinted this card into powder, and it hasn’t recovered yet, given how its inclusion in Legacy decks seems to be a thing of the past. Still, this is how blue and green draw cards and islandwalk makes this a threat, especially if you put equipment on it. Still, how much money do you lose if you don’t sell these in anticipation of the precon? None, that’s how.

There are two ways to get Edric in foil and those may be a better bet. This card doesn’t need a reprinting but I can’t rule it out.

Should I list card drawing stuff in EDH? Rhystic Study is basically the one to watch: everyone knows it’s good, and I don’t know how likely it is to get reprinted. Instead, I want to devote the rest of my word count (and probably like 200 or 300 words beyond it) to talk about Simic cards that I think might be good in the deck but don’t necessarily deal with +1/+1 counters or card drawing. I’m going to do that in the most confusing way possible, by starting with a card that does deal with counters.

Miscellany

This would be included just to give us something that worked well with +1/+1 counters. That said, this also works well with just about anything. This card is expensive because MTG financiers convinced themselves Tiny Leaders was a thing. When is the last time you heard anyone mention Tiny Leaders? Forever ago, right? Well, just being wrong about a format getting traction doesn’t mean there won’t be real consequences, and the consequence for this card was that it reached $15 a few years too early. It would likely have hit $15 without intervention eventually, so a reprint is not unwelcome. Rings of Brighthearth could be this deck’s Wurmcoil, although it would be tricky to justify it if it doesn’t work pretty intimately with the theme of the deck. A lot of the abilities on the creatures and enchantments are triggered. Strionic Resonator does a lot of work in my Vorel deck, although this does double planeswalker loyalty counters, Vorel himself, and some other key abilities. I’d like to see a reprinting of this card, but only if it makes sense with the deck’s theme.

…and Consecrated Sphinx deals with card drawing. I could easily go back and change that paragraph where I said I wasn’t going to necessarily name cards that dealt with those concepts. but I’m not going to, because it’s way funnier to me not to.

This is controversial for another reason. This card is discussed as bannable because it’s stupid. You either kill this, steal it, clone it, or lose to the player that has it. Still, this is expensive and this deck makes more sense as a reprint venue than the UR deck. Still, I think this is safe for now.

This seems like a good candidate. The reprinting would curb its price and increase its availability for one. This isn’t exactly Wurmcoil tier, but bringing the price down forever would be okay. The good thing about EDH cards is that a lot of the people who have the cards play with them every week and likely won’t even notice the price went down. If they do, they will be happy they can afford more copies for other decks. I think this seems like a decent choice to jam in the Simic deck.

The Difficulties of Being Simic

It’s hard to identify cards in Simic that were like Wurmcoil Engine in the red precon from last year: $15 plus or minus a few bucks, played a lot, unlikely to tank largely in value even after the reprint, and cards that players need. I have mostly UG decks, and while I could rattle off cards like Black Market quickly for the Orzhov and Golgari decks, I’m at a bit of a loss here.

The problem with Simic? It has two types of cards: cards that aren’t very good and cards that are so good they’re unfun. Are we going to see Deadeye Navigator and Great Whale? Palinchron? Prophet of Kruphix? Consecrated Sphinx? There are so many cards that are controversial due to how good they are and how every player that plays those colors seems to use them, and Simic has a lot of those cards. I think it means the cards I do have somewhat of an inkling they could see printing could be more likely due to a smaller field of candidates. It also means they could skip all of those cards and the Simic deck could be total trash.

Will we see any hydras at all? Will there be a Momir Vig type theme with mutants rather than +1/+1 counters? Will Wizards not reprint anything over $5 and put all of the value in a card that is new and will be good in Legacy? Will something from a previous precon be reprinted, like Shardless Agent, Scavenging Ooze, or Lifeblood Hydra? It’s hard to say.

I almost did this color combination last since, it’s the trickiest, but I’m going in the order of that stupid wiki and that’s how I live my life. I expect a lot of disagreement on this one, and I welcome it this week. I may play too much Simic to see around my own biases, so let’s hear what you all think.

