Personal Control

So far the collecting is moving right along.  I am really happy with only picking up 6 booster boxes and opening up 4 of them with the 3 Bundles.  It is cutting down my bulk and I am not really that concerned with the Standard cards I am missing.  That $369.03 amount that I still need for my full playset just keeps getting lower every week, and it also includes the Planeswalker deck cards I need. So really the total is closer to $300.00.

I am going to keep watching that price as we move into newer sets, and will update as the results come in, but I am pretty happy with holding off on opening so much this go around.

I am still considering where to buy sealed product as I just keep getting a bad feeling from the LGS I currently buy from.  They seem to be cutting services more and more.  When I do go and put in an online order for instore pickup, there is always something wrong with their inventory.  Not that it is a bad thing, but I really get the feeling that they are a playing store more than anything, and are not really concentrating on the online sales.

With that being said, I do know I can get all the new product, but I just don't know who is running the ship anymore over there, and I think they are just in float mode with no real plans to increase the business.  And from what I can tell they are not really doing buys with much forethought.  It looks like they just pick up anything that comes into the store, collecting only a small percentage for the cards they are picking up, and then turning around to sell the cards at TGC Mid.

This of course is great for me and picking up speculations, but how long can I really expect the store to stick around.  If they really put thought to it, they would have a buy list, and buy cards from that list based on demand, and not just shotgun it.

Which comes to the topic I really wanted to talk about.  Speculations...

I have put into play my pickups for all the new product, and it seems to be working.  Masterpieces are coming down in price, and I am pretty sure that is a trend that will continue moving forward.  The "new hotness" feel for them has worn and players are now just treating them like foils.  This makes it a lot easier to shop for and picking up.  Even the older Masterpiece cards keep coming down in price.  Now that BFZ block is no longer printed I am keeping a watchful eye on those prices since the supply has been cut off.

With only 724 more cards in the count, I can actually look to pick up cards that I think will increase after 5 years.  So far I have been hit or miss on them, but the ones I hit on are fairly large gainers. I know I know, I have said that I won't be speculating much at all while I try and get the 724 down to 0, but the prices on some of these cards are just too good to pass up.  Think about it, if I did not pick up all those Dual lands back in 1996 for $10 a pop, then I would be very behind the collection 8 ball right now.

So really, picking up the rares that I think will pop later is the only real way I can find value in the cards that I collect.  Then I can turn those gains into picking up the Standard cards that I no longer crack packs for.  So I pick up a Mythic Rare for $.95 and in 5 years it pops to $5.00.  I can then trade that $5.00 for a bunch of newly rotated cards at $.95, in essence doing a five banger gain on cards that I need.  Saving me money in the long run to pick up those Masterpiece sets, where the real value is.

The best example I can give for that is New Phyrexia - Surgical Extraction.

I picked up 15 of them for $6.45 back in 2014.  The current price on those are $20.36 each.  That is 3 banger.  That means it has increased over 300% for me.  So I gained 100% of my money 3 times. Now I have those sitting up on my deckbox tradelist, just waiting for folks to try and pick them up.

The thing that I am seeing now is that my wishlist only has the 700+ cards I am looking for the collection.  I have not added any of the Standard cards that I still need.  I am pretty sure, once I add those Standard cards on my wishlist I would get a lot of trade requests because everyone wants to pick-up the value of the overpriced standard market.  So really, no good trader would want to trade for Standard cards while they are in Standard because of the inflated prices.

With that I have also been tracking the speculation cards and what my cost basis is on those.  That way I can see if the trade is going to be more to my favor, and I can also cut deals based on what my cost basis is.  It just give me more leverage when doing trades.

Also to that point, when I do pick up a large sum of speculation cards and post them on Deckbox, I only post one available for trade.  That way if someone wanted to pick up more than one because there was a price spike on TCG Player, I can control the loss of someone else speculating on cards. With Deckbox there is about a 2 day delay in price increases.  This is cause TCG Player sees the buyouts because that is the site the cards are getting bought out from.  Deckbox prices only adjust based on the "Traders" and "Sellers" on that site, so they are normally a little late to update their prices.  And it gives me the opportunity to control how many of the speculated cards are removed from my inventory, and I don't lose out to other people that have the same ideas that I have, and trying and pick up cards that I am already picking up.

So now that I have setup the new release budget, and what I am thinking about with speculation, the third leg will always be sealed product.  This third leg is always older sealed product because we are always picking up newer product at the pre-order prices.  I have been keeping a list of older booster boxes and fat packs that I want to pick up.  At some point I hope to get another set of the From the Vault series since I opened the ones I had to play with, and I also need to get another Planechase 2012 because I opened that one when I got it.  That was about the time I had came back to Magic and really had no idea what I was doing.

So as it sits right now, 50% of the yearly budget is spent on all new product.  That leaves 50% of my MTG money to spend on speculation and older sealed product.  And this is where the title of the blog finally comes into play.  In the past I have gone overboard with speculation, and over bought singles that I thought might have some promise to gain in the future.  I have also spent that speculation money at the wrong time, and was picking up cards right before rotation.

Example: Sphinx's Revelation around $13 a piece.

My thought on this card was: Instant + Gain Life + Draw Cards = Winner.  I still think I will be right, but it should have been about 1 year after rotation, and not while it was going out of rotation.

It is personal control that I need to use in my purchases.  I do think that this budget is helping in that, by putting restrictions on my purchasing power, and setting my limits.  This is causing me to pause in any purchase, or what I might want to purchase with how it will play with my budget.  In the end it will save me money in the long run, I just need to keep that in mind when I do my purchases.

So hopefully I can use my personal control with speculation of singles, and I can split that last 50% into two buckets.  Single speculation and older sealed product.  Like we all see in the market now, they are over printing the sets, and people are starting to collect more by holding sealed product more than before.  This is double edged from a collector standpoint.

Pre-2012 players were opening everything for the singles, and not really paying attention to holding booster boxes for future gains.  Now people are picking up extra product to hold on to for future gains.  I think this is worse for a collector than the over printing.  With over printing, distributors would be the main holders of the product, and could control the market and prices much better.  With more holders of the product, the market will be more accurate to the supply and demand streams, but that will cause the prices for sealed product to be at a much lower price, for a much longer time. More people will have more of the product, trying to make money off of booster boxes just collecting dust.

This is why it is so important to try and get the out of print boxes that are pre-Scars of Mirrodin block.  And that is why it is so important for me to have personal control when it comes to speculation and picking up singles here and there.  Also remember, I still need to fill out the standard sets when they rotate out.

So with those parameters, I should be able to save 50% of the budget for at least 2 years before the sets rotate out, and then pick up the needed cards at a discount.  Also, I can spend some cash on cards that are rotated out, and I feel could have a jump in 5 years to make a gain on those, but also saving up for older sealed product.

This is all managed by personal control.  I could blow my load this year, and spend that other 50% on speculations, but then it is cutting into my post 2 year wait to pick up all the rotated cards, and I would not have anything left over for older sealed.  Considering that most older sealed is over $200, I still need to save up cash this first year so I don't blow my load again, removing my kitty and emptying my budget too soon.

So this blog is all about personal control.  Not spending too much too fast on the shiny objects in front of me, and sticking with the budget that is already proving I can still reach my goals with a little patience.  I am hoping to start picking up some older sealed product after the Fall release.

So far so good this year, and I will keep updating the blog with my progress with this plan.