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Once in a while I’ll receive a question in the Quiet Speculation Insider Discord chat about my selling patterns. This usually occurs after I report a sale I made via Twitter or Facebook—someone will be curious to know how frequently I sell on those venues versus a more traditional website like eBay or TCGplayer (though recall I don’t sell on TCGplayer at all).
While I did have some peak periods last year during the Reserved List and Alpha boom, I tend to do the majority of my selling to buylists. It’s not optimal from the standpoint of grinding out every cent I can from my cards, but it’s often worth this inefficiency to save on time. It’s efficient for me to ship a bunch of cards all at once, and I often get impatient waiting for my cards to sell with eBay listings. With a buylist the sale is guaranteed and immediate. This frees up my resources to make the next acquisition.
This week I want to do something a little different. I am going to review my 2018 buylist orders to Card Kingdom and share some key statistics and highlights. I made 47 buylist orders to Card Kingdom last year—nearly one per week—and there’s a mine of data within to be explored. What were my best sales? What did I sell way too prematurely? This could get interesting…
High Level Stats
As I mentioned before, I submitted 47 unique buylist orders to Card Kingdom last year, averaging nearly one per week. This should showcase how often I rely on the buylist to move my cards and keep my portfolio fluid. Depending on my cash balance at the time, I sometimes choose to receive payment as a check and sometimes credit. Credit is normally the better value, but when my funds are low I may consider taking a check to give me more liquidity with which to do my buying.
Between the 47 buylist orders, 29 of them were for store credit and 18 were for cash. The total value of all 47 buylists was $3498.55, meaning the average order was $74.44. In retrospect, this seems like a reasonable value for an average buylist order, being sufficient to justify my shipping costs. If each package averages about $3 for shipping materials and postage, then my total buylisting shipping costs was $141, or about 4% of my total buylisting value for the year. That’s a decent rate I’m willing to accept.
You would think that my average store credit buylist order would be more valuable than my average cash buylist order by about 30%, due to Card Kingdom’s 30% trade credit bonus. And if my buylist orders were categorized randomly between the two options, you’d be correct. But they’re not. I tended to ask for credit more often if the value of my buylist order was relatively low. This way I felt like I could stretch the value of the trade-in a little bit further. Conversely if the buylist order was substantial, then I was more motivated in taking the cash.
Therefore, the average buylist value of my store credit orders and cash orders was $60.10 and $95.56, respectively. With this much data, it has become quite interesting to run these analyses. But let’s take a deeper dive now to see how I did on some of the orders themselves.
A Deeper Dive into the Numbers
The most expensive buylist order I shipped to Card Kingdom in 2018 was for $255.25, a cash order, made on June 30th. Let’s see what was in that order and how much I received for each card. Below I will list the cash I received for each card and then what the card would net me today from Card Kingdom in parentheses.
- 4th Edition Strip Mine, 1 VG and 1G: $7.35 ($8.75) for VG and $5.25 ($6.25) for G
- Antiquities Winter Mishra's Factory, 1 VG: $224 ($128)
- Arabian Nights Nafs Asp, 1 VG: $0.37 (N/A)
- Legends Knowledge Vault, 1 EX: $18.28 ($10)
Other than the Strip Mines, it looks like my timing on this buylist submission was very good. If I had kept all of these cards instead of selling them to Card Kingdom, their total buylist value would be $120.25 less! I love my Old School cards, but when prices became too wacky and got ahead of themselves last summer, I knew I had to be opportunistic. This transaction perfectly captures why, and I suspect many of my buylist orders last summer will look similar.
Next, let’s run a similar analysis on my very first buylist order of 2018, made on January 2nd (I didn’t waste much time, did I?). This was also a buylist order for cash, totaling $101.39.
- Antiquities Urza's Avenger, 1 NM: $3.25 ($8)
- Arabian Nights Ifh-Bíff Efreet, 1 NM: $95 ($65)
- Modern Masters 2015 Myr Enforcer, 7 NM: $0.05 each (N/A)
- Unglued Bronze Calendar, 4 NM: $0.16 each (N/A)
- Unglued Chicken a la King, 1 NM: $0.75 each ($0.36)
- Unhinged Who // What // When // Where // Why, 1 NM: $1.40 ($2.25)
When Unstable was announced and silver-bordered cards were made Commander-legal for a brief moment, there was some speculative buying on Unhinged and Unglued cards. In this buylist order, it looks like I was clearing out some of the small stuff I had remaining. I also have a small bulk box from a Modern Masters 2015 booster box I opened when the set was new—every once in a while Card Kingdom throws a random common from that set on their buylist and I dig for those nickels.
But clearly the headliner from this order is the Ifh-Biff Efreet.
