Category Archives: Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Shaman of the Boats

July 15, 2015 Jason Alt 8 Comments

By: Jason Alt

As I alluded to last week, I am going to spend the next few articles looking at cards from Origins that may either launch new archetypes or strengthen existing ones. I think there is plenty of EDH gas in this set and that there are a few archetypes that are going to get plenty bolstered.

Last week, we discussed future Superfriends builds brought on by the new planeswalkers in Origins, and I think we uncovered some really interesting cards that are overlooked, undervalued, and poised to do big things. Inexorable Tide shows us what a reprinting can do to prices, but it can also make foils look safer, and EDH player sure do love their foils, don’t they? With the emergence of Cube as a format that can affect foil prices, as well, foils are very saucy targets moving forward. So we may not know what we want to talk about this week, but at least we know how we want to talk about it when we figure that out, so that’s good.

Packing Shamans

There was a card in particular in the spoiler for Origins that really caught my eye. It’s not getting discussed much at all, probably because it’s not a mythic rare, or even a rare. It’s an uncommon and there isn’t much financial upside to the non-foils of this card. So why am I so excited about it? Why would we spend an entire article discussing a card that doesn’t have a ton of upside? Well, the answer to that is simple: we’re talking about the boats that are lifted by a rising tide, and sometimes you don’t need to drop a very big rock in the water to make big waves. Sometimes the card is a butterfly flapping its wings across the globe and a chain reaction of events takes care of the rest. Strap in, nerds, because it’s El Niño season and we’re about get hit with a wave so big that every other boat’s going to be all jacked up and our boat will be fine because we were prepared and got ahead of the storm and Lieutenant Dan was just daring the storm to kill him but he survived and I’m mixing my metaphors. Let’s just show the card I mean.

That’s the card. Does it fit in a narrow list of decks that are able to run it? Possibly. Would it benefit most greatly from being in a deck with Rhys the Redeemed, a potent token generator? Possibly. Does that mean this isn’t a ridiculous auto-include in more decks than you might think and a potent finisher? No, this card isn’t going to routinely deal 10 or more damage to people. You have to have a formidable board state to make that happen, but this spell breaks ground stalls open and that’s the most useful thing an EDH card can do in my opinion. So which generals are able to play this card and benefit easily from it?

This is a big one. Nath is a nathty character, he makes elf tokens, he strips cards out of opponents’ hands, and he sets you up to benefit from making them discard aggressively, turning cards like Mindslicer, Mind Shatter, and Waste Not into potent cards. Pop quiz, hotshot. How much is Waste Not worth?

Three dollars? It’s up from $2, down from $8, this card’s price is confounding. I don’t think $14 makes sense, but if someone bothered to buy the card out at one point, a lot of the copies were concentrated in one person’s hands for a minute. This could dip even more at rotation, even though this price is entirely predicated on EDH and casual and I think this is a $5 to $7 card long-term. It’s very unlikely to get reprinted (there’s no precedent for reprinting a “you make the card” winner) and the foil has upside either way.

This is a crazy, crazy graph. Instead of maintaining a multiplier, it has held at just about $10 even as the non-foil approached that price several times. If the non-foil has upside at $3, you’d better believe the foil has upside at $7.50. I like this pickup a lot. This is like Geth’s Grimoire on steroids.

Speaking of which, with a decreasing spread and increasing upside, Grimoire isn’t a bad trade target in foil if you find any. The more Nath we see, the more people will want to cheat with a Geth’s Grimoire.

Savra is another sweet legendary build-around, and having lots of elf tokens to sacrifice will really help out. Savra is a good general in her own right and an inclusion in my Nath deck as well. She’s fine in any GB elves build and also works with the GB graveyard-based strategies we see. Dredge is very potent with sac outlets, and green and black have plenty. A few that work well in decks with a lot of tokens and other elves have real upside.

Completely unperturbed by the reprinting in a Commander deck, this card shows solid growth and is a solid, solid card. Attrition does everything you want a sac outlet to do, and sacrificing one elf token that you got when they discarded a card to kill one of their creatures with Attrition plus everyone losing a dude to a Grave Pact trigger is potent. I think there is upside at $2.50 to $3, even with another reprint possible, seeing how Attrition shook that first one off. I used to buy these for a quarter out of binders and sell them for $5 a playset on eBay. Those were the days. I kept enough for my decks, which ended up being a pretty large number since I don’t know a ton of black decks that don’t want an effect like this. I’ve used this to protect my general from tuck spells back in the tuck days, get value out of a removal spell of theirs, and avoid returning creatures I have borrowed with Threaten effects. Attrition is a solid gainer and I would get on the train now, even with the spread doing goofy things. The foils are too expensive to trifle with.

