GP Minny 2018!

Total Card Count: 291

This is another large update, but I am kind of liking just putting out one of these each week instead of the multiple smaller updates.  We will see how it goes, but I really just don't have a lot of time to do updates anymore.

So let's start up with some pickups I got from Card Kingdom.

I love these lands because I am a Commander player, so I prefer to playing against multiple people at one time and these lands are perfect for me!  I am trying to pick up more of these that needed, just cause I see these are a dual land reprint.  Yes those ABUR dual lands.  Commander (EDH) is only getting more players, and I see these lands going far in value.  Now, this is not a speculation, but more of a grab to supply my decks.  I do see that I need more than 2 playsets, so I will more than likely stop at 3 playsets in hopes for a reprint at some point, and then I can trade some of my originals out for the reprints.

I also got some sealed product in from CardSphere!  I Love These Trades!!!!

This was a surprise, but a very nice surprise.  This finishes out my Magic 20XX Core sets and now I can mark that down as a small accomplishment and move on to the next step of the Modern Core sets.

This one was a planned pickup!  So now that people know I am looking for sealed products, I have other traders picking up boxes I need, and letting me know that they have them.  This allows me to know that I have something on a balance buildup.  Of course, this makes me want to trade more, so I can build up my balance to get those sealed booster boxes.  It just works so well knowing that I have product like this waiting for me, and all I need to do is sent cards out.

Now for the Grand Prix Minneapolis update!

I was lucky enough to have some family in town this past weekend, and decided to bring my two nephews to the GP so that they could see what it is all about.  I have been playing Magic with them for a while, and have been teaching them since they were 9, so it was a really cool thing to be able to show them the upper tiers of professional gaming.

We did not take part in any of the side games, and it was more just to show them what goes on, and they were pretty impressed.  They did grab a side table to get a couple games in while I did my trading business, and our real playing time was going to be up at my LGS.

So these.  I was planning on pulling my Revised Booster box our of storage to see if I could trade into some sealed booster boxes I needed, but was a bit timid of walking around with a box like that in my backpack.  I also did not see Alter Reality Games as a vendor, so I was not sure there was going to be anyone there that even had sealed product.

So as plan B, I grabbed a couple of my sealed Revised Starter decks in case there was something I could trade for.  I was quite surprised to see that folks were selling these for around $500, and pricing them around $1000 per deck.  I figured if there was something in sealed product I could at least get a sealed box for one of these.

To my disappointment I did not find any sealed product vendors there at all, so I was very happy I did not bring my Revised Booster box, but I was interested to see what I could get for the Starter decks.  I went to each vendor, verified there were some cards that I could pickup, and asked them how much they were willing to give me for trade-in value.

I ended up finding a vendor that was pricing them out at $400 in trade, so I pick them.  Now, the other vendors were all around the $300 - $350 per, so I only made out with $100 more in trade with the final vendor.  Let's take a look at what I was able to pickup:

And this is what I found for my Revised Starter decks an Unlimited Scrubland and Unlimited Savanah.  I was able to take a $7.95 pack of unopened cards and trade them for +$300 cards.  This also finished out my playsets of those Unlimited dual lands I was looking for.  I know they are not the best dual lands, but they are my finished Unlimited playsets and now I can freely trade away the Revised Dual lands that I was holding on to for other decks.  Basically I am trying to hold on to 2 sets of Dual Lands being a mix of Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, and Revised.  Granted I do not play with my Alpha or Beta Duals, but you get it.

I did have a little left over, so I also picked up these packs to round it out.  I am not opening them because I do not want to sort and inventory the cards I would get.  I really do find that now that I am done with collecting all my sets, I just don't want to open any sealed product past my pre-order pickups.

I was also weak and picked up some cards from a vendor.  I normally keep all my cash buys for my LGS when I can, and I like buying standard playable cards from them so they make a little money off of cards and I can help keeping them in business.  But I was weak, and picked up these cards.

This finished out my playset and I have no idea why I needed to pick these up, but it started my drift down the issue of picking up cards I did not need to buy at the time.

Yep, did not need these, but picked them up anyway.  Totally should have grabbed them from Lodestone, but yeah...

Ok!  So this one I needed for my playset, and it is a Modern playable card, but yeah another card I should have grabbed from my LGS...

