Ooooooooooooh Sexy!

Tempest Booster box!

That is right!  I splurged a bit on this one, but it has been on my wish list for quite some time.  I know the LGS I bought this from has had this product for a while now, and they asked if I wanted it a while ago, but hey I was Black Friday shopping and figured I would finally pick up this bad boy.  Honestly I was there just to pick up my Anthology Planechase, but saw they had a small pile of older booster boxes sitting behind the counter.  If you were wondering I picked it up for $850.00.

Yeah I know, it is a bit of a high price for the booster box, but I figured it is an item that I am never going to open, and it is going to sit in the collection until I sell it.  So with a 10+ year time horizon I figured the cost basis of what I spent will be fine at $85 a year at minimum.

I know, I mention cost basis and I am more of a collector but keeping those numbers in mind when buying does mean something.  I don't want to just splurge on everything, but keeping track of what I got it for will help when I sell the collection and taxes I will have to pay.

Fallen Empires

Here we have another older sealed booster box and I was able to pick it up from a LGS that was close to where I live.  Unfortunately that LGS is going out of business, and it really sucks since I just found them, but picking up this box makes me feel pretty good.

$160 was the price, and I consider it a good pickup.  Normally when I find a new LGS I like to buy some stuff to throw my support, and mainly see how they treat customers.  The only bad thing about buying this from this particular LGS is that they are going out of business.  The manager was very nice, and I think I spent a good hour in there talking to him.  It was a really great environment to play, they had a great playing area and a good number of boosters to pick from.  Their prices on sealed and singles was a bit high, but hey they need to stay in business.  Just sucks that they are closing shop.

Amazon Purchase

So I am trying to get a sealed booster box of every set that I am getting, because you know, why not. I was shopping around for some new wire shelving to expand my Modern collection, and decided to pick up some sealed product.  So in Nov I filled out my wishlist and picked up a good old box of Chronicles!  That's right, Chronicles!

Why the hell would I spend $300 on a box of Chronicles?  Same reason I put priority on Legacy cards and left the Modern cards for later.  So now, I am going to do the same thing and try and pick up those booster boxes, because who really knows how many are out there.

Is $300 too much?  It might be, but I really felt more comfortable with buying the box off Amazon than eBay.  Only time will tell if that is a mistake.

Long time no talk

It is almost a year ago since I have wrote last, and a lot has changed.  We got Kaladesh, Anthology Planechase, From the Vault: Lore, Eldritch Moon, Conspiracy: Take the Crown, Shadows over Innistrad, Eternal Masters, Commander 2016, 2 Duel deck, and a large amount of other small stuff.

My count last blog was 14,887 and I have been very hard at work in driving that down.

There is no real excuse outside of what type of priority I put on MTG Blogging in my life, and I am really hoping to bring that back to the front.  Magic in general has just been a chore as of late, but within the last couple weeks I have been able to get everything organized and sorted.  I was pushed out of my office, to a larger bonus room, and now I am in a different office.  Hopefully this will be my last move.

So I have been able to keep up with all the buys this year, but let's hope that WoTC slows it down a bit next year, because I am afraid I am not going to be able to keep up.

Oath of the Gatewatch
Duel Deck Blessed vs Cursed
Shadows over Innistrad
Gift Box Shadows over Innistrad
Eternal Masters
Eldritch Moon
Conspiracy: Take the Crown
Kaladesh
Kaladesh Starter Planeswalker deck
Duel Deck Nissa vs Ob Nixilis
From the Vault: Lore
Commander 2016
Gift Box Kaladesh

When I list it all out, it looks like a ton.  I even bought more Kaladesh Bundles then I normally would, and got suckered into those Buy a Box promos for Kaladesh for those 3 card packs.  I did get an Expedition with them, so I can't complain too much.  I am still kicking myself in opening them, I should have just left them closed as I did not need anymore of the cards.

Currently my number for my collection is set to 2,081 left to get.  I have adjusted the number a bit to remove Portal, Starter, Conspiracy, and Un-sets.  I am also not counting the Masterpieces because those usually take me a lot longer to get.  But with getting so close, I am starting to get my missing Portal, Starter, Conspiracy, and Un-sets.

I am still keeping out Alpha, Beta, Unlimited and Portal Three Kingdoms.  I hope to get those sets as soon as I can, but the priority is to get the playsets first.  I am also just trying to get a single set of any non-major release set, but with the change that I am trying to also get a playset of first release cards. For instance Conspiracy: Take the Crown - Sanctum Prelate, I just don't want to open sealed product to get them.  I keep opening newer sets, and I am hoping to be able to trade for them after I do open sealed product.

We are back in business!

I found that I was still able to scrape off of TCGPlayer, and I am not sure they know I can do it, but I can!

Before the printable price guides, I was able to scrape off just the table from the website.  They then change it so you had to repoint to the printable versions, but it looks like now with their new price guide they opened up the table on the webpage.

I will update this later, but I just wanted to send a quick update.  I was able to update my Price.xlsx with all the new connections, and update the Collection spreadsheet, but there are even more edits I need to post for the spreadsheets.  The prices for Mid shifted over a column, and the issue with N/A being presented on the web prices, so there will be some new updates to those changes.

But I have been able to get things 75% back up and running with Excel, and that will give me some more time to get coding to get my database up and running.

It is late and the wif is wanted to head to bed, so look for an update later!

FYI, I was going to make a pretty large purchase with some extra money I have saved up, and with the changes that had occurred I was really looking to not use TCG to buy anything and just go to the sites themselves.  But now with being able to keep my spreadsheets up to date with price, I just might throw some cash to the site again!

I know, it is pretty sad to not buy from the site for them wanting to keep this information to themselves, but come-on!  I am not some big business guy, I just don't want to post my collection on any site and keep the prices up to date.

I hate my life right now

So....

TCGPlayer has now decided to change the way they post the Price Guides and I am no longer able to scrape the website pages to get my information that I load into collection sheets.  This is not so bad when it comes to gathering the set information, but now I am no longer able to update my prices to see what my collection total is.

Options now are to use a site like MTGPrices, Deckbox, or even TCGPlayer to keep track of my inventory.  OR... I build my own application to scrape off data from websites to get prices and keep going with my own application.  TCGPlayer will not give me their API to write my own application because I am not a company that is trying to drive traffic to their site, and MTGPrices has an API that I have a request out to in order to see if I can use theirs.

All in all, I need to start building a python script that will allow me to gather data from sites for the prices so I can then merge it with data I can gather from other sites on card information.

This is going to be a long process...

More to update later.

14,887 Been gone for a bit

I picked up all my Battle for Zendikar cards, and I picked up a bunch of singles.  Also picked up some SDCC sets, but I have been away from writing this blog because I have been trying to deal with a death in the family.  I should be able to update more now, and I will try and catch up with some photos of some things I have picked up, but it has been a while since I have posted so I am really not sure where I left off.

I am just going to post this, and try and do a reset as to where I am.  More posts to come.