Going for a GRAND Prix

So I have been having a little bit of trouble sleeping lately, so I figured that I might as well get started on my Grand Prix Nashville post. I will be going to Nashville in a week in hopes of winning the Grand Prix. However, if I don't get a busted sealed pool and play perfect, that probably won't happen. My real goal for the weekend is to try and trade for +$1000 in trades. I think that while it is a rather lofty goal, it seems rather doable if I stick to my guns and make a lot of solid trades. I will be trying out a new style of trading, so hopefully that will add to my profit margin. The other big thing that I need to do is get some Steam Vents, 4 to be exact. I might have borrowed them (2 from 2 different people) and then traded them away. While I know that is a horrible thing to do, the problem is that the people looking for them were willing to overpay so much that I couldn't say no. Looking back at my first post, 2 were involved in a trade where I was +$96 in trade (and also resulted in the acquisition of 4 dual lands and a Force of Will). The other 2 ended up getting packaged with a few Cunning Wish and some other small stuff for a Watery Grave and a Plateau. Again, the deal was so good that I had to take a risk to hopefully cash in. If I can get a playset of Steam Vents in Nashville, that would really help me clear my slate in terms of debt. While I know that it is rather risky to trade away stuff that isn't mine, I thought about the potential negatives that would be involved if I was called out on it. I could easily just say that "I left that deck at home", or worst case scenario just say to the guy that "Someone made me a really big offer on the cards, and I was hoping to replace them, but have not been able to yet", and then just buy them off StarCity or something and have them for the guy next week. So hopefully I can trade for them and then get rid of my outstanding debts.

Debts aside, the Grand Prix should be rather interesting. It is very important to mentally prepare for a large event where you plan on being cut throat in terms of trading. I am going to try and maximize every dollar possible, and pick up as much stuff as I can. I am going to do so using the following idea.

1) Understanding the price fluctuations of a few key cards- It seems like a no brainer right now. I am going to plan on grinding a lot of Snapcaster Mages, picking them up for $20, as they just dropped, and trade them at $28-30 each. There is a lot of room for profit there, and Snapcaster is a card that a lot of people seem to want, and everyone seems to be willing to take them in a trade. This card seems to be the key to my trading. The problem is that it finally saw a dip on StarCity to $25, dropping from $30. This was horrible timing for me, since I was planning leveraging the price difference to my advantage. I hope that it jumps back up to $30 before Friday. Beyond that, there are some other cards that I plan on using to grind out profit. Geist of Saint Traft is at $28, so I would imagine that I can stretch it to the $25-30 range to pick up a few bucks here and there. Phantasmal Image is seeing a spike due to UB Zombies, and I would love to cash in on them, picking the up at $10 and moving them for $16-18 each. I am hoping to get rid of a lot of Modern stuff, since the Modern PTQ season ends April 1st. I get the feeling that Modern will not be a format that sees popularity year round, so now will be the time to move the Modern stuff I have for either Legacy staples or for a lot of value in standard (I would try and get a 25% bonus for all of the Modern stuff I trade into standard) After that, I would imagine that I can wait 2-3 months for the stores to get overstocked on their Modern stuff, then when their prices drop I should begin trading for them again.

2) The "Buylist Approach"- In the spur of the moment, people are generally erratic mentally, and you can get them to agree to a lot of stupid stuff if you do it properly. I have spent some time watching people take their binders to the dealers and watch as they sell their cards for 25% of what they are actually worth. Part of it is because they don't know any better, and part of it is because they are in a situation in which they really don't want to say "no" very often out of a fear of being difficult. The key is to find someone who will verbally express what is looking for. Most of the time, people will give vague answers because they don't want to look desperate. I am torn between going through someone's binder and pulling cards first or having them do it to me. I am going to try and let them go first, then when they are done, total up the value of my cards, then go through their binder and pull things out at around 50-60% of what it is worth. If I can work on assigning the values to cards (or at least give an initial price where they can come up a little) I should be able to get a significant amount of cards valued lower than what they are on StarCity. Picking up Birds of Paradise at $2-2.50 or Day of Judgment at $2 is a very quick way to make a lot of value really quick)

3) Trading for Foils and Textless cards- I have really been ignoring this most of my trading "career". It seems like people wanting to "pimp out" there deck has gone through the roof, and I would think that there is a huge amount of value to be made in it. I am going to try and pick up a lot of foils cheap, get textless cards for .50 each, and then work on flipping them for an inflated price.

4) Trade for the Promo card- Goblin Guide is the GP Promo this year, and right now it is valued at $15. While there, I should try and trade for them at $8 each, since they should be an easy trade to anyone who likes promos or wants to pimp out their RDW in Modern or Legacy, but has not been able to go to a GP. The promo generally trades cheap there, since a lot of people don't really want it, and the market is flooded with them, since everyone has one.