As always, it’s been a pleasure and I’ll be back next week with Izzet—and we will likely have some spoilers to discuss also. Until then!

Going Mad

Going Mad – Fighting Words

October 14, 2015 Derek Madlem 21 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

How about a break from Battle for Zendikar? Sound good to you? Yeah, me too. While I love talking about how much I hate stuff and think it’s terrible, we’ve had this record on loop for a few weeks now and it’s time to move on to something else. Don’t worry though, this weekend is Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar, so I’m sure we’ll be back with all kinds of exciting price spikes and buyout targets next week (you know, #mtgfinance stuff).

#MTGFinance

There’s a label that’s loaded with angst and misconceptions these days. Of course, by now we all know that #mtgfinance is the publicly used brand for ripping people off, because that’s what sharks and thieves do – share their methods publicly. #MTGFinance is basically the Lehman Brothers of the Magic world, it’s an evil organization hell bent on leveraging card value credit swaps and killing the game of Magic by making cards too expensive for the average player to afford, thus crushing their dreams of ever being Magic’s middle class.

Or maybe, and this is just a crazy theory I have, #MTGFinance is…wait for it…just a ****ing hashtag used for categorizing information.

Yeah, that’s a crazy thought right? As it turns out, there are a lot of words on Twitter and most of them aren’t pre-filtered into easily read categories so Twitter came up with a system that its users could use to filter down information into easily searchable terms. NEAT-O!

The Revolution Will be Televised

Did you know that right now there are freedom fighters battling for the heart and soul of Magic? It’s true. They’ve posted compelling arguments all over Twitter and various forums about how #mtgfinance has ruined Magic, and you can tune in. Some of these arguments include “it’s a ****ing children’s game!”, and “**** #mtgfinance!”, “**** price gougers!”, and I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Well maybe…

Here’s the thing, #mtgfinance is an all-encompassing term. It covers every financial aspect of Magic from the price of booster packs, to the cost of tournament entry fees, to the value of of cards contained within. A lot of people act like #mtgfinance is some new secretive Illuminati organization that’s manipulating the market, but it’s just a hashtag.

People get angry about things easily these days, and rabble rousers are great at making a system seem like it’s committing criminal acts when in reality, that’s just how things work. You don’t see people clambering all over social media crying out “**** chemistry!” every time someone uses their chemistry knowledge to make a bomb do you?

Tell you what, let’s skim over the economics of Magic (#mtgfinance) so that we all can better understand our enemy.

Retail

I’m sure many of you have worked in retail, and the concept is pretty simple: the retailer (we’ll call him Bob) orders product that they think will sell from the manufacturer and they put it on a shelf, a peg, online, in a catalog, or in wicker baskets to sell. Then someone buys it. Bob then uses the money from that sale to pay for his expenses and orders another widget to sell.

Unfortunately this is not the entirety of Magic retail because you, the consumer, don’t want to just buy packs from Bob until you get every card you want. You want to buy individual cards but Bob can’t order individual cards from the manufacturer so he has to get them from packs or people who have opened packs. Generally this is pretty easy, Bob just opens some packs and sells the cards inside for a little more than he would have made selling the packs. Why more? Because Bob has to pay Steve to open the packs and sort the cards.

This all seems simple enough until you, the consumer, wants a card that comes from a pack that Bob can no longer buy from the manufacturer. Now Bob has to find that card and buy it from a person so that he can sell it to you. Bob offers Greg and Dave $5 for the card, but they don’t want to sell it for $5 so Bob still doesn’t have that card you really want. Bob finds another guy with the card and he offers that guy $8 for the card and hopes that you’ll still want it when he has to charge a little bit more for it.

This is how the majority of cards go up in price. It’s not a global conspiracy, or a coordinated buyout by an army of market manipulators, it’s not price gouging; it’s supply and demand.

