Starting legacy - where should I get my cards?

[MPL]

I've been playing casual Magic for some years now and never got bored, but recently I feel an urge to try some competetive Magic and feel the tension of a tournament. As I don't want to sink hundreds of dollars per year into the game, Standart is out of question for me and unfortunately, I'm not very hapy with the current extended. So I'd like to get my hands on Legacy to play with some of the good ol' cards and so on.

For starters, I built a mono red Goblin deck, reading that these are quite sucessful and already owning most of the deck anyway. Now i'm missing the Wastelands and 2 Ports to finish the project and a SB. To get the rest of the deck and then start buying staples for the format (Fetches, Duals, Sinkholes, ...), I'm looking for tips where to get the cards for a good price.

First of all, eBay or Shops? If shops, which? Are there certain seasons when I should (not) buy stuff? I'd like to get the cards over time, not having all the money now, so I could wait if this was the case.

I just don't want to spend a truck load of money on the cards just to find out that they are like 25% cheaper somewhere else. You people here, wise and rich in experience, seem to be the right people to help me poor fellow (I'm a fulltime student, where should I get the money from?) save his pocket money to buy an extra ice cream or two.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge with me, yours sincerly, MPL

[Xero]

I think E-bay is the best for cards that are around $8 a piece and up. You can usually get them pretty cheaply. For cards that are cheaper, I like Cardshark.com. They often have as good or even better prices than ebay on medium range ($3-7) cards and ship faster.

[Vardaman]

Ebay. Check Magic Online Trading League (MOTL) for decent price guides.

Focus on one or two decks that you like and build them first. Then you can work on getting the rest of the staples.

I don't know if online stores have decent prices on duals but I doubt it.

See if any local shops have weekly tournaments for store credit. You can slowly accumulate duals that way.

[MPL]

Thanks for the answers and wuzzah, that price guides are fricking long :)

Concerning eBay: I have the feeling that auctions sometimes really get out of hand and people bid like 80 € for a playset of a dual which StarCityGames sells for 20 $ a piece. If you didn't guess it already, I'm from Europe and I think that some auctions finish at prices way atop what you should pay. Just sayin.

[Eldariel]

Thanks for the answers and wuzzah, that price guides are fricking long :)

Concerning eBay: I have the feeling that auctions sometimes really get out of hand and people bid like 80 € for a playset of a dual which StarCityGames sells for 20 $ a piece. If you didn't guess it already, I'm from Europe and I think that some auctions finish at prices way atop what you should pay. Just sayin.

It's up to you, how much you bid. But duals are a tricky issue, SCG gets you SP revised duals, Ebay has everything up for grabs, and most of the cards are at a much better price than SCG (just the edition and condition, which might increase the cost). Still, duals are the one group, where SCG-prices actually come close to the Ebay prices.

Ebay is your best bet here, especially for the more rare and obscure cards less available in Europe, since their prices are much lower overseas. I could get Maze of Iths for 6-7 dollars in the US, while in Finland, I'd be paying 20 a piece.

[freakish777]

Thanks for the answers and wuzzah, that price guides are fricking long :)

Concerning eBay: I have the feeling that auctions sometimes really get out of hand and people bid like 80 € for a playset of a dual which StarCityGames sells for 20 $ a piece. If you didn't guess it already, I'm from Europe and I think that some auctions finish at prices way atop what you should pay. Just sayin.

Try and find American Sellers that are willing to ship oversees (on eBay). You can tell them that US Postal Service's "Airmail Letter Post" is relatively inexpensive (about $3 tops for anywhere in the world for something like 4 cards), relatively quick (4 - 7 days), and that you're willing to pay the extra shipping.

Most sellers are fine with going down to the post office once in a while if they sell enough stuff anyways. Essentially the extra $3 you'll pay for shipping on your playset of whatever dual land you get should save you a lot in comparison to buying older cards from a European seller (80 Euros = $105 about? I could see justifying $105 for almost any of the blue duals if you want them bad and need them fast, but for a set of Plateaus? No way. Find an American dealer/seller on eBay).

[Cavius The Great]

I buy all my cards off SCG.com, but that's just me. They have decent prices and it's sweet cuz you can basically buy all the cards you need in bulk as opposed to buying them one playset at a time off Ebay.

[hi-val]

SCG is a very fine source to buy from. I like them because the cards are correctly graded and they offer a cheap shipping option in the States when I just want a couple commons or something. They're very easy to do business with.

Ebay is a fine source if you have more time than money, which is what it seems like. If you're a casual player, I suggest taking a look at your collection and thinking about what you could get rid of and what you want to keep. There are some cards whose value will astound you. Go to coolstuffinc.com or SCG and check out their buylists, or look at Europe-based web stores. Seemingly crap rares go for a decent amount of money. For example, Avatar of Fury is around $2.50 and Conspiracy is at least $1.25. If you have enough janky rares that are worth a buck or two to a dealer, you can finance your jump into competitive Magic by clearing out some of the chaff.

If you really want to play for free, become intimately knowledgable about what dealers are willing to pay for jank rares. You can do stuff like buy a stack of rares for .20 apiece from your friends and other players and then turn that around for a staggering amount of money. You can turn $50 of junk rares into over $200 if you know what to look for and you have enough time to do it. That's what I do and I can't remember the last time I've actually had to pay out of pocket for Magic.

