25,398 Up but added M15

Magic 2015 is on Pre-order so I needed to add all those cards to the list, so the card count has gone up, but as an awesome addition I did a trade with ABU Games and got a lot of good stuff added to the collection.

I had a couple of Unglued Sealed Booster boxes sitting around that were extra, and decided to see what I could get in trade for them.

www.abugames.com

These guys gave me a pretty good price and 25% more in store credit, and considering the price I bought these boxes for when they were released, I think the trade was even up.  This is what I was able to get:

Duel Deck: Elves vs Goblins
Planechase: 2009 4 deck set
Premium Deck Series: Graveborn and Slivers
Deckmasters: Garfield

Now I know that with this trade for these sets I pretty much got the backend of a good kick, but I consider that I bought the Unglued boxes for around $60 each, and if you consider that I think I made out pretty even trading for a $250 Deckmasters: Garfield set when it sold for $25.95 list.

I was also able to complete these sets:
Revised
Legends
The Dark
Conspiracy
Timeshifted

I was also able to get all the basic lands for Mercadian Masques that I needed, and an Ihsan's Shade that I was missing for an Anthologies set that I had.  Most importantly, I think the only things now that I need for small expansions are Battle Royal, Beatdown, and Duels of the Planeswalkers.

I should be putting together the M15 card separators this week and opening packs this weekend.  Lets see if I can get all the cards that I am looking for.

As a side note, I just setup my own Minecraft server, and have been spending a lot of time with that.  Since I don't have a good play group with Magic, I might just move down to collecting one of every card rather than the playset, but that just might be a fad, and I am just bored with Magic again.  Still muddling around with the idea of getting 6 sealed booster boxes each set for the commons and uncommons, and then just buying the rest of the rares and mythic rares I need to fill out the sets.  That way I could also save up for older booster boxes I don't have and not spend most of my money on the new sets that come out.

Card Separators

Trade with me on CardSphere  <---Click here!

This blog is going to be about how I keep all my cards separated.  I have gone through the majors of how I keep my collection separated, but is going to be about the cards themselves.  What am I talking about?

This:

Sorry a little fuzzy.  The car separator is in the back, and for every card that I have will follow the separator.

Dimension:

So we have these tan looking separators, and they are 2 1/2' X 3 3/4' cards.  They are just a tad taller than the normal Magic the Gathering card, and have the same width.  Why tan?  Why not.  Honestly though, they are tan because that was the extra scrap paper the printing store had on the cheap, and instead of changing the color I just kept with that color.  And really, the color works well.  It allows the label to stand out without being too bold, and it is a gentle enough color as a background for the magic cards.

For the strength of the separators, they are pretty firm.  I don't remember the grade of the paper, but they are close to the strength of a magic card.

Basically what I did, I found a commercial printing place and gave them a sample of the separator cards I had and they matched up the paper with samples they had.  Once they had the dimensions of the cards needed they figured out how many they could cut from a sheet, and they were able to tell me how many I get per sheet.  From there, they told me how much a sheet was and you can go from there.  I believe I bought 4 boxes full of these separators for about $400.00 US, and I ended up with over 90,000 separator cards.  This price also included the cut cost for the printing place to cut the separators to my dimensions.

In the first order, there was two boxes full of separators, and I think my father paid $90.00 for that order, and there was about 20,000 cards.  Cost of inflation, I think I made out with a good price, and I won't need to get any new separators for quite some time.

I should also add that a friend of mine saw my separators and got some cut from Kinkos, and they did not do as well of a job that the commercial printing place would do, but he also only spent no higher than $20.00 for a stack of separators.  So if you wanted to go that way, puddle it up.  I am also pretty sure you can just go to a paper store and try and cut the separators yourself.

Color Coding

I color code by rarity.  Since I keep all the cards of the same color in the same box I wanted some type of distinction of the different cards.  Now I need to remind you that back in the day there was no way to tell what the rarity of a card was by just looking at the card.  Now you get the different color of the set symbol, so it is a lot easier to tell what the rarity is.

Common:

I stuck with just a basic Black.  I also use Black for land and tokens.

Uncommon:

Here I went with a Blue because it is hard to read silver letters on a white background.

Rare:

Yeah, it is fuzzy...  You can barely tell, but yes it is Green

Mythic Rare:

And of course, I went with Red

Labels

So the labels, quick run down; go to Office Depot, or Staples, or Amazon and pick up some Avery labels.  I went with 1/2' X 1 3/4' labels with the part number of 5167.  With Avery labels, you can also download the Microsoft Word template that will allow you to copy and paste your information directly into the cell, and it prints pretty well.  I had some issues printing my labels in the beginning, where the drivers on my printer could not read the top margin, and I would lose that top row.  But HP updated their drivers, and we are good to go now.  I am pretty sure the normal consumer would use these labels as envelop return labels, but here we use them for Magic cards!

Now before you think about making labels and selling them, I already asked WotC if I could do that, and they put a stop to that in one e-mail.  I can see why they would not want my crappy labels on no art separators, but hey I had to try.

In making the Labels I massage the data from the spreadsheet in order to get it to the format where it is really easy to cut and paste into the Microsoft Word cells.  Basically I will get the data to the point where all the names will have the set underneath it, and then the Type - Rarity at the bottom.  Once I paste in all that data, I will then color code the cards and print.

Once printed I take all the labels and place them at the top middle of the separators.  If anyone really wants to know my keystrokes I can post something.  Also let me know if you want labels for a set.  I have most of them ready to print.