5) Stick to what I do best- It is important to make sure that I don't forget the things I do best in trading. I am really good at spotting undervalued cards, I am really good talking to people and getting them to undervalue things a little, and I am really good at meeting the needs of the people I trade with. I would imagine that I will probably make a little cheap sheet that I can study on the car ride down of all of the current prices so that I will not be caught off guard by the value of something. Preparation is very important. I need to make sure I am vocal on trades, and do not wait 10 minutes for someone who will be hard to trade with. A great way to trade would be to sit down at a table and let people come up to you and trade, and have others walk by and see your stuff while you are in the middle of a trade. I think that if I can be a little more aggressive on picking up smaller stuff from people a little cheaper than it is worth, I should really be able to come out on top. I am also going to look at the top decks form the recent SCG events to know what cards are in demand.

6) Trade with my mind, not with my heart- I know that there are a lot of cards that I really want and would instinctively trade for. However, I am going to focus on the goal at hand and not get sidetracked on things that will not give me value. I will stay away from FNM promos and random stuff, and will focus on getting the most out of my cards. My long term goal is to have a playset of all of the Legacy and Modern Staples, and then continue to grow my collection more and more. I would also want to own all of the dual lands ever printed. While that is an absurd idea, my general belief is that the safest Magic cards to invest in are Dual lands and Force of Will. They are the most important cards in Magic. The dual lands allow decks to function effectively, and FoW is "The Glue that holds the format together". As long as Magic tournaments exist, Force of Will will almost assuredly be in at least 50% of the decks, and dual lands will be in 90%. I have never seen these cards drop (with the one exception being a "price correction" ever since Legacy initially took off and staples exploded. Since that little self correction, duals and FoW (and all Legacy staples for that matter) seem to gradually be going up, and I want to be stockpiling as many of them as I can so that I can really profit when I want to cash my chips in.

7) Remember that sunk costs exist- I still have two Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas in my binder. I was never able to move them when they were $25, and they are now sitting around $12. So I have two options right now. I can either hold on to them and use them if I ever want to play some Tezzeret legecy deck, or I can try and move them at $12 to clear some space out of my binder and get something else that might be easier to trade. The biggest thing to trading is to constantly keep your cards moving. When cards sit in a binder too long they seem to get comfortable and don't want to move.

8) Understand current trends in play and capitalize on them- The Red Deck has been rather quiet lately, which means that people probably do not know the prices of the main cards in that deck. Chandra's Phoenix is at $8, but I would imagine that I should be able to talk them down to $5 each based on the fact that they don't see any play and will cycle out in 6 months. Coming up with some sort of "With Spirits and Elesh Norn in the format, they probably won't see any more play" idea, people will be more willing to get rid of them. The same thing should be true with Stromkirk Noble and Grim Lavamancer. These cards could really be negotiated down a bit. The same is true for hot cards. Being able to move them in groups to make it easier for people to acquire a playset has perks as well. People generally don't like trading when they really need cards, and are willing to overpay to get it over with. With zombies hot, having sets of Gravecrawlers and messangers will allow me to ask for a little extra in terms of value.

9) Trying out a .50 binder and a $1/$2 binder- After the Standard binder and the Modern/EDH/Legacy binder, I have 2 extra binders that were just sort of random rares and foils. I came up with a pretty decent idea earlier today about going through, sorting the cards by set, and then pricing them out. I would use one binder for anything 50 cents or less, and the other for anything in the .75-$1 range and $1.25-$2 range. This would allow me to try and move the random rares that I have lying around without having to go through and price them individually on the spot. After someone goes through the Standard binder and pulled things, I can encourage them to go through the other ones while I let the next guy look at the Standard binder. This doesn't really add any extra time, but will hopefully help me start moving the random lower value rares. I am debating about being upfront and saying that everything in there is .50, but I am not sure. I am at least happy that I have come up with a plan to start moving the random rares, and at the same time figure out that some cards sitting in the junk pile do not belong (Captain of the Watch is apparently $5). I would imagine that having all of the cards sorted like that will help a lot more in dealing with casual players, and will also eliminate the need to memorize the value of all of these lower tier rares while still having the prices handy to move them. If things start moving out of those binders, I will try and be a little more aggressive in picking up bulk rares to try and feed that binder. 10) Do not feel any pressure for the goals I set- It can be pretty easy to try and overextend and try too hard to make trades work, or take unnecessary risks just to try and get a few bucks. While I am aiming for $1000 in trade value, I fully expect to come short as a result of not enough time, not enough people to trade with, or not enough cards that are in demand. That being said, I am going to work on maximizing my profits and continue to upgrade my binders. I would love to clear out a lot of the smaller value cards, but that is one of those things that will gradually happen through time. I think that the most important goals are to pick up 4 Steam Vents, a Underground Sea, and just enjoy my trip.