Tag Archives: collection buying

Facebook Acquisitions, Part 2

October 15, 2015 Douglas Johnson 5 Comments

My definition of when I buy a “collection” has always been loose at best. I classify pretty much everything as a collection, because it’s just easier to have a category in place for when I mark it on my spending spreadsheet for the month. Even if I just buy someone’s EDH deck at buylist prices, I label it as a collection. Four thousand commons and uncommons that a Legacy player was looking to move from his basement? Also a collection in my book. Maybe I should start to refer to the smaller pickups as “acquisitions,” because I’m not buying out their entire accumulated (or collected, if you will) lot of cards. I’m just buying what they don’t need at the moment.

Lik Dis If U Cri Evertim

Back in May of this year, I wrote about my first few lots that I had purchased through Facebook at buylist prices. I’m not referring to that guy from high school on your friends list who happened to see one thing in his feed about Magic, so he sent you a private message reminding you that he still lives in the area and has a collection of cards he wants to sell you from 2003 to 2005. While those are nice and lucrative (albeit rare), I’m talking about having someone from California ship me two of her tier-one EDH decks at buylist prices. You don’t have to spend time sorting through bulk, and you just get to immediately throw the cards up on TCGplayer, eBay, or another buylist that you know will pay just a little higher than what you gave the seller.

Are these acquisitions an every-day occurrence? No, definitely not. I will say that they’ve been a more frequent find than Craigslist nowadays, and I find myself sending messages to sellers at least a few times a month on average (compared to less than once a month of finding a Craigslist ad worth sending a reply to). Not every seller is willing to take your offer of approximately buylist prices, and that’s okay. We’re there to give them options, not force-feed them our Cutco knives.

I’m going to go through my most recent ~~collection~~ acquisition step by step, and try to show you how both sides can leave the conversation and transaction without being ripped off, and without feeling like you’re being ripped off.

Where Do I Find Them?

Well, you want to be a part of a lot of Facebook groups, for one. Does this result in a somewhat unsettling amount of garbage posts that you really couldn’t care less about? Yeah, definitely. Thankfully, you quickly learn who’s a frequent poster, who to “hide” posts from, and how to immediately recognize if a post is worth your time in the first few words. To get started, I recommend joining all of the groups that I listed in the first article. All of those groups are still active, and I’ve picked up (or sold) cards in every one. In the past several months since that article has gone live, I’ve found a couple of new groups that you can also find some value in:

MTG SICK deals (Magic: The Gathering)

Magic: The Gathering (Buy, Sell, & Trade)

The SICK deals page doesn’t have nearly as many “buylist”-esque posts, but I highly recommend joining it if you’re a player who still occasionally wants to buy cards for personal use. The prices are always cheaper than TCGplayer or eBay, and can be very close to buylist sometimes.

Although these are the most prominent groups that don’t correlate with a specific region, I still highly recommend networking with your local area and joining most of the region-specific groups on Facebook. Finance aside, they’re good ways to make friends, carpool for events, learn about new sales your LGS might be having, etc.

However, certain areas might have your juicy Facebook acquisitions on lockdown without you even knowing it:

Derek bought up an excellent point that I had never really run into (at least that I know of): some area Facebook groups may be moderated by the same people who buy and sell collections as a source of income. If the group settings require posts to be submitted to an admin before they’re accepted, then we may very well be missing out on a lot of the sweeter deals before they even go public. While there’s unfortunately nothing we can really do about that, you’ll probably notice eventually if there just don’t happen to be any good deals at all on your local Facebook group.

Fool Me Once…. Or Not At All

Any of you who were previously aware of the Facebook MTG market are probably familiar with horror stories of players being scammed out of cards, not being paid, or their trade partners blocking them and never getting the cards they were supposed to. It sucks and it’s definitely a risk that we take anytime we deal with someone who we don’t know personally through an unregulated, third-party channel like Facebook. I’m lucky enough to have never been ripped off throughout my experiences buying on FB, but I believe that’s partially because I’ve learned to be very cautious in the steps I take before a transaction.

