Anyone who trades Magic cards and also plays Magic is faced with an interesting dilemma: how much of the collection should go in the trade binder, and how much of it should be tucked away as ‘personal stash’?
Answering this question will be different for everyone, and depends on what goals you have for yourself. These are some of the common goals of owning a Magic collection:
1. Having the cards to play whatever deck you want in a tournament
2. Increasing the financial value of your collection
3. Building casual decks, including EDH, cubes, fun decks
4. Collecting (misprints, artwork, rare or old cards, etc).
Most people who own a Magic collection do so for more than one of the above reasons. For example, a serious tournament player prioritizes (1) over any of the others, but may also employ (2) at least as a means toward accomplishing (1). The first thing you should do is evaluate which goals you have and to prioritize them.
Prioritizing your Goals as a Magic Collector
My own ranking is 1-2-3-4. People who prioritize (3) or (4) to the exclusion of the others do so because they just want to have fun. These are perfectly reasonable goals, but since I am on the opposite end of the spectrum, I don’t have much advice for these types of players. Fortunately for me, if you are reading my column, you probably at least prioritize (1) or (2) in some capacity. So let’s consider these two goals more closely.
Among those who prioritize (1), there are players who play every competitive format (Vintage, Legacy, Extended, Standard) and there are players who mostly play one or two formats and only play the others in fringe capacity, if at all. For example, some players are Legacy players or Vintage players and do not care much for the newer formats.
These players don’t care about qualifying for the Pro Tour and often view the newer formats as too much work to keep up with. Players that mostly play the older formats typically have lives outside of Magic that are very demanding, yet they wish to maintain a large enough collection to play whatever they want to in the older formats. Once you have a Classic collection, updating it requires little more than reading Stephen Menendian set reviews and purchasing a handful of cards whenever a new set comes out or a new archetype emerges.
On the other end of the spectrum, a lot of players care about Standard and Extended but do not care enough about the older formats to maintain a collection that affords them the ability to play whatever they want. This is also a reasonable approach because the newer formats are the most active and offer the biggest tournament prizes. If your primary goal is to qualify for the Pro Tour, you’ll probably only play in one or two Legacy tournaments per year (usually a Grand Prix). So investing several thousand dollars into a Legacy collection is not worth it.
Still others wish to maintain the complete player’s collection (CPC) — all the Vintage, Legacy, Extended, and Standard staples. Ideally every player would like to own this, but it costs a lot both in terms of dollars and opportunity cost. If (2) is a high priority to you, the opportunity cost of hoarding a CPC is quite high, even if just a CPC for one of the four major formats. In order to demonstrate what the opportunity cost is of (1), let’s consider some examples.
Opportunity Costs of (1)
Case 1
Player A’s primary goal is (1), but only as it pertains to Standard, and his secondary goal is (2). Whenever a new set comes out, Player A tries to pick up a play set of everything good and then hoards those play sets in his box of non-tradable cards. Once Player A has acquired 4 Primeval Titans, he starts trading for extras as trade fodder, but until he gets that fifth one, he will not trade away any of his Primeval Titans, even if someone is specifically looking for it and Player A does not even intend to play them in a deck in the coming weeks.
Compare this approach to Player B, who prioritizes (2) over (1). Every card this person acquires goes straight into the trade binder and immediately becomes tradable at the right price. Then if someone comes along who specifically needs the Primeval Titan and is willing to concede value in order to acquire it, Person B will gain more value than Person A.
For the most part, I generally pick a deck when a new set comes out, aggressively acquire the cards for that deck, and then everything else I acquire from the new set is tradable. This way I will acquire all my play sets of the new cards faster since I have more of the new cards in my binder and hence more fodder by which to gain more value and more new cards.
Case 2
Jim plays Standard a lot and maintains a complete Standard collection, but he also prioritizes (2). He acquires Legacy, Vintage, and Extended cards solely for the purpose of gaining value and as fodder to trade for the new cards whenever a new set comes out. He always has Tropical Islands, Lion’s Eye Diamonds, and Force of Wills in his trade binder, and only comes off them for cards like Baneslayer Angel and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.
In contrast to Jim, Dan only plays Legacy and rarely plays Standard. Like Jim, he also prioritizes (2). Whenever a new set comes out, he trades for the hot new cards but only as fodder to trade for Jim’s Legacy staples. Jim and Dan have a healthy business relationship and always know which cards the other is looking for. They help each other to maintain a CPC in each’s preferred format. Once per year whenever there is a Legacy Gran Prix, Dan loans Jim a deck for the tournament. Likewise, whenever Dan has a desire to play Standard, Jim loans him a deck. These types of relationships are mutually beneficial, and if you see yourself as an exclusively Standard collector, it may be wise to seek out an exclusively Legacy collector (or vice versa).
