Collection Time

I bought a collection a couple of weeks ago, for $700.00 and I just finally got through with sorting and getting an inventory of it all.

Card Totals
Cards: 17,149
Foil: 196

Card Value
Total: $5765.35
Rares: $2467.17
Non-Rare: $3298.18
Foil: $210.69

Collection Count: 1079

So it looks like the bulk of the purchase was bulk, and I really did not make a dent on the collection count.  I was able to pick up some Starter 1999 cards, along with some Portal cards, but nothing really impacted the collection.  This was pretty much known going into it, and I really did this for trading fodder.

Let's take a look at see what I got for the collection outside of what was already posted in the first blog post.  I will also review what I did get out of the rares for the collection.

Starter 1999:

Considering that I have not really been diligent in gathering these cards for the collection, and have only become somewhat of a priority for Phase 2, it was nice to pick these up.  Not all of them were in great condition, so I am pretty sure I will need to replace some of them, but it was a nice pick up considering I was not expecting to get anything like this.

Portal

Nice little Porta pick up here.

Portal Second Age

Some good pickups, but nothing really crazy.  Just some good cards to get to finish the sets.

Champions of Kamigawa

One single common I needed in the whole collection...  I was hoping for more.

This is a picture of everything that I pulled out of the "Bulk" in where the seller thought it was not worth anything.  As you can see there are some real gems in here.

Wasteland - Tempest
Gush - Mercadian Masques
Cabal Coffers - Torment
Urza's Lands - Multiple
Mirrodin Artifact Lands - Mirrodin

Considering that he wanted to just sell me the rares and what he thought was expensive, but I insisted that it was for the whole collection.  I think I made out with that decision.

With that I can equate this stack of cards adding up to $241.28.  It is a ruff estimate.  What I did was I took the amount of rares on the first sort, then I subtracted that from the subtotal of all the cards that were above $1 for each set.  That got me to $241.28.  In my spreadsheets I have a column for each set that will look at the card prices and then SUMIF when the card is above $1.  I have wrote about it in a previous blog, but here it is again if you are interested:

=SUMIF(C2:C602,">1",H2:H602)

Here are the highlights from the collection, that I am hoping I can turn pretty quick, but I am not very hopeful.  We will see though.

So really all that I am getting from this is a bunch of trading fodder, again which was expected, and a lot more bulk that I need to sort.  There is the possibility that some of the cards that I did pick up will spike at some point, but it is not hopeful considering most of the cards I got were from RTR and up.

All in all, I did get my money back from the investment considering I should be able to trade away the cards I did get.  There was a large amount of older cards that were in really bad condition, and it would be hard for me to trade them away.  There is a LGS near by that from time to time give out store credit for bulk.  $.50 per inch and I might be able to get something back from a lot of the bulk.

With the original cost of the collection, and getting some cards I needed for the collection, I consider this a good buy.  I still think I paid too much for the cards, but considering my time horizon, I still could make out with this trade.  I know, you are saying that I bought +$5000 worth of cards for $700 but in reality I maybe got around $1000 worth of valuable tradable cards.  Most everything else I will have to do a store bulk trade for store credit, or just wait for something to pop.

So now that the sort is done, I will combine what I have just got with the collection, add the cards up to the spreadsheets and then I will update the cards on Deckbox to get some trades in.

I will update what I get in future trades, and hopefully this will be a fruitful adventure.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Card Count: 1080

The Good

First trade I was really happy to complete.  It was from a guy I traded with before, and he was only looking for a single $2 card to complete his Magic Origins set, and I was more than happy to trade with him.  I let him know that if there was any trade he was trying to get done because he was trying to finish his set or something of that sort, I will do my best to get a trade done.  I love trading with collectors and find them a joy to work with.

So here we go!  What did I get for $2?

This is all stuff that I needed for the collection, but it did not add up to $2 so I added some other cards.

Play set of Piracy Charm from Planar Chaos, and let me tell you that this is a really nice card to pick up!  I can't believe this is a playset for $1!  All in all the trade was under $2, but I was more than happy to help this guy out.

The Bad

Found another jackass that I will never trade with again.  I normally don't shame anyone here, but seriously fucking ass.

Username: IzzetCharm

That is right, never fucking again.  What a fucking asshole.  There is so much about this that makes me to never trade with a new trader, it is insane.  The cards he sent were in crap condition, he did not send all the cards in the trade, and then tried to make it up by sending me a complete crap condition card.

