Category Archives: Douglas Johnson

Advances in TCGplayer

March 23, 2016 Douglas Johnson 6 Comments

First things first;

Jason Alt and I have been slaving away at spoiler coverage. Thankfully, we have it all in one convenient place that’s only one click away. Allow my excitement about how 90% of the set will be flavorful bulk rares flow through your mind. Now that that’s out of the way, we can focus on the best card in Shadows Over Innistrad.

The Best Card in Shadows Over Innistrad

Have you seen this freaking frog? Don’t worry, I’m going to avoid all of the overused Futurama hypnotoad references.

I know that I’m mainly supposed to write about finance and prices and all that jazz, but sweet miss Mary; this card is the bee’s knees in my Child of Alara Lands deck. Every set I always cross my fingers and think “Maybe there will be just one card that I can throw into a certain Commander list”, and this thing is it. Trade Routes, , Seismic Assault, Life from the Loam, fetchlands… the possibilities are endless. Oh, you want me to talk about Standard play? Meh, he’s probably a bulk mythic, so I’ll just wait two months to pick up a foil one for my Commander deck at like $1-2.

The Meat of the Article

Oh, right. I actually have to write about something this week. Well, let’s start with an announcement made by TCGplayer.com last week that will have an impact on the way we buylist cards;

DIRECT IS NOW EVEN BETTER.

Las Vegas, NV, March 16, 2016 – Today TCGplayer.com^® announced a dramatic expansion of the TCGplayer Direct service, the only fulfillment shipping program in the World for the multi-billion dollar collectible gaming industry.

TCGplayer’s first of three announcements was a global expansion of TCGplayer Direct. With a brand new international fulfillment program for the collectibles industry, customers worldwide will be able to order from multiple collectible sellers and receive the orders in one package, for one shipping fee and verified by the professional graders at TCGplayer.

This revolutionary offering by TCGplayer allows its sellers to fulfill international customer orders at domestic U.S. shipping rates through TCGplayer Direct. TCGplayer Direct International will be the most efficient, affordable and safe way for sellers to sell collectible products worldwide.

The company also announced an expansion of its current TCGplayer Direct program, which will now fulfill orders of any size without a minimum order size. This change allows buyers to make smaller purchases from multiple Sellers for quick, spontaneous purchases of lower priced collectibles. This means significant sales growth for sellers while improving their profit margins on inexpensive but labor intensive orders, returning valuable hours for seller investment elsewhere.

Finally, the company’s biggest announcement was the launch of a brand new marketplace called the TCGplayer Buylist, a revolutionary, first-of-its-kind program that empowers customers to easily find and receive the greatest prices available for everything in their collection without breaking it apart. Just as TCGplayer Direct combines the best prices for cards from hundreds of sellers, the TCGplayer Buylist provides the highest value for customers to sell their collection to all of the country’s largest brick and mortar sellers through one convenient transaction.

For sellers, the TCGplayer Buylist will help them keep up with the accelerated sales that TCGplayer’s new programs will drive. The TCGplayer Buylist provides sellers unparalleled inventory access from the World’s customers, freeing them from the limitations of acquiring inventory from their local markets. Cards sold to sellers through the TCGplayer Buylist program are received and processed entirely by TCGplayer, delivering more incredible labor and logistics savings for them.

“The TCGplayer Buylist is the first marketplace designed to help brick and mortar stores acquire more inventory for the explosive collectible gaming market.” said Chedy Hampson, founder and CEO of TCGplayer.com. “We’re now able to provide our buyers and sellers with incredible logistic efficiencies that benefit everyone. The ability to instantly find and sell collectibles at one time for the best prices possible online will delight customers. And our sellers receive new solutions that grow their online sales while solving their inventory dilemma as they expand beyond their local town or city into the global ecommerce market.”

Rollout of TCGplayer Direct International begins next week, with the order size expansion of TCGplayer Direct to follow at the end of the month. The TCGplayer Direct Buylist is underway for a summer 2016 launch.

Okay, there were a lot of words there. I know you kids love your TL;DRs, so I’ll do my best to give you a summarized version of what we care about in this announcement.