The reality of the situation is that you’re only complaining about this because Bob, and thousands like him, put their futures on the line investing in the idea of running a local game store. Magic is built on the backs of retailers and tournament organizers that simply would not exist if “stupid pieces of cardboard” weren’t worth money, end of story.

Jace, the Price Pariah

Usually as a round of rabble rousing occurs, there’s a catalyst and often times it’s our friend Jace. Jace, the Mind Sculptor was realistically the second card to go to an insane price while in Standard, but its the card that’s emblazoned in people’s psyche and for years we’ve been waiting for the fulfillment of “The Next Jace” prophecy that heralds the return of a really expensive card to Standard, preferably a creature or planeswalker (nobody called Bonfire of the Damned “The Next Jace”). With the return of the prophesied “Next Jace” to Standard, we have another round of people losing their damned minds because it’s obviously a conspiracy.

Just look at this guy, he’s wearing a suit. A SUIT! Clearly he’s manipulating the market price of Jace, and if he’s manipulating Jace you can bet he’s manipulating other cards too! He even said numerous times that cards from Magic Origins would be good bets because the set was not exactly a sales dynamo and they sandwiched it between the two biggest releases of the year. Obviously a criminal.

Here’s another one! The nerve of this guy, wearing a suit [blazer -ed.] and getting kissed by a girl. A GIRL! You can tell by the sunglasses that this guy has something to hide. He also said numerous times that Jace was a strong card and a good buy; he’s been saying it for months! Obviously he was behind the price of Jace going up and likely the cause of numerous other buyouts.

Or maybe Magic Origins just wasn’t opened that much in paper and maybe it wasn’t drafted as much online because it’s a boring core set and everyone was busy quitting MTGO because of the new prize structure so there isn’t as big an influx of set redemptions as we’ve seen in the past. Maybe, Jace is just a great example of supply and demand in action.

Maybe there’s a reason that StarCityGames raised their buylist price on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy above what they were selling the card for at the beginning of the weekend at the first Open in Indianapolis. I’ll give you a hint: Bob spent much of Saturday offering $30 on Jace and every single one of those people said no. Bob tried offering $40 and every single one of those people said no. Then Bob offered $50 for Jace and people reluctantly started to say yes.

Historic Perspective

So the year is 1995 and a slightly smaller version of myself is sitting in a local game store playing Magic: the Gathering. You know what was going to kill the game back then? If you guessed all the insane card prices, you’re correct!

Magic is no different now than it was then, or has ever been. It’s a game that costs money, it has always cost money, and will always cost money. The bulk of in-print Magic cards are cheaper and more accessible than ever, the only thing that’s REALLY changed to bring about this latest backlash is social media. You know how prices for cards changed back in 1995? A new issue of Scrye Magazine came out and you checked the price guide (Inquest if you were a savage).

We didn’t have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Podcasts, or entire websites dedicated to providing content on the matter. It seems worse now for the same reason that crime and natural disasters seem worse than they’ve ever been: there are less barriers to that information reaching us. We have access to and are bombarded by more information than we ever imagined.

Reality Check

There’s this image in the community surrounding #mtgfinance because it’s become associated with a few bad apples. I admit, there was a rough patch there for a while as Medina wrote weekly articles about how to shark the trade tables or convince your partner that their card was worth less than yours, but we’re past that now. The trade tables have never been calmer than they are now, everyone has access to the value of every card ever printed right at their fingertips. We can cite a few a-holes at local game stores ripping off little kids for their Expeditions, but this has been happening as long as Magic cards have been printed and realistically has as much do with forum users as your average child pornographer has to do with Subway restaurants.

This Too Will Pass

While thinking about the recent angry backlash against a non-existent entity I was reminded of another internet boogeyman that was going to ruin Magic: the netdeckers. Those of you that have been around for a few years remember this insult being thrown around within the Magic community.

