Back to Organizing (for the most part)

June 1, 2016 Douglas Johnson 2 Comments

Written By:
Douglas Johnson @Rose0fthorns
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Welcome back, and welcome to last week’s article as well. It’s a little lengthy but I’m proud of it all the same; we went and examined the different pricing metrics of TCGplayer high, median, low, and market price. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback so far, so it’s definitely one you don’t want to miss.

As for this week, let’s finally get back to processing and organizing our collections and bulk stuff. Instead of getting outside and enjoying the sunshine on Memorial Day weekend, my friend Sean Love and I were hard at work in the basement where it was a solid 20 degrees cooler than the heat wave upstairs and outside. I had one more objective that I wanted to make into a reality before I started on the 400k bulk in my closet, so we got to work.

Bad Binders

Up until this point, I’ve had about nine trade binders that were between halfway and completely full at all times. They’re the Ultimate Guard “QuadRow Flexfolio”, which I would not wish upon my worst enemy. I wanted them to be able to hold playsets of cards in a single row, but the quality of the binder was shoddy and the glue holding the pages together would rip all the time even with the simple act of putting a card in or taking it out. I’m no Tolarian Community College Professor, but I would absolutely stay away from this brand of binder and look for something else that’s more structurally sound. I owned the binders for less than four months before they started to fall apart, and I feel like I threw away over a hundred dollars on them.

So where am I going with this segue? Well, I haven’t regularly traveled with binders in almost two years. I don’t have a local FNM that’s less than a thirty minute drive, I don’t have the time to be a Grand Prix backpack grinder, and it’s not exactly like I even “trade” very often anymore (unless you count people bringing me lots of bulk to get “DJ Dollars” in trade credit). A few weeks ago, I asked myself why I’m even still using a binder system to loosely organize my relevant cards. It was a pain to constantly look through the majority of a “Green” binder just to see exactly how many Vengevine I had, and I wanted something that would help me find X card from Y set in under Z seconds. I was already constructing a framework for doing something similar with my Blueprintable commons and uncommons…. why not do the same with my “higher end” cards ($4+) that were worth selling on TCGplayer?

This article is made for those few of you who might not trade anymore, or go to events at an LGS. I recommend continuing to read especially if you have a sizable collection that you want to manage without using binders, sell by piece, or just know where your cards are for deckbuilding. Several of the pieces of advice are extremely similar to other articles I’ve written, so we’ll get set sort and alphabetize everything out of the way early. Netflix helps. I finally got started on Jessica Jones.

Ta-Da! I mean, it obviously took a lot longer than it did for you to check out the picture; roughly about eight hours of Sean and I working to set sort and alphabetize. (A skill that he is much faster than I am at). You’ll also notice that those BCW dividers continue to come in handy, although I’ll have to trim them down by a few centimeters if I ever expect to put a lid on this box and apply any weight to the top of the lid.

Because the long term goal of this inventory box is to have everything listed on TCGplayer by the end of the week (you can see my printed-out and hastily scrawled-on to-do list in the background), we also had to grade every card in the box.

origins — The “Origins” pile. Definitely losing some money on these Abbots here.

Some of you may remember that I sleeve everything over $2, regardless of what box it goes in. While I was using opaque sleeves for the cards in the binders up until this point (penny sleeves can be annoying to fit into binders without crinkling, at least for my personal preference), sorting my inventory into a 5K meant that I could penny sleeve everything to make it uniform. This also helped with grading the cards easier, being able to see the front and back at a glance. If you do find research, you should be able to find 10000 penny sleeves for around $45. Here’s some research.

Hopefully I’ll manage to list everything by the end of this week, and hopefully I’ll have enough time in the day to ship and pack all my orders. I had my TCGplayer store hidden for the past two or three months while I was working on school, graduation, GPNY and GPCharlotte, so I had forgotten what it was like to have to deal with this:

Now that that’s all settled, we can *finally* begin to work on set sorting this bulk that’s been accumulating in my closet. Phase one (which I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned in a previous article or not) is to make another series of those divider set tags so that each pile of set sorted bulk will be easy to find and alphabetize when the time comes. For now, I’ll conclude this brief article with a prelude of what your basement/living room/bedroom might look like once you get started on this project.

