Category Archives: Conjured Currency

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Dimes Versus Dollars

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I have not been on top of my game recently, and I apologize for that. I’ve had a lot more schoolwork and mentoring work on my plate than I expected to over the past month, and the quality of my articles has suffered so that they have not been the fountains of knowledge that they used to be.

Another problem that I’ve been having recently is that I don’t have as strong of a niche as some of my fellow writers on this website. Jason Alt gets to handle a format of otherwise “unplayable ten drops” for people who want to pretend that they still play Magic, and Jim Casale handles the “grinder” aspect of the game to help all of you who actually do play Magic. Sigmund is skilled at tying in “real life” finance and investing to the Magic market, and he’s also got a pretty solid handle on this Old-School Magic thing. I should probably sit down and talk to him about that format one day, but I just keep getting too distracted. “Tell me about the war, Grandpa!” I ask him, but then it’s time for his afternoon nap and I have to wait another day.

Oh, and I try to focus on collection buying and building a personal brand as a vendor. That’s supposed to be my area of expertise, if you can call it that.

The Problem

There’s an inherent problem with collection buying though. Well, not collection buying itself. Buying cards at buylist prices is awesome; writing about it can sometimes be another story, though. While EDH, Standard, Modern, and real-world finance comparisons continue to change and evolve based on the new products and information that Wizards provides us, the rules for collection buying largely stay the same.

I don’t exactly expect WOTC to start selling “collection buying” kits that come with $1000 cash, a buy mat, and business cards, so as an ex-grinder trying to teach the transition toward “friendly local guy or girl who has what you need, whether it be cash or cards,” it can be difficult to come up with new material when there’s not a new breadth of information that applies to us. I’m often at a loss for words on the night of my deadline when all I can think of in terms of helpful advice is, “Wait until people need to sell cards at buylist prices, then buy those cards at buylist prices.”

A Little Help

convo

Thankfully, I have at least a few people out there who haven’t stopped reading my content (yet), and are willing to provide constructive criticism. I was having a conversation with one of my readers earlier this week, and he gave me some excellent advice that I think will help me focus on this specific topic more, and by extension I hope that will be helpful to you. I’ve already written on bulk rares quite a bit in the past, and why they’re one of the safest purchases that you can possibly make in the game, as long as you don’t overpay on them. They’re versatile, easy to convert back into cash, and they allow you to bridge the gap between competitive and casual players very easily.

I hope that with the hint from the title, and my follow up on that paragraph of helpful advice, you can see where I’m going this week. Well, if you follow me on Twitter then that helps too.

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Three yes votes? Good enough for me—let’s go. While I’ve extensively covered what I have personally nicknamed “true bulk” rares, I’m going to expend on that topic a bit by giving a closer examination to “fake” bulk rares.

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The above is a picture of (mostly) true bulk rares. These will have a TCGplayer mid average price tag of 75 cents or lower, and no buylist will touch them as actual distinct cards. Most stores who buy true bulk rares do so at a rate of 10 cents a piece, although sometimes you’ll get lucky and find a vendor shelling out 12 cents at a Grand Prix. These are the vendors that you’ll likely want to cash out to, and I highly recommend Card Advantage (the United States one anyway) for ousting your bulk rares.

So what’s a fake bulk rare then? Well, they pretend to be higher then bulk, but only if you take a quick glance at the TCGplayer mid or SCG price that so many players know and love. That price will usually waver anywhere from $1 to $2 depending on the site that you use, but the important number that us financiers care about is the always-precious buylist price.

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If you’ve been buying some collections, decks, and lots from players as a result of reading my articles, great! I’ve always advocated waiting until you can find things for buylist prices, as it’s usually the most effective way to flip something relatively quickly for a solid profit. Someone needs to sell an Overgrown Tomb to buy a milkshake or pair of comfortable cargo shorts? Give them $3 or $4, then go throw it up on TCGplayer when you get home.

tomb

When you’re dealing with staples above $4 or $5, it’s much easier to use 50 percent of the average price as an approximate guesstimate line because you have more of a profit margin to work with. It’s fine to pay $60 on a Liliana of the Veil, because you know that the highest buylist price is $65 for you emergency out, and you’ll get $73 or $74 after fees if you throw it up on TCGplayer or eBay. (Hinty hint-hint: you’ll probably get more on Facebook)

lili

What Does This Have to Do with “Fake” Bulk Rares?

