All posts by Aaron Dettmann

Common Cents

Common Cents with Aaron Dettmann

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Last week I talked about how better, more accurate pricing information provides an advantage when trading. This week I’ll talk about another method to utilize to get an advantage while trading.

A resource that has been very useful to me has been the ProTrader Daily Market Updates I get from MTGPrice. This daily email update lets me know which cards are rising (or falling) sharply in price, so I can join in on the buying action before all the stores realize the trend and raise their prices. In addition to a card price change update, the email also includes a card stock inventory update, which keeps track of various stores’ supply of a card. If the inventory supply of a card goes down by a lot, that’s a good indicator that demand is high and the price is likely to increase. This information is especially useful on Pro-Tour and Grand Prix weekends, as there are often brand new decks that employ previously overlooked cards that will rocket up in price.

One example of when I utilized the ProTrader Update was the weekend of Grand Prix San Diego (Modern format) on March 16th. I woke up on Saturday morning, checked my ProTrader Update email from MTGPrice, and saw this information staring back at me from amongst the cards of interest:

Percent Price Change of Ajani Vengeant Image and video hosting by TinyPic

I thought these numbers were interesting, as Ajani Vengeant had jumped up in price by almost three dollars, and risen by 50% of its value overnight. Next, I scrolled down to check on the Inventory Change of the card and saw this:

Percent Inventory Change of Ajani Vengeant Image and video hosting by TinyPic

This information let me know that the number of cards available to buy on the market had already been halved, and confirmed that demand for Ajani Vengeant had become very strong.

I was now very intrigued by this card, and clicked on the link to take me to the price graphs on MTGPrice, so I could see the history of what is going on with Ajani Vengeant. When I saw the graph, all the stores had kept their prices the same except for ChannelFireball, who overnight had more than doubled their price by raising it from $5 to $12. They alone were responsible for the increase in price on MTGPrice.com. Now remember, I received all this information on Saturday morning before even the first round of the Grand Prix had been played. Since ChannelFireball had drastically raised their price on Ajani Vengeant, I could deduce that the deck their team planned on playing that day both heavily utilized that card, and that they were very confident in their deck choice. The ChannelFireball team was convinced that they would do well at the Grand Prix, and since the new addition to their deck was Ajani Vengeant, they decided to preemptively raise the price of that card on their website.

Since I now knew that team ChannelFireball was going to play Ajani Vengeant at the Grand Prix, I had inside information to guide my buying decisions. When the ChannelFireball team has a deck that everyone on the team likes and plays, they usually get at least one person into the top 8 of that tournament. I put my trust in the team as well, and started buying up all of the Ajani Vengeants from the websites that still had them at low prices. I bought dozens of copies from stores at $3-$5 (depending on which version I bought), and have now sold most of mine away for $8-$10, a tidy profit of $5 per card, more than doubling the money I put into this investment.

The emails I get from the ProTrader Daily Market Updates are a great tool to keep me ahead of pricing changes on cards. As you can see from the example in this article, sometimes you can even figure out which cards pro players are going to use in their decks before the tournament even starts. Use all the information at your disposal to keep ahead of the change in prices.

Bonus PTQ tip:
I expect a lot of Turbo Fog decks in the online standard PTQ on Sunday; it has a terrific matchup against the current bogeyman of the format, Junk Rites. After Turbo Fog placed 2nd in last Saturday’s PTQ, I faced off against it three times in the PTQ the next day. In addition to that, this past week the best bow-tie-wearing magic player Roberto Gonzalez (9th place at Pro Tour Gatecrash) stated he was pretty sure he was playing Fog in the PTQ, and Todd Anderson wrote an article about the deck and played it in the PTQs himself last weekend. The best ways to beat the deck are with Skullcrack (completely dominates the card Fog) in conjunction with being faster than Turbo Fog can set up its’ defenses, discard (although Turbo Fog does bring in 3-4 Witchbane Orbs), or with Planeswalkers.

Common Cents

Common Cents by Aaron Dettmann

How better pricing information provides an advantage

Knowledge is power, as Sir Francis Bacon once said; in the world of magic finance, that means knowledge is money. Obtaining better information than most of the market means that you can take advantage of price discrepancies between stores, and utilize that knowledge to your advantage when trading, buying, and selling cards. One source that provides great information is this very website, MTGPrice.com; whether it be giving you more accurate pricing information than other individual card store websites, or providing ProTrader Daily Market Updates which clue you in on which cards are spiking in price so you can buy in before everyone sells out.

This week we’ll look at the importance of accurate pricing sources, and next week I’ll finish off this two-part series by discussing the ProTrader Daily Market Updates.

