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(Note: This is written in response to this article by Peter Jahn)
Dear Mr. Jahn,
Let me first begin by saying that I enjoyed your articles on Star City Games, despite the fact that I wasn’t necessarily the target audience. I really enjoyed the UST you were running even though I didn’t play when 90 percent of the decks were in Standard. I respect your opinion on a number of topics.
But you are dead wrong when it comes to trading.
I understand you don’t know me, so I’ll describe my situation to you, lest you think I’m some card shark who regularly preys on children and handicapped people.
I’m 22 years old and about as broke of a college student as you can be. When I began playing Magic with the release of Shadowmoor I thought Faerie Trickery was awesome because “no one plays Faeries.” As I began to delve more into the competitive aspect of the game I quickly became aware of how oppressive the prices can be for someone in my position. Trust me when I say that trading a Bitterblossom to the store owner for $20 store credit was the highlight of Magic career to that point. I remember maybe two matches from those first few months, but I’ll always remember that trade.
As my skill and knowledge increased, I began to take store credit for prize winnings (my store owner generously gives $4/pack in credit). This allowed me to continue playing at a reasonable price, and more importantly, my hobby paid for itself!
This strategy worked gloriously for drafting, where I can reasonably expect to make my store credit back every time I sit down, but then came the next stage in my development as a player – Constructed. I couldn’t justify (nor afford) dropping $20 on a land, no matter how good Reflecting Pool was (which is almost humorous now with Jace, the Mind Sculptor on the market). But I had the fire – I wanted to take my game to new heights, and that meant breaking into the Constructed game with a tiny card collection.
As many players do, I started with budget decks. My first constructed tournament I played a Red/Green elementals/Bloodbraid Elf deck and won a few games. Then the $50 dollar Baneslayer Angels started hitting the table and I found out how much of a disadvantage going budget can be. What was I supposed to do now to compete?
Enter trading.
I’ve always been a financially conservative person and I like to save money more than I like to spend it. I don’t play MTGO because I can’t afford it and I can’t take those cards to play Planechase with my friends.
As I grew accustomed to treating Magic cards as dollar bills (easy to do when you lose to Walletslayers) I started to see my opportunity. I could leverage my cards into actual decks without spending hundreds of dollars! The more I traded, the more I loved it. The rush I got from making a trade was equal to that I got from winning a game. My collection began to grow, and suddenly those Reflecting Pools didn’t seem so out of reach.
I’ve put hundreds of hours into trading, and I can unequivocally tell you that trading is not a zero-sum game. I feel like a great deal of your argument is based on this principle, when in fact it is just indefensible from a logical standpoint. Taken literally, if this were true there wouldn’t be a dozen different prices attributed to any single card.
But there is much more to it than that. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written on this site, the Number One thing I advocate is to develop relationships with your trading partners because doing so is more important than any single trade you could ever make with them. We’re all in this Magic: the Gathering thing together, and we are a tiny community in the big scope of things.
When I trade with someone, I am not deceiving him or her in any way, and I have never intentionally “ripped someone off.” The only cost any Magic card truly has is the pennies that were spent to produce it. Anything else attributed to it by the secondary market is impossible to definitely quantify, as demonstrated by the fact that I can buy Primeval Titan at dozens of different prices at this very moment. Your argument of a zero-sum game breaks down here, even strictly looking at prices. Where it truly falls apart, however, is in the nebulous area of “value,” which you incorrectly use interchangeably with “price” in your article.
The first definition for value in the dictionary is “relative worth, merit, or importance”
You say you have no problem trading off a fifth Baneslayer Angel because you have no need for it and would trade it off for spares. Tell me, is the price of that fifth Angel the same as your fourth? What about the value? You admit that the “relative worth, merit or importance” of the fifth is lower to you than that of the first four. But how can this be true, if trading is a zero-sum game, as you say? Seemingly every week I remind readers that value is relative, and I’m not doing it because I like to type the phrase. It is vital to understanding how to trade, and build the Magic community while doing so.
You say that Magic is a game with a winner and a loser. While superficially true, is this really the intellectual level you want to have such a discussion? Tell me, when a group of friends sit down at their kitchen table and sling some cards for a few hours, having a blast doing so, and everyone walks happy at the end of the night, who lost? If a player cheats to win a match, did he truly win? The answer, like everything in life, is relative.
