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Weekend Update for 5/3/14

By: Jim Marsh

Every week, some cards from Magic the Gathering increase and decease in value based upon a number of factors.

Let’s take a look at some of the cards whose values have changed the most and the factors behind why those changes have occurred.

10 Big Winners of the Week

10. Edric, Spymaster of Trest
$12.34 to $14.33 (16.1%)

I think $12 was the new floor and $14 seems fair for this Commander. It is being used in 4 Color Delver and Noble Fish.

4 Color Delver made Top 8 on 4/20 in Detroit. It is earning its place and I would gladly trade for these at $10 to $12. I would not go too deep in them though. There is only one in the decklist. Commander and Legacy players alike will only need a single copy. It is still something good to keep in the trade binder.

9. Shivan Reef
$6.87 to $7.98 (16.2%)

Modern loves its Izzet decks. From Kiki-Jiki making a billion Pestermites to Goblin Electromancer and Pyromancer Ascension powering up Grapeshot for the win.

Both of these combo decks need their mana fixed consistently and quickly. They need to have blue for Serum Visions or Sleight of Hand and red for Lightning Bolt and Shattering Spree.

They both want to win quickly before Tarmogoyfs can attack for large amounts of damage.

Taking a little pain from your lands is acceptable to end the game a turn earlier.

Despite three printings Shivan Reef is still going strong. I would not recommend any of the other painlands. This is the only one seeing wide adoption. That is why it is so much more than the others.

I think these could be a strong sell as Modern season is approaching they have people looking for them but the power of the card probably gives it a ceiling of around $8. I don’t see this as a $10 card so your profit is already set.

8. Cephalid Coliseum
$2.30 to $2.68 (16.5%)

Cephalid Coliseum has been printed twice. It was an uncommon in Odyssey and it appeared in the From the Vault: Realms.

It is used in Legacy Dredge decks as a full playset.

It is a deceptively powerful land. For a single blue mana you can get an Ancestral Recall and mini-Buried Alive rolled into one.

You get to stock your hand and your graveyard at a very reasonable pace.

What’s more is that in a standstill you can use it offensively. You can target your opponent and essentially Burning Inquiry them to mill for the win.

We have recently seen Ichorid from the same deck increase in price. Mana Confluence from Journey Into Nyx will help the mana in this deck by upgrading City of Brass and will edge out Gemstone Mine or Tarnished Citadel.

More consistent mana should mean a more consistent deck.

I think this increase is deserved and would be happy to trade for them around $2 from anyone who still has old price memory.

7. Shadowborn Demon
$6.06 to $7.15 (18.0%)

Shadowborn Demon is a mythic rare from M14. It is currently used a 2 of in Golgari Dredge Standard decks. It also sees play in Junk Reanimator.

All of its play is in Standard. It has not see any adoption in other formats. I would be surprised to see it reprinted in M15. I would also be surprised to see it stay higher than $1.50 once rotation hits in another couple of months.

There may be a little growth but I don’t see much opportunity compared to the amount of risk associated with this card. I would trade these as fast as I could.

6. Nether Shadow
$1.72 to $2.11 (22.7%)

Nether Shadow is a staple of Legacy Manaless Dredge decks.

The fact that it can be brought back from the graveyard turn after turn and attack or chump block for free gives it immense value.

We are not going to see any future printings because Wizards of the Coast no longer supports cards that care about graveyard order.

It has been printed six times if we count both Alpa and Beta so it will not see explosive growth. It will grow slowly over time.

Nether Shadow knows that sure but steady wins the race.

5. Drop of Honey
$38.75 to $47.74 (23.2%)

Drop of Honey is a rare from Arabian Night. It is powerful as cheap, repeatable green removal. It is also on the reserved list.

Most importantly is that it has been used in mono-green 12 Post decklists as a sideboard card.

I think the fact that this card now buylists at the price it had last week is evidence that retailers have a lot of faith in the card.

12 Post has been making top 16 in MTGO daily listings but if it can break Top 8 I could see this getting to $60 or $70.

4. Karador, Ghost Chieftain
$4.50 to $6.35 (41.1%)

It seems that all of the wedge commanders are being snatched up while the snatching is good. It is easy to see why.

They have color combinations that are difficult to print in normal expansions.

Their abilities are unique and fun.

Karador plays in a lot of space that makes him popular with casuals.

He has interested interactions with the Graveyard and can provide value as he lets you cast your creatures over and over again.

