I am trying to build an online collection from scratch. I have tried online traders, sellers, trading bots, leagues and drafts. You could even buy packs and bust them. Some of these ideas work. Some don’t. Let’s review.
I’m trying to accumulate enough online cards to play a variety of Constructed formats, including casual games. I want a reasonably competitive Type Two deck, a halfway decent block deck, a Singleton deck, a Rainbow Stairwell deck, a multiplayer deck or three, etc. I’m also more interested in playing a variety of decks, rather than concentrating all my effort on building a single deck. However, whether your collecting goals are like mine, or more targeted, you still have the same basic concerns. You want to get the cards, especially the rares, to make the deck you want to play.
Let’s look at methods for getting rares, starting with the least effective and working up. In these examples, I am going to use Magic Online for prices, both because that’s where I’m building my collection at present (I have a huge and amazingly complete real life collection already), and because the economics are easier. In real life, pack prices vary a lot (retail per pack is $3.69 – but a lot less if you buy by the case.)
Busting Packs:
Economically, this is the least effective method of getting rares and chase cards. In a pack, you will get one rare, three uncommons, eleven commons and, if you are lucky, one of those will be a foil. On average, the value of a booster pack drops by half once you open it. In rare case, you can crack a foil chase rare and make money, but you are far more likely to open rare you don’t want – or, worse yet, one no one wants – and lose pretty much the entire purchase price.
Online, you can often buy and sell random commons for 1/128th of a TIX each. If you have nothing at all, packs could be okay, but even then, you are generally better off buying singles.
Buying Sets:
You can buy whole sets, or sets of just commons or uncommons. Star City generally has paper sets of recent expansions – online you need to hunt [censored] or get lucky, but the sets are available.
Generally, if you buy a set, you pay a lot less than buying the cards individually – but you are paying for a lot of cards that you may never use. For example, you can get a whole set of Mirrodin for under three times the cost of just the big dollar cards (namely Chrome Mox, Solemn Simulacrum, Arc-Slogger, Tooth and Nail and Troll Ascetic.) The problem is that you get Chimney Imp and Liar’s Pendulum as well.
If you are trying to build a collection sufficient to play casually, or to play Pauper magic, then buying sets might be the way to start. I found a complete playset of Onslaught commons (that’s 4 of every common, including lands) for under four bucks. It didn’t even take much time to do.
Sets (at least out-of-print sets) appeal to me because I want to build a lot of different decks, so I will find a use for (almost) all the cards. However, if you are a dedicated Blue mage, for example, getting everything may not be all that cost effective.
Leagues:
I’ve talked about this before, but leagues are still and interesting way of filling a set. I have played in several 8th Edition leagues, and drafted the set some. As a result, I have almost a full playset of 8E commons, and multiples of many of the uncommons.
The cost of a League is a little over $20, and you wind up with 5 random rares, 15 uncommons and a pile of commons. However, you also end up with the ability to play sealed deck games against people with comparable decks pretty much at will for a month. If you factor in the benefit of not having to hustle games in the casual room, and if you like Sealed, then leagues are a decent value. If you don’t like Sealed, then league is 2 TIX more expensive than busting the packs.
I like Sealed, and I can usually win a couple packs, even when my opens are horrendous, so I’m reasonably happy with League play. At least, for now.
Sealed Premier Events
I can’t talk much about these. I have never had enough time – at a single stretch – to play in one. If you do, though, you get the product, a chance at prizes and, at least for now, an Unhinged Forest. Like Leagues, however, you are opening random packs – Sealed events are not the best way to nab that final Gifts Ungiven for your block deck, but if it works for you, revel in it.
Drafting
This shouldn’t be news, but going into a draft, you can draft to win, or draft to get rares. Those are, generally, mutually exclusive.
Here’s a simple example. Assume your opening pack contains Cranial Extraction, Honden of Life’s Web and Kabuto Moth. If you pick Cranial Extraction, you are pretty much trading away your first draft pick for a Constructed deck to be named later, and are much more likely to lose the draft. If you pick Kabuto Moth, you are more likely to win it. If you are an idiot, you might decide to pick an almost good, almost playable and slightly more expensive card – sort of the best of both worlds idea.
(Yes, halfway between good and expensive – and clearly neither. Not that I would do that. Again. Too often. *ahem* I hope.)
Let’s see how this plays out. Assuming a 4-3-2-2 queue, and assuming that the players follow the same strategy throughout the draft, here’s what is likely to happen.