[al the great]

Yep just like everyone and their mom here is right. Egay is no.1 for magic. You'll almost always save a good 25% or even much more compared to buying with most online stores. You'll save a good 40% and up if you also stay away from card shops most of them are over priced some are fine but the fair ones seem to be rare.

Edit:
Like you were saying duals for you go for more on Ebay than you expected. Well with bigger stuff I've learned to wait and keep looking. There is always a right time to buy and when not to buy. If you're on a budget you have to be patient with the more expensive cards. I almost own all of the dual lands x4 but that took almost this whole past year to get them all at the right price. Back then before I owned all the staple cards it would sometimes take me upwards of 5-6 months building a deck I want simply because I had to wait for the right time to buy and just keep looking. That's the way it is.

Last but not least, trading! Trading gets you cards you want, period. Sometimes you may get the upperhand sometimes you get lowballed but you get what you need without having to buy.

[herbig]

Go to coolstuffinc.com or SCG and check out their buylists, or look at Europe-based web stores. Seemingly crap rares go for a decent amount of money.

www.findmagiccards.com is really good for this purpose. Personally, I don't ever buy cards because I don't often have money. I either win them or trade for them.

[MPL]

Wow, that's a lot of advice here :) Thx a lot good sirs!

Concerning the idea of selling my crap rares: Would you advice a certain way to get rid of them? Playing for some years now I've got quite a few to sell, some are not even that crappy, just not used by me. In your experience, was it better to sell them over eBay or to some shop like SCG? Ebay seems like a lottery sometimes, netting weird amounts of money from time to time but kicking you in the nuts when nobody is interested and someone gets your cards cheap.

//goes off to clean out his binder

[MPL]

Mighty fine sirs, I'm very grateful for your help this far, but I have one last request: Now searching through eBay I realize that even though I read the price guide, I can't identify what one would call a "good deal". I don't want to get the price of the year, just some reasonable sum which makes me say: "Yes, I have not spent too much. Look, what a fine deal I made."

As I'm currently not looking for the chase duals, the ones featuring blue, it's even more difficult for me figuring out what I should pay. Scrublands, Taigas, Plateaus, what are they worth?

I know that I'm starting to get on your nerves and I want to avoid that because as stated before, this community really helped me a lot and I don't want to spoil that. Yet, my budget as a fulltime student is quite low and I'm not what one would call a business genius. So hopefully some more experienced people can help me out once again, so that I can start stirring Legacy up.

[herbig]

Identify which decks you want to play before spending money. Since you already have most of goblins put together I would work toward getting what you don't have, the wastes and ports. From there get duals that will work for a splash color as well as later decks. Plateaus, Taigas, Badlands can all be used in other decks. Your sideboard will be cheaper to put together than the main deck but it is equally as important. Remember you play 2/3s of your games with a sideboard, so the deck will not perform well with an inadequate board.

After you search on ebay, check the box on the left that says "Completed Listings." This will give you a sense of what other people are paying for playsets. Unless you really need the cards asap, I'd wait before paying anything over average price.

[freakish777]

As I'm currently not looking for the chase duals, the ones featuring blue, it's even more difficult for me figuring out what I should pay. Scrublands, Taigas, Plateaus, what are they worth?

Scrublands - $15~$18 USD + whatever for shipping (should be $3 tops, so about $75 tops for a playset which beats 80 Euros, keep in mind these won't be absolute Mint condition)
Taigas - $17~$20 + shipping
Plateaus $14~$17 + shipping

I think those are reasonable prices with the upper limit being EX+/NM- and the lower limit being EX-/played. Ebay is good about having a range of conditions (SCG is too) but I know some dealers only have NM cards (or atleast try to say they only have NM cards so they can charge more) for sale.

[Eldariel]

Oh, one more thing. Find out if your country has an auction-site similar to Ebay. Finland has one (Huuto.net in case someone cares) and while it doesn't boast quite the range of options Ebay has, it has most of the stuff from Revised onwards for sale, the prices are decent and most importantly, since it's domestic, I don't need to send money out of the country (no matter how you do it, you'll always pay for it. An envelope is mere 65 cents, but envelopes are slightly unreliable, and the costs get up from there as you move to Money Orders or electronic means), nor the larger shipping fees of shipping internationally (most people charge a lot more for international shipment than it actually costs to ship internationally, compared to the difference in domestic shipment. Heck, through Huuto.net, most people are willing to do the shipment just for the postal fees, which is another reason I like it). Those might seem like minor points, but when you eventually make hundreds of purchases to stay at cheap prices, that euro or 2/purchase you save will eventually stack up.

[hi-val]

A good way to tell if I am getting a deal is to look at web stores and figure out how much they are charging and how much you are willing to pay and how much time you have to work on it. I usually try to get stuff at 10-20% off stores, otherwise it isn't worth the amount of time it takes to shark really good deals for myself. Ebay Stores have some good deals at times too, so I wouldn't discount them.

If you have a lot of time to scour websites and ebay, you can get really nice deals, but if you're looking for specific cards and you don't have hours to devote to watching auctions, it's worth biting the bullet and just taking what you can get.