Before I first send money to someone else over the internet, there are a couple of basic precautions I take:

I want them to name me at least four out-of-state references, who I will then message and confirm the legitimacy of the person I’m trading with. The reason I try to specify out-of-state references is because it’s not too terribly difficult for any old Scamming Sammy to be a fine and upstanding citizen at his LGS or be well-known as a great guy at his local PPTQ, but turn into a ruthless shark on the pseudo-anonymity of Facebook. Sammy can easily ask his Facebook friends from the LGS or PPTQ to be his references for his online trades, and they wouldn’t be the wiser to his cheating. I want references who have dealt with Sammy through the mail, preferably those who are unbiased and have never met him in person.
I want physical pictures of the cards themselves before and after packaging, a tracking number, and/or shipping label receipt before I send any money. It’s easy for someone to ask Sammy for a tracking number, and he types 5479678564156469896 (or something that actually looks similar to a legitimate Paypal/USPS tracking number), and have the number “not work” during the first day or so before it gets processed. Can they still technically get around my request by taking pictures of the cards, packaging up a bag of rocks and shipping them to me with no return address? Sure, but then you’re getting into mail fraud territory and I think the number of people who are willing to go through all of that trouble is a lot lower than you’d expect.
Lastly, I really recommend paying through the PayPal Goods & Services option if the cards you’re buying get to be in the hundreds-of-dollars range. At that point, you’re always better off protecting yourself, even if it is an extra three percent out of your own pocket. If I’m paying $850 for a small pile of cardboard being sent through the mail by someone that I’ve never seen before in my life, I want the support and dispute resolution of PayPal on my side.

Options

Now we’re getting to the part that you probably hoped I would start out with. Negotiating a price to buy other people’s cards at buylist prices from the comfort of your home or smartphone. Let’s look at my most recent Facebook acquisition, and how I broke the ice with my seller.

Unfortunately I didn’t save the initial post before I got the idea to write this article, but he provided a list and initially said that he was looking to get $1000 for the entire lot.

First and foremost, I always take everything to a private message discussion. I don’t want to start a bidding war in the comments section, and I don’t want to get a hundred notifications from other people commenting their offers. I comment with “PM sent” (or “PM me” if their privacy settings are too high) to ensure we can discuss everything between the two of us.

Thankfully this seller was very realistic about the options he had, and was very pleasant to deal with throughout the entire process. It’s not always this easy, and some sellers don’t take kindly to offers, either due to delusions of grandeur or refusing to accept the true cash price of their cards. You don’t want to message someone who’s selling organized singles at 10-percent off of TCGplayer mid and try to offer buylist—you’ll just be wasting your time. You want to look for a post similar to this one;

Although this particular person ended up wanting way too much and was expecting an unrealistic price, you want to look for those types of key phrases. “Getting out of the game,” “need to sell soon,” “$XXX or best offer on the lot,” and “have to sell for X” all immediately set off green lights in my head.

When you’re negotiating and presenting your initial offer, you need to present yourself as an option, and make it clear that you’re not necessarily their only or their best option.

Let’s make up an imaginary scenario to demonstrate how I go through these situations. Jason has $500 TCGplayer mid worth of singles that he wants to move on Facebook as a lot and makes a post asking for $350 OBO. He gets a few comments on the thread asking for prices on certain singles, but Jason would really just rather avoid the hassle altogether and ship one package. That’s where we come in. Once we get confirmation on the important card conditions, potential foils, and other information that wasn’t visible in the initial picture, we present our offer.

“Thanks for helping to clarify with that information, Jason. $350 is a really good price and I’m sure someone else will probably pick it up at that number, but it’s just a little too high for me personally. I was going to offer $270 for the entire lot, and I can PayPal today if that makes a difference. If you end up changing your mind, you’re always welcome to message me. Good luck with the rest of your sale :)”

Instead of shoving a number down his throat, we gave him an option. A price of $350 isn’t too bad—someone might actually decide to buy at that number, and that’s okay. We didn’t want to bid against that person, anyway. However, it’s more likely that the seller won’t get another offer over the next couple of days, even if he does bump his post. We gave him the power to make a choice between taking our immediate offer, and holding out to try and get more from someone else, with no pressure or strings attached.

Sometimes, I’ll take it a step further and outline all of a seller’s other options to them as well, especially if I get the sense that they’re trying to maximize their value in selling off their collection. Explain to them that if they want to squeeze the most value out of their cards, they should probably list the higher-end singles on TCGplayer or eBay, or price the cards out individually to sell on Facebook at ten percent below the cheapest matching condition copy. Let them know about other buylists like Card Kingdom, ABU Games, or Strike Zone, and explain the process of buylisting to them if they’re foreign to the concept.