People from around the world will be able to order cards via TCGplayer Direct. More importantly (at least, I assume that most of my reader base is ‘Murican), that means it’ll be a hell of a lot cheaper for us to sell cards to the international market if you’re a TCGplayer Direct seller. Want to become a Direct seller? Honestly, it’s not that difficult. If you have an average of four sales a day and you have over 99.5% feedback rating, you can apply right now.
There will no longer be a minimum order amount when buying cards through TCGplayer Direct. Currently there’s a $25 minimum when placing an order with Direct, I assume so they don’t get destroyed on shipping costs. This removal makes it a lot easier for those budget players who want to pick up an entire deck of bulk rares/commons for $20 can do so while only receiving a single package in the mail. Again, much better for those who want to hop into the Direct program but unaffecting you if you’re a small time seller.
Their last announcement is by far the one that will have the largest impact on the market for everyone, regardless if you’re part of the Direct program or if you’re even a TCGplayer seller. They’re coming out with the TCGplayer Buylist, allowing an individual person to ship their entire collection to TCGplayer and get the best buylist prices among those who sign up for the program. While there aren’t a whole lot of details, it could be an attractive option for those players who want to dump a Commander deck or their entire collection without pricing out a billion different stores.

We don’t have the exact details of everything about these new practices yet, but I’d still like to give my initial thoughts to quell some of the questions that I’ve been receiving. One of the biggest responses I’ve gotten to this post is as follows, paraphrased slightly:

“But DJ! How am I going to be able to act as my local buylist if TCGplayer is going to become one of the most prominent locations to sell cards to other brick and mortar stores? People will see their prices, and I’ll have to up my buy prices on collections to compete with Channelfireball, Cardkingdom, etc.”

Well, I’m not exactly worried about this encroaching on me being a local buylist. These same buylists existed before TCGplayer’s Direct buylist, and very few players in my local area made the choice to ship their cards over selling to me or other local players. The biggest advantage you have as a local buylist over TCGplayer that won’t change is that you have cash in your hand now. While CFB/CK/ABU might offer $600 on Person X’s collection, you can still offer $500 on his/her pile of cards because immediate cash dollars have an inherent value when compared against “We’ll send you a check/Paypal you in a few weeks after receiving/grading/verifying.”

You’re also removing a large chunk of the work from their side of the equation. Oh, you have six semi-foiled Commander decks that you need to get rid of to pay for X expense? Well, you’ll have to set sort and alphabetize within sets for every card, and that takes a non-zero amount of time. Then there’s figuring out how you’re going to ship it safely, taking the time to go to the post office and mail it…. Remember the magic words; “I have cash and can be at your place in X amount of time.” Unless you live in an area where there’s already a significant amount of competing buylists for high dollar staples, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about the Direct Buylist encroaching on your ability to buy collections or lots from local players.

That’s actually a good segue into the next thing I was going to write about. Guess how many stores are going to have a Direct buy price for Scalding Tarn. There’s going to be a lot, right? Okay, how about the number of stores who can afford to put a deep enough buylist for cards like Lightning Helix, Manamorphose, and Rancor? There will probably be some stores who can port their buylist directly (ChannelFireball, Cardkingdom, etc), but it should weed out a lot of the smaller minnows who are trying to play with the big boys.

Okay, final question. How many Direct buyers do you expect to see put up a non-foil Immerwolf or Savage Lands? Exactly. I’m going to predict that 99% of the stores who want to take part in the Direct buylist will not care in the slightest about paying pennies for the buylistable commons and uncommons that I have grown to love and enjoy. Go ahead and let the big cats fight over whether they’re paying $55 or $60 for a Scalding Tarn, while you’re happily buying bulk commons and uncommons by the tens of thousands and burning through Season 2 of Daredevil while you pick out the $.25 and $.50 cards.