End Step:

Huh, there’s really not much to talk about here. Kind of a dry week, but that’s alright. I’m happy to see Realms Uncharted and Horn of Greed finally going off thanks to The Gitrog Monster, so I’ll be taking my copies out of the spec box and sorting them into my wonderful new inventory system, then putting them on TCGplayer. Until next week!

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Jason Alt

Cheating

June 1, 2016 Jason Alt 5 Comments

I spent a lot of time last week thinking about how we were going to build Superfriends decks in the future because our mana is going to be so crazy bonkers with the advent of a bunch of four-color decks that people will be able to be super greedy. While I think it’s true that Superfriends are about to get a bit of a bump, I think it’s also worth taking a lot at other ways players plan to play cards with their wacky new cards. I have a few different theses to cover so I’m going to launch right into it because I want to get all of my thoughts out before I hit my word cap. I mean, it’s a soft word cap. You’re not going to want to read a 4,000 word article, true, but I’m also going to hit like 2,300 words and think “I’m not getting paid any extra for this” and that’s going to sap my enthusiasm in a hurry. So, like I said, I’m not going to waste time – I am going to get right to it and cover what I want to cover. I think you readers are worth it.

Thesis Number the First – People Will Build New 4-color Decks

And why not? They’re going to get new cards that are 4 colors. I have to imagine there will be at least one good creature and one good spell per deck that are 4 colors and if it’s that hard to cast that spell, the effect is going to worth it. Just look at the spells we have now that cost 5 mana – Coalition Victory, Last Stand, Conflux, Maelstrom Nexus – these are good spells. They’re difficult to cast because they require a mana of every color and they’re even more difficult to cast in EDH because we have to have a general with all 5 colors in their identity.

4 color spells are obviously easier to cast than 5 color ones but not all that much easier and, again, you can only play them in a deck where the general has all of those colors in their color identity. How are people going to cast those spells?

They’ll fix their mana

This one seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning. There are a few ways I think people will try this.

These would have been better to buy at their historic lows, but now that they’re starting to rebound, it seems fairly obvious that it’s time to get these if you need them. You can fetch these with fetchlands and Farseek and you don’t need to shell out for a Savannah to get basically a Savannah. Sometimes people put ABU duals in EDH decks. Super, go ahead and do that. Or, you know, sell them and build a new deck for basically every dual you sell. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, but I will tell you that shocks are going to go up more and people will need them. In a 4-color deck you can play a lot of them. You can play 1 in a 2-color deck, 3 in a 3-color deck, 10 in a 5-color deck and 6 in a 4-color deck. If every new deck that gets built means the builder needs 6 new fetches, they will be closer to $20 than $10 in a year or two if they’re not reprinted. Return to Return to Ravnica doesn’t seem all that close so I think we’re safe for a minute.

Ditto here. These aren’t at a historical low or high, but I bet this plateau means they’re not going anywhere for a minute. Dealer interest is waning, so I’d wait for these to crater and recover, but EDH demand could give these some upside, although supply is super high right now with everyone having them in their decks and binders, still.

Them putting these in every deck seems as unlikely to me as them putting them in only some decks. I think this doesn’t get reprinted and I think the price goes up. Conspiracy might be a good venue to print this but I bet they won’t. I bet this card gets ridiculous before it gets reasonable.

This card has some real upside. It is a creature that is also mostly a Chromatic Lantern and people are starting to notice. With a new focus on mana fixing, this is going to be a player if people remember to use it. This even lets you use utility lands for mana if you have something like Tabernacle (you don’t have a Tabernacle) or Maze of Ith that doesn’t tap for mana.

This probably won’t get bought more because it’s so expensive, but I bet it gets played more. EDH demand could start to make it disappear from Pucatrade which could signal other markets.

This are like $2 in other printings. That has to change the farther we get from the last time it was printed.

How else will people play stuff in 4-color decks?

They’ll Cheat

Not at Magic, necessarily, I mean they’ll cheat stuff into play. There are a lot, lot, lot of ways to do this and they all have upside.

