By: Travis Allen
If you’re the type of individual that checks in weekly to read some words written by some guy about how much children’s playing cards cost, you may have noticed I was absent last week. I was off at the Finger Lakes, enjoying copious amounts of wine and lounging about on inner tubes. You could have read Jason’s article about boats or whatever it is he writes about these days instead, I guess.
I started a new job this Monday—the first adult job I’ve had in over two years (I’ve been goofing off as a research assistant while earning my master’s degree since). As I begrudgingly head back into the 9-to-5 world, at least for the time being, my engagement with Magic finance is going to change. With a real job comes an increase in liquid funds and a decrease in time available to monkey around with big volume and small prices. One of the downsides to our hobby is that Magic doesn’t scale especially well when compared to something like the actual factual stock market. Buying 100,000 shares at $0.01 each and then selling them for $0.10 is just as easy and profitable as buying and selling a single giant share. Buying and selling 100,000 Magic cards, though, is a task best left to the folks at SCG, CFB, and the like. That means that as funds and time head off in different directions, so too does one’s methodology need to evolve.
With a new stream of income and the calendar halfway through August, now is the time to make big plays. It’s well-understood by now that this is the time of the year when cards are generally at their lowest price point they will ever be, especially those that will be surviving the coming rotation. That positions a large slew of Standard cards to be potentially valuable buys. As you browse lists of Khans of Tarkir, Fate Reforged, and Dragons of Tarkir, know that at least a handful of the card names you read will triple or quadruple in value, and several cards of currently reasonable value will find themselves with double digit price tags. Typically, we’re left trying to find the omens and figure out which flips could buy us a new Legacy deck, but my goal today is to mostly sidestep that process.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.
