All posts by Cliff Daigle

I am a father, teacher, cuber and EDH fanatic. My joy is in Casual and Limited formats, though I dip a toe into Constructed when I find something fun to play. I play less than I want to and more than my schedule should really allow. I can easily be reached on Twitter @WordOfCommander. Try out my Busted Uncommons cube at http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/76330

Trading Strategies for Events

By Cliff Daigle

Large-scale Magic events offer the chance to get a lot done without spending lots of money.

At every large tournament I go to – be it a Pro Tour Qualifier, a Grand Prix, or something really huge, like Gen Con or SDCC – I bring the cards I want to sell, and a list of things I want.

Depending on the size of the event, organization is key. At a Pro Tour Qualifier, you’ll get a couple of vendors and comparing buylists is easy. Most vendors will have a buylist printed out that you can use to compare those numbers. But at larger events, there might be a dozen or more different companies who want your business, and you need to be ready to browse. A list of the things you brought to sell is vital, and if you’re looking for a certain card, then it’s important to know if you’re going for cash or credit.

Different vendors give different amounts for the same card, and different trade bonuses if you want store credit. But even on a 30% bonus for credit, you’re still under retail value of a card, so don’t do this lightly. I’ve done this to get some sweet cards and finish foiling out decks, but I’m not happy about it.

A more recent trend is the rapidly growing market for Magic accessories, like playmats, dice, and life counters. Not every vendor is into those things, but research and preparation is going to pay off. You’d be surprised how many vendors are going to offer you cash for things as common as a spin down D20. Before Grand Prix Anaheim, Star City Games put up a banner saying that they were buying spindowns. A little research and a lot of contacts with my friends, and I ended up selling SCG about $100 (cash, not credit!) worth of dice.

The main event may or may not be right up your alley, but the side events offer a range of formats and pricing. While I do not advocate buying single packs just for the value of the cards inside, I love drafting. Sealed is fun too, but drafting is second only to EDH in my personal pantheon. I have gone to Grand Prix just to enter side draft after side draft. I’m paying for the tournament, not just the packs, and in some drafts, I’ll get passed valuable cards.

Sometimes the value is in the event itself. When my wife and I went to Worlds in 2011, they were giving out a Pro Tour foil Ajani Goldmane with every event entry. Dealers were only giving $3 cash, but in a $10 draft, you’re paying $7 to open three packs. That’s hard value to walk away from, especially since that was Innistrad.

Once you’re done drafting, you can take the good cards and trade them to players or dealers for more of what you really want. Again, an example from Worlds: I did ten drafts that weekend, and had a Liliana of the Veil, a couple Garruk Relentless, a Snapcaster, and a few of the rare Innistrad lands. I traded all of those to a dealer for a Diamond Valley and could not be happier.

Be advised that there is often a saturation effect, especially with smaller vendors: At the end of a three-day Grand Prix, some will be lower on cash and already bought a thousand Steam Vents, so they will lower their buylist on the one you just opened.

I’m preparing to go to GP Oakland next month, and I’ve got my lists ready to go. If you’re there and want an EDH game, shoot me a tweet @WordOfCommander. I’d love to get in a game with you.

The Singular Art of Patience

By Cliff Daigle

Welcome back, dear reader.

If you have read other things I’ve said then you’re aware of my driving principle when it comes to acquiring cards for casual decks: Patience.

If you have ever bought something online, you’re aware of the value of patience. Next-day shipping from a retail website might be $25, while mere First-Class mail is $5 or less. To be patient, for just a couple of days to a week, in this case is worth a cool $20.

I’ve been in positions where I could not bring myself to be patient. I once had to have some Goblins in a couple of days because I wanted a Krenko deck to be ready for FNM. The shipping costs of my cards were more than the cards themselves were worth. But in that case, it was worth it to me not to wait.

Retail stores work the same way. Sure, you can often get a lower price for an item online, but when you measure the cost difference against the time difference, sometimes you just take it home that day.

Magic: The Gathering cards are similar. I’ve said before that prices all drop over time, but that’s only on average. Sometimes, waiting on a card to go down is a bad play, because the price goes up. Just look at Voice of Resurgence:

Voice of Resurgence. May 3 2013 - Jul 25 2013.
Voice of Resurgence. May 3 2013 – Jul 25 2013.

