Tag Archives: MTG finance

Conjured Currency, Modern Masters

Dealing with 150,000 Bulk Commons

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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.
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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.

1-BX-800_1_800-COUNT-STORAGE-BOX

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.

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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

Wasteland.full

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…

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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.

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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!

ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Make Money By Going Nostalgic

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I remember 1993 as if it was yesterday. The World Series was won by a Canadian team, the Toronto Blue Jays. Canada also took down a Stanley Cup, something they haven’t done in a while, via the Montreal Canadiens. It was the year of “Got Milk?” and Mrs. Doubtfire was outclassed only by Jurassic Park in the movie world.

According to http://www.pop-culture.us/Annual/1993.html, “The Habit” of 1993 was a little collectible card game called Magic: the Gathering.

 

Shivan

Anyone who played Magic in the early-to-mid 90’s remembers wishing this card was in every pack they opened…ok this isn’t precisely the case, but I sure remember wishing I owned a copy of this top-end creature. Even now, 20 years later, I feel incredibly nostalgic when looking at my favorite classic cards. That nostalgia is my primary motivation for maintaining a separate “not-for-trade” binder. The binder isn’t about value, though there are certainly some valuable cards inside. It’s more about cards I’ve enjoyed as a kid or cards with artwork I love so much that I want to keep a copy of the card forever.

In the “New Age” of Magic — Modern Masters 2015 reprints, flashy sets filled with Dragons and computer-generated artwork — my nostalgia for classic cards and art grows continuously.

And it seems I’m not the only one who feels this way…

Welcome to Old School (93/94)

From http://oldschoolmtg.com/, here’s a brief overview of the format:

“93/94, Old School Mtg, started 2007 in the casual Magic scene in Gothenburg, Sweden, and have since grown with players across Europe and North America. A total of seven sets are allowed in the format: Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, and The Dark…” [SIC]

Essentially, this is a fledgling format all about enjoying the Magic of yester-year. While technically I didn’t start playing Magic until 1997, I can still appreciate the concept of a format based around the earlier days of the game, where cards like this were highly relevant:

Icy

“Seriously? During the release of the most financially impactful set of all time, you’re going to write about Alpha Shivan Dragons and Beta Icy Manipulators?”

Yes, for two reasons.

First, I am 100% confident you will be inundated with Modern Masters 2015 articles throughout the week. From strategy and how to build a sealed pool to what cards to sell immediately to what cards to acquire, it’ll all be covered by my esteemed colleagues here. While I could be content to share my thoughts, I suspect they’ll overlap tremendously with the rest. Frankly, I’d prefer to write something unique that will bring new perspective to MTG finance.

Second, I suspect there is some very relevant financial information associated with this nostalgic phenomenon. More and more players are talking about older cards and I’m noticing my Twitter feed is filled with this buzz. But there’s no explosion of interest yet – I would go out on a limb and suggest this isn’t even as big as Tiny Leaders, which is arguably more hype than actual format. That being said, getting into this format on the ground floor is absolutely critical.

Don’t care about a nostalgic format? Too young to remember casting Juzam Djinn and Hypnotic Specter? This may not be important. I’m not here to sell you on a (yet another) format; I’m writing this column to drive awareness of a small trend with potential for profound financial impact. This is about getting in front of the curve.

Some Observations

Doctor Superstition (@DSuperstition) is an active member of the Old School Mtg community, and he’s been tweeting some curious observations of late.

Tweets

These comparisons fascinate me. They may not be incredibly successful in converting players to Old School MTG, but they present some intriguing, hypothetical trades — even highly relevant trades, considering all the MM2015 booster packs that are about to be opened. Imagine opening a Mox Opal at GP Vegas, only to be offered a Beta Hypnotic Specter in trade for your sweet pull. Would you do it?

Mox Opal

Hypnotic

As Doctor Superstition pointed out, the two cards have roughly the same value. But looking at the charts above, which one would you rather sit on for the long term?