In contrast to Jim and Dan, Bob plays a lot of Legacy and Standard, but also tries to accomplish (2). He hoards his set of 40 duals and his play set of Legacy and Standard staples. Whenever a new set comes out, he tries to acquire the new cards for his play stash, and only after accomplishing this does he try to trade for value. Jim and Dan will typically accomplish each of their goals more quickly than Bob, yet (1) will fully apply to each of them (except in cases where Dan and Jim want to play the same or overlapping decks).
Case 3
Jose prioritizes (2) over 1, 3, and 4. He opens a Grave Titan in a release event booster draft and immediately thereafter adds it to his trade binder. Later that day he trades it for a Revised Plateau and then the following week trades the Plateau to Dan for a pair of Fauna Shamans and a Sun Titan. He then trades the Fauna Shamans to Jim for a pair of Dark Confidants, and trades the Dark Confidants and Sun Titan for his extra Phyrexian Dreadnought. Jose then trades the Dreadnought to Dan for his Primeval Titan. Then the following week Jose trades the Primeval Titan to someone at the local store for a pair of Grave Titans.
Meanwhile Bob and Jim also opened a Grave Titan the same day in one of their booster drafts and instead of putting it in their trade binder they each put it in their box of untradeable cards. The card sat in each player’s box the whole week and at the end of the week neither gained any value out of the Titan while Jose managed to double the value of his Grave Titan through a series of trades with the sole intention of gaining incremental value. In this example, the opportunity cost of hoarding the Titan for that first week was 200% value. The cost is not always this high, though over the course of the first month of a set’s release, the lost value of hoarding new cards is certainly very close to 200%.
Analysis of Hoarding versus Liquidating
If you value and actively pursue (1) and (2), the opportunity cost of (1) can be quite substantial. Everyone is willing to trade for dual lands and other Legacy staples, just as everyone is willing to trade for Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Primeval Titan (at the moment). The hottest cards tend to carry the most solid values across price ranges and hence are the most profitable to trade.
For example, Primeval Titan is worth $50 almost across the board, and dealers are buying them for as much as $38. Someone who values their $4 cards at $5 want the Primeval Titan and value it at $50, but are not willing to concede value to acquire it, so you don’t trade it to them. However, someone who values their $4 cards at $3 likewise value the Titan at $50 and are also willing to trade for it. These people are the ones you should trade your Titan to since you will gain $70 or so in value out of the Titan.
If you hoard the Titan instead of putting it in your trade binder, you will miss out on the $70 of value opportunity. And over the course of several trades, those $70 worth of cards will presumably grow to greater value. It is hard to tell precisely how much cost one is paying by hoarding, but it is certainly the case that the more you hoard, the more value you are potentially missing out on.
On the other side of the coin, there is also a cost to liquidating (i.e. putting cards in your trade binder and being willing to trade them off). Basically what you are doing by liquidating is temporarily sacrificing (1) in favor of (2). The more sacrifices of (1) you are willing to make, in favor of (2), the faster you will accomplish CPC. Then once you’ve accomplished CPC and have sufficient surplus, you can afford to hoard CPC at only a marginal cost. In other words, once you own ten Jace, the Mind Sculptors, hoarding four of them has much less cost than if you only had four or five. In short, the opportunity cost of hoarding diminishes as the size of your surplus increases.
The cost of not hoarding, however, is temporarily not having (1). Someone who is solely a trader and does not play in tournaments is in the optimal position to gain value because temporarily not having (1) is irrelevant to him. But to most Magic traders, they are also a player in some capacity and hence feel the bite of (1) at least enough to hoard the cards for the specific deck they want to play.
My recommendation for people who are players first and traders second, though who prioritize both to a significant degree, is to playtest with proxies while liquidating the new cards. Whenever a new set is released, the cards are in high demand and can be traded a premium. As a result, this is the costliest time to hoard. One would be better off figuring out which deck one wants to play and then aggressively trading for the needed cards in the days or week leading up to the tournament. Building a CPC of the new set should be a longer-range goal, and the hoarding stage should not occur until you have plenty of surplus — enough surplus that the cost of hoarding a CPC is marginal.
One of the misunderstood facts about liquidating is that you still own the cards that are sitting in your trade binder. Until you are actually offered the value deal for the cards, they are still at your disposal as a player. So hoarding the cards in a box that is never seen by people you are trading with is almost entirely negative value.
The only danger in liquidating is losing value or getting even value and then later having to concede value in order to reacquire the card. This danger is real for someone who does not invest a substantial amount of time into keeping up-to-date on all the price fluctuations of cards. In the long run, however, the positive EV decision will almost always be to liquidate. Any value lost from having to reacquire cards (e.g. trading away your Stoneforge Mystics at $2 before they tripled in value after Pro Tour: San Diego) will be more than compensated for by the value gained from trading away the cards for value (e.g. getting $70 of value for the Primeval Titan).
In conclusion, if (2) is even a reasonably high priority to you, you should liquidate almost all your cards. This is the fastest path to acquiring a CPC of every card. This strategy works best the more trades you make and the better you study and keep up with price fluctuations. Even as someone who is a player first and a trader second, liquidating is the best way to accomplish CPC, which is the ideal situation for the Player-trader.