Rags to Riches: Week Six
July 1, 2010 by: Marin Baraba
Hello, fellas. I apologize for the late appearance of my series this time. The last few weeks were pretty crazy with me flying to Renton to spend time at Wizards of the Coast, followed by a gripping cold that did not allow me to do my usual duty at the trading table. I was able to get a few interesting trades in today so I will go ahead and share them with you. As mentioned in my last article: Tickets are king. So I decided to do something many people would probably shy away from when trying to increase collection value: selling to bots! It is indeed important to know that bots often buy Standard staples in high demand for high prices (very close to their going rate) to keep the card in stock. So I sold a few cards to get the event tickets I needed. Here is the deal:
What to do with my event tickets now? Well, I was scanning some bots for possible good deals when I encountered a classified ad that was buying bulk for tickets. This might be just what I was looking for to get rid of all the commons and uncommons I have acquired thus far. After a short conversation I was able to sell nearly all of my commons and uncommons and my cheap rares for 2 event tickets. In my excitement I forgot to make a screenshot of the first trade that contained the tickets… but oh well, here are some of the trade screens anyway:
Puh, that was a lot of trading for 2 tickets, but when you have so little everything counts. Now back to my initial intention to search bots for good deals. One of my usual suspects had a very interesting card for sale. A foil Arid Mesa that he was selling for 6.8. I just previously had sold a regular one for 6 to another bot so this must be a good deal. I immediately purchased the card with the hopes of flipping it for 2 tickets profit:
The next trade included my foil Oust and the promo Plains for an Oracle of Mul Daya, as can be seen here:
Next I was able to snag a foil mythic for 2 event tickets from the classifieds:
Hopefully I will be able to flip the Demon quickly for 2 to 3 tickets profit. This wraps up the trades for today and I think we made a nice progress. Our collection now mainly consists of foil Hellcarver Demon, foil Arid Mesa, foil Phyrexian Negator, and 4 Event Tickets.
Thanks for following and see you next week when I am trying to flip the foils for tickets and/or good cards to continue my quest!
Cheers,
Marin
Great bunch of trades up until the end. Not sure what it is about Hellcarver Demon but it doesnt seem to be selling at all. I picked up 4 of them for 4 tix earlier this week. Its a fun card but very iffy which may be a reason for it’s lack of sales. Hopefully you are able to flip it though this whole concept is quite intriguing.
Academy_PointsSome great trades, Im loving this series so far!
Academy_PointsYou forgot to include the total value of your collection thus far as you have included in every other article though.
Foil hellcarver for 2 …im jealous lol. Seems like a nice series of trades this weeks hopefully the luck keeps up
Academy_Points@ShardFenix – The interesting fact about foil mythics is that regardless of their play value they catch usually at least 5 tickets because of set redemption. If you can pick up a foil mythic for less then 5 you will most likely turn a profit.
@SaiDes – Oh, yeah. Sorry for that. In this case the value is pretty easy to figure out as I have sold all my smaller items. The total value now is about 24 tickets. This is no big change from last time but in contrast to my previous collection all my items are now high value singles that are much easier to sell then hundreds of commons and uncommons that do have a value but are nearly impossible to sell for singles prices.
@Ranth – Hehe, yeah, the Hellcarver Demon for 2 was nice. I will try to release the next parts on time. The next few trades will hopefully slowly show more margins as I get more event tickets to work with.
Academy_PointsI wonder how much people would buy foil hellcarver for. I think it would only be used by those looking to complete a foil set of ROE for redemption. In that case, I could see it going for well above 2 tickets, but I don’t know
How many commons/uncommons total did you trade for those 2 tickets?
Academy_PointsIf you can’t outright sell the foil Arid Mesa, you can usually find someone willing to buy it for 2 tix + a regular.
Academy_Points@Aznsilly – The Hellcarver should sell for about 4.5 to 5 tickets. I gave away a lot of commons and about twenty uncommon and 3 bulk rares for the 2 tickets. Mainly because the player that advertised on classified offered his 2 tickets for “20 Green cards”. This indicated a newbie and I wanted to jump in and give him a fair deal before one of the sharks handed him 20 commons for 2 tickets. He got around 400 commons, 20 uncommons, and 3 rares for the tickets which is fair I hope.
Academy_Pointsfor a new player that is really fair since you helped him with his mtgo career. And awesome trades.
Academy_Pointsahh i never even realized that about foil mythics…
Academy_PointsIm certainly going to keep an eye out for them more often.
@ Plejades
Academy_PointsI see. Well that was very nice of you, and quite fair since he couldn’t get that for 2 tickets anywhere else I’m sure! It seems to me that sometimes the foil mythics don’t have high prices, I’m not sure if it’s because they happen to be opened more or what. After a quick look at the MTGOtraders site for some prices, I see that in ROE and M10, the lowest price for a foil mythic (including the demon) is 5.00. However, since the bot sells at that price, I assume you would get around 1 ticket less for selling it, though that would still make it a good deal!
All the way down to a tiny collection now, very good. This is much easier to follow. Although I guess it could be time to pick up your new 64 commons again soon.
I also missed the estimate tix worth, by the way. I always liked seeing that in comparison to last weeks value.
Academy_PointsI normally hit up one of the bots that buy like 200 commons. Between like 2-3 different bots they normally buy up everything besides basic lands.
Academy_Points