The cost to enter is 3 packs plus 2 TIX. That’s in the neighborhood of $13, (plus tax, if you buy at the store. Plus time and effort, if you get the stuff trading.)
The Kabuto Moth drafter will, on average, make the finals. His deck will contain a mix of commons and uncommons, and maybe a random rare here and there. The value of the deck will be 1-2 TIX, maybe a bit more if he lucked into a decent rare, like Celestial Kirin, in a later pack. His winnings will be 3-4 packs, giving him a finishing value of 15-17 TIX worth of product, plus some rating points and the enjoyment value of playing three matches. That’s a profit of 2-4 TIX and some intangibles.
The Cranial Extraction player will likely lose in round one. The value of his winnings is zilch. The value of his deck will vary. How much that varies is the question, of course.
The Hondens player may win one round, but not two. He will win 2 packs, and typically wind up with a deck worth 2-3 TIX. That’s a total finishing value of 9-11 TIX – meaning that he will lose, on average, 3 TIX for the experience. No question, that is not particularly smart.
Let’s look at the expected value of a deck acquired through deliberate rare drafting.
Champions of Kamigawa has 110 rares. The vast majority of those are random rares – the kind of thing that goes for under a buck online. Those rares account for 80-90 percent of the rares in the set.
A few are bomb rares, like Kokusho, the Evening Star. Kokusho is expensive and a bomb in Limited and Constructed – meaning that if you don’t open it, you won’t have an opportunity to rare-draft it. Kumano, Master Yamabushi and Meloku, the Clouded Mirror also fall into this category – as does Umezawa’s Jitte (in Betrayers), of course. If you get passed a Jitte, it means that the person passing you the cards has lost the connection.
A few more rares are Constructed worthy, but not great for Limited. Cranial Extraction is a great example, as are Gifts Ungiven and a couple others. These could get passed around a while, so you could rare draft them. Other rares get nabbed fairly early. Journeyer’s Kite is an example – it probably isn’t a first pick, but it won’t go far. That lessens the chance you will see it.
The remainder of the cards that will make it around the table at least once are junk rares – the kind of thing that is not really playable anywhere.
Let’s put some rough numbers on these:
The high-priced rares that suck in draft are limited in number. There are, typically, 3 in a big set and 2 in a smaller expansion. Your chance of having one of these cards in a draft is 3 in 110 per pack, times 8 packs for the main set, plus a 2 in 65 chance in each of the 16 other packs. That gives you a slightly under 70 percent chance of seeing one of them in the draft. With a median value of $6 for those cards (see below), your expected value is about 4 TIX.
Medium value rares that suck in draft: I’ll say 4 and 3, with a resale value of $2, meaning that you have slightly better than even odds of seeing one, and your expected payback is 2 TIX – and that is probably generous.
Medium value rares that go a few places: 5 and 3, but they need to be in the first four packs you see, so the odds to see them go down to about 2 in 3. The expected payback is a bit over 1.3 TIX for those cards.
The remaining rares are going to be, to be generous, the $0.75 variety. You will see maybe ten of those (after subtracting out everything others pick), meaning that you will wind up with, at most, 7.5 TIX worth of those rares.
This means that the expected value of the rare draft is going to be about 14.8 TIX – but with two important caveats.
First, I used purchase prices, mainly those of [bleep]. That means that you could buy the cards for that amount. You probably cannot sell them for that amount. You will be lucky to sell them for two-thirds of that amount – meaning that if you sell them, you lose. Remember, the draft cost 13 TIX to enter.
The second caveat is that you are the only rare-drafter at the table. If even one opponent is also rare-drafting, then all your odds are halved, as are your expected payouts. Your expected payout, with one other rare-drafter in the mix, is probably 8 TIX, or a loss of 6 TIX on the deal. With three rare-drafters, the payout is even worse. In fact, with three rare-drafters in the mix, the payout is probably worse than not paying the extra 2 TIX for the draft, and just busting the packs.
Let’s use a real world example: my best rare draft (hey, I can be stupid, too) to date. I drafted Kamigawa block, and ended up U/R/b. That says a lot right there.
I opened Time Stop, and stole it. I was looking for U/W, but pack two was garbage, and my picks were Iname, Death Aspect, Consuming Vortex and maybe a mediocre Green card like Burr Grafter – and junk. I raredrafted again. I was tired, just back from GP: Minneapolis, and wanted to play Kamigawa block online. I had no useful cards – not even a single Top, in my collection, but I had 8 Consuming Vortexes.
