Rags to Riches: Week Five

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Plejades

Hello everyone,

Welcome back! First off, apologies for not showing up last week. I was to busy clashing cards with Wizards of the Coast at their headquarters in Renton. (More of my experience at Wizards of the Coast and many pictures in a later article.) Back to business. My objective for this week was mainly to transform our foil Comet Storm promos into something that is easier to trade or sell and make sure I am taking all opportunities offered to me this week to increase value.

My first action was to visit mtgotradersfreebot to grab 64 free cards for this month as can be seen here:

I also made a trade that might be a loss in the books, but I believe that the cards I got are much easier to sell or trade then the foil promos I gave away. We shall see if it will pay off:

In general, foil promos are often a tough sell. I sometimes prefer to have cards that are worth a bit less, but are easy to turn around. This is especially valuable when you don’t have much inventory and need to keep things moving.

Another small trade I made was trading 2 Sign in Blood for a foil Oust. Not a huge gain, but it is always nice to trade up for cards someone might be interested in.

Not many trades this week, but sometimes things go slower than you like. I do think that my goal for next week will be to sell a bunch of cards for tickets so I can start buying singles I believe are undervalued. The Arid Mesa is in high demand and should bring around 6 tickets. Hopefully I will also manage to sell the foil Phyrexian Negator (which lost some value since our last article). If your collection is small it is always a good idea to invest in cards that sell easily to decrease your turnaround time. We wrap up with good hope and the current value of our collection which is 27.35 tickets.

Take care everyone and good luck,

Marin (AKA: Plejades)

 

  1. Wow this is pretty cool seeing on how you invest and lose/gain week by week. I wish you the best of luck in future trades.

  2. i think the arid mesa/wolfbriar elemental trade is fine if not good. it’s like 7.5 tix worth for 3x comet storms, which is nice but since they are promo, have even lower demand since they cant be redeemed like the ones from the normal set can IMO.

    Oust trade seems good too!

  3. Im loving this series of articles, it’s good to see you advance week on week and see the value of your collection increase.
    Keep up the good work.

  4. Thanks for the comments, guys. This week was a bit tough. I guess you cannot expect to always find super deals but we are making progress. At some point I will add a few general trading tips for everyone.

  5. I look forward to the general trading tips!

    By the way is there any place you can recommend looking for some pauper commons? I mean like a bot you’d recommend or something? I’ve had some success asking around for drafters in #auction (they don’t care about Halimar Wavewatcher 5-8), but there is probably a better way.

  6. Oh and I think the Fetchlands are a great trade. If you don’t like the price, all you have to do is wait an hour =)

  8. Agreed with the above posters, the Mesa + Wolfbriar is an upgrade to Comet Storm, which hasn’t found a home yet.

    I would try to unload the Wolfbriar soon, and look to sell that Mesa right before the next Standard PTQ. I find buying on MTuW and selling on ThFSatSun to work best if trying to eke a profit out of the same card.

  9. I love reading these articles it pretty much sums up the amount of progress i have been making as well but also has helpful tips that I had no idea about such as 64 free cards a month.

    p.s any idea when we get the free packs?

  10. I think I remember reading that the packs will be distributed late July. Rest assured you will get them but you will have to be patient. :-)

  11. Oh how i dislike having to be patient hopefully it will be nix tix time by then havnt checked yet

  12. Re: Mirrodin draft. The drafts will be available Friday, July 23 at 9am PDT until Monday, July 26 at 9am PDT. It looks like if you miss those drafts, MD5 is in the NixTix rotation in early September. http://community.wizards.com/magiconline/blog/2010/06/15/announcements_for_06162010

    I haven’t seen when the packs will be distributed, probably buried in a thread somewhere. IIRC, last year it took a few weeks for the Momir Avatars to be distributed.

  13. thanks for the info about the mirrodin draft! now, does anyone know if we get the packs or free entry to one where it provides product? if we get physical packs, maybe you could use them toward your rags to riches goal since they were free! i don’t know if the packs are really worth cracking though, maybe just better off trading them?

  14. I love how helpful people on this site are :D thank you very much.

    And it would be much better to sell them for 4 each if possible tan cracking them unless ravenger goes up in prices really fast although a feeling the packs will probably be worth a little less since everyone will have them I dont know how it works online.

  17. D’oh, that would have been pretty cool, too bad I missed it. Thanks for the explanation though, juggernaut1002 :)

  18. I’m really loving this series. Any chance you could do an ongoing chart though, showing how the value of your collection changes each week?

  19. I’m curious on how you found someone willing to do the trade for the Oust? Did you just find someone wanting Sign in Blood on the classifieds?

  20. Reading this years later, it’s so funny watching you trade 3 comet storm for an Arid Mesa and say “it might be a loss” :P