Applying this principle to trading, you claim that it is unethical to trade $15 in cards for $21 in cards. To quote:
“Let's look at a trade. The trader is offering a Verdant Catacombs, a Vampire Nocturnus, three Captivating Vampires and an Obstinate Baloth for a Null Rod. We have all seen or heard of trades like this. Six cards for one may look good, but based on MTGOTraders prices at the moment the trader is giving away $15.60 worth of cards and getting a $21.00 card. If both players have knowledge of the market values of these cards, that trade never happens.”
This is just blatantly false. These trades happen daily, by players with full knowledge of SCG and MTGOTraders prices. Why? Because value is relative. For players not planning to sell their cards online (and most don’t), price guides are nothing more than that – a guide.
If a player has had that Null Rod in his binder for years and never had a use for it, then it likely has a relatively low value for him, despite what a price guide says. Likewise, if he really wants to finish his girlfriend’s Vampire deck (She loves Twilight, after all), then those Captivating Vampires have a pretty high value. If his partner is a “value trader” and is offering less than $20 in cards so he can make a profit, does our player searching for Vampires care about that last few dollars? The answer, as demonstrated time and time again in gaming stores across the world, is an emphatic no. Matching up to some arbitrary price guide means a lot less than accomplishing his goal of rounding up all the Vampires his girlfriend can handle.
The type of player I described above exists in every Magic market there is. Is it wrong for a P2P trader to trade up through these players until they achieve a piece of Power? If done without lying or deceiving players, then there is nothing wrong with such a goal. You seem to assert that the only way to go from a Beta Goblin Mountaineer to Power is to rip off others, when that is far from the truth.
While every player has their own limits as to what they can accept (mine is at a 100 percent profit margin), no one can be faulted for making profitable trades, as long as there is equal knowledge on both sides, nor can you fault a player for losing out monetarily in a trade as long as there is sufficient value for him in the deal. For many players, this just means getting a particular card. For others, knowing they helped someone on their quest to Power adds that value.
The same goes for signed cards. I took my Jonathan Medina signed P2P cards and put them in my binder, despite the fact they are commons. Why? Because they have added value to me, despite the price of the card not having changed.
Many serious traders start conversation with “what do you value card X at?” for a reason. Is their partner using Ebay or SCG pricing? Do they place an arbitrarily high value on a card because it was their first-ever rare? Do they even know prices?
If the answer to the last question is “no,” I won’t deny that there are plenty of unscrupulous traders who would take advantage of that fact, but that is not everyone. Even if that is the only type of trader you’ve experienced (which I doubt), then I am politely extending you an invitation to read my work on this website, where I have constantly discouraged this type of behavior. By choosing to make such obtuse generalities, you are offending an entire population of players who trade for value without “ripping off” their partners. As I’ve said numerous times, if both players walk away from a trade happy, then it was a successful trade (so long as no deceit was involved).
Mr. Jahn, I share your disdain for those who give traders a bad name, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt in this case, since apparently this is the only experience with traders you have had. I suggest you get to know the rest of us. You might find out we’re not so bad.
Sincerely,
Corbin Hosler
@Chosler88 on Twitter
Different types of players want different types of cards. I play Legacy and am looking for cards playable for that format. I'll gladly take those Knight of the Reliquary off your hands and now that you can't play them in Standard any more you'll probably be thrilled to do it. I'm also interested in cards that are good in EDH like Brooding Saurian. Brooding Saurian for christsake!
Trade something that isn't worth much to you for something that is worth more to you. Your trade partner is seeking to do the same thing. You agree on the trade and voila – we both gained.
100% true due to the fact that not every trader out there is a guy looking to prey on the people who don't keep up with pricing nor care about the relative value of cards. Personally I see myself as not a trader in the sense of leveling up my own collection but more of a caravan. I travel around to the shops out here and am able to bring cards to those who want them and don't want to provide the most valuable thing a person can have, in the form of cold hard cash, to a shopkeeper for them. As that guy when I walk into a shop I am immediately asked, by not only the people playing but even the shop owner on occasion, what I have picked up over the course of a week or two. By doing this people aren't afraid to trade at our local stores anymore, they don't fear cracking open their binder to someone because they know we aren't in the business of ripping people off but we are in the business of Magic, the business of creating a strong community.