The Voice’s price has climbed steadily, and is the chase Mythic. Right now, preordering it at $20 looks like a steal. But note that the price has hit a peak and is creeping downwards. Patience past the initial craze has already paid off some.

Now, let’s look at Ral Zarek:

Ral Zarek. May 3 2013 - Jul 25 2013.
Ral Zarek. May 3 2013 – Jul 25 2013.

If you waited a week after release, he cost you $30. If you waited a month, he cost you $15. If you wait longer, he’ll probably go under $10. Patience is usually the better financial plan, if you can stomach the wait.

When you’re trading, patience is a key virtue as well. I love trading, the knowledge that both of us can get what we want and be happy with the exchange. Unfortunately, there are times where someone is belligerent, telling me what I have to do. If they have a rare foil, I’m not above giving more than I originally wanted, but if we are talking Standard cards, then I’m likely to walk away.

An example of this is dealing with speculators. You might be someone who traded for a bunch of a certain card because you were sure it was going to go up. I’ve dealt with people who act like their card has already gone up or down to an expected price, and that was irritating until I realized I could just walk away. (Excerpt from the conversation: “Your Sphinx’s Revelation is not going to be worth my two Deathrite Shamans after rotation.” “Rotation for these two cards is 18 months away!” “I know, that’s my point.”)

Let me be clear: I’m all for speculation. I like the gamble, the idea that we can predict these things. But dealing with unpleasant people is generally not worth it.

Patience, in the casual realm, is also about managing your needs and expectations. It’s not always useful to go after a card in foil just because it’s in a deck. (Full disclosure: I chase foreign foils more than I should for my EDH decks. I try not to overpay, but the craving to own the sweet rare foil is strong. Gogo Foil Russian Doubling Season! (сезон удвоения foil))

Nor is it necessary to chase a foreign foil simply because it has worth. Keep in mind that Wizards wants to support all formats, not just Standard and Modern. The more people that play, whatever the format, the more cards they sell.

This is why reprints will require patience. It seems a safe bet that almost everything not on the Reserved List will get printed again. I couldn’t say when, but especially for Modern-legal cards, nothing is safe. The use of Modern Masters, as well as preconstructed decks like the Commander or Planechase sets, shows us that Wizards knows that people want these older, rarer, more expensive cards.

The Onslaught fetchlands, Thoughtseize, the Shadowmoor filter lands, even Force of Will…these will all get printed again. Perhaps not in Standard-legal sets, but there will be more.

Just be patient.

The case for singles in M14

By Cliff Daigle

So now that Magic 2014 is out, what’s a casual player to do?

Here is a tip that I’ve learned through hard experience: In most cases, buying a box to open the packs is a terrible idea.

There are reasons to buy lots of packs, mainly the fun of opening 36 or more at a time, but financially, they aren’t a winner. If you want to buy a box, throw the loose packs onto your bed and roll around in them, and revel in what *could* be in those packs, then by all means do so. I may or may not have done similar things.

Just don’t kid yourself about the value and the money you spent.

There’s ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that you often don’t get a playset of a certain uncommon in your 36 packs, much less multiples of a certain money rare. And while most boxes have a foil rare or mythic, it’s not always true. I’ve opened such foil-rare-less boxes.

We have another issue present, when you buy loose packs from Amazon or a store that doesn’t store packs in the booster display: box mapping. By calculating a print run, you can open just a few packs in a box, take the money cards, and sell the packs you know contain chaff. It’s real and it’s effective. I haven’t done it, but the math is there and the YouTube videos are certainly convincing. Look up the user MTGBoxMapper if you really want to see why you shouldn’t buy loose packs.

Here are the exceptions to my policy of ‘no packs’: Sealed and Draft events. In this case, you’re paying not just for the packs, but for the tournament and the chance to win more. I like these formats more than Standard, but they are more expensive. I recognize that a lot of cards are not money cards, yet they are very good in Limited formats. I don’t mind paying for the experience of playing, especially because Standard isn’t always fun for me.

My wife and I have indulged in two-person drafting as well. We buy six packs, shuffle up the cards, and engage in a two-person draft, usually with the Solomon style but sometimes wegoWinston. We can usually get two drafts out of the same six packs, but again, we are buying the experience, not the value of the cards.