A guy with this in his Legacy deck isn’t going to trade it to an EDH player. He won’t want any of the cards the EDH player has. But some rando busting this in a pack in the LGS might be inclined. The new supply might hurt the price for a while, but if it gets low enough, EDH demand could buoy the price based on people who wrote the card of as unobtainable before now using it. This is a fine way to cheat.

This has been printed a ton but the price doesn’t seem to want to dip below around $7. This has a decent reprint risk but it also has demonstrated an ability to mostly shrug off reprints. I like this as a pickup.

Meanwhile I bet this never gets reprinted. This is starting to move up and I bet if more people play it because the new creatures are savage and hard to cast, this could see movement. This is just a solid gainer in my view and it looks like markets and dealers are finally on board with that assessment.

It would take a lot to drag this above bulk but it is worth remembering this card exists. It’s too good.

Bet you thought this was still bulk, didn’t you? Well, it’s not. The price has basically doubled in the last year and that’s good for business. This is on its way up and I bet this could hit $5 if it’s not reprinted. And why would it be reprinted?

I’ve made money off of this card twice and it would please me to do so a third time. With copies concentrated in the hands of dealers, how easy would that be? Very easy, that’s how. Very easy.

Mirri’s Guile, Sylvan Library and Sensei’s Divining Top are nice pairings with this spicy vintage. Cream of the Crop, too. All of those cards can go in a deck that can have green in it. Mayael, anyone?

I bought all of the copies I have years ago for $2 each. That’s about as fair as putting something into play with this. Granted it’s not the best way to throw out an Eldrazi, but can you really complain about having a creature that big if you miss a few of its triggers? It That Betrays doesn’t mind getting tossed out EOT with this beauty. This card isn’t even close to being done growing.

This may do it randomly, but don’t pretend it’s not cheating. This card is rare from an old set and it’s on the Reserved List. If this gets any notice at all it could hit $5 fairly easily and it would be pretty boss to chop into Pucapoints rather than buylist for $3.

Everyone realized this would be nuts with Narset and the price went up accordingly. However, this is a great way to cheat creatures into play. If you have nothing but fatties and tokens, it’s even better. This is taking a break from climbing, but it will be back at it as soon as something else is printed that is saucy with it and there is only one deck from Commander 2016 that won’t have blue in it meaning you have 4 chances to find something saucy to go with this.

Modern spiked this card, which sucks because that deck doesn’t play it anymore, the price is really high for an EDH card and the copies are concentrated in the hands of dealers meaning a second spike will be much harder and faster. The only bright spot is that this seems relatively easy to reprint. Just kidding, that’s terrible because everyone who paid $10 for these will eat it in that case. I don’t know when they’re going to reprint this, or even if they will, but this is destined to go beyond $10 just on EDH demand and it’s too much fun to play this card. Dealer confidence is creeping up which means they’re selling copies which means the price shift is organic and predicated on real demand. This bodes well. Graphs that look like this make me want to buy.

This is on its way back up. The reprinting made the price very reasonable but Modern hasn’t gone as cuckoo for this as they did a few years ago and the new supply did wonders for controlling the price. This is a very easy way to cast a creature with a nutty effect and goofy casting cost and you can even tap tokens to do it. What could be better? This is a fine way to cheat at Magic.

Legacy and EDH are keeping this card pretty expensive since it’s banned in Modern. Eternal Masters copies are going to make this dirt cheap and if this hits like $2 I recommend investing like $100. It could get reprinted again which will make it take a while before you can recoup your $100. More likely is that it recovers and lands around $5 because it’s so good in EDH. Less likely is that it’s unbanned in Modern and becomes like $15 overnight and then you look like Nostradamndamus. I’m not saying it will happen but I am saying that there are three basic scenarios and in the worst case you still break even eventually.

This card is very expensive. This card is also tailing down a bit and since it’s demonstrated the ability to be $25, you might want to watch it crash then buy in because it will go back up because how could it not? It’s Tooth and Nail. This is in so many EDH “I win” combos it isn’t funny. No, seriously, have you lost to this card? It isn’t funny. It’s annoying. I cast this entwined to get Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts on turn 4 one time. It wasn’t funny. I mean, it was to me, but when 4 out of 5 people at a table think something isn’t funny, maybe you’re the one who’s wrong. That’s Comedy 101.