Recently. the buylist price was so high on foil Perilous Forays that we see something I want to take a second to talk about. I am going to zoom in a bit on a region of the graph before I come back and discuss the card.

See the white area? When you graph the price (green) against the buylist price (blue) you sometimes see “white” regions where the buylist is above the retail price. This is an arbitrage opportunity. I won’t go a ton into arbitrage because it’s a bit outside the scope of this article and the series, but even if you don’t pounce on every arbitrage opportunity, what you can do is take note. There were two periods of potential arbitrage over the graph of foil Perilous Forays, which means dealers think there is upside. Currently the buylist price has backed way off, which tells me one dealer was paying a lot to get these in stock and then got enough copies and removed the card from its buylist, causing the buylist price to be set by the next-highest buyer. That means the demand for this card may be regional. Still, two “arbs” popping up in a one-year period coupled with the strong growth tells me this is a lowish buy-in with upside, demonstrated power, and the benefit of being in foil and less susceptible to a reprint blowout. I like foil Forays a lot, and tapping a Priest of Titania and sacrificing 11 elves to pull every last basic out of my deck in response to a Massacre Wurm saved my bacon in a game this weekend. It’s expensive to get out, but it’s worth it. It replaces Boundless Realms in my decks that want a sac outlet.

This is a terrible sac outlet in a deck that runs 1/1 tokens, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how flat the price has been for a while. This is an EDH staple and it’s sicko in Cube as well. I think there’s upside here, eventually. Trade for these at $6 and put them in a shoebox and forget about them.

So what else is good in decks that want to have a ton of elves on the battlefield?

This card has been reprinted basically into powder. A price of $3 is a pretty cheap buy-in considering this card has demonstrated the ability to be way more and lords are always interesting, but I think it’s been printed too many times and could be printed more.

Wizards’s demonstrated willingness to reprint foils of this card make me wary as well. I don’t know if there is a ton of downside to buying the cheapest non-foil you can for $2.50 (the entire green Commander 2014 precon is looking like a great buy with Ezuri surging), but be careful. I brought up Perfect because I think it’s a deceptively bad buy.

This has been printed as a foil many, many times. Four times. That’s so many times. That’s one more than “too many” times for a foil to be printed. The thing is, though, I like this as a pickup at $3. Why? Let’s think about where this can get printed as a foil. Hardly anywhere! From the Vault: Elves? Commander’s Arsenal? Core sets that they’re not doing more of? I think the dealer price surging(ish) and the increasing demand for elves with Ezuri resembling the new Birthing Pod spells real upside for foil and non-foil alike. This card is bonkers and when copies start drying up, I expect foils to diverge wildly from non-foils. Priest of Titania this card is not, but sometimes it’s better and it’s legal in Modern which helps it immensely. Besides, why debate the merits of Archdruid versus Priest in EDH when you clearly run both?

If you’re trying to destroy them with Shaman of the Pack, you’ll want a way to find him.

Check out the foil Elvish Harbinger: a recent arbitrage opportunity, steady(ish) price, and a multiplier of two on a card with two printings. There is upside here, I think. The card is fluctuating between $4 and $5, but it wouldn’t take much of an increase in play to push it up. There just ins’t much movement here—the buylist price for the Duel Deck non-foil hasn’t budged a penny in two years. Any activity could see the few copies snapped up quickly. Don’t buy in for cash on a stagnant card, but be aware: this card is very good.

Not shocked to see that this card looks strong. It’s a good tutor in the best EDH colors. It lets you search for Craterhoof Behemoth at the end of their turn. That’s quite good. Enlightened Tutor has established that the ceiling could be around $16, so buying these at $8 seems fine, especially with the strong growth we’ve seen lately. Dealer confidence is up; retail price is up. Expect a leap and a plateau of $2 next year.

Just finding him isn’t enough, recurring him to smash them is important, too. How do we do that?

No super-duper upside here, but just remember to keep some of these on-hand to trade out. Wirewood Symbiote is bonkers with elves that have enters-the-battlefield triggers, and since there are so few, Symbiote is underplayed right now.

We talked last time about how Superfriends would give us some real upside with Doubling Season but not so much with Primal Vigor. How’s Primal Vigor doing?

Not bad! Having called this a pick at $4, I obviously feel great about the price doubling since then. Vigor isn’t done, I feel. While you can’t stack counters on planeswalkers and you can accidentally benefit your opponent, Primal Vigor is nuts with token decks. Imperious Perfect, Nath, Waste Not: your deck really benefits from spitting out a ton of tokens and this can help you go very wide. Doubling the number of elves you put out matters a great deal when you can KO your opponents with Shaman. This is good in lots of other decks, so the overlap will be very good. I said to buy these at $4 and I’m saying now that $8 isn’t a bad buy-in either. You don’t like to buy stuff after it doubles since it doubling again is somewhat unlikely, but this card has upside and low reprint potential. An $8 card in a $20 precon could do any number of things, all of them good.