24,324 Conspiracy opened

Yeah so I opened up some of my Conspiracy to try and get my full set.  After opening 3 boxes I was able to get everything except for 3 cards.  After opening the packs I wish I would have just bought a couple of boxes to keep, and then a full set.  The price of the set just keeps dropping, and I cant use any of the cards in tournament decks, so I do have a lot of trading fodder from it, but in the end I should have just bought a full set.

I guess I did get the tokens, but still have opening remorse...

I also got a couple more cards from pucatrade.com, but still on the fence with that site.

24,534 to go, and found a doosh I won't trade with again

So I got 1 card from deckbox.org and 3 lands from pucatrade.com.  First off, I don't want to flame anyone on my blog so I am not going to say the username here, but honestly if you start a trade and move forward with a trade, and then pull out some cards you put up don't lie about why you don't want to trade the cards.  Don't tell me you can't find the cards only to open another trade with me with the exact cards that you lied about.  Seriously, it only puts you on my Do Not Trade list.  It just shows me you are dishonest, and you are not to be counted on when you try and setup a trade.

Anywho, received another Zendikar Mythic Rare from deckbox.org, and another name I put on my Do Not Trade list.

Pucatrade.com is becoming more interesting, and I think I might be able to get some trades done for the lesser wanted items.  I think I will be able to send unwanted rares/cards to people just like me who are looking for the same types of cards, in the hopes that they will look at my needs list and send me cards.  I still don't like how you are supposed to setup your wants/haves but I do like the theory of sending and getting based off of what you send.

Still thinking about it, but I did get 400 points for setting up an account, and got 3 Zendikar (a) lands sent to me for doing nothing, so that was pretty cool.  And then when I finished my first trade I got another 100 points, and 2 more cards are headed my way.  So we will see.  But yes, still have not sent anything in return, but there is a guy looking for Homeland cards, so I might try and send some.

Online Trading - Pucatrade.com

https://pucatrade.com/

Puca Trade

So just saw something about this site on theMeadery and oh boy, not sure how I feel about it.  First off I don't think there is a lot of people on the site now, and it is really hard to see who all the traders are.  So I signed up for the site, and you get 100 points for signing up, than 200 points for giving them your cell phone number, and then another 100 points for setting up a want list.

The object of the site is that you get points for giving cards to other members, and you can only get cards based off the points you earn.  Each card is given a specific point value, and that determines how many points you would get or spend.

So if you start out with 400 points for just following their rules, and you put 2 cards on your want list that are worth 200 points each, and someone sends you those cards you would end up with 0 points, but have the 2 cards you were looking for.

If you have 0 points, then no one can send you cards, and you need to find people that need your cards, send them the cards, and then you get points.  With 0 points you need to find people to send cards to, so the next step would be to setup the 'Cards Have' part which will fill out your inventory, then you can go to the 'Send Cards' section.  This will show you people that have 'Card Wants' that match your 'Cards Have' and you can send them cards.  This will then increase your point total, and more people can send you cards on your 'Card Wants' list.

I am just not sure about this whole thing.  It seems like you can send cards and get points, but you really need to keep an eye out on what you have on your want list.  From what I can tell, everyone just has super crazy expensive cards on their want list.  There is no real way to look at what some people might want, or maybe no one needed the cards I was looking to give.

Honestly I am just not sure how I feel about this site.  I think in theory it is a good idea, but most of the people on the site just want the really expensive cards and it really does not have value when it comes to trading.  Maybe I am more of a traditional trader and I want cards for cards rather than building a pool of points for giving people cards in the hopes that someone sends me cards I am looking for.

What if I were to give a bunch a cards away and no one gives me any cards in return, and all I get are these points I never get to use.  Not sold on the idea at all.

24,541 to go

Boom!  So yeah, I just inventoried a large trade from deckbox.org.  It was mostly throwaway Modern rares but still a pretty awesome pickup for me.  This trade was for extra sealed product that I had laying around, so for me it was a huge plus.

So it was a huge plus to me because there is no time that I will open the extra sealed product because I already have a crap ton of it in opened product, and already have my playsets collected.  So rather than open more of it to get the cards that I can trade, I can just trade the packs away in the hopes that whoever I trade the packs to will get something awesome.  Yes, I really do hope that the traders get that wicked awesome $50+ rare when we only traded for a $14 pack.  It is exciting!

I get to fill out cards that I really need for the sets that I did not collect in, and that person has a chance to double-up and get a cool card they will play with.  I consider it a win/win, just because I am getting cards that they don't want and most likely use in a trade, and I trade away something that I don't want or need.

It is like the risk is a little better to take when it is pack for throwaway rares.  It is a lot better than trading a dual land for a bunch of pack, because it is not a high valued rare for maybe something good.

Well that is how I consider it, and I just hope I can find more people that want to make trades like this because I really want to know what are in those packs!!!

Thank you trader, you know who you are!

Mythic Rare: 147
Rares: 6810
Uncommons: 8350
Commons: 7902
Lands: 1332

24,973 Conspiracy +210 add

Conspiracy has come out so I needed to add that total to the count.  Hopefully I will get my pre-order in and I can trim this down a bit.  I am still a bit on the fence with this set, and I don't know if I am going to open my packs or not.  I think the value in the draft format will increase their value, so I am thinking of just holding off on opening these for a year to see where the prices go.  As a collector it seems silly that I would not open them, but also as a collector I know that keeping them in the packages might raise the value with holding onto this product.  Once again, it is still up in the air, but since the release of the product the set has gone from $288.00 to $237.00, and I only see the prices going down on the mythic rare and rare cards.

But since this is a multiplayer draft format, I also don't see WoTC doing another print of this set, so this also leads me to think that keeping sealed product of this set around could be more beneficial for the collection.

This is a small update, but I did just get in a trade that I am trying to inventory right now, so another update to come soon.