By virtue of being internet based EDH REC cannot possibly give an accurate representation of EDH as a whole. Players who post online are far beyond your average casual player.

Many people are fooling themselves into believing tools can give you an accurate idea of casual. The only way to really know is to interact with the players.

Tim,

That’s great news! It looks like you’re already on top of this foil approach. I’m a little new to the game…what foils are high on your radar now?

Sig

If you trade too I found people will trade a lot of sell fast value for foil sets for eternal decks or singles that are hot in commander.

Thanks for the comment and question! You are absolutely right to call out demand challenges with foils – they will probably sell less quickly than nonfoils unless you price your copies well below market pricing. This can become a barrier to making larger profits on foils vs. nonfoils.

But with foils not getting reprinted as often and having so much upside potential, I think it may be worth the slow grind. If you can’t sell your foils quickly, you will likely be able to just sit patiently for the eventual sale. In the meantime, the market price will gradually rise, so at some point your foil listing will be a good enough deal to get that sale. Since I’m relatively new to foils, I can’t offer any experiential data yet but I’ll let you know once I start trying to unload these foil Temple Bells and Hardened Scales. Wish me luck!

I don’t know about EDH REC beyond what the site shows at face value. It seems like it’s pretty representative of the EDH metagame but I’m not sure. I wonder if other members of the QS community have some ideas here?

Sig

I understand your feeling. Buying cards before hype, but not selling them.

I also tried the foil strategy. I still have these foils because…

What I learned:

Foils can go up pretty fast, because of the limited supply, but there is also a limited demand, certainly if the price tag is high.

For me, foils were not a good strategy. I let that one go.

What I learned is that it is important to study demand rather than supply or price. So refering to EDHrec is good.

However, how representative is this site to the real community?

David,

This is definitely valuable information to share, and I appreciate the build. I admit I haven’t been actively playing EDH lately, so my exposure to Atraxa is limited.

What I will say is this: when I search Hardened Scales on EDH REC, the deck that it shows up most in is Atraxa (753). Next is Ghave and then Animar. The number of Commanders where Hardened Scales can be relevant is very deep, which makes this a really compelling play from multiple angles. So even if Atraxa isn’t as big a player as I was thinking with the EDH REC data, there’s such diverse demand that the card is a strong pickup regardless.

Thanks!

Sig