Well, your margins are a lot smaller when you’re buying cards that only have a TCGplayer mid of $1 to $2. If you settle into the mindset that true bulk rares are the only actual bulk rares in Magic, then you’ll end up overpaying and losing money when you’re handing out 50 percent of TCGplayer prices when you’re buying Beastcaller Savants. (Disclaimer: CCG House is paying 50 cents cash on Beastcaller Savants, and they want multiple playsets. It’s ridiculous. This is basically unheard of for a card that has otherwise depreciated to the point of being a bulk rare when it’s viewed through the lens of a vendor.)

beastcaller savant

Instead of shelling out 50 cents a piece on these when Ben the Standard player wants to cash out on the remains of a Battle for Zendikar case that he received as a Christmas present, you lump these in with the bulk rares. If you’re feeling like a jolly Santa, you pay 25 cents.

“But DJ! The TCGplayer mid of that card is $1, how can you rip me off and pay 10 percent of the cash value on a card like that?”                  –Ben, who is woefully misinformed about the cash value of his card

This is the part where you get to choose what to do. You have control over this situation; it’s like one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books that I read in fourth grade (and got like six reading points for each book, even though it’s obviously not a “full book” and I only had to read like 30 pages to get to the end). You can choose to A) Educate him by pointing to this article, B) Explain a summarized version of this article to him and let Ben know that he would be hard-pressed to get even 25 cents for the card, even if he were to sell on Facebook, or C) Don’t bother explaining the economics of everything to him if he seems genuinely offended and expecting to get 50 cents, and just let him keep the card.

beastcaller

You’ll notice that I have some other Battle for Zendikar rares in that pile of garbage, like Radiant Flames and Scatter to the Winds. I paid 25 cents each on the Radiant Flames, and 10 cents each on the Scatters. That’s not a brag about how I’m going to make 400-percent profit on each of those cards, because that’s probably not going to happen. Nobody wants to pay the full TCGplayer retail price on a dollar rare like that, unless they’re inside the convention hall on the morning of a tournament and in a desperate situation to find the card.

So Why Should I Acquire “Fake” Bulk?

I’m glad you asked. While these cards are almost impossible to sell for a significant profit margin, trading these off to Standard players who “need a set” or “might play these in the future” is definitely the play. Because they teeter on the edge of fringe playability in one format or another, you’ll have much more success using them to bump the value of larger scale trades when your partner wants to use TCGplayer mid or SCG values. While I don’t think PucaTrade is the worst outlet for fake bulk at it’s crisp and tasty full value of $1 to $2, it’ll be basically impossible to find a trade unless you’re willing to put in a massive amount of time and effort to upload all of your lower value rares, then use a bot or program to help click your trades for you before they’re gone in an instant.

If you happen to be $3 or $4 up on a trade involving Modern and EDH staples and your partner needs to find that amount to cover the difference, grabbing three Scatter to the Winds or Radiant Flames at $1 each can be a quick and easy way to finalize the trade instead of dealing with awkward Modern increments of $5 or $6. Alternatively, you can work up small piles of fake bulk rares into rock-solid casual/EDH cards that can later be sold for a relevant value. One playset of Fathom Feeder for a Blood Artist? Seems fine, especially when our trade partner is a Standard grinder who has no use for a Blood Artist, and might play Esper Dragons in the next couple of months.

Fathom Feeder

Before I make my exit, I want to go over a point that may not have been initially clear. Fake bulk is not always rare, and it’s not always “semi-playable garbage from the most recent Standard sets.” Some fake bulk cards can still have buylist to retail spreads of 90 percent, but manage to hold their demand and retail value exceptionally well. These are usually better known by the term “picks.”

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If you had the option of paying a dime for a Beastcaller Savant or a Pyretic Ritual, where are you throwing your coin? Exactly. Many of these modern, casual, and EDH commons and uncommons share a retail to buylist spread similar to the fake bulk rares that we’ve been learning about, but it’s going to be much easier to find a buyer or trade partner for a playset of Pyretic Rituals, Brainstorms, or a single Alara tri land at $1 per card than you will for a Bring to Light.

