Anyone have standard playables?

I know the feeling.

I sold a large box of alpha and beta cards back in 2013 for $3,000.
Today, that same collection is worth closer to $15K.

Amazing how much Alpha and Beta have grown in value.

Marcus

Yeah, people have caught onto the rarity of them.

I have recently jumped back in hard. I have become the sponsor of a MTG club at our school. Check out this combo that I laid down tonight!

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Nice! Love the revised Elves thrown in there.

I'll sell every card I have right now. Just been too lazy to Ebay lately.

All bubbles burst

I opened 3 boxes of Ultimate Masters already, I love it

Damn! Nice.

I opened a box and these were a couple of the sweet cards.

Yep, Liliana's a foil. I also had a couple of other $50 cards in the box.

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Rootwalla is nothing special but it's a foil. The buried alive is just one of my favorites in general.

The foiling on these newer cards is so disappointing. On camera, you can barely tell they're foils.

Nice pull though.

I may be alone, but I like the current foiling. It’s like a satin and probably won’t curl as easy.

Unfortunately it's still curling, it's not quite as crazy as the cards from original Mirrodin block, which always seem to curl worse than anything else for some reason, but the new ones definitely will still curl badly if you're not careful.

The peeps at Wizards of the Coast are genius. They hand out free starter decks and all of a sudden my kids are buying expansion packs, plains walkers, and single cards. I just learned to play, but now I can't keep up with the kids.

Starting to pick up a few modern cards again. I think we all have those stories of missing out or selling too cheap. I remember my friend buying a full playset of duel lands for $400. I thought he was an idiot, but turns out I was the idiot. That was actually the beginning of the end for me. It became less fun when you needed to have hundreds of dollars invested to play with your friends. I liked it better crap like Killer Bees were playable cards, when the theme of a deck was just as important as how good it was. I sold my few dual lands for way to cheap, based on today's pricing. Force of Will was another card that seems to have exploded since I've been away. It's interesting how those very small benefits increase card pricing. Anyway, I'm starting off by buying fetchlands and shocklands. I know they aren't the original duel lands, but both seem like they going to be long term staples in decks (especially fetchlands). They might actually be better then duel lands in my opinion. If anyone has anything for sale at below eBay pricing please send me a PM.

May want to look on TCGplayer. They usually have the best prices. Ebay is much more of a rip when it comes to MTG.

Do you play casual formats or do you play seriously at the LGS/tournaments? If you play casual, maybe consider ordering some nice-looking proxies to save some bucks. I have a cube that we draft out of and have saved a lot of money by proxying. In many cases, you can't tell the difference between a proxy and the real thing.

I've been able to beat TCG player in most cases. I've went a bit crazy the last few days. I picked up a full playset of Blood Crypt, Breeding Pool, Hallowed Fountain, Stomping Ground, and Watery Grave. Average was exactly $7 per card, shipped. I'd still like to grab the Steam Vents, but the meta game seems to be driving their price up currently and I could see that rotating as those decks rotate out of favor. Still, I see shock lands as a long term staple in most decks, plus with them being recently reprinted they are nearing all time lows. I also picked up just a handful of fetch lands, including: Bloodstained Mire ($13), Marsh Flats ($26), Misty Rainforest ($34), Polluted Delta ($10), Scalding Tarn ($56), and Verdant Catacombs ($30). Unless they are reprinted, which they very well could be, I don't see any reason they shouldn't have a steady rise in value. Every single deck, that they are legal in, should be running fetch lands. If for no other reason to thin out their deck. As stated above, I think they are perhaps even better then the original duel lands. Because of that, I'm somewhat taking a gamble that they will not be reprinted. I'm trying to be very selective and only buying where I see long term value.

Anyone else doing Rainbow Walker Weekend? War of the Spark is such a fun set.

I wish that I was able to buy a few of these packs at our LGS, but WotC didn’t notify anyone that they would be in the Japanese boxes and they had to order them prior. Kinda lame on WotCs part.

Do any of you guys play arena? I have been playing quite a bit lately.

I'm going to be selling off my collection in the next few weeks. It's mostly cards from unlimited, revised, legends, and the dark series. a few dual lands, etc. If you're interested send me a message. I'd rather give pinsider's a good deal than ebay or the middlemen who mark them up.

You get some damn nice coin on Ebay, but boy when they take their cut it hurts.

I don't play standard at all, but purchased a single pack of WAR to support my local shop. I honestly had no idea what the good cards were and before I opened it asked him to list the best cards I could open. He said Nicol Bolas or Liliana. Ended up with a Nicol Bolas, so I was pretty stoked. I know that's not super high dollar or anything, but since I open about two packs per year, that felt like a win.

I play Arena exclusively now. Need to sell off my paper collection, haven’t set foot in a game store in 6 months. Arena will kill paper Magic.

I wouldn't be too worried. I think Arena will draw more people into the game, could actually increase the demand for paper cards. Perhaps a few Standard players will choose to only play digitally, but I don't think it will effect anything before Standard. Modern, Legacy, Commander, and Vintage staples all seem pretty safe to me at this point.