I also had a large gin and tonic. Long weekend, followed by a long drive, and a drink, and I was drafting. What can I say – I was making poor decisions.
Pack three had a foil Top. My first online Top ever. I took it. Pack four had Myojin of Life’s Web, and random non-creatures. One mediocre Red creature (maybe Kami of Fire’s Roar – probably worse.) I took the Myojin. Four packs, three colors, all double colors in the mana cost. Whee! Pack five had a Rend Spirit and no rare. That really wrecks the rare-drafting concept, but I stayed at it. My best hope was to face someone with a 1400 rating.
Betrayers and Saviors had me switching colors and scrounging for creatures, but I did open Jiwari, the Earth Aflame and was passed Cloudhoof Kirin. I ended up with several good fliers, a Torrent of Stone, Rend Spirit and Horobi’s Whisper. I also had a Lava Spike to splice the Whisper to, plus Flames of the Blood Hand to adjust life totals. Yuki-Onna, Rushing Tide Zubera, Hinder, Phantom Wings and a Descendant of Soramaro rounded out the playables.
I splashed Horobi’s Whisper off four Swamps. Yes, I know just how dumb that is.
My round one opponent had Teller of Tails, lots of fliers – in short, a good deck, and a high rating. I used some trickery, the Time Stop and some lucky draws to win 2-1. In the semis, my opponents deck did what it was supposed to, and mine did what you would expect of a 3-color bad stuff deck. I ended up 1-2.
Does this have a point? Maybe. Here’s a list of the cards I got from this draft, together with their purchase price. The purchase price is a blending of the [online list] prices for these cards.
Time Stop: $2
Through the Breach: $1
Oboro, Palace in the Clouds: $2
Akuta, Born of Ash: $2-$3
Iname, Death Aspect: $1
Promise of Bunrei: $4
Jiwari, the Earth Aflame: $2-$4
Myojin of Life’s Web: $0.50 – $2
Sway of Stars: $1-$2
Cloudhoof Kirin: $2-$3
FOIL Sensei’s Divining Top: $6
Hinder: $0.50
The rest were junk and filler. If I had bought the cards retail, they would have cost $25+. If I were to sell these cards, I might get 15 TIX or so. The price to enter the draft was $11.07 for the three packs, plus 2 TIX. I also won two packs.
This is not typical.
Typical is winding up with 2-3 bad rares, some random uncommons and 2-3 packs. I have been drafting Mirrodin most often (when I draft at all.) Based on the frequency with which I get passed a pack with only the rare missing, the number of rare-drafters in Mirrodin drafts is huge.
In short, rare drafting is almost always not cost effective. Rare-drafters will almost always lose money, and they don’t even get to choose the rares they wind up with. Of the cards I rare-drafted, I can see myself playing most of them, but I’m not sure I would ever have gone out to buy them. I did wind up with 25 TIX “worth” of cards, but I doubt I saved myself that much in purchase price.
I am not even going to mention the problems that rare-drafting causes, in terms of bad signaling, skewed decks and unusual play patterns. Some serious drafter or Limited specialist can rant about that. I’ll just say that I’m usually really happy to play against a rare drafter.
In short, deliberate rare drafting is a really stupid strategy.
So, does that mean that I will pass a Meishin, the Mind Cage fourth pick, if it is in a pack with absolutely nothing in my colors? Well, that depends on how much tonic I have consumed, but I doubt it.
Trading
I don’t have a lot to say about trading. I don’t do all that much trading in real life, and I don’t have spares – meaning more than complete playsets – of any online rares, so I don’t have much to offer. I expect to trade at some point, but that will be a while off. I mean, I have a dozen Horned Turtles, but I’m not going to waste time trying to trade them up.
Blisterguy wrote a good article about trading and dealing online. Read that if you need advice.
This article was talking about starting a collection from nothing. Trading is not a great way to do that. You need something to trade.
Buying Singles
If you are looking for singles to complete a Constructed deck, the most cost effective method of obtaining the cards is to buy from a dealer. Find a good, reputable dealer, with a good stock of cards, and stick with them.
Over the years, I have bought a lot of Magic cards. I started playing – seriously – in late Tempest block, and bought booster boxes from sets as far back as Alliances. I have bought singles on [censored], in binders on store shelves, from backpack dealers and from online retailers. I have been ripped off (twice) and dinked around with on occasion.
