City of Traders

PROTRADER: Warning Signs

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By: Travis Allen

A kind and enlightened soul recently made the point of telling me how much he still likes what is probably the best thing I’ve ever written, “My Spec Quadrupled and I Only Made $.75.” (I hate that article title, by the way. I would change it if it wouldn’t throw off people looking for it.) It’s an oft-cited piece that describes exactly what so many in this field have experienced at least several times: even when the stars align and you hit your spec out of the park, you still aren’t necessarily guaranteed to make any reasonable money. Magic finance can be a real grind, and it isn’t the “step 1: buy 100 copies, step 2: make $500” easy money as claimed by the voices of the damned that one hears wailing and gnashing their teeth in the depths of r/magictcg.

Within the same day I found myself shaking my head at some of the items in the Single Card Discussion section of the MTGPrice ProTrader forums. There’s lots of good discussion in there, but occasionally some…less good ideas show up. I do my best to dissuade people where possible. While I’m sometimes able to divert people from poor life choices, the same mistakes continue to show up—a carousel of bad logic and wishful thinking.

Today’s article isn’t just an excuse to link an old work of mine. Rather, we’re going to consider the opposite side of a well-known coin. We’ve all seen (or written) the “how to pick good specs” article. Now how about some examples of bad targets, suggested in earnest by real people, so that we can avoid them in the future?

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Going Mad

Going Mad – Vendors, Magic, & You

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By: Derek Madlem

There seems to be some confusion about vendors. For those of you that have been watching from home, I’ve spent much of this year working with and around various vendors as both a buyer and a seller. One thing I’ve noticed from the other side of the booth is that there are a lot of people that just don’t really get what’s going on. As always, I’m here to help.

I’ll apologize in advance to all the seasoned #mtgfinance veterans out there, this article may be a little basic for you. If you’re looking for something a little more meaty check out this fine read from the archives: So You Want to Sell a Wingmate Roc

The Hot List

This is one of the most common misconceptions new(er) players have when it comes to selling cards. I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone sheepishly ask me, “are those the only cards you guys are buying?”The hot lists that vendors post are not the only cards vendors are buying, they’re simply a “hello”. Think of hot lists as conversation starters. Vendors pick cards that they know they can sell quickly and offer high prices on them just to get you to sit down so that they can make offers on the rest of your cards.

So you should just sell cards to vendors that are on their hot lists right? Sure, if you like wasting time. One vendors “hot” price is another’s every day price. But if you feel that standing in line to sell cards at seven vendors vs going to one or two is a good use of your time, then go for it.

The Buy Mat

Most vendors are going to have a playmat that’s organized in a grid with prices printed on it. These prices will generally range from small change up to $35+ and as you and the buyer agree to prices they’ll place it on the mat in the corresponding square and then total it up at the end.

Money_Mat_02_grande

This process is usually going to involve the buyer pointing at a card and telling you a number with you responding in some audible way. Most buyers don’t just yank cards out without asking first, but if they do just stop them and ask them to check first. Some people prefer to just tell the vendor to pull out everything and put it into piles and they’ll take back what they want to keep; as a buyer I always hated doing it this way but because it felt so impersonal, but some prefer it.

At the end they’ll shoot you a total, at this point if you’re looking at getting cards out of the case ask about any trade bonus they might have, it’s usually going to be around 20%, though some vendors do ridiculous bumps as high as 35% at times.

Trust

A number of people don’t know who to trust when it comes to selling cards to vendors. There’s a lingering misconception that selling cards to a vendor is like that famous line from Rounders:

Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.

The first thing that everyone needs to understand is that the era of vendors trying to shark you is pretty much over. There’s simply too much at stake. In an era when reputation and bad encounters can be amplified via social media and everyone has access to online pricing, there’s too much at stake to try to get one over on somebody for $3.

There was an era when basically any schmuck could show up at your local PTQ and offer garbage prices for your cards because they were your “only out” at the event if you wanted to turn cardboard into currency. That era ended with the death of the old PTQ system. Vendors are now in a situation where they have to feed the beast. They can’t just casually drop a couple hundred dollars on a booth and buy a thousand dollars in cards and call it a successful weekend.

We’re now in a world where the cost to set up a table at an event has become monolithic. Vendors can either shell out the bucks and run a $5K or similar event themselves, or they can buy into Star City Opens or Grand Prix events. A table at an SCG event is going to set them back at least a couple grand, while a table at a Grand Prix can scale all the way up to $10,000…and that’s before you pay for travel, employees, food, etc.