If you have the opportunity to pick bulk and end up with a pile like the picture above, I certainly don’t recommend buylisting off those Rituals, Thought Scours, or Delvers at 10 or 25 cents a piece. It’s fine to play the waiting game here until Modern season rolls around, or until a budding Commander fanatic texts you a list of stuff that he needs, but is too cheap for other players at the LGS to have in their binders. If you have it stashed away like my pile above, you’ll be that player’s hero and make a few dollars for nothing.

No “End Step” this week, because I feel like we’ve covered a lot of material already, and all of my other co-writers will have covered the current news to the point where I’d just be beating a dead horse. It feels good to be back and writing about a topic that I think has a shockingly low amount of content, and I enjoy feeling like I’m at least filling some kind of niche in this arsenal of prolific Magic writers. Thanks for reading!

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Finance 101: Emotions and Goal Setting

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When my coworker Sigmund Ausfresser posted his article for the week on Monday, I almost had a heart attack because I thought he managed to grab my idea before I was able to put it up for my own deadline later in the week. Thankfully after reading through it, I learned that his content was mostly different than what I plan to write about this week. Instead of struggling to pick out a specific format I want to sell out of, I (and I can only assume many other Magic enthusiasts out there) have previously been emotionally conflicted with selling out of cards for a myriad of other reasons.

One of the more frequent mistakes I made as a budding Magic financier several years ago was letting my emotions and desire to show off my “victory” in my trade binder before I had actually made any money in reality. I remember one of the first singles purchases I ever made online with value in mind was pre-ordering two sets of Inkmoth Nexus for $20 each through eBay, on the night that the card was spoiled. My rationale for making the purchase was definitely flawed at the time because of my semi-casual bias towards infect, and my desire to make some sort of infect deck work in standard. I thought that it would be in every single Standard deck ever, and I knew I would be able to flip the second playset that I had purchased with ease at my local card shop that I had recently started attending in the previous months.

By the time the set was released and my cards were shipped to me, Inkmoth had made it to approximately $10 a piece. My years of calculation and planning had finally come to fruition. The first bud of a future Magic finance empire had finally begun. I would take the world by sto- …..

Except, there was one problem. I never actually ended up selling those Inkmoths. Well, I shouldn’t say that was the problem specifically. You don’t need to sell cards to achieve a goal, and I didn’t even sell cards back then: partially because I didn’t know how, and partially because I actually played Magic. However, I didn’t trade the playset of Inkmoths away either. I let them sit in my trade binder for weeks, even during the several requests of “Would you trade your extra set away?” that I was approached with during the first few weeks of the set’s release. Eventually, the hype over the new infect land had faded, the the price moved to reflect that.

Why? Well, I was proud. Those Inkmoths represented a story to me, even though my initial reason for buying them was “I think this card will be worth more by the time it arrives in my hand, and I will be able to get more trade value out of it if I buy now.” They were a reason for my 17 year old self to humblebrag to the other guys at my shop, and a constant reminder to myself that I had made a smart buy every time I flipped to that page in my binder.

The lesson here, if it’s not too visible already, is to remove emotional attachment from your cards when you’re planning on buying them for strictly financial purposes. As Magic players, we tend to have a tough time with this because the cards are tangible, and we can see our rewards in front of us while using cognitive dissonance to shove aside the failures and bad thoughts. We got into this game on an emotional level, and can have trouble separating business and pleasure when it comes to what we’re willing to sell, whether it’s in our personal collection or investment portfolio.

Personally, I’ve been very loose with my goals when it comes to how much money I want to make through my various streams of revenue in Magic. As a broad goal, I would love to just be able to pay for my graduate school degree, and maintain a sizable collection to use as inventory at the same time. Interestingly enough, players who need to liquidate their collection for unexpected life expensive and are selling at a discount are much better at this aspect of goal setting than I am. Some people need to sell specific decks to pay for rent, to buy a car, or help afford a trip to their next Grand Prix. Due to the fact that I’ve been very poor with goal setting and not having any immediate bills to pay, I’ve grown apathetic in how many cards I currently have listed on TCGplayer, my Facebook posts in the buy/sell/trade groups, and buylisting as a whole. With no immediate need to acquire funds, I’ve gotten really lazy when it comes to selling cards.

