Monday 3 October 2011

Dwarven Trader – Investing In Innistrad

By Dan Hiscutt

Greetings, and welcome to my first article on Magic finance. It’s geared mainly towards newer players, but hopefully everyone will find one or two of these tips useful.
I will be concentrating on buying cards for cash, rather than trading, as this is my forte. As long as you carry a smartphone or a printout of Starcity Games latest buy/sell list, trading should be simple and relatively hassle free.

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The Magic year

Let’s kick things off with the yearly cycle of set releases :-

The “Big” Autumn set – this set – currently Innistrad, is drafted roughly a million times more than the others, Innistrad sealed is also the format for the coming PTQ season. There will be a lot of this set around for trade and purchase, keeping the prices reasonably low. Look at the price of Scars of Mirrodin cards now to see the kind of values Innistrad cards will eventually level out too.
Although there is not so much of a rush to pick up Innistrad cards compared to other sets in the block, there is still an opportunity to get yourself a pre-order bargain. Simply because people are slow to evaluate all the new mechanics and interactions at the start of a block, and often mis-price cards.

The middle set – “Dark Ascension”. This set will strengthen and add nuances to the themes in Innistrad, cards will generally be evaluated quickly, they will fall straight into existing decks and will be priced correctly much sooner. You will have to be quick to grab a bargain.

The last set – currently unknown name. Drafted the least, I highly recommend picking up any cards you need from this set as soon as you can, as the prices will only go up.

The core set – Wizards seem to use this set to experiment and plug gaps, as they (in theory) can pull a card from the next year’s core set if it becomes a problem. In practice they seem to keep popular (and/or financially expensive) cards in for two years, so they don’t anger players. See Baneslayer Angel and the Titan cycle. It will have a few key cards for standard, but plenty of junk rares and reprints too.

Trading tips

So then, in no particular order, here are some tips.
  • The day before the pre-release is the best time to pre-order cards (before anyone has a chance to actually play with them and re-evaluate). Buying as early as possible gives the most reward, but also the most risk! As a rule of thumb, ignore the 6-8 most expensive rares in the set, and also the 20-30 or so cheapest. Crap rares are evaluated quickly, and chase rares can be subject to irrational cardlust. I’d recommend picking up anything from the middle section that appeals to your tastes, if it also displays card advantage, appears undercosted, or has powerful synergy with the rest of the set.
  • Planeswalkers are risky, they usually drop in price after release, sometimes massively. Liliana 2.0 is proving me wrong so far though, she was $20 at one point!
  • About a month before a new set is released, just as the very first spoilers appear (typically the buy a box promo, pre release card or something to do with Duel of the Planeswalkers) take time to look back through previous sets in the block and the rest of standard. You would be surprised how many cards are forgotten about until an old block leaving standard re-invigorates them. Tips like this lead to £7 Elspeth Tirel’s and many other bargains.
  • Use Twitter. It will often give you a one day lead on the pack, and let you grab cards before some webstores adjust their prices. I bought my Splinter Twins for $1 each, a day later they were nearly $10. @mtgmedina, @thejrrr, @NextLevelSpec are worth following – but I recommend following all the pro players too, as they are more carefree with their tips (the speculators only go public after they have bought what they want). Last Thursday for example, I read a retweet from a webstore owner to Brian Kibler – mentioning that he saw Kiblers name on one of his invoices, buying up his entire stock of Daybreak Ranger. At this point the card was $0.79 on some stores. On Friday Kibler published his article on Starcity Games Premium regarding Daybreak Ranger, it’s now $3.99. Information and timing are important!
  • While eBay can be a bargain, think about how many transactions you make, ten different purchases from several different traders leads to an awful lot of postage charges. Sometimes it’s better to buy in bulk from a single webstore.
  • If you don’t draft much, consider buying a 4x common/uncommon playset rather than random boosters. This will set you back somewhere in the region of £24 plus postage on ebay, less for small and core sets. Almost every set has a “power uncommon” Kitchen Finks, Bloodbraid Elf, Path to Exile, Inquisition of Kozilek, Dismember and so on. The price of a 4x playset of these alone can often be in the region of £12-£15 at their peak of popularity.
  • Buy from America if you can. No, really. Prices are literally half of those over here.
  • It’s worth your time looking for a “mom & pop” Magic webstore who are slow to update their prices. When a junk rare becomes a pivotal piece of a new deck or strategy overnight (especially true of Modern and Legacy), you can grab them at the junk rare price if you are lucky. My current store for this is bazaargames.co.uk, although I’m sure they will tighten up their act eventually and I will have to find somewhere else - £6 Vesuva’s when everyone else raised them to £25+ , yes please!

Just to hammer home the point about buying from America, consider my Innistrad preorders:
CardTCG Warehouse 23/09/2011Magic Madhouse 23/09/2011Magic Madhouse 04/10/2011
Hinterland Harbor3.565.995.99
Isolated Chapel3.535.995.99
Sulfur Falls3.535.995.99
Woodland Cemetery3.535.995.49
Clifftop Retreat3.215.995.99
Heartless Summoning2.243.993.99
Mentor of the Meek2.244.993.99
Bloodline Keeper // Lord of Lineage1.993.994.99
Tree of Redemption1.764.993.99
Army of the Damned1.603.993.99
Champion of the Parish1.602.992.99
Stromkirk Noble1.602.494.99
Moorland Haunt1.442.992.99
Mayor of Avabruck // Howlpack Alpha1.253.493.99
Stony Silence0.961.491.49
Kessig Wolf Run0.891.991.99
Cackling Counterpart0.832.491.99
Kruin Outlaw // Terror of Kruin Pass0.801.992.99
Nevermore0.801.991.99
Splinterfright0.802.492.49
Gavony Township0.641.991.99
Nephalia Drownyard0.641.991.49
Unbreathing Horde0.642.491.99
Curse of Stalked Prey0.571.491.49
Stensia Bloodhall0.480.990.99
Falkenrath Marauders0.320.990.99
(All prices are in £)

TCG Warehouse was the American webstore I used this time round, with the comparison function on magic.tcgplayer.com. I mostly use Challenfireball.com to be honest, but they were undercut by many other traders on Innistrad. Magic Madhouse prices are given to show typical UK prices in comparison.
Most of the above is baseless speculation and hedging before a metagame develops, but really, at these prices there is little that can go wrong. Trading them on for profit if they fail to deliver is pretty easy. I seem to have lucked out on Stormkirk Noble in particular  Edit: it’s now a $10 card on American websites, ker-ching!

And lastly, trading magic cards is a gamble. Don’t risk what you can’t afford and never go into debt. Because for every one of these;
Or these;
Or even these;
There is almost always one of these!

3 comments:

  1. That jace buy was some super value. Really good read dan, nice one :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, bit of a bargain that one! I've been burnt by the last few Planeswalkers though, they is tricky..

    Dan H

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bit of an update - Buying one of each card in the table above cost 41.45 at TCG warehouse (in actuality I bought a mixture of 2, 3, and the occasional 4 of's), and as of 17/10/11 buying one of each from Magic Madhouse would cost 109.50, over a 60% saving! Although I do think MM prices are inflated and will drop a bit.
    I think largely ignoring Mythics was the right decision for this set (picked up new Garruks at $21 as an exception).

    Dan H

    ReplyDelete