To put it simply, they can’t afford to waste their time trying to gut a couple of fish, they’ve got a business that depends on you selling them cards. For the average person selling binder chaff, you’re probably not going to see a huge difference between many of the vendors at a Grand Prix; it’s going to be a few dollars here and there but you’re not going to see that much of a difference until you start dropping piles of cards onto the buy mats.

Your Local Game Store

So why not just sell to your local game store? Chances are you don’t live in a major metropolitan area and  if you do, half your local game stores are poorly run to begin with…and there’s a good chance they’re not even set up to sell on TCGPlayer. Most local game stores just need some cards to sell, not all of them. They’re often the only game in town so they don’t HAVE TO pay as much as you’re going to see from your average GP vendor simply because they have no real competition.

The Lowball

The idea that vendors are going to try to shoot you lowball numbers on cards to try to screw you isn’t much of a reality these days, but there are still a couple reasons that you’ll get a lowball offer:

  1. They don’t know that the price of a card has changed drastically.
  2. They really don’t want it.

In the first scenario, it simply comes down to honest mistakes or lack of knowledge. When I was at my busiest working as a buyer, I would work shows many weekends in a row with only a few days in between so I was watching price moves daily and had the buy prices memorized for a number of cards. But when we’d be on an extended break, the last thing I wanted to do was look at charts of card price changes every day, so I would fall behind. If I had to work as a buyer this weekend, I would be way off my game for the first couple hours as I haven’t been following prices that closely for the past few weeks.

In the second scenario, different vendors want different things. Some vendors sell cards on Amazon.com and they want infinite copies of Colossus of Akros, while others do most of their selling at competitive events and only want competitive staples. Some stores just don’t want to carry an SP copy of an obscure EDH foil from event to event but others love having it in stock because they know their regular customers will snatch it up. Other times a vendor has just bought too many of a card and would prefer to spend that money on something else: Tasigur, the Golden Fang is a great card, but you can’t set up a booth that only buys and sells Tasigurs and be successful.

Typically if you get a number that seems low on a card, it’s because the vendor wants you to say no so that they don’t have to deal with the card.

The Negotiation

There’s a myth that you should haggle over the price of any card you’re selling because a vendor is always going to offer low on a card to start with, and that might have been true in the past, but it’s just doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. None of the vendors I’ve worked with wanted me playing games as a buyer. If we didn’t buy $X in cards an hour, we weren’t going to have a good weekend. For the same reasons discussed above, it’s just better for a vendor to lead with a strong offer and get the card than to have it walk away.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t haggle if a price seems way off, the buyer might just be unaware of a price fluctuation or might have a little room to give, but fighting over every single card is not in your best interest. Multiple vendors that I’ve worked with have instructed me that if someone wants to haggle over every single card, just close the binder and say “thanks” to open up the chair for someone that’s not going to be difficult.

The Elephant in the Room

The biggest mistake I see players making at events time and time again is lining up at the big name stores to sell cards while other vendors have no lines at all. This phenomena is especially true at SCG events. Star City Games has one of the most extensive buylists in the industry, but their buy prices are often among the lowest in the room for everything but the hottest of hot cards.

Much of this is likely a trust issue for newer players or just an unfamiliarity with the smaller vendors. Some players are only familiar with SCG because that’s where they get all of their content. As a consumer, you have to look at it from a different perspective – the stakes.

If you’re a vendor paying SCG $2,500 to set up a booth at their show, you have to compete to even have a chance at getting a return on your investment. Even if a vendor would normally pay less for cards and sell them for more (not sure how that’s possible), they have to change because they’re going to set up shop twenty feet away from the biggest name in Magic outside of Wizards of the Coast.

Big names ≠ big bucks. 

The SCGs, Troll and Toads, and Channel Fireballs of the world know that you’ll come to them because you know their name and you’ll do business because you’re already there. It’s in your best interest to start with the smaller guys because it’s often THEIR business and THEIR livelihood on the line, so they’re generally a bit more competitive.

Grand Prix Indy

If you’re going to be at Grand Prix Indianapolis this weekend and want to say hello, trade, ask questions, or even play some EDH, you can hit me up on Twitter @GoingMadlem. It’s my home turf so I’m going to try my hand at competing for a change.

 

Danny Brown, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Don’t Get Too Comfortable With Your Preferred Out

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For some reason, Khans of Tarkir didn’t grab my attention. I immediately knew the set was objectively good, with all kinds of possible decks from two to five colors. Yet, when the format was all said and done, I drafted it about a dozen times total, which is quite low for me.

