Rags to Riches: Week Fourteen
October 12, 2010 by: Marin Baraba
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another installment of Rags to Riches!
Today, I am going to work against my own advice and buy bulk for tickets. I guess that it’s really important that exceptions prove the rule – this isn’t something you will see me doing often, as I usually recommend to trade up (trade several lower value items for fewer higher value items). The reason I believe it was justified this time is twofold:
1. Some of the commons I got are pretty popular
2. Having more cards makes it easier to do casual trades, which can help to increase value.
So the first trade of the week was 125 commons for 1 Ticket.
Then, I sold 20 of the cards for 2 tickets in the auction room. A good deal for both of us! As funny note on the side, the artifact lands don’t stack and always show next to each other. Not sure why….
Another issue with trading online is that you have to be careful with trading high volume chase rares or mythics. While you are usually not going to get stuck with them, bots have very slim spreads between “buy” and “sell” for those cards, and they are hardly going to make a lot of profit for you if you pay near what bots buy at. I have to admit that my recent Lotus Cobra buy and the foil Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre did cost a lot of tix but did not provide me with ample opportunity to really profit. So I made the decision to sell them to a bot for tiny profits and use my tix for better opportunities. 
As usual I was checking bots for some good deals and purchased a nice promo Goblin staple – Goblin Piledriver.
The last deal for this episode was quick and easy- I bought 2x M10 boosters for 5 tickets. Not a deal I would usually do, but with M10 Nix Tix coming up soon, I hope to make a small profit on them. Buying Nix Tix boosters for a few tix almost always ends up profitable.
It seems that many players are holding their tickets for Scars of Mirrodin release. It was very tough to find buyers this week! Fortunately, new set releases are always a great time to make profits, so I look forward to this coming week. Hopefully, we will be able to arbitrage ourselves to new Event Ticket highs during the release events. To make that possible, I might need to sell some cards for small-to-no profits; I might even be willing to take a small loss if it means I can make a hefty profit!
The current collection value is (bot buy prices)
289 Commons/Uncommons – 6.7 tickets
30 Rares/Mythics – 63.9 tickets
29 Event Tickets
2 Boosters – 5 tickets
Total: 104.6 tickets
Happy trading everyone,
Plejades
: D you have helped me profit with all your little tricks and with them I have been able too draft at no actual money expense for a long time, btw I would start trying too get lots of archdruids.
Academy_PointsI also agree, since i have started reading I have gotten a lot better at managing my ticks i haven’t been able to draft for free but i have mad 10 ticks from trading so I am pretty happy about it. Thank you for the article, Good Job!
Academy_PointsNice pickup on the artifact lands in the common lot. I think you could have made out a little better on them by waiting for the next TNMo pauper night, however.
Excellent point about being willing to unload high-cost cards at little/no profit. I picked up Iona a few weeks ago from some bots @ 6.5 when many other bots were buying at the same price. They never moved at 7 in classifieds nor did the buy price budge, so I turned them into other cards.
States results have and articles have caused a ton of cards to move upwards 25-50%, and some few even more. Flores’s article about Pyromancering Archive Traps has pushed the Trap to 2.25! Cards related to Elves and Ramp (eldrazi and valakut) have showed the biggest gains thus far, as UW was already a big player pre-rotation. UB control put up some interesting results, it will be fun to see if anything comes of it.
Are you speculating on anything pre-rotation?
Academy_Points@masterofbrine @zac Thanks. Glad you like it.
@juggernaut1002
I agree that I could have made more with the artifact lands but at the end it’s really important to understand that time is money; and in my case I have very little time to dedicate for the trading.
I am not really speculating on anything pre-rotation right now as it is hard enough to predict prices without major shifts in the standard environment. I guess I rather try to arbitrage a bit during the release week. Hope that goes well.
Academy_PointsThat was one heck of a deal with those commons you bought since you normally can only find junk commons for a ticket.
Academy_Points