Point-Counterpoint: Is Legacy Running out of Fading Counters?

November 5, 2015 Corbin Hosler 25 Comments

I’m not going to call it a death knell. I’m not going to say the sky is falling. I’m not going to call it the hammer that shatters the format. But I’m also not going to shy away from it and what it indicates.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Star City Games made some very large waves Monday afternoon when it announced changes to its Organized Play system. Not only has the Open Series been renamed the “SCG Tour”—a weak imitation of the Pro Tour for sure, but still a positive development overall for Magic — and announce changes to some prizes and events, but it absolutely gutted its schedule of Legacy events.

To be sure, there’s a lot to digest from the full announcement, and I highly recommend reading it in full. Before I get into today’s full topic, I’ll touch on one thing I’m not concerned about: the slightly reduced number of events. SCG follows Wizards of the Coast in this regard, and while it does likely mean we haven’t had the explosive growth in the playerbase we had during the five previous years, tournament Magic is still incredibly healthy. SCG expanded its offerings at the lower levels, and the truth is that no matter how many people play Magic, the ecosystem can still only support so many events. With SCG and Wizards both lumping so many onto the schedule, it was bound to hit a wall sooner or later. Prize support is still strong across the board—heck, Wizards increased the prize for winning a GP to 10 grand—so this doesn’t throw up any flags for me.

But what does hit a few is the dearth of Legacy events on the first part of the schedule. I’ve had a few conversations on Twitter and elsewhere about what exactly this means, and there are a ton of ways to interpret it, but all readings try to answer one basic question:

Is Legacy Dying?

I’m approaching this from a neutral perspective, and I want to make that clear before I dive in. There are a ton of heated opinions on both sides of the aisle here, and truthfully, no one can say for sure what the future holds. So sitting here and just throwing my opinion out at you like it means anything more than the next players’ simply because I have a platform would be, frankly, arrogant of me. But what I can do is present the evidence we have, and allow all of us to draw our own conclusions.

With that said, let’s dig in.

Point: Star City Games has Functionally Dropped Legacy Support

For years, Star City’s Open series was the heart and soul of Legacy. Every Saturday would be a boring Standard format, but on Sunday we’d all have fun watching or playing Magic’s most exciting and diverse format. Survival-Vengevine broke out and broke the metagame, though it was ultimately a blue-black Merfolk deck that won the Grand Prix where Survival emerged.

This was of huge interest to the community at-large, and Survival of the Fittest began to inexorably take over the format. I played a lot of Legacy during this time, and when Survival was ultimately banned, I split the finals of an Open with Merfolk, kicking off what became the second-best romantic relationship of my life. I say this not because it’s hugely relevant to SCG’s actions, but to show that I’m not some shadowy finance guy who doesn’t know anything about the community; instead, I was as keyed in then as I am now, doing regular coverage.

So Legacy was huge then, and we saw rapid growth on a lot of cards in the format, or cards that might break out. So much so, in fact, that growing concern over the Reserved List became a huge, contentious issue again. Ultimately, this played into the creation of Modern, which both served as a replacement for the lagging Extended format and gave Wizards an eternal format not constrained by cards that wouldn’t be reprinted.

At first, SCG ignored the fledgling format, and even Modern 1Ks on Sunday failed to generate huge interest. I recall a conversation I had with a senior member of SCG around 2012 where he told me very simply how the company felt about Modern:

“You can see how we feel about it based on the schedule.”

At the time, that meant the company was fully committed to Legacy, which continued to be heavily supported. Today, we have just one Legacy event on the schedule for the first four months of the 2016 season.

Counterpoint: This is a Small Sample, Not a Mission Statement

It may seem from this that SCG is just off of the Legacy train. But let’s not forget that the company has always led the way when it comes to Legacy support, and it wasn’t that long ago that Grand Prix New Jersey completely ran the Legacy hype train off the rails—people were talking of taking freaking Standard decks to the event just to be there and get the playmat and deckbox and signed Brainstorm paraphernalia. Excitement ran wild, and the event ended up drawing more than 4,000 players, an incredible number for any event.