He is one of only four Commanders in his color combination. Each one offers very different styles of deck that they want to be played in.

I think he will continue to grow in value as time goes by. He is tough to reprint in a normal set so the only opportunity for him to show up again is in future supplemental products.

3. Urza’s Miter
$2.44 to $3.98 (63.1%)

I did not even remember that this card existed. It only has two things going for it.

It was a rare from Antiquities so there are few in existence. It is on the Reserved List.

The ability is expensive and does not even work in a deck that wants to sacrifice its artifacts to Megatogs or Grinding Stations.

I see no reason for this price increase except for someone trying to get cute with the market. Stay away.

2. Winding Canyons
$5.85 to $9.61 (64.3%)

This rare from Weatherlight is on the reserved list so there is very little supply.

It is not seeing play in any tournament format. Where is the demand coming from?

There is not a Commander deck in existence that should not ask itself if it should run a Winding Canyon.

The ability to give any creature in any deck flash can disrupt any potential combat situation.

You can trigger evolve, constellation or even throw down a big Blightsteel Colossus or Meglonoth as a surprise blocker.

Just imagine how devastating casting something like Sunblast Angel can be as an Instant during combat.

The last time Wizards of the Coast gave a similar ability to a land was Alchemist Refuge.

I think this price is here to stay.

1. The Mimeoplasm
$3.78 to $7.17 (89.7%)

Everything I said about Karador can be repeated here.

The Mimeoplasm was only printed in the original Commander decks and Commander’s Arsenal.

What I love about The Mimeoplasm is that he is in great colors and let’s you mix and match your creatures in endless combinations.

Need a 15/15 evasive infect creature? Just splice Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon and Worldspine Wurm.

The great thing is that is just gets better as more creatures are printed. I think that this recent surge in prices for Commanders is actually a price adjustment that has been warranted. I would not mind trading for them at these prices if I wanted to play with them.

I do think the chance to make a quick buck has passed.

5 Big Losers of the Week

5. Necropotence
$7.81 to $6.64 (-15.0%)

Necropotence is restricted in Vintage, banned in Legacy and too dangerous to reprint outside of From the Vault: Exiled.

That still leaves casual kitchen tables and mono-bloack Commander decks who want to relive Black Summer.

This card is a piece of Magic history and is one of the most powerful card drawing engines ever printed.

It has shown steady growth for a while and this is just turbulence. I would grab as many at $6 as I could and hold onto them. I would not be surprised to see them as high as $10 by the end of the year.

4. Ghostly Prison
$8.54 to $6.85 (-19.8%)

This looks worse than it is. I still like Ghostly Prison for the sheer power and versatility it represents in Modern and Casual formats. It has already had a tremendous year and I expect it to show up in every deck running Sigil of the Empty Throne and then some.

It plays a strong defense allowing you to buy time to get to your win condition. It makes attacking you problematic and swarming you impossible. Suddenly having twelve 1/1 goblin tokens from Empty the Warrens is not such a dangerous proposition.

This is another one I would try to trade for.

3. Disharmony
$6.24 to $4.99 (-20.0%)

This rare from Legends is on the restricted list. It is a powerful combat trick but otherwise unremarkable.

I think $5 is about right.

2. Silent-Blade Oni
$8.34 to $5.99 (-28.2%)

My outlook on the demon ninja is the same as it has long been. It likes to play ping pong between $5 and $9.

I would trade for it at $5 and trade it away at $9. This just may mean it is time to keep your eyes open for that $5 copy soon.

1. Lotus Petal (From the Vault: Exiled)
$40.0 to $28.49 (-28.8%)

There are a number of competitive Legacy decks that play a full four copies of this handy artifact.

If you are a Legacy player and have a fully foiled deck then you need these. They are the only way to get a premium Petal.

I would get in on these. I think they will be back to $40 and even $50 sooner rather than later. You will be glad you got your play set for around $100 when that happens.

Casual Fridays

The Cards You’ll be Sick of

1 Comment

By: Cliff Daigle

Journey into Nyx has given us some very interesting cards to use in casual formats. Some of them will be niche cards at best, but others are going to see a lot of casual play even if their price isn’t very high.

I’m going to rate these based on what I’d do if I opened these at a Release Event, with the set still new and prices high.

Ajani, Mentor of Heroes

This cat does it all, unless you’re losing. His lack of board impact means NOTHING to the superfriends decks, the ones that play almost every Planeswalker and Doubling Season. (Except Tibalt. No one plays Tibalt.)

