Happy Holiday's!

What up Mother fuckers!

Yeah, no idea how to start this one...

So yeah, I have never been the holiday type.  Ever!  Ok, maybe when I was 9 and getting Empire Strikes Back toys, when life was good and innocent, but ever since then I hate them.  With a passion.  But now, we have "the child" and it is red and greed diarrhea all over the place.  My family sees the Christmas tree in the living room and make comments like, "Wow, really...  How did that happen?"  To my reply is to point to my wife and she returns a big smile.

Suffice to say, I hate this time of year.  In my world, every small child had a wake up call in the double digits of age, where their entire life came crashing down, and all those special wonderful moments of family just blew up in their face.  Where life came knocking on their face and gave them a shit sandwich.

But now with "the child" I find myself embracing the holiday spirit again, and only wish to not allow that shit sandwich to hit my child's mouth until maybe 18'ish, when they learn to hate the world anyway.  Christmas tree, and Secret Santa, and holiday presents for people I should buy things for and had never done that before for.

With that, I am just excited to see what happens from here on out, and waiting for the plot to thicken.  Another reason why I am posting this, I have been trading a bit but it is slow going and I am trying to think of things to write about.

The YouTube community has been toxic and I wanted to write about that, but not in the context of what every other content creator is posting about.  So I hope to get that up this week.

**Edit**
Yeah started to write about this topic and decided to just leave it.  If there is more drama that comes up I might write about it, but the YouTube world is toxic and I just get depressed when I think about it, so not writing anything about it.

Also, I wanted to write about some of the things I am doing with the collection now that I am all caught up, and hopefully that will come this week as well.  Just with getting back into building decks, and what I used to do with new players that do not have collections like me, and how I try to make it even.  Also what I am doing with the Duel Decks.

But yeah, with "the child" it is pulling me away from writing as much, but I am still here, and will be posting more within the weeks to come on more than just cards I am getting for the collection.

/hugs!

CardSphere Secret Santa!

So what they hell!

CardSphere - giving gifts - getting gifts - Lets give it a shot!

And this is what I get...

Spot on!

Yes that is an Unlimited Meekstone!  And he sent me some 4th Edition cards, but I think he missed the fact that I needed Korean cards, not english, but who cares!  Unlimited!  Meekstone!  Boom!

And if anything makes me feel like an idiot, it is these things.  He pretty much sent me plastic loaders for shipments, with a ledger on the back to see where they have gone, and 5 fucking pre stamped with return address envelopes all set to ship out.  I have to say that getting these envelopes was the best part of the package, just pure love from someone that is on CardSphere.  I wish I had thought of it, and I will be doing the same thing every time I send out a Secret Santa!  Just pure joy!

Thank you CardSphere member #7!

Barter in the books!

Total Card Count: 87
Unlimited: 34

Today on the greatest Magic the Gathering blog in the multiverse!

CardSphere trades a flew!  The big comings and goings was the large amount of Unlimited cards that came into my possession.  I am just amazed on how well CardSphere works.  Since I have put the Unlimited cards up on my Wants, I have had a lot of cards come in.  Considering that we are still lower than 6k of users, it is just great that I am getting the cards that I am posting to my wants.

Here we go!

So this was a trade in where the sender thought he was sending me an Unlimited Sunglasses of Urza, unfortunately it was only Revised and a dispute had to be opened.  With how CardSphere works, it was resolved very quickly and I was refunded my balance.  Fucking loving CardSphere!

This next one is a sexy one!  All 4 are rare, and they came in with some ware, but still good condition!

Fucking score!  I was a bit timid on this one, just cause the condition was too good.  But everything checks out and it is real.  A huge score!  I can't believe I picked this one up.

This next one came in with more Unlimited, the final basic land I was looking for to complete my Modern cards after the recount, and a great Erg Raiders from Arabian Nights.  First off, Fastbond was a great pick up all on it's own.  Blaze of Glory is a Reserve List card, so I am happy as snot someone wanted to part with that.  Control Magic is a sought after uncommon, and that Disintegrate is always wanted.

Now, that Erg Raiders.  When Arabian Nights was printed, they did a different print run with a different printer.  The colorless mana symbol is lighter on the left, and darker on the right.  Collectors call these two separate cards, and to fill out the full set you would need to have both.  There is only a handful of cards with this problem, but they exist none the less.

There are only 14 of the, but I have found that it is pretty difficult to get them all.

Holiday slowdown

So we just had Explorers of Ixalan come out with From the Vault, and this weekend was the Unstable release.  I was able to pick up a couple of sealed boxes of Unstable from the LGS Lodestone here in Minneapolis, but I am optioning to not open them. 

I was also able to pre-order 4 boxes from ABU Games, and 1 case from Alpha Investments but I plan on holding onto a large percentage of that for the long haul.  I am thinking I will open as much as I can to get close to a full set, but I am really after the lands and tokens.  Considering on opening weekend I can get a full set for around $106, it is somewhat stupid to try and open more than I need for the set.  I do hope I can get a foil land, that is some pretty good trading fodder.

The trading has been going on, and I have ended up sending out over $500 worth of cards within the last 2 weeks.  Better yet I am getting in over $250 cards with 10 of those being Unlimited cards.  With more and more people joining CardSphere, it really looks like sending out as much as I can to build up that balance is going to payoff.

Deckbox on the other hand is pretty slow.  I do get offers from time to time, but the amount of ABU cards on Deckbox is slim pickings, and when you consider trying to find someone that needs something that I have it becomes much worse.  That is one good thing about CardSphere, I can just send and send and hope for cards to come in.  There is no real barter, and at this point in the game it is pretty sexy to just send cards out and have cards on my Wants.

It is a non-stop thought in my head to just call it quits and not getting any of the new cards, and every day I get closer and closer to that decision.  I guess I am just hoping that WotC pulls their heads out of their ass and stop releasing so many products.

I have started to build up my collection of decks since I am done with my verification of the collection.  Now I can build up all those Dual Decks for some quick easy playing.  I do plan to keep 2 decks of each variety as well, that way I can head out to play when ever I need to.  I hope to some day build some decks of my own design, but I am a bit away from those days.

So yeah, hope I can put an update later this week with Unstable and maybe some incoming trades!

Duck, Duck, Grey Duck

This is a local game store near the house and every once and a while I will head up there to see what they have.  They have a pretty small community up there, a lot of high schoolers, and some older EDH players.  I have found that they do end up getting a lot of Masterpiece cards and higher priced cards, I can only assume that their player bases usually cashes out with them in order to get other packs or lower prices staples.

This LGS usually holds a lot of PPTQ and smaller tournaments, and they have enough space to hold them, so they do get a lot of product like this.  They are also so small that they do not get a lot of collector traffic, so finding this type of product is pretty easy.  Most everything they sell is MSRP, so picking up there is a no brainer, but it does suck that they try and sell Master sets at MSRP.  With Iconic, I don't think they can keep that pricing model up for very long.

But yeah, picked up another two of these for the collection.  Thinking that in a couple years they will be closer to $70 a piece.

Also found some of these for the collection.  They did have a lot of other Mythics, and considering that I opened 6 boxes and only got a handful of Mythics, my theory of them picking up a lot of these cards from their player base is a bit stronger.

And yup!  Got the rest of my playset when most of the other stores I stopped in did not have any of these.  But yeah, my theory more and more solid when I go up there and keep seeing these types of cards.

Now all I need are a couple of Uncommon lands to finish out my Iconic Master needs.

Deckbox is Still Alive!

And we are still alive in Deckbox!

I was able to pick this on up for the Standard needs.  Remember I tend to grab what I can for Standard cards to even out trades.

Decided to grab these for some speculation.  Of course if they reprint them I am hosed, but I still like the bet.  Journey to Nix cards, not a loved set.  I can hope!  Well I can hope if they do end up reprinting the card it was because the card edged up past $20 and it does not end up going back down to the price where I got them at $2.50.

A complete Reserve List play here.  More on the cheapish side of the RL, but since I was just trying to even out the trade I thought I would go with these.

Yup, another RL play here.  This would make my 3rd Lady, but I needed to fill in some pricing to even out the trade.  Her ability is not that bad, but this is defiantly a more expensive RL card.

And this is what started this trade.  Since I started to add my Unlimited needs to CardSphere and Deckbox I am trying to finish out that set.  Luckily I was able to find this Canadian trader that had them sitting around.

Here is the gravy that I was able to get in the trade.  He thought these cards were Beta, but after he shared the pictures we found out they were Alpha.  I could have saved myself a lot of trade value if I had kept them as Beta, but what kind of trader would I be to take advantage of someone.  Anyway, these are always a great pickup for what ever reason.  Anytime I can get closer to an Alpha set is a good time.

It has been a struggle on Deckbox lately, but I am able to get trades here an there.  I have been trying to do trades on Deckbox, but it is slim pickings.  Granted I do not have a lot on my Wishlist, but traders to try and still get some things done.  It is a pretty good place for me to do a lot os speculating with downtrades, but my trading life is on CardSphere right now.  I am able to keep trading while running up my balance for the hopes of finding more people to sending me cards I need.

Unlimited Supply of Awesome!

Today on the Greatest Magic the Gathering blog!

CardSphere strikes again!  I actually got a couple of Unlimited cards for the collection.

This one was a little beat up, but adding it to the collection.

And another Unlimited Rare to add to the collection.

I do have to say that CardSphere is turning out to be really cool.  I am going to have over $800 in funds, and really just looking for my sealed needs or the ABU cards.  Moving a lot of my bulk for items I need, cannot get any better than that.