Or through a combination of reddit posting, streaming videos and forum posts, hype up cards and make people buy.Originally Posted by ramanujan
I mean, have you checked Land Equilibrium and Invoke Prejudice lately, for example? There's no way in hell their 'prices' are what they are now due to real demand.
Looks like Remand is getting reprinted in the new Duel Deck.
Nothing earth-shattering, but $20 for an uncommon in Modern was getting a little ridiculous, so that's nice.
This.
@ Arsenal: What's better? Wait a year or two (so that the prices rise a bit) but risk bubble-burst and also sell cards in hurry? Or start selling now (without many unnecessary problems) and have the money available two years from now, although maybe a smaller sum than if you'd keep the cards until 2016?
I sold lots of my stuff, but I'm quite unsure if it was a good idea, maybe I should have waited a year or two, but well, then one may wait until grave...
For me, I get a lot of utility just owning cards to build almost any deck I want. Certainly, I trade / sell off my extra stuff (or if I pimp something out, dump the old stuff), but I derive much pleasure from owning the collection I have.
However, if that's not for you, and you're going to need the cash, your best bet is to probably slowly trim down.
just picked up an extra play set of fetches and dual lands makes my third play set of each and I think a solid investment even if they reprint the fetch lands soon. Damn 8 years ago I got a full play set of dual lands when I came back after a 3 year retirement for under $800. In 8 years the price has shot up to close to over $1600 for a play set. Over 8 years I would have made more on the stock market with some good investments but when you figure int he extra play value I get out of the cards, I think they are a better investment of my spare resources.
here is another one for you my very first set of dual lands purchased during Alliances ran me $175 out the door from my lgs in Omaha, NE. Same time i purchased moxen at $50 each.
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To be fair - you would have to count inflation. Which makes your $175 to be $261 as of todays worth (Moxen= $74.50 (1996)). This is still not much compared to todays prices.
Assume you double your money every 7 years in the market. Magic wins by a lot
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I also remember buying Shivan Dragons for 15 bucks for revised. Things always look better when the results are cherry picked. It is very simple to look at the cards that have withstood the test of time. Mtg cards are constantly being created, who knows what cards will be the best in another 15 years.
Imagine a 1 cc ww creature that states something to the effect "land cards can only enter the battlefield from players hands"
I would literally jump for joy if that was printed. I have all the fetches and duals I will ever need but I miss when getting colored mana was more than a trivial thing and people didn't shuffle thier decks every other turn. At some point I should yell at most of you to get off my lawn.
While this is a well thought out and intelligent post (and I mostly agree), I think you've simplified the matter FAR too much. It is true that the market is not frictionless and therefore transaction costs have to be taken into account, but on high ticket items you will usually have free shipping, so half the transaction costs aren't in the equation. Also, and even more importantly, is the fact that supply is small enough that one person would be able to influence the market price through buys/sells in a significant way. While there is a decent amount of supply, it seems like supply is outgrowing demand and therefore, every purchase should increase price and every sale decrease price, but that isn't exactly what we see. The market is slow to correct. Therefore, a quick sweep of all inventory will sharply decrease supply and increase price (cornering the market, if you will). I point to the last 2 months as proof of this. If you look, sellers for some of the more demanded items have dropped to only a handful and they all increased their prices. However, it probably took a day, or at least several hours, for these price increases to occur. Without a computerized trading system, it is up to the seller's vigilance to keep prices current. Once you've cornered the market, simply increase the price of the item as you see fit (I'm looking at you SCG) and then re-sell. At this point, do you really care about transaction prices? I wouldn't.
I think every risk you listed is spot on. If someone was to think through the entire process: from raising capital to buying to price changes to selling, etc. Then this would be a risk, but with a high upside. Someone with a portfolio of safe assets - Index Funds, CDs, Bonds, T-Bills - or someone who is younger and can take on more risk in their portfolio or even someone who just has a high risk tolerance may find this risk acceptable. You can also choose how you want to spread the risk: systematic vs. idiosyncratic. Although, based on my previous point we are mostly talking about both!
"You are free to make your own choices, but sinking a fair chunk of a healthy retirement simply for the purpose of financial gain seems foolish to me." This is the statement I agree with the least. As mentioned above, it is educated thinking, an individuals current and future needs, and that individuals tolerance for risk that should drive an investment. Also, isn't all investment for the purpose of financial gain?!?!? Even your proposed method of dividend-providing stocks with sell covered calls is an attempt to gain money, albeit in a super risk-averse way. You do realize that that particular financial strategy limits your upside, don't you? In fact, the entire reason it is a valid strategy is that you are taking a nearly guaranteed return over any potential growth in the stock.
OK, I don't mean to pick on you... like you said, it is a personal choice and you are probably just more risk-averse than I am, which is not a bad thing. However, I felt it was important to point out that there is a flip side to your argument; yes there is risk, a good deal of it, but also a chance for high reward.