This could be based on an irrational fear, but Parallel Lives strikes me as a card that is super, duper, duper reprintable. I was buying the non-foils very cheaply and still had a lot left when they hit $4 and I sold then. I am just waiting for the next EDH supplementary product or even Duel Deck to have a Parallel Lives reprint (new art would be sweet). The foils can help us dodge that.

Now this I can f@#% wit. A mere multiplier of two, very steady growth, decent dealer confidence, art that looks good in foil—I expect a divergence from the non-foil price soon. I think a higher multiplier is more appropriate and I expect that to be on the horizon. This card is a no-brainer, honestly.

I think these are all cards that have significant upside once Shaman of the Pack is out. I think Shaman will be a card you will find randomly in draft chaff for free sitting on tables, and I plan to pay cash for any foils at the prerelease that I can find. This card is good and it just might make some other cards better.

Do we want me to stop this format after Origins is released? Immediately? Sound off in the comments! Until next week.

City of Traders, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Magic for the Rest of Us—One for Me, One for TCGP

July 15, 2015 Travis Allen 1 Comment

By: Travis Allen

Hello, and welcome to my first unlocked article! Today we’ll touch briefly on the banned and restricted list update from 7/13. Then we’ll move on to the meat of today’s article, a speculation technique designed for those that aren’t looking to become cardboard stock traders, but rather simply want to make Magic a little cheaper to play.

Checking in on the B&R List

No changes to the banned and restricted list, eh? In the cycle of B&R updates, we were in the “something is going to change” phase, as evidenced by the fact that plenty of people were taking to Twitter to voice their (often terrible) opinions.

I’m a bit surprised Wizards hasn’t seen fit to remove some part of Amulet Bloom from the format. While it dodged removal once again, I still am not confident it’s here to stay. Part of the reason that deck hasn’t taken over Modern yet is that it’s incredibly difficult to play well, requiring months of practice to pilot optimally. Even Justin Cohen, who made top eight of a Pro Tour with the deck, was making mistakes on camera that could have won him games multiple turns earlier. Due to the challenging nature of the deck, most players can’t just sleeve up 75 and head to the local PreTQ. Right now, we’re only seeing highly skilled and dedicated players achieving. If Amulet Bloom were more simple to play, akin to the now-banned Blazing Shoal infect deck, it would be gone. Perhaps its resistance to being piloted properly will save it from the banned list altogether. It’s hard to say. The power level is certainly there, though.

Goryo’s Vengeance is the other card a handful of people were hoping to see exit the format this week, which would have been premature. I have thought for years that the card will eventually be banned, and I still expect that to come true at some point. The card is capable of killing an opponent on turn two, or even turn one in conjunction with perennially questionably legal Simian Spirit Guide.

While Grishoalbrand may prove to be the list that finally forces Wizards’s hand, we aren’t there yet. This Modern season will likely provide the data it needs to decide whether Goryo has had enough vengeance for awhile.

Oh, and people think Sensei’s Divining Top should go in Legacy. I’m sympathetic to this cause, if only on the issue that the card is miserable for tournament logistics. It’s banned in Modern because of how much time it eats off the clock, and Legacy’s card pool only exacerbates that issue. It would be nice if we had infinite time in which to play, but sadly, that is not the case. I wouldn’t want to be holding on to spare Tops and Counterbalances by the time Battle for Zendikar rolls around.

One for Me

Early in Origins spoilers, we got a handful of uncommon elves. Among them were Gnarlroot Trapper and Shaman of the Pack, two high-power elves that require black mana. I immediately dove in on Gilt-Leaf Palaces, the spike of Wanderwine Hub still fresh in my memory. (I was ultimately rewarded, initially buying in at $2 a copy, and as of Monday, seeing a NM low on TCG around $12. Auntie’s Hovel reacted similarly at the reveal of Goblin Piledriver, but has since sunk to $5.)

My behavior is not noteworthy here. I’m not the only finance-oriented individual to have done this, and I won’t be next time, either. That’s not what’s interesting.

The reason I bring this up is that as I was buying copies of Palace, a friend in our local MTG Facebook chat of about seven people said that he too was buying copies. This surprised me, as this particular individual is entirely a player, not a finance hobbyist. I’ve never once seen him speculate on anything. He doesn’t like foils, as they add nothing to the gameplay experience, and hey, any foil copy could instead be two nonfoil copies. I’ve seen him hand over 30 dollars of cold hard cash to someone for an Elspeth, Sun’s Champion when they were available on TCGplayer for under 25 bucks. His interest in the game is exactly that: as a game.

So when he said that he bought copies of Gilt-Leaf Palace as a result of the reveal, I was quite curious. Had he finally come over to the dark side of Magic? Was he going to give in and subscribe to ProTrader so that he could read all my articles? (None of my real life friends read my articles when they were free, so this was an unlikely outcome. They’re jerks.)

As it turns out, he purchased exactly four copies. A single playset. While he saw that the likelihood of the card rising in value was great enough that it warranted buying in immediately, without waiting for results, he still chose not to buy any extra copies. He now has his $10 set of Gilt-Leaf Palaces, with no copies to spare.

I was a bit struck by this decision, as if you’re confident enough the card is going to rise, why wouldn’t you pick up some number of extra copies in an attempt to profit? It’s not terribly difficult, and you don’t need to be heavily invested in the sales process to to make it worth your while.

One for TCGP

A technique that many players use, myself included, is a “one for me, one spare” technique in speculating. Or “one for me and one for TCGP,” which rhymes if you pronounce it “T-C-G-P.” A handy little mnemonic for you there.

While you won’t make much money doing this, the two-set purchase has several benefits.

Partially subsidized or even free playsets of cards
Low effort
Low risk

The process is simple. If you see a card that you want a playset of, in part because you expect the price is going to rise soon, buy two. Keep one, and sell the other one. It’s simple enough. The idea is that the second set will rise in value enough that your profits will at least partially cover the cost of your own personal set, and at best will completely cover your price of entry. Here are two examples: one real, one theoretical.

Theoretical Example, Scenario A

Alex predicts that Gilt-Leaf Palace is almost definitely going to rise in price, with at least enough confidence that he knows he should buy a set now in case he wants to use them. Rather than buy a single set, though, he buys one extra, for a total of eight cards. After the price jumps to over $10 per NM copy, he sells the spare set on eBay for a competitive $35 in order to ensure he actually puts money in his pocket. He ends up with roughly $30 after fees, and with a buy-in of maybe $10 for the set of Palaces, he’s made $20. His own personal set cost $10, so not only has he covered his personal set, he’s made $10 in the process.

Theoretical Example, Scenario B

Alex buys the same number of copies, but Gilt-Leaf Palace never spikes. He’s now spent about $10 he wouldn’t have otherwise. He puts the extra playset of Palaces in his binder and trades them to someone else that’s looking to play GB elves at some point, netting himself a Bloodstained Mire, a card he still needs for Standard. Now he spent $10 for a Mire, which is retail cost. The end result is that he paid $10 for his Palaces, which he would have done anyways, and $10 for a Mire.

Real Example

Stormbreath Dragon was pre-ordering on ABU for $15 a copy. I wanted a personal set to play with, and at the same time, I thought that $15 a copy was too low for what I expected would become a banner mythic. We were coming off Thundermaw Hellkite, a similar card that had at one point been $50, and even if Stormbreath ended up being bad (which it wouldn’t), it would experience at least enough popularity to rise above $20, if only temporarily. I picked up three playsets at $60 a set. Stormbreath ended up hitting the street around $25 per copy, and according to my PayPal sales history, I sold sets for around $95 each. At $30 profit per set, the first two meant that the third was free.

Simple Strategy

What sets the “one for me, one for TCGP” rule of thumb apart from general speculation is mostly twofold: A) it’s a strategy that doesn’t seek to make as much money as possible, but rather, there’s a clear profit goal, and B) it minimizes risk.

When engaging in true speculation, you buy as many copies as you can at whatever price you feel falls below the threshold of risk. Your goal is to make as much money as possible. With the two-for strategy, however, you have a clear number in mind: exactly the cost you paid for a single set. This matters because it is not an infinitely scaling ambition, but rather, it is limited in its scope. Why do we want to limit our scope, rather than shoot for the moon?

The reason for that leads us directly to B, which is that you minimize your exposure. When Alex buys only a single extra set of Palaces, he isn’t putting himself in a position where he may lose a large sum of money. He’s not going to be out $100 because whoops, Palaces are in Origins. If he’s locked himself into buying at least a single set, the extra set only opens his exposure up to a single set’s value. Compare that to speculating in earnest, in which case you may buy hundreds of copies of a card, with your risk profile now tens or even hundreds of times greater than the cost of a single personal set.

