UNLOCKED PROTRADER: How I’m using CardSphere
Here we go, prerelease weekend! I’m planning on attending a midnight prerelease, because I am indeed crazy like that. I hope yours goes amazingly, you open well and play better, and that you trade everything away as fast as you can this weekend.
That’s basic advice that I give every time a new set comes around, and it remains true. Some of the Hour of Devastation cards are going to spike, eventually, but I am bad at that guessing game.
I know prices are at their max for most of these cards, and they are going to fall. I’m looking to out them pronto.
Which leads me nicely into today’s topic: Cardsphere, and why you should be using it too.
Full Disclaimer: I am not an employee of CS. I am going to give my experiences and my viewpoint. I have bought value on this site, I have sent and received cards. I’ve been a user for about six weeks. I advocated for Pucatrade, and I’m advocating here too. Your experience may be different than mine, and I hope you have as good an experience as I have had.
Now, I want to refer you to an interview that MTG Fast Finance did with the founders of Cardsphere a while back, but that was before it went into public launch. The interview is worth a listen, for the philosophy and the backstory, but let’s get to how you should use it and what is happening there.
If you’ve used Pucatrade at all in the past couple of years, the idea is the same: It’s a trading environment. You send off your cards for currency, and you can get cards for that currency. The primary difference is that the currency in CS is straight cash, US dollars. You can get your dollars out of their system and into your account, for a fee.
Otherwise, it’s a similar economic system. Because it’s in real dollars, the offers tend to be adjusted downwards, where they were going up and up and up in Pucatrade, since that was in a currency locked into their system. It’s an interesting flip: On Puca, the question was ‘How many extra points do I need to offer for someone to send me this card?’ On CS, it’s ‘How low can I go with my offer and still get the card I want?’
Philosophically, the experience with CS is that you’ll have to decide how far off of retail you can go. You’re setting your own wants, and how much extra you’ll give/take away. Then, when sending cards, you decide how much you want to get.
Right now, here’s what is happening. Granted, this is only my experience. I’m not trying to trade up for things (yet) but I have been getting cards for my uncommons Cube, building a Standard deck, and building a new Commander deck.
The experience has been amazing.
I am someone who did very well off of Puca in the salad days. I bought low, sold high, accumulated points. I got SDCC walkers, I got a Gaea’s Cradle, and a judge foil Sol Ring. Future Site hit, and the values tanked. Inflation is going mad there. I’ve gotten myself down to 92 points there, and while I’m monitoring the site and the subreddit to stay informed, I’m no longer putting cards or a subscription into that economy.
I say this so you’ll get what I mean when I say that the CS experience is wonderful. I can’t keep credit for more than a day or two. I have had a range of wants filled, and while I haven’t chased any foils, or any high end cards, I’m having a steady churn and it’s fun. I’ve been asking for uncommons and commons at about +20%, to make it worth sending, and most of my wants for Commander are between 0% change and -20%. I got a Deadapult for +50%, because that’s a crap rare and I wanted to make someone feel good about sending it.
I am seeing that there are two categories of offers on CS: The full-value (or nearly) or higher, for people that want to get stuff right away, and there’s the lowballers, the ones who are literally offering buylist prices plus ten percent. I’m finding that the offers at 90%-110% get filled fast, and the 60% and less offers take a lot longer to be sent.
Which is fine and the freedom of the platform, quite frankly. I would surely have a standing order to buy foil Thought-Knot Seer at $15 if someone wanted to sell them at that price, and then that person pays for the shipping to send it to me? Done and done.
Cardsphere is also doing an excellent job with transparency and feedback. The founders and other admins are very active on Discord and Reddit, the home page shows exactly the userbase and flow of cards, the most wanted and most traded, plus weekly updates on how cards are being traded. Here’s an example post. (It’s Reddit, while this post is safe for work huge swaths of the site aren’t, be forewarned.)
This image shows the quartiles of the trades being made, by % of value, for the month of June. Someone listed a card that was a dollar or less and put it at 224%. Someone else sent a card at 21% of that value. Hopefully that was part of a package. Someone listed a $5-$10 card at 7% of its value…and someone else sent the card at that price.