This card moved wildly throughout 2018 and speculators moved in and out again. It looks like my timing on this sale was reasonable, although I don’t think the buylist peaked at $95. It's also worth noting that MTG Seattle pays more than $95 today, though I don't have much experience selling to them.
Let’s look at another order, chosen randomly but which is quite representative of my buylist habits of 2018. This order was placed February 25th and netted me $78.33 in store credit. Since this one is a bit longer, please forgive the formatting as I paste images directly from Card Kingdom’s website:
This buylist order contains cards that fit three categories. Category one is my Old School pile, consisting of nearly unplayable Antiquities and Legends cards that spiked for speculative reasons. Obelisk of Undoing, Voodoo Doll, and Rebirth all buylist to Card Kingdom for less today than they did back in February, so these were great moves. Again, other stores may pay more for these cards but I have limited experiences selling to them.
Category two consists of my bulk. I have a modest amount, but once in a while I dig through and find a bunch of nickels to ship to Card Kingdom. I figure the incremental cost of doing this is minimal in terms of shipping expenses; it only costs time. But given how much I enjoy sifting for nickels (it’s relaxing to me), I don’t mind the time sink one bit. It looks like I shipped 36 bulk cards in this order—that’s another couple bucks in credit from cards that are rotting in my bulk box!
Category three consists of one card—another one of those Un-set speculations of mine. This time it was a foil Letter Bomb, which buylisted for $9.60 back in February but would fetch $16.50 today. Clearly that’s one I should have kept.
How about one more order? The last buylist order I placed in 2018 was relatively uninteresting, but the second-to-last order is worth discussing. This was a $75 buylist order for cash:
This was an all gold-bordered buylist order. Selling these cards to Card Kingdom today would net $2.50 per Glimmervoid, $4.00 per Grim Monolith, and $5.00 per Mystical Tutor. Since this buylist order was placed so recently, in late December, it’s possible that my submission impacted their current buy numbers. So making the comparison is unfair.
But the key to this buylist order is that I bought all of these cards from Star City Games, using cash, and sold them directly to Card Kingdom for a small profit. My return was probably only about 10% after accounting for shipping, but I’ll take a 10% return with one week turnaround and near-zero risk any day of the week!
Wrapping It Up
Where do I most often sell my cards? It has to be to buylists! In total, I placed 47 buylist orders to Card Kingdom alone. The convenience and ability to cash out of cards so quickly is just too tempting to pass up. What’s more, by timing my buylists correctly I can often make more money selling right away rather than sitting on cards long-term. Things don’t always work that way of course, but I’m pretty satisfied with the decisions I made in 2018 when taken in aggregate.
Oh by the way, last year I made another 31 buylist orders to ABUGames, 10 for checks and the other 21 for credit. I wish I could analyze those buylist orders as I think they’d look quite different and be very interesting. I had a stack of Alpha commons and uncommons I shipped off to ABUGames when their buylist went crazy last year. But for now, I can’t view the details of that history on ABUGames’s website. Perhaps that feature will come in 2019!
As for other vendors, I have no recent experiences to share. I haven’t sold to Star City Games’s buylist since February 16th, 2017—nearly two years ago! For kicks, here it is!
I wish I could have that Unlimited Righteousness back, but my biggest regret is selling those two Legends Palladia-Mors.
Oh well, at least I cashed out of those Tezzeret the Seekers, which haven’t done much in price since I submitted this buylist. It looks like this order was for store credit and probably reflects my store credit flipping days. I suspect I got those Anthologies Armageddons, Battle Royale Subversions, and Beatdown Kird Apes from a different vendor and I was flipping them for more store credit. Yet another utility of the buylist!
As you can see, I love shipping to buylists and I leverage them very often for numerous purposes. But at the end of the day, it all comes down to trying to out cards quickly for a reasonable numbers so that I can rinse and repeat. Here’s to another 47 buylist orders to Card Kingdom in 2019!
…
Sigbits
- Look what’s back on Card Kingdom’s hotlist: The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. I watched that card’s buy price drop all the way down to $1200 or so on Card Kingdom’s website and now it’s back up to $1680. I’m telling you, Old School stuff is going to stabilize in 2019 and the most desirable cards—especially Legacy-playable ones—will see a rebound.
- Gaea's Cradle spiked like crazy in 2018 and then dropped back down to earth as vendors ended up with more stock than they wanted. Card Kingdom was also in that boat, though I see the card is back on their hotlist with a $235 buy price. I’m going to watch this one closely because I expect this one to rebound steadily in 2019 as well.
- While I don’t see the Revised Dual Lands on Card Kingdom’s hotlist, I see they still have a few Collectors’ Edition duals listed. And recently they added another one: CE Tropical Island, at $165. These really went crazy in 2018 and it looks like demand for them is still strong. I’d watch these closely throughout 2019 as well!
