dont play against me and u'll be fine 😉 I'm the only player mouthing off out there! 😛

Thanks for the insights, shazam. We just had our first baby back in March so I can certainly appreciate the time savings MTGO has to offer. Plus I am truly a casual player/collector at heart once you get through the thick skin that is my finance savvy. So any chance to play for fun and for free would be great.

My other concern with MTGO – I see so many horror stories about players being jerks and mouthing off. Do you find most of your opponents as kind and courteous, or do many players through a fit when you win?

Btw, I would always try to avoid bringing along any cards that are not for trade. It's bound to annoy players if they keep hearing that what they want is not available. Somehow, even when I bring along thousands of cards, people always seem to be asking about the few I've been considering to keep for a deck. Always. I should just take out these cards and improve the experience for them and I try to (though I sometimes forget).

I see the same happen with online haves lists, where it also annoys me considerably at times when I see something I would like only to hear they don't really want to trade it.

Offer > (cost to reacquire + time/effort wasted on reacquiring + personal attachment to card) = deal.

What I mean to say is, a profit alone is not enough to convince me to part with a playset. There is a time and effort factor in the equation as well as an attachment to a card. If my attachment is high there's no chance at all, for example nobody is going to be able to buy one of my decks at any price that is not ridiculous. Time and effort mostly applies to hard to find cards. My playset of Diaochan could be sold, however, not at a small profit as it will be an enormous pain in the ass to reacquire them as they're just not being offered online. Same for many other P3K cards.

Currently I have so many cards for trade people already find it too much effort to look through it all, so I'm probably fine in that regard ;).

There is actually a huge portion of the mtgo players who dont even know there is a marketplace to trade with bots. There are lots of casual decks around. I used to play an aura deck that cost me like 5 bucks, and I was kicking b utts big time 🙂 There is also the multiplayer interface, and a bunch of other stuff. Overall, I'm playing almost for free now, but like i said I first had to make a significant investment and make sure my buys were solid…

Amen! I am always eager to sell for profit, especially when there's a solid chance of re-entry.

I sold my Noble Hierarchs for $15.50 each out of fear of a reprint. Then I bought them in an eBay auction for $53.50/set, and then immediately turned around and sold them again for $60. Looking to buy yet again, though I may wait for the remainder of M13 spoiler season first. I smell a reprint…

Templeguard, thank you very much for your feedback! I'm genuinely pleased you enjoy my writing – I take the gig here at QS very seriously and I hope my writing reflects that. Thanks also for casting a vote on article format. It's ironic that I tried to write an article that covered a diverse set of topics so as to please a diverse audience, and even this concept itself strikes a dichotomy among the readers.

Guess it's a lesson learned that you can't please everybody. All I can say is, I will keep the diversity of QS subscribers in mind while I write. But as I'm not a member of the MTGO community, my writing in this department will be sparse. If anyone wants to donate cards to me to get me started, I'd consider it :-).

Also, well done. I've enjoyed your articles for some time now.

Thank you for commenting! I am often tempted with embarking upon the MTGO journey, but it seems so daunting to have to start from 0 all over again! I suppose through speculation, one could manage the hobby rather inexpensively? Are there many MTGO players with cheap collections looking to play casually for the fun of Magic? If so, I'd be much more tempted. I love playing with random cards (which is why EDH is so much fun for me).

Thanks for the comment and your perspective. I agree that once you have a significant collection you can start to afford setting cards aside as "not for trade" while not sacrificing profitable opportunities. My struggle in the past was that I set way too many cards aside and therefore struggled with trading. I would notice that others did not want to trade with me because so many cards were not for trade. I found that I needed to open my binder for trade more fully, and by doing so I opened the door to acquire more cards that were interesting to me.

If someone offers you a deal on a playset of yours, why not let them go and re-acquire them at a lower price? I sold my set of Snapcaster Mages a month ago at $17 each and now they retail for $16 on Star City Games. Even though I miss my set, I'm glad I sold them, and I intend to pick them up again at a price floor.

As for article format – thanks for the feedback. Your vote counts, and so far with your comment being the only one, I will not attempt a disjointed article again. 🙂

* returning trader

Not actually a dealer.

What I'm trying to say is that 'everything is for trade' is not always required, but you need a collection of considerable size to support your trading if you want to frequently set cards aside like I do.

I do not consider myself an active floor trader right now, I just don't go to tournaments often enough. I'm not a returning player though, as I never quit the game. You could say I'm a returning dealer though as for quite some time I was not tracking magic prices as actively as I am now.

After I moved away from being a floor trader I always remained a trader and mostly my focus was on keeping the costs of this hobby down. In fact it still is. I'm not even looking to break even or make a profit on the whole, but I am looking for anything that makes keeping my Magic collection current, less costly .

I don't think I'm a very big fan of this disjointed format. I guess I would have focussed on one area, perhaps promising to cover another area in a future article. On the whole I'm not entirely sure what to take out of this article.