I now buy all my cards from three places. Dan Bock, a local dealer. Star City Games, the biggest and best online retailer of paper cards, and [censored] for online cards.
I sell my physical cards, on the rare occasions I sell any, to Dan Bock and to Pete or Ben at Star City.
After buying and selling cards for the better part of a decade, I think I get the best value from these dealers.
Let me repeat that: I get the best value from those three places.
That doesn’t mean I get the best price. The best value.
The cost of a card is not just the price of the card. It is the total amount of value I have to expend for it.
Let’s assume I want a Morphling.
I can try to trade for it. I have to go somewhere to find people with trade binders. I have to find a person with a Morphling to trade. Around Madison, assuming I’m simply looking for Dan Bock, that will take a while. Then I have hope I have something the Morphling’s owner wants, and then negotiate a trade. It’s possible I could find a kid with a Morphling, and get a bargain, but the odds are anyone I meet with a Morphling in their binder knows what it is worth.
Let’s assume I’m lucky, and I can drive to the store, find the person, make the trade and get back home in two hours – and that I got a slightly played Morphling for $15 bucks. I saved five bucks off the Star City price – and spent two hours to do so. More likely, it would take a lot more time to find that one card.
What is your time worth?
I know a few sellers that like to buy cheap, then sell the cards fast for a small profit. They have great prices, but low inventories. If they have the card you want, you get a bargain – but the cost of those bargains is the time you waste checking them out, only to find that they do not have the card you want.
In general, I value my time. Between writing and other pursuits, I can, if I try, earn at least minimum wage – more commonly significantly more than that. Given that fact, I have to balance the costs of the time I’m wasting against the lower price I’m working for. It’s what we economists call the opportunity cost of the activity – the value of whatever else you could be doing.
I could be trolling online bots, trying to find MTGO cards to complete a deck. In fact, I have wasted hours trying to make that work – and bought almost no cards. I also searched through a lot of online dealers in MTGO cards. I found some with good prices – and small stocks. I also found some with tons of inventory, and high prices, or interfaces that are a pain to work with.
In the end, I am sticking with dealers that I am certain will not rip me off, and that can get me the cards I need with a minimum of fuss.
Sure, I write for Star City. I have also bought literally thousands of dollars in cards and boxes from them, and have had almost no problems. In two cases (out of probably 200+ purchases) orders got mixed up, but the problems were always resolved quickly and without any hassle or extra expense on my part. I may be paying a slightly premium price, but I balance that against a totally risk free purchases, and the knowledge that I can get practically any card I need quickly and without any hassle.
So far, [bleep] seem to be the online equivalent to Star City. I don’t have enough experience, yet, to know, but my dealings have been good so far. If Star City sold online cards, I would use them, however. I am probably risk adverse, but the biggest reason is that I want to spend my spare time playing Magic, not waste it trying to get cards.
Sorry if this sounds like a commercial. It isn’t. The premise was looking at the best options for getting cards. In all my experience, big, reputable dealers are then most efficient option.
If you do not value your time, the cheapest way to get cards is to wander around and look for lost cards. It might take 10 years to find a Morphling that way, but the price will be zero – and the time was valueless, anyway.
If you are not risk adverse, there is an auction offering a playset of Morphlings. The current bid is $5.00. The bidder has been registered with [verboten] for only two weeks, and already has a rating of -4. That’s quite a bargain – and there is a slim chance you might even get the cards.
I got my last Morphling from Dan Bock – mainly because I found I had left mine at home, and needed one immediately, since registration was closing in five minutes. If I had had a couple days to get the card, I probably would have gone through Star City.
In both cases, the list price wasn’t necessarily the lowest around, but the total cost of the deal was.
Anyway, that’s my conclusion – and I have double playsets of practically everything that is legal in a Vintage tourney, including the Power Ten. I have a lot of experience buying cards at retail.
We can debate this in the forums, if you are of a mind.
PS: Neither Dan Bock, the folks at [Bleep] or the folks at Star City knew about this article before I submitted it. None of them offered me anything for the plugs – although I expect to get paid my regular rate for the articles from Star City.
[Editor’s Note: The name of the online store referenced in this article is censored as part of a general site policy forbidding advertisement for any website that buys/sells Magic: the Gathering related product online.]