Goals in Goal Setting:

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If you were forced to go to some sort of goal setting orientation at a job, school, or something else, you’ve probably heard of SMART as an acronym for determining goals that you can stick with, instead of just saying something vague like “I want to sell Magic cards and make money” as a goal.

You’re going to want a particular exit price in mind when you buy cards with the intent to sell. If I buy 5,000 copies of Seance, I need to be immediately ready to sell them (emotionally and physically) if I pick $.50 as my buylisting sell point. I don’t recommend picking a spec and saying to yourself “I’ll sell this when it goes up.” When I bought into He Who Shall Not Be Named, I chose $6-7 as my price point that I would sell out at, after buying in at $3. It can help to write down your projected sell point on the sleeve of the card so that you don’t forget in the long term.

Be firm, and stick to the decision you made a year ago, if and when the card actually reaches that price point that you picked when you purchased it. If you bought into Snapcaster Mage at $35 in late 2014 and decided you would sell at $60, then you need to be steadfast and hold yourself to that number, or else you risk the demand for the card declining over the next several weeks and days. (Yes, I get that Snappy peaked at $80 or something ridiculous, but it’s one of the exceptions to the rule)

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Going back to the “paying for a college degree with Magic cards” goal a few paragraphs ago, I’ll use myself as an example for how a more specific goal would help encourage me to list more cards at a time and keep a more constant flow of income happening, instead of just relying on the local players who irregularly ask me to piece together decklists for them.

If I pick a more specific, measurable, and achievable number for a month’s worth of TCGplayer sales, I’ll be able to constantly keep track of where I am in my goal, instead of just guessing on the vagueness of an unclear finish line. To start us off, I’m going to try and have 150 TCGplayer orders in the month of December. If I really work towards it and start listing a larger portion of my collection, this is almost certainly a realistic number for me to achieve, as it boils down to 5 orders a day. Depending on where we end up at the closing of 2015, we can increase or decrease that number based on how close my estimate is to my real potential.

End Step

Having a personal goal to stick to that’s specific, measurable, achievable, and time-bound should help to increase my personal productivity, and remove some of the emotions from the equation to help me focus entirely on the business aspect of Magic. Even now, there’s still a lingering emotional satisfaction when I buy a collection, sort everything out, and have the pile of all of the relevant and listable stuff on my desk. Sometimes it takes me much longer than it should to actually incorporate those new assets into my existing inventory, simply because the cards are tangible in front of me, and the changes in numbers for my bank account are much less so. Here’s to hoping that I manage to fix this personal problem, and help you set some goals in Magic finance as well.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Reddit Questions #3: Finance 101

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I really enjoy writing these personalized response threads, because I know for a fact that my content is helping at least a few specific people in particular with their questions about Magic finance. If you weren’t around to read the first two articles where I answered questions from Reddit, then feel free to do so. I mean, I’m not sure if the answers to those questions are still relevant two months later, but they should at least make for some decent reading material if you’re bored. Hopefully next week, I’ll be back with a more comprehensive article on collection buying, since that appears to be my niche among MTGPrice writers.

GriselGrand Prix

Our first question comes from user Edward_Dionysos

Question3

Griselbrand GP promo. It’s played in Legacy, modern and has a lot of casual appeal. It’s down to 13 and I think I can pick a number up for 11.

Worth buying into or wait a couple months yet? The regular foil is at 60.

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I don’t think the promo Griselbrand is the best pickup you should be aiming for right now (unless you happen to need copies for personal play, in which case I don’t think you need to wait for it to drop any further). The supply on these is absolutely huge, and I think people often forget that these are still being given out! There will be over a thousand more copies added to the pool this weekend at GP Pittsburgh, and I don’t think the casual appeal on this is as high as you suggest, partially due to his “banned in Commander” status.

If you’re looking for safe Modern-legal investments, I would turn your attention towards Modern Masters 2015 cards that have been suppressed over the summer and fall, and will continue to dodge reprints through next year. We’re not opening anymore of that set, and we’re almost guaranteed to see cards like Remand that have hit an all-time low start to creep back up. I also wouldn’t hate you for picking up Fulminator Mage, Mox Opal, or Cryptic Command.