At this point, I’m going to audible and save my second thesis for next week. We still have plenty of time before we start getting any cards previewed so we can look more at how players are going to cheat using the new cards next week. I have plenty to say on the topic and I really don’t want to load this article with too much information. Let’s reconvene next week and look at a second way I expect people to cheat using older cards to help them cast newer cards. It should be a hoot. Until then!

City of Traders

PROTRADER: Masters for at Least a Little While

June 1, 2016 Travis Allen 4 Comments

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of MTG Fast Finance! An on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important Magic economy changes.

Eternal Masters spoilers wrapped up last Friday, and general reaction has been quite favorable. While not every card made it in – I’ve seen no shortage of jokes and hand wringing regarding Damnation and the lack thereof – people are all-in-all pleased with the outcome. While people weren’t exactly clamoring for Chome Mox or Vindicate, cards like Mana Crypt, Karakas, Natural Order, and Sneak Attack are great “accessibility” reprints, and Gamble, Force of Will, Entomb, and Shardless Agent provide opportunities to pick up foils that otherwise didn’t exist, are ugly as hell, or were exorbitantly expensive. All in all, Magic is better for the release.

The question now is how should we approach it? This is tough, especially because what each one of us wants out of it is different. Is your intention to sit on sealed product? Are you looking to spec on targeted singles? Or maybe you’re more in my camp; mostly interested in just picking up a few personal items for as cheap as possible.

Sealed Product

Three years ago, Modern Masters hit the shelves. Supply was constrained and while you could occasionally and briefly find product at MSRP, there wasn’t much of it. I saw a few boxes floating around the $220 mark, but there weren’t many, and it was limited to local pockets.

In February I wrote an article about what to do with sealed MMA product. I concluded that it was getting time to start selling, and that cracking for singles was probably the right idea, but that leaving boxes sealed was only marginally less profitable, and accounting for time, probably a better idea overall.

Quite recently, the equation has begun to shift. Sealed MMA boxes have seen an uptick in sale prices. eBay completed auctions jumped into the $370 to $400 range, and the TCGLow has similarly moved, and in fact, there’s only a handful of boxes under $400. The two boxes I’ve had sitting there since I wrote the article suddenly sold for around $375 each. Before fees that’s about $150 profit on a box. (After, it’s a lot closer to $100.) $100 profit on a $220 investment is a little less than a 50% return, in the span of three years. 50% ROI over three years is pretty great, especially when you consider that it’s a lot easier to put thousands or tens of thousands of dollars into – and get back out of – boxes than it is one dollar rares.

Modern Masters 2015 had a different print run; one which was considerably larger. Today, a full year since release, boxes are still available at $240. That’s MSRP; 24 packs at $10 each. I don’t recall exactly how much MMA boxes were one year later, but I know it wasn’t MSRP. This is no doubt due to a few factors. I don’t expect that the natively higher MSRP on MM2 was a culprit, but the overall lower quality of reprinted rares has certainly stymied interest. In addition it had a much larger print run than MMA. It’s really difficult to put a ratio on that, since we don’t get official sales numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if MM2 had anywhere between 30 and 100 percent more boxes available than MMA. I’ve even heard projections as high as fives times MMA. That glut of supply, combined with a less-exciting rare slot, has kept prices from rising. Of course, it’s only been a year. How will boxes look after three? I don’t know and that’s not today’s article.

Those Vegas GPs played no small part in the supply of both sets either. MMA had Las Vegas, while MM2 had Las Vegas, Chiba, and Utrecht. With a player count just south of 8,000 for Las Vegas alone, there were roughly 2,000 boxes of MM2 opened in the main event. If each store was allocated maybe 20 boxes of MM2, that means Las Vegas accounted for 100 stores worth of product. How many states worth of stores is that? I’d guess New York has what, 50 stores maybe? This also doesn’t account for all the side event product, or the other two GPs. All in all, I’d guess the entire GP weekend cracked enough MM2 packs to match a large portion of the entire eastern seaboard’s distribution.