Where I feel really great is that last column. Of the $25-$50 cards traded, there’s a real packing together. Nothing under 71%, nothing over 110%. Should I decide to go for higher-value cards, it’s nice to know they will be there.
Cardsphere is growing slowly but surely. They have increased membership by more than two thousand users since they went live on May 27 of this year. As I said before, I put in $40 at the beginning and it’s given me a bit better value than I would have gotten on eBay or TCG, but the ability to send out stuff and get stuff back…I’d forgotten how much fun it is. Go try it! Costs you nothing but a stamp.
I’m going to be sending out all I can of Hour of Devastation on Saturday afternoon. See you there!
Cliff is an avid believer in saving money for stuff that isn’t Magic, and his goal is to enjoy this hobby without paying cash for individual cards. Drafts and other events are fine, but buying singles stings. It’s just cardboard! Nothing has the EV of Cubing, though, so that’s a solace to his cold, Scroogelike heart. Find him on Twitter @wordofcommander and tell him about the three ghosts that will be visiting him.
Eye Candy from Grand Prix Vegas (Part 2)
Hello everyone! It’s been a few weeks since Grand Prix Vegas took place and it’s time to look forward to many more amazing events. First though, I would like to conclude my article showing off the amazing and unique items I saw at the Grand Prix Vegas. If you missed part 1, here is a link to it!
https://blog.mtgprice.com/2017/06/21/eye-candy-from-grand-prix-vegas-part-1/
So without further delay, here are some more amazing things I witnessed, and even something I picked up there.
Honey, I’m home! VintageMagic.com’s booth certainly had the lion’s share of Drop of Honey at the Grand Prix that weekend. It was quite the mover due to its showing in the 4th and 9th place Legacy decklists piloted by Jody Kieth and Jarvis Yu. This powerful reserved list spell is a new innovation for sideboards in the Lands deck. To start the weekend, you could still snag these off tcgplayer.com for under $100, but now you are looking to pay close to $300 apiece on them.
Well who’s that? That’s me! Of course, being the Lands player I am, I had to take an opportunity to snag up a few copies myself. Being in the know about a card this rare spiking is surely helpful. I had to drop some really honey to buy these, but not as much as I would if I were to buy them today.
There were many awesome sights down artist alley. Dozens of artists were featured at this historic event and many brought with them prints, playmats, and original artworks. On display above is a painted print by Dan Scott of his Ponder artwork. Up close and in a frame, it really resembled an original artwork to the point where it even fooled me. I had been under the impression the artwork was done digitally (which it was) meaning a true original did not exist. The added brushstokes for texture really brought this piece to life. Who wouldn’t love to have this beauty hanging up on their wall?
If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed this sweet alter from my Drop of Honey picture above. Also at the VintageMagic.com booth, was an Alpha Forest signed and altered by none other than the legendary Christopher Rush himself. A piece like this is truly special as Mr. Rush is no longer with us, but his artwork and love of Magic will always live on. Illustrating his iconic Black Lotus on this Forest, which could very well have been pulled from the same pack as one, is the icing on the cake.
No one man should have all that power. That sure is a lot of old school Magic goodness. Literal rows worth of Power 9 cards, including black bordered versions? That’s enough to make my jaw drop. I just wanted to grab into this case and build a 93/94 deck right then and there.
Okay Snapcaster Mage and Jace, you guys aren’t old school but it’s cool you can chill. Mahamoti will allow it. We coo.
Do U Sea what I see? I see a down payment on a house worth of sweet cardboard crack right about there. I would killll to play with some of these beautiful cards in all their black bordered glory. Imagine the powerful spells cast by these iconic dual lands. Serra Angel and The Hive most likely, but hey, casting a Jace, the Mind Sculptor off these in today’s era would make this girl swoon.
Do you like your cards nice and minty? Well who doesn’t? These are some pristine cardboard rarities here. BGS and PSA 8’s and 9’s seriously skyrocket that price point, and for good reason. How can you one-up the next person’s Alpha Power and dual lands? Have yours graded and show off that pack-fresh godliness. Graded cards aren’t really for me. I have to take it out of the box and play with it!
It might have been long before I started playing Magic the Gathering, but many old school players surely have played against their fair share of Shivan Dragons. Gem Mint PSA 10 Beta Shivan is truly a spectacle and I would happily be scorched and engulfed in flames by this mystical and expensive piece of cardboard. Take my money!!