Boros Bartering

Question number two comes to us from A_Tattooed_Biker:

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I pulled an Arid Mesa Expedition (currently @ $105) and a Sacred Foundry Expedition (currently at $65). I’ve watched the Mesa climb from mid 70s to the current price. My question is, how long should I hold on to these guys? They’re only going up, right?

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Expeditions lands have definitely settled down over the past month, although I don’t recall Mesa ever being at $70. If you’re someone looking for pure finanical gain, then you’re correct that I think these can only go up in the long term. However, that long term is, well, a very long term. I expect these to slowly creep up over years, not weeks or months. If you’re a player who is on the hunt for pieces to decks, then I can only recommend trading or selling them to help you play Magic.

If you’re looking to get into Modern, these two lands can help to put a decent dent in some of the higher-dollar cards that you probably don’t want to shell out pure cash for. The Foundry can turn into a set of regular Foundries plus $15 in other random goodies. The Mesa can split itself into two Mesas plus some other small stuff. There’s probably someone at your LGS who is hunting these down and has a fully stocked trade binder for you to go digging through that you normally wouldn’t have access to without these kinds of cards. If you care about trying to build a deck, I think these are your ticket to help with that. If you’re not planning on playing anytime soon, they should be considered reasonably stable holds.

The Waiting Game

Next up at bat is N1trobunny asking about the potential growth of sealed product:

Question2

Greetings!

I usually just lurk on r/mtgfinance[1] , so please forgive me if I’m asking a question that always comes up (a link would be nice too!)

I was thinking of snagging a couple boxes of Khans to hang onto, as I imagine they’d go up in value due to the fetch land content. Is this a realistic Idea, or would I be better off buying fetches and letting them go up?

Thanks all!

Not to go too deep into the time machine, but one of my favorite articles that I wrote back on Brainstorm Brewery was about investing in Sealed product, and how it’s really not what it used to be. Return investment on boxes of RTR have been, well, lackluster to say the best, and that was three years ago. The TL;DR of the article is that other than novelty product like the  first-ever Commander set, I really don’t think we can expect the return on investment for fall- or spring-set booster boxes to be what it used to, like with Zendikar or Scars of Mirrodin. You’d be waiting three, maybe four years to get a return of 20, maybe 30, percent and then what? Selling them will be brutal with all of the shipping costs. I really think you’re better off looking into single card specs at that point, although not fetches. They’re currently too high from their ubiquity in Standard. If you’re looking for card specs that have the potential to span over several years, you can continue reading and we’ll get to that in just a bit.

Question4

If you’re looking to hold onto the boxes for three years and then have some booster drafts with your friends down the road for nostalgia, then my advice is a bit different. I’d tell you that you can find KTK boxes for around $85 on Massdrop. If you can’t wait patiently until the next drop becomes available, you can find a local judge who’s willing to sell you his box that he received for judging an event, or until you find a lucky deal on eBay or something. I wouldn’t feel like you have to run out and buy it right now is the point I’m trying to make here.

Bulk Rares are Best Rares

Lastly, we have a question on cheap cards to invest in that have the potential to show a lot of growth very suddenly, from dbchiu.

Question1

Okay, so maybe he wanted to know more about Pauper picks, but he didn’t ask that specifically in the question, did he? Eh, I’ll use any excuse to talk about bulk rare penny stocks. Instead of Pauper penny stocks that you may or may not have a hard time getting rid of to a large crowd, I love setting aside certain bulk rares that I pick up for a dime a piece. Eventually some of them pop, like Spoils of the Vault earlier this year. More recently, Kabira Evangel and his other ally friends from Zendikar gave me some pretty ridiculous percentage gains.

In terms of risk versus reward, I absolutely love cards that just have that sense of “this could be broken if the right card is printed.” At a dime each, you can’t really go wrong. The worst case scenario is buylisting back to a large vendor at a Grand Prix, or shipping them to someone like me who wants all of your bulk rares.

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Okay, seriously. Someone has to break this eventually. It has so much potential, and just screams combo.

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Once a proud $6 card, now reduced to a mere bulk rare. This one’s less of a “combotastic Modern sleeper” and more of a “non-competitive slow gainer over three years,” but I’d rather have 1,000 copies of this instead of a booster box of Khans of Tarkir any day. Even if I wait two years for a slow gain back up to being buylistable at 50 cents, I’m perfectly fine with that.