Corbin your article was very well written in trying to get across the view of a trader that sees the value of cards differently. It is true that the value of cards is all relative to the person who owns them. Just today someone offered me a trade of a Jace Beleren and a foil Temple Bell for a Jace, the Mindsculptor because the shop didn't accept it as a buy. In my right mind I could not accept this trade and told the guy to go back to shopping in my binder for a lot more cards. Not everyone would do what I did and he knew that, just because we love to trade does not mean we are heartless.
Hi Corbin, I had no idea about this site until someone linked to it in Pete's article that you have writen about here. I am a long time player myself and a regular puremtgo.com writer.
I did not extract "zero sum" ideology from Pete's article. I think Pete is intelligent enough to see that different people place different values on things. (After all they are just things right?) But I also think his point is that while there are differing values from personal perspectives there is a mean objective value that good traders know about.
Trading "up" is an art-form (I've done quite a bit of that in my past as a paper player.) This can be achieved with an eye towards ethics or by ignoring them. I think THIS is what Pete's main point is. People who trade with knowledge of the market value (or mean objective value) of an item is and take advantage of the fact that their trade partner does not know this information are trading unethically. Sure Timmy might really want the gigantosaurus rex card for their dinodragonbot collection but if it's worth a nickle then taking megaomgwtfweretheythinking mythic in trade (worth mega $$$ on the market) for it is just robbery.
Even if both parties are happy, because one is ignorant they are being ripped off, and the other because they are the one getting away with it, someone is losing out. This doesn't mean every uneven trade is unethical or bad. Ive trade 3-4x the value of a card I was asking for just because I wanted the card (betas for example.) I knew the values and made an informed decision. Now if I was trading 3-4x value for a card I didn't know the value of I'd feel pretty bad once I found out how much I'd been taken for. Again by value here I am not referring to how much I valued betas for but how much their average price on the market was.
Wanting something for nothing, getting over on someone, lying because it is easier than being truthful are all human traits. Throw a rock in a group of people you are bound to hit someone who has done or felt these things. The difference is acting on it. As someone who has done plenty of wrong in my past I am acute aware of where my ethical boundaries are. I do believe many mtg(o) players are not as intune this way. Many are still adolescent or even children themselves if only in maturity level. Personal ethics are something that grow with a person as they become adults. Not everyone achieves the same set.
I do believe the point Pete was making was that uneven information in trading may lead to unethical decisions. I don't even think this point is debatable. The most you can say is "well no one I know does that." (I'd disagree, because inevitably someone you know will try to get a fast buck, if not off you, then someone else) or potentially "Well there is that one guy but everyone stays away from him by consensus." And pariahs are harder to spot and deal with online because of the anonymous nature of user accounts.
It amazes me how strongly people reacted to Pete's article considering that it is about a topic that is so well known and discussed. Sure he did call a group of people out (The pack to power writers) but there were plenty of responses from other people on all sides of this apparently still controversial subject. (One I wrote about years ago concerning paper trades.) I lament that trading is not fun online and yet at the same time I suppose that is to the better if the end result is so much emotion spent arguing about it. If Trading were easier online I imagine it would be fraught with subtler perils than exist now.
Thanks for sharing.
Paul Emerson Leicht
Winter.Wolf on Modo
Paul,
Thank you for taking the time to write out such a thoughtful response, this is the level of discussion I hoped to generate with this piece.
On the whole, I agree with nearly everything you said. And I agree with much of what Pete said. The problem is he makes extreme generalizations by stereotyping traders (and even P2P traders).
A few things I wanted to address:
– Pete unequivocally calls P2P trading a zero-sum process, which is why I addressed that. The quote from his article:
"The flip side, of course, is that this is only possible if his trading partners have lost a lot of money. This sort of trading is a zero sum game. No value has been added in the process. The only thing that has changed is the ownership of the cards."
– Many traders don't share their information with their trading partners, which results in unequal information, I understand that. My problem is that Pete lumped every single "value trader" into this category in his article. I have a personal ethics system that keeps me from "ripping off" children or genuinely uninformed players. Five days a week a writer on this site discourages the type of trading Pete claims to have a problem with, and he does not mention that anywhere in his nearly 3000-word article. I was personally offended because it seems that he and I align pretty closely on the ethics of trading, and yet he lumps me into a group that he claims is stealing. I have a problem with that.