The key is to be blatantly transparent, and present them with as many options as possible. Most of these options involve getting paid more than you would pay them, but that’s fine. Fortunately, this transparency has two advantages for you in addition to giving your seller information to make their decision. The option you gave them is probably the only one that would pay them within the next day or two, and cash in hand is king. If they list their cards on eBay, they won’t reap the full benefits for multiple weeks, or even months. Buylists can take a while to process, but you’re a buylist with a very quick payment process.

The other benefit of this transparency is that it smooths the air between buyer and seller, and tension goes down. You’re no longer seen in their eyes as the “guy who’s trying to lowball me and rip me off,” because you’re the one who just told them about all of the other ways they could make more money instead of selling to you. You’re just one of their options, and you have a serious advantage on all of the seller’s other choices as long as you follow the steps to protect yourself as mentioned earlier.

I hope this helps. Happy hunting!

End result of the list earlier in the article :) — End result of the list earlier in the article. You can do this too!

Conjured Currency

The Reasons Why I Hate Magic Finance

August 6, 2015 Douglas Johnson 26 Comments

Yeah, you know me. I’ve been writing articles on Magic finance for almost two years now, so I’ve basically figured out every single thing there is to learn about this extremely delicate ecosystem we live in. I’ve written some of the greatest, quality-est stuff of the decade, and some of the lesser minds of the community have pretty much suggested that I’m the Batman plus Superman plus Goku of Magic finance, all put together in one currency-conjuring package.

I’m just going to assume that you read The Art of War: MTG finance edition that’s still hot off the presses from last week, so now that you know every gory detail about the millions of dollars that I rake in every day from my vast and expansive MTG finance network. Seems like a pretty freakin’ sweet gig, right? Gonna go out and start up your own MTG finance business like me, are ya? I don’t blame you, my life is pretty sweet. I sleep on a bed made of the finest foil Tarmogoyfs, delivered on a bicycle by Pete Hoefling himself. Every day, I buy sets of Alpha power from 48-year-old men who say stuff like, “Hey, I just found a bunch of this stuff in their basement, and was wondering if I could get a few hundred dollars for it all.” Every night, I listen to my own podcast. You know, the one I spend four hours recording, where I’m the only host. #MTGFINANCE

Well I’m here to let you in on a little secret. MTG finance isn’t all fun and games. It’s a ruthless and papercutthroat world out there, so only the strong, smart, and incredibly attractive can survive. It’s a ton of hard work every day, and it has some of the most grueling aspects of any job out there. You’ve seen the best parts of MTG finance, so now I’m going to show you what the other writers are afraid to reveal to the public. These are the things I hate most about working in Magic: The Gathering finance.

1. Alphabetizing/Sorting cards

When most people use “C/U” as an abbreviation for “common/uncommon,” they’re referring to bulk lots of non-rare peasant cards like Glistener Elf, Blighted Agent, Brainstorm, nonfoil Force of Wills—you get the idea. Personally, I don’t even touch filthy low-rarity cards unless they’re foil, and either Japanese, Korean, or Russian. And let me tell you, it’s a huge pain to constantly have to sort and alphabetize all of these absurdly expensive cards. Sometimes, I even run out of programs to watch on Netflix, and have to degrade myself to watching reruns of anime that I’ve already completed. As you can see in the first image, we have Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood playing in the background, with a freshly sorted pile of Russian foil Gitaxian Probes, Young Pyromancers, and other garbage.

The second picture is my top-tier professional sorting tray; only the experts have this type of smooth, black plastic. I would tell you where to get it, but you should have been paying attention to my previous articles, where I already told you where to find it. Unfortunately, this tray doesn’t hold nearly enough cards for my personal needs. The 42,000 cards beneath the tray are all foil Legacy and Modern staples that need to be alphabetized, and a small, peasant-sized tray like this isn’t going to be quite large enough to support my exquisite needs. Ugh. The thought of these cards touching a playmat to be sorted and sold is making me sick, so let’s just move onto the next annoyance that I have to deal with in my stressful existence.