This Ajani not only completes the two-color combinations for Planeswalkers, he digs for those friends quite quickly. You’re going to sigh when he lands, because he’ll grab another annoying card almost immediately.

I don’t see this making a big splash in Cube, it’s a bit slow for that, but if you can get $25 in trade I’d make such a deal. A warning: as a mythic PW in a third set, he’s got a very real chance to spike hard during the next block. Better to take the sure thing, though.

Prophetic Flamespeaker

I admit I misread this card. I thought you’d be able to cast it without paying the mana cost. Instead, we get the pseudo-draw of Chandra, Pyromaster. In the next year, in Standard and in casual games, you’re going to have to correct someone how it works far more than you want to.

Even with that, it’s a card with both double strike and trample, a combination that has only been on Dragon Tyrant so far. (Someone forgot Greater Morphling. -ed.) Any equipment, any pump spell, and this guy is ready to set the world on fire.

Kruphix, God of Horizons

For all sorts of reasons, this is going to be a popular card in casual games. Fun color pair, enables big spells, no maximum hand size…and indestructible on top of that. At first I thought it was lame that the mana became colorless, but then I realized that if the mana kept its color, you’d need many colors of dice to keep track of what was still being saved.

Exiling enchantments has never been more necessary in EDH games, for this God and its kin.

Worst Fears

I understand why this needs to exile itself after use. I’ve seen Mindslaver/Academy Ruin locks and Wizards wanted to avoid adding another one of those. I do like the point-and-click nature of this spell: No warning, no chance to get Krosan Grip-ed before use…just take their turn. Done.

I think this is going to be the card that keeps its price higher than expected for a while, like Primeval Bounty in M14.

Dictate of Erebos

Grave Pact is a little rough on the mana with triple black, and others can see it coming. Giving it flash means that the surprise value is going to be very, very high. Having some iconic art (especially in foil!) doesn’t hurt at all. I don’t think this is going to be a Standard player, but it will be a mainstay of kitchen table Magic for quite some time.

What to Grab

I told you last week to trade everything you open, but at certain prices, there are things I’d try to trade for this week in the release event (All prices as of Wednesday):

Mana Confluence at $15 – I will be surprised if the big MC goes below $15 for its time in Standard. The foils are at an appropriately ridiculous price, indicating the appeal of this card in casual/pimp formats. I’d be happy to pick these up at $15 in value, because it won’t go below that for very long, if at all.

Temples at $6 – The two temples of Journey into Nyx are going to be the rarer ones, as I’ve covered before. I think $6 is a great price point for lands that I’ll be trading away at $10 in the middle of the next block.

What to Ship

Godsend at $13: While the effect is neat and there’s a chance of Legacy play in the True-Name Nemesis matchup, it’s just too much mana. More likely this settles in around $7 for the casual crowd.

Prophetic Flamespeaker at $10: While I think you’ll see a lot of this card, it won’t hold this price for long. A spike is possible, since it’s a mythic, but the safer play is to get out now. If it hits $15 in a year, oh well. Look at something like Deadbridge Chant to see the other path it could take.

Good luck at your events!

Think Twice

The Importance of Organization

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By: Camden Clark

It has recently come to my attention how important organization and keeping records really is.

In an abstract sense, many of us would nod our heads and agree that, yes, organization is important. We should all be keeping records too. Few would argue with these seemingly logical standpoints. Many would say “this is basic.”

However, outside of the abstract, how are you really improving your organization to maximize the value you get out of this game?

Let us talk about organizing your cards.

Many of us have that box. That box is the one that has all of the excess cards we have obtained through the years. We rarely know the exact inventory of the cards we have in this box. We fail to keep track of the amount of rares we have in that box, the uncommons, the commons, or what set any of them are from. 

That box could be holding a few Serum Visions or Spell Snares. The easiest thing to do to organize your cards is to go through it in phases.

The first phase involves combing your collection for rares and other money uncommons and commons. If you generally know the era of Magic where your cards come from you can print out a buylist from those sets and look through it before going through your cards.

You may be surprised how much value you pull out. There are lots of cards playable in Modern and Commander that are great to throw in your binder. Even common foils move well. I and many others in the MTGFinance community attest to how many Oblivion Rings they trade away to people who simply don’t want to buy a playset online.

Once you pull out the cards with value, you can organize them into a few different binders. Yes, this means you might be taking apart your current trade binder. Do not fret: this will get you more value in the end.

