I’m nothing if not a man of the people, and while I have a vision for this column and occasionally get inspired to write three–part series (I made each word a link to a different article, so I guess you could say I’m pretty awesome at the internet) about even the most miniscule-seeming of topics, I’m not above feedback.
By: Travis Allen
Does everyone remember this article? If not, read it again. It’s going to be what we’re talking about today.
Last week, Derek wrote about how Khans of Tarkir would fare leading up to rotation. This is the first set that will rotate earlier than we expect it to. Rather than rotate in the fall of 2016, two years after its release, it will rotate during the spring of 2016. Dragons of Tarkir launched in late March and Battle for Zendikar will release in early October, meaning that KTK will lose about six months of Standard legality. While he has a grim outlook on the future of Khans, I’m not as certain we’re done with this block (well, Khans and Fate Reforged) yet.
So, you have a collection that you want to sell all or part of to a buylist. Maybe it’s a collection you picked up off CraigsList, maybe it’s culling down your personal stock, or maybe you’re helping out a friend who found a box of Magic cards in his attic.
Whatever the case, you now have to balance two factors that are somewhat at odds with each other: 1) getting through the process as quickly as possible and 2) getting the most amount of money you can.
Everyone has his or her own method, and I’m interested in hearing the ways you’ve streamlined the buylisting process in the comments at the end of this article. First, though, we’ll cover some of my favorite tips to help you get your buylisting done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Before we dive in, let’s address the question some of you may be asking: “Why would I buylist my cards? I could get more money selling them on eBay or TCGplayer.” While this is true, listing cards on those sites requires someone to buy your cards, which could take weeks or more. When those cards do eventually sell, it almost certainly won’t be all at the same time, which means you’ll be shipping out far more packages that if you had buylisted. And after all that is done, you still have to pay fees, cutting into that extra profit that seemed so appealing.
I was opposed to buylists for a long time, but with the advent of aggregated lists like you can find here on MTGPrice, the process became much faster and easier, as well as more profitable. I very rarely list cards for sale these days, instead choosing to send cards on my schedule either through buylisting or PucaTrade. That alone increases my MTG finance efficiency. Now let’s talk about how to improve the efficiency of your buylisting.
We’re not going to go over how best to pick a bulk collection in this article. If you’re looking for that sort of thing, Douglas Johnson has covered that topic from numerous angles on this very site, as well as BrainstormBrewery.com. We’re going to assume that you’re starting from a point of having your mythics and rares separated out, with anything that is obviously bulk set aside. The same is true for commons and uncommons that you know (or suspect) may be worth the time to sell individually.
For years, I organized my cards by color, because from a player’s standpoint, that’s just the intuitive way to do it. Eventually, I started sorting by color within sets, because when you’re trying to build a deck for a particular format, you want to be sure the cards you’re choosing from are legal.
Nowadays I don’t really build any decks at all (I’ve been playing Limited and Cube only basically since my son was born a year ago), so anything I own is either in a trade binder, my cube, or my cube’s on-deck binder. Everything else is sorted in longboxes alphabetically by block.
Sorting alphabetically is key. No matter what buylist you’re dealing with, you will have to sort alphabetically—first by sets, then by card names within sets. However, I don’t like to go all the way down to the set level when sorting for a buylist. It just takes a little bit too much time, and it’s not that hard to flip through a block’s worth of cards a few times over when comparing to each set. That said, if you’re dealing with an absolutely huge collection, sorting by set instead of block will probably be more efficient by the end of the process.
If you go to MTGPrice.com’s homepage, this is what you’ll see at the top of the page. If you click “Browse Sets,” you’ll get a list that looks like this:
Pick up a pile of set- or block-sorted cards, find the applicable set(s), and then start comparing what you have to the buylists you see. Let’s say you’re looking to get rid of a pile of Modern Masters 2015 cards:
Initially, the cards will be sorted by descending price. Since you’re working from an alphabetized pile, though, you’ll probably want to click “Card Name” to make the list here sort alphabetically.