2. Telling People Their Parents are Dead

Yeah, that’s an occupational hazard in MTG finance. What, you don’t believe me? I’m serious here.—100-percent serious. Alright, fine. Let’s go though a normal scenario that I’m sure you’ve been through. You talk to a guy about buying his collection, and he says it’s pretty small. He’s mainly a casual player that has only been casting spells since Fate Reforged, but he has about a hundred rares. Tsch, just another small collection. Doesn’t anyone have anything better? Whatever, let’s get this over with. Maybe he’s got at least one judge Force of Will that will make it worthwhile.

You meet up with the ~~peasant~~ guy at his place, and he pulls out his precious little fat pack box. The first card you see when you open the lid is an unsleeved, moderately played Spine of Ish Sah from the Commander 2013 product, and you vomit in your mouth a little. Not a good sign. After flipping through the rest of the fat pack box, you calculate that the most expensive card in the box is his Flamewake Phoenix, and that’s only because it managed to stay near mint. You look this guy in the eye and see his hopes, his dreams. You see his ears, ready to hear the words, “I’ll give you $30 for everything.” It’s such an innocent face, completely unaware that its entire world is about to be turned upside down. You have to breach the subject gently, ease into it.

“Look, Marcus… Some rares are worth more than others. Those are the ones that have a lot of demand to tournament players, and are the reason that players buy booster packs. Unfortunately, I… I don’t see any of those particular rares in here. There are a lot of rares in Magic that… that aren’t worth more than a dime. Even a lot of commons and uncommons can be worth more than those rares, and we in the buying and selling business tend to call them ‘bulk rares.’ I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but… all of these rares are bulk rares. I know that you loved them, and, uh, tried to take care of them… but there’s nothing we can do here.”

See? Exactly like telling someone their parents are dead. It’s another reason I hate MTG finance, but someone’s gotta do it. I have to be the buyer and seller that my small college city wants, and the one it needs. Let’s be real here: my bottomless money pit is needed by all of those looking to unload their collections to me.

3. Having Any Competition At All

As one of the high-rolleriest high-rollers in the business, it absolutely shocks me that I don’t have swarms of Magic players knocking on my door to unload their stacks of gem-mint Beta power. I mean, how come this poor soul gets to find a decent-sized collection through his connections? I’m pretty sure I live within eight hours of that guy, and somehow he didn’t bring the collection straight to me. I post Craigslist ads in my local area, have henchmen that distribute business cards across the tri-state area, and even occasionally post to Facebook groups where I’m using my oodles of cash to purchase huge collections at below buylist prices. For some reason, my potential customers still end up occasionally visiting other competing stores or financiers, and giving their delicious profit cardboard to people that aren’t me.

This is another tweet that leaves me sick to my stomach. Bobby is a great guy and also located on the east coast like myself, and yet he’s displaying pictures of quality Magic: The Gathering cards that I do not personally own. He’s making my MTG finance monopoly much more difficult to establish by undercutting my personal profits through sweet deals and quality salesmanship. If he would just ship that entire collection to me for below buylist prices, it would make everything so much easier, and MTG finance would be a much less stressful job.

Now some of you are probably thinking: “But High Arbiter of MTG finance, how are you going to sell cards if you buy all of the collections and cards in your area? Won’t that drop tournament attendance, reduce the amount of Magic being played, and put stores out of business?” Well, young and budding financier in training, all of those will almost certainly happen. What you’re forgetting to take into account, though, is that I’ll be able to sell all of those Magic cards that I buy to my secret underground network of vendors across the world, and I’ll make a lot of money. I’m switching the structure of my bed to be composed of foil copies of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy to keep up with the “poor person” fashion style, and living this lifestyle can be a struggle filled with sacrifices and trials. Or something like that. Hold on, let me get the door. Pete is here with my Jaces.

**4. Selling Magic: The Gathering Cards**

Sometimes, I think about having subordinates who will aid me in the massive undertaking that is shipping out my card orders everyday. I absolutely loathe doing it all myself, because it involves actually looking away from the Netflix screen for a few seconds to write down addresses on envelopes, print shipping labels, and other boring crap. I even have to pull the cards out of my solid gold trade binders myself, like some kind of blue-collar animal.

While I obviously mentioned that I already have henchman distributing my business cards, I unfortunately cannot trust them with the task of handling my vast fortune of cards. They work purely through the motivation of fear and intimidation, and have every reason to try and rob me of my hard-earned profits. I cannot let them near my empire, and must handle this dark burden of shipping and packaging alone.

