Hey y’all! I hope everyone had a great Ravnica prerelease. The StarCityGames.com Richmond prerlease was our best ever, and the excitement in the room for Ravnica was at an all time high for any set I’ve ever seen. This set is going to be the most popular Magic set in history – the cards, the buzz, and the sales all support this notion. There’s even good news for the rest of the block: due to the ten guild system being broken up across three sets, the next two sets will be just as good as the first! This is because each guild must be designed to be as playable as any other, so the power level of the cards in the Blue/White, Blue/Green, Blue/Red, Green/Red, Black/Red and Black/White guilds will be on par with the White/Green, White/Red, Black/Blue and Black/Green guilds.
During the first run of Ben’s Corner, I mentioned “The Monster”, but never fully explained the concept. I’ve gotten quite a few e-mails over the past few months asking about The Monster, and now is the time to finally talk about this particular beast. The Monster refers to the cards that have been building up over the past year to year and a half that have not yet been graded or added to our system. I’m a stickler on grading, and so grading our cards tends to be the slowest part of our card processing. In case you were curious, here’s the usual process we go through to add cards to our system:
1) We acquire the cards, usually through our buylist, buying in person at PTQs/Prereleases/conventions, or from people who travel to our store to sell us singles in Roanoke. For new releases, we open enough sealed product to meet preorders on both singles and sets.
2) I go through all the cards we’ve bought and pull out all the cards that are either hotter sellers or that I know are out of stock/low on stock in our inventory. Usually this amounts to about 10% of any given collection, but the number can be as high as 100%. These cards are seperated from the others, and are sorted by set, graded, alphabetized, and then entered into the system within a couple of days.
3) The rest of the good cards that aren’t high demand are thrown in The Monster. The cards are eventually broken down by set and then integrated with the rest of the cards in The Monster.
4) Here’s the tricky part – eventually we are supposed to go through The Monster and grade/alphabetize/enter all the cards into our inventory. Unfortunately, things have fallen behind and The Monster kept growing and growing without being kept in check. As it stood, The Monster had grown to such a point where we ran out of room to put the entire thing at once and had to break the Monster in half in order to keep the tables we kept the cards on from breaking in half from weight!
There’s some good news (at least for me!) – we’ve hired a few new people (some starting soon, some who have already started) and we’re finally making progress on The Monster! This has allowed us to completely restock several sets for the site, along with allowing us to drop the prices on hundreds of cards (now that we know our real inventory numbers, I’ve reduced prices on cards we have a comfortable quantity on). Let me use Exodus as an example.
Exodus:
Cataclysm – Before: 0 copies in stock. After: 83 copies in stock.
Dominating Licid – Before: 15 copies in stock. After: 106 copies in stock.
Hatred – Before: 0 copies in stock. After: 57 copies in stock.
Mirri, Cat Warrior – Before: 0 copies in stock. After: 75 copies in stock.
Paladin en-Vec – Before: 0 copies in stock. After: 86 copies in stock.
Price of Progress – Before: 0 copies in stock. After: 97 copies in stock.
Skyshroud Elite – Before: 3 copies in stock. After: 160 copies in stock.
As you can see, we had quite a few copies of several out-of-stock cards just sitting around in The Monster, waiting to be inventoried. On the flip side, several cards we’re low on were not in the Monster, such as Recurring Nightmare and Survival of the Fittest. These are cards I usually pull in that initial 10%, so it makes sense that we wouldn’t have any in The Monster. Going through The Monster has allowed us to raise hundreds of prices on our buylist, since we now know exactly which cards from which sets we’re low on. The sets completely wiped from The Monster include Revised, 4th Edition, 5th Edition, 6th Edition, 7th Edition (and foils), 8th Edition (and foils), 9th Edition (and foils), Alliances, Apocalypse (and foils), Battle Royale, Beatdown, Betrayers of Kamigawa (and foils), Champions of Kamigawa (and foils), Chronicles, Darksteel (and foils), Deckmaster, Exodus, Fifth Dawn (and foil), and Homelands. Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Judgment and Invasion should be completed next week, and then we’ll be taking a brief hiatus from Monster-slaying to tackle Ravnica singles and sets.
Card of the week: Reset
Reset has become a staple of the Legacy High Tide deck, and has quadrupled in value since January of this year with no signs of slowing down. In keeping with the theme of The Monster from this week, I’ve recovered 33 copies of Reset from the murky depths of the unknown, all of which are now up for sale on the site! If you plan on playing High Tide at the Grand Prix in November, pick these up now because they will very likely sell out within a couple of weeks.
Feedback Time
I’m looking for suggestions about future topics to cover in Ben’s Corner over the coming weeks. What are you interested in hearing about? I have a list of possible topics to talk about in Ben’s Corner, but I want to what you guys (and gals) want to see here! Do you want me to talk about our current best sellers? Are you looking for a discussion about Magic rarities? Do you want more in-depth details about additions and changes to our inventory? Post your ideas and wishes to the forum of this article or e-mail me at Ben@StarCityGames.com with suggestions and I’ll do my best to incorporate everyone’s ideas! Please keep in mind that all suggestions about Ben’s Corner should be kept out of the realm of strategy – this column is about the economics of Magic.
Until next week,
Ben Bleiweiss
General Manager, StarCityGames.com
Ben@StarCityGames.com