So this week was rather productive. Beyond trading for a Bazaar of Baghdad, I ended up buying $74 worth of bulk rares from someone. For the mere price of .10 each, my collection added around 700 "junk" rares and 20 Foil Junk rares. This is one of the best investment I could have made. Off the bat, at any point, I can take them all to a store and get my money back. Beyond that, any cards in there that really weren't bulk (like 4 Thraben Doomsayers and 3 Helvaults, off the top of my deck). There was at least 50% of the pile that was Innistrad+DA, and another 30% was Scars block. Any card that I can move for .50+ is all profit, and it does give me a lot more ammo for smaller trades. I was able to fill out some gaps in my binder, especially with DA cards, and am gearing up for the next week's PTQ. It will be the end of the Modern season, and it is a good time to take a look at my stock and set some goals for the rest of the year. So this is what I am at.
Top Tier Stuff:
6 Revised Badlands
4 Revised Bayou
1 FBB Bayou (Italian)
7 Revised Plateau (1 HP)
1 Unlimited Plateau
2 Revised Savannah
2 Unlimited Savannah
5 Revised Scrubland
1 FBB Scrubland (French)
6 Revised Taiga
6 Revised Tropical Island
1 Beta Tropical Island
6 Revised Tundra
1 Unlimited Tundra
5 Revised Underground Sea (1 Italian)
6 Revised Volcanic Island
1 FBB Volcanic Island (Italian)
Mox Pearl
Bazaar Of Baghdad
So yeah, bragging aside, by the end of the year, I would love to have a total of 2 playsets of duals. That would mean that I would need 19 more duals Overall, that isn't too bad, as I am only missing 6 blue duals, which are the most expensive. Beyond that, I would like to continue working on my Legacy staples, which would include 4 Wastelands and finishing up a set of all of the fetchlands. Then there are staples that would be rather helpful. I would also like to pick up a second set of Force of Will so that I could either use them to trade up or let someone use them.
In terms of Modern stuff, I don't really know if I should be in a Buy or a Sell mode. It seems like there might not be too much of a reason to move the Ravnica duals, though I am still afraid of a reprinting hurting the investment. Beyond that, there really is no data on how card prices fluctuate as a result of a rotation after the huge jump in card values, so I am sort of acting blindly. In reality, moving the Shocklands for other staples is the safe move, which is what I am going to do. I only have 5 Shocks (I think) so I don't think that it will be too hard to get rid of them. I can't really see a price jump for them, so getting rid of them now seems to be the best move. I will gladly trade for a set when they are reprinted and the price drops significantly. Until then, it is a shaky place to have value. Overall, I have been pretty happy with my progress lately in terms of trading. I have been moving a lot of standard cards for eternal cards. The big thing would be to start working on trading up random EDH/Modern cards to get either top tier stuff or things that are easier to move. Realistically, there are isn't a bigger tournament until June, with a SCG in Columbus. So that seems to really restrict what I am able to trade, as the trading at my local store has sort of dried up some. You can't get blood from a turnip, and for the most part, the good Modern and Legacy cards have been traded for. Beyond that, smart phones seem to be eating up profits as well. I think that I am going to need to try and refrain from trading the really expensive standard cards, because trading down doesn't really do too much at this point. I might need to start storing the expensive standard stuff in the good binder to avoid the "Oh, I want that card" situations where I end up trading down for value. I need to work on getting the top tier standard cards that won't be going anywhere any time soon. Foil Lingering Souls, Foil Delver of Secrets, and Thalia will be my targets for next week (though foil delvers and lingering souls will be rather hard to pick up as there are not too many in the local pool). I really need to work on moving the chaff for the cards that should have long term value, or at least cards that will be easy to move. This would include snapcasters, as I only really have my playset for standard. Trading is essentially taking a bunch of small cards of converting them into a more expensive card, then converting that card into more smaller ones, grinding out a small profit both times. At this point, I don't really have that many of the expensive cards, and I am flooded with the smaller value ones. So my two biggest goals for the next few months are to upgrade the cards I have now, try and eat into the box of extras I have, and work towards identifying and hoarding cards that I feel will jump after rotation. I should also work on coming up with a deck that will do well at FNM so I can have more packs (though I am sitting on a bunch as it is) I have not been performing as well as I would like over the last few weeks, so perhaps it is time to tighten up my play, or at least run a deck that is more resilient. I think that my stumbles this week were just running into some bad draws on my part and great draws on theirs (turn 1 delver, turn 2 delver+delver, turn 3 flip them all). Drafting was a little rough, as I was around some people who really didn't know how to draft and I got partially cut from both sides. On the plus side I left with a Messanger, a Woodland Cemetary, 2 Tragic Slip, and about 6 random rares. Broken drafts happen, but at least I was able to get a lot of value drafting the money rares.
So overall, I guess that I have my goals, have figured out what I want to do, and have obtained the raw materials to get it done. I am going to hope to make about 4 trades a week, and try to reduce the number of cards in my binder by 9 a week (not counting the cards I add by drafting). This should hopefully slow down the growth of my binder, as it is pretty much maxed out, and I might need to consider working out something with 2 binders, as the binder will not be able to hold Avacyn Restored and M13 in it. It is a good thing to have a binder so full, but at the same time, it seems like most of the cards will be in my possession forever (Magnetic Mine and Prototype Portal). I guess that is the life of bulk cards. I guess the same thing would probably be said about so many other cards that I ended up moving recently. It seems like an endless battle trying to convert junk cards into Legacy cards. I am glad that I have been able to get some real tangible results with trading (as my new Big Three have really motivated me into maximizing my collection so that I can trade for big ticket items when they come around).
Short Term Goals, Aiming for these by June 1, 2012. These are the cards I am expecting to jump in value post rotation, so I hope to stock up on them now:
20 Dungeon Geists
24 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
8 of each Innistrad Dual Land
24 Increasing Savagery
12 Bloodline Keeper
12 Garruk Relentless
4 Olivia Voldaren
24 Past in Flames
24 Champion of the Parish
12 Daybreak Ranger
24 Elite Inquisitor
24 Stromkirk Noble
24 Increasing Devotion
24 Thraben Doomsayer
My Want List, Aiming for December 31, 2012. While I don't plan on having all of this, I will at least have something to work for:
2 Badlands
3 Bayou
4 Savannah
2 Scrubland
2 Taiga
1 Tropical Island
1 Tundra
3 Underground Sea
1 Volcanic Island
4 Wasteland
1 Windswept Heath
4 Flooded Strand
2 Sneak Attack
4 Show and Tell
4 Progenitus
4 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
1 Karakas
3 Force of Will
3 Green Sun's Zenith (no idea why I can't pick these up)
3 Noble Hierarch
4 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2 Intuition
24 Snapcaster Mage
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