Of course, EMA has no such GP. That’s thousands of packs going uncracked. And given distributor numbers so far, it looks like we’re getting far less EMA than we did MM2, and possibly even MMA. There’s also an expectation that distributors and local stores are going to hold product a lot closer to the chest this time around. With diminished supply and a built-in pedigree of distinction, there’s an incentive to slowly dole out your allocated boxes. I’m reminded of the diamond market.

The sum of all this is that if you can get boxes at MSRP, it’s basically a slam dunk. I’m pretty sure the expected value is over MSRP at this point anyways, so essentially you’d be a fool not to buy it at that price. What about north of MSRP though? I’m seeing boxes in the $300 to $350 range, which is already 50% over MSRP. That’s, well, brutal. Remember I made 50% profit on my MMA boxes over the course of three years. At the same time, there’s simply less EMA out there, it will generally be more desirable, the cards are less likely to be reprinted, and if they do run back another Eternal Masters, it will be missing many of the cards it has this time around. Sure, you’ll see Force of Will and Wasteland return, but what about Gamble or Mana Crypt?

Overall, I’d say paying less than $300 is reasonably safe. I can’t imagine how you lose money on that, so the worst case scenario is that you end up outing it to someone local for basically what you paid. Boxes at MSRP are a home run, and if you find one at that price that you can’t afford you call your friend and tell them to get their ass to the store. The possible upside on boxes is also large, as if the distribution numbers end up landing where we’re predicting them to, prices could end up in the $500+ range in a few years. For those of you looking to make some real money on Magic investments, you could do a lot worse.

All the Single Ladies

Here’s a photo that was shared by fellow writer Jim Casale. (No idea who created it.)

Those are all the cards, as of probably a week ago, that are worth more than the cost of a pack. Prices have begun slipping on the low end, with Shardless Agent, Vindicate, and Maelstrom Wanderer beginning to fall below $10. Of course, single prices will be at their absolute highest right now, since we’re in maximum hype/minimum supply territory. In about a month we’ll probably see several more dip beneath double digits.

Here’s roughly what we can expect:

Across the top ten or so MMA cards, most saw their local valleys between mid-October and early December. I’d expect EMA singles to follow a similar pattern. Most sets usually see their floors several months after printing, and it just so happens that a set released in June hits that time period during the shopping frenzy ahead of Christmas, when wallets are thin and attention is directed elsewhere. That’s when I’ll be shopping for my singles, and I’d recommend the same for you too.

Although really, I’ll be looking for foils, and waiting may not be ideal. Here’s a handful of foil price graphs, to contrast the non-foils above.

It would seem that while non-foils enjoy a cooling off period over the span of several months, we shouldn’t hold our breath for the same thing on shiny copies. Prices will be erratic as people try and figure out what foil prices should be in the days leading up to and directly after release, but once they find their foothold, I don’t foresee any dramatic drops in price. In fact, if we’re modeling our predictions on MMA, you’re far more likely to get blown out by waiting. Most MMA foils were close to their floor in the weeks and months following release, and then experienced various rates and severities of growth. It would appear that the lesson here is that waiting is a fool’s game. By the end of July, you should have already begun to acquire any foils you’re seeking. It may be burdensome attempting to trying to cover the cost of several large ticket foils early on, but you’re likely to save yourself money in the long run being proactive here.

Specul8’n

I’m not going to pick out exactly what cards you want to spec on quite yet. I’d like another few weeks of price data before we begin honing in on specific targets, and with some time before non-foils settle down, we can make informed decisions. As we just discussed, the floor on non-foils tends to land in mid-fall. If you really feel compelled to start jumping on the EMA train today though, I’d look for uncommon foils like Hydroblast or Pyroblast, or inexpensive rare foils. While there’s a lot of attention and excitement around big ticket cards, these small foil items may experience dramatic roller coasters over the next few weeks, especially without reliable price data. Use your best judgment while seeking deals and you may manage to get your hands on some foil uncommons for what ends up being below buylist.

One quick aside for today: have any of you checked out the price on the original San Diego Comic-Con Planeswalker sets? They’re now selling – actually selling – for $600. Holey moley. A lot of people grabbed them in the $200 to $300 range when they were released, which means big profits for anyone that scored some. I swear I remember seeing someone that grabbed like 45 or some such nonsense…

MTGPrice Blog

Monthly Archives: June 2016