The big problem is shipping time. Either you pay inflated shipping charges which make your profit vanish, or you wait for 2 weeks and whoever was looking for the card no longer is. I do do this every now and then if I see something for a price that's just too low, but not exclusively with US sellers. The profit margin also tends to be a little low as the people I currently have that would want me to go look for something for them are reasonably knowledgable on prices.

Mostly I try to find shop prices that will pretty much garantee a profit. For my work I sometimes travel to Germany and a shop there is generally behind, so when I go I make sure to browse through their binders (last trip got me foil shockduals at pre-modern prices even when non-foils were in a different binder at similar prices (!!!), a foil sword of light and shadow at about half of what they normally go for, etc.). I also have some Dutch stores with which I do the same (incidentally, the one I've used most for that seems to really like me as a customer and keeps throwing in nice goodies as well… weird :), I just wish he had more in stock). Many of my beta rares also come from a shop that was asking far too little, unfortunately the Sapphire I had also bought in the same deal has turned out to be a fake, pretty much ruining any profit I might have made on that one.

Another issue is the time I have available, I do have a full time job and a busy social life. My interest is more in keeping the cost of magic as a hoby down and less in actually getting a lot of income from it. As a result I do often buy from shops outside of The Netherlands, but mostly for cards I want for myself. I could see buying some of the high end cards I'm looking for from people on QS if that saves me money.

Send me a PM on the forum, we might be able to work something out. Alternatively, I might be interested in buying some of those, I could see wanting a Wrath in the future for EDH usage and I know I will want a Shivan eventually. It all depends on condition the cards are in though, I am picky.

The sword was def the "piece de resistance" in that trade. Having Olivia on that side also made you ask yourself if she's just a "flash in the pan" at her > $10 price point, so you had to balance that vs. losing the Hero's which as you've said have the potential to go up huge before the end of the standard season despite the fact that they were a promo offering. I can't see the sword going any higher than $30, but I CAN see the Heros going up to $15, so it's the opportunity cost that made me choose the Hero side in my selection. Glad you enjoyed it! 🙂

LOL you and I are in EXACTLY the same situation right now! I've got a ton of nice beta stuff like WoG / Shivan / Serra etc but the people who show interest either a) Don't have the cards to trade for it or b) Try and value it so low that it's just not worth trading them. I've noticed that "beta chasers" REALLY know their stuff most of the time as well, so when I trade with them I'll normally just quote eBay prices since I KNOW that's what I can get for them should I choose to sell in that manner. (I totally want your Chaos Orb for my EDH deck btw!)

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it 🙂

Nice Picks! I like how you chose the Regal Forces here as well because it REALLY has some great modern potential! Admittedly, even I didn't realize that the Gilded drake had gone up from $8 -> $10+ but eBay confirms it… good call! (And yes, we're talking about putting out real cash in this exercise)

I'm also one of those people who only uses eBay / buy lists then take those cards back into my local community to sell / trade them at my regional values, which often time differ greatly. Gotta play those markets! 🙂

Hmmm… With that strong Euro maybe you would benefit from buying a bunch of cheap cards here, and selling them to individuals in your area? If right now they're stuck paying more than shop prices, perhaps this is a great chance for you to step up and act as a "middleman" and make a few sales here and there to cover your expenses? I'll bet if you started doing this, you could get a rep as the "go to guy" for great prices and make a killing! If the opportunity exists, you've just got to grap the reins brotha! I know you've got the skills and the mindset to do it… 🙂

Actually I have quite a few beta rares for trade or sale, only a year ago I moved a NM- Lord for a RV EX+ Savannah, a Flooded Strand and a Honor of the Pure (+throws), but before that the card had been sitting in my binder for years. Many of those beta rares I have now have been sitting in my binder as long or longer (I have stuff like Mind Twist, Bad Moon, Mana Flare, Chaos Orb, Royal Assassin, so comparable if not better).

There simply are very few takers for cards like that, I'm more likely to at some point put them in one of my own EDH decks instead. So I would say for that deal you need to consider holding the card for quite a while before you could move it.

Fun though that it entices so much discussion, so even just for that it's great that you included it.

I'm with Kelly. I saw Sword and immediately knew that was my pile once I realized they were within $10 of each other.
I'm not great with old beta prices, so I basically had to throw in the towel on the second one, and I would have taken the Coalition pile in the last trade.
These were fun, though, so keep it up!

Trade 2: The FoW guy is just a jerk! The other consideration is, when was the last time you EVEN SAW a Beta Lord of Atlantis? FoW are fairly common compared to Beta rares. Even I didnt know what to spot the Lord at; i was guessing 75-100

Trade 3: I don't think there's a clear winner. I like being on the side that gets the rarest card, which IMO is the Foil Relic. Probably just a square deal all around.

Glad you're on the team 🙂

Trade 2: The FoW guy is just a jerk! The other consideration is, when was the last time you EVEN SAW a Beta Lord of Atlantis? FoW are fairly common compared to Beta rares. Even I didnt know what to spot the Lord at; i was guessing 75-100

Trade 3: I don't think there's a clear winner. I like being on the side that gets the rarest card, which IMO is the Foil Relic. Probably just a square deal all around.

Glad you're on the team 🙂

As for the Snap-Buys, I do regularly see such lists and then will review, just wanted to say it felt like too much effort to put into reading an article from my point of view as a reader. Of course possibly that's just me :).

I guess being from a whole different area of the world taints my view. Any dollar prices look pretty good to me due to the strong euro, also not that many copies of obscure legends cards are getting offered here. Even American shop prices are frequently better than what people seem to be asking for cards when dealing directly.

I should have made that "not as interesting" rather than "not interesting".

My problem with this is that the right buyer for that Lord will be much harder to find.

I was assuming the same trading scale, but past experience has shown me that people saying a card is EX could have it range anywhere from Good to indeed Excellent by my own definition (I am a rather tough grader). EX and EX+ could also be a world of difference, or rather close, depending on which scale is used. If the person grading the cards would be like the average trader or dealer I run into, that EX+ Lord is not going to be interesting for collectors and people who like to pimp out their decks. Therefore it will be much harder to move than Forces that just about everyone would like to get.

By my own grading, yes, I agree with which stack to go for, but I don't consider the difference to be as much as the numbers seem to show as I would want to see some compensation for the Lord being difficult to move if I was the one receiving it. Mostly I wanted to point out that the grading matters a lot in this case and that "a litle more work" might even be "a lot more work" depending on what the card actually looks like.

Also, happy to contribute :).

As for that buy list, a huge part of what I'd consider is whether paying cash or trading for the cards in question. If I was considering cash, the only cards I'd even contemplate were the Maelstrom Pulse, the Regal Forces, the Adarkar Valkyrie, and one of the gems of the list, the Gilded Drake. Additionally, these are rather stable cards right now, and the Pulse and Regal Forces could gain significantly with the right deck doing well in the upcoming PTQ season.

These are the cards I noticed that were at or barely above their SCG buy list prices, and I could probably find a buy list for more. Though a huge part of this is how much of a market I have to turn my cards into cash without using vendor buy lists. Myself, I don't have much of that market currently, and only deal with buy lists.

As far as the Snap-Buys section, it was designed so that when you DO see a buy list, you'll be familiar with them and how to check prices to compare. For example, you stated that you liked the Phyrexian Dreadnaught (@ $15) and the Resets (@ $16). By reviewing our results we can see that the Dreadnaught is only an "OK" deal (as it sells for between 10-15 on eBay = you're paying full price), but the Resets don't seem like a bargain. Yes, they DO hit $16 each SOMETIMES on ebay, but they also sell for as low as $10 ea or $41 playsets. You save $25ish by waiting patiently and trying to snipe an auction in this case, OR by asking the seller to work with you a little… maybe put in an offer $12 each? It's funny you'd mention this btw, as I agree on your call for resets… I've been picking mine up @ $10 each, so I know for SURE that we can do better than $16…

Assuming that we're both using the same grading scale, we can be safe with our conditions. I'm not going to try and trick you into having one piles EX being different from the other piles EX. The thing that I really liked about this trade was my final comment "Pile 1 could do a little more work and sell all their cards for $190, buy the FoWs for $150 and pocket the leftover $40." If I were the forces pile, I'd do that trade all day long! Tundra > FoW. To the right buyer Beta LoA = a FoW (but we'll give it $10 more from the $30 extra on the Tundra). That leaves the trade at 3x Stifle, 1x Flooded Strand and $20 (from the Tundra) for the last 1x FoW… I would NEVER do that trade ($90 vs $50). Since all of my prices are ACTUAL eBay sell values, this example was a great illustration of what NOT to do if you're the Tundra pile.