On another note, can you believe how annoying some customers get? They feel that it’s okay to waste my time by making “small orders” like a stupid Modern Jund list, or a foiled out Standard deck. Like, why even waste my time if you’re not going to drop $20K on Alpha power? If you want that type of peasantry, just shop at TCGplayer or something. Ugh.

End Step

Yeah, the End Step is still here. I’m not some god damn monster who’s just going to complain for this entire article and then not impart any actionable knowledge into your grasping minds.

Here. Sell these Magic cards if you’ve got ’em. If you were in on them before the Pro Tour, give yourself a pat on the back, and then sell them.

You know where to reach me. I’ll return at the same time next week, with some absurdly useful MTG finance tips. You’re welcome.

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

July 13, 2015 Jared Yost 15 Comments

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

Let’s take a look at the Magic Origins Clash Pack to see if it is worth picking up in order to boost the value of your collection. I’ll look at both the MSRP versus retail value of the singles and then compare them to my opinions of what the future value of the cards will be after their rotation from Standard. I’ll also keep in mind that some of the cards from the decks are alternate art foil, which could reflect their future value.

For the alternate art foils, I am going to use the TCG Median price since MTGPrice does not yet track the value of specific clash pack foil versions of cards. I will note the special foils with three asterisks ***.

Decklists:

ARMED	$$$	DANGEROUS	$$$
1 Anointer of Champions	0.22	2 Ainok Bond-Kin	0.28
1 Dragon Hunter	0.32	2 Disowned Ancestor	0.26
1 Honored Hierarch***	3	3 Lightwalker	0.42
1 Seeker of the Way***	0.71	1 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit	2.47
1 Dromoka Warrior	0.18	1 Avatar of the Resolute	1.6
2 Topan Freeblade	0.28	2 Abzan Falconer	0.4
2 Undercity Troll	0.46	1 Tuskguard Captain	0.18
1 Consul’s Lieutenant	0.3	1 Mer-Ek Nightblade	0.18
1 Dragon Bell Monk	0.14	1 Abzan Battle Priest	0.19
2 Valeron Wardens	0.48	1 Longshot Squad	0.14
2 Citadel Castellan	0.76	1 Siege Rhino***	4.5
2 War Oracle	0.48	1 Elite Scaleguard	0.19
1 Outland Colossus	1	1 Dromoka, the Eternal***	0.5
1 Kytheon’s Irregulars	0.9
		2 Cached Defenses	0.42
2 Epic Confrontation	0.22	2 Map the Wastes	0.28
2 Enshrouding Mist	0.28	2 Incremental Growth	0.32
1 Feat of Resistance	0.15	2 Ultimate Price	0.68
2 Mighty Leap	0.28	1 Scale Blessing	0.2
1 Pressure Point	0.13	2 Dromoka’s Gift	0.4
1 Valorous Stance***	2	1 Suspension Field	0.24
2 Titanic Growth	0.3	1 Debilitating Injury	0.14
1 Dromoka’s Command	6	1 Abzan Ascendancy	0.3
1 Collected Company	18	1 Citadel Siege	0.72
2 Pacifism	0.5	1 Ancestral Vengeance	0.14

2 Blossoming Sands	0.3	2 Jungle Hollow	0.3
2 Evolving Wilds	0.44	1 Sandsteppe Citadel***	0.69
1 Windswept Heath	14	2 Scoured Barrens	0.3
11 Plains	0	2 Blossoming Sands	0.3
10 Forest	0	7 Plains	0
		6 Swamp	0
		6 Forest	0
Total Cost:	$51.83	Total Cost:	$16.74

The MSRP cost of the clash pack is $24.99, so looking at these two decks priced at $25 feels like highway robbery. Collected Company and Windswept Heath makes this a very juicy pickup indeed. On top of that they decided to throw in Dromoka’s Command, Siege Rhino, Honored Hierarch, and even Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit for fun.

The retail value of the singles versus the MSRP of the deck doesn’t automatically mean that everyone should buy this. Yet, I’m pretty sure this is the first clash pack released that is more than double its MSRP value in singles if you were to pay TCGPlayer Median for them. I’m wondering if that means the singles in the clash pack will drop significantly or if this clash pack will sell above MSRP for its life in Standard due to the value of the cards.