There you go! Now you can compare the pile of cards you’re holding to this list. If a buylist price looks acceptable, simply click on the card, click “Sell To” on the left hand of the screen, and note the name of the vendor offering the highest price.
So, if you were looking to buylist an Apocalypse Hydra for that tasty 39 cents listed above, you would see that ABUGames was the one offering that price.
At this point, I like to take a Post-It note, write “ABUGames” on it, and then start a pile of cards directly on that Post-It. For each new store that I am considering a shipment to, I’ll start a new Post-It note. Some people have playmats specifically for this purpose, but I’m not quite that fancy just yet.
If you have a completely unsorted pile of cards, you may find yourself not really wanting to go through and sort everything, especially if it’s a mixed lot with lots of different sets and not too many cards from any one block.
In this case, you can take the slightly more painful method of individually searching for cards by just typing in their names here on MTGPrice. In most cases, it will be less efficient, but there are certainly collections that warrant this approach rather than pre-sorting everything.
If your memory is not such that you can remember which pile you put a particular card in, though, you may want to at least sort cards so that that duplicates are together. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time searching for the same card over and over again.
How you ship your buylist cards largely depends on how many cards you’re shipping.
If you’re doing a quick and easy buylist including a just a few cards (no more than six), you can send them in a plain white envelope with a stamp. However, note that this method will leave you with no proof your cards were actually sent, should you be the paranoid type.
Most buylist shipments will include a few more cards than that, though, and if they’ll fit, a bubble mailer is a fine option. You can buy shipping for up to three ounces for $1.93 through PayPal, and that comes with delivery confirmation, too.
I like to use team bags with toploaders on the ends for protection. This will ensure your cards are easy to access but well protected. Whenever you’re shipping Magic cards to anybody, including merchants, if you’re taping stuff up, fold over the end of the tape to form a little tab that makes it so the tape can be very easily removed. This is 100 percent a value play for you. Think of it this way: if you were the guy grading cards for a shop and somebody packaged something up in a way that made it really difficult to open, you would probably grade their cards a little more harshly, right? Not to say you would be dishonest in your grading, but you would be less inclined to give somebody a pass on borderline stuff. I want to do everything I can to avoid that.
Occasionally, you’ll need to ship a much larger buylist order that couldn’t reasonably fit in a bubble mailer. In these cases, I fill up a regular card box (the of which is size based on the number of cards, of course). To ensure nothing gets damaged in the mail, all empty space should be filled in with folded tissues, cotton balls, packing peanuts, or other soft material that won’t damage your cards. Make sure that when you shake the box, you don’t hear cards banging on the edges. Once you’ve got that done, tape it up very well (those things aren’t fully enclosed to moisture) and ship it out in the box itself. A recent 500-count box I mailed cost just less than $10. That’s kind of a lot for shipping, but presumably you’re getting a nice return on that many cards.
Finally, do some research on the vendors you’re considering dealing with. Some have better reputations than others, and it’s important to know what you’re dealing with going in.
I won’t do any badmouthing here, but I’ll go ahead and say that I especially find it a pleasure to do business with Card Kingdom and ABUGames. AdventuresOn is fine but I hate buylisting on its website, and ChannelFireball pays quickly on the occasions that you actually like the prices it’s offering. I’ve had good and bad experiences with other stores, but these are names I tend to trust.
Each time I prepare a pile of cards for buylisting, I figure something out that helps improve my efficiency the next time around. What are your best tips for improving the buylisting process?
I’ll leave you with this one last thing: find something entertaining to listen to while you’re doing all this sorting—a podcast, a TV show, a web series, whatever. This is not very engaging work, but if you want to make money in MTG finance, it’s necessary.
Until next time!
Has anyone even tested Goblins in Modern? The speculation is so rampant on a strategy that has yet to prove itself. Maybe people are forgetting there’s no Goblin Lackey, Goblin Matron, Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Warchief, Gempalm Incinerator, or Rishadan Port.
That’s a lot of gaps to overcome. Yet this still happened:
We are in the midst of rampant speculation on Legion Loyalist, Warren Instigator, and the catalyst itself, Goblin Piledriver. With prices this inflated, the risk of buying into these targets is at its highest. Being the steadfast risk intolerant speculator, perhaps I can propose some alternate targets – still potentially relevant to a Goblins Modern strategy – with a much more attractive risk/reward equation.
Goblins are an unproven strategy in Modern. This is certain. What’s equally certain is that Elves and Merfolk are proven strategies in Modern. Both decks won a Modern Grand Prix very recently.
I proffer this idea for your consideration: why not buy into some of the cards in those decks instead? Some of the critical pieces of these decks have barely moved! So while Warren Instigator, a card I’ve never seen cast in my life, goes from $10 to $17, you could be buying into something like Silvergill Adept near its 2014-2015 low!
Silvergill Adept is critical to the Merfolk strategy in Legacy and Modern. I hear getting a Merfolk in play while also drawing more Merfolk is a pretty sound strategy [Editor’s note: Best card in the deck, not close]. And there’s no way this card should be under $3 when Nettle Sentinel – a common from the same block – is around the same price.
If you’d prefer throwing your money into Mythic Rares, you could also consider Master of Waves. It’s about to leave Standard, but I suspect nearly 0% of its value is driven by Standard play anyway. This key Merfolk card can be found for under $4. I’d much rather have my money in these than, say, Goblin Rabblemaster – a rare about to rotate that does have value driven by Standard play.
Fish not your thing? You could pick up a couple of critical Elves pieces instead. Most of the best Elves targets have already spiked, but I could see Elvish Archdruid moving higher. It’s been printed a million times, but it’ll always have some demand keeping the price above bulk. And the further away we get from the latest printing, the more value it’ll become.
If you want to trade into something newer, you could always pick up Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. The card may dip slightly at rotation, but this land is powerful and should maintain value going forward. You will likely need to be patient with this one, since I’m sure a ton have been opened. Still, you could find far worse places to park money.
The rise in popularity of tribal strategies has generated newfound opportunities in Modern speculation. Most Elves cards have already seen significant appreciation. Merfolk cards haven’t moved as much, but they should bounce nicely off recent lows. And of course we’ve all seen the rampant Goblins speculation this past week on news of a Goblin Piledriver reprint.
Rather than tossing the dice and gambling on one of these strategies, wouldn’t it be nice to find something relevant across all three? In an ideal world, you could acquire key cards that play an important role in all Tribal decks. This way no matter which strategy rose to the top, you’d have exposure to important cards.
I did a quick comparison between Knocinski’s winning Merfolk build and Malone’s Elves build to start. I’m immediately disappointed. I counted exactly one card in common: a singleton Cavern of Souls played in Elves.
As an aside, Cavern of Souls is positioned to continue hitting new all-time highs given its relevance in Modern and Legacy.
While my profits were still decent, I will be first to admit I made a mistake selling this one. This is definitely a case where my perpetual bearishness in Modern narrowed my perspective too much. This land will only go higher until it is reprinted. The current $50 price tag is likely to stick.
Despite the common “tribal” theme, it would appear these three decks all have completely different building blocks. Outside of Cavern of Souls, I see no overlapping card. Does that mean we should give up? Absolutely not – it’s all about speculation!
For example, couldn’t Aether Vial be relevant in at least two of the three tribal strategies? Elves may not want the artifact for now, but I could certainly see Goblins following the Merfolk approach to flash out instant-speed lords.
I really like the card’s price chart as well, from a technical standpoint. I see some healthy growth in both retail and buy list pricing. More importantly the buy/sell spread has narrowed in recent weeks – a likely sign of further price appreciation on the horizon. While speculating on a $30 uncommon is a tough pill to swallow, I’d still support grabbing a few copies. Feel free to grab the Modern Masters version if you feel better paying $30 for a rare instead.
Perhaps a safer target is a critical land that is near an all-time price low: Mutavault.
While this land isn’t so hot in Elves, I could see Goblins picking it up. And even if Merfolk is the only deck that runs Mutavault, it’s still an automatic 4-of in every Merfolk build. This is a card I’m willing to throw cash into; it can readily spike to $20 during next year’s Modern season or possibly earlier, if the Modern metagame leads the right way.
Perhaps I’m being naïve here. I’m focusing heavily on cards that these three tribal decks would want to play. But if I want to place bets on all three at once, perhaps I should be seeking out cards that beat all three of these strategies. I believe Anger of the Gods is already a viable sideboard card in Modern. A one-sided wrath for three mana is probably decent against all three tribal strategies. Be careful with Standard rotation – we may see a small dip before the card stabilizes higher. Perhaps trading for unwanted copies is the best play here.
If you’re looking for a more permanent fix, you could try Night of Souls’ Betrayal. It doesn’t kill as many creatures as Anger, but sticking two copies could really wreak havoc on tribal decks. The card has spiked recently but buy lists haven’t chased nearly as much. I’d watch that spread closely – the opportunity to pick up this sideboard card may close faster than you think.
Lastly, there’s my favorite sideboard tech: Engineered Explosives. This artifact seems well-positioned in a tribal-heavy metagame. Played right, you can set yourself up for a solid 3-for-1 or 4-for-1 play. This card is destined to go higher, and I don’t expect to see a reprint in 2015 or 2016.
Most of you know by now I’m not as excited about Modern as the rest of the player base. Even though I’m trying to flip Modern specs, I really prefer to sink my funds into safer investments. I still believe most Modern staples will pull back in price in a month or two, so I’ll be content to largely sit on the sidelines until then.
My quest to move profits into older cards is not a solo one, it seems. Did you notice some other really interesting price moves from last week? I’m talking about this:
And this:
These charts are extremely attractive from an investor’s point of view. Barring a minor hiccup on Library of Alexandria last year, we’re seeing monotonically increasing prices over time. I’m not sure if Mishra’s Workshop’s price tag will stick above $1000, as reflected in mtgstocks.com’s most recent Interests page. But the card will certainly maintain its upward momentum in the years to come. I’d pay close attention to that buy-list curve, in blue, on these charts. They will reflect how eager dealers are to pay higher prices for these old-school cards. Library of Alexandria is even playable in Old School MTG, perhaps catalyzing some upward price movement.
If I had to recommend picking one of these valuable Arabian Nights cards, I’d recommend Bazaar of Baghdad.
The card is a 4-of in Dredge, a powerful Vintage deck with an important defining characteristic: no Power! Once you have your 4 Bazaars, you’re most of the way toward building a viable Vintage deck. Even if you never plan on playing Vintage, you have to admit the artwork on the card is one of the sweetest in the game. I’ve been eyeing this for almost a year now, and I’m only seeing upward movement on prices.
The theme of last week: tribal Modern decks and high end Arabian Nights cards. These are on opposite ends of the risk/reward spectrum. On the one side, we have rampant Modern speculation based on unproven deck strategies (Goblins). On the other side, we have measurable price growth in classic cards on the reserved list.
While my affinity is always to err closer to the conservative side of the spectrum, I see many opportunities in between. You don’t have to chase Warren Instigator higher to make money on the latest trends. There are far better plays – especially at this point, where prices have already jumped so high. Aether Vial, Nykthos, Cavern of Souls, and Mutavault are all well-positioned no matter which tribal deck earns the top spot of future Modern events. If you really despise all three strategies, maybe now’s the time to pick up your Engineered Explosives.
Targets like these are far safer than cards that have already spiked solely based on speculation. They have plenty of upside potential, with minimal downside risk at this point. These are my kind of pick-ups, and I’d encourage you to move some of your newfound profits into these cards as well. Give it a year, and you’ll likely be looking at more sizable gains. Plus you’ll have the upside of preserving your capital in case one of the tribal strategies becomes a major flop. It’s the best scenario for investing, and it’s why I’m moving my resources accordingly.
…
