Hey, guys, my name is Eric. Look, this is a little bit awkward. I got a Skype call from Ryan, Marcel and Jason this week and they said “Don’t do regular show notes, instead tell everyone we’re doing a vote to see if Corbin is getting kicked off of the podcast.” They insisted they were serious but it sounded like they had all been drinking. I heard what I assume was Ryan and Jason high-fiving each other. I tried calling them back to see if they were really serious and they’re not picking up. I have like 10 minutes for them to get back to me before I have to submit the shownotes and if I don’t hear different, they’re going out like this. Anyway, if this was a prank and the guys get a lot of e-mails saying to kick Corbin off the cast, this wasn’t my fault. I’m just a guy helping out for a chunk of the Patreon money. If you’re reading this, they never got back to me, or I guess they were serious when they said to do the show notes like this. Either way, I really hope I don’t get fired, this wasn’t my fault. – Eric, the show notes guy
Are you sick of Corbin Hosler? Here’s your chance! If you don’t want him on the cast anymore, e-mail brainstormbrew@gmail.com. If you say something that is funny, not mean-spirited and is readable on the cast, we may read a few.
I don’t feel good about this, but I bet no one reads shownotes anyway and we’ll be fine. – Eric
Corbin is missing. We assume an old country road, a dog and a pikcup truck is involved.
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These are the latest cards of value to be put into an Event Deck, and the latest to take a hit straight to the value as a result. In some cases, there was an immediate loss of value as people panic-sold and stores changed their listed prices, for the buying and the selling of the card.
However, I’m here to make the case that being reprinted this way is not as awful as you might think, and actually represents an opportunity.
Let’s start with the precedent and the flag bearer for preconstructed deck inclusions:Umezawa’s Jitte.
For the longest time, before the price graph shows, this was rock-steady at $20. During its time in Standard, Extended, and after that in Legacy, this has been one of the best equipment ever. (I’ll listen if you want to talk about the Swords or Batterskull, but really, this would get my vote.) Why was such a good card only $20? The preconstructed deck Rats’ Nest. Simply having the card available in a $20 precon meant that there was a price ceiling, even as there was a very small chance of finding it at that price. Even now, with a Grand Prix promo out there, it’s got a relatively low price for a card this old and this good, due to price memory from being in the deck.
This principle applies in the modern day: being in the Event Deck lowers the price briefly but can’t add too much quantity.
How about an example of Wizards trying, I mean REALLY trying, to make a card accessible through Event Deck printings?
Thragtuskwas a lowly Core Set rare. Granted, that was Magic 2013, presumed to be a smaller print run than Magic Origins, and that was also before a lot of current players started, but it was THE card to have against blue decks. Or aggressive decks. Or removal-heavy decks. Or anything, really. It’s value coming, going, and in between. Imagine Abzan or other Den Protector decks with this card!
Wizards wanted everyone to have as many Thragtusks as they wanted. To this end, on top of the original supply, this was added to three Event decks in a row: M13, Return to Ravnica, and Gatecrash. For a card that was seeing heavy Standard play, that was the only way for the price to get down to what Wizards felt was a reasonable one. Look at the beginning of the chart and that $25 tag. It still took three additional printings to lower it to $5, and by then, rotation was imminent, which likely did more for lowering the price.
Thragtusk was at $25 and started going down immediately. It never stabilized because of the repeated printings during its year in Standard. Other cards have not gotten the same treatment.
Let’s look at Godless Shrine.
Notice that blip around June 2013? In early May, the Dragon’s Maze Event Deck was spoiled and there was one Godless Shrine in the deck, so it took a hit. The downward trend lasted for about a month, and then it ticked back upward. The card was good enough that while it didn’t rebound completely, it held much of its value.
Same thing with Hallowed Fountain, a one-of in the Theros Event Deck.
The Clash Pack is another method of increasing quantity of a card, as evidenced by Courser of Kruphix:
See that dip in the middle? Right before it made it to $25? That’s the Clash Pack copies hitting the market, and in the flood the price fell hard…and then came back by the time the new set was released.
I’m not trying to make the statement that all the cards given an auxiliary printing will eventually regain their value. That’s not true at all, and there’s a long list of $5 or less rares that got reprinted and struggled to break $1 after the re-release. That’s likely the fate in store for Evolutionary Leap, Warden of the First Tree, and Llanowar Wastes.
What I am saying is that the better cards, the already-expensive cards, those are very likely to bounce back. I’m specifically looking at Hangarback Walker, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Whisperwood Elemental.
