These are great examples of cards with wide buy/sell spreads. It's very difficult to pin a certain "value" to them because they are very hard to come by and fairly unique. If you found John Doe who collects misprints, he'd probably give you significantly more than FNM Steve who is only interested in Standard staples. So to profit, you could obtain misprints from Steve and then find the corresponding John Doe. Problem is (as you've noticed), this is very difficult and time consuming to do.

I, for one, had a couple lame miscut cards in my trade binder for months before I finally traded them away (as throw-ins!). I lost patience waiting for the perfect person to trade them to, especially because they were not good cards.

Perhaps try MOTL or Twitter for starters?

That would be an interesting idea. Like a dating service, but for rare and obscure Magic Cards (haha). For example, I need a Chinese Starlit Angel, but I don't want to pay retail for it. Someone else may need a Beta Bayou, but where they are from, Beta Bayous are too expensive. We can overcome some arbitrage by enabling trades through this service.

Probably too good to be true, not to mention shipping costs would be prohibitive. But I love the concept. It's funny how we live in such a networked, technological age yet these discrepancies in card availability still exists. Especially with these obscure cards, where quantities are sparse to begin with.

I am probably that 1 in 1000 person for the right kind of stock. I don't like many of the usual pimp cards (don't like foreign, don't like foil, don't like Alpha), but I am willing to shell out for those I do like. I would for example be interested in Beta Duals (particularly a Bayou) and other high end cards. I have been thinking it might be beneficial to us here on QS if we could actually in some way line up what who is interested in (either personally or because it's easily moved among their connections) and find some way to basically move stock that's not interesting for you to me and visa versa. Shipping cost would probably negate the advantage unless it's done on a large enough scale. I have been including my high wants in my forum signature for this purpose, but I haven't seen any responses so far.

It certainly sounds like where you are, the market is much smaller. In the U.S., cards are much more readily available. Between eBay, Star City Games, MOTL, etc., the definition of "obscure" is perhaps a bit more extreme.

I think you nailed the gist of the article it in your last paragraph. No matter your location, there are some cards that are very limited in numbers. And while it's tempting to collect them all, having a binder full of cards that only 1 person in 1000 wants is not necessarily a good thing. You find that one person, sure you make a nice profit. But until then you're inventory is sitting there instead of being traded for new inventory. So it's a balance like everything.

Many of those I would not get into, non-english cards for example are very hard to move here, far less popular than in America and I could only see going into alters if they've been done by a known alter specialist. I have had my misprint Diplomatic Immunity ever since I traded for it not too long after Masques was released, nobody has ever shown the slightest interest in trading for it or buying it (though as I pretty much traded for it at regular foil common price I don't mind). I suppose the market for rarities might be smaller or different in this part of the world.

On the other hand I do try to make sure I keep interesting cards in stock to trade to my local group where for many of them I am the only reliable source for more expensive, rare and/or popular cards (in this context that's anything $10+, any older cards and EDH staples). I get these through online trade or from shops that seem to have undervalued their stock. I guess I might be implementing what you're suggesting, but with less special cards.

The same phenomenon occurs in the stock market too. If you try to buy or sell stocks with very low volume, the buy/sell price spread is usually measurable, as opposed to the typical 1 cent spread on a popular stock.

I have no idea how I would be able to keep a few rarities in stock, unless I was to specifically buy them online and that doesn't seem to be a good idea.