– It is entirely possible to do a P2P on sound ethical ground. If you are trading with someone who thinks themselves a shark, would you correct them like you would a 14-year-old kid with his first booster? This is where I draw the line. Since you are new to the site, you probably haven't read much of my work. I will trade on whatever grounds my partner wants. If he wants to quote prices at me, I'll take a hard stance and take advantage of his misinformation. I don't lose sleep over this because he is trying to do the same to me. If I'm trading with a casual player with little-to-no knowledge of prices I don't even bring numbers to the table, because it can intimidate these players, but that does NOT mean I am planning on ripping them off. I keep a mental tally of our trade and make sure it works out to what I consider fair value.
Again, thank you for your feedback and I hope to see you back on QS.
The way that I read Peter Jahn's article really sounded to me like he missed the point that different people will value cards differently. They may even value the same cards differently based on the situation. Trading doesn't have to be a competition where one side wins and the other side loses; the best trades are the ones where both sides are happy with the trade. I do agree that there are trades which are obviously lopsided no matter how you evaluate them, but that doesn't mean every trade that could be labeled as unequal is a bad trade for one side. It just means there are other factors to consider.
"you claim that it is unethical to trade $15 in cards for $21 in cards"
No no no! You misunderstand the position, here. It's not unethical to trade 15 for 21 – what's unethical is to [i]present that trade as even[/i] to your trading partner. This includes keeping mum about the imbalance – a lie of omission is still a lie, and just as dishonest.
If the other guy knows you're trading for profit, and is cool with it, then the trade is ethical. You don't have to go into specifics or reveal your 'trade secrets' (you don't need to tell him that only want his Koth because you know a guy who desperately needs it for the tournament tomorrow), just let him know that you're in it for value.
(Obviously if the trade is actually even, based on market value, this doesn't apply.)
Also, the phrase you're looking for in the Null Rod/Captivating Vampire example is [i]utility[/i]. The Vampire in your binder does nothing – it doesn't even beat for 2, the bare minimum we ask of most cards! – but the same Vampire in the girlfriend's deck can win games, and more importantly, make her happy. By moving the Vampire into a deck, you increase the utility of the Vampire.
Making profit by increasing the utility of cards is definitely a value-adding process (this is the major point Peter Jahn's article missed), and quite ethical. Making a profit off of sheer ignorance – not so much! If you want to wear the 'white hat', you need to figure out how to do the former without doing the latter.
(freakin' tags :/)
“you claim that it is unethical to trade $15 in cards for $21 in cards”
No no no! You misunderstand the position, here. It’s not unethical to trade 15 for 21 – what’s unethical is to present that trade as even to your trading partner. This includes keeping mum about the imbalance – a lie of omission is still a lie, and just as dishonest.
If the other guy knows you’re trading for profit, and is cool with it, then the trade is ethical. You don’t have to go into specifics or reveal your ‘trade secrets’ (you don’t need to tell him that only want his Koth because you know a guy who desperately needs it for the tournament tomorrow), just let him know that you’re in it for value.
(Obviously if the trade is actually even, based on market value, this doesn’t apply.)
Also, the phrase you’re looking for in the Null Rod/Captivating Vampire example is utility. The Vampire in your binder does nothing – it doesn’t even beat for 2, the bare minimum we ask of most cards! – but the same Vampire in the girlfriend’s deck can win games, and more importantly, make her happy. By moving the Vampire into a deck, you increase the utility of the Vampire.
Making profit by increasing the utility of cards is definitely a value-adding process (this is the major point Peter Jahn’s article missed), and quite ethical. Making a profit off of sheer ignorance – not so much! If you want to wear the ‘white hat’, you need to figure out how to do the former without doing the latter.
Years ago our youthgroup did an experiment called "Bigger and Better" that was similar to P2P. The difference was that the trading was not restricted to MTG cards. We started with a penny and went door to door one night offering to trade our penny for something "bigger and better". Didn't matter what it was that we got in trade. We first got a Garfield poster. Then a fancy kite. The evening progressed until we had traded a kid's carseat for a 10-speed bicycle and the bicycle for a wood-burning stove. We ended there because it was getting late and nobody could transport the stove. We might have left the stove at the guy's house, it was so long ago I can't remember.
