By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

One of the most common misconceptions about folks involved in MTGFinance is that we are constantly manipulating the market and feeding players misinformation to help fuel achievement of our personal goals.

It has occurred to us at MTGPrice that though we dole out a good deal of advice, most of you ultimately have very little insight into when and why our writing team actually puts our money where our collective mouths are pointing. As such running this weekly series breaking down what we’ve been buying and selling each week and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought for personal use without hope of profit. We’ll also try to provide some insight into our thinking behind the specs, and whether we are aiming for a short (<1 month), mid (1-12 month), or long (1 year+) term flip. Here’s what we we’ve been up to this week:

Buying Period: June 29th – July 5th, 2015

Note: All cards NM unless otherwise noted. All sell prices are net of fees unless noted.

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

So I finally landed the Big Kahuna Burger of collections this weekend, paying $14K for a collection that looks like it will end up being worth north of $30K. I’m going to be turning the handling of this collection into a new mid-term article series, providing transparency into the world of collection flipping, so keep an eye out for that on Friday this week. As such, for the first time in a long while, I didn’t purchase any singles this week, opting out entirely from the very tasty Origins pre-order opportunities to focus on the collection. I’ll be covering off potentially undervalued cards from the new set on Wednesday this week in the latest installment of Digging for Dollars. 

SOLD (Pucatrade)

• 1x Shared Animosity  @ $7.01 ($2 cost)
• 2x Mindbreak Trap @ $6.79 ($2 cost)

Just a few odds and ends I moved through Pucatrade this week.

Guo Heng Chin (@theguoheng)

Guo says:

All those below were acquired at GP Singapore.

BOUGHT

• 2x Wurmcoil Engine (Prerelease promo) at $11/per: I bought it from a friend, hence the exceptionally low price. Vendors were selling it at around this price too at the Grand Prix. These are Wurmcoils 2 and 3 for my RG Tron.
• 2x Painter’s Servant at $10/per: In my previous weekly purchases update (https://blog.mtgprice.com/2015/06/22/mtgfinance-what-were-buyingselling-this-week-june-2115/), I mentioned that I acquired a Painter’s Servant to try out it’s synergy with Ugin, the Spirit Dragon in this funky Tron build that surfaced in Tokyo a while back: http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=9272&d=253286&f=MO. I bought 2 more Painter’s Servants at the GP to tinker around with the ‘combo’. It’s a purely casual win-more synergy and under no circumstances should be brought to a competitive event. It’s helluva fun though. I may try and integrate the Ugin-Painter’s Servant combo into my EDH decks because I am a fun guy to play with.
• 2x Karn Liberated (MMA2015) at $33/per:  I got these slightly lower than the fair trade price from a vendor due to plain luck, something I rarely attribute good deals to but in this case, it probably was a stroke of luck. Most of the vendors at the GP kept their displayed cards in perfect fit sleeves and marked the price of individual cards on the perfect fit sleeve using marker pen. The vendor I approached dug up the second copy of Karn from their box, which was why it wasn’t in a perfect fit sleeve. She then proceeded to scribble a ’49SGD’ on the back of Karn Liberated himself, before realising that the second copy of Karn was unsleeved. It turned out that it was their last copy of Karn as well. So she agreed to give me a bit of a discount on the total purchase (the original price of the Karns were $36 each) and gave me on of the foils in my purchase for free (foil Conspiracy Silent Arbiter).
• 1x Foil Unburial Rites (Japanese) at $6/per: I‘ve read multiple accounts that UW Gifts Tron is an extremely fun deck to play, so I gave it a shot while testing for GP Singapore as I was lacking the expensive components of RG Tron. They were not exaggerating at all. While the deck is not exactly tier one, the deck was immensely satisfying to pilot. There is an incredible number of permutations of Gifts pile you could play around with and the deck could attack from a multitude of angles. I’ve decided to keep Gifts Tron as a permanent deck in my Modern repertoire and so I’ve begun the arduous quest of foiling it out.
• 1x Iona, Shield of Emeria at $10/per:  For my Gifts Tron. I didn’t have an Iona as she was quite pricey prior to her Modern Masters 2015 reprint and I was replacing her with Sundering Titan, which was not as good as I thought it would be. GPs are good place to get deals from vendors as the $10 Iona testified.
• 1x Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (Prerelease Promo) at $28/per: Another piece of RG Tron sorted out. Now to wait for a Grove of the Burnwillows reprint and I’ll be able to RG Tron-stomp my opponents. In the mean time I’ll experiment with the Mono-G Tron that showed up in a Modern daily a while back.
• 19x Snow-Covered Mountains, 3x Snow-Covered Swamps, 1x Snow-Covered Forest at $0.74 per: Another acquisition for a Modern archetype I’ve been itching to try: Skred Red. Modern cards are not easy to find in Malaysia, and could be quite expensive. GP Singapore was a great opportunity for me to grab the Modern cards I need to complete certain decks. The Snow-Covered Swamps and Forest were for EDH.
• 1x Snow-Covered Island @ $1.48 per: Another missing piece for Gifts Tron, for those rare situations where I am so desperate for a second blue source I Gifts up a Snow-Covered Island.
• 2x Magus of the Tabernacle at $0.37/per: From reader and fellow mtgfinance enthusiast Daryl (@mtgProjectZer0). Sometime ago I mentioned that I was attempting to brew a Modern incarnation of MUD. One of the version I toyed with splashed white for Ghostly Prison and Ethersworn Canonist. Taking a bit of inspiration off a Mono-White Stax deck posted here http://puremtgo.com/articles/mono-white-stax-legacy-modern a while back, I thought Magus of the Tabernacle may be a good addition. Thanks Daryl!

 

Note: The rest of the guys were quiet this week.

So there you have it. Now what were you guys buying and selling this week and why?

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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