One experience I personally had with highly variable pricing between a store’s website and the actual worth of a card was with the card Emrakul, the Aeons Torn foil. Multiple people have asked how much I valued mine while trading, and I had always replied $50, since I had looked up the price on Starcitygames.com (SCG), and that was the relative price guide we were using. However, about a month ago I looked up the price again and realized SCG had that price posted while they were out of stock on the item. Curious as to what price eBay was selling them for, I looked over there and was surprised to discover that the cheapest listing was priced at $75. This difference in price was especially astounding because eBay usually has much cheaper prices than SCG. What’s more, the price has risen even more since then. As of this writing (March 27th), virtually all the stores are sold out of the foil Emrakul, the Aeons Torn. Out of all the stores that MTGPrice.com provides pricing data for, the only places that have copies of that card in stock are TCGplayer and eBay. There are a mere three copies of a foil Emrakul, the Aeons Torn on TCGplayer ranging in price from $89-$100, and a lone, single copy on eBay priced at $90 (SCG is still out of stock, but has risen their price up to $60).

Now, I feel very lucky that none of my trading partners took me up on my $50 offer for my card; I was using poor pricing info, which caused me to undervalue my card. The lesson here is to be wary of prices when a store is out of stock of an item. Many stores don’t update their prices when they don’t have any copies of that card to sell. Using the Fair Trade Price found on MTGprice avoids this problem, since they compile their price using many different stores and only use prices from stores that have the item in stock.

Next week, I’ll conclude this two-part series, and discuss how ProTrader Daily Market Updates can let you know which cards are rising in price before all the stores adjust their prices accordingly.

Common Cents

Thursday: Common Cents with Aaron Dettmann

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Bazaar Trader. (c) 2013 Wizards of the Coast.
Bazaar Trader. (c) 2013 Wizards of the Coast.

Many people are leery of buylisting their cards and selling them to stores and card dealers. Players are worried that they’re getting ripped off and not getting full market value for their cards; however, this is not always the case. There are numerous factors and situations many people fail to think about that can make buylisting your cards a great, profitable transaction.

Here are some reasons why it’s often best to sell your MTG cards to stores’ buylists.

One factor some people fail to consider when trying to sell their cards on eBay or TCGplayer is their fees. eBay charges a 9% total value fee in addition to PayPal charges of 2.9%+$0.30 per transaction. For comparison, TCGplayer charges 11%+$0.50 for a sale. In addition to those fees, you still have to mail out the item; even the cheapest mailing method of a regular envelope still costs $0.46 for the stamp, plus another $0.10 for the protective plastic top loader. Here’s a graph illustrating how much you pay in fees and shipping charges if you sell on these websites:

Graph comparing Ebay and TCG plus shipping fees Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Transaction cost (y-axis) and selling price (x-axis)

The horizontal (X) axis is how much the item sold for, and the vertical (Y) axis is the cost of the fees and shipping charges. For example, if you sold an item for $10, TCG’s transaction costs would come to $2.16, whereas eBay’s fees + shipping would cost you $2.05. The marked point on the graph is the spot where both websites charge the same amount of fees for the item sold; any item sold for $21.72 would cost you fees plus shipping of $3.45 at both websites. As is evident from the graph, eBay has lower fees relative to TCG on items cheaper than $21.72, whereas TCG has lower fees relative to eBay on items more expensive than that.

These fees eat into a huge portion of the expected profit from a card. I routinely see cards listed on eBay and TCG where the person would receive about the same or even more money if they just sold the card to a buylist from a store. For example, as you can view on mtgprice.com, Venser, Shaper Savant is selling on eBay for $15, and yet ChannelFireball has been buying them for over a month at $12. The fees for that transaction on eBay end up being $2.65, so you end up receiving $12.35 – essentially the same price you would receive from selling to a buylist, not to mention the 30% bonus if you choose to get paid in store credit! Also, the buylist has the added benefit that you don’t have to wait around for someone to buy your item. I can see from the price history of the card for March that people have sold copies of Venser, Shaper Savant for $12-$13, with a few even as low as $9.39 on eBay; if they had all sold to ChannelFireball, they would have made more money than they did on eBay.

It is also often worthwhile to sell your $1-$5 cards grouped all together to a buylist. If you want another way to look at the fees, you can view them as how much of a percent you’re paying on the item you sold:

Graph comparing Ebay and TCG plus shipping fees as percentage of selling price
Percent of fees paid relative to selling price

This graph illustrates the percentage of fees paid relative to the item’s selling price. The X-axis is again how much the item sold for, and the Y-axis is percentage of the fees you paid relative to the cost of the item.