Oh I’m sure there will still be people who want to play Commander, Modern is out of reach for most due to the cost as is Legacy. Paper Magic will be a niche thing in a few years, even more so than it is now. As a former paper player I can’t see a reason for me to travel to a game store, spend more money on paper cards to make a deck, pay an entry fee and then play in an event when I can sit in my comfortable office and play Arena any time I want.

I rarely play at this point, but I find more value in those eternal formats, even though the initial cost if much higher. With Standard I feel like I'm just throwing away money. Commander, Modern, and Legacy feel more like pinball, in that I'm almost always able to resell my cards for what I paid for them, often times more. When I buy cards now, they are generally from a list that see heavy play in at least two of those eternal formats. I'd also make the argument that there are people who want to play and hang out with others in real life. I enjoyed the game the most when I had friends that wanted to play together. The game was essentially an excuse to hang out.

I played last night. Was as much an excuse to hang out as it was to play, but was a blast.

I have always been more on the side of the eternal formats because I simply don't have time to keep up with the standard metagame, and didn't like the idea of things constantly rotating. Having said that, I play so rarely that while I have three or four modern decks that I built, I think I've only ever played two of them for real, moving into just drafting or doing sealed mostly with friends which I've found is better because no one has a huge advantage based on what deck they bring or can buy.

After realizing this, it's made me think a lot more about standard, and how because of the constantly rotating format, you should theoretically have a better chance of evening the field and actually having skill involved.

Alas, I have no time. :-/ I keep debating whether to keep and expand my cards or dump and sell some of the older ones...

I've sold off twice in the past. I currently have a single shoebox of cards with maybe 6-7 decks. Most decks are total trash to play in their legal formats, but they are fun to play casually.

Since this post is ramping up again - I will say (again): if you're thinking of selling out, think about pulling 1-ofs and building a cube before you cash everything out. A cube is a custom draft set that you maintain. It's great because all of the players are all on the same power level and there's no money involved once you're set up. Draft your deck, have a few brews with some buds, and then put it all away for a month or two.

Here's an example of what I have built right now. http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/2780. There are obviously tons of ways to build according to rarity, theme, etc. It's basically all I have left of a once-giant collection and I'm very glad I have it in my back pocket.

I have purchased two boxes of Modern Horizon and I should get them tomorrow.
The set is designed for Modern from what I understand.

They have recreated some pitch spells that mimic power spells like Force Of Will.

I'm pretty excited to crack some packs!

Marcus

Do you ever feel that as the cube creator you have a better understanding of the synergies built into the cube, thus giving you a distinct advantage over those that you draft it with? That's my biggest fear with creating a cube.

Totally. To counteract this I give a heads up about changes and provide my cubetutor link to the group chat with a brief blurb about goals behind changes, etc. They have the ability to draft the cube many times over online before we physically draft.

I will also try to draft archetypes that I feel are shaky to see if they can hold up. A lot of my cube is based on more straightforward play instead of niche archetypes/combos for this reason.

Another option is to build a Battle Box. I have an Unstable Battle Box - 1 of each card, less the "players outside the game" cards. Since everyone is playing from the same deck, no need to study before hand. Also has the benefit of not needing to draft. Open the box, pull out the cards, and start playing.

Drafting is actually the most fun part tho

I have a Unstable deck called, Crossbreed Labs. I change the rules and both players start with one mana of each color play from the same deck. It uses most of the host / augment card, except for the few that are unplayable given the limitations of my adapted rules. My girls also like to just match up the cards to make funny creatures.

I love drafting games like seven wonders, but typically I'm more invested them my local playgroup, so I'm not sure they would follow a blog or practice drafting.

Sure - you can also get them there and tell them the basic ideas behind each archetype, a three minute speech about why you made the choices you did can help players understand what to prioritize early on. It all really depends on your playgroup: if you are more experienced than all the other players, you'll have the advantage regardless of whether or not you designed the cube. I've drafted other people's cubes and come out undefeated multiple times based on my knowledge of the game itself, not of the cube.

Yeah, I've been trying to think of a balanced cube that would allow multiple build types, yet not be so complex that it would be impossible to teach to beginners.

To some... I guess.

I always hate drafting because I suck at it.

I wish I could cash out my collection, but every time I look at buy list prices, it makes me sad. I want to sell my collection for actual value, not 50% (but i dont want to do the work to ebay them individually ).

Check out some peasant cube lists and/or the board game cube.

Hence the dilemma. Do your own work, sell for close to actual value. Be lazy, get a lot less.

Marcus

What is the best way to sell individual magic cards? Send off to PSA and post on ebay?

Grading can be risky. I'd only grade items you are near certain will come back a 9 or 10. Lower then that you are lucky to break even. Unless you're talking power, where it might be worth it to guarantee authenticity. I sell mostly on TCG, but as others have said you either need to take the time and ship out a lot of packages, or accept buylist pricing. Same thing for buying. You can find anything you want at or under buylist pricing if you put in the time.