Big Reprints

Collected Company

So this card is almost $20 TCG Mid right now as a Standard legal rare. Only out since April, Collected Company has already spiked three times due to Modern hype and the amount of decks that it has helped to push in the Modern format, on top of Standard demand in decks like Devotion to Green and Selesnya Aggro. Please realize though that this card isn’t Snapcaster Mage, so I don’t think that the $20 and higher price point is going to be sustainable for long.

It took a long time for Snapcaster Mage to break the $25 barrier. While it was in Standard, not only did it NOT receive the clash pack treatment but it also never went far above $25 as a fair trade price and could easily be acquired in cash or retail for $20 or less. Collected Company isn’t going to be nearly as ubiquitous as something like Snapcaster Mage. I mean, Birthing Pod decks at one point was putting up numbers in the mid-30% range of Top 8’s in Modern and even Pod never went farther than $20.

Standard legal cards are tricky, though. Since CoCo is so popular in both Standard and Modern the new price could be sticking. However, with the clash pack reprinting I’m guessing that something similar to what happened to Courser of Kruphix is going to happen to CoCo.

See that dip there in Jan 2015? That’s about the time the clash pack came out. Courser dropped $5 and never recovered in price. Now, CoCo also has significantly more Modern demand going for it, which is part of the reason the price is so wild right now. Though I feel that as more Dragons of Tarkir packs are busted that the hype will die down and that Collected Company will settle between $12 and $15 for the rest of its Standard life with a dip at rotation. However, if you were savvy enough to get in on Collected Comapny at $4 prerelease prices then definitely get rid of any extras you have before the price starts dipping again. This is the highest we’re going to see it for a while, and the clash pack reprint means the price is only going down.

Windswept Heath

I don’t think the clash pack printings are going to have any effect at all on Windswept Heath’s price in the near future, other than to stabilize it further at $15 compared to the other currently Standard legal fetchlands. The price isn’t going to lower significantly, as I don’t think we’ll ever see sub-$10 fetchlands in Standard since they are so vital to mana bases in the format and beyond.

This is a great opportunity to get in on Windswept Heath once copies from the clash packs saturate the market, since I’m guessing that many players are going to want to pick this clash pack up for the value. Once the price on Heath stabilizes, it’s going to be nice to pick up extra copies to use as trade bait later in Heath’s Standard life.

Dromoka’s Command

Dromoka’s Command is never going above $6 due to the clash pack printing. It previously had highs of $10 closer to the release of Dragons of Tarkir, however now that the hype has died down and Standard might be taking a new direction as the fall approaches, demand for Dromoka’s Command has wavered and retailers have updated their prices to reflect that.

Siege Rhino

I think that similar to Whip of Erebos that the clash pack printing of Siege Rhino will reflect the pack version’s price. The alternate art isn’t great on this card, so the regular foils of Siege Rhino will still be worth more than the clash pack foil but will stabilize quite a bit due to the clash pack printing.

In general, I’m not sure if Siege Rhino will ever go much further than $6 retail during its remaining time in Standard. Abzan is already starting to wane in favor of other strategies, so the demand for the Rhino has also been waning.

Honored Hierarch

The jury’s still out on Honored Hiearch, as Magic Origins has just been released, however I think that it definitely has potential in Standard since Wizards is showing that they are moving away from one mana manadorks in favor of cards like Rattleclaw Mystic. My personal evaluation of the card is hot garbage, however I’m no professional player and also noted that Wizards released this as a rare which means that in playtesting it was too powerful as an uncommon (maybe for limited reasons?).

Either way, due to the clash pack printing and the already low price of $2.50 to $3, I don’t think that the Hierarch is going anywhere in price for the time being. Seems like it is tricky to get going in Standard, and even then your reward is only Birds of Paradise.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit

Any chance that this card had of going over $3 was just killed. Now that there are going to be even more copies of this version of Anafenza out there the price isn’t moving. In fact, it could even go down based on the release of the clash pack.

If a later Standard strategy utilizes her, the price might move back up towards $3 but I don’t think there is room for growth here due to the clash pack reprinting.

Summary

The awesomeness of this clash pack can’t be understated. There is a ton of value here and I’m sure I’m not the only person that noticed. The big-box retailers are going to sell this clash pack for $30 or more based on the card values yet there are always deals to be had. I’m sure plenty of retailers are going to have this for $25 (or less even) so if you want to pick up the clash pack for a cheap copy of Collected Company and Windswept Heath for Standard play you can’t go wrong.