My point is that we embarked on a PSP-like mission and by the end of the night we had ended up with something more valuable than what we had started with. I don't think that anybody we traded with regretted having trading with us (they could have said no, after all). And so I disagree that when one person parlays an item into another item of greater value using a series of trades over time, that it requires that other people be taken advantage of.
There are also those who misrepresent the value of their trades to gain value, but those people are being dishonest. They are taking advantage of others.
So there are 2 ways to go from P2P, honestly and dishonestly. To say that all those who go from P2P all do so using the dishonest method is not fair.
This article came across as very definsive. Peter is talking about traders who lie about the values of the cards.
You wrote:
"no one can be faulted for making profitable trades, as long as there is equal knowledge on both sides,"
Peter's article is about traders who take advantage of other people that don't have the knowledge. You completely missed the point.
You wrote:
"Many serious traders start conversation with “what do you value card X at?” for a reason. Is their partner using Ebay or SCG pricing? Do they place an arbitrarily high value on a card because it was their first-ever rare? Do they even know prices?"
Most people that ask "What do you value card X at" are looking for a bargain and will repeatedly ask that question looking for you to undervalue your cards. When they want to know what pricing system they use, they ask "What pricing system do you want to go by". I've been trading for a very long time, and I would say this is true 90% of the time or more.
The point is, if you both trade using the same pricing scale (guide), no harm can be had since you both have fair information. If you want to value something higher than what the scale says, and the other person agrees to it, that's fine. If you can make a proffit using arbitration by picking cards up cheap using one scale, then using a different scale in a seperate trade that values the card at a higher %, that's perfectly fine. Most trades that I have seen involve 2 people using their own seperate pricing scales and their own knowledge, which opens the channels for ripoffs. If each person places values on their own cards and agree, that's fine. The problem comes when trader A tells trader B what the value of trader B's cards are. Just because the other person agrees to it does not make it ok, it makes them a victim for having trusted you. If you're going to tell them what the value of their cards are, just use the same pricing system you used to value your cards, and memorizing 1 site's prices does not entitle you to make a gain by lying our just letting them make poor guesses.
There are still pleanty of ways to make a gain in trading, buy lying about values of cards should not be one of them.
No one on any side of this debate (to my knowledge) is saying it's okay to make money by lying. The problem with Pete's article is it comes across as directed at all P2P traders, and "value traders" in general, without referencing that there might be any form of ethical value trading.
I suggest that you reread the article.
I made two basic points:
1) traditional economic theory defines adding value, as a basis for price differentials between the price of inputs and outputs. That is not happening here.
2) the basis for the difference, in the absence of added value, has to be either arbitrage or incomplete information. Since arbitrage opportunities are extremely limited on MTGO, that leaves incomplete information as a major driver.
I then said that, if a trader knowingly calls a trade "fair" when he or she knows that the trade is unbalanced, that is unethical.
Is there ethical trading? Yes – but it is very, very hard to make a profit at it. It is easier in paper, but possible online. Look at Marin Baraba's latest article on MTGOAcademy for some opportunities for ethical trade options.
In my experience, however, nearly all of the people I have seen trading a lot are not ethical. Pretty much anyone who starts the trade saying "what do you value that at?" is probably looking to trade only for cards their opponent (that's probably more accurate than "trade partner" or the like) undervalues, and that's what they trade for.
Here's another way of looking at a trade. If both people pull out the cards they want, and then check some resource to see if the values balance – throwing in some extra cards on one side or the other to even it out, that is a totally ethical trade. If one person trades only for the cards they expect to be able to trade later for more than they get – especially those that thier opponent undervalues – and lies about an unbalanced trade being balanced, that's not ethical.
I think you and I are operating on fundamentally different definition of "value." There are countless examples on this site alone of how and why value is variable, whereas you seem to try and apply a strict price point to it, which is just an untenable position given the dozens of prices attached to any given card.
Since when did traditional economic theory ever apply to collectibles? The inherent nature of the goods discussed is an extremely variable "value," based on who you're talking to.
So when you say "in the absence of added value," I have a problem with that, because that value can be added or subtracted based on nothing more than who you are trading with.