I had attributed this not to a lack of interest in the set, but to the fact that my wife had our first kid shortly before Khans of Tarkir‘s release. The thing is, though, that my son is way more of a handful than he was last year, and yet today, all I want to do is draft Battle for Zendikar. Considering how good Khans was, that must mean Battle is even better.

Cream of the Crop

What’s really been drawing me in is the set’s difficulty. The format is very complex, with synergy playing a much more important role than in usual sets. A blue card that is excellent in black-blue may just be straight unplayable in white-blue. Figuring out this stuff is a joy, and after nearly 20 Limited events, I’m still trying to determine the proper balance between synergy and power.

What’s surprising is that I’m not even winning very much, yet I’m still interested in the format—usually, the formats I end up playing the most are the ones where I win the most matches. In this case, it’s the learning curve and the joy of discovery keeping me coming back, which is a huge endorsement for the design of the set. I’m hoping that more match wins will start coming eventually.

The need to reconsider many standard drafting practices is comparable to another issue I ran into recently: the need to reconsider one’s various outs for cards.

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Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Unanswered Questions

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Inspired by a recent article by our very own Douglas Johnson, I thought I might also take a stab at answering some unanswered questions from Reddit that are many #mtgfinancer’s minds.

Using the Weekly Ask MTGFinance Anything thread, I am going to try and answer all of the (currently) unanswered questions that may have been asked later in the week and got buried near the bottom. No question is a stupid question, so let’s dig our way up from the bottom and see what we have this week.

   

Mattscriv writes:

Alright guys, I decided to drop in and ask a few questions. Just to get this out of the way: I am in possession of a BFZ land brick. Is it okay to take off the plastic and use them, or will the value decrease a lot if I try to sell them later on? Second of all, I have a list of a few cards I was lucky enough to open in packs and I want to know whether I should keep, or get rid of:

Ruinous Path Shambling Vent – Foil Sunken Hollow Canopy Vista Liliana, Heretical Healer Archangel of Tithes Bloodstained Mire Dragonlord Ojutai Fathom Feeder – Promo Greenwarden of Murasa Sarkhan, the dragonspeaker Smothering Abomination – Promo Sword of the Animist

(Side note: I know that I should try to pick up ask many KTK fetches as possible, but what other lands around $10 or less should I try to pick up too? Pain lands?)

Thanks everyone that helps me out, but be warned, I may have further questions.

Land brick response:

Crack it and sell now. The only item that will maintain significant value in the future in terms of full art lands is the sealed Zendikar fat packs. The land packs won’t be worth much more than MSRP for all lands in the pack because players can get lands in boosters. Plus we also need to consider that Oath will contain full arts in many supplemental products as well.

Keep or Sell Questions:

Sell:

Sunken Hollow, Canopy Vista, Liliana, Heretical Healer, Archangel of Tithes, Dragonlord Ojutai, Greenwarden of Murasa, Promo Sword of the Animist, Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker

These cards are all propped up by Standard currently. I recommend selling cards like Sunken Hollow, Canopy Vista, Liliana, Heretical Healer, and Greenwarden of Murasa sooner due to Pro Tour and new BFZ hype to maximize the price you sell at.

Keep:

Ruinous Path, Shambling Vent – Foil, Bloodstained Mire, Fathom Feeder, Smothering Abomination

I believe all of these cards will either maintain value or go up in time if cards like Runious Path and Smothering Abomination find a home in Standard.

Side note response:

The only other Standard lands worth picking up right now are Khans trilands, which if you can get for $0.25 to $0.40 you should stock away in bulk. These tri-ands will be in great demand in the future because of all the Wedge Commander decks that people build and they are going to want copies for fixing.

dwaynebank writes:

Do you guys believe holday giftboxes will affect the price of fatpacks? I understand they also come with land packs, but they’re packs of 20, where the fatpacks have packs of 80. The MRSP on the holday gift boxes is $24.99. Is it possible the giftboxes sell out everywhere and will sell for more than their MRSP, similar to the fatpacks?

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT – No,  holiday gift boxes will not affect the price of fat packs because the holiday gift boxes contain regular art lands, not full art lands. The gift boxes should sell at past or current levels of demand.

Adelysium writes:

Hey all! After some good trading on Gameday I managed to procure a Jace. My intention was that its easier to move 1 card than the 15 I traded to get him, when I eventually know what I want and find someone with the some stuff I want. My questions pertain to him.