The TCGplayer Direct buylist will allow the big name vendors to fight over paying top dollar for the hot staples in competitive formats. I think the best way to compete with this new market is to avoid it entirely by focusing on what has always been the best way to make money in Magic: bulk and bulk accessories. I’d rather have 23,000 bulk common/uncommon over a single Scalding Tarn any day of the week, and only one of those is going to give you an anxiety attack in the coming months about whether or not its’ going to be reprinted.

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Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Bulk is Like Play-Doh

March 16, 2016 Douglas Johnson 13 Comments

Does anyone else remember playing with Play-Doh when they were younger? That stuff was a child’s best friend. You could live out your wildest six-year old imaginations from the highest chair in the house, while Mom watched out for the four-year old brother crawling around beneath ready to eat up any of the delicious clay that fell to the floor.

Of course, it was never actually anything like the picture above. That was a cold, hard, sweet-smelling lie; similar to Play-Doh after it hardened because you didn’t touch it for like five minutes. The real stuff wouldn’t mix without turning into grotesque colors, ruining your idea of a rainbow or multicolored house. Other than that though, it was a wonderful blob of molding clay that you could turn into anything your heart desired.

I find bulk to be a lot like unused Play-Doh. I mean, it’s a lot harder to make rainbows and ice cream out of Magic cards, but the core concept is still there. You can mold it into any number of different shapes and sizes to fit the needs of your customer base. While the majority of competitive players don’t really care about the Suture Priests or Jace’s Erasures of the world, we can be thankful that the invisible and silent majority of players really could care less about bulk. In fact, they’re one of the main sources where we’ll be acquiring the recent bulk. I’ve mentioned this in previous articles so I won’t go too into depth on bulk acquisition this week, but phase one is just putting your name out there in the local scene and being “that one person” who wants to fill their house/apartment with Magic cards.

My Preference

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you know what I’ve been molding my bulk into. I pick through it for the Rancors and the Blood Artists, even snatching out the Ajani’s Pridemates. Those were alphabetized, while the remains were randomized and packed into 1,000 count BCW boxes (Disclaimer: These actually hold approximately 1,200 cards, so don’t pack them to capacity if you’re trying to sell 1ks). I sell those out of my small display case in town for $7 per thousand, and continue to be surprised at their enduring popularity.

This method certainly doesn’t take a whole lot of effort, but you can scale the amount of money you squeeze from a thousand cards up with the amount of effort and time you want to put in. For those of you who are true ~~masochists~~ grinders and actually enjoy sorting cards by set/alphabet, there are a few select buylists out there that will pay you handsomely for your Netflix+sorting multitask skills.

If you’d rather not turn down the dark road of becoming a real “Magic Financier”, then don’t worry. We have some other options available that involve a significantly lower time investment. If you can set up a consistent stream of “old” bulk from NPH or later, certain stores like Coolstuff are willing to pay a solid amount of coin.

Sorting of old/new

It’s a lot easier to sort rarity colors and set symbols than letters in the alphabet, so this might be up your ally if you get all of that NM Revised bulk that has been stripped of all its’ dual lands. I’ve also found CSI helpful when I bought bulk that was already sorted by common/uncommon, and I didn’t feel like randomizing it or increasing my volume of 1K boxes at the shop. Once you pick out all the Mindcranks and Vapor Snags, Coolstuff will take the scraps without you needing to put in a whole ton of brain power or effort.

My Future

While I pick relatively thoroughly, I don’t pick down to the nickel. At least, I didn’t before visiting Card Advantage in Athens, GA. After having a few conversations with the owner, I am now (well, I will be over the summer when I actually have time) a certified Blueprinter. What the hell is a Blueprint? Just one of the most extensive buylists for common/uncommon picks that you’ve ever seen, created by some of the most amazing people in the industry. (Disclaimer 2: Thomas Dodd did not pay me or MTGprice for this advertising space; my high recommendation of them comes only from my own personal experience). While this style of buylisting is certainly not for the faint of heart, you can pick your bulk absolutely bone dry with methods like these, then ship the rest off to CSI.