There is some precedent for unbanning Stoneforge Mystic on the grounds that its power level is now appropriate for Modern. This justification was used for 
Stoneforge's power level seems lower than that of many legal Modern cards, but what of its future? At this point, its status on the list is about as laughable as Golgari Grave-Troll's was in the year before its own unbanning. Unlike the Troll, though, Mystic doesn't have any broken keywords attached, and is unlikely to become much better with later printings; not only has Wizards drastically scaled back the power level of Equipment cards, but those artifacts now compete with Vehicles when it comes to set design.
The least subjective "positive" effect a Stoneforge unban would have on Modern is one of diversity. Stoneforge Mystic doesn't easily slot into any existing top-tier decks; taking things a step further, none of those decks (or even lower-tier decks) even run Equipment, a card type mostly supplanted in function by planeswalkers. Besides, the type of deck that wants Mystic at all, a goodstuff-style 
artifact hate in Modern.
But the card I'd most like to have in Modern is Preordain. Faithless Looting and Ancient Stirrings are both top-performing enablers in Modern that escape the banlist, and I think Preordain would mostly contribute to decks that don't perform as well. Of course, the glaring exception to this argument currently is Izzet Phoenix, which would snatch up Preordain in a heartbeat and further extend its lead over other aggro-control strategies. So I can't in good conscience advocate for a Preordain unban.
Disclaimer: I like a boogeyman. As a brewer, having a top deck in the format lets me explore design space that effectively attacks specific mechanics. Consider 
Despite that increase in heavy-duty hate, Ironworks continues to succeed, and with staggering consistency. 
These cantrips contribute to more than just whichever top-tier deck is playing them, also supporting less-represented strategies. So having them in Modern represents, at least theoretically, an increase in diversity. Looting's performance, while impressive, has paled in comparison to Stirrings's, so we can take the former off the table. And Stirrings just isn't bringing its many other decks (i.e. Gx Tron; Hardened Scales; etc.) to the same level as Ironworks. This predicament suggests that something is wrong with the rest of the cards in Ironworks, and not with Stirrings, which also finds itself in plenty of less successful strategies.
And that brings us to Trawler. If Ironworks is a busted deck, why not just ban Ironworks itself? Again, we can look for precedent—Wizards does not like to forcibly remove decks from Modern. They always seek to water them down so that they can continue to compete without dominating. Successful examples of this kind of ban can be found in Dredge, Amulet, and Infect; a notoriously unsuccessful example is Splinter Twin. But no matter the result, Wizards' aims have been made abundantly clear by their banlist announcements, with the company sometimes 
I will be focusing on Repudiate // Replicate for this section, but I have the same arguments for Modern prospects Incubation // Incongruity and Revival // Revenge. These are spells with decent effects and very attractive flexibility defeated by 
The same can't be said in Modern, where mana cost and effect impact are king. Decks are more powerful and streamlined than in Standard, so there's less need for flexibility. Some modal/split spells see niche play, like Orzhov Charm for Death's Shadow or Dusk /// Dawn in Death and Taxes. However, I can only think of two that see regular play: Cryptic Command and Collective Brutality. The former sees play in control for its power, while the latter is more widespread and applicable to this discussion.
The only thing Repudiate has over Trickbind is that it could be played in mono-green decks. However, why would any deck want to? The effect is niche at best. 
If this is where Wizards' heads are, then Lavinia, Azorius Renegade starts to make sense for Standard. That aside, Electrodominance has had an electric effect on spoiler season. Everywhere I've 
The obvious answer is to play Ancestral Visions or Living Ends from hand rather than leaving them stranded. This is fair, but Modern already had that in the Aether Revolt expertise cycle. In particular Kari Zev's Expertise was 
Since Electrodominance doesn't fix this fundamental strategic problem, it won't rescue 
The next card is a creature with multiple problems. Gruul Spellbreaker looks so close to making it in Modern. Being a three mana 3/3 with haste or a 4/4 without is close to playable in the right deck or with the right abilities, as demonstrated by Mantis Rider and Loxodon Smiter. But therein lies the problem. Spellbreaker's other abilities aren't relevant enough in Modern, and even if they were, the right deck for it is the wrong deck for Modern.
As it doesn't have built in card advantage or value like Dark Confidant or Scavenging Ooze, the ogre is just a beater, which is the same job Tarmogoyf holds. Given that Goyf is cheaper and frequently bigger than Spellbreaker, it wins the fight easily.