End Step

Normally this is where I give you some random small tid-bits of information that I realized at some point throughout the week, but I’m not sure I have anything today.

This coming weekend is Grand Prix Pittsburgh, and you might see me there. If I do decide to go, I promise I won’t write about it for next week. I’m trying to think of a topic focusing on collection buying that I can hone in on, so if you have any suggestions or requests, then I’d be glad to hear them! Hit me up on the Twitter or Facebook, or in the comments section. Have a great week!

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Stitch Together

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Alright. So… I have no topic for this week. I tried, I really did. I sat in front of my screen for two hours trying to think of something that

1) I genuinely cared about

2) I could relate to Magic finance

Unfortunately, I don’t really care about the Commander 2015 spoilers, except for the fact that Necrotic Ooze dodged yet another reprint opportunity. I love both of the new Golgari commanders, because they give me an overabundance of options for my favorite queen of life and death. Honestly, I’m surprised that she didn’t make it into the deck herself.

Now you see, this is the kind of thing I was trying to avoid. You don’t give a damn about me talking about Commander 2015; that’s Jason’s job. I can’t talk about Standard, because I don’t care enough about the format to pay attention. Grinder finance is Jim’s area of expertise. My niche in our arsenal of writers is collection buying, and I think there’s only so much I can say before I start to repeat myself to death. Whatever. I’ll just wing it this week, and see what comes out. There’s got to be at least some relevant info in here for someone.

Pucadvice

I do enjoy Pucatrade, I really do. However, I just have too much stuff constantly moving in and out of my collection to keep my haves list current. I think it would literally take me days just to piece together my current inventory as a have list, so I rarely (read: never) really send cards nowadays. Instead, I’ve taken up the practice of buying points for $.70 on the dollar from Facebook groups and Twitter acquaintances.

Due to the fact that I have a large Commander/non-competitive customer base in my area, every now and again, I get requests for certain cards that I don’t happen to have in my inventory. For whatever reason, some of these customers prefer to avoid buying cards online themselves.  I appreciate that they would prefer to support a local business, because it works out well for me when they request to have me order cards for them.

So, let’s say that I buy 2000 Puca Points for $14 from someone in a Facebook group focused on the buying and selling of Puca Points and other MTG currency. Then, local customer Jimmy texts me and asks, “Hey DJ, do you have any Wurmcoil Engines?” If I don’t happen to have any Wurmcoils, I’ll usually reply with something like this: “No, but I can order one for you using the trade credit I have on a website, and it would cost you $18. Is that okay?” I’m usually met with an affirmative answer of some kind, because who doesn’t like the convenience of someone else ordering your cards for you? I then put the Wurmcoil on my want list, have it shipped to me at the cost of 1800 pucapoints, and get to turn those points into cash back at a 100-percent conversion rate.

Now, your results will vary with this when it comes to more obscure cards. If someone asks me for a foil version of an older common or uncommon, or something that I know will take Puca forever to send me, then I’ll kindly let them down and tell them that I don’t think I’ll be able to get it with trade credit, but that I can order it off of TCGplayer or eBay for them, as long as I’m still making a couple dollars for my trouble.

If you’re someone who doesn’t have the time to grind the Puca system by constantly sending out small cards and churning them into big cards, you might just be able to use it as a bridge to turn your 70 cents into a dollar, if you’re willing to wait and have a potential customer base waiting in the wings.

Tools of the Trade

I’m literally just looking around my desk/workstation and looking for things to write about at this point. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever brought up how useful having your own business cards can be, even if you don’t decide to turn Magic into a full-time trade. While I would never advocate whipping them out while in an LGS, they’re a cheap and professional way to maintain a customer base through Craigslist, word of mouth, and good, old social-media outlets.

I personally use Vistaprint to make my cards. They were cheap (I paid $31 for 500 double-sided cards and used an existing logo/design, so they were only about six cents a piece), and the ordering process was very easy. The below pictures are the second version of business cards I’ve ordered, and you can get them even cheaper than that if you opt for a blank backside and take advantage of sales. The first time I ever ordered cards from Vistaprint, I took advantage of a “250 free sample cards” option and used a stock background, and they only charged me the $6 shipping. They still worked well enough to land me several collections back in the day, which made it all worthwhile.

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Shoutout to Tim Ano, a former classmate of mine who designed the awesome logo and background.