So really it is not as bad as it could have been, but these cards are the types of cards I would only pickup from my LGS.

Now lets get into the real good stuff I get when at a GP!

RK Post was there!  This is the first time I was able to see this artist, and I was really happy!

More art for the walls!!

I need to buy more frames!

And then, there was Arron Miller!

It was only a couple of playmats, but I really like this work.  I wish he had a new Star Wars playmat, but I am happy with these additions.

So yeah, it was a good week, picking up some sealed booster boxes, along with some Commander lands, and finished it off with a great GP weekend with family.  We did end up going to Lodestone and playing Commander for many hours.  It was a great time, and we played with my higher powered Commander decks.  It was pretty dead in the shop because of the GP, so we were able to grab a table off to the side, and gamed it up.  It really get's me excited for the time when my child is old enough to spend hours upon hours at the LGS playing games all day.

This is a long one!

Card Count: 414

Well it has been a bit and there were a lot of stuff that has been released.  We recently had the Core 2019 set release.

With this set we got a bunch of reprints, but we also need to try and get a playset.  This set release increased the card count by +197 cards.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know I do not like Core set releases because I hate having to collect playsets of reprints.  What I really hate about this set are the Planeswalker desks!

These fucking things.  Not only do they keep making these deck, they decided to make 5 of them instead of just 2, and now I am officially done with them.  What a waste of capital.  I could just pick up another sealed booster box than try and grab these.  I will try and put up a bunch on CardSphere to pick up cheap, but I am not going to try for these anymore.  It is a waste for my budget and if WoTC is just going to put out crap I am not going to buy them anymore.

I will keep track of the cards, but very close to just removing them from the collection all together.

And these stupid things are back...  I am going to stick with just getting the decks and not picking up the deck printed only cards.  So what is happening here, WoTC is putting crappy reprints in these decks, but you can only get the cards from these decks.  So in order to get a playset, I would have to ask my LGS for 4 of these decks so I can have my playset.

These decks are out there for free to get newer players playing MTG, and they are not for sale.  So for me to try and get 4 sets of these cards is just stupid.  I am just going to get 1 set of these and leave it at that.  Taking free cards from newer players is bad enough, trying to get a playset of these stupid things is just greedy.

This is what my collection of Core 2019 looks like after sorting and sleeving.  I just need to make my labels and put them in the Standard shoe box for my Standard decks.

I had done my pre-order for the set, and you are now able to pick up the booster boxes at pre-release instead of 1 week after, so I needed to go up to the LGS and grab my Bundles I have been collecting.

And while I was up there, I might was well grab some Core 2019 cards I need for my playsets!  I know!  I know!  I am supposed to wait until after rotation to get them!  Well this is another reason I am not buying so much sealed to crack, because I always need to buy something from my LGS, so I might as well buy things I need, and not pick up things for the trade binder.

I figured I should grab all the Elder Dragons I need because I can see these going up in price with Commander ideas.

Yes I am one of those guys that picked up some of these at the increased price, but I have always made the mistake in not picking up Liliana right after release and the price just goes up higher, so I just grab these to be done with it.

And yes, I picked up my playset of these because.  There is no deck I needed these for.  I just wanted to be done with these as well.  I know I could have waited for these, but I can see that Core 2019 not being opened a lot, and these creeping up.  Well, that is what I am telling myself with this one.

I also grabbed some of these because I want all of these.  Come on!  Dual lands for multiplayer games?  And they are below $10?!  I am picking up as many of these as I can.

Oh yeah I don't collect promo cards...  Total impulse buy.  I did not need this card, nor did I want this card.  I recently picked up my second playset of the normal printed card, but I for some reason wanted this one too.  I am still not planning on collecting the promo cards, but you never know...

I can't forget about CardSphere!  This sexy thing came in from 1 trader along with another sealed booster box.  But it is the first booster box from the block, and he let me know that he had another one when I had enough balance for the send.  I just love getting booster boxes!

And the first Ravnica block is done!  I have to admit, I am very happy to get this one from CS and not having to buy this box.  To be able to get a $600+ booster box from the site really tells you about the community.  It really has some legs to be able to pickup this.  I am very happy!  Come join me on CS and help me get my referral badges by signing up with this link!

https://www.cardsphere.com/ref/711/e4031f

Last but not least, Art Book for Dominaria!  I know I keep picking up these books, but it really sucks sometimes being a collector.  I really want to crack the book to read, but as a collector I won't allow myself to do it.  I hope to run into someone with these books opened so I can enjoy them.  And no, I am not going to by 2 of them so I can open one and keep one sealed.  But that does sound like a good idea.

So my day job should be a lot less stressful, and we got through the hell weekend that we had been planning for over a year for.  I hope to be able to post a bit more now, and maybe share some more of my collection.

So yeah!  I hope to have some more posts soon.  I am getting in some new stuff in the coming weeks.

Phat Pack!

Just another pickup from CardSphere.  The only issue I have with these pickups, CardSphere does not have all the prices up yet, so I can't get everything I am looking for.  They need to get the MSRP from the sets in order to post the prices, and I am stuck waiting for them to get that data.

Granted these Fat Packs are pretty low on my want list, but it is pretty cool that I am finishing out this part of the collection.  This was a small add from trading, but still a welcome one.

Ok, so yes it is my first case of Dominaria.  And I know I said first case, because I do think I will be buying more.  Like in stocks, always pick up the winners and keep picking up more.  Ok, so in stocks it is not as simple as that, but in some senses it is.

This set is great for drafting, great for sealed, and great for single cards.  They added the Sagas, and I see those cards being worth more after rotation.  Then there is the new Mox, Karn, and Teferi.  All of which I think will be worth more in the future.  Cabal Stronghold is good, and could show more growth later, but yeah all in all I want more of this set. 

I think this will be one of those great sets that people will look back on and want to play more of.  To me, I think back to Urza's Saga when I thought to myself that I should get more of that set, but did not.  Or Innistrad and thought to myself and said I should get more, but I didn't.  So with sets like this, I tend to pick up more then the normal set. 

Kind of like what I did with Kaladesh, Aether Revolt, and Ixalan.  There is something with those sets that I just wanted more for later.  Amonkhet, Hour, Rivals, Oath, BFZ were all sets I did not see anything special with the set, so I did not pick up more, but it was also the time I had a larger buy pool so I have way too much of those products.  And as I have gone over and over, I am now under a new buy rule where I only pick up a small amount on pre-release to keep my bulk down.

Now I also know that this set was just released, and it has a long print run right now.  I want more of this set.  Honestly, I really think that the availability of this set will not be like we have had in recent years.  My feeling is that they will slow down on the release of all their sets instead of having an open fire hose for all Standard sets.  Almost like going back to the Scars of Mirrodin days.  I also think they are not doing this to keep print cycles down, but instead they are ramping up the number of products released into the wild.

There will be so many products out there, the natural purchase cycles these sets did have will go down because there is more to consume out there.  Everyday MTG players will not be able to sustain buying everything at the same amounts they had before, and they will now need to spread their cash around to different products.  But I also think that Commander has taken over the game, and people really have flocked to that format because of the cost.  Players no longer need playsets for their collection.

I also think WoTC is seeing this trend, and are moving forward to releasing more product to meet those needs.  Conspiracy, Battlebond, Spellbook, Global Series, and of course Commander.  These are all new sets that have multi-player cards in them, and are very useful in the Commander Meta.  They are also doing card frame changes to make those legendary cards more special.  Hell, go back to Dominaria and they added the Historic feature.  Wizards see's that the player base wants more Commander like decks, and can see where their customers want to spend their cash.

Come on - Brawl?

Standard is the way of the competitive player, but the Commander style of play is for 90% of the MTG community in some way of form.  Players might not play Standard, but they will play Commander.  The format is just better for the casual player, and lets be serious, 90% of the player base is causal for the majority of their playing time.

And like I have said before, and the reason I am buying so little of the sets when they come out, is because I want to be able to be more selective with what I get to buy, instead of bulking out more than I should.  Don't buy a ton of Hour of Devastation so then I can pick up more Dominaria because it is a better set.  Just crack a small amount so I can pick up singles that will be worth more later.  This way I lower my cost in bulk, keeping my bulk card supply down, and I can be more specific in what I buy along with getting my playset.

I am really just going to be excited for the time when I am done picking up my sealed product for the collection, and then that will open up my cash for all future speculation with new product.

Not much of an add to this blog, but wanted to keep up with what is going on since work is easing up.  Hopefully I will have another add soon with the M19 opening this weekend!