The problem with Zoo is that it's the definition of a straightforward aggro deck. It just plays the best cheap attackers, turns them sideways, and hopes that plus some burn is enough. Even in 2014, pure Burn did that too, but far more efficiently; Affinity did that more explosively, with flying, and featuring an infect backup plan. Today we have decks that randomly dump free 4/4's into play turn 1 and follow that up with 1 mana 5/5's. Zoo's strategy is from a time when Wizards didn't push the bar on creatures, and is now too archaic to survive. If Zoo in any form wants to come back, it will take a major overhaul, and a three-mana, 3/3-4/4 beater isn't going to cut it.
help or hinder its playability. Trample is mostly irrelevant on a lower-mid sized creature since it's only getting blocked if it can be killed anyway and that's not too hard today. Trample isn't why Reality Smasher is played.
Finally, there's the newest broken-card-with-legs, Prime Speaker Vannifar. Time Spiral's Magus cycle of Vintage-cards-on-legs are Vannifar's direct ancestors. While Magus of the Moon and Magus of the Tabernacle have seen play, the Magi with activation costs (like Vannifar) have had no real impact in the format.
Being fetchable is no small thing, and neither is the manaless activation. However, the problem of being a creature still hangs on Vannifar; while I'm sure she'll see play in Modern, her true home 
Chording for Vannifar with the intention of going off after untapping would be a sound plan if it could be defended. However, that Chord requires seven mana, and while it's possible with two Birds of Paradise and a Wall of Roots on turn three, it doesn't leave any mana open to protect the Chord or the Vannifar. 
- The deck that wants this card does not exist because there aren't enough cheap multicolored spells to emulate Young Pyromancer. I'd like this not to be the case because the greater flexibility is very appealing.
I got to work building the Delver deck of the future. For starters, I figured a full set of Snapcaster Mages could be added to the core over the 
Scour, too, is an instant-speed cantrip, and has the potential to be the best of the bunch. Grixis Shadow's dip into Faithless Looting and Mishra's Bauble has claimed some copies of Serum Visions, but Scour always remains a 4-of in that deck due to its ability to power out delve threats. I wanted my Delver deck to also have the ability to abuse Thought Scour, ideally enough to make it better than Serum Visions—in doing so, I'd upgrade the power level of my cantrips generally.
While I wanted a set of Scours, I also didn't want to build the deck in such a way that it would fold to heavy-duty graveyard hate, especially Rest in Peace. That's a problem with Temur (reliant on Tarmogoyf and Hooting Mandrills) that I think makes the deck utterly unplayable in this graveyard-wise metagame. The question when choosing threats was one of how to extract value from a full set of Scours without opening myself to blowouts from hate cards.
I ended up settling on Grim Lavamancer. The four Scours ensure a constant stream of cards entering the graveyard, allowing Lavamancer to totally dominate the small creature matchups Delver has long splashed sideboard sweepers to beat. Its floor is much higher than Goyf's, for instance, as a one-mana 1/1 considerably trumps an off-color, two-mana 0/1. Finally, Lavamancer makes up for his lack of offensive power by letting us run 4 Wizard's Lightning comfortably. The instant adds oomph to our Bolt-Snap-Bolt plan and gives us additional ways to power through board-invalidating tech like Ensnaring Bridge and Terminus.
Naturally, Pierce shines against spell-based decks with combo elements. Hitting these decks where it hurts means 
for whatever else might present itself. While it's not permission, I also threw in a pair of Abrades for good measure; I like to have at least six removal spells in my Delver mainboards, and was interested in discovering what mainboard artifact hate can do for the archetype.
I rebuilt the deck from scratch in another five minutes, landing on a list almost identical to the UR Lavamancer one. In place of Wizard's Lightning, I added a smattering of random instants and sorceries that underperformed during initial tests. Then, I realized another of Pteramander's components: it's blue! That means the creature helps enable Disrupting Shoal, which I have again been pining after in this metagame of blazing-fast kills created by cheap spells. Shoal also does a fine job of protecting Pteramander from the likes of Fatal Push: at the stage of the game where Pteramander "flips," it's often trivial to hold up hard-Shoal mana, and Cancel is as strong as ever with a beater on the table.
A number of little changes were made from the Lavamancer version:
whatever permanent opponents stick, and I've liked it so far. It also sometimes exceeds its on-paper worth by dealing with a horde of tokens.
The creature's worse against combo-oriented decks like Phoenix, Ironworks, and even Tron and Burn. In these matchups, it takes too long to grow and is usually sided out for hate. Fortunately, Delver (not to mention this build) is already well-equipped to defeat these sorts of decks, so a potential game 1 loss isn't the end of the world. Salamander is also soft to Rest in Peace, and gets swapped for Drake against opponents likely to bring in multiple copies of the enchantment. Since Rest decks tend to be slower, casting multiple Drakes on just 18 lands is feasible in those matchups.
Leaping Forward