Players that turned to the internet for knowledge on deckbuilding strategies and trends were filthy netdeckers, and they were ruining “real Magic” for the rest of us with their unoriginal deck choices. Obviously these people were filth because they didn’t play the game the same way the rest of us did and they were always winning and stuff. “I just play to have fun” we said proudly from the 0-3 bracket while we stared covetously at their prize packs and the riches contained within. “The rich get richer” we thought as these privileged douchebags with too much time on their hands trounced us week after week. The nerve of these people.

Looking back, it seems ridiculous that this was ever a realm of thought, and you can still find this behavior to a lesser extent but the bulk of the community has moved on and just acknowledged that these decks are good and people are going to play them. In a couple years the finance aspect of Magic will just be another mainstream category like Limited or Standard.

The financial aspect of Magic is no different than any other aspect of the game. If you want better results, you’re going to have to put more time into it. Whether that time be researching, grinding marginal value in trades, reading Tweets, or just reading the occasional article. You get out of the game what you put in.

Knowledge Gap

Think of an activity, any hobby or pastime your heart desires. It doesn’t matter what you choose. Do you resent someone with more resources (hint: time IS money) to devote to that hobby doing better than you? Do you resent Michael Jordan for spending all that time in the gym to perfect his craft? Do you resent a master gardener because they’re able to grow better tomatoes and more of them than you? Do you resent your friends for buying more expensive golf clubs than you? Name any activity that doesn’t reward your for putting in additional effort and gaining additional knowledge.

Maybe it’s time to put down the pitchforks and rethink what you’re trying to accomplish. Someone else having more resources than you (time, money, knowledge, effort) to devote to something doesn’t mean that they’re ruining it for you. Basketball isn’t worse for the rest of us because Michael Jordan existed, why do we get so mad at other people having better cards than us?

Disclaimer

Before you guys start piling on in the comments section here accusing me of being some kind of industry shill, I’ll go ahead and throw out a disclaimer: I too have been upset, disgusted, or annoyed by the actions of people using the #mtgfinance hashtag, but those individuals are just individuals in a very large and very complex ecosystem. That jackass that has to get value out of every trade at your local store is just a jackass, he’s not indicative of an entire category of knowledge.

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – How to ship a Magic Card

October 13, 2015 Jim Casale 15 Comments

No matter who you are or what your eventual end goal is, you are limiting your options by not knowing how to properly ship a Magic card. Now there are some things you can do to make a package special.

The most important thing is to make sure you are shipping something that doesn’t damage the cards. Too many times I’ve received very makeshift packages that people got lucky and survived the mail system. While some of these points will be specific to people living in the United States, packaging is something that is universally lacking.

What do you need?

Ostensibly, you need a lot of things to mail a good secure package but the reality is that it’s not nearly as much as you think. Here is my basic set of tools to send out cards. A box of envelopes, a scissor, a bubble mailer, team bags, penny sleeves, stamps, toploaders, and the card I’m mailing. Depending on where you purchase all of these things, you shouldn’t end up paying more than $20 or so to start up. I’m sure some people are familiar with most of these things, but not with mailing best practices. Let’s take it from the top.

What do I do?

I prefer to buy size 6 3/4 envelopes (9.2cm x 16.5cm) due to their size. They are large enough for a few cards to fit comfortably but not too large that a loose toploader will move around a lot and rip the envelope. Outside of this there are many varieties of envelopes but the most basic security lined envelopes cost you somewhere in the ballpark of $0.03 each.

Penny sleeves, as the name implies, are usually about 100 for $1 (or $0.01 each) and are where the process starts.

The first step is for small orders (1-2 cards) put the cards upside down into the sleeve. Theoretically which side is up doesn’t matter that much but it makes it easier to explain the later steps.

After you put it into the sleeve, fold the open side over to create a small flap. Penny sleeves should be larger than your card and if you can’t make a nice fold then there are probably too many cards in the sleeve.

Put the sleeve into a toploader with the folded side entering first. This will ensure the card doesn’t move around much in the sleeve and get dinged up by the toploader. It also provides some tension to keep the card from sliding out of the toploader after being mailed.