Oh, you didn’t know that you can get almost a dime a piece for common Sludge Crawlers? That’s twice as much as an uncommon Retreat that actually sees play in the Modern deck. If you thought Sylvan Scrying was dead after the reprint, you’re dead wrong. Card Advantage will pay you a dollar for five of these things, which later equals ten more bulk rares in your pocket when you buy someone’s collection. See where I’m going with this? Once you get used to the extensiveness of the buylist and the types of cards that people on Amazon buy, it will only get easier and faster.

Let me repeat this for those who are going to scroll to the bottom and write an angry message about how I’m wasting my time sorting cards for pennies on the hour. This industry pays off depending on how much time you put into it. People like Ryan Bushard built a full-time job out of bulk, and there are some people out there who actually enjoy sorting cards. If you want to go out and find the next underpriced Shadows Over Innistrad Standard staple, I think you clicked on the wrong article.

Am I going to be spending the next week working on my Blueprint with the 150k cards in my dorm room? No, I don’t have time for that. I will, however, use my last summer break before starting graduate school to grind value out of this, learn the .03 cards to pick, and practice speeding up the process of set sorting/alphabetizing while watching Netflix or professional League of Legends streams. While the remains that didn’t get Blueprinted won’t be up to par to be sold as 1k boxes in my display case (I don’t think my non-competitive customers would appreciate if half the cards in the set were missing), those leftover Play-doh droppings can be molded into cash dollars from another vendor like Coolstuff, and be sold as true bulk.

bulk — No, those are not World of Warcraft cards.

End Step:

Can someone explain to me why the pre-release foil of Lotus Bloom is the same price as either non-foil? I feel like there are only a couple dozen people in the country who went to a Time Spiral prerelease, and Lotus Bloom certainly isn’t getting another printing anytime soon considering they pumped out Suspend a few years ago and it’s extremely high on the Storm reprint scale. Do people not like the Christopher Rush artwork on the promo? Someone help me understand.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson, Uncategorized

Still No Full Moon

March 10, 2016 Douglas Johnson

So a couple weeks ago, I talked about why I really didn’t like Mayor of Avabruck as a spec target. Back then, my logic was based on the extremely small space for werewolves as shown on the checklist card. If we put ourselves in the shoes of the player type that we’re not, then we can try to shine some moonlight as to why this tribe that’s seemingly dripping with flavor and non-competitive appeal has been so much of a financial letdown over the past four and a half years.

I’ve seen a decent number of people suggesting that the puppy patrol will see a rise in popularity in the wake of a potential new legendary werewolf creature to lead the Commander deck. Now that the second checklist card has been proven to be a reality, we have a bit more clues to narrow down the possibilities of what can and cannot be in the set.

With two of the white and blue slots being taken up by Archangel Avacyn and Marit Lage, she’s on Innistrad and going to fight Emrakul in a 1v1 duel to save the Multiverse, we only have one red, one green, and one gold double-faced card at rare or mythic. I’m going to go out on a limb here and take a guesstimate that the werewolf ‘walker takes up one slot there, and the legendary werewolf Commander is the other.

That makes the total number of double-faced werewolves in Shadows Over Innistrad an approximate grand total of fifteen. Yep, fifteen flip doggies, give or take one or two (I can’t really tell if Breakneck Rider is the name of a werewolf or not, and it’s possible that the mono-red double faced card is not a werewolf). Let’s compare that to the number of Allies in Battle for Zendikar that managed to spark a couple of the decks’ core components.

As you can see, Allies got a lot more support in BFZ than Werewolves are likely to get in SOI. There are a couple explanations for this; the word Ally got slapped on at least a dozen or so random creatures that would have likely been the exact same without it, and BFZ wasn’t really competing within itself for any other non-Eldrazi tribes. Innistrad is full of Angels, Vampires, Zombies, Humans, and Spirits, all fighting to get a piece of the tribal pie.

Instead of the new Allies being any good at all for the competitive player, they managed to spark a fire in the casual players heart. People started to look back at some of the older (and better) Allies that they could combine with their pack-fresh durdles, and we saw a lot of the reasonably powerful ones creep up in price. The mana dork, clone, and protection engine are the most prominent of that group. The kind of player who enjoys Magic without sleeves eats those cards up, and you should always be happy to find that person and do business with them.