Concerns over scale make this another great method for players, rather than economists, to play Magic for (sort of) free. If I buy 100 copies of Eidolon of Blossoms and it triples in value, that’s all well and good, but it means nothing until I have money in my pocket. I have in the past spoken about how difficult it can be to actually profit from a situation like this. When you’re only dealing with a single extra set, though, you don’t have nearly as many issues to contend with. You don’t have to deal with shipping twenty or thirty packages, nor do you need to learn what a buylist is and then ship to three different vendors to maximize your profits. Rather, since there’s only one extra set of cards, the methods available to profit are numerous and simple.

Sell the card on eBay. If you’re able to purchase cards on the internet, you can sell on eBay. While eBay is not a preferred method for regularly selling large quantities of cards, selling a single playset is just fine.
Sell the card locally. Whether the deal is hammered out at a kitchen-table draft or you post to your town’s Magic Facebook page, it’s a face-to-face transaction that eliminates risk and fees. You could never sell 25 playsets this way, but a single set is easy peezy.
Trade the set away. As we saw in the theoretical example, trading is a perfectly reasonable way to move a single set of cards. Chances are you can find at least one person who didn’t get in early yet still wants a personal set. You can trade your spare set for Standard cards you’re in need of, or just any decent Standard or Modern staple that you can turn into something more useful at a later date. Trading one or two sets is easy; trading twenty-five is nearly impossible.

As the number of extra cards you’re looking to sell increases, certain paths begin to close themselves off to you. Trading piles of playsets locally is going to be extremely time-consuming, if not impossible. When you’re in possession of only a single extra set, though, finding avenues to rid yourself of it is not difficult.

Playing with the House’s Money

If you’re a player, not a financier/hobbyist, your goal isn’t to supplement (or outdo) your professional income by swapping cardboard. Your goal is to play Magic. Magic is an expensive game, though, and the costs can catch up to you quickly. Through the technique of “one for me, one for TCGP,” you can ameliorate the high costs of card acquisition by doubling up on your purchases before cards rise in value. It’s a simple technique that’s low risk, easy to manage, and quite profitable given the effort involved.

You may be thinking, “Okay, great, but how do I know which cards are going to rise in price?” Well, dear reader, for the answer to that, keep tuning in to my and others’ articles!

Danny Brown, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Buylisting Efficiently

June 30, 2015 Danny Brown 2 Comments

So, you have a collection that you want to sell all or part of to a buylist. Maybe it’s a collection you picked up off CraigsList, maybe it’s culling down your personal stock, or maybe you’re helping out a friend who found a box of Magic cards in his attic.

Whatever the case, you now have to balance two factors that are somewhat at odds with each other: 1) getting through the process as quickly as possible and 2) getting the most amount of money you can.

Everyone has his or her own method, and I’m interested in hearing the ways you’ve streamlined the buylisting process in the comments at the end of this article. First, though, we’ll cover some of my favorite tips to help you get your buylisting done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Why Would I Buylist?

Before we dive in, let’s address the question some of you may be asking: “Why would I buylist my cards? I could get more money selling them on eBay or TCGplayer.” While this is true, listing cards on those sites requires someone to buy your cards, which could take weeks or more. When those cards do eventually sell, it almost certainly won’t be all at the same time, which means you’ll be shipping out far more packages that if you had buylisted. And after all that is done, you still have to pay fees, cutting into that extra profit that seemed so appealing.

I was opposed to buylists for a long time, but with the advent of aggregated lists like you can find here on MTGPrice, the process became much faster and easier, as well as more profitable. I very rarely list cards for sale these days, instead choosing to send cards on my schedule either through buylisting or PucaTrade. That alone increases my MTG finance efficiency. Now let’s talk about how to improve the efficiency of your buylisting.

Sorting Things Out

We’re not going to go over how best to pick a bulk collection in this article. If you’re looking for that sort of thing, Douglas Johnson has covered that topic from numerous angles on this very site, as well as BrainstormBrewery.com. We’re going to assume that you’re starting from a point of having your mythics and rares separated out, with anything that is obviously bulk set aside. The same is true for commons and uncommons that you know (or suspect) may be worth the time to sell individually.

For years, I organized my cards by color, because from a player’s standpoint, that’s just the intuitive way to do it. Eventually, I started sorting by color within sets, because when you’re trying to build a deck for a particular format, you want to be sure the cards you’re choosing from are legal.

Nowadays I don’t really build any decks at all (I’ve been playing Limited and Cube only basically since my son was born a year ago), so anything I own is either in a trade binder, my cube, or my cube’s on-deck binder. Everything else is sorted in longboxes alphabetically by block.

Sorting alphabetically is key. No matter what buylist you’re dealing with, you will have to sort alphabetically—first by sets, then by card names within sets. However, I don’t like to go all the way down to the set level when sorting for a buylist. It just takes a little bit too much time, and it’s not that hard to flip through a block’s worth of cards a few times over when comparing to each set. That said, if you’re dealing with an absolutely huge collection, sorting by set instead of block will probably be more efficient by the end of the process.

Using MTGPrice to Your Advantage

If you go to MTGPrice.com’s homepage, this is what you’ll see at the top of the page. If you click “Browse Sets,” you’ll get a list that looks like this:

Pick up a pile of set- or block-sorted cards, find the applicable set(s), and then start comparing what you have to the buylists you see. Let’s say you’re looking to get rid of a pile of Modern Masters 2015 cards:

Initially, the cards will be sorted by descending price. Since you’re working from an alphabetized pile, though, you’ll probably want to click “Card Name” to make the list here sort alphabetically.

There you go! Now you can compare the pile of cards you’re holding to this list. If a buylist price looks acceptable, simply click on the card, click “Sell To” on the left hand of the screen, and note the name of the vendor offering the highest price.

So, if you were looking to buylist an Apocalypse Hydra for that tasty 39 cents listed above, you would see that ABUGames was the one offering that price.

At this point, I like to take a Post-It note, write “ABUGames” on it, and then start a pile of cards directly on that Post-It. For each new store that I am considering a shipment to, I’ll start a new Post-It note. Some people have playmats specifically for this purpose, but I’m not quite that fancy just yet.

The Alternative Method

If you have a completely unsorted pile of cards, you may find yourself not really wanting to go through and sort everything, especially if it’s a mixed lot with lots of different sets and not too many cards from any one block.

In this case, you can take the slightly more painful method of individually searching for cards by just typing in their names here on MTGPrice. In most cases, it will be less efficient, but there are certainly collections that warrant this approach rather than pre-sorting everything.

If your memory is not such that you can remember which pile you put a particular card in, though, you may want to at least sort cards so that that duplicates are together. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time searching for the same card over and over again.

Shipping Out

How you ship your buylist cards largely depends on how many cards you’re shipping.

If you’re doing a quick and easy buylist including a just a few cards (no more than six), you can send them in a plain white envelope with a stamp. However, note that this method will leave you with no proof your cards were actually sent, should you be the paranoid type.

Most buylist shipments will include a few more cards than that, though, and if they’ll fit, a bubble mailer is a fine option. You can buy shipping for up to three ounces for $1.93 through PayPal, and that comes with delivery confirmation, too.

I like to use team bags with toploaders on the ends for protection. This will ensure your cards are easy to access but well protected. Whenever you’re shipping Magic cards to anybody, including merchants, if you’re taping stuff up, fold over the end of the tape to form a little tab that makes it so the tape can be very easily removed. This is 100 percent a value play for you. Think of it this way: if you were the guy grading cards for a shop and somebody packaged something up in a way that made it really difficult to open, you would probably grade their cards a little more harshly, right? Not to say you would be dishonest in your grading, but you would be less inclined to give somebody a pass on borderline stuff. I want to do everything I can to avoid that.

Occasionally, you’ll need to ship a much larger buylist order that couldn’t reasonably fit in a bubble mailer. In these cases, I fill up a regular card box (the of which is size based on the number of cards, of course). To ensure nothing gets damaged in the mail, all empty space should be filled in with folded tissues, cotton balls, packing peanuts, or other soft material that won’t damage your cards. Make sure that when you shake the box, you don’t hear cards banging on the edges. Once you’ve got that done, tape it up very well (those things aren’t fully enclosed to moisture) and ship it out in the box itself. A recent 500-count box I mailed cost just less than $10. That’s kind of a lot for shipping, but presumably you’re getting a nice return on that many cards.

Know Your Vendors

Finally, do some research on the vendors you’re considering dealing with. Some have better reputations than others, and it’s important to know what you’re dealing with going in.

I won’t do any badmouthing here, but I’ll go ahead and say that I especially find it a pleasure to do business with Card Kingdom and ABUGames. AdventuresOn is fine but I hate buylisting on its website, and ChannelFireball pays quickly on the occasions that you actually like the prices it’s offering. I’ve had good and bad experiences with other stores, but these are names I tend to trust.

More Efficient Every Time

Each time I prepare a pile of cards for buylisting, I figure something out that helps improve my efficiency the next time around. What are your best tips for improving the buylisting process?

I’ll leave you with this one last thing: find something entertaining to listen to while you’re doing all this sorting—a podcast, a TV show, a web series, whatever. This is not very engaging work, but if you want to make money in MTG finance, it’s necessary.

Until next time!

ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Elves, Merfolk, and Goblins (Oh My!)

June 29, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 18 Comments

Has anyone even tested Goblins in Modern? The speculation is so rampant on a strategy that has yet to prove itself. Maybe people are forgetting there’s no Goblin Lackey, Goblin Matron, Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Warchief, Gempalm Incinerator, or Rishadan Port.

That’s a lot of gaps to overcome. Yet this still happened:

We are in the midst of rampant speculation on Legion Loyalist, Warren Instigator, and the catalyst itself, Goblin Piledriver. With prices this inflated, the risk of buying into these targets is at its highest. Being the steadfast risk intolerant speculator, perhaps I can propose some alternate targets – still potentially relevant to a Goblins Modern strategy – with a much more attractive risk/reward equation.

Goblins: Not the Only Tribe in Town

Goblins are an unproven strategy in Modern. This is certain. What’s equally certain is that Elves and Merfolk are proven strategies in Modern. Both decks won a Modern Grand Prix very recently.

I proffer this idea for your consideration: why not buy into some of the cards in those decks instead? Some of the critical pieces of these decks have barely moved! So while Warren Instigator, a card I’ve never seen cast in my life, goes from $10 to $17, you could be buying into something like Silvergill Adept near its 2014-2015 low!

Silvergill Adept is critical to the Merfolk strategy in Legacy and Modern. I hear getting a Merfolk in play while also drawing more Merfolk is a pretty sound strategy [Editor’s note: Best card in the deck, not close]. And there’s no way this card should be under $3 when Nettle Sentinel – a common from the same block – is around the same price.

If you’d prefer throwing your money into Mythic Rares, you could also consider Master of Waves. It’s about to leave Standard, but I suspect nearly 0% of its value is driven by Standard play anyway. This key Merfolk card can be found for under $4. I’d much rather have my money in these than, say, Goblin Rabblemaster – a rare about to rotate that does have value driven by Standard play.

Fish not your thing? You could pick up a couple of critical Elves pieces instead. Most of the best Elves targets have already spiked, but I could see Elvish Archdruid moving higher. It’s been printed a million times, but it’ll always have some demand keeping the price above bulk. And the further away we get from the latest printing, the more value it’ll become.

If you want to trade into something newer, you could always pick up Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. The card may dip slightly at rotation, but this land is powerful and should maintain value going forward. You will likely need to be patient with this one, since I’m sure a ton have been opened. Still, you could find far worse places to park money.

Goblins, Merfolk and Elves (Oh, My!)

The rise in popularity of tribal strategies has generated newfound opportunities in Modern speculation. Most Elves cards have already seen significant appreciation. Merfolk cards haven’t moved as much, but they should bounce nicely off recent lows. And of course we’ve all seen the rampant Goblins speculation this past week on news of a Goblin Piledriver reprint.

Rather than tossing the dice and gambling on one of these strategies, wouldn’t it be nice to find something relevant across all three? In an ideal world, you could acquire key cards that play an important role in all Tribal decks. This way no matter which strategy rose to the top, you’d have exposure to important cards.

I did a quick comparison between Knocinski’s winning Merfolk build and Malone’s Elves build to start. I’m immediately disappointed. I counted exactly one card in common: a singleton Cavern of Souls played in Elves.

As an aside, Cavern of Souls is positioned to continue hitting new all-time highs given its relevance in Modern and Legacy.

While my profits were still decent, I will be first to admit I made a mistake selling this one. This is definitely a case where my perpetual bearishness in Modern narrowed my perspective too much. This land will only go higher until it is reprinted. The current $50 price tag is likely to stick.

Despite the common “tribal” theme, it would appear these three decks all have completely different building blocks. Outside of Cavern of Souls, I see no overlapping card. Does that mean we should give up? Absolutely not – it’s all about speculation!

For example, couldn’t Aether Vial be relevant in at least two of the three tribal strategies? Elves may not want the artifact for now, but I could certainly see Goblins following the Merfolk approach to flash out instant-speed lords.

I really like the card’s price chart as well, from a technical standpoint. I see some healthy growth in both retail and buy list pricing. More importantly the buy/sell spread has narrowed in recent weeks – a likely sign of further price appreciation on the horizon. While speculating on a $30 uncommon is a tough pill to swallow, I’d still support grabbing a few copies. Feel free to grab the Modern Masters version if you feel better paying $30 for a rare instead.

Perhaps a safer target is a critical land that is near an all-time price low: Mutavault.

While this land isn’t so hot in Elves, I could see Goblins picking it up. And even if Merfolk is the only deck that runs Mutavault, it’s still an automatic 4-of in every Merfolk build. This is a card I’m willing to throw cash into; it can readily spike to $20 during next year’s Modern season or possibly earlier, if the Modern metagame leads the right way.