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I’ve found several ways to make sure that my lotus logo gets spread throughout the community. I tend to give them out after each Craigslist meetup, leave them in my display case for the store employees to distribute to anyone who asks about the cards in the case, and I personally like to include them in the envelope whenever I ship out cards to someone who’s semi-local on TCGplayer. I’ve actually gotten a text from someone who I once sold cards to through TCGplayer, and I ended up buying their collection because they only lived two hours from me.

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Here’s another tool that I use constantly, whenever I buy collections, or trade for other cards at less than retail. If you’ve ever been to a Grand Prix or dealt with someone who does what I do, this picture looks familiar. It makes buying lots of cards at buylist a simple breeze, and the mat is simple enough to make with only a sharpie and ruler. The same rules apply here as with the business cards: please do not bring this type of mat to the LGS without prior consent. If you can work out a deal with your shop owner so that you can buy cards for them or in their place, that’s great! Just be sure to make sure they get something out of the deal for sharing their space and customers.

I’m actually in talks with my graphic designer friend Tim to try and get a customized design for a custom mat, which I will then order from InkedGaming.com. It will definitely look a lot more professional than the dirty and used mat above (to be fair, that’s my travel mat; I have a matching, yet cleaner one at the store). Would you rather sit down across someone with a mat like mine, or the one below?

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If you’d rather not spend a lot of money on a mat just to look fancy, though, that’s perfectly understandable. That’s money that could be spend buying cards at buylist prices! You can find brand new blank playmats on eBay for less than $8, and then take a sharpie and a ruler to it for free.

Useful Gift Boxes

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Apparently there’s been some pretty funny controversy on how the Battle for Zendikar gift box is still sub-par quality compared to the Theros and Khans of Tarkir gift boxes. I really don’t care because my fiancee knows not to buy me Magic-related product for presents, but I would like to let everyone know that the Return to Ravnica boxes are actually of very good quality in my experience. I use them reguarly to hold sleeves, toploaders, and other shipping supplies that I keep at my workstation.

I’m not sure if they intentionally cut corners on these boxes or if it was just negligence, but if you’re someone who does like the style and size of the boxes to hold their collection, I recommend the RTR one. I mean, they can’t be that expensive….

Wait, what the hell? Someone bought a sealed RTR gift box for $90 over the summer? And ABU has sold them for $40? Uhh… I was going to suggest that you grab them for cheap from other players and save them if you pick up collections in them while you throw the THS and KTK ones to the curb, but damn. I didn’t think they’d be this expensive on eBay. I mean, does anyone actually have any of these things still sealed? Props to you, I guess. I got like three or four RTR gift boxes as a combination of birthday and Christmas presents three years ago, and I cracked them all for those sweet Dreg Manglers because I’m a Golgari member ’til death and beyond. If anyone reading this actually owns the sealed ones, throw them up on eBay and see who bites.

Actually, this brings me to a good point on sealed product. If you’re eyeing the BFZ gift box and thinking “Man, I should totally buy this for $25 and then sit on it for three years, I’ll make a ton of money selling it later,” then let me correct you. Don’t do that. I’m assuming that the RTR one is selling at a premium due to a combination of being  the only one study enough to stack on top of itself, plus the lack of print run from being the first of its kind. New generations of sealed product have always held a premium when they’re the first of their kind, just look at the original Commander, Planechase, and Duel Deck. Wizards doesn’t know how to anticipate what the demand will be, so they suddenly become scarce three years later.

Anyway the point is not to buy the BFZ gift box if you’re looking for long-term profit. Hell, the Tolarian Community College professor suggests not to buy it at all if you’re looking for up-to-par box quality and good EV.

End Step

Kabira Evangel is part of the reason I love bulk rares. Oh, I picked these up for a dime a piece two years ago? Now I can sell them for ten to twenty times that. There’s still time to do similar things with cards like Crucible of Fire, Heartless Summoning, and all of the new bulk rares from the new Commander set. You literally have nothing to lose.

Eye of Ugin has managed to creep up by around 25 percent since Battle for Zendikar’s release, so there’s definitely real demand for the “old” Eldrazi cards. It’s up to you whether you sell at $4 or wait for a couple more dollars, but I’m always happy to find a buyer at full retail.