Ok, so it doesn’t take much to convince folks that old-school cards are safe to hold for the long haul. Everyone can look at charts like those above, comparing MM2015 reprints and playable Beta cards, and make this same conclusion. That’s not the most breakthrough observation, I’ll admit. But it does plant a seed in the back of my mind for when I’m in Vegas…

The “ah-ha” observation comes from looking at other charts for Old School Mtg cards alongside the current stock of major retailers such as Star City Games.

Consider Tawnos’s Coffin, for example, which is seemingly sold out across most the internet.

Coffin

This is the buyout that no one is talking about. The Antiquities artifact is sold out mostly everywhere, and you can see how both the value and buy list price jumped simultaneously, a sign of very positive upward momentum. This isn’t some forced buy-out here – this is a move backed by retailers. And you can bet the farm that when SCG restocks this card, it’ll have a much higher price tag than its current $24.99 one.

Of course, the trend on Tawnos’s Coffin could be a fluke. It’s a powerful Commander card, so maybe people are finally discovering it? It’s plausible, but I don’t believe Tawnos’s Coffin is the only old-school card suddenly gaining interest.

Old Man

This is one I’ve been highlighting on Twitter lately. Old Man of the Sea’s price seems stagnant when looking at the green curve. But when you assess the blue curve, indicating top buy list price, you can see a noteworthy incline. Retailers are having a tougher time keeping this creature in stock, and it won’t take much to see a sudden spike here as we did with Tawnos’s Coffin. Though it’s worth noting Star City Games has nine total copies in stock with NM listed at $59.99 (this is $10 higher than the price was a month ago).

One of the neatest Old School Mtg card is Chaos Orb, which has also seen significant buy list increases over the past couple years, including one earlier this year.

Chaos Orb

I hear it’s not easy to keep nice copies of this rare artifact in stock. Star City Games is completely sold out of the most affordable Unlimited version, with a NM price of $99.99.  This card seriously deserves more attention than it is currently getting.

The three examples above highlight an important trend – these nostalgically popular cards are destined to increase in price. This should come as no surprise to people. What’s critical to consider, however, is the potential impact an Old School MTG format could have on some of these prices. Let’s face it – there aren’t many Chaos Orbs and Tawnos’s Coffins out there. Any spike in demand, no matter how small, could have a profound impact on card prices.

I’m not here to incite a buyout. If people were to suddenly start speculating on these cards like they did on Tiny Leaders, it could prove detrimental to the health of Old School MTG. Availability is a major consideration here.

But I am trying to inspire you to consider adding a few of these cards into your MTG portfolio. They provide tremendous stability with significant upside. In fact, I’d probably rather have a few Chaos Orbs than, say, a couple booster boxes of Modern Masters 2015. I believe there is much greater upside and lower risk to the former. MM2015 boxes may be good investments eventually, but with so many unknowns right now in this unprecedented time, I can’t help but encourage caution.

Wrapping It Up

Thus summarizes my strategy heading to GP Vegas. Some players will be anxiously dumping the pulls from their MM2015 booster packs. Others will be keenly aware of dropping prices, attempting to pick up their Tarmogoyfs and Vendilion Cliques at a favorable price. While I have a short Modern shopping list myself, I’ll be most interested in picking up some of these older cards.

The reason for this move has nothing to do with my desire to play Old School MTG (although it does sound like a fun format). Rather, I’m noticing a gradual trend towards these nostalgic cards and I recognize that any spurt in demand could lead to drastic price fluctuations. A small surge in Tawnos’s Coffin interest has caused one retailer to double their buy price overnight. ABU Games and Star City Games are two vendors that do not like being out of stock of these older cards – if that trend occurs too frequently, they WILL up their buy prices.