So this is how it went.  I did the first trade with him, he sent first and sent me the wrong Birds of Paradise, but all the other cards were in great condition.  I made him aware of the issue and he tells me it was his mistake and he will send it out right away.  I am happy that he is understanding, but this should have been the first sign of a dickhead and I should have just stopped trading with him after the first one.

In the meantime he starts up another trade, and I was like great.  Good first trade, this should be sweet to find another repeat trader.  We figure out the trade, everything goes well, I confirm my side and hit Accept.  I had already sealed up the first trade so I needed to send the M10 Birds back with this new trade, so I let him know.  And since the first trade was done so well I shipped out the second trade cards toot sweet.

A day goes by and he updates the trade with "Hey man, looks like I don't have a $.50 card and a couple of the cards are not near mint.  How about I send you this awesome card instead?"

Then I reply back, pointing out that I was not complaining or trying to make him upset, and I was trying to explain that since he accepted the trade it is his responsibility to get me the cards in the trade, or the other trader can give him a bad trade score.  I knew he was new to Deckbox, and it is in the rules for him to get me the cards we agreed to.  All the cards he was looking for were in the mailbox, so he was getting what he wanted, and all I wanted were the cards we agreed to.  He could go to his LGS and and pick it up and send it to me, or buy it online and send it to me, but I wanted the cards in the trade because I don't need anything that is not on my wishlist.  I also informed him that LP cards work for me, so I could take them no problem.

Holy fucking shit, this guy....

Chaos ensued, and he literally went complet bat shit on me.  Saying that I was not flexible, and he was a cool guy for offering me something I did not want.  I was wrong because I did not read his profile where it said that some of the cards could be not NM and I should ask him about it.  He was awesome because he pointed it out and did not just send everything without my cards that I wanted, and to make it up he was giving me an awesome card, and that I sucked and I should really just take the cards he was giving me.  Saying that his $4 card was worth way more than the $.50, and he was such a great guy to be doing me a favor and how much I suck because I wanted what we agreed to.

So now I was in defuse the situation mode.  Just trying to calm him down to get the trade completed, since I already sent out all the cards.  My mindset was that the first trade went so well, I don't need to send tracking on such a small trade.  What could go wrong.  How wrong I was, and I was pretty much thinking that this guy freaking out could just say that he never got my cards, and I would end up having to send out the cards he was looking for and the M10 Birds just to get this over with if he wanted to be a real jerk and say he never got the cards.

At first I replied to him saying that he accepted the trade and all I wanted was the cards that we agreed to.  I did not care about the LP and those were fine and I am not sure he is seeing that it was ok if he sent me LP cards, but I really wanted the $.50 if he could get it, but I did not want the $4 because I did not need it.  Then after about 1 minute of thinking about it I did not care about anything with this trade, and I just wanted it over.  I could care less if he sent me nothing, I just wanted this trade to be over.

I went to his profile and edited his "Note" section to remind me to never trade with this guy, ever. Ever...

It is really cool on Deckbox.org you can write yourself these little notes about the traders that only you can see.  It is a great way to keep track of every trader, and Deckbox makes it very easy for you to hover their name to see those notes anywhere on the site when you see their username.

So my next chat reply to him was basically "Hey man, don't worry about it.  Send me what ever you think is fair.  I am good."

Fucking Goat Ass

His reply was something to the fact that I suck, and I am a stickler, and a bunch of stuff in CAPS. Asking me why I am being so unreasonable, more on how cool he was for being so awesome, then asking me what my problem was with the $.50, and bla bla bla...

Of course I at this point I am just staring at my screen, but I reply with "Whoa, it is not a big deal.  I am not sure how you are not understanding what is being said in chat.  Chat is a part of the trade, and I have agreed to your terms.  I did not know what he was still angry with, but we could talk more about it.  I am agreeing to what ever you want to do, it is in the chat, just send the cards."

Finally he calms down and says he will send the cards.  So here let's just look and see what garbage was sent to me, shall we.

So here is the Birds of Paradise that was the correction to the M10 one he sent by mistake.

Here are the cards that were in the second trade minus the 8th Edition Collective Unconscious that he did not have.  The Forbidden Orchards were LP, but one of the Reciprocates was definitely not LP and more Played.  Let's take a look.

There was major wear on the right side, and a lot of wear all around.

But let's wait, he did send me a pretty cool $4 to make up for the LP conditions that I was ok with, and the missing card.  Score!!!

