You’re right, just read a passage where Uno calls his pikemen “flaming sheepherders!”.

I was just confused because when I hear speculating, I think of gathering cards, like what you mentioned just now in the trade example (a card that is peaking for stuff that hasn’t gone up.) As that’s the only part of magic finance I participate in I just didn’t think long enough about other avenues, and was really curious what they would be. Thanks for the clarification.

I\’m jelly

It took a lot of restraint!

Actually I was still working my way through the other books, I finished the 2nd to last late in November and it was a good present to ask for my birthday early in January. They also only released the paperback on January 1st, given choice I would prefer my books to look the same and otherwise it would have been my only hardcover for the series so it worked out fine that way too. Spent the time in between reading Snuff by Terry Pratchett.

MERFOLK

🙂

Honestly, any card with under 100 copies on TCG Player that is in a deck that anyone has been seen playing will work. It is scary.

I’m not worried about the validity of QS, and the insider emails. The secondary market is crazy right now, and I know you know that more than most.

My point was that, no matter what anyone tells you, even well reputed sources, you need to be able to evaluate cards/situations on your own. You touched on some very important points in this article, and I think it is invaluable information.

I don’t think I did the wrong thing with Gen wave. I took a shot in the dark, and because of the EDH appeal, I can sit on the card and be ok. It’s not like I put much money into it, because I was smart enough not to buy a lot… “smart” from taking advantage of all the information available to me from QS. You win some and lose some. Keep doing what you are doing!

Jesus, man! That book came out like a year ago! What have you been so busy doing? How could you even wait once it came out?

You bring up an excellent point. The e-mail isn\’t always fast enough to get to people when the cards are at the best buy-in price. I imagine it was bumped up to $3ish because if it was $4 everywhere by the time you got the e-mail, reading \”Buy these at $2\” wouldn\’t help you a ton. We anticipated these doing better than they did. The deck seemed good, it was hot, copies were disappearing and EDH loves this card. Buying in at $3.50 when it peaks at $5 isn\’t great.

Even Insider e-mails aren\’t quite as effective as they used to be because you don\’t have the time you used to have. I had two or three days to durdle and pick up Food Chains and Huntmasters of the Fells. We don\’t have that luxury anymore, and your time crunch lead you to say \”OK, I trust these guys\” and it looks like you are stuck with those until Modern Season starts up. Genesis Wave was giving all the signals that cards like Huntmaster used to, and twitter gave justification for the e-mail which gave twitter justification to point out the e-mail which lead to a run we didn\’t anticipate. You may feel like you did the wrong thing but I want you to know that no one knew at the time. Speculation is changing. We are still figuring out why Genesis Wave sold so hard, so fast and then had no demand- something we aren\’t used to seeing.

We all learned some lessons, and if you learned that it\’s better to invest more when you have time to really evaluate things, I advocate that approach personally. Insider e-mails have made a lot of Insiders a lot of money historically, but if that model isn\’t sustainable, be assured that we\’ll get it figured out. In the mean time, there\’s value out there. Thanks for taking the time to write.

I hardly trade except to get rid of cards I can\’t sell like foreign and foil stuff. 95% of what I do is buying at buylist and selling for retail or buying collections to flip. I fill orders from people when I go to events. I stock the case at an LGS.

There is no such thing as an equal trade. You can have it line up in dollar value on the site they designate, but if you can\’t figure out a way to make money doing that, I wouldn\’t trade. It\’s not about overtly ripping people off or telling me \”I automatically deduct 20% from your side because this is how I make money\” like some dingleberry tried to tell me one year in Orlando. You can trade peaking stuff for stuff that hasn\’t gone up. You can trade a card that is $10 on TCG Player for a card that is $18 on TCG Player because they are both $20 on Star City. I am not sure where you got the impression that I advocate a trade always be \”equal\”, a term that is very misleading.

“Target cards:

Genesis Wave at anything under $3.50-4. Already disappearing on SCG and TCG. Deck really wants this. Reminds me of Disrupting Shoal shooting up and that deck wasn’t as good as this.

”

I’m not trying to correct you, just putting it out there to demonstrate something, as my approach ties in to what you mentioned in your article. When I got the email, the internet was already out on cheap copies of Genesis Wave, and the cheapest I could get playsets for came to a hair over 4 dollars a piece with shipping. I was on my phone, at work at the time of the email, and my TCG cart was being bought out from under me as I was trying to make my purchase, so I had to act fast. I blindly followed the email, but only because I didn’t have time to look into the card before I had to act. Trusting the staff and members here, I followed the herd. I probably will be stuck with these cards for quite some time now before I can offload them at a profit(or I can take a slight loss and sell them now).

I don’t feel bad, and I don’t blame anybody. I actually want to point out that I only bought two playsets. I wasn’t comfortable buying more than that, when I didn’t know much about the card, and why it was spiking besides just the speculation that it could be good in a specific modern deck that has yet to put up any real results. I saw this as a low risk, considering I didn’t put much money into it. I knew I wasn’t going to make much, but I was also fine with losing that money, because I knew I was just blindly buying. I normally buy into a card much more than that, but this time I didn’t because of the valuable advice you and the other members of QS have provided me since I have become a member. I knew I was taking on a risk, and that’s fine. I can find solace that I was smart enough not to buy in hard, with money I wasn’t comfortable losing, because I knew the buy in price was high, and I didn’t want to be the “greater fool.”

Before I digress any more, I just wanted to emphasize the value in this knowledge that you shared, and share that I have personally learned to keep these ideals in the back of my mind. There are tons of opportunities out there to make money in mtg finance, and I have learned there is nothing wrong in staying out when you have missed the bus, because there will be another one right after that one.

Good thing no one said that

Or a BUG deck from 2012