After you finish you should be able to shake the toploader and see little to no movement in the card. Now you may also notice the fit is pretty tight. You probably can’t fit a whole playset of cards into this, so what do we do?

Start the same way, put the 4 cards into the penny sleeve upside down. But here’s where this mysterious “team bag” thing comes in.

Team bags are pretty large self sealing sleeves. They’re called team bags because sports stores use them to make bags of the same team. Rocket science, right?

Well it’s nice because it snugly fits all of our cards and our toploader without having to squeeze them into it. Team bags allow you the storage of a large plastic sleeve while keeping the rigidness of a toploader. I recommend this for 4-8 cards.

Now to finish it all off, put a Post-it note on the sealed team bag with your order number or PucaTrade number and you have one nice package. For single toploader envelopes, you can fold the post-it over the open end of the toploader to keep the card inside.

What is the point of all these weird procedures? To minimize the amount of tape you put on everything. It’s a pretty big waste most of the time and gets the toploader all sticky for the next person. Ideally you will reuse the toploaders you get sent to save money and I’d rather my recipient to not need to clean off the tape after they receive my card.

After you’ve finished packaging your envelope you can address the front and slap a Forever stamp on it and it’s ready to be dropped into a local mailbox.

Damage on the Stack

What’s the total damage?

Envelope $0.03
Penny Sleeve $0.01
Team Bag $0.03
Toploader (Free)
Forever Stamp $0.49

Theoretically, the cheapest you can send a card is $0.53 to $0.56. That’s pretty cheap but sometimes you want more protection for a valuable card.

Most bubble mailers can be available for $0.50 but the real extra cost here is in the shipping and time commitment to go to the post office to get tracking. Unless you use the fantastic Paypal shipping service.

Cheat code shipping

Here is a link to the Paypal shipping service. It allows you to pay with your Paypal account (you must have a Paypal account to use this service) for a label that you can print out and tape to the bubble mailer. This saves money (it’s actually cheaper than the Post Office) and tons of time (you don’t have to go to the Post Office to mail it). I generally choose to ship the cheapest way with tracking. This is USPS First class thick envelope that weighs 3oz. That’s typically enough for a small bubble mailer and packaging for up to 10 cards in a team bag. Shipping this way ends up costing $2.04 for shipping inside the US plus materials ( ~$0.56).

Where do I get this stuff?

I’m glad you asked reader! Well I’ve got another cheat code for you, enter Potomac Distribution. Unfortunately this site will only ship products within the US but you can save a ton of money by buying in bulk. You can find smaller quantities for close to retail but you start saving a lot once you hit case size quantities. While this is not an option for everyone if you do decide to get into Pucatrade or selling on TCGPlayer you can save a lot of money by buying in bulk. Unlike food, sleeves don’t spoil. You can also find cases of KMC and Dragonshield sleeves for much cheaper than usual. Splitting a case with friends can yield up to a 30% savings. For smaller quantities, you can find singleton packs of these sleeves at your LGS or on Amazon.

Final Thoughts

While I didn’t plan it this way, Oblivion Sower is probably a card to be on the look out for. Contrary to what the note I received was, I requested these Sowers 3 weeks ago. After our roving reporter in the field, Jeremy, reported yesterday, a buyout is indicative of probable Pro Tour play.
Expeditions are probably nearing their lowest price unless we see Pro Tour decks with 8+ Mythics from Battle for Zendikar.
Crackling Doom will probably have a weekend price of $4
Unless something usurps Mantis Rider, I expect the same of it this weekend.
Dragonlord Ojutai saw double digit growth over the weekend ( I literally bought one for $15 on Friday and cant find one less than $30 right now) despite a poor showing at SCG Atlanta. I am curious as to why that is. Maybe he will be a Pro Tour powerhouse.
Dispel is a maindeck worth card in Standard. I would look to powerful sorcery speed removal for the future.

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