That’s hardly the sign of a dying format. Sure, SCG has pulled support of Legacy in their Open Series early in the year, but it doesn’t have a Legacy Grand Prix on the schedule this year. Why would a company support a format that ultimately ends up promoting someone else’s GP instead of its own? In this context, it makes sense why SCG would instead throw its support to other formats.

Point: Modern has Eclipsed Legacy as the Eternal Format of Choice

If there’s ever a contentious point to make, it’s this. But at the same time, this seems to certainly have evidence to support it. It’s evident in SCG’s scheduled events, in WOTC’s schedule events—including the Pro Tour—and Modern certainly generates more headlines. These days, it’s very rare when new cards come out that we talk about their Legacy playability; instead we’re much more interested as a community in how they’ll do in Modern. Because of this, there’s always something new to consider with the format, and every few months we see something new break out.

This speaks to how Modern—with its carefully curated banned list—is viewed by the majority as a more exciting format. I see a ton of players come into my store hoping to gets certain cards to break into Modern, but almost never does someone come looking for Legacy cards. Nearly every LGS around here has weekly Modern events, but none of them carry Legacy events. While this isn’t the same throughout the country or world—at least in the U.S., the coasts have more Legacy players than the Midwest or South—it’s certainly part of a larger trend.

And while we talked about how Grand Prix New Jersey hit big numbers, it failed to surpass Grand Prix Richmond, which is still the third-largest Grand Prix to date, with only the two Modern Masters Vegas events passing it. In this world, if you’re not growing, you’re dying, and these things seem to indicate that Modern is growing and Legacy is not. Legacy is not irrelevant because of these things, but Legacy has become to Modern what Vintage is to Legacy—existent with a passionate community but ultimately less relevant.

Counterpoint: Modern and Legacy Can Coexist Peacefully, and It Doesn’t Have to Be One or the Other

Everything said about Legacy and Modern—that one is less prevalent than the other on the schedule, one generates more day-to-day social media interest and headlines—can be said about Modern compared to Standard, as well. After all, no format is more played than Standard, and it dominates the Pro Tour schedule, not to mention being the LGS format of choice by and large. If we were to sample a given time period’s top headlines, it’s highly likely Standard would dominate Modern in those regards. But I don’t think anyone would say Modern is dying because these facts hold true, so why is it used to say that Legacy is dying?

Furthermore, fewer events doesn’t mean less interest—it simply means more pointed interest. The fact that Legacy doesn’t change as often as Modern is seen by many as a benefit since the deck you build today is less likely to get banned or hated out when you do get to play it. Legacy’s metagame doesn’t change as much as Modern’s simply because there are more cards legal, and this fact will automatically generate fewer day-to-day headlines. But that doesn’t mean people care about the format less, it just means there’s no need to obsess over it every day. And because the schedule isn’t saturated with events, the ones that do happen will have more success thanks to the condensed air time. No one gets tired of Legacy when you don’t have it shoved down your throats every week; can the same be said of Modern?

There’s more to a format than number of events and Reddit upvotes. Legacy has a thriving community and is in no way falling off.

Point: Legacy Prices on Staples Flatlined or Declined in 2015

Allow me a few graphs to illustrate this point.

That’s a lot of downward movement, and it’s certainly atypical from what we’ve seen in the past, where Legacy seemed to be a growing format rather than a stagnating or declining one. I spend more time tracking price movements of cards than 99.9 percent of people who play this game, and I can tell you that it’s extremely rare that I see Legacy cards make it onto the weekly or monthly interests page.

When I started playing this game seven years ago, there were always Legacy movements happening. A new deck would break out at an event, and cards would shoot up. Even if there wasn’t a new event, the substantial growth of players getting into the format would increase prices steadily enough to frequently make new cards worth watching. These days, that’s left solely to the purview and Standard and Modern.

Modern prices have, as a whole, increased despite reprint pressure in Modern Masters 2015. The reason is that more people want to play the format and are willing to purchase the cards, which moves the price up, regardless of card prices beforehand. If the same were true in Legacy, we’d see duals rising. Instead, they’ve fallen flat, and despite 2015 being another banner year for Magic, some of its most iconic cards couldn’t keep up with the growth. If Legacy were truly still growing, why wouldn’t this be the case? Even the most stapleish of all staples—Force of Will and Wasteland—experienced a flat or slightly negative 2015.

Even if you want to suggest that the movement in duals is tied to playability, it’s hard to make the same argument about these two cards, which are perpetual must-haves of the format. If Legacy were truly growing rather than fading, these graphs would look far different.

Counterpoint: Sure, 2015 Was Weak, but These Cards Are All Still Higher than They Were Two Years Ago

For a game that’s been around for nearly 25 years like Magic, taking one year of price movement to try and illustrate a trend for an eternal format is silly. No one claims the stock market is dying because it experiences a bad year or two. Trying to draw blanket conclusions from Legacy based on 2015 alone is a wasted exercise.

And if the format were truly fading, why are prices still far higher than they were two years ago, in many cases? The run-up was so much, so fast it’s natural to expect some settling, and these will rebound in the future.

Not to mention, there are a ton of factors that explain why prices didn’t move besides claiming the format is dying. It’s no secret Star City Games leads the market in these cards, and the run-up to Grand Prix New Jersey was a result of great advertising and market influence by SCG. Given that the company doesn’t have a GP this year to draw people to, why would it need to buy staples so aggressively? When the market leader has a Grand Prix-level reason to support these staples again, the movement will pick right back up.

Point: The Reserved List Exists, so Legacy Will Never Be Able to Be Played by Anything More than the Most Hardcore of Players

It’s a simple concept. There are exactly X number of dual lands on the market, and that number decreases every year as copies are lost or destroyed. Furthermore, because there will never be reprints of these cards, there is a hard cap to the number of players who can play top-tier Legacy decks at any given time. How can a format be anything but dying when the copies of cards needed to play literally die off more and more every year?

Even if we don’t reach the “hard cap” in Legacy, there’s a reason Reserved List staples have trended up over the last few years: only the most dedicated and well-off financially will be able to play. More and more players are priced out of the format every year, and they give up and sell their finite copies of dual lands, which go to players buying in who are willing and able to pay a premium for the chance to play Legacy. It’s very much a luxury among luxuries; after all, we see NBA teams get sold for more and more every time one comes for sale, but I still count only 30 teams in the league. It’s hard to call that “growing,” and as we established earlier, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

Counterpoint: These Factors Have Been True for Years, and Haven’t Stopped Legacy’s Growth

Continuing the NBA example, it’s also hard to call that “dying,” either. If people are willing to pay more and more to buy in, what is that if not a sign of the format’s popularity? And given that popularity, how can you say that Legacy is dying?

Also, I haven’t seen TCGplayer sell out of dual lands recently. As of this writing, there are more than 100 copies of even the most popular blue duals available. If this “hard cap” was so dangerous, why haven’t we seen the market sold out yet? And for every dual that becomes “lost,” another becomes found. People are still turning up collections from the ’90s that are loaded with duals, and the number that are actually destroyed is so minuscule it doesn’t affect the overall market.

$A fraction of the money cards.$

Attendance at Legacy events has continued to be strong, and players find ways to play even if it’s not with the most expensive duals. And when Standard can cost over $700, how is using the price of Legacy staples — that don’t rotate — a point against the format?

Conclusion

I have to say, I feel like both sides of these arguments have merits, and the truth likely lies somewhere in between. For me, the problem lies in the question itself: so many people are worried about proclaiming the “death” of Legacy because it’s a flashy headline, but the truth is that Legacy doesn’t have to be in the spotlight every single weekend to be relevant.

But no matter how I evaluate each individual point, it all comes back to one simple question for me: is Legacy more relevant today than it was five years ago? Will it be more relevant five years from today than it is now? I think it’s hard to argue that it will be. Wizards of the Coast has proven that it’s Modern that will be getting the support, both in reprints and in events, and over time, the format will continue to eclipse Legacy.

Yes, it will be fun whenever we get a Legacy event or there’s one on Twitch, just like it’s fun when Vintage occupies that niche now. There are way more cards out there for Legacy, so it will never truly be as rare or expensive as Vintage, but it will continue to be pushed into that corner, where it’s a luxury hobby within a luxury hobby. I don’t think this constitutes dying or even “fading,” but it’s hard to see Legacy being more relevant five or ten years from now than it was five or ten years ago.

That will mean something different to everyone, and the most important thing to consider moving forward is how you plan to interact with the format. If you want to be a hardcore Legacy player, I suggest looking toward local and regional events—many of which are already springing up to fill the void SCG left—and finding ways outside of SCG to support that hobby. If you’re a casual fan who enjoys watching the format, this will make those events we do get all the more exciting. If you’re someone who wants to get into competitive Legacy, this may make the transition a little bit easier in the coming years.

For all of us, what’s far more important than worrying about whether or not Legacy is “dying” is worrying about how you want to go about enjoying it. Because it is a fun ride, and that’s never fading away.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter/Twitch/YouTube

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Sibling Rivalry

November 5, 2015 Douglas Johnson 4 Comments

Douglas, the Returned

Wow. It feels like I’ve been gone forever, but it’s only been a week. A mixture of a stomach bug and huge workload at school joined forces, so I took the week off from writing and tweeting about Magic cards. Now that we’re up and running again, I want to pick up where I left off, and continue to focus on collection buying. I don’t want to pretend to know what I’m talking about by bringing up Commander spoilers, even if it is the only format that I play anymore.

I went to Twitter two weeks ago to crowd source a collection buying topic to talk about, and Scott Munro wrote in with this gem:

While I’m lucky enough geographically to be one of the only cash buylists in a 45-minute driving distance, most of the people reading my articles and trying to level up their finance game probably don’t have that luxury. Some of you guys live within an hour or two of a huge LGS that has an iron grip on a lot of the collections that come through your area. Some of you have to compete against, well, people like me. Heck, some of the locals reading this article might even be reading it to learn how to compete against me. That’s fine, too. The content of this article originally had a lot more references and metaphors for treating your competition like your brother or sister, and how sometimes you have to give each other space and sometimes you have to work together, but… meh.

Anyway, there are two prevalent strategies that I want to bring up that can help you build your own personal brand as a buyer and seller of cards, without encroaching on another established buyer’s territory. One focuses on flying solo and trying to learn the weak areas of your competition, and the other involves cooperation between you and the buyers that you’re “competing” with, for lack of a better word, so that you can both end up winners.

Anytime, Anywhere

Let’s say that for argument’s sake, you have an LGS within walking distance of you. We’ll call them CardGarden, or CG. CG is a great LGS, and you love to play FNM there every week. They have solid enough buy prices that a lot of your local players will regularly sell their cards to CG when they need cash, and fair sell prices such that you can’t really catch them unawares by grabbing cards that should be priced much higher. All in all, CG is a quality LGS that you enjoy attending and playing at, even if you personally don’t buy or sell with them.

How do you buy cards locally at buylist prices when most of your players default to a known constant? Well, a brick and mortar store inherently has limitations. They can’t stay open 24/7, so there’s a window of opportunity when their doors are closed. Again, we’re going to come back to Facebook because it’s one of the hot spots for buying and selling cards locally. If it’s a Sunday evening at 9:00 p.m. and your LGS is closed, Bill might post his Modern deck on Facebook in the local group in order to pay his rent, insurance, or whatever. If Bill needs cash ASAP, you can send him a PM and he’s much more likely to negotiate with you.

While you obviously don’t always have a ton of windows where your LGS is closed, there’s also the possibility that the person selling their binder or deck doesn’t have the transportation to make it to CG. If you have a car or are able to meet the person without them putting in any actual effort, you can step up your game where the LGS is rooted to one specific location. The magic words, “I have cash in my hand and can drive to you right now,” have sealed the deal on many collections in the past several years for me, and adds an extra convenience factor to sweeten the deal even if you’re not paying as highly as the LGS.

Now, this obviously isn’t always going to work: no method here is a guaranteed get-rich-quick scheme that will leave you with thousands of players swooning at your door trying to sell collections next week. A relationship and brand take time and trust to build up, and it took me years before I had people messaging me saying, “Hey, my brother’s friend told my mom to tell me that you buy Magic cards.” With enough time and effort (and a bit of luck), I do think that it’s possible for anyone to pull it off.

Back to Bulk

Does your LGS buy bulk commons and uncommons? Most don’t, at least in my experience. Some shops also pay less on even the higher-end Legacy staples, just because there’s really no market for them in the area. I’ve seen a store offer a mere $40 for a minty Force of Will to a kid that found it in his dad’s shoe box collection. Because the owner had no experience running Legacy events, he knew that it would sit in his stock forever, and he didn’t sell on TCGplayer at all. Even if you have no way to move that Force of Will locally, it doesn’t take a brick and mortar store to message the guy on Facebook later and give him the option of $55 or $60, then flip it on TCGplayer for $85 later.

The point I’m trying to make is that there are probably some things your LGS (or other local finance grinders) try to stay away from. Maybe it’s outside of their comfort zone, or maybe they don’t know the intricacies of the outs for it. This works in your favor. If nobody else in your area buys bulk commons and uncommons, pick up that banner and make some room in your closet. If there’s something that your LGS or other buyers want to stay away from, that’s a chance for you to move in and find the person who wants that particular product without stepping on any toes.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

In that same vein, it’s entirely possible for you and other local buyers to work together. Let’s keep going with the assumption that your LGS doesn’t buy bulk. It can’t move it because it mostly sells to competitive players for Standard/Modern nights, and it’s way too much work to deal with 50,000 cards in bulk that the store owner has at his house.

Now this sounds like an opportunity. If that bulk has been sitting at his house from cracking boxes over the past few years to sell singles and he’s not going to move it, why not make an offer so that you and him can work together? Pay him $200 to get those 50,000 cards out of his basement, or maybe work out a deal where you give him cards equaling a bit more than that in value. Hell, if he knows that he has a constant out flow to incoming bulk, it gives him a reason to start taking it in at the store if he knows that he has a low-effort out that will guarantee a profit margin. He buys it from locals at $3 per thousand, then you swoop in and pick it up at $4 or $5 per thousand.

End Step

Before I make my exit for the week, I just want to talk really quickly on what you don’t want to do to play the finance game with other local buyers. Getting into a bidding war with your LGS is not a good way to secure repeat customers and a positive reputation, even if it nets you a few collections or decks in the short term. Name your price, and let the customer decide where he takes his supply.

Even if you pay lower than the other buyers, you can find areas where you can make up for the raw cash with a convenience factor. If someone responds to your offer with, “CardGarden is paying $130 on this lot,” after you offered them $100, so be it. Don’t just one-up them and offer $140 just to steal the business—stick to your original number and let the seller make the call.

Being able to meet up at 11:00 p.m. in a Wal-Mart parking lot on a Saturday night to buy a collection when no one else in town wants to do so has its perks. Being open to buy anything and everything from bulk to basics will allow you to access markets that other vendors and buyers don’t want to get involved in, and it will secure you future lasting relationships that can help build your brand name. Good luck, and let us know if you have tips of your own!

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #169 – Second Place Best Place

November 5, 2015 Jason Alt

Personally, I thought Josh Lee Kwai (@JoshLeeKwai) from the Command Zone podcast was a great idea for a guest. He sent us an e-mail asking a great question about finance and we invited him on the cast to talk about it. Simple. Then GP Indianapolis happened and Ray Perez Jr got second place. Second. Not first, but second. Even Josh e-mailed us to say “You should absolutely bump me to talk to Ray” but that’s not how we roll. Am I the only one who doesn’t think you bounce a great finance guest to talk to a guy who got second place at a GP? We could have gotten Brent Clawson (@brentpk) the winner of the event if we wanted to talk about the GP.

Don’t get me wrong, we’ll likely talk to Ray very soon and it’s cool that the second place finish gets him back on the Pro Tour. Esper tokens looks like a sweet deck and Ray’s our boy. We don’t bump guests on Brainstorm Brewery. We had a great conversation with Josh about all kinds of topics. This is a good episode. Ray’s not on it but it’s still a good episode. Would we have bumped Josh if Ray had won the GP? I think it’s more fun if I don’t answer that.

Josh Lee Kwai (@JoshLeeKwai) from The Command Zone joins us
Shadows over Innistrad?
GP Indianapolis is discussed at length, but not how you think
Josh had a question and we answer
Commander 2015 spoilers!
Pick of the Week is back!
Support our Patreon! DO IT. You know this cast makes you more than $1 a week
Need to contact us? Hit up BrainstormBrew@gmail.com

Contact Us!

Brainstorm Brewery – Website – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – RSS – iTunes – Stitcher

Ryan Bushard – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook

Corbin Hosler – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – MTGPrice

Jason E Alt – E-mail – Twitter – Facebook – MTGPrice

Marcel White – E-mail – Twitter

Uncategorized

Anatomy of a Deal: Trading Up on PucaTrade (Pt 2)

November 4, 2015 James Chillcott 13 Comments

by James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

Heading into late 2015, PucaTrade is still humming along. Casual players are still having a blast getting cards for “free” just by ditching some cards at the post office that they never play with. For those of us attempting to use the platform to speculate or amass significant collection value, the system is still a mix of many positives and frustrating bottlenecks.

On my side of things, I am still leveraging my initial strategy of trading out of successful short and mid term specs and using the acquired points to trade up into collection defining big ticket cards. Given my success earlier this summer trading up into a lovely Mishra’s Workshop, I was emboldened to see if I could make a habit of consistently acquiring great cards through the platform.

As a quick refresher, here’s a summary of my current strategy:

Focus on trading up into cards in the $500-$1500 range.
Give myself three months or so to complete each acquisition for a total of $2000-$5000 or so in major trades per annum.
Focus on outing short and mid-term specs that have ripened past my loose “limited greed” limits, turning dozens of sub-$100 cards into bigger, potentially more liquid pieces that help keep my collection trim and consolidated.
Make use of points bonuses offered by users to get access to specific cards they want as a way of offsetting the potential point premium assigned by sellers to the high end cards I’m after.
Network constantly with other power users on the platform to gain access to important opportunities to trade up into something great, with a secondary focus on time dependent deals on both the buy and sell side of things where users may be willing to offer discounts or points bonuses to unload or acquire cards quickly.

Now since I last checked in, word has come down from the PucaTrade admins that the next big upgrade will include the ability to support foreign cards across the platform, which will be an intriguing option for potentially unloading some of my Japanese, Korean and Russian foils. MTGO to paper trades will also be supported, which may open up some interesting arbitrage opportunities.

Now many users are still experiencing trouble unloading standard cards, an issue that seems linked to a fundamental supply/demand inequality and the use of bots and browser monitoring tools by high volume sellers to ensure they can move their product. (I’ve recently gained access to MiseBot and Pucauto and will be testing them in the near future in support of the next article in this series.) Despite real concerns about the inflationary nature of the platform the Pucapoints to USD exchange rate is still hovering between .70 and .75 on Twitter and relevant message boards.

Here is the list of cards I traded out to Pucatrade members during this phase of value storage in order to build up a sufficient reserve to target a high value card.

Here are some insights into the cards on this list:

I acquired 10+ Liliana of the Veil shortly after the holiday season last year around $55. With it being easy to acquire 11000+ points on these including bounties I haven’t been shy about outing them since I already have the playset of mail damaged ones I got for free last year.
Jitte, Dreadnought, Flooded Grove, Minamo, Sword of Feast and Famine, Academy Ruins and Horizon Canopy were all cards with minimal short term upside that had already accrued excellent value while sitting around in my personal collection. I continue to trim cards like this where I don’t need them for my deck collection.
Godless shrines were acquired around $6 and had been sitting latent for too long.
Verdant Catacombs and Scalding Tarn were sold out of fear of reprints and I am happy to be rid of them in anticipation of a reprint in the next 24 months.
Chord of Calling is a card I acquired dozens of under $4, so I was happy to out a few copies here.

Sum total, I’m proud to say that I took no losses on the cards shipped, and that average profits vs. original costs varied from 25% to well over 100%. I still try not to underestimate the real costs of shipping all the cards, and the value of my time in prepping all the cards for shipping, with total time spent during this phase likely equaling a couple of hours. As usual this was mitigated somewhat by the fact that I already have a daily ritual of prepping shipments while I’m watching online media/TV, allowing me to reasonably distribute the time cost across additional sales.

Along the way I also acquired some smaller value cards, creating a relatively minor drain on the accumulation of points, including:

11x Hangarback Walker @ 1793 points
2x Hangarback Walker @ 3050 points
6x Evolutionary Leap (foil) @ 1300 points

These are all cards I consider to have a little potential for gains before rotation and excellent long term prospects in Modern and casual formats.

Consequently, by early October ’15 I had almost $1000 USD in points built up again and decided to start poking around for a frseh deal. Starting with my list of previous trading partners, along with the most recent publicly posted list of the most active sellers on the platform, I again started reaching out to let folks know I was looking for a sizeable trade. As per usual I barely bothered with a Want list at all (only listing Power 9 cards there for the most part), opting to instead make a note in my profile that I was looking for big ticket items and had points at the ready.

After a few conversations yielded no especially desirable opportunities, I was approached by a European dealer who had seen my profile notes requesting high value cards. He sent over some pics of a fairly sexy looking German Foreign Black Border Volcanic Island.

In case you aren’t aware, Foreign Black Border cards were released in Europe in the mid 90s as a result of a policy that dictated cards were to be black border the first time they were released in a given country/language. As such there is a relative fortune in black border Revised cards out there in German, French, and Italian. These cards offer many of the aesthetic benefits of Beta cards, but are in fact first run European Revised cards. Relatively rare in North America, these cards move reasonably well on Ebay and CardMarket.eu when priced a bit below market averages, especially if they are blue duals.

I had a bit of hesitation reviewing the pics of the Volcanic Island, as it seemed as though it might have a shuffle crease, but the buyer insisted this was not the case and that the card was easily SP quality. And so, after getting approval from Pucatrade admins to back my play on the normally unsupported foreign card, I negotiated a value of 84,000 points for the card based on the few Ebay and European price references I could find. I then sent a deposit of 54,000, with the rest due upon successful delivery and condition review.

Much to my delight, the Volcanic Island arrived within the week and indeed, proved to be a solid SP grade. Here’s what I got on a pretty good mail day:

With the lovely Volcanic Island in hand my confidence in PucaTrade as a solid option for trading up is upheld and I have already begun accumulating another round of points to put together another deal. See you guys next time!

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, “The Future of Collecting”, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

MTGPrice Blog