However, I would caution that once the singles dip in price that the deck will get less and less valuable and therefore less attractive as a pickup. For example, after Collected Company and Windswept Heath stabilize in price, most of the value cards are going to be $3 and less with just tons of bulk thrown in there. It’s going to be hard to trade or out the cards as more time goes on, so if you want to make the most of this clash pack then it is better to sell or trade the singles sooner rather than later.

Conjured Currency, Modern Masters

Dealing with 150,000 Bulk Commons

May 27, 2015 Douglas Johnson 9 Comments

I’m not going to talk about Modern Masters 2015.

“But DJ, it’s the hottest ne—”

Don’t care.

“There are a bunch of complaints about the packaging an—”

Nope.

“This set is going to make Tarmogoyf into a $50 ca-”

No, it’s not. And I said I don’t care.

Maybe that’s a bit of an aggressive opening to this week’s article, but it’s honestly how I feel. I’m not diving in headfirst and buying mass copies of cards that have been reprinted, and I’m not squirreling away boxes of the set so as to gamble on their long-term desirability.

My methodology stays that same throughout this turbulent time in pricing, and that’s, “Buy stuff at or below buylist prices, and then sell it for TCGplayer-low through local individuals, Facebook groups, and on TCGplayer itself.” It’s really that simple, for the most part. If Timmy/Tammy cracks a Mox Opal but was hoping for an Emrakul, I’ll be happy to ship her $20 for it so that shecan grab two more lottery tickets.

…I just talked about Modern Masters, didn’t I? Crap.

That Is Over Now, Though

Actually, this article is supposed to be one that will continue to be useful months and years after MM2015 stops causing a financial hurricane. About a month ago, I purchased a pretty large lot of bulk commons and uncommons: approximately 150,000.

Thanks to being able to negotiate with a past employer who owns a videogame store, I’m able to have access to a display case and physical retail location where I can buy and sell singles, collections, and bulk lots. My most popular item is definitely a lot of 1,000 randomized commons and uncommons sold in a BCW storage box for $7.

Quick aside: While I used to highly recommend ordering these boxes en masse from BCW itself, its shipping costs have changed since I last ordered from the site.

supershittyshipping — “Super Saver Shipping”? Not exactly.

If anyone reading this knows of an alternative method to acquire 1,000 count boxes for a cheaper price, please feel free to let me know so I can spread the word. I’d like to know for myself as well.

One of the “Magic Rules of Magic Finance” that I tend to repeat a lot is that I will always pay $4 per thousand on unseen bulk commons and uncommons and never more. If I am already stocked up on tens of thousands of cards and am in no rush to acquire more, I’ll lower my buy price down to $3 per thousand. If the person I’m working with wants to trade for cards out of my binder, I’ll give $5 per thousand. Because a large majority of the cards in this lot were common and sorted by set and color, I ended up giving $500.

Sorting 150,000 Commons

It’s actually a lot more annoying for me to buy collections of commons and uncommons that are sorted methodically by color and/or set, because casual players don’t really want 14 copies of Pensive Minotaur all lined up next to each other. They want one or two of each minotaur from the set, and some supporting cards from other sets so they can build their own 78-card unsleeved minotaur deck akin to how Tony Stark built his first Iron Man suit. The more randomized, the better, and I let people know that before they sell to me.

The most frustrating part of this buy was effectively randomizing the 100,000 cards from the recent blocks of Return to Ravnica and Theros and mixing them into the older stuff that was among the collection. Ideally, you want a wide mix of cards in every box so that Timmy/Tammy doesn’t feel like he should have just dropped his money at Wal-Mart on two packs of Return to Ravnica and gotten some rares with a chance at a planeswalker.

(Side note: announcing that you threw a planeswalker into one of these boxes may have the side effect of new players ravenously buying out every single box in hopes of being the winner of the Golden Ticket).

Thankfully I’m a college student and have other friends who had nothing to do but pick through my intimidating wall of Magic cards. That plus the promise of food and Netflix helps.