I like to have three binders:

  1. One for the hottest standard cards. Shocklands, scrylands, and Standard playable cards galore. I generally try to trade into newer sets with this binder.
  2. One for Modern/Legacy cards. Any kind of dual land, Modern and Legacy commons, uncommons, and rares all go here. Commons like Serum Visions trade surprisingly well and are not that difficult to obtain in trade.
  3. One for Casual/Commander cards. This one is typically the bulkiest. There will be tons of foils, Commander staples, etc. that move out of this binder. Keeping this one stocked will net you massive gains from seemingly silly foils and trade you into cards that hold more weight. I might even say this pool of cards will trade the most.

It is easy to gauge who will want to go through which binder first. The guy who is asking you to play a multiplayer EDH game with his Zedruu deck is probably a good target for the Commander staples. Conversely, the guy who grinds PTQs could probably care less about your Sol Ring collection. These are all generalizations but making a good first impression with your first set of cards will make them want to go through the rest of your collection anyways. Having these three binders will allow you to be more organized and trade with a wider variety of people.

After you get through your binders, you should go back to the bulk commons, uncommons, and rares. You should now take out any rares and mythic rares. You can save these in a separate box for bulk at a later date or keep in a dusty old binder in case they spike. This is a good way to utilize MTGPrice’s collection tool. You can input all of the cards that you have in a junk binder and be able to see if any spiked recently. Needless to say, you could make a whole bunch of money. Going forward, if any of them spike, you will be able to see that too.

After you have a box of simply commons and uncommons, you should go through and sort it by format. Which ones are Standard legal? Which are Modern legal? Which are only Legacy legal? From here, it will be much easier to break them up into each set.

From that point, you can comb through to find an obscure card whenever or be better organized to sell bulk if you go to a major tournament.

To many of you this seems basic. Trust me: take a day to reorganize yourself. It is very worth it.

Now let’s talk about the other end of organization, taking inventory.

This is a quintessential part of speculation and should be paid attention to whenever dealing in cards. Generally the advice is: do what the card shops do.

You should know what quantity you are speculating in and how much you bought in for. You should also know how much you spent on shipping. I like to keep this in a spreadsheet.

The above is the absolute basics.

What are you doing with the above information? Other than being able to make an informed decision about when to sell, how does it help you in the future? Where do you learn about the bad decisions that you made and the good decisions that you made? 

I’m a big fan of learning from our past experiences and using statistics to evaluate why things went correctly or poorly. A recent article caused me to think really hard about the essential elements of Magic speculation that many people gloss over. They look at the retail price but fail to see the overhead and other costs involved.

Thus, from the start, you should be evaluating how much the buylist/eBay price is going to have to rise before you make any money at all. You should do a gauge on shipping costs and factor that in to a spreadsheet.

In your spreadsheet or somewhere else you should also write a serious evaluation of why you bought in to this card and what trajectory you expect to see. I say this not to cause self-doubt but rather to evaluate the decision making calculus and thought process. We are not sterile computers, we have off days, we make mistakes. However, we can come closer to understanding everything that causes us to make our decisions. By gathering as much data as possible we can make better decisions in the future.

Thus your spreadsheet should have the following things:

  • The name of the card you are speculating in
  • The amount you bought
  • The lump sum price you paid to acquire all the cards
  • The lump sum of shipping you paid to acquire all the cards
  • Average out a total price per card including shipping

Then for the eventuality of selling

  • The shipping you will probably need to pay per card
  • A formula box that shows the price each card will need to reach to make any money

And finally you should include an explanation for why you bought the card.

I will be creating a template for a spreadsheet on google docs to share with you. If you are interested in getting this, follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/CamdenClarkMTG

Spreadsheets are invaluable tools for keeping yourself sane-ask any accountant.

As a supplement to your own tracking, a great way to find out where the cards in your collection are at is the collections feature on MTGPrice. I use this one to find out where the price of all my cards are at and see how they compare to the price I need to be at. I really like seeing which cards have increased in value recently and you should too. That can be an invaluable way of not having to look up every card individually. When you are ready to sell, it’s quite easy.

Using Google Docs (Drive?) Spreadsheets and the MTGPrice tools in conjunction I have most of the information available to me that I need to trade. When I am at an event, I can pull up the spreadsheet of the cards I am speculating on and seeing if I can pick up any more copies at similar prices minus shipping.

I really like the spreadsheets for when I am watching coverage of major events as well. I can quickly plug in the expected prices of a card and find out how much it would have to go up in order to make any money at all.