The most important thing to note is the inverse relationship between the fee percentage and your item value; as an item increases in value, the percent of fees relative to the item you pay decreases. This relationship is most relevant in items $20 and less; the percentage changes very quickly, especially for extremely low priced items. Yes, eBay is better than TCG for selling lower priced items, but if you think you want to sell a one dollar item there, think again – you’d have to pay fees and shipping costs of 98% of what you sold the item for! If you sold that item on TCG, you’d actually be losing money! Fees for selling a two dollar item on eBay would be at 55%, eating up over half of what you sold the card at. Even for a five dollar sale on eBay, fees and shipping still consume 29% of the sale price, leaving you with only $3.54 net income. As the item increases in value, the percentage of fees paid eventually levels off at around 12%-13% for both sites.

The moral of this story is that small value cards are often worth grouping together and selling to a buylist. Forgo the extra costs so the fees don’t eat you alive.

Thragtusk as of Mar 21, 2013
Thragtusk as of Mar 21, 2013

Another excellent opportunity to sell cards to a buylist arises when you know the price of a card is going to drop, and stores have not yet updated their buylist prices. For example, when the contents of the Gatecrash Event Deck were released, I knew the price of Thragtusk would plummet due to yet another reprinting. For over a week after that information had been released, Starcitygames was still buying Thragtusk at their old buylist price of $15. Fast forward a couple of months and sure enough, the price dropped, and now you can rebuy them for as little as $10. The lesson here is if you think the price of a card is going to go down, it’s often best to sell them right away even if it’s slightly under the market value, rather than trying to eke out every last cent of value out of the card and get stuck with it.

One last tidbit of advice: before you hit that confirm button to sell to an online buylist, visit your local store or dealer to see if they are willing to beat any of the prices; it’s a win-win situation. The store gets some cards they need, and you get a little bit more money for the cards you were willing to sell. I like to set the guideline at either getting an extra $0.25 or 10%, whichever is more, but you can decide for yourself whatever arbitrary criteria you want to follow.

I hope this guide helps you decide the merits of selling your cards to a buylist.

Common Cents

Common Cents

This past weekend saw a plethora of Standard tournaments spanning multiple countries. The United States held a 774 player SCG tournament, while Verona and Rio both hosted a Grand Prix.

Let’s take a look at a few of the cards that were highlights at these tournaments.

Prime Speaker Zegana. (c) 2013 Wizards of the Coast.
Prime Speaker Zegana. (c) 2013 Wizards of the Coast.

The breakout card at SCG Indianapolis was Prime Speaker Zegana. Two Bant decks that made the top four each ran three copies of the card. Immediately upon the success of this card, Starcity more than doubled their price of this card; before the tournament they were selling Prime Speaker Zegana for $6.99, and currently Zegana is on their site for $14.99. However, other stores have taken much less extreme measures. Most places have only modestly increased the price of this card by one to two dollars, and you can easily grab these up from multiple places for around $8. This, then, prompts the question of which price more accurately foretells the cards’ future.

Working in Zegana’s favor is the fact that it’s at Mythic rarity, which often have sudden and sustained price increases. Additionally, Zegana had multiple high place finishes in a tournament. However, I think the lower price will be the more accurate one for the following reasons.

  • It is directly competing with the spot Sphinx’s Revelation fills in the Bant deck.
  • Multiple pro players at GP: Verona called Sphinx’s Revelation the most powerful card in Standard.
  • While Zegana performed well at the SCG event, at the more competitive Grand Prix events it was a no-show, and did not make any top 8 appearances.

Now let’s talk about some cards that did well at both Grand Prix tournaments. Human Reanimator, utilizing Angel of Glory’s Rise, made a top 8 in both of the Grand Prix. However, I’m a little wary about investing into Reanimator-type cards, as that strategy is easily hated out if people decide they want to do so. It is difficult for a deck that’s easily hated out to maintain the long term success that will drive an increase in its’ card prices, so therefore I don’t foresee the cost of Angel of Glory’s Rise to go up.

Angel_of_serenity
Angel of Serenity as of Mar 15, 2013

Angel of Serenity is one card that holds similarities to both Prime Speaker Zegana and to Angel of Glory’s Rise. It is Mythic, just like Zegana, and it also found success in a Reanimator deck this past weekend, just like Angel of Glory’s Rise. Unlike the other two cards, however, Angel of Serenity is one that is primed to rise. Far from being a one-trick pony in Reanimator decks, Angel of Serenity has shown in the past that it can fit into multiple deck archetypes. It has a history of being a powerful card, at one time acting as the top end of control decks in Standard. Now it has found yet another deck to fit into, in the Junk Reanimator decklist, which won GP: Verona, had two decks in the top 8 of GP: Rio, and also made the top 8 of SCG Indianapolis. This deck is also more resilient since the Junk Reanimator decks are less dependent on their graveyard than the Human Reanimator lists. Angel of Serenity has also proven that it can command a high price, fetching as much as $25 back in November. The power level of this card, along with the strong showing of the deck this weekend, combined with the resiliency of the deck, in addition to the past price history of this card, leads me to recommend Angel of Serenity as a card to acquire.