By keeping an eye out for deals now, and trading strategically into some of these nostalgic cards over time, you set yourself up for strong portfolio growth going forward. And if this 93/94 format ever does grow legs, you could be looking at some surprising double-ups. Even if that doesn’t happen, collecting stuff like Guardian Beast and Island of Wak-Wak is just plain fun. With most of these cards also being on the Reserved List, you can be confident your investments will, at a minimum, hold their value.  Cards like these remind me of what initially got me into Magic. Collecting these cards and then making bank on them would just be icing on the cake.

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

Here are a few other Old School Mtg cards I have my eye on for GP Vegas:

  • I mentioned Guardian Beast towards the end of this column. The Arabian Nights creature has increased in value by about $10 over the past year. But what really interests me is the top buy list price, which has been steadily increasing throughout 2015. SCG has three total copies in stock, with zero being NM ($79.99 price tag). If you want a copy, why not trade into one soon?
  • Dark Ritual has been printed a billion times. You can find hundreds of copies for $0.50 throughout the internet. But how many Alpha copies of the black instant can you find? None at Star City Games, where they are sold out with a $39.99 price tag. Yet again I see the top buy list price steadily rising over the past 6-12 months despite choppy action in estimated value. I have to imagine this card is a power-house in Old School MTG, and definitely worth keeping an eye on.
  • Speaking of cards that have been reprinted a ton, City of Brass is also worth closer inspection. The original printing of this Nonbasic land has been on a steady incline over the past couple years as well. Did you know this card retails for $79.99 now?! Star City Games has a handful of copies in stock, but finding NM copies can be quite difficult!
  • BONUS TIP: Want to go real deep? Reviewing some of the top decks of the 93/94 format, it looks like Su-chi is a popular card. The artifact creature is an uncommon from Antiquities, so it’s not as difficult to find as some of the other cards I’ve mentioned earlier. But the top buy list price has jumped from $2 to $3 earlier this year. SCG has 17 total copies in stock, with only 1 being NM at $5.99. It probably wouldn’t take much to manipulate this card’s price, but I’d much rather be in the camp of obtaining my set now and sitting on them for a couple years.
Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Modern History 101 – Eighth Edition and Mirrodin

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BRIEF TEMPORAL ASIDE: I’m jealous of all of you who are reading this, because you are living in a time when Modern Masters 2015 has come out, while I am currently trapped in the past. Are you gonna crack some packs? I know I am! Cracking packs is so much fun.

Rather than talking about Modern Masters 2015, I want to talk about Modern itself. A lot of writers have done individual set or block reviews (myself included!), but I don’t think there has been a narrative overview of what Magic was like when those sets were out. We are going to do that, and compile some information that often gets discarded. You’ll see what I mean as we go along.

 

Eighth Edition

This was the first set to feature the new card face that would later go on to kill Magic1. The set, like all pre-M10 core sets, was comprised entirely of reprints. The selling point, though, was that this set would contain one reprint from every previous Magic set that had not been in a core set already. Neat!

And while several of those reprints are underwhelming on the order of Vexing Arcanix and Skull of Orm, there are some good cards in this set! Blood Moon was first reprinted here (and later again in Ninth), and Eighth Edition put such gems into Modern as City of Brass, Intruder Alarm, and Ploooooooow Uuuuuuuuuuuundeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer (I really like casting Plow Under).

Other finance gems worth noting include Planar Portal, the Urza-tron lands, and foil copies of Fecundity, Merchant Scroll, and Vernal Bloom. The first Standard format that Eighth Edition came into was Odyssey/Onslaught/Eighth, and neither of those expert-level blocks are Modern legal—if you want to see what the format looked like, check out the 2003 World Champs. Oh, and they made a big deal about the prerelease (even though the promo was Rukh Egg), and I won mine.

Non-Foil Cards of Note

Blood Moon – This card is in good Modern decks and bad Legacy decks.

Ensnaring Bridge – Modern, Legacy, Cube, Commander, Casual.

Bribery – Commander only. [Editor’s note: Cube would like to have a word with you, Ross.]

Grave Pact – Commander only also.

Lord of the Undead – I’m beginning to sense a pattern.

Defense Grid – Mostly Commander, some Modern.

Elvish Piper – Commander, and the eventual inverse of Tiny Leaders (Okks?).

Coat of Arms – Commander and any weird tribal format.

Choke – Modern, Legacy, and anything that is dominated by blue.

Foils of Note that Aren’t Just the Same as Above

Birds of Paradise – I’m not entirely sure why, but this is one of the most expensive printings of Birds. Seventh Edition foils blows these out of the water, though.

Storm Crow – I hate that the Storm Crow people have made this happen. Retail “price” of $32, best buylist price of $4. One of those prices is off, and I think it’s the first one.

Merchant Scroll – Vintage!

Teferi’s Puzzle Box: Casual favorite, I suppose?

Ambition’s Cost: Only foil printing of this card.

Noteworthy Standard Decks

NONE.

Now, I do love me some UG Madness2 and some Goblin Bidding, but that’s not really what this section is going to be for. As we roll into future sets, I’ll mention any decks that I think may be worth having on a resurrection radar—maybe an old archetype could benefit from new technology! I don’t expect much, but it’s worth looking. Also, I’ll be able to tell you if a deck was the real deal (like Karstenbot) or bogus (like Ghost Dad).

Analysis

There are a lot of foils in this set that are worth money, and there are fifteen rares worth $3 or more. The downside is that the set had 111 rares, so only about ten percent of the rares are worth the typical price of admission. There are some major wins if you hit on a foil, but I’m not going to tell you to buy a bunch of old packs to hopefully open a foil rare.

This set, despite its gimmick, was not super popular, since most of the marquee cards at the time (Persecute, Birds of Paradise, Wrath of God) were cards that enfranchised players already owned. Sealed packs look to be between $5 and $8 (ignoring shipping), so that’s not quite low enough to look appealing. If you are a gambler, and your local store has had these on a shelf since 2003, maybe they’ll take $3 each just to clear up space, but even then, 111 rares is a lot. To compare, there are 73 rares and mythics combined in M15, and only 68 rares and mythics combined in Dragons of Tarkir. If you open a box and each rare is different, you are only going to open 32 percent of the rares in the set, and only about three to five of them are expected to be “hits” (versus the lower price of entry, if you can even get it).

The prudent thing to do is to stay away, which means that these cards are going to slowly keep creeping up in value. All of the cards in here are prime candidates for reprinting in a future Modern Masters or Commander product (it’s already happened for some), although some of the more powerful cards, like Plow Under, are unlikely to ever be put in Standard again.

Oh, and I’ll mention this now since we were talking about packs: don’t forget that the foil distribution process didn’t change until Planar Chaos (where the foil replaces a common), so if you open a foil rare, that is also your rare. You can’t get two rares.

Parting Words

Don’t buy packs, do look up any foils that you see in longboxes where you don’t already know the price.

Mirrodin

This was the first expert-level set to feature the new card frame, and, to be fair, did a pretty good job as a block trying to kill Magic. This was also the first set to leave Dominaria in a long time, and we wouldn’t return until Time Spiral. The block’s theme was “artifacts matter,” and the books were terrible. I don’t want to talk too much about the block as a whole, since we are going through sets individually, which will probably help me limit my hateful vitriol to Darksteel where it belongs.

Mirrodin introduced affinity, equipment, and Mindslaver to Magic, so it certainly has had an impact. The set definitely had hype going into release, and the massive amount of design space devoted to cool artifacts has definitely given the world several casual favorites. The prerelease card, Sword of Kaldra, was a big hit with the Timmy/Tammy crowd, and the only reason it isn’t worth more is because I doubt most newer players are aware it exists3.

I remember Mirrodin pretty well, because it was around the time I started FNMing weekly as a priority. Like Eighth Edition, much of the analysis of this set in terms of Standard is going to be warped by the inclusion of sets that aren’t Modern legal (in this case, just Onslaught, one of the coolest blocks ever), and also by the fact that several of the best cards in this block got banned. I remember FNMs were getting pretty big around this time (I hopped between a few different stores). If only they knew what was about to happen…

Non-Foil Cards of Note

Chalice of the Void – Took off as anti-Treasure Cruise technology, and hasn’t come down since. The card is very good in older and more cutthroat formats like Legacy and Vintage, since there are more aggressive forms of “fast mana.” This card was a player in Old Extended with the next card on the list.

Chrome Mox – It should not come as a surprise that when WOTC uses the word “Mox” in a name that the card is very good. This card is considered to be too good for Modern, but it’s about right in Legacy, since going down an extra card when you play it is more taxing. Something to notice on Chrome Mox and some of the other top cards on this list: the buylist prices are all very good. Often a smaller spread between a buylist price and a retail price can mean copies are viewed as easy guaranteed sales, which you can extrapolate as expressed confidence in the card in the long term. If the big dealers like something, then you probably should too.

Oblivion Stone – This card went from zero to hero with the advent of EDH, and has cemented a place in Modern with the consistent success of Tron decks. Two big populations like this card, and it’s pretty good in Cube, too. This is basically Nevinyrral’s Disk to a generation of players. That’s a good thing.

Glimmervoid – Some versions of Affinity play lots of spells of different colors, so this is pretty much their best land.

Tooth and Nail – If you resolve this in Constructed, you win. There are lots of different two card combos to find with Tooth and Nail, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Mephidross Vampire and Triskelion. For a while, Tooth and Nail was an easy twenty bucks, so don’t be surprised if the current price of $8 balloons up again.

Duplicant – Popular EDH card and actual spot removal spell in Vintage (you can cast it off Mishra’s Workshop!). Yes, this is why the foil price is insane.

Platinum Angel – Despite a couple reprints, this is one of those marquee cards that is always going to keep a respectable price. “You can’t lose” is pretty appealing to most Magic players and/or Parker Lewis.

Sculpting Steel – Another card that is good because of Mishra’s Workshop, although this has largely been co-opted by Phyrexian Metamorph.

Goblin Charbelcher – Best card in Magic.

Foils of Note that Aren’t Just the Same as Above

Solemn Simulacrum – This is the original set foil version of this card. Sad Robot, perhaps, but at that price, I’d be smiling.

Lightning Greaves – EDH staple, or at least it used to be. Also original set foil.

Mindslaver – The other best card in Magic.

Thoughtcast – Again, original set foil. This card is crucial in Affinity decks, since playing your entire hand at once typically becomes a disadvantage if the game goes on for much longer.

Sylvan Scrying – Original set foil, finds Urza lands and other toolbox effects. Played as a 4x in a few Modern decks.

Talisman of Dominance – Played in Legacy, believe it or not.

Molten Rain – This card hasn’t been in either Modern Masters set yet, which is surprising. This card is very good, and I’m surprised the foils are only $10.

Noteworthy Standard Decks

Broodstar Affinity – It didn’t take long (by 2003 standards) for Affinity to be uncovered as an extremely unfair mechanic. The five artifact lands, in concert with Disciple of the Vault and Atog (yes, really), helped enable some extremely degenerate strategies.

The decks also featured Broodstar, a heavy-hitting beater that would get in large chunks of damage coming down extremely early. Broodstar was a serious threat, and is probably the only Affinity-era star to not get serious consideration in Modern. The reason why is likely because Affinity decks now lean towards strategies that better support Cranial Plating, which encourages a wide threat of small artifact creatures, rather than just a bunch of artifacts. I’m not sure if Broodstar adds anything to existing Affinity strategies or if building a new version around the flier is worth exploring, but Broodstars are currently dirt cheap and Affinity is very popular in Modern (and Legacy!). Much of the other stuff that was in these lists was later replaced by better cards in the other two sets (sorry, Scale of Chiss-Goria).

RDW – Red decks are always going to try to be as lean and redundant as possible, so it’s hard to find something that is “hidden” in terms of red deck technology. Molten Rain is probably as good an example of a hidden gem as red decks can get, which should tell you how little meat is still left on the bone. Arc Slogger does not belong anywhere near your Modern red deck. Slith Firewalker is probably not even good enough, which stinks.

Analysis

Looking through the foil prices on Mirrodin, I started to realize how many good cards there are in this set. While you can never truly judge a book or a Magic set by its cover, I think it actually makes thematic sense that Mirrodin has a wide variety of cards with casual appeal. Artifacts, by their nature, are accessible to decks of every color, so the demand is more widespread—if something is good, it’s a card that all EDH players want, not just ones playing blue (like Bribery) or green (like that dumb creature that does a thing). Put a pin in this topic, we’ll come back to it in a bit.

Anyway, boxes look to be about $250, which puts packs just shy of $7. There are only eleven cards that beat that mark (or come super close, like Sculpting Steel), so buying packs is a losing proposition once again (this is often going to be the case). There are a few uncommons and commons of value in the set, including Wrench Mind, which is the closest Modern is ever going to get to Hymn to Tourach4. This is a great set to pick through when you are looking at bulk, and there are a handful of cards out of this set that may be worth a closer look (I’ll be changing the way I do my set reviews to better fit this new series in the future, so they are complimentary pieces rather than basically writing the same thing twice).

It’s worth mentioning once again that Mirrodin on release was a very popular set. Standard was still heavily defined by Onslaught, but that set, while it featured some pretty powerful strategies, wasn’t so strong that it overshadowed new tech. There were a lot of people, myself included, who were just happy that Odyssey block was gone, if you can believe that. Those sets were cool, but rewarded thinking in a way that was only clear to very good players.

Coming up next: the set that would send the tournament player base into a nose dive.

Two Sets Down…

Let me know what you thought of today’s article. It’s fun to go back and parse out what we didn’t know when all this was happening, and I try to interject what I remember personally (this will get easier as we progress and sets are more recent in my memory, except for those years where my LGS was next to an Outback Steakhouse that did happy hour right before FNM). If there is something you’d like to see me add, or you’d rather me just stick to our old set reviews, let me know. Thanks, and I’ll see you next week!

Best,

Ross

P.S. Word is that it is possible to reseal Modern Masters 2015 packs. Do not buy packs from someone you don’t trust completely, and be extremely scrupulous. Also, as a way to be respectful to other players, don’t discard the packaging in a way that other people may be able to reuse your packaging. And make sure to actually recycle them! That’s what this change was for in the first place.

P.P.S. Sounds like cards are coming out of the packs with scuffing and damage. This is likely due to the new packaging method. More on that as it unfolds.

P.P.P.S. Remember when I said to put a pin in what we were talking about before? Here’s the elevator pitch version of every Modern block in three words. Tell me which jump out as the best sets for casual cards:

  • Mirrodin: Lots of artifacts!
  • Kamigawa: Lots of legends!
  • Ravnica 1: Ten color pairs!
  • Time Spiral: Sure, why not?!
  • Lorwyn: Lots of tribal!
  • Shadowmoor: Lorwyn minus tribal!
  • Alara: Now three colors!
  • Zendikar: Lands and Cthulhu!
  • Scars: Mirrodin plus poison!
  • Innistrad: This is Halloween!
  • Return to Ravnica: You loved Ravnica!
  • Theros: Remember Homer’s “Odyssey”?
  • Tarkir: Wedges and dragons!

1 Clearly it didn’t, but that was the assumption.

2 This was also the name of one of Magic’s few webcomics. I really liked it, and it’s where I got my Mise shirt.

3 The concept of exposure is something we’ve been talking about on the forums lately.

4 Although I’m holding out for an eventual “dinosaur world” set featuring a functional reprint named “Hymn to Turok.”

Conjured Currency

Selling Collections Through Facebook

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Alright, so last week we went over how to find people selling their cards on Facebook for buylist prices, and how to negotiate a deal so that you don’t get scammed. I mentioned that sellers were between the two extremes of, “I want to sell my cards for SCG prices over Facebook” and “Please buy these today, I need gas money.”

You want to be a median of these two types of sellers, because it allows you to maximize profits from the things you’ve bought at buylist prices, avoid fees from eBay and TCGplayer, and get paid on the same day that you sell the cards. Today, I’m going to show you how to create a proper Facebook ad for buying and selling cards at a reasonable rate.

Rule Number 1

For the love of Pharika, don’t be any of these people. If you are one of these people, you’ll learn that changing your prices and listing methods will prove fruitful. Each of these individuals has at least one thing wrong with how they created and priced their list of cards.

BadFBsellFB1
Figure A

In the first post, we see someone looking to move a pretty high-value collection, if he has what he says he does. Revised duals, foil fetch lands, and staples. What duals? What fetches? I have no idea. There’s no picture, no list of cards, and no document to reference. He’s only willing to produce a list for those who are interested, which is an immediate turn-off when considering the price he’s asking. Five percent off of TCGplayer low is a price that I would sell singles for out of my display case, or if I was trying to piece out a collection over time. To ask for a number like that when selling an entire collection at once is simply unreasonable. For these reasons, his post had exactly zero comments or interested parties when I saved the picture.

FBsellfail
Figure B

Well, at least we have a list to work with here. This person has linked to a Google document, so we can see what cards exactly we’re dealing with, and how much each of them costs. He’s looking to sell everything in order to purchase a car, so there’s clearly a bit of a hurry to move everything at once for a lump sum. The problem? Ten percent off of TCGplayer mid (which I’m assuming he used for pricing based on my quick look at the document) is not exactly a deal that we’re looking for, and it’s sure as hell not going to get him any bites. If his “firm” became “less firm,” I asked him to let me know and send me a message, as I’d gladly pay $1500 to $1700 for the whole thing, and PayPal him the money today if he provided enough tracking and shipping confirmation.

BadFBsell3
Figure C

Lastly, we’ve got this carefully typed out list. This is only about 25 percent of the total cards that he carefully typed out, but I think you can see a pattern of problems here. First of all ,”Scarcity games” doesn’t exist, so I have no idea what his cards are priced at. Then there’s the issue of him painstakingly listing every single bulk rare on his list, in an attempt to make it look like his list is more valuable than it actually is. Near-mint bulk rares are worth 10 to 12 cents each to any buyer who would be interested in picking up an entire collection, nothing more.

Rule Number 2

This rule doesn’t specifically apply to Facebook buying and selling, but more to the world of Magic: The Gathering finance as a whole. If we’re looking to sell cards, we will get paid a varying amount of money depending on the amount of work we put in. If we want to appear to be a reputable seller via Facebook and get paid approximately what our cards are worth, we want to put at least a bit of effort into our listing, and make it as easy as possible for the buyer to purchase our items without asking an infinite number of questions.

This means that every item should have an associated price tag, and not a lazy listing like, “Everything is ten percent off of TCG low,” because that just makes more work for your potential customers.

GoodSellAdFB1

Now this is an example of a much better listing. The cheapest copy of Lion’s Eye Diamond on eBay right now is $68, and the lowest priced near-mint copy on TCGplayer is $72. Putting his at $60 almost guarantees that someone who was already eyeing (heh) one will gravitate towards this deal, but it’s also above the “liquidating these because I need rent money” pricing so that the seller makes a profit.

I only have a couple of criticisms about this listing that if addressed would serve to make the transaction easier for both parties. There’s no condition listed for any of the cards, so I’m not sure if I’m getting a great deal on a NM LED or an average priced HP copy where the back of the card has been sandpapered down. There’s also no info on shipping prices. Some people feel the need to charge $5 for tracked shipping in a bubble mailer, which would certainly take the sweetness out of that Mox Diamond deal.

Build-A-Post 

Now, let’s try to make our own Facebook post that is both comprehensive, simple to read, and priced smoothly enough to make multiple sales within a couple days of the post’s origin. First of all, we want to establish a rule of how much we’ll charge for shipping and how we’ll accept payment. I usually ship for free in a plain white envelope (PWE) for total orders under $20, unless the buyer specifically requests a tracked shipment of the small order, in which case I charge $2. You can create a PayPal shipping label from home with a printer for $1.93, and then buy bubble mailers for approximately $.07 each. Once we start getting over the $50 mark, I generally just start shipping for free as a courtesy, and to encourage buyers to add a few more cards to hit that price point.

As for payment, I only accept PayPal, and I always ask for the money upfront. I have enough references to solidify my position as someone who’s not a ripoff artist. While I’ve lost a couple of deals over this, I’m not willing to ship another party cards only to have them be unable or refuse to pay. If you’re just starting out selling via Facebook, you might have to accept shipping the cards out first if you don’t have enough references. Just be sure to actually confirm that the other party has real references, and that they’re not just sending you a list of names, by waiting for replies. Payment via gift is the preferred option, because we don’t have to deal with that little three-percent fee that comes attached for the goods and services option.

Finally, let’s get to the cards and their pricing. The golden rule of thumb here is to try to make sure everything is a little bit below the cheapest available copy on eBay and TCGplayer—otherwise there’s no point in buying from you. This difference in price between your listing and the cheapest available copy can vary based on the current market for the card, taking reprints and such into account. For example, let’s say I have this Tundra:

Tundra

Other than the fact that it’s yellow and looks like someone took out a cigarette and smoked directly onto it over a period of time, it’s still a sleeve-playable Tundra. It’s a dual land, and won’t ever see another printing. The cheapest heavily played copy on TCGplayer at the time of this writing is listed for $146 shipped, so I would probably put it on Facebook for somewhere around $130 if I wanted to get rid of it. While this is close to the “ten percent off of TCGplayer low” that I criticized the above seller for citing, this is the price of an individual dual land, and I’m not pricing my entire collection at this looking to unload everything. For contrast, let’s look at something that’s scheduled to be reprinted.

splinter twin

In contrast to Tundra, the cheapest Splinter Twin available is $19 on TCGplayer, and I would list mine on Facebook for closer to $13 or $14. The highest available buylist for Twin right now is $12 if I wanted to sell to ChannelFireball, and I’m predicting that Twin drops down to $10 or $12 a few weeks after the reprint in Modern Masters 2015. I’d rather sell it to someone who is looking to build the deck immediately instead of buylisting to CFB.

In both these cases, note that instead of glancing over a pile of cards and saying “ten percent off TCG low for everything,” I’m going through each card and determining a value that would be beneficial to both me and the buyer, depending on the future of the card.

If you’re planning on buylisting a bunch of staples in the future, you might want to look at the prices that you’re willing to accept and consider selling them on Facebook. Instead of spending time alphabetizing, set sorting, and scouring multiple different buylists for the right price, we can make this a lot easier. Add a small percentage to that number that the store offered, list some rules for shipping and payment, add a couple of pictures of the collection, and then wait for some replies.

MyFBsell

And there we have it! This is obviously just a very basic template, but it conveys the message quickly and can be customized to add more cards easily. We made sure that we were beating the current market price to move product quickly, established shipping and payment in advance so that we don’t have to waste time answering questions about it, and we’ll get paid today if someone’s interested in the cards.

One final note when making posts across multiple groups, though, is to wait at least a couple days after posting a listing in a single group . You don’t want to spam the feed and get kicked out. Good luck!

End Step

In other news, Abrupt Decay has started creeping back up on MTGstocks Interests. It’s only up by five percent, but I fully expect this to be a $20 card sooner rather than later. If you need copies now, I think now is the time to buy, and they’re still great trade targets. Remember that almost anyone building a Tarmogoyf deck is going to need these, and I don’t think it’ll be getting a reprint soon.