For maximum value should I try to move now or keep?
If we assume relatively few packs of Origins will be opened between now and when he rotates, how much is there to lose and will he rebound after a slight dip considering his playability outside of this format?

The fact is, I have the standard deck I want and am happy with, sideboard and all. As far as immediate gratification, I’m fine without trying to move him. However, if he won’t be this high within a year of rotating I might as well move now. I don’t have the intention to acquire more of him, that’s for sure.

Thanks for the help guys!

Move the Jace. It is at peak price right now due to a confluence of factors, which is explained in great detail by my fellow write Corbin in this neat little video he made on the topic.

There is quite a bit to lose in terms of Jace’s price if you do not move him soon – Snapcaster was only around $30 at the time of his rotation from Standard, and I expect Jace to be at that price point or less by the time he rotates from Standard next year. My more precise prediction is that Jace lands between $20 to $25 at Origins rotation. If he still proves as popular in eternal format then as now, rotation would be the perfect time to pickup copies for future growth since double-faced walkers are going to be tough to print in the future. Otherwise, if you have extra copies around that you aren’t using than I recommend selling ASAP.

kogikogikogi writes:

Is it possible to link friends directly to my mtgprice.com collection? I’ve googled around and searched their site but I can’t find it at all. If not I’ll just use export and use deckbox but having a direct link on mtgprice would be super helpful.

No, unfortunately we don’t have that feature of our collection manager just yet. For the current iteration of the website you will need to export and then send the file. However, we’ve been working very diligently on a mobile application for the website that should have many features that will make collection sharing better – trading with nearby users and remote trading should alleviate parts of the collection list sharing process. Though, having a button/permalink to your collection is also a nice feature. We’ll have to add it to our feature queue in the future.

   

DatsRadMan writes:

I have a foil promo Zada, Hedron Grinder (TCG: $6.65) and a foil promo Beastcaller Savant (TCG: $5.49) that I’d like to know what to do with – should I sell/trade them now or sit on them?

What are these card’s potential long-term? I have heard Zada is useful EDH card and Beastcaller has potential in Modern Elves (whether that’s true or not)…what do you guys think these cards will be at post-Standard rotation?

Thanks!

Zada and Beastcaller have gotten plenty of attention, Zada from the Commander crowd and Beastcaller from the constructed crowd. Personally, I believe that you should keep the promo Zada because even if he drops I don’t see it dropping too significantly over time. Foils in Commnader will always maintain value, and if he turns out to be a popular card in the format than the promo should also maintain value in the future.

Beastcaller I’m not so sure about. I would sell now while BFZ demand is still high and supply hasn’t crashed the prices. It doesn’t seem like a Commander auto-include and I don’t think it quite gets there in constructed.

G_Admiral writes

I have a bunch of sealed booster boxes from the Return to Ravnica block (mostly RTR and thankfully only a couple DM) and several boxes of Conspiracy. It seems like the price hasn’t moved since I bought any of them. Any thoughts on when it will move or if there’s an opportunity to open them and trade/sell singles?

Now this is an interesting question, where an entire article (or even series of articles) could be written about MTG sealed boxes and when is the best time to buy and sell sealed boxes .

First, let’s take a look at what I and others have said on this topic in the past. Sig and I have briefly discussed boxes as article subtopics, however James has focused two well written free articles on the value of sealed product and how booster boxes play a role in that.

Me:

https://blog.mtgprice.com/2014/09/08/ancestral-recall-casual-demand-and-why-its-important/

Sig:

Protrader – https://blog.mtgprice.com/2015/04/13/on-pro-tours-and-booster-boxes/

James:

https://blog.mtgprice.com/2015/09/25/is-magic-origins-the-next-innistrad/

https://blog.mtgprice.com/2015/05/21/best-bet-booster-packs-vs-fat-packs/

Now, the summary of all this information is that booster boxes will go up in value due to inflationary costs of packs at a normal rate except if they are extremely popular draft sets like Innistrad, which will go up even more over time. However, even if they are extremely popular to draft and have other in-demand eternal cards in the set, it will still take quite a while for you to get a turnaround on those boxes where it worth selling (factoring in shipping, fees, etc.). Sealed booster boxes are hard to move, and they don’t go up that much in value over the years especially if the set is post-Innistrad.

My advice to those who are packing away extra booster boxes of sets is not to crack them, not to sell them off en-masse now, but to play the waiting game. Eventually, these boxes will go up at some point, for one reason or another, if they contain eternal playable cards like shock lands or the new baby Jace. However, sets like Dragon’s Maze are a lost cause, similar to Saviors of Kamigawa. How old Saviors is compared to the price of those boxes is abysmal when considering the age. Unpopular sets will still be that the in future, and it’s the nature of the beast that some sets will be stinkers throughout Magic’s history.

CaptainKnusper writes:

What is your opinion on the filterlands (Twilight Mire etc.) ? Would you hold or sell them ?

Filter lands are extremely risky to hold onto long term at this point. Any reprint is going to cause the current prices of these lands to crash significantly. At least if they’re reprinted in a Standard set, they only drop by half initially since the reprint hype will be in full swing. But once the market is saturated? You can bet they’ll all be in the single digits (barring the more popular ones, of course).

However, for the short term the price should hold unless a surprise reprint happens in Commander 2015 which would be pretty unexpected. They will probably spike during the next Modern season next year, which will be the best time to get out. In summary, my advice is to hold until the next Modern spike next year and sell during the hype of the season.

   

VolcanicVaranus writes:

Does anyone think the Theros block temples will swing up in price eventually? I know that most stuff hits an all-time low at rotation, and many of the temples are sitting under $1. I know they likely won’t see much (if any) use in constructed formats, but do you think they’ll end up higher than they are now?

Yes, Theros temples will start going back up in price eventually, but it won’t be a swing but a slow crawl as the years go on. They have a high chance of being reprinted as well due to Scry now being an evergreen ability. So, they should go up slowly over time until the reprint. Many of them should go up past $1 (until the reprint) since they are all used in Commander in one way or another as budget lands but not enough that I would suggest picking them up en-masse.

DarthAbel writes:

You can get “Kiora, Master of the Depths” for $7 or less (TCGPlayer), is this a good time to pick a couple of Kioras or will she keep falling? Usually the floor for “meh” planeswalkers is around $5 but I am surprised about Kiora been close to the bottom so fast.

No, I don’t think now is the time to pickup Kioras. It was a no-show at the Pro Tour, so she should only go down in price more from here on out, especially if she makes another reappearance in the next duel deck product. If you want BFZ Kiora, I would suggest waiting until around December, when we start hitting peak BFZ supply.

Biohunter405 writes:

Hello everybody! My friend and I recently traded for a Mox, but due to inexperience and not understanding everything being said, we ended up with a “border inked” Unlimited Mox Sapphire. Now the border inking is not something we had taken into consideration, so we were wondering if getting it entirely altered through something like Klug alters would be a worthwhile endeavor? We’re just a little lost and would like some advice from some people with more knowledge than us. Thanks!

Very interesting question! I’m sure an article (or even series of articles) could be written on the value of alterations and what the market for alterations would look like. A great topic for this series would be your situation, where we have an HP/MP card that can be touched up and what the price of it would be after the alter.

I’m glad that this question was asked, because I have a friend that went ahead and did this for a foil Worldwake Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Here is the Klug posting for the story behind it and what it looks like after Klug touched it up. Now, this was a restoration-to-alteration rather than an alteration but I’m sure that this situation will be very close to what you want for the Mox. I’m sure if my friend tried to sell he would get a price very close to the current foil WWK Jace for the work that Klug did to the card.

Basically, the answer to your question is yes – I highly recommend that you get your card altered by Klug because it will look great and add value to the card. The waiting list is pretty long though, so be prepared to wait in the backlog for some time.

TheHat2 writes:

Knight of the Reliquary had a nice spike after BFZ was released, and has pretty well kept that high price in the weeks since. Where do you see this card going in the next six months?

I don’t see Knight of the Reliquary dropping until its next reprint. Retreat to Coralhelm is an awesome card with Knight that has spawned a new Modern deck, one that I don’t see being replaced anytime soon. I would say hold, and if you’re looking to get out of Knights to wait until peak Modern season next year. That way, if the deck does well at a huge event you can sell into the spike that Knight is sure to experience.

SOHC4 writes:

What’s Dragonlord Ojutai looking like? In the last week or so, I’ve seen it drop about $3. Doesn’t seem like Jeskai lists are running it anymore. Should I dump them now?

Yes, get rid of Dragonlord Ojutai if you’re not using him for Standard. He might experience another spike when Khans / Fate Reforged rotates from Standard but ultimately he will drop like a rock once Dragons rotates from Standard.

 

So there we are, as of Sunday night I’ve answered all of the unanswered questions for this week’s Ask MTGFinance Anything. I hope these answers provide some insight to everyone for my current thinking on several topics, and that they also continue to provide discussion on the future trends of topics in #mtgfinance. As always, thanks for reading.

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