Hangarback has lost a couple of dollars in the last weeks since the announcement, and for a card seeing as much play as it is, that’s a very good sign for the card and our opportunity to gain value from it. I’m hoping that it goes down to $10 once the decks are on sale, because there’s still a whole year for it to go back up, and that doesn’t even count the appeal outside of Standard.
The current dip means this is the time to buy in, even if it doesn’t go below $14. It’ll be $20 or more by Valentine’s Day, and that’s value we can use.
Tasigur is in an interesting spot. Many of my peers here are preaching the foils, and I’m on board. I also think he’s good enough to hold a $10 price tag in a year when he rotates, because he’s big and easy to cast and has a great ability in older formats. It’s fascinating how on the day of announcement, he fell $2, but the demand is there.
This principle also applies to the Clash Packs, and to some extent the Commander precons. The cards that were expensive stays that way, and will likely recover most of their price. Let’s use Collected Company as an example:
See that diagonal slide in July? The Clash Pack decklist was spoiled on July 9th of this year. We still have a lot of time for this to creep back up, especially because that particular card is already seeing Modern play in a variety of decks.
So in closing, I want you to see reprints as opportunities. I’m still sitting on two playsets of Hangarback, and I’m giving serious consideration to a third.as the playset price creeps to $50 on eBay. If there’s other examples of cards resisting the reprint effect, list them in the comments!
(It’s been a while since I wrote a freely-available article, so I wanted to take this opportunity to do so. I hope you enjoy! – Corbin)
By the time this article comes out, you’ll be knee-deep in Pro Tour speculation, with all the pros gathering in Wisconsin to battle it out for the plane of Zendikar (and up to $40,000 on the line). Personally, I’ve been on the road for a week at this point, from Grand Prix Madison to a bus and some downtime in Milwaukee. I’m not usually much of a story guy, but I can safely say that fun has been had, drafts have been drafted, and Canadian Highlander is the best new format I’ve encountered since EDH.
So how about one quick story: Marshall Sutcliffe and I were playing a game earlier today, and I—having not built my own deck for the format yet—was simply playing my Karador, Ghost Chieftain Commander deck with my commander shuffled in. It’s far from optimized for the format, but due to the grindy nature of the deck, it actually competes reasonably well with some of the decks in the Canadian Highlander. Anyway, there were some great games today, from Marshall Mind Twisting me for five only to see me shrug it off and go to town over the next ten turns with Life from the Loam and cycling lands on the way to a win.
But the best story is probably the following: I had to mulligan twice, and my hand by the fifth turn was Unburial Rites, Sun Titan, Karmic Guide, and Animate Dead, and I had just cast Oblivion Ring on Marshall’s Liliana of the Veil. With four lands in play and nothing else to do, my hand was completely dead. Luckily, Marshall had my back and Mind Twisted me for five off a Grim Monolith. I untapped, flashbacked Unburial Rites, returned Sun Titan, returning Animate Dead, returning Karmic Guide, returning Acidic Slime. Pretty sick.
After a few turns of battling like this, Marshall was at one life and had wiped the board. We both whiffed for a few turns, then I topdecked Birthing Pod. He followed by topdecking an answer. I topdecked Makeshift Mannequin, starting the chain over. Given that I had Swords to Plowshares in hand to Marshall’s no cards in hand and Grindstonein play, I felt fairly safe from Painter’s Servant combo. It would take an absurd topdeck to beat me.
Which means, of course, that Marshall ripped Dig Through Time to find Fabricate(to fetch Painter’s Servant), then had exactly enough mana to Muddle the Mixture my removal spell. That’s just one of the crazy awesome games I’ve seen out of this format, and I highly recommend giving it a look.
Could it be financially relevant? Maybe. The format has been around for a while, but hasn’t taken off, nor do I think it necessarily will, given that it appeals primarily to competitive players. I will say that it’s already more of a thing than Tiny Leaders, so I hope we don’t see a repeat of that debacle. If there’s interest (let me know!), I could revisit this topic in the coming weeks with a more financially based perspective. I tentatively have a retrospective on my post-rotation Standard picks slated for next week, so just let me know what you want to see!
Now, let’s get on to some more immediately-relevant matters.
Standard Spikes
We’ve seen some major movement over the last few weeks, and while much of it has been expected (and predicted in this column), there’s still plenty worth talking about.
Let’s start with Dragonlord Ojutai. Still the best finisher in Standard (and in Canadian Highlander if you’re Randy Buehler), Ojutai has doubled in price over the last two weeks. Truthfully, there’s not much to say here except that Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy (which I wrote about in detail last week) will continue to be played across the field, and Ojutai will almost always accompany it. I don’t expect the price to crater anytime soon.