I said something important back there. Remember that all-important article by Ross Lennon that I always reference, called Mastery of the Invisible? You know that they exist, which is good. You also have a general idea of what kinds of cards these players enjoy playing with. Mill. Angels. Demons. Dragons. Zombies. Relentless Rats. All deck themes that are time-honored favorites in the unspoken majority of the player base. Why aren’t werewolves a part of this? Well, my friend; I have a theory (and it’s just that, a theory) that one of the reasons for the unpopularity of werewolves is the requirement for additional hardware; either in the form of checklist cards or protective sleeves.

“But DJ! Checklist cards are only like 25 cents on TCGplayer, or 10 cents on SCG!” Yep, but they’re an additional hoop that the player has to jump through to build their deck. While anecdotal evidence is far from fact, I thought about this while at the shop one day when a customer came in to buy one of the 1,000 count boxes of commons/uncommons that I sell for $7. He pulled out one of the double-faced werewolf cards and questioned how you were supposed to play in in the deck if you could see it coming, which is a fair question if you’ve been playing Magic for less than a month. I explained the concepts of both checklists and sleeves to him, and was met with the following response:

“Oh. That seems like would take more work to keep track of if I had a deck full of two-sided cards. Can I just trade it for a different card in another box?”

So what are your thoughts on casual players disliking a high volume of double-faced cards in their deck because of the requirement of additional checklists/sleeves? I’ve had no trouble selling Bloodline Keepers in the past, but maybe that’s because it is usually the only DFC in the deck. I’m curious if anyone has had a similar experience as I have, and if the need for a high volume of checklists has had an effect on the suppressed demand of werewolves as a casual archetype.

Were Else Should we Look?

If we’re not buying into werewolves as a casual spec, what kind of cards should we be looking into? Well, I like Vampires and Zombies as a starting point. Contrary to our furry friends, we can put our hard-earned cash dollars into cards that, like the werewolves, won’t be reprinted anytime soon, but also have the benefit of already being proven over time.

Now that the windows are broken, this card is practically on the reserved list. There is no way that the cathars of Avacyn can rebuild with all those undead walking around. All jokes aside, this has managed to shamble its way to a solid $3 over the past few years, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it hanging around the $7-8 mark in a few months. If all else fails, this will be a much easier sell at the $3ish it’s at now than a pile of 47 Mayor of Avabruck.

Let’s wrap all that up in a neat bow; Even though there will likely be a double-sided werewolf planeswalker and legendary werewolf creature in Shadows over Innistrad, I do not expect werewolf cards to increase Mayor of Avabruck or any of his werewolf buddies to increase in price significantly enough such that it would be worth buying in now for profit. If you’re one of the few Invisibles that keeps their finger on the pulse of the finance market by reading these articles, and you want to build werewolves, then I don’t think there’s downside in buying now because you plan on playing with them.

End Step

Rest in Peace is fighting the good fight against the undead hordes, and wants a bigger paycheck because of it. He’s not arguing for a $15 minimum wage, just a $2 raise per copy. What a goddamned socialist hippie. Even at $4, I don’t think this card is a bad buy if you need copies or expect to require them in the future. Remember all those players who thought Stony Silence had reached its’ peak at $5? Exactly, you don’t remember them because they shut up real quick.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Reserved List in Commander

March 3, 2016 Douglas Johnson 2 Comments

So About Those Legacy Cards….

How about that? Magic prices have been going crazy over the past few weeks, and a lot of it is thanks to the Eternal Masters Announcement that I personally haven’t really talked about a whole lot. I’ve been more focused on casual hits and collection grinding recently to worry about that kind of stuff, although I did enjoy the jumps on a few Legacy staples. Thankfully, the market that I want to talk about today moves a lot slower than the more competitive land of 4-ofs. While the wake-up call of “Reserved List is here to stay” has driven some interesting Legacy prices spikes, I’m happy to say that Commander has so far remained relatively untouched. If you’re someone who’s been on the fence about certain Commander staples for a while, let me be one of the first to say that you don’t have a lot of time left.