Well look what we have here! Stacks of cash? Meh. Richard Garfield exclusive cards? Shrug. One of each Summer dual land. JACKPOT. I have never seen one of each Summer dual land in one place, and you likely never will either. The prices on these I couldn’t even begin to figure, I will just let you know it’s a lot. Better yet, I saw them out of the case and being negotiated on by a potential buyer. I can’t even imagine the amount of money that changed hands during Grand Prix Vegas, but I am sure it puts that wad of cash there to shame. Also, yeah, that’s a blue Hurricane just chilling there.
Ohhh gurl, there she is! I was speechless seeing this beautiful card. Easily the most expensive card in the room at Grand Prix Las Vegas, a BGS 10 Beta Black Lotus is easily worth upwards of $80,000!! Don’t let my nails fool you, I couldn’t afford this bad boy even if I sold my entire Magic collection and my car. I was just happy to bathe in its light. What a truly inspiring and unique piece of MTG history.
On the topic of inspiring and unique, there was far more to take in at the Grand Prix than just Magic cards. Here was a cosplayer posing as Nissa, Steward of Elements from Amonkhet. And right beside her, the original artwork for that very Nissa. Illustrated by Howard Lyon!
It doesn’t get any more unique and spectacular than that! Owning an original Magic the Gathering artwork is an amazing feat, and one that is both rewarding and exciting. Be warned, once you have one, you won’t want to stop. I do not own this beauty, but I was lucky enough to pick up an original artwork at the Grand Prix of my own…
Makeshift Mannequin from Lorwyn! I was so excited to finally see the artwork for the first time in person. A very kind person from the Facebook Mtg Art Exchange page, Luke, sold me this amazing piece and I couldn’t be happier. I absolutely love the colors and details on this piece as well as the lighting. I love all things faerie and MTG, so when I saw the piece I knew I had to own it. Picking this up was one of the highlights from my trip to Las Vegas and I won’t soon forget it.
And so there you have it. My Grand Prix Las Vegas adventure. I was one of the last people to leave the event hall before closing time on Sunday, spending my last hours cube drafting the night away. I had a wonderful and magical time at Grand Prix Vegas and I would absolutely do it again next year! From all the artists and vendors to the friends and events, I couldn’t even express how much fun I had. I hope you also had fun living vicariously through me a little through these photo essays. I surely had a blast taking the pics and spreading the word.
Thanks so much for reading! What were your favorite sights from the Grand Prix? Did you pick up anything cool? Let me know it the comments!
Rachel Agnes is a VSL Competitor, Phyrexian Princess, Collector of all things shiny and a Cube, Vintage, Legacy, and EDH enthusiast.
Catch on Twitch and Twitter via Baetog_.
7 Thoughts About Hour of Devastation in EDH
Hey, readers,
The Hour of Devastation is almost upon us and that means we get to wait around forever for EDH prices to move. The stuff that was going to move immediately already has – Solemnity was a massive earthquake that ripped through a swath of old Magic cards and made them suddenly valuable. Everything else could take a minute to move, which is probably a good thing because it gives us time to scoop cards up. Unlike previous sets, we’re not going to have to wait for card prices to plummet on our long-term holds because unlike with previous sets, this set isn’t worth jack and/or shit. Is redemption going to enforce a higher box price, forcing singles to take the hit? Are Masterpieces going to keep box prices low? Is this set just another Dragon’s Maze without the benefit of a Voice of Resurgence to keep the boxes at all worth buying? I don’t know how things will shake up, but what I do know is that it’s never been easier to buy our EDH cards right out of the gate. Let’s take a look at some thoughts I have had about this set and where it fits into EDH.
1)Solemnity isn’t done
Solemnity came along and made a bunch of prices go nuts. Lucky for you, I managed to predict a lot of them and if you read the article the same day it came out, you had a decent shot at getting some of the cards before they sold out and people started to cancel orders. Lucky for us, Solemnity interacts with a TON of cards and not all of them were mentioned or even all that obvious up front and there is still a chance to get in on a few of them.
