Greetings, Emancipators!

I'm writing this from Ryan Bushard's couch. That in and of itself isn't remarkable, but even though the visits are typically social, business will be discussed. That's just sort of how it goes.

I take a look at the stack of empty 5k boxes that I recognize from my own "tower of success" situation in my basement. Ryan has a lot of bulk in other 5k boxes that he's got to find a way to deal with, and that's the struggle, isn't it? I've talked a lot about creative ways to deal with bulk in past installments of this series, from instant collections to amassing so much that a company like Troll and Toad would consider coming all the way to you just to take it off of your hands. As long as there is a way to make money from Magic cards, we'll keep finding it.

Ryan and I got to talking about how deep he picks and how that philosophy has changed over the years. We don't need to write another article about how to deal with bulk, but there are cards that are very close to bulk, and knowing how to maximize value from cards like that is worth exploring, I think.

How Little Is Too Little?

Last May, Sigmund wrote an article about wasting your time and why not to do that. I thought it was a good article, especially coming from the point of view of someone who has a real job and therefore limited time to monkey with a childrens' card game. If you're trying to maximize your time-to-profit ratio, I agree that a lot of the time, grinding nickels into powder isn't the most effective approach.

If you're trying to maximize your time, I can't even recommend picking nickels out. A lot of people who are interested in MTG Finance are interested in maximizing their profit-to-time ratio only. We're all trying to make effective use of our time, but when people skew so far toward that one goal on the spectrum, there is some pretty valuable baby thrown out with the bathwater. Someone who is buying bathwater in this metaphor is going to be happy getting bonus baby thrown in with the deal, and those who value something else are making out.

If we're not maximizing our time-to-profit ratio, what are we instead maximizing? I'd argue that some of us see each collection as finite and feel it's worth investing some extra time in maximizing the collection. That is to say, wringing the most possible profit out of the collection even if it takes longer. Our dollar-per-hour rate is going to suffer, but once those cards are gone, you may wish you'd spent a little more time grinding profit out.

If you're taking in collections regularly like a lot of us are, you likely don't treat every collection like it's your last, but then the answer doesn't have to be one of these two extremes--either "Everything under a dollar is BULK," or "I pick anything worth more than half a penny". The answer is somewhere in between, and it never hurts to figure out to what extent you'd like to optimize the ratio between your money per card and money per minute. I wrote on the topic in response to Sigmund's piece.

Ryan and I were talking about how his "cutoff" has changed slightly. What you pick and what you sell can vary and it all depends on your outs. Let's explore this topic a bit more because it's relevant to an announcement I want to make at the end of the article.

Know Your Outs

We harp a lot on "knowing your outs" or "playing to your outs," and we do so because that end goal fixed in your mind is going to inform every one of your decisions.

If you're outing to buylists, you can't afford to pay buylist prices unless you're speculating that every card you buy is going to go up. If you are outing to eBay or TCG Player, you don't want to be picking out their nickel buylist cards even if you're only paying a nickel because those cards are rarely worth listing. They're a nickel because supply is high and demand is low. If you're looking to trade cards out, you don't want to buy competitive stuff if you trade with casuals or casual stuff if you trade with competitive players. This is all pretty basic.

But once the cards are bought, knowing your out can inform the next step in the process: picking. How "deep" should you pick? Ryan and I discussed this, and like me, his answer to this question has shifted over the years.

The difference? You guessed it. His outs. When he was paying someone per hour to list cards for him, all of a sudden it didn't make sense to pick cards that were not super likely to sell. Even if a card buylists for $0.02 it may be worth it to buylist it rather than list it for $0.35 on TCG Player. It's unlikely to sell and you paid someone to pick a card then list a card and you're paying him with money that you made selling better cards.

An even more effective use of your time? Don't pick a two cent card. I talk to a lot of financiers who don't even like to pick nickels. If your out is retailesque like TCG Player, I agree that it doesn't make a ton of sense.

Ryan's opinion started to change when he started primarily buylisting as an out. I still recommend having a TCG Player (or some other retailesque outlet) so you can still buy singles. This forces you to approach different cards a different way. You pay buylist prices on $5+ cards and list them on TCG Player confident in the fact that your profit is already built into the spread. For cheaper stuff, you don't really trifle with it, preferring to buy cards in the easiest way you can--in collections.

The way you pick a collection can be different because your out is likely to be buylisting the cards that are too cheap to bother listing on TCG Player. If you get a collection, I recommend doing what Ryan does--pick down to $0.03.

WHAT?

Stay with me. If you're trying to maximize your return from the collection, I'd pick down to $0.03 and there is one reason that it's cost effective to do this--your shipping costs are flat. The USPS has a flat rate box that fits four 1K card boxes, so if you have any room  to jam more cards, jam more cards.

If you sort properly, you sometimes have a stack of 40 copies of a nickel card. With shipping $12, it only takes 240 nickels to pay for shipping. If you have room for 240 more cards in the order, all of a sudden it wasn't so silly to pick those nickels, was it? If you're adding 20 copies of a card at a time, it adds very little time to the order processing.

However, I think while you need to pick those cards, you don't need to plan on including them as part of the order right away. Rather I add them last to shim up the boxes until I can't fit any more value in them. We're paying a flat rate, so let's make the box as heavy as possible. However, picking three-cent cards, or nickels, or anything under a dime isn't for everyone, and that's what I want to talk to you about.

Has This Ever Happened to You?

You spend a few days putting together a big buylist order and when you come in the next day and refresh, some of your dimes are suddenly worth nothing? It's worth it to pick a nickel, but is it still worth it to ship it if they want to pay two cents on it later in the week? Usually it's better to take that stuff out of the list.

When I add everything to the list, I have it set sorted and alphabetized and the sets are in alphabetical order as well. This way, I can scroll through one box in order and take out everything going to a specific dealer quickly and easily. When it's time to build the box for the next dealer, everything left over is still in order, ready for me to quickly cull through and put together that order. The stuff left in the box at the end is stuff no one is buying anymore, and you can easily set it aside, knowing that it's worth adding to a future order.

The best part? It's in alphabetical order and easy to add to set sorted and alphabetized cards for a future order should the price go back up. It's so quick and easy to add cards that it's worth jamming them in the future.

We are exploring an option to completely remove the need to go through and remove those cheap cards manually. This was recently implemented and I am still toying with it, but if all goes well, there will be a very simple step for all of us that will automate the culling process that will pop up when you click the "sell for cash" button on Trader Tools.

You decide your minimum price to bother with. This won't help you pick, but it will help you decide what to sell now and what to sell later. If you're not looking to ship anything for under a dime, and suddenly prices go down drastically on a lot of dime cards, it may be beneficial to you to keep them. If you set your threshold to 0.10 it won't send anything in your list below that price to trade routes. It won't be sent to the buylist carts and when you package the orders, those cards will be left behind and you can easily stash them back in your collection to sell them for a dime later.

How deep do you want to pick? I would recommend picking deep because while cards can go up in value from $0.03 it is rare for them to go down more than that. You're not going to want to repick your bulk when a $0.03 card goes over a dime, especially if it's for a limited time. Instead, having those cards as part of the inventory you have organized will help you quickly locate the whole stack and jam them in an order. It's all up to you how you choose to maximize.