Personally, even though I do have spare capital, and am not overly risk-averse, I would prefer to put my money in the market and get a more stable return. That being said, someone mentioned hedge funds... from my personal experience, they wouldn't touch this market, but those types of investors, who are actively seeking out a way to increase their portfolio's alpha, may be enticed by something like this. So, while you may not be able to raise capital in the conventional ways, getting a group of individual investors may be possible. Which, is sort of what a hedge fund is anyway. :-)
- Zwei
My statement ending in foolish should have specified Magic cards, sorry for that. I accept your opinion that you are on a different place in the risk/reward spectrum. That being said, I didn't specify the strike price of my covered calls. I think you just assumed it was Market value. I don't need to give up all potential upside, but I would cap it and get a healthy price for doing so.
I look at Mtg card investments as simply too risky and expensive to justify. There are, in my opinion, far better (Less expensive, more upside value) risky options out there. I can accept that you disagree with me on that point but it isn't a risk averse issue. Thank you for spending time to respond to my original post.
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Hello Zwei, thanks for your post! You've touched some very important and interesting aspects of (not only MtG-related) economics!
I think that there are trends or fundaments, or call it as you wish, that anyone interested in Magic cannot miss. The ever increasing prices of good/RL stuff, and the occasional spike of a random fringe card when new tools are printed, the slow loss of value for most of the cards as they're outdone by power creep, etc. Standard rotation aside (as this is a very special subject) and also reprints aside, the market is quite predictable, at least if you concentrate on the "safe" part of "MtG portfolio", P9, duals, fetches, RL power cards, etc.; in short, staples.
For the sake of simplicity, I wouldn't count in inflation, moreover when it doesn't mean that much of a difference, see above for the "$50 Alliances Mox" example. What I find really interesting (and I always tear my hair when I remember what silly stuff I bought/done on the high school, esp. when I listened to my stupid friends and buddies, did not hoarded cards like crazy and instead "pimped" my computers like that the output matters in three years), is how the prices of good stuff went always and only up, and esp. speaking of several items (like Tabernacle, Moat, Nether Void, Karakas... why always the Legends' stuff?) they are really crazy. I remeber Tabernacle for roughly 800 crowns (more than 5k today) and I bought my very first Karakas (though Italian one) for 30 CZK back in 1997 (it solds for about 1800 crowns today). Karakas' price went up some sixty, that's amazing, even if we think about a period of seventeen years! And the duals (going from 300 to 1500-3000 crowns), fetches (150 to 750-1500), and esp. FoW/LED (quite the same as Karakas) are also pretty silly. (Or reasonable, depends on point of view.)
Karakas sidenote: Fact is that for the most part of this period, it was 3 dollars card and it went up in several steps (DnT, Clique, Emmy/Griselbrand); I remember something like 200 CZK in 2006/7, then it jumped to 800/900 crowns (Clique?) where it plateaued for maybe a whole 2010, than it once again went up to cca 1400 crowns and spiked to the 2000 crowns of today just few months (no longer than half a year) ago. Quite an interesting progress for a 30 CZK item. And it's all about playability, not collectibility. I don't think that the recent thirst for Ještěd is about anything else than players wanting their answer to legends, it definitely isn't about collectors wanting to have a nice card in their safes. Those bought them years ago.
I'm not sure if $ 100k are that small money to start business without actually starting business.I mena: you need a very, very special person (that has enough money spend them on this risk, but also "too few" money to take this risk at all) with a good self control, good knowledge of what's going on in MtG, maybe some kind of insider's info, lots of free time to manage the purchases, etc., but a person that's still unwilling to make a business out of his/her sideline. You may easily get into legal trouble once you cross some threshold. I'm not even sure how exactly it works here, but I can definitely see that 2 millions crown spent on a collectible might get police/tax office interested, esp. with the recent affairs of local politics spending horrid amount of cash on brilliants, Gucci bags and other expensive stuff that definitely wasn't (bought with the money gained as) bribes.
It's easier said than done (the casual cornering of market in a "guy hacking into Pentagon" style). If I had to waste $ 100k on this (even spread over a period of one or two years), I really can't imagine doing this without another $ 500k-1000k "pillow" to absorb a possible loss, to finance the rest of my life, etc.; simpy put: only a guy with (at least) million dollars may waste 100k on cardboard without blink of an eye.
I've done something similar (although on a much much smaller level) when I returned back to game in 2005/6, but I still had some money in reserve; moreover purchasing shocks, fetches, duals and staples (above that: only for a personal use) can't be compared to this mostrous racket of "I'll buy all blooh duals on teh interweb". This cannot be done without turning this into a full-time job (or even business project) and then we're on a really different territory. Does SCG do this? I can't tell. I simply can't tell, I don't see in their heads and althought the price jumps are crazy, so are the MtG players and it's quite possible that it's only their fault. Look, we're speaking of first world troubles, and once we discuss things like Gucci bags and Tarmogoyfs, people are willing to spend their money in really strange ways.