Delaying Shield is like $0.70 currently and you straight don’t take damage with Shield and Solemnity out. This isn’t all that good without Solemity but it’s not all that bad, either. If you don’t draw your Solemnity, this is a card that lets you take damage as normal but also opt out of some of it if you choose to untap your mana and prevent some of it. Not only that, this prevents you from dying when everyone else dies so a lethal earthquake that would kill the table suddenly makes you the winner. Zedruu decks were running this already to take a ton of damage then donate the shield to let opponents deal with the consequences. This is fun in EDH, it’s cheap, it’s old so therefore scarce and it’s unfair with the most exciting card in the new set.
Solemnity decks are starting to shape up on EDHREC so take a look at the cards other people are running with it. While there’s not a ton populated yet, there’s stuff to learn. Zur is most likely the deck that benefits from this card. What other cards do Zur decks run? I don’t know, click on Zur and find out. EDHREC is still the best resource I have found for predicting price increases predicated on a card making another card better. And, before anyone accuses me of shilling super hard for EDHREC because I am employed by EDHREC, let me just say that it’s the other way around – I’m employed by EDHREC because of how hard I shilled for them before they even started paying me. If there were a better resource for what we do in this column, I’d use it. There isn’t. Go get the free money.
2)The Planeswalker decks are loaded
The set appears to be dumpster lasagna from a financial standpoint. The Masterpieces are hot and the set looks like it’s really balanced in terms of Limited (I have a feeling I’m going to take Deserts really hard in draft and ride that synergy wave) but that doesn’t really do much for the prices. Pre-sale data on TCGPlayer is super depressing.
Of the 14 cards pre-selling above $3, 3 of them (Nicol Bolas the Deceiver, Nissa, Genesis Mage and Visage of Bolas) are in the Planeswalker packs. Combined, the 3 cards total $21 in pre-sale value. The Planeswalker decks are available for $23 combined from Miniature Market. I’m not advocating buying at that price, but what I am saying is that there are 3 cards that people really like (or liked a few days to weeks ago when the Market Price was established – I bet those cards are cheaper now) and they don’t care that they’re not in boosters, they just want them to jam with. You think anyone is jamming an 8 mana Planeswalker in Standard? No chance. How about a bad mana rock that tutors for an 8 mana walker? No, this is casuals and EDH players establishing those pre-sale prices on those cards and making the rest of those planeswalker packs (each of which includes an Hour of Devastation booster pack) essentially free. People like Planeswalkers and this set has a lot of Planeswalkers and they aren’t all in boosters.
3)Obvious cards are too cheap
Mill is always a buy. Good mill even more-so. EDH players benefit from mill the least out of everyone (or so you’d think, but look at Phenax decks) but mill cards are always good financial decisions. This set has, basically, Mill Reflection and it’s like 30 cents.
This card is really good for taking out one player. Even if you play this in EDH, this makes it really easy to kill one person quickly so you can use your Traumatize on everyone else. Alternatively, curse yourself and fill your graveyard with cards to use to kill them. This is already a bulk rare and this will not be a bulk rare long-term. This is a sicko mill card and it’s very, very obvious as a pickup but people don’t seem to want to worry about that until much later. If you end up with someone who trades at TCG Player value, out a terrible card like Nimble Obstructionist for 10 copies of this and you’ll be very happy in a year or two. Is it still the dreaded “value trading!(cue Wilhelm scream)” if you’re doing it based on the values from two years from now? There are plenty of other obvious cards that are bulk already and which you should be targeting.
This one comes to mind, for example. Bulk is too cheap for this forever.
4)Gods could be too cheap
I have seen a lot of people excited about The Locust God and wheel effects. You may remember wheel effects from going up in price when Nekusar was spoiled and again when Leovold was spoiled. How many times am I going to be able to make money from Teferi’s Puzzle Box? Skullclamp, Windfall, Arjun, etc.
The Locust God is $6. Now I realize that in order to go up, this card will need to impact Standard, right? As much as it’s cool to Skullclamp your Locusts, or win with Purphoros, Skullclamp and Ashnod’s Altar (a pretty easy combo to assemble once you get Skullclamp going) we don’t have access to that in Standard. But do the guys truly need to be that good in Standard to maintain their current price? I only ask because this set seems like hot garbage, there are no cards over $20 and booster boxes are like $100 retail. If people stay away from the set because it’s hot garbage, scarcity will keep prices artificially medium. If they get high enough, it makes sense to buy boxes again and people will. But if people aren’t compelled by anything in the set, the value has to be somewhere and why not the Gods? $6 is already pretty reasonable and they could at the very least maintain some of their value if nothing else from the set jumps. I’m not saying invest, but I’m going to pay $6 for a copy of The Locust God now, build that hilarious deck and laugh at people and I doubt I’m going to look at the price of the God in 3 months and think I took a bath.
5)Read what EDH players are building
I was focused a lot on Solemnity shenanigans and brewing decks with lots of Gods in them for my Gathering Magic article so I didn’t really take a look at what people are doing with the rest of the set. Think about which cards will go into existing decks. Is there a card that’s going to go in Atraxa? There is?! Well that’s worth knowing.
I also recommend using EDHREC for a sort of reverse-engineering. Instead of typing in a God and seeing how to build it based on suggestions from the other decks in the database, start with a single card and see which generals want it. The cards in those decks are more and more attractive the better that commander is.
Swarm Intelligence is a new card and I think it has potential, but I don’t know where. What do other people think?
There isn’t much consensus, yet, but I didn’t think about Narset when I first read Swarm Intelligence, but it makes a lot of sense. And since The Locust God seems to be coming up a lot, it doesn’t hurt to see which cards are going in that deck because while some people may scrap their Nekusar deck for cards to put in the deck, some won’t and that means they’ll need to buy cards they already have. A lot of cards in the Locust God deck are creeping up lately and it pays to check that. Without looking, how much is Chasm Skulker worth, knowing it was first in M15 and was just reprinted in Commander 2016? Bet you were off. Bet you’re glad you looked because if you’re like me, you have a bunch of them shits in a box somewhere.
6)Bad Standard sets can be good for EDH
Not always, though. Let’s look at every card in Dragon’s Maze worth above $1.
Gross. Mirko Vosk is under $1. Where is this pressure on prices coming from? It’s not like boxes are flooding the market. Still, even this is less bleak than it looks at first. Voice and Progenitor Mimic are low due to reprinting. Deadbridge Chant is a solid EDH card, as is Savageborn Hydra. With strong, powerful Standard cards like Varolz and Aetherling worth diddly, it seems like EDH is the only thing making these cards worth anything. This is the worst case scenario for Hour of Devastation – no good cards and therefore no value no matter what set redemption has to say about it. Let’s look at a set that’s closer to Hour of Devastation in terms of being disappointing for Standard but giving us lots of EDH cards.
M15 is much closer, if you ask me. We had a lot of cards that were good in Standard like Hornet Queen and painlands fall off a bit and EDH cards came in and picked up the slack. Chasm Skulker is between $2.50 and $3.50 after a reprint and was a bulk rare when the set was Standard legal. I think Hour of Devastation will force the EDH cards to take up value in the coming years, which is perfect because I think there are cards like Neheb that are up to the challenge. They’ll be overlooked for a minute, but not forever.
7)Look for more Solemnities
Anything that is a good card could be worth some money and if it gets better as people discover how to use it properly, it could be worth even more money. That’s base tier. The we have cards that are good in one deck the way Abandoned Sarcophagus will be good in a cycling deck, and that deck’s increased popularity could drive up some of the prices of the other cards in the deck. That’s mid tier stuff. The truly worthwhile cards are ones that bring up multiple different decks, interact in a stupid way with a lot of other cards and in general are going to go ham with lots of prices. That’s Solemnity. Could we have missed another Solemnity in the set? It’s possible. If there are cards in the set that I think could be potential top tier finance cards, they’re these.
This not only could be the commander of his own deck, I think he goes in Athreos and Shirei-based Shadowborn Apostle decks and probably Kaalia decks. Are a bunch of people building Kaalia lately? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that Kaalia just became more affordable when it was jammed in the Commander Anthology set. Razaketh seems like it could make a bunch of other cards in other decks go up and I think it’s the closest thing we have to another Solemnity.
That’s all I have for you. 10 seconds before wrapping this up, I saw
so I bet you know what we’re going to talk about next week. Until then!