Joiner Adept from Fifth Dawn...  As you can see the complete wear on the card.  I could not get $.25 for this card anywhere.  This is how he felt about the trade, and how bad he felt about making the mistake he did.  I am sorry but if you make a mistake, make the other trader feel like it is their fault and how cool you are because you are so cool, and then continue to justify the mistake with a punch to the nuts?  Yeah never trading with IzzetCharm again.

The Ugly

Oh yeah:

At least it was real...

Modern Masters 2017!

What a fucking roller coaster this has been.

I started out ordering just 4 booster boxes from PreOrder, and then after the spoilers were released I pushed that up to 8 booster boxes.  Then, I went to go pick them up last Friday and was planning on going over to Kitchen's place to do some sealed fun with a buddy of his, so what the heck, I picked up yet another box to throw that into the fun.

But yes, of course, I was at my LGS and decided to see what I could find.  I picked up these gems.

Yes these two go towards the collection, but not towards the countdown.  Remember I keep all these types of sets out of the countdown until after Phase 1.

So here is what 2 cases of sexy time look like:

Shout out to my LGS again for just giving me sealed cases!  Love that.

So a little back story time.  After watching Alpha Investments and how he was opening boxes for his Patreons, I was thinking that each half case was a good box and a bad box.  So I tried to do a little mapping myself to see if I was correct.  Let's see how I did.

So this is the first box that I opened at Kitchen's house.

As you can see I got 3 Fetchlands, 3 Mythic, and 2 Foil Rares.  The other rares that I threw in there were the ones that I thought were worth a bit more.  I know, Terminus, Gift, and the Cage are not that high buck, but I was excited so I did it.

First Half Case

Now, these next pictures I am going to show are from the half cases to try and prove out my theory in the small ass sample size I had.  In the first two half cases I opened the boxes that were in the same place within the half case.  I will go over what I did with the last 2 half cases to see if I could prove myself right or wrong.

So if my theory was right then this would prove that the first box I opened was the Dud box.  In reality I did get 2 Fetchlands and 3 Mythic Rares, but only 1 Foil Rare.  Far from being a Dud box, but there it is.

This was a boner box!  2 Fetchlands, 4 Mythic Rares, and 2 Foil Rares and 1 Foil Common worth something.  I also got a Guide, Cage, and Moon, so really if I were to count any box as the winner it would have been this box.  But all in all my theory is going down the shitter.

Next Half Case

With this half case I opened the same box as the other half case in the hopes that I have proven that 1 box in a half case is a Dud and the other one is a monster!  Lets see.

Ok, so NO Fetchlands, 2 Mythic Rares, and 1 Foil Rare with 1 Foil Mythic Rare.  If not for the Guide, Damnation, Shadow, Cage, and Collar it would have been a horrible box.  And the Foil Gift and Grizzy also made up for it, but hard to say this is a Dud.  The box total from the prices from this weekend was around $120, so really this could be considered a Dud box.  Being a collector this was not a Dud box because it was the only Craterhoof and Linvala I got out of my openings.

So this is the other half of that case, and you could say that it was the better box.  3 Fetchlands, 4 Mythics, 1 Foil Rare, 1 Foil Mythic, and 1 Foil Uncommon that is worth some cash.  Throw in the Shadow and Moon and it is a pretty sick box.

So with this case, it did look like the first box I opened was less powerful than the second box I opened, so you could say that they were split up like this within the half case.

First Box: $90.97
Second Box: $131.43

First Box: $120.15
Second Box: $231.12

So you can see that there is a slight mapping going on here.  Basically the first box is lower in value than the second box.  So with the last case I had I wanted to test out my theory even more.  So I opened the crap spot in one half case, and then opened up the money box in the second half case to see if I was right.  Let's see how I did.

This is the crap box.  Yup, crap box.  NO Fetchlands, 4 Mythic Rares, 2 Foil Rares one being a Foil Fetchland.  Then I got another Cage, Collar and a Damnation.  So yes, I was being a funny guy when I said this was a crap box, but if you call no Fetchlands a crap box then this would be it, not counting the Foil because that is random beyond random.  I mean com'on...  Lilly, Goyf, Cavern....  Value town.

And in the second half case, I opened the money box.  4 Fetchlands, 3 Mythics, 2 Foil Rares and 1 Foil Uncommon worth some cash.  Knuck.en.futz.

Dud Box: $298.21
Money Box: $321.68

So with that all being said I could open the Money box in the first half case and it should be a destroyer of a box, and the Dud box in the second half case would be lower than the Money box, but still should have a lot of value.  Unfortunately I always keep 2 sealed boxes so who knows if I will ever find out.  I do have them labeled, and if I ever get a bug up my butt I might open them to see what comes out of them, but really I don't think my mapping experiment holds any real value.

The good thing out of all this, I actually got a full set with this opening.  Normally with Masters openings I am always missing some Mythic Rares.  I think I got a really good mix of cards with both cases, and even with the extra box I did buy for the Sealed party I would have still got the cards I needed.

I am trying to get a full playset of Fetchlands from this set to go along with my Zendikar playset. That way I will have two playsets to build decks with.  I am also considering going out and getting another Zendikar playset when prices drop some more, just so I can get one more set.  I might wait until the Christmas Bonanza at the Source to pick up the extra playset, because I can get so many good deals, but I am pretty sure if I see them available at Meadhall I will break down and pick those up.

I am sure I have spoken about this in the past, but I like to really ramp up my buys with these types of sets, just because you can get so much value out of a single box.  And with that value I get a ton of trading fodder, and it held very true with this opening.  I was able to get an extra Goyf, Lilly, Caverns and a ton of extra stuff.  I will hold on to the foils like I always do in hopes to build a nice position with those to trade a way in a big deal for some Alpha power that I still need.

As it ends up after the weekend of release.
Total: $2268.59
Cost Basis: $1977.67
Collection: $1069.46
Foil: $279.60
Trade: $919.53 ($504.30 that are the higher valued Cards that go into the trade binder)

This is all after the first weekend from the release, so I can only expect these prices to go down as more boxes get opened.  But I got my full set, so I am happy and will be trading away all the extras.

Smaller Trade

Card Count: 1092

So I am not sure what I did with the card count, but it is off compared to what I got in.  I am still trying to add the collection that I got it, and that might have thrown me off a bit.  But as far as I am keeping track, that is the current count but hopefully I will have a more precise count once I accept the collection I just bought.

These cards are from a first time trader.  Only issue is that it should be 3 cards not 2, but he sent me the wrong version of the card so I am waiting for our second trade to finish to complete this one out. This was a small trade, from a first time trader.  Again, love new traders because I get stuff that no one really wants, because it is their first time on deckbox and that just means more inventory for me to get things out of.

Good pickups from my end, and it gets me closer to 0!

Fate Unraveler

So, I am going through the collection and sifting through the rares, and I come across a Born of the Gods rare named Fate Unraveler.  I am like, oh wow for 3 and a B I get a 3/4 Enchantment Hag that would do damage to my opponent every time they draw a card.

I am wondering to myself, this has to be a $2-$3 rare so I look it up.  Low and behold, the card on TCGPlayer is set to a whopping $.15...

Seriously?  $.15!

You make them draw and that gives them damage.  You make them draw and they take damage.  Every turn they have to draw, and then they would take damage.  If they had a Tier 1 deck, they are most likely drawing a lot of cards, and therefore taking a lot of damage.

One things I have learned about this game, there are certain aspects of this game that people try and take advantage of, and there are things people build aspects of decks built around those advantages. You will see things in specific cards that just breathe possibilities, and I believe this is one of those cards.  Just like the Surgical Extraction I speculated on a while ago, I just see all sorts of value in this card.

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=378440

So no matter what, your opponent is always going to need to draw cards.  Higher powered decks will always draw more because of card advantage.  Your deck will never want to allow your opponent to draw more cards.  So in reality what I see in this card is a whole new deck that goes against what normal decks would do, and it would go against what high powered decks want to do.

So what do you think I did?

Yup...  But hey, it was only 60 and a playset of foils.  And hey, they were only around $.15 each.  And hey, I was able to pick them up using store credit.  So what you see here is the first shipment that are coming in, and I just wanted to share a small bit of why I think the card is worth it.

Here is the second shipment.

And the third.

FOILS...  I hate foils, but if I am going to Spec, I might as well Spec right.

If the card goes up to $1, then I will have made out, but considering what could be designed at some point I think this card has a lot of runway.

First Collection!

This is just a short update about a collection I bought.  I will go more into detail as soon as I get everything sorted out.  It was about 12,000 cards that I am taking in, so it will be a bit.

This is a picture after I got everything bulk sorted out, and with hindsight I should have just taken a photo of how the collection came in.  If I buy another collection I will do that instead and then show an after picture as well

But, big shout out to my LGS for allowing me meet up with the guy at the store to go through it.  I only went through the rares, but it was nice to just have a place to meet up where I knew nothing funky was going to happen.  I know that my request would have been very odd for anyone to ask because normally the LGS would be the only one doing the buying in the store, so it was very nice of them to allow me this space.  I did make sure that the inspection was done before the nightly gaming was done, just so I would not be doing what I was doing while other player were there to see.  I can't stress enough how it is not something that any other store would allow.

So a friend of mine, we'll call him Kitchen, told me that he knew a guy that he had played with a couple times and was looking to sell out of his collection.  Kitchen was a bit strapped for cash so he pushed the deal my way.  The seller posted everything he thought that had value on Deckbox.org, and will go into this with more detail later.  I ran the numbers, and gave him the purchase price.

It sounded like he was in a hurry to get the deal done, and wanted a response pretty quick.  So I ran the numbers and gave him the price.  I valued everything RTR and above as nothing, and then priced out all the sets that were Core or Block.  I gave him 30% for anything below $10, and 50% above $10.

Why did I price it out like that?  So basically anything RTR and above, there is so much inventory out there that no one has an issue finding that stuff and I don't get a lot of trade offers for that stuff. The Promo and special set cards I almost never get bites on, so they were left out completely.  That leaves the Core and Expansion sets.  Now I knew I had to do better than what an LGS would do, and most of the cards to me are just trading fodder, so buying for a bit more was not that big of a deal to me. I could only guess what a store offered him, but I am pretty sure it was below the $700 on my first offer was.

So I had made the offer about a month before he accepted my offer, and I can only guess that he went around to some LGS's to see what they would offer.  From the start it seemed like he was wanting to sell pretty quick.  That is the only thing I can assume why it was such a delay in accepting the offer.  I honestly thought he was going to pass.  But in the end, the offer was accepted and the deal was done.

So with the first pass through, these were the cards that were needed for the collection, which is a very good thing.  I did not think I would find anything I really needed.  But again I will go through this more in a later blog.

Considering that I was allowed to do what I did at my LGS I had to buy something, right?  :-)

So yeah, I did see they only had the Sphere of Resistance in their inventory so I picked that one up but while I was waiting another customer came in looking to sell some stuff to the store.  I tried to keep my distance, but all I heard was "Chalice" and "$100".  So I was very interested in seeing what they were about to pick up.  Ends up, the guy sold 4 Kaladesh Inventions to the store, but unfortunately the only card I needed was the Chalice of the Void.  I was really hoping for more, or even another Torrential Gearhulk!

So yeah, stay tuned in, should have more about the collection and what I did.

Oh Canada!

Card Count: 1104

Sick of all sickness!  Love this trade!  Ok so it was a downtrade, and it had to get shipped to Canada (which was cheaper than shipping to the US), and I got a lot of commons and uncommons, but hot damn!  Picked up a ton of stuff I needed.

So let's go through with what I did trade away, and remember everything that was traded away was extras outside of the collection.

1 Celestial Colonnade - Worldwake
1 Collected Company - Dragons of Tarkir
1 Flooded Strand - Khans of Tarkir
1 Forest - Battle for Zendikar (Foil)
1 Island - Battle for Zendikar (Foil)
1 Karakas - Eternal Masters
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast - New Phyrexia
1 Plains - Battle of Zendikar (Foil)
1 Swamp - Battle for Zendikar (Foil)

Yeah yeah, Foil full arts for bulk!  Insane!  Well find me on Deckbox.org and trade me!

So here we go with what I got.

Shadowmoor:

These are little pickups but really I only need 3 more cards from this set to be complete, so there is that.

Lorwyn:

This my friends brings me to 5 more cards if you don't count the basic lands!

Planar Chaos:

One more left!  ONE!!!!

Future Sight:

Fiver left!

Tenth Edition:

That my son is one sexy list of pictures!  It brings my requirement for Tenth Edition down to 188 more for the playset.

Big pickups in this trade was the 10th Birds of Paradise, Angelic Chorus, Field Marshal, Platinum Angel, and Pithing Needle.

I know I know, that is a lot of value leaving for trash, but like I said before find me on Deckbox!  I did get about a $30 premium with the trade, so it was not completely on the downside for me.  And if I consider having to buy everything that is saving me $150, and really all those foils are all gravy to me.