Perhaps I’m being naïve here. I’m focusing heavily on cards that these three tribal decks would want to play. But if I want to place bets on all three at once, perhaps I should be seeking out cards that beat all three of these strategies. I believe Anger of the Gods is already a viable sideboard card in Modern. A one-sided wrath for three mana is probably decent against all three tribal strategies. Be careful with Standard rotation – we may see a small dip before the card stabilizes higher. Perhaps trading for unwanted copies is the best play here.

If you’re looking for a more permanent fix, you could try Night of Souls’ Betrayal. It doesn’t kill as many creatures as Anger, but sticking two copies could really wreak havoc on tribal decks. The card has spiked recently but buy lists haven’t chased nearly as much. I’d watch that spread closely – the opportunity to pick up this sideboard card may close faster than you think.

Lastly, there’s my favorite sideboard tech: Engineered Explosives. This artifact seems well-positioned in a tribal-heavy metagame. Played right, you can set yourself up for a solid 3-for-1 or 4-for-1 play. This card is destined to go higher, and I don’t expect to see a reprint in 2015 or 2016.

Modern Not Your Thing?

Most of you know by now I’m not as excited about Modern as the rest of the player base. Even though I’m trying to flip Modern specs, I really prefer to sink my funds into safer investments. I still believe most Modern staples will pull back in price in a month or two, so I’ll be content to largely sit on the sidelines until then.

My quest to move profits into older cards is not a solo one, it seems. Did you notice some other really interesting price moves from last week? I’m talking about this:

And this:

These charts are extremely attractive from an investor’s point of view. Barring a minor hiccup on Library of Alexandria last year, we’re seeing monotonically increasing prices over time. I’m not sure if Mishra’s Workshop’s price tag will stick above $1000, as reflected in mtgstocks.com’s most recent Interests page. But the card will certainly maintain its upward momentum in the years to come. I’d pay close attention to that buy-list curve, in blue, on these charts. They will reflect how eager dealers are to pay higher prices for these old-school cards. Library of Alexandria is even playable in Old School MTG, perhaps catalyzing some upward price movement.

If I had to recommend picking one of these valuable Arabian Nights cards, I’d recommend Bazaar of Baghdad.

The card is a 4-of in Dredge, a powerful Vintage deck with an important defining characteristic: no Power! Once you have your 4 Bazaars, you’re most of the way toward building a viable Vintage deck. Even if you never plan on playing Vintage, you have to admit the artwork on the card is one of the sweetest in the game. I’ve been eyeing this for almost a year now, and I’m only seeing upward movement on prices.

Wrapping It Up

The theme of last week: tribal Modern decks and high end Arabian Nights cards. These are on opposite ends of the risk/reward spectrum. On the one side, we have rampant Modern speculation based on unproven deck strategies (Goblins). On the other side, we have measurable price growth in classic cards on the reserved list.

While my affinity is always to err closer to the conservative side of the spectrum, I see many opportunities in between. You don’t have to chase Warren Instigator higher to make money on the latest trends. There are far better plays – especially at this point, where prices have already jumped so high. Aether Vial, Nykthos, Cavern of Souls, and Mutavault are all well-positioned no matter which tribal deck earns the top spot of future Modern events. If you really despise all three strategies, maybe now’s the time to pick up your Engineered Explosives.

Targets like these are far safer than cards that have already spiked solely based on speculation. They have plenty of upside potential, with minimal downside risk at this point. These are my kind of pick-ups, and I’d encourage you to move some of your newfound profits into these cards as well. Give it a year, and you’ll likely be looking at more sizable gains. Plus you’ll have the upside of preserving your capital in case one of the tribal strategies becomes a major flop. It’s the best scenario for investing, and it’s why I’m moving my resources accordingly.

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

Some tribal-specific lands have moved a ton lately. Wanderwine Hub has jumped all the way to $11.99 at Star City Games. The major retailer has no copies in stock. If I was going to spend $12, I’d rather pick up a Mutavault anyway.
Gilt-Leaf Palace is the Elf equivalent to Wanderwine Hub. The only difference is Knocinski’s Merfolk build actually runs Wanderwine Hub, while Malone’s Elves list did not use Gilt-Leaf Palace. Despite this critical fact, Star City Games is still completely sold out of the palace, though their price tag hasn’t corrected the latest spike: it’s only $3.99…for now.
I wasn’t exaggerating when I mentioned how popular Engineered Explosives is right now. These tribal themes are only going to make the artifact more powerful. Perhaps that’s why Star City Games is completely sold out of all non-foil copies of the card, with a $17.99 price tag. These will retail for $20 very soon.

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