Now that we have organization out of the way, I plan to create a Modern portfolio that answers a question I see all the time on /r/mtgfinance: “What should I invest one-hundred dollars into?” This portfolio will take the lessons from this article into account and document the picks I plan to make with such a small sum of money.

Thanks for reading. Does this portfolio idea sound interesting? What organization methods do you use? Respond in the comments.

City of Traders

My Spec Quadrupled But I Only Made $.75 Each

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By: Travis Allen

First was Kaalia. She climbed to $15, then $18, and is now showing $26 here on the MTGPrice tracker. Animar followed this past March, although he hasn’t quite gotten as high yet. He’s currently $12. Sometime a few weeks ago Corbin Hosler was pointing out Damia, Sage of Stone to his companions on QS and lo and behold in the past three weeks she’s climbed to $15.

A lot of people were scratching their heads on this last one. Kaalia is easy to understand. She’s what you get if you take the two most popular tribes in Magic, along with a third semi-desirable one, and shove them into a single card. Of course EDH and kitchen table players all over the place are going to want her; she has both the words “Angel” and “Dragon” printed on her. 

Animar was a little less obvious but is still understandable. He doesn’t have blatant support for tribes like Kaalia does. Instead, he’s rocking the counter theme. +1/+1 counters are popular with the silent minority as cards like Doubling Season and Parallel Lives have taught us time and time again. He’s also Johnnyrific with that last line, enabling scads of broken interactions in a format such as EDH.

Damia caught most of us by surprise though. What’s Damia do? She…draws some cards I guess? Don’t get me wrong, she’s obviously very powerful. I have a Damia deck myself and it’s probably the best EDH deck I’ve built so far. Those are the three best colors in EDH by a wide margin. But her effect is just not splashy. She doesn’t have the word “Elf” on her, she doesn’t enable an alternate win condition, and she doesn’t enable any combos that are going to make your buddies jealous. She simply generates value.

At that point, it was pretty clear everything from Commander was on the table. Who would be next? Karador, with his serious graveyard synergy? Graveyard strategies have always been popular with casual and spikey types alike. Riku? Riku does some pretty awesome things with doubling both spells and creatures, another fan favorite. Edric already popped awhile ago after Drew Levin suggested him as a Legacy spec.

When I looked over the Commander list at that time Ghave jumped out at me. A buddy had a Ghave deck and I remembered him being exceptionally strong. Being a one-card enabler for all things tokens seemed excellent to me. We already know that type of effect is popular and Ghave can turn it on all by himself. He was super cheap, with plenty of copies under $4 available. I decided to run with it. I tweeted about having purchased thirty-five or forty copies. Forty-eight hours later I was rewarded. Ghave jumped from the few bucks I paid for each copy to over $10 on TCG. A clean, fast, easy purchase. My spec had more than tripled in price. Now it was time to roll in all the money I had made.

Except, I hadn’t.

A little while after Ghave spiked I had a slightly dismaying revelation.

I’ve been staring at this pile of Ghaves on my desk for the last week or so now and I’ve decided to use it as an example of the actual cost of speculating like this. How much do you really make on a spec?

Capture

Here’s my TCG order of Ghaves. You can see I bought twenty-five copies at $3.35 each. I live in New York, so I get the privilege of paying sales tax at TCGPlayer. All said and done I paid $3.64 per copy of Ghave. That looked real good when they were getting relisted on TCG for $15 at first.

Now here I am ready to sell my Ghaves. How should I out them? Let’s look at the most painless process; buylisting. Buylisting is really the best option for anything you spec on for more than a few playsets. If you bought twenty copies of Sphinx’s Revelation when they preordered for $6 then eBay would be your best bet. That’s only five playsets so it’s easy to ship them. What if you bought three hundred Burning Earth for $1 each though? They jumped to $4+ TCG at one point, but have fun selling seventy-five playsets on eBay. Even if the entire process was fee-free the time it would take wouldn’t be worth the extra scratch you’d make over buylisting.

Capture

Using MTGPrice, I see that the best buylist is currently StrikeZone at $5 a copy. Oh. Hrm. Ghave is over $9 mid on TCG right now, but the buylist is still only $5. That’s kind of a bummer. Even though my spec looks excellent on retail prices, my profit margin is actually a lot smaller than you would think.

You see, when you look at specs it’s easy to compare retail to retail. “I bought at $X, and now the card is $4X.” That looks like you quadrupled your money. The reality of the situation is that you’re comparing retail to buylist. You paid $X at retail, but you aren’t selling at $4X retail. You’re selling at $Buylist, which is $2X if you’re lucky. It’s still a profit, but it isn’t going to make you nearly as much as you thought it would.

Alright, so I’m going to sell these twenty-five copies of Ghave to StrikeZone at $5 each. That’s $125 for all of my copies. Now I just need to get them all to StrikeZone. Shipping four cards in a bubble mailer is $2.91 with delivery confirmation, so I’m going to ballpark about five dollars in postage. Don’t forget your sleeves, hard loaders and bubble envelope though. We’ll say that’s $1 for everything together.

$125 from buylist – $5 shipping – $1 materials = $119.

Looking at StrikeZone’s buylist page, you have the option of receiving your payment as a check or via PayPal. There’s a $3 processing fee on checks and PayPal takes around 3%. SZ will be sending me $125, 3% of which is $3.75. I guess I’m taking the paper check.

$119 – $3.75 check fee = $115.25.

Alright, I’ve got the check in my hands. After shipping the Ghaves to SZ and getting paid, I have $115.25 in my pocket. It originally cost me $91.08 to make the order, so how much did I make?

$115.25 – $91.08 original cost = $24.17

Less than twenty-five bucks. That’s a bit under $1 a copy. How long did it take me to do all of this? At least an hour right? The experienced buylister can do it in under an hour, but not all will accomplish the task that fast. So I made roughly $24 an hour. That’s fine I suppose, but it isn’t anything remarkable. Some of you reading this make less than that at your job, some of you make more. Most of us can agree that the absolute value of $24 isn’t all that much though. It’s probably most of the bill for some takeout Indian food for you and whoever it is that’s currently tolerating your company.

I could possibly try eBay for outing my Ghaves if the buylists are too low, but a quick search there shows me they’re selling for barely $5. Over at eBay you need to ship each card individually, and you better do it with tracking unless you want to get royally screwed. That’s going to destroy your profits to the point that you would actually lose money selling copies.

You also won’t be selling these as playsets. At least with those theoretical copies of Sphinx’s Revelations you could sell them as sets. People would want all four. But Ghave is a commander. Nobody needs more than one copy. Keep this in mind in your future spec purchases. Can you sell them as playsets or are you only going to get buyers on one copy at a time?

So where did it all go wrong? How come I made so little? Didn’t my spec basically triple?

Well yes, yes it did. At retail prices.The buylists never reflect that though, at least not right away. The buylists on Ghave may eventually get up to $8 or even $10+, but it will take continued, sustained demand and enough people buying the card at $15+ to push them that high. That could very well happen, but not overnight. Unless the card we’re talking about is a breakout combo piece it will take weeks and sometimes months for buylists to climb that much.

There are lots of other factors to be aware of here as well. Not every flip is going to behave quite like this. Sometimes the seller will flake and refuse to send you copies, in which case you accomplished nothing except being $100 short for a few days. Other times the cards will get lost in the mail and you’ll have to argue with the TCG and the seller. Sometimes they’ll be damaged or otherwise not quite NM. Maybe the buylist won’t even need all the copies you’re selling. In fact, SZ only wants eleven Ghaves. What do I do with the other fourteen? Perhaps the store will be one of these that jerks you around, and once they have the cards they’ll offer you $3.50 each instead of the listed $5. If you sell your spec on eBay you have to deal with shady buyers that are going to take any opportunity to take advantage of you. (Hence the required tracking on anything sold through eBay.)

Heck, what if the card you speculated on didn’t even rise? Or only gained twenty percent? All of those potential issues only arise if the card manages to jump enough to be worth selling. There will be plenty of times where that doesn’t happen. Into the box of shame they go. Sometimes the buylists rise a little faster too of course. But how often do you think that happens compared to one of the above situations?

What I want you to take away from all of this is that speculating is not equivalent to printing money and that you are likely to make much less money than it seems like you would. When a card doubles, triples, or even quintuples on the surface, most of the time the profit realized by the people who got in on the ground floor is zero to maybe thirty or forty percent of their investment. It’s time consuming if you’re new to the process and it’s fraught with hidden risks. There is the potential to clean up for sure, but every time a card jumps from $3 to $11 it doesn’t mean that a shadowy cabal of speculators just quadrupled their money. It means a bunch of people that owned between ten and two-hundred copies made 25% of their investment.

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