Everyone has a story of some amazing pack they opened. At the Magic 2013 Celebration, one of my prize packs had a Thundermaw Hellkite and a foil Jace, Memory Adept. But I’ve also opened an awful lot of bulk rares, so I try not to let the outliers affect my perception.

Make no mistake: Opening a pack of Magic: the Gathering cards is a gamble in strict financial terms. You’re scratching a ticket/pulling off the packaging in hopes of something more valuable than the cost of the ticket/pack.

The emotional thrill of opening packs is exactly the thrill you get from roulette or slot machines or anything that casinos make a mint off of. I know a guy who is addicted to buying $8 packs of Worldwake, because once in a while, he opens a Jace, the Mind Sculptor and it only cost him $8! What an amazingly lucky guy!

Except I know that for every post he makes on Facebook showing his $150 card that cost him $8, he’s bought at least 30 other packs that cost him $240, and the other cards he’s opened don’t come close to the $90 gap.

If you have to have certain cards, get them as singles. Don’t buy the packs and hope to get lucky. Be discerning, and target only what you need. Trade for it if you can, but don’t gamble your cash on packs.

Prerelease: Keep or Trade?

We are thrilled to introduce Cliff D! Cliff has managed to foil out an EDH deck on a budget and maintains a blog at wordofcommander.blogspot.com. Welcome Cliff!

My name is Cliff, and I’m a Magic addict.

I tell you this because as a husband and a father, it’s a big deal to have a hobby like Magic. It’s got the potential to be a very expensive hobby, and I’ve spent years figuring out how to spend the least and get the most of what I want.

Today I want to share one of my best tips with you, something that has kept me from spending too much on this game I love a little too much.

In one sentence, here it is: Trade everything you open at the prerelease.

This goes against everything in my nature as a casual player. I have nine EDH decks, and with every new set, there’s some maintenance I have to do. So my urge, and probably yours, is to get things as soon as possible, to get that upkeep done and the decks finished. Don’t do it!

There is evidence, all over this site, of cards that opened big and didn’t ever get more expensive than they were the first week. That week is now, and you need to cash in.

For example: At the Return to Ravnica prerelease, I opened a Vraska the Unseen. After tearing up matches with it, I traded it for a pair of Abrupt Decay and a Guildpact Stomping Grounds. Now, I’d be even trading the Vraska for a single Decay.

Vraska the Unseen. Oct 2012 - June 2013.
Vraska the Unseen. Oct 2012 – June 2013.

If you have to have four of a card for that following FNM, so be it, but let me tell you, you don’t want to be the guy trading super-hard for Rise of the Dark Realms at the prerelease. Almost everything in this set, and every other set, will go down in price within a couple of weeks. Our most recent example is classic: Dragon’s Maze has very few cards worth more than the cost of a pack at retail, so I hope you got rid of them all when you opened them.

Magic 2014 looks to be similar. There’s a lot of awesome casual cards in this set, and most of them will be at or near bulk pretty quickly. It will not be long before you hear someone groan at opening “another stupid Primal Bounty?!” This is the only weekend where people will be actively trying to get this card; trade it to them accordingly.

My exception might — MIGHT — be Scavenging Ooze. This is going to be interesting. If I had to pick a card to go up in the long term, this would be it, because it seems like it will be good in all three Constructed formats. I’m aware that it is a Duels promo, so anyone who wants to buy the game in Steam can get a foil of this for $10. I’d still be willing to trade it away this weekend, though.

If you want to keep the sweet foils you open, do so, and I understand completely the urge to GET IT NOW WOW!! But you’re now making the informed choice to keep it, when you could sell at the probable top of the market. I jumped at the chance to trade for a foil Aurelia, the Warleader at the Gatecrash Prerelease, and I got it plus a regular for my Polluted Delta.

Let me leave you with the graphs of those cards, and I’ll let you decide which side you want to be on, just a couple of months later.

Aurelia, the Warleader. Foil. Jan - June 2013.
Aurelia, the Warleader. Foil. Jan – June 2013.
Aurelia, the Warleader. Non-foil. Jan-June 2013.
Aurelia, the Warleader. Non-foil. Jan – June 2013.
Polluted Delta. Non-foil. Jan - June 2013.
Polluted Delta. Non-foil. Jan – June 2013.