Price drop on COK block staples

[jazzykat]

Hello all.

I was wondering wether you guys feel that there woudl be a significant price drop on pithing needles and jittes once COK rotates out. I continue to accumulate store credit from placing in a weekly tournament but can't bring myself to burn my measly credit for $30 needles (If competition continues to stiffen I may do it to continue winning though.)

Also is a beta or alpha badlands(it appears to be lightly played but I would have to take it out of the sleeve and see for sure) for $75 a good deal or no?

Thanks,
JK

[kicks_422]

Jittes might drop their price, but not by a significant amount... It's still crazy in other formats, but bigger card pool means more answers for it, such as the Needle itself... Needles, however, would certainly not drop price... It's more widely used in other formats than in Standard (it's almost a staple in Legacy deck SB's), so I think it would stick to its current price...

[Caboose]

Jitte will drop some, and the Needle will likely stay the same. I don't know why you'd pay $30 for a Needle, though. Most of the dealers at GenCon were trying to get $22, and even the biggest asshole dealers were only asking $27. After the rotation, you shouldn't be paying more than $70 for a playset of Needles.

[Kadishack]

I have been selling my needles for around 18 each. I think they ahould stay about there atleast but the lowest they would go is 15. And 75 for a beta badlands is not a bad deal. Magictraders has them at 91 on average. So you can make money on that. I have no clue on jitte.

[Fortifitakitors]

Buy that Badlands, especially if it Alpha because there are people that collect alpha and beta dual lands. I'd buy it for that price.

[Bryant Cook]

Hello all.

I was wondering wether you guys feel that there woudl be a significant price drop on pithing needles and jittes once COK rotates out. I continue to accumulate store credit from placing in a weekly tournament but can't bring myself to burn my measly credit for $30 needles (If competition continues to stiffen I may do it to continue winning though.)

Also is a beta or alpha badlands(it appears to be lightly played but I would have to take it out of the sleeve and see for sure) for $75 a good deal or no?

Thanks,
JK

Do you live in 'Cuse? Needles here are like 35$ in store credit. Not to mention if the store has less than 4 you can't buy the card.

[Obfuscate Freely]

Do you live in 'Cuse? Needles here are like 35$ in store credit. Not to mention if the store has less than 4 you can't buy the card.
Unless you're a complete moron, Needles are the same price in Syracuse (http://www.ebay.com/) as they are anywhere else in the country.

Why do people still buy cards at such inflated prices?

[quicksilver]

Unless you're a complete moron, Needles are the same price in Syracuse (http://www.ebay.com/) as they are anywhere else in the country.

Why do people still buy cards at such inflated prices?

Because they give store credit in syracuse as prizes, and last time I checked, you can't use store credit on ebay.

[mikekelley]

I don't even bother with stores anymore, I am yet to find one that has prices anywhere comparable to online sites such as Star City, ABU, etc. Not even worth my time anymore. Just use the credit to buy cheap things. Or get some old packs that are fun to open.

[Nightmare]

That's a great attitude, and a great way to put your local store out of business.

[mikekelley]

That's a great attitude, and a great way to put your local store out of business.

Right, i'd be glad to overpay by 40 dollars on a playset of Needles.

They don't need such inflated prices to stay in business, and singles do not bring in nearly the same amount of revenue as tournaments and booster sales.

[Jander78]

Seriously, if a store wants to stay in buisness or wants support from customers, they will have competative prices. I haven't bought a card from a store in a while because they are so much cheaper online. I'd prefer to buy my cards from stores, but I'm not going to at the expense of paying double or more in most cases.

[TeenieBopper]

If card X is $10 on ebay, and at the store for $11, I'll buy it from the store, because I get it now. I'm willing to go with it.

But if a card sells online for $12, and the store is selling it for $24, fuck 'em. If they dont' want to go out of business, they shouldn't have outrageously high prices. And I'll tell other players to shop elsewhere too, because retardedly high prices only hurt the community in the long run.

[Nightmare]

If card X is $10 on ebay, and at the store for $11, I'll buy it from the store, because I get it now. I'm willing to go with it.

But if a card sells online for $12, and the store is selling it for $24, fuck 'em. If they dont' want to go out of business, they shouldn't have outrageously high prices. And I'll tell other players to shop elsewhere too, because retardedly high prices only hurt the community in the long run.Who are you kidding? When's the last time you bought a Magical card?

[Bryant Cook]

If card X is $10 on ebay, and at the store for $11, I'll buy it from the store, because I get it now. I'm willing to go with it.

But if a card sells online for $12, and the store is selling it for $24, fuck 'em. If they dont' want to go out of business, they shouldn't have outrageously high prices. And I'll tell other players to shop elsewhere too, because retardedly high prices only hurt the community in the long run.

QFT.

[mikekelley]

If card X is $10 on ebay, and at the store for $11, I'll buy it from the store, because I get it now. I'm willing to go with it.

But if a card sells online for $12, and the store is selling it for $24, fuck 'em. If they dont' want to go out of business, they shouldn't have outrageously high prices. And I'll tell other players to shop elsewhere too, because retardedly high prices only hurt the community in the long run.