As I noted, I don't play MTGO, so I'm speaking for the world of "paper magic," but seeing as how you addressed both in your article, the issues I discussed still apply (albeit to a lesser extent on MTGO).
I appreciate your reply on here, and I think you and I agree on a lot of trading principles, I just would like to see you acknowledge than rather than stereotype all traders based on anecdotal evidence.
“Since arbitrage opportunities are extremely limited on MTGO, that leaves incomplete information as a major driver. ”
I hate to reply to something 6 years late but this is so ridiculously incorrect i had to say something.
I have arbitraged thousands of dollars from bots on MTGO, it is insanely easy, to state that arbitrage opportunities are extremely limited is either completely uninformed (just like your article on p2p) or intentionally untrue.
Every post that's anti-value-trading includes a little caveat "the trade occurs without knowing the true value of the traded items".
1. Magic cards have no "true value" only an individual value placed upon the card by their former and future owners. If I value Baneslayer at $15, and you value it at $30 who's right? Answer: We both are!
2. No one here has condoned lying to your prospect. Lying is stating a fact that deviates from the truth. This relies on there being one ultimate "Truth". So will one of these honest traders please tell me, right now, 100% truthfully, what is a Baneslayer worth right now and forever more. If you can all agree on an answer to that question, then you're welcome to accuse me of lying to my trading partners.
What do you mean "and forever more" isn't fair? So if I traded for your Frost Titans when they were worth $3 knowing they would spike to $12 that was a completely honest trade? If your moral compass doesn't allow for deviations of value, then it must reconcile temporal differences as well.
You are still missing the point of his argument. As long as each side is totally aware of the monetary value of the trade, it is fine, and ethical (he still wouldn't do it though).
It's only when lying, deceit, misinformation, and lack of knowledge does trading xx for xxx become unethical.
“Let’s look at a trade. The trader is offering a Verdant Catacombs, a Vampire Nocturnus, three Captivating Vampires and an Obstinate Baloth for a Null Rod. We have all seen or heard of trades like this. Six cards for one may look good, but based on MTGOTraders prices at the moment the trader is giving away $15.60 worth of cards and getting a $21.00 card. If both players have knowledge of the market values of these cards, that trade never happens.”
Just going to point out that $21 is a VERY expensive price for null rod. The store I work at sells them for $10.00, so naturally for many people (because SCG also lists this price), that looks like an awesome trade for the fellow with the vampires.
This is a concrete example of how you cannot numerically define secondary market prices.
I need to point out that the prices used throughout the article, published on a MTGO related website, were refrencing the *online* price of *online* cards, as of the date the article was written. The article stated that several times.
If you missed that – well, want to trade your pair of Jace TMS for my Tabernacle? (Online, Jace II is pushing $90, and Tabernacle is under $5.00. And, yes, the offer is a joke – I would consider it unethical if I offered it to you, since you clearly didn't know that we were referencing online prices.)
I just wanted to chime in again to refine what has been said about lying ethics and magic. Many players think it is fine to lie your butt off to your opponent(s) as long as you don't get caught. The level of ethics in magic varies greatly. So it is not surprising to see someone making unethical trades. That does not make it acceptable. The problem is I think what people consider a lie. For example, the player who lost Worlds last year because he let his opponent fail to choose a target from his side for Master of the Hunt's ability. So his guy died and none on the other did. Afterward he somewhat dumbly noted his opponent's failure to do so. To him it was perfectly ok that he didn't notify his opponent of breaking a rule. But apparently the judges didn't think so and penalized him accordingly. I am sure his view on the ethics of lying have changed dramatically if only this: don't get caught doing it even by omission. It is a shame traders don't have to fear this sort of thing as well. Though in a sense they do since the consequences of being branded a liar are fairly extensive in a close-knit community.
I don't think your example fits at all. In Magic there are hard and fast written rules that say, "thou shalt do X". If you break the rules, then Y will happen.
In trading there are no rules. Not because no one's written any, but because it's impossible to write any. There would never be consensus on what is right and what is wrong.
What Corbin has put together here is essentially his Terms & Conditions for trading with him. He's very open about it and there's no hiding it. If you decide that's unfair, no one is forcing you to agree to them.
Aritlces like this are an example of quick, helpful answers.