The same goes for Den Protector, which just keeps going and going. I’m going to be honest: there’s not much reason to believe that Dragons of Tarkir cards won’t continue climbing, or at the least remain steady, for the next few weeks and months. The set was, unsurprisingly, a combination of not heavily opened and very, very good.
Which leads me to Ojutai’s Command, which as you saw in Monday’s Floor Report from LengthyXemit (related: I’m the content manager around these parts, so let me know if you want to see more of those). On topic, Ojutai’s Command was bought out on site at Grand Prix Madison at $3 and under, and the growth on this has been steady. I cannot stress enough that this returns Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, which seems to be the most important card in the format. I see this easily moving past $5 and maybe to $10 on a post-Pro Tour spike, and I love picking these up at Friday Night Magic.
Other cards that have shown strong movement are Mantis Rider and Dromoka’s Command. These were both major calls here a few weeks ago, and while another one, Rattleclaw Mystic, has shown only marginal growth, these two are steadily rising and even exploding.
I’ve seen Event Decks come and go, and just like it has in the past, the printing hasn’t destroyed prices like many feared. HangarbackWalker has shrugged it off, while Dromoka’s Command has in fact grown from $3 to $7.
If you’re in on any of these from when we tagged them as pickups one to two months ago, the time to sell will be after the Pro Tour concludes this weekend. Sunday through Wednesday will be the peak for many of these prices. Remember when the time comes to not be greedy, and instead be happy to lock in profits.
Fetch Lands
Much has been made of how much many dealers are paying on-site for fetch lands, with prices on site for Polluted Delta and Flooded Strand going as high as $22. That’s nuts for a card with a price of $25 TCGplayer mid, and the truth is these may not come down for a while. With Standard stretching so much to four- or even five-color manabases—and even the aggressive decks being two colors with fetches—these could continue to climb over the next three months.
But don’t panic. These are being driven heavily by Standard, and while I imagine many players will hold onto these even after rotation, they will likely fall some before rotation hits. That’s what we saw with Zendikar fetches and with Return to Ravnica shock lands, and I expect the same trend to repeat. Still, there’s definitely value in having these in your binder right now. I’m also not definitively opposed to selling these at $20 or more now in cash, because there’s little reason to believe you won’t be able to reacquire them at at least $20 in six months. For reference, Misty Rainforest and Scalding Tarn fell to $10 to $12 in the same respective time period.
Zendikar Expeditions
These have certainly come down rather quickly. Remember that a large amount of product (I’m not applying a made-up percentage, just speaking in generalities), is opened within the first two weeks of a set’s lifetime. I don’t think we’re at the valley on these yet, but I also don’t think we’re that far off. People have been rushing to sell these because the majority of people would rather have hundreds of dollars over a single vanity item, and those who do want to splurge for them aren’t in any rush to pick them up as a result.
But if the behavior of fetch lands over the past two months tells us anything, it’s that sets become “old” very quickly, and something that was plentiful seemingly yesterday gets rare fast. Keep a close eye on Zendikar Expeditions if you think you might want to acquire them, because the floor can’t be that far away.
A Called Shot
I made this a Pick of the Week on Brainstorm Brewery a few weeks back (along with Wingmate Roc), but I want to reiterate it here. There are very few surprises left in cards at this point, as we haven’t seen any huge impact (yet) from Battle for Zendikar, and nearly everything that we expected to spike has spiked already.
Hidden Dragonslayerhasn’t yet. But you better believe it’s on the way. Look at this chart.
That’s the look of a card about to explode. There will be plenty of people playing Green-White Megamorph at the Pro Tour, and Dragonslayer is almost always at least a two-of. In addition to killing big things, it also is a fine lifelinking two-drop against Atarka Red. Combine that with a chart looking like this, and you have a recipe for a card you can trade for at $1 at FNM and sell for $5 next week. Warden of the First Tree is less exciting given that it’s showing no momentum at $3, but I’d also keep an eye on it this weekend, given its status as a mythic.
See You at the Pro Tour
That’s it for this week. I hope you tune into the Pro Tour this weekend (I’ll be the guy in the background typing on his laptop). Until next time, as always, thanks for reading!
My definition of when I buy a “collection” has always been loose at best. I classify pretty much everything as a collection, because it’s just easier to have a category in place for when I mark it on my spending spreadsheet for the month. Even if I just buy someone’s EDH deck at buylist prices, I label it as a collection. Four thousand commons and uncommons that a Legacy player was looking to move from his basement? Also a collection in my book. Maybe I should start to refer to the smaller pickups as “acquisitions,” because I’m not buying out their entire accumulated (or collected, if you will) lot of cards. I’m just buying what they don’t need at the moment.