Exactly. I'll give a store a few dollars to take my money, but i'm not going to pay 25 dollars for a played psionic blast when i can get a played one for 12 dollars online. If they were selling it for 14, i'd get it at the store no question.

[Drathro]

It might even be different if all the local stores had inflated prices, but that's just not true. There is a lot of variation locally. For an example, I'll pick two stores in the NY Capital District. Both of them have a surprisingly steep policy on rares in general (min price = price of a pack), so if you want to pick up a crap rare for your casual deck, they will both charge at least 4x the true value of the card.

However, one of the stores generally sells the more valuable rares at reasonable competitive prices, while the other store twenty minutes away never has a non-crap rare priced for less than $5 over the average, and usually the prices are inflated much more at that store. Were talking Overgrown Tombs for $12 at the first store vs $23 at the second.

The way I figure it, if one store can sell rares at a reasonable price for a modest profit, the other one should be able to, also. It looks like greed, pure and simple. Is it any wonder players don't want to support stores like that?

[Lego]

Is it any wonder players don't want to support stores like that?

QFT. The problem with the store that he talks about is that when you mention the fact that their prices are higher, they berrate you. I probably wouldn't shop there if they had reasonable prices.

Often though, I find that if you just mention to the store owner that their prices are a little high, they will bargain with you for most stuff. At my local shop, I know that the owner doesn't pay much attention to his cards, so sometimes they'll have ridiculously old prices. Occasionally this means you'll get a good deal, but if it means that a card is overpriced, he'll usually just fix it for you.

[tivadar]

A large part of the problem is that even updated Scrye or whatnot tend to be completely wrong. I go on findmagiccards.com and tend to get about half the listed price a good majority of the times. For example, I just got 4 parallax wave, $4 listed on scrye, $1.75 online... For cards like this, it's not so much of a big deal, because shipping and handling comes to nearly the same thing. But when you start talking about more valuable cards, it can get harsh.

[jazzykat]

I help my local store by helping to marshal people for a tournament. BTW: I got 2 needles for $24 a piece as we looked it up in Scrye and it was the median price. I will wait for the price to drop in a few months for the other two but in the meantime I think 2 needles are plenty for the board of UGR thresh.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

My local store has fetchlands for 7.50 each. A winnar is meh. I feel like buying a playset of Windswept Heaths for 30 dollars...

[jazzykat]

My local store has fetchlands for 7.50 each. A winnar is meh. I feel like buying a playset of Windswept Heaths for 30 dollars...


I hope you walk out in front of a bus with your new fetchlands :B

[jazzykat]

So, just to follow up on the suggestions posed in this thread. I won $20 in store credit today and bargained on a needle from $24 down to $20 because it was lightly played. YEAH! Now I have 3 and will play again next week to get my fourth.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

I hope you walk out in front of a bus with your new fetchlands :B

Good thing I'm a recluse, then, eh, Doctor Strangelove?

[dahcmai]

We just give a nice listed printout of common prices to our storeowner so he can keep up with the online prices. We give him expected prices on newer stuff coming out in sets. Sometimes, he will overprice certain things since they are in rare supply in the area. For example, he overprices pithing needle because no one, and I mean no one around here bought Saviors packs and are therefore in short supply. I think I have the only set of four around, I was the only one buying those packs. Though he does like to keep a high price on Ravagers just to mess with people who think they should be cheap.

Some things he sells are cheaper than online though because we are centered around Legacy and Vintage. So come up here for Standard staples. They are dirt cheap and no one wants them. I picked up 4 foil Nantuko Husks just to sell out of town for $1. I trade Orsov Pontiff's at about $2 since they are useless around here. The new shock lands are also cheaper than normal when people sell them unless they don't have reg duals. I buy them at $7.00 or so and trade them out of town for regular duals easily.

We have a weird area though since there is not another store for a 5 hour drive south and that's Detroit and no one likes going down there anyway. Just keep your store guy in check with the online stuff and it will balance out. We'd rather keep our store open and competitive with the online stuff fora few reasons.

1. Card in hand. You can check out a card in person, you can't online.
2. No scams - Face it, there's a ton of them on Ebay, especially if your'e talking about power.
3. No stupid ridiculous shipping costs.
4. Keeps the only place to play open.
5. You can trade with a store, you can't with Ebay sellers and not too many online sellers. Even if you can, you get a better trade usually from a store.
6. our store owner closes the door at night and cracks open the beer fridge at night for us older players. heh...

[jazzykat]

Good thing I'm a recluse, then, eh, Doctor Strangelove?

Wass? Du beist ein "recluse".

Anyway, I got my last needle today for only $17 in store credit because it had a bit more play. The store I play at has at least two locations in town maybe more, and there seemed to be a bunch of stuff sold/moved today. Either they aren't selling enough or are selling a lot. Either way, if the store want's to actually come up with prices that are only a bit more than ebay+shipping then I will happily give them my business.