So is ebay still the best way to get mid-TCG returns? All of the major online retailers I've looked at offer 50-60% cash mid-TCG value.
You won't ever get mid tcgplayer prices, but eBay is the closest you'll get. After fees and shipping you usually get about 75-90% of tcg player low. Which is better than the 50-60% most stores would give in cash for a trade in.
You're right, I did assume MV (actually slightly above, but close enough)... my mistake. In that case, you probably aren't much different than me in terms of risk aversion; I even stated that I prefer normal market returns. I wonder about less expensive, higher upside investments though. The way prices trend in magic does lead to some easy money for savvy people. For instance, *. tl;dr I made money investing in cards on a small scale. Off the top of my head, I'm coming up with very little that could be done with an average person's savings that is much different (risk aversion aside). Oh well, I'm okay with agreeing to disagree on this one. Thanks for your response as well!
* near the end of the Innistrad block I set $300 aside and bought every enemy colored Innistrad dual land (Woodland Cemetery, et al.) that was selling for under $4. Obviously this isn't enough money to buy EVERY card, but I bought out all of the cheapest sellers and given that the cards were newly printed basically they were all LP to NM quality. This was a speculation on the next block being Return to Ravnica and the use of shocklands. Within 3 months, every card that I had purchased went up 400-500%. That ROI is insane!! I traded most of my cards for modern and legacy staples (the main reason I can now play in those formats!) and then sold off the rest for $250. In essence, I spent $50 for about $1200 in cards. Now, of course there was a risk that shocklands would not be reprinted, but then the price stays the same for the Innistrad lands and I take a small hit on transaction costs probably around $30-$50.
Hi. Glad you appreciated it!
- Zwei
How much costs your time? I would prefer sell everything to a shop in 1 hour (including travelling), than working with ebay and postoffice next two months..
Basically as soon as I typed that, hit submit, and then reviewed my message, I immediately began to give it more serious thought. The trajectory/fluctuation of prices right now is really remarkable, and there's little incentive to not do this again as a part time business, especially when compared to the potential ROI compared to a number of my other 'safe' investments with banks (barely treading water after inflation). I am tossing around some ideas for making this a reality right now. The only thing that has held me back thus far is the fact that I don't have that much fully liquid capital to risk (yet), and the fact that I don't enjoy the grind of it all anymore. In 2002-2004 era I loved it, because all of my rent, living, and entertainment expenses were paid directly from my PayPal account gains, while my day job checks went straight into my savings account, which was awesome and enabled me to buy my first house at quite a young age. Bottom line, I'm about 75% sure I'm going to do this as of right now. I'll be sure to post again in here if/when we start rolling.
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Depends. Check what Rytíř gives you, sometimes it's not even funny.
I'd throw part of the collection on MKM (esp. pimp stuff, chase rares, Power, duals/fetches and such), then I'd bring the boxes of crap to shop. Out of the one thousand cards there's like 50 that make no sense to bring to shop (you won't be selling a dual for 1300 crowns if you may get about two thousand crowns instead) and it doesn't take that much work to sort, scan and upload thost fifty.
Post office? Well, unless you're unlucky bastard like I am (and even I lost just the untracked shipments), you should be fine. Sadly, each lost envelope unmakes the profit to-be-gained (as you're going to waste time and energy with compliances, etc.)
There are also bank transfer fees and such, so basically unless we're speaking about a real difference, there's no real difference, if you know what I mean...I guess that comparing MKM and brick and mortar shop, you need to have a really significat difference in price (lets say you need to get at least +30% from MKM compared to shop) to turn it into a real profit: time, fees, packing, it all costs money.
I wouldn't use MKM, but as I wanted some cards that are otherwise unobtainable (and simultaneously I was unwilling to feed too much money to Rytíř/Najáda via repurchases), I've decided to try the service. It has very little meaning for a person that wishes to quit (you won't be trading, just selling), but if anybody's goal is to unload nine tenth of his collection and also get a few pimp/jap/mising pieces here and there, MKM is quite solid tool for this. (Except if you're sucker for new toys like I am and you unload Trop and waste the money gained to build a 1996 Erhnamgeddon in case my zombified friends wake up from the hibernation...)
Why did Bloodghast suddenly double?
Market manipulation? It doesn't match up with the MODO market:
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Zendikar/Bloodghast
Because every John, Dick, & Sally thinks they are big-shot MTG speculators that is entitled to earn a genuine profit on each transaction they engage in. There are far too many sheep in the #MTGFinance game, and it only takes one wolf to scare them into buying.
A more clinical look at the phenomenon reveals that the MTG singles market is far too small to have meaningful economic conclusion drawn. Supply is low, demand is high and steady; therefore prices will shoot up quickly. Price memory and finding a "greater fool" to sell to means prices rarely fall. The market is not as liquid as some think it is.
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