Lik Dis If U Cri Evertim
Back in May of this year, I wrote about my first few lots that I had purchased through Facebook at buylist prices. I’m not referring to that guy from high school on your friends list who happened to see one thing in his feed about Magic, so he sent you a private message reminding you that he still lives in the area and has a collection of cards he wants to sell you from 2003 to 2005. While those are nice and lucrative (albeit rare), I’m talking about having someone from California ship me two of her tier-one EDH decks at buylist prices. You don’t have to spend time sorting through bulk, and you just get to immediately throw the cards up on TCGplayer, eBay, or another buylist that you know will pay just a little higher than what you gave the seller.
Are these acquisitions an every-day occurrence? No, definitely not. I will say that they’ve been a more frequent find than Craigslist nowadays, and I find myself sending messages to sellers at least a few times a month on average (compared to less than once a month of finding a Craigslist ad worth sending a reply to). Not every seller is willing to take your offer of approximately buylist prices, and that’s okay. We’re there to give them options, not force-feed them our Cutco knives.
I’m going to go through my most recent collection acquisition step by step, and try to show you how both sides can leave the conversation and transaction without being ripped off, and without feeling like you’re being ripped off.
Where Do I Find Them?
Well, you want to be a part of a lot of Facebook groups, for one. Does this result in a somewhat unsettling amount of garbage posts that you really couldn’t care less about? Yeah, definitely. Thankfully, you quickly learn who’s a frequent poster, who to “hide” posts from, and how to immediately recognize if a post is worth your time in the first few words. To get started, I recommend joining all of the groups that I listed in the first article. All of those groups are still active, and I’ve picked up (or sold) cards in every one. In the past several months since that article has gone live, I’ve found a couple of new groups that you can also find some value in:
The SICK deals page doesn’t have nearly as many “buylist”-esque posts, but I highly recommend joining it if you’re a player who still occasionally wants to buy cards for personal use. The prices are always cheaper than TCGplayer or eBay, and can be very close to buylist sometimes.
Although these are the most prominent groups that don’t correlate with a specific region, I still highly recommend networking with your local area and joining most of the region-specific groups on Facebook. Finance aside, they’re good ways to make friends, carpool for events, learn about new sales your LGS might be having, etc.
However, certain areas might have your juicy Facebook acquisitions on lockdown without you even knowing it:
Derek bought up an excellent point that I had never really run into (at least that I know of): some area Facebook groups may be moderated by the same people who buy and sell collections as a source of income. If the group settings require posts to be submitted to an admin before they’re accepted, then we may very well be missing out on a lot of the sweeter deals before they even go public. While there’s unfortunately nothing we can really do about that, you’ll probably notice eventually if there just don’t happen to be any good deals at all on your local Facebook group.
Fool Me Once…. Or Not At All
Any of you who were previously aware of the Facebook MTG market are probably familiar with horror stories of players being scammed out of cards, not being paid, or their trade partners blocking them and never getting the cards they were supposed to. It sucks and it’s definitely a risk that we take anytime we deal with someone who we don’t know personally through an unregulated, third-party channel like Facebook. I’m lucky enough to have never been ripped off throughout my experiences buying on FB, but I believe that’s partially because I’ve learned to be very cautious in the steps I take before a transaction.
Before I first send money to someone else over the internet, there are a couple of basic precautions I take:
I want them to name me at least four out-of-state references, who I will then message and confirm the legitimacy of the person I’m trading with. The reason I try to specify out-of-state references is because it’s not too terribly difficult for any old Scamming Sammy to be a fine and upstanding citizen at his LGS or be well-known as a great guy at his local PPTQ, but turn into a ruthless shark on the pseudo-anonymity of Facebook. Sammy can easily ask his Facebook friends from the LGS or PPTQ to be his references for his online trades, and they wouldn’t be the wiser to his cheating. I want references who have dealt with Sammy through the mail, preferably those who are unbiased and have never met him in person.
I want physical pictures of the cards themselves before and after packaging, a tracking number, and/or shipping label receipt before I send any money. It’s easy for someone to ask Sammy for a tracking number, and he types 5479678564156469896 (or something that actually looks similar to a legitimate Paypal/USPS tracking number), and have the number “not work” during the first day or so before it gets processed. Can they still technically get around my request by taking pictures of the cards, packaging up a bag of rocks and shipping them to me with no return address? Sure, but then you’re getting into mail fraud territory and I think the number of people who are willing to go through all of that trouble is a lot lower than you’d expect.
Lastly, I really recommend paying through the PayPal Goods & Services option if the cards you’re buying get to be in the hundreds-of-dollars range. At that point, you’re always better off protecting yourself, even if it is an extra three percent out of your own pocket. If I’m paying $850 for a small pile of cardboard being sent through the mail by someone that I’ve never seen before in my life, I want the support and dispute resolution of PayPal on my side.
Options
Now we’re getting to the part that you probably hoped I would start out with. Negotiating a price to buy other people’s cards at buylist prices from the comfort of your home or smartphone. Let’s look at my most recent Facebook acquisition, and how I broke the ice with my seller.
Unfortunately I didn’t save the initial post before I got the idea to write this article, but he provided a list and initially said that he was looking to get $1000 for the entire lot.
First and foremost, I always take everything to a private message discussion. I don’t want to start a bidding war in the comments section, and I don’t want to get a hundred notifications from other people commenting their offers. I comment with “PM sent” (or “PM me” if their privacy settings are too high) to ensure we can discuss everything between the two of us.
Thankfully this seller was very realistic about the options he had, and was very pleasant to deal with throughout the entire process. It’s not always this easy, and some sellers don’t take kindly to offers, either due to delusions of grandeur or refusing to accept the true cash price of their cards. You don’t want to message someone who’s selling organized singles at 10-percent off of TCGplayer mid and try to offer buylist—you’ll just be wasting your time. You want to look for a post similar to this one;
Although this particular person ended up wanting way too much and was expecting an unrealistic price, you want to look for those types of key phrases. “Getting out of the game,” “need to sell soon,” “$XXX or best offer on the lot,” and “have to sell for X” all immediately set off green lights in my head.
When you’re negotiating and presenting your initial offer, you need to present yourself as an option, and make it clear that you’re not necessarily their only or their best option.
Let’s make up an imaginary scenario to demonstrate how I go through these situations. Jason has $500 TCGplayer mid worth of singles that he wants to move on Facebook as a lot and makes a post asking for $350 OBO. He gets a few comments on the thread asking for prices on certain singles, but Jason would really just rather avoid the hassle altogether and ship one package. That’s where we come in. Once we get confirmation on the important card conditions, potential foils, and other information that wasn’t visible in the initial picture, we present our offer.
“Thanks for helping to clarify with that information, Jason. $350 is a really good price and I’m sure someone else will probably pick it up at that number, but it’s just a little too high for me personally. I was going to offer $270 for the entire lot, and I can PayPal today if that makes a difference. If you end up changing your mind, you’re always welcome to message me. Good luck with the rest of your sale :)”
Instead of shoving a number down his throat, we gave him an option. A price of $350 isn’t too bad—someone might actually decide to buy at that number, and that’s okay. We didn’t want to bid against that person, anyway. However, it’s more likely that the seller won’t get another offer over the next couple of days, even if he does bump his post. We gave him the power to make a choice between taking our immediate offer, and holding out to try and get more from someone else, with no pressure or strings attached.
Sometimes, I’ll take it a step further and outline all of a seller’s other options to them as well, especially if I get the sense that they’re trying to maximize their value in selling off their collection. Explain to them that if they want to squeeze the most value out of their cards, they should probably list the higher-end singles on TCGplayer or eBay, or price the cards out individually to sell on Facebook at ten percent below the cheapest matching condition copy. Let them know about other buylists like Card Kingdom, ABU Games, or Strike Zone, and explain the process of buylisting to them if they’re foreign to the concept.
The key is to be blatantly transparent, and present them with as many options as possible. Most of these options involve getting paid more than you would pay them, but that’s fine. Fortunately, this transparency has two advantages for you in addition to giving your seller information to make their decision. The option you gave them is probably the only one that would pay them within the next day or two, and cash in hand is king. If they list their cards on eBay, they won’t reap the full benefits for multiple weeks, or even months. Buylists can take a while to process, but you’re a buylist with a very quick payment process.
The other benefit of this transparency is that it smooths the air between buyer and seller, and tension goes down. You’re no longer seen in their eyes as the “guy who’s trying to lowball me and rip me off,” because you’re the one who just told them about all of the other ways they could make more money instead of selling to you. You’re just one of their options, and you have a serious advantage on all of the seller’s other choices as long as you follow the steps to protect yourself as mentioned earlier.
I hope this helps. Happy hunting!
End result of the list earlier in the article. You can do this too!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