A Barren Landscape

No, we didn’t find a Wasteland or anything else close to that amount of money in a single card. The person that I purchased the lot from had thoroughly picked it of almost everything that I would have set aside, and I was actually more impressed than anything. It was definitely the cleanest-picked collection I have ever seen, so it freed me up to skim through a lot of the sorted cards without worrying about missing anything. However, there were a couple of things that I did end up finding…

Shadowborn Apostle has gone the way of Relentless Rats, to the surprise of zero people. While buylists only pay around $.15, they’re easily able to be unloaded locally in sets of 20 for $15 to all of those casual demon players or anyone wanting to make a fun EDH deck with Athreos, God of Passage. Out of dozens of forgotten M14 commons, these guys helped make up for the fact that all of the relevant uncommons were already spoken for.

As for the tokens, I’ve previously written about how tokens are often forgotten about and can be free money. While not all of them will be worth $.50 to $1 on a buylist, they’re easy ways to add a little bit of value to a trade here and there. At the absolute worst, I like to use them as throw-ins when I sell their associated card on TCGplayer, to practically guarantee a positive feedback review. As a general rule, a token will become more expensive as its associated card increases in price. If SCG will pay $.25 a piece for Young Pyromancer tokens, you can get at least $.50 to $1 from the actual players who want to use them.

Eventually, I ran out of uncommons to ration appropriately throughout the 1K boxes. What I had left were 50,000 or so commons without additional uncommons, so I decided to label and price them differently without waiting to get my hands on more uncommons. As you can see in the picture, the “1,000 commons and uncommons” boxes are labeled “1K”, and the ones that have zero uncommons are labeled “1KC”. You can’t see in this picture, but I have the labeling explained on the top of the boxes as well. I’ll be selling the ones with just commons for only $5 per thousand, and it’ll be a nice experiment to determine whether the casual players who shop at the store are more attracted to having uncommons in their boxes or the lower price tag associated with removing them.

Moving 150,000 Commons

Thankfully, I have more than one out for these. In addition to having a passive source of income at the store, I’ll be making a Craigslist ad for these once I get back from Vegas now that I’m home for the summer.

I’ve even seen a bit of interest on Facebook for buying lots of 5,000 cards for above my usual sell prices, which helps take shipping into account. The sentence, “I just want to have a bunch more cards to add to my collection, kind of like opening a much less expensive booster box,” is music to my ears, so I’ll be looking into Facebook in the future to not only sell singles, but bulk lots that have been customized to have rares and mythics included.

Overall Evaluation of my Experience

I’ve seen multiple other articles where at the end of the exercise, the author will break down and calculate exactly how much money he made through buylisting the picked singles, selling the bulk, and determine an hourly rate that he basically worked for. I’m not going to do that. I already know that I probably made less than minimum wage during the time that I was randomizing these cards, boxing them up, moving them into the store, making advertisements to sell them, etc. However, I’m also a college student who didn’t have a whole lot else to do other than work on school papers, play League of Legends, and watch Netflix.

I don’t need to be told whether or not it was worth my time, because I understand that not every collection earns you $300 an hour because you happened to find a playset of Forces in the small box labeled “old blue commons.”

End Step

I forgot to mention this last week, but thankfully I haven’t really seen anyone mention it since. While everyone else was complaining about the higher-end cards that weren’t in Modern Masters 2015, I saw that Spell Pierce had also been omitted. I don’t think that it has too high of a power level for Standard, so I wouldn’t be completely shocked to see it in something like Magic Origins or in the next Zendikar block. I think selling these off is the call for now.

I had a local casual player ask me if I had any Archenemy schemes, and I was surprised to see that some of the random ones I had that were collecting dust were actually worth a decent amount of money. If you have schemes or Planechase planes from the multiplayer sets, I recommend doing an inventory and seeing if any are worth buylisting or throwing up on eBay/TCGplayer. Hint: the Time Walk one is worth something.

Anyone have personal stories of buying massive amounts of commons and uncommons? Find anything cool, or was it cleaned out like mine? Let me hear your stories! I’ll be in Las Vegas for the Grand Prix as of this past Tuesday, so hit me up on Twitter if you want to find time to hang out!

MTGPrice Blog

Tag Archives: collection buying

The Reasons Why I Hate Magic Finance

1. Alphabetizing/Sorting cards

2. Telling People Their Parents are Dead

3. Having Any Competition At All

**4. Selling Magic: The Gathering Cards**

End Step

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

Dealing with 150,000 Bulk Commons

That Is Over Now, Though

Sorting 150,000 Commons

A Barren Landscape

Moving 150,000 Commons

Overall Evaluation of my Experience

End Step

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY