Your cards are sorted as requested by the website. You specified the proper condition on your cards, if applicable, to minimize surprise downgrades. You’ve followed precise packaging instructions. You’ve shipped with tracking to protect yourself.

Buy list order successful, right? Well, maybe.

When it comes to buy listing, the name of the game is time-efficient optimization. You can ship all of your cards to a single store to save time, but you may sacrifice value in the process. On the other hand, shipping cards to seven buyers so you can earn an extra few bucks is likely not worth shipping costs or your time. These are just a few considerations that feed into the buy listing process.

In addition to these, I’ve recently gleaned a few new insights on the buy listing process that I feel is worth sharing. It’s not related to how to package and ship cards, nor is it even directly related to which cards you should consider selling at this time. Instead, I want to focus on one of the most crucial aspects of buy listing: how you are paid.

Here’s the hook: from what I have learned, I may never take cash payments ever again.

Cash Isn’t King?

You may be wondering how I can make such a bold claim when in the past you’ve heard me declare “cash is king” in various media. The end game is still cash of course. In fifteen years when my son’s university requests payment, I don’t think they’ll be willing to take Black Lotuses and Moxen. The critical thing I’ve learned though, is that you actually sacrifice many worthwhile efficiencies when taking cash payments.

First of all, there are the suboptimal cash payment methods. If you want access to funds instantly, PayPal is generally your go-to option. However any active Magic card seller will tell you PayPal fees add up quite a bit. Three percent here and there may not sound like a sizable amount, but over the course of a year it can turn into hundreds of dollars in lost value.

When I was new to MTG Finance, this was my payment method of choice. I was so focused on getting paid immediately that I sacrificed value to get there. In hindsight, this was 100% the incorrect move. Unless you have an immediate need for funds, I cannot advocate this approach.

Enter checks. By exercising patience, you can instantly earn roughly three percent more on your buy list orders. All it takes is requesting payment by check. Checks incur zero fees and most (though not all) shops will offer a check option with no penalty. The major downside here, however, is the resultant wait. While some card shops are very prompt with issuing payment, others can sometimes drag your feet.

Add in inconsistencies of the postal system, and you enter a tireless waiting period with every buy list you submit. This means you’ll have more funds tied up in pieces of paper stuffed in envelopes handled by mail carriers. I’m not so sure I love this premise.

Best of Both Worlds

The drawbacks to PayPal payments and check payments have haunted me for quite some time. I didn’t like the fees, so taking PayPal payment quickly became highly unattractive. Yet I get so frustrated waiting for checks to come in the mail – plus there’s the added inconvenience of having to go to the bank to deposit the checks. Even once the checks are deposited, there may be hold times until the check clears in your account.

I’ve discovered a better way, and it’s been right under our noses all this time: store credit.

Everyone knows about the store credit option. Vendors throw this option in our face as often as possible, offering significant incentive in the form of trade-in bonuses for those willing to leave cash out of the equation. Star City Games and ABU Games offer a solid 25% trade bonus. To be more competitive, Channel Fireball and Card Kingdom do even better by offering 30%. Either way, the conclusion is identical: you get more for your cards if you’re willing to take credit.

This isn’t news to anyone. If you’ve ever dealt with store credit before, you know there are some sizable drawbacks to this avenue as well. Most notably, you need to determine if the vendor has any cards you need in stock, and then you need to double check their pricing. Having $125 in store credit instead of $100 in cash may sound great, but if you have to pay 25-50% premiums with your credit then this approach kind of defeats the purpose. If you’re trying to pick up that Underground Sea from Star City Games with trade credit, then you’re stuck paying $250 for MP copies knowing you can get them much closer to $200 from private sellers. So much for that 25% trade-in bonus.

Historically, this is where I would give up. I would browse an online store’s inventory looking for cards I wanted. If prices on those particular cards were unfavorable, I’d just take the cash. I figured I’d be better off without the trade-in bonus if I could find the cards I needed for 25-50% less than what a retailer would charge anyway.

I had it all wrong.

The World Is Your Oyster

Flexibility is the ticket to maximizing your buy lists. If you broaden your search on vendor sites and look for any and all opportunities rather than just your particular want list, you’re almost guaranteed to find good deals. Let’s face it: there are ten’s of thousands of options to choose from when you factor in conditions, sets, grades, sealed product variations, etc. Every single vendor is likely to have a good deal somewhere. And I mean everyone. Let me illustrate this point with a story.

Lately, I’ve been in the market for some Old School MTG cards. I wanted to acquire some Beta Hypnotic Specters for my deck. After searching through eBay and TCG Player, I concluded that Moderately Played copies would cost me about $25 and that Heavily Played copies were only slightly cheaper. I was about to pull the trigger, when I discovered something.

Even though Star City Games has some fairly high prices on Near Mint Alpha and Beta cards, their Moderately Played prices are actually pretty good. In fact, their price on MP Beta Hypnotic Specter was $19.99 – below TCG Low!  So I filled out my playset by purchasing the copies I needed from SCG without blinking an eye.

Fast Forward a couple weeks – Raging Ravine spiked due to Modern speculation, and Star City Games upped their buy list for the card enough to pique my interest. I wanted a quick flip, so I pulled the trigger. Since I didn’t have an urgent need for cash I requested the trade-in credit option. When the credit arrived, I began my quest of trying to find a card I wanted which also carried a favorable price. I was having little luck, when I remembered the deal I found on Beta Hypnotic Specters. Sure enough, they still had a few MP copies in stock at $19.99. So I picked up three more copies despite the fact that I already had my playset. By selling and trading these extra copies, I was able to turn that 25% store credit trade-in bonus into more cash and cards than I would have had if I simply took cash payment from Star City.  Because I didn’t limit my search to only cards I needed, I was able to generate more value from my trade-in.  Success!

Next Level

This isn’t a one-time incident.  There are always opportunities – I don’t see myself ever taking cash payments again. At least, not until I’m ready to cash out a chunk of my MTG portfolio. Taking the cash leaves too much value on the table.

But I want to make an even bolder statement: not only do I believe taking trade-in credit is always the more optimal play, I also believe you can turn store credit at any site into more store credit at a different site right away.

Here’s a quick example: imagine having $50 in Star City Games store credit. I’d encourage you to consider picking up Island of Wak-Wak.  If you don’t own a copy, I’d recommend it as a sweet card to jam in an EDH deck.  But even if you have zero interest in the land, it still may be worth grabbing.

Star City Games’ price tag may not be too impressive: $49.99 for Near Mint copies is in line with TCG High pricing. You certainly wouldn’t be able to grab that copy to flip on TCG Player. But here’s the beautiful thing – you won’t have to. You can immediately unload it for value by simply selling it to ABU Games. Currently ABU Games is paying $44.13 for NM copies of the Arabian Nights land. While there’s no cash arbitrage here, it’s worth noting that you’d get $55.16 in trade credit with ABU Games by selling them one NM copy and taking the 25% trade-in bonus. Now your $50 SCG credit suddenly becomes $55.16 ABU Games credit.

This doesn’t work perfectly on a small scale. Star City Games will charge you shipping, and you’ll need to pay more shipping when mailing the card to ABU Games. But if you do this in sufficient quantity, there is value to be made here. The challenge is finding the good deals and identifying which vendors pay better on which cards. This is the “barrier to entry” on this buy list arbitrage endeavor. Research is significant and can be time consuming if you’re not sure where to look.

I’ve been working with a friendly, insightful colleague who has alerted me to this strategy, and together we’ve discovered some pricing trends. We don’t have them all hashed out yet, but some ideas are showing promise. Perhaps this is a topic for a future article if there’s sufficient interest…

Wrapping It Up

Buy listing is an ever-present component of MTG Finance. PayPal payments incur unnecessary fees, and I can’t ever support this approach. Receiving a check payment incurs no fees, but I’m beginning to question whether this is also sub-optimal.

Trade credit, especially with hefty trade-in bonuses, may just be flat out better 99% of the time. As long as you broaden your search and open your mind to any cards (even cards you have no interest in), you may be able to find deals with your store credit. Then you can flip newly acquired cards on eBay or TCG Player to extract maximum value. Or better yet, skip the hassle of trying to sell cards by flipping your cards to other vendors for more store credit. The opportunities are out there – you just need to be willing to look.

Sig’s Quick Hits

• I’ve mentioned this card numerous times already. Despite increasing their price from $400 to $800 over the past couple months Star City Games is still sold out of Bazaar of Baghdad. I wonder if they’ll bump their buy price yet again so they can actually keep some copies in stock.
• The Pro Tour is less than a week away and I am keenly interested in which Origins cards get the most attention from all the Pros. Right now Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is quite hot. Star City Games is now sold out of the flip Planeswalker at $34.99. His price is likely to go higher in the coming days, but will it stay that high?
• Modern has really cooled off in the weeks following Grand Prix Vegas. Many spiked cards have drifted sideways or even downwards. But a few select cards haven’t gotten the “memo” that Standard is the exciting format to watch. Star City Games has just one nonfoil copy of Disrupting Shoal in stock, at $14.99! This is pretty steep for a card that sees so little play.

Magic Origins is upon us, and last weekend we had the opportunity to watch the new cards in action. The first weekend of any new set’s legality in Standard is always an exciting one and Origins was no exception. On center stage we could watch players battle with updated decks at the Chicago Star City Games Open.

Watching the first large Standard tournament after a new set’s release can cause a lot of early hype for cards getting camera time. It always seems like a handful of cards get all the attention, inevitably leading to sudden price spikes. After all, Origins has only been available for a week now and supply of any singles from the set are dangerously thin. This can lead to some pretty crazy price movements.

I had the pleasure of watching a couple games on camera throughout Saturday, and I look forward to watching more later today (being Sunday). With this context in mind, I want to touch on a few observations I’ve made so far along with my recommendations and cautions.

Hoogland’s U/W Control

Jeff Hoogland’s innovative U/W Control deck received decent camera time on Saturday. He was even called upon to do a well-deserved deck tech.

What sparked the most interest to me in this deck were the Origins cards that played a significant role in its strategy. Consider the only creature in the deck, for starters: Hangarback Walker.

When this rare began trading on TCG Player, it was immediately condemned to near-bulk status preselling in the $1.50 range. But it didn’t take long for the artifact creature to move higher. After yesterday’s appearance throughout SCG Chicago live coverage, Hangarback Walker bumped up a tad more, solidifying its status as non-bulk…at least for now.

My take? Initially I wasn’t a believer. Artifacts with XX in their casting cost haven’t been good since Chalice of the Void. But after watching Hoogland’s deck tech, I slowly warmed up to the card. Putting little at stake, I grabbed a playset to have on hand in case this card really breaks out.

I really like Jeff’s comment that this card can be a relevant 2-drop. It also has versatility in late-game. Hangarback Walker also fits into numerous builds because of its colorless casting cost – potential breakout Standard cards are often the cards that work in multiple archetypes. With these qualities, I’m certainly going to be keeping a close watch on this card. If it gets even more successful camera time today, I could easily see this hitting $10 for a day, then settling in the $5-$7 range in the short term. Being from Origins, if this card shows any mainstay then it’ll have a shot at maintaining that $10 price tag in a couple months.

Hangarback Walker wasn’t the only Origins card that made Hoogland’s deck new and exciting. He also included two copies of Thopter Spy Network to work in cooperation along with Hangarback Walker.

Again we have a card that was deemed as virtual bulk when it began its life at a buck. But over the last couple days we saw the price tag jump from $1 to over $3. Jeff Hoogland’s creative use of the blue enchantment is likely a significant catalyst to this movement. The card enables card draw – something control decks thrive on – and it even combos well with Darksteel Citadel (useful artifact land in the deck) and Hangarback Walker, which leaves behind even more flying thopter dudes when it dies.

I’m extremely hesitant on this card. I was one click away before pulling the trigger on buying a set when I decided to consult with a trustworthy source, MTG Price’s own Jim Casale. Not only did he set me straight on Thopter Spy Network, he also expressed overlapping sentiment on Hangarback Walker.

Hoogland’s deck ran a few other Origins cards, but only Commons and Uncommons in the main deck. He did include two copies of Displacement Wave in the sideboard, which I will definitely be keeping my eye on going forward. The blue sorcery could be devastating to token-based strategies, but if it remains only in sideboards then its price potential isn’t too great.

Moving forward, I definitely prefer Hangarback Walker over Thopter Spy Network. Hangarback Walker gives so much more value and doesn’t depend on artifacts to work. The fact Hangarback is the cheaper of the two rares makes little sense to me – this is my favorite target coming out of the new U/W Control deck. Even if the deck itself does not remain relevant post-Pro Tour, the artifact creature still has a chance at squeezing into an array of other builds.

5-Color Rally

One other player received a deck tech on Saturday of the Chicago SCG Open: Matthew Tickal’s 5-Color Rally.

Talk about innovative! Any deck that runs Chord of Calling naturally gets my attention. But Chord is far less interesting in this build when you compare it to the white instant deck namesake Rally the Ancestors.

This rare from Fate Reforged was purely bulk, never even showing up on most vendor buy lists until very recently. The card has been trading between $0.25 and $0.50 since forever. But Tickal just may have changed that.

His strategy is incredibly explosive, gaining endless value off Grim Haruspex, Deathmist Raptor, Den Protector, Satyr Wayfinder, and Origins common Nantuko Husk. The deck manages endless triggers from all the creature dying and returning. Handling all of these mechanics has to be very complicated. Complexity may be a barrier to becoming ubiquitous in Standard, but I have to be honest here – the deck looks really sweet. If anything, it showcases the potential power level of Rally the Ancestors, a card I bought a few sets of last weekend for very cheap. Even if sets hit $5 on eBay, I’ll still eek out a modest profit. And there is certainly potential for greater upside.

As for Origins cards in the deck, look no further than Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy and Liliana, Heretical Healer. The former is played as a 4-of while the latter is a singleton. I’m beginning to believe that Jace may be the most played new Planeswalker from the set, but it’s probably premature to make such a bold claim. I am fairly certain that at least one of the flip Planeswalkers will remain relevant and maintain a $30 price tag throughout Standard, but I am not prepared to predict which one. My suggestion on these is to watch their utility closely in the coming weeks, but hold off from buying in with cash on these already-expensive cards. Let’s wait for the supply to commoditize these cards first before we start looking at prices seriously.

Words of Caution

These two decks received a great deal of attention throughout the weekend, and for good reason. Star City Games likes to showcase innovative, successful strategies because it brings viewers. It’s a billion times more interesting to watch $0.15 rares like Rally the Ancestors take over matches than it is watching the Abzan mirror. I give Star City a lot of credit for their approach to live broadcasting their tournaments.

However this approach brings along with it a potential risk – emotional speculation. Seeing how awesome Thopter Spy Network is in one match, for example, can provide very misleading data on how the card may perform at the Pro Tour. It’s highly possible the blue enchantment gets no notice at any event ever again. Whenever new sets come out, there seem to be strategies that can dominate an ill-prepared metagame but then struggle for the rest of Standard.

Take it from someone who lost money on Contested War Zone – you do not want to speculate on a card that is in only strong in one archetype, which can also be hated out very easily.

Contested War Zone traded at $6 the first weekend it was Standard legal. It’s been a bulk rare ever since. I’m not saying Thopter Spy Network will definitely be a bulk rare. I’m just expressing extreme caution when buying into new rares that are successful in a young metagame. The Pro Tour will reveal much more.

For now, I’m content with my playset of Hangarback Walkers and a handful of Rally the Ancestors. The former is an artifact creature with utility in early and late game – a true versatile card that could work in numerous archetypes. The latter is a penny stock, worth grabbing at a quarter just to tell a story and ride the wave. And in both cases, I’m committing very little money because I recognize these strategies can be as evanescent as fog on a summer morning.

Wrapping It Up

This was the most exciting Standard tournament I’ve seen in months. I just got so sick of watching endless Abzan mirrors. Standard always tends to get stale this time of year. But that’s all about to change as rotation approaches.

In the meantime, we need to be extremely careful with our Origins speculation. Strategies that make a splash this weekend may never make waves again. The safest play is to find versatile cards that could fit into varying decks, and acquire cautiously. There will be a time to buy in aggressively, but not until the Pro Tour. The Pro Tour is when the real buying opportunities surface, as players scramble to acquire cards to play the decks wielded by successful pros.

And who knows? Maybe Sphinx’s Tutelage – which also received some camera time last weekend – will continue to be a thing in Standard. Turbo-Fog received some camera time last Saturday and the deck looked pretty sweet. I don’t know if Wizards wants this deck to be good or not. Some casual players are excited by mill strategies, but watching one player sit there and cast fog while another sits there with a ton of harmless creatures hardly makes for exciting Magic.

Either way, we’re in for some exciting times ahead in Standard. This shift in focus will be reflected in card prices, and we’ll likely see a drift downward in Modern values and new weekly buyouts of Standard targets. We can remain in front of the curve by watching how the metagame unfolds. Come rotation we’ll see a brand new Standard. And if there’s room for a Tier 1 Rally the Ancestors strategy, I just may have to try my hand at the format.

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

• I’ve noticed that Star City Games will suddenly sell out of cards that make new appearances in live coverage. On Saturday I noticed they were out of stock of Rally the Ancestors with a $0.49 price tag. Sunday morning, just 12 hours later, I’m seeing the card still out of stock but with a $1.99 price tag. I suspect we’ll be seeing this card on camera again before the weekend is over, and I look forward to seeing where the price spikes to on Monday.
• Hangarback Walker is also completely sold out at Star City Games, with a $2.99 price tag. Seeing as that is the eBay price, I suspect SCG will restock in the $3.99 to $4.99 range, but time will tell.
• Here’s why I prefer Rally the Ancestors and Hangarback Walker over the Origins Planeswalkers when it comes to speculation. For one, the two rares are far cheaper than the new Planeswalkers. In addition, Star City Games has 15 copies of Jace in stock at $19.99 and 30 Liliana in stock at $27.99. I’m much less confident that these receive a sizable price bump in the near future. Meanwhile if SCG is truly sold out of Rally the Ancestors, they will have to establish a reasonable buy price in order to restock sufficient copies.