Why Commander?

First, let me address some of the reasons for speculating on cards when their sole demand comes from singleton formats like Commander, Cube, and Tiny Lea-hahahaha…. Sorry, I couldn’t write that with a straight face. Anyway, let’s say for example that you buy 9x SP copies of Volrath’s Stronghold for $21.29 each. You know that it’s a powerful staple in almost every black Commander deck, and you’ve jammed it in at least a few Cube drafts before. According to EDHrec, Stronghold sees play in 10% of all decks that can support it. While this isn’t close to the numbers of staple cards like Eternal Witness or Sol Ring, it’s still a strong showing and a versatile card.

You did so because you’ve been noticing the supply dwindle on TCGplayer from 48 sellers with no price filters, all the way down to 30 sellers as of 3/1/2016. You want to check vendor confidence in the card, so you check SCG’s storefront and their buylist. They’re currently out of stock on Volrath’s Stronghold at $30, and their buylist for NM copies is $17.50, which is 75% of the TCGmid price today. Starcity wants more Strongholds, so I’m going to follow suit.

One of the problems in speculating on a 1-of wonder is the inability to unload a significant amount of copies relatively quickly. Patience is a virtue when dealing with Commander cards and finding the right buyer for them, because we’re not shipping them out in playsets or selling into the hype from tournament results. We have to accept the slow trickle of sales as they come, and that type of strategy certainly isn’t for everyone. It’s probable that this is not the single best Magic: The Gathering card to buy right now if you’re looking to make a huge amount of money in a short period of time (In other words, it’s not the next City of Traitors where you can easily sell playsets to aspiring Legacy players). However I think it’s safe to say that cards like Volrath’s Stronghold and Earthcraft are some of the safest buys you can make at the moment (Except bulk rares!), especially if you intend to jam them into your Commander decks for the next year or so.

Specsheet Tracking

I sometimes obsess over cards that I speculate on, because I’m that confident in them. Many of the cards that I buy in collections and set aside for later have an “Eh, maybe one day” feel attached to them (Breaking // Entering, Seance, and Aggressive Mining are some of the forerunners in this category). However, the rest are the vocal majority that I’ve chosen to write about. I like to break down as many aspects of the card as possible, and keep my finger on the pulse day after day to check any minuscule change. Noticing the small 2-3% increases in price day after day is often the sign of an incoming spike in the near future.

While this spreadsheet model is far from perfect, I think it’s a decent representation of the factors that I’m trying to keep track of in my single-card case studies. Creating an “MTGfinance” routine in the morning can take less than ten minutes; simply scroll through Twitter, check your mtgstocks interests, and take quick glances at the applicable pieces of information in the spreadsheet above.

So Other than Stronghold….

Oh, right. Volrath’s Stronghold is obviously not the only card that we need to keep our eyes on here.

Is “Buy reserved list cards” going to be earth-shattering news to anyone with a cardboard cutout degree in Magic finance? No, of course not. You all have already made your money on Mox Diamond and City of Traitors, so these singletons are irrelevant to you.

End Step

Breaking news: Wizards just announced the first werewolf planeswalker, which we can probably assume will follow the trend of being a double-sided walker like Garruk Relentless. I would assume that she is able to flip back and forth between forms due to the following line “she can control the transformation, in both directions, with relative ease.“
As we talked about last week in the Werewolf article, the Shadows over Innistrad checklist that was spoiled shows no mention of any legendary werewolf or planeswalker, but it is labeled “CH1/297”. I think this all but confirms that we will receive a second checklist card with a separate set of double-faced cards to represent [Ed note: Wednesday’s Werewolf Planeswalker announcement supports this]
I do not think that Wizards will reuse the templating from the Origins planeswalkers, because “Legendary creature turning into planeswalker” now has the flavor attachment of igniting a spark and having time pass between the two faces of the card.

MTGPrice Blog

Category Archives: Douglas Johnson

Advances in TCGplayer

DIRECT IS NOW EVEN BETTER.

Bulk is Like Play-Doh

Still No Full Moon

Reserved List in Commander

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY