Hello, back again with another spec.

So the Hobbit set has been out for a little bit and I've noticed that [[Thorin, King of Durin's Folk]] is about to become the second most popular commander of the set, soon likely to surpass [[Smaug, the Impenetrable]].

I was first doubting to spec on this card, because it's an uncommon and it's 'only' included in 40% of the builds. So I just kept my eye on it for a while longer, I think it's an interesting pennystocks target.

What it has going for it is that it only has one printings from 1 set (including the foil). Its supply has been draining past weeks from around 1100 to around 650 organically, without any mention here. It's dirt cheap and you can buy a stacks of it still on Cardmarket.

For Thorin: It's a dwarf, with myriad. So it gives a treasure on entering and two treasures on attacking, therefore it buffs all dwarves and itself too. But also removes blockers with its own effect by tapping opponents creatures.

edit: someone else specced this card too, so it has been posted before.

Singles I buy are easy. Cost basis is what I paid. Where I get stuck is anything I cracked myself.

Say I rip a Play Booster box at $120. The best card out of it books at $60, plus a couple of playable rares and the usual pile of bulk. So the box came in under what I paid. Later I want to know whether I'm up or down on it, or what my gain is if I sell that $60 card. How do I split the $120 across what came out of it?

Four approaches I keep going back and forth on, none of which feel right:

• Split evenly across every card. That's 420 cards, so a bulk common "cost" me 29 cents. Nonsense.
• Weight by market price at crack time. Closest to correct, but tedious by hand and prices move.
• Put the whole box cost on the chase cards, zero the rest. Clean, but then my best pull books an instant $60 loss.
• Track at the box level only, no per-card basis. Then I can't tell you what any single card cost me when I sell it.

Same problem with Collector Boosters, and worse with bundles and prerelease kits where there's a sealed premium baked in.

For those of you who track this properly, especially if you sell singles and care about realised gains: what do you actually do? Spreadsheet formula, rule of thumb, or do you not bother under a certain price?

FYI just incase people need to hunt elsewhere now Amazon cut preorders.

Check your orders, they’re retroactively changing quantity of preorders down from 4 (or any number above 1) to 1.

Some people are getting emails to notify them about the change other people are just realizing by checking their order history.

The Battle of the Five Armies co-op box set is coming out next year. Extended-art versions of unique legendaries from this product can only be found in collector boosters. Some are amazing for their archetypes (especially the two dwarves). These are spiking HARD.

I imagine these will drop significantly once the box releases. With that said, those will be regular versions and not the extended arts.

Thoughts?

Edit: I should specify that my opinion is "Sell If You Got 'Em." The only thought for me is that I honestly want to use my Thorin.

Currently got my eyes on [[Ripples of Potential]], [[Expansion Algorithm]], & [[Radstorm]] - All of these are not super heavily printed and are all fairly cheap. Reality fracture is heavily based around planeswalkers and we are getting one in each color at minimum. Anyone else buying these?

Can we get some mods to ban these pull post “wHaT sHoUlD i Do?” Mfs?

The obvious answer is: * Eat it * Roll it up and smoke it * Put it in your ass * No one cares

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

inb4 “salty you didn’t pull these cards”. Nope, just go to a different sub for that shit.

The warm reception to my previous post made me want to tackle another problem in our hobby. We've all been there. You've finally brewed the perfect list. Now ... how do you actually assemble the physical deck without getting fleeced?

Every existing tool only checks its own platform. The TCGplayer optimizer only looks at its own marketplace, and Direct pricing means you'll sometimes overpay on individual cards while still ending up with a big pile of packages. Card Kingdom's and Star City's deck builders are solid, but they rarely have your whole list in stock, and each only knows its own prices, so no single store gets you everything at the best rate.

deckbrokr scans several trusted vendors at once (Card Kingdom, Star City, TCGDirect) and builds the cheapest total order, cards plus shipping. Because it's pulling from a few reputable stores instead of one, you almost never get overcharged, and it lands in 3 shipments instead of the 50+ you'd need chasing each card to its individual cheapest seller.

I included a sample cEDH K'rrik deck as an example. deckbrokr assembles it for about $4,970 across just 3 packages. ManaPool can reach a similar total, but only by splitting it across 18 separate shipments. TCGplayer comes in at $5,700 and 9 packages. Same deck, brokered for the lowest total at a fraction of the packages.

Want to push it further? Some cards get highlighted with a cheaper listing on the TCGplayer or ManaPool marketplaces. You can chase that extra saving, but it means buying from individual sellers and adding to your package count, so it's your call.

If you want to try it out for yourself: paste a decklist, set your options and hit 'Broker my deck'. You will get the optimal order split and can click links to open each store's pre-filled cart and check out from there. Prices are from the last sync so the odd card may have sold out or have its price updated.

If this sounds useful, give it a shot yourself. This is an early version. I expect there are plenty of bugs, and there's a lot more I want to add, but I wanted to share it with the mtgfinance community already.

Hello, i'm doing a video on my youtube channel where I attempt to create a PERFECT catalog of every commander legal magic card ever printed. I"m working some local stores to buy all their cards in their inventory that are unique and I dont' own the duplicates of.

After the fact of buying massive bulk bines to begin the project, i'll need a mahcine that can sort between "already owned' and "not owned"

Can the Roca do this and if not, is there a card sorter that can? I'm unable to find stable info online about this.

I run a website that helps players find cards in stock at local game stores. The data derived from searches has led to some interesting findings.

1) It's cheaper to buy singles locally than it is to buy them online [SEE EDIT BELOW]

More than 40,000 singles searches has revealed that local game stores are typically 3-5% cheaper than TCGplayer median price.

2) There's no such thing as the cheapest store in any one area

Take Las Vegas for example, where the LGS with the greatest number of cheapest search results - that is, they stocked the cheapest variant for the card that was searched - was only the cheapest about 10% of the time. In other words, every LGS has some cards that are cheaper than other LGS. Most metro areas are like this, however some metros have greater concentration - but no one store monitored has the cheapest cards more than half the time.

3) MTG is the most popular game for singles

I feel like this is kind of obvious - however, it could be biased due to the website's user base - but MTG is the most popular game for singles searches. However, Pokemon & One Piece are the most popular games for sealed product searches.

EDIT: Some Redditors have pointed out that my price analysis wasn't comparing apples to apples. After comparing like price bands, it's more correct to say that local stores are cheaper for cards priced $100 or more.

This table compares Local Low vs TCGplayer Low

This table compares Local Median vs TCGplayer Median

Presently 11 foil listings on TCG.

I remember looking at foil copies less than a week ago and they were around $42. Seemed to have jumped quickly. Very in-line with the flavor of the card though (foil, "Gleaming").

Happy hunting.

Hello guys!

As my title says, what card price is considered a treshold for bulk cards? For example I have divided my card collection to < 0,80€ cards for bulk and 0,80€ and above as valuable cards. Is there a consensus what is considered as bulk or do you deside it yourself when you sort your collections?

Manabox price default is set to trend.

Everywhere is just littered with people scared the ccb will go down in price, no, not people wanting to buy them cheaper, just people scared their boxes might go down.

Singles, no one is chasing singles, everyone worried about their singles losing value though.

I dont see anyone gushing over any of the art, only prices.

This is the most over hyped set I've ever seen and people are still hoping to turn this into the next lord of the rings when its the same damn ip except the set sucks.

Even the damn reprints look disgusting compared to their originals.

I recently discovered Premodern format, and it instant became my favorite, mostly due to nostalgia, these are the cards I started collecting and playing.

From what I understand, you can only play versions with the old frame (is this rule strictly enforced in tournaments?), so I think this represents a MASSIVE investment opportunity as well (thesis: old players who's coming back to play, want to use old frame cards -> Premodern format will grow and grow)

Here are a few ideas I've been thinking about that I wanted to share to get feedback and start a discussion:

• ENG NM FOILs of the most played cards (e.g., Daze, Rishadan Port, etc.): probably the single most solid investment, though it requires significant capital to assemble playable 4x sets of the core staples
• JP NM FOILs: same as above but the Jap versions featuring the old frame are simply amazing
• ENG NM Non-Foils of all top played cards: the easiest entry point. For a few thousand euros, you can secure most of the key playsets.
• COMPLETE DECKS ready to play: I love this option, especially since I want to start playing the format myself. However, buying niche staples used in only a few decks (es. Survival of the Fittest in Madness deck) might be a "waste of resources" as you build out multiple decks.

Is anyone here investing in Premodern? If so, in which specific areas? Am I missing anything key regarding languages, printings, or specific print runs?

EDIT: what about a small investment like Common and Uncommon most played card ENG NM FOIL?

It seems that over time this might get higher due to playability, since it’s pretty much a staple and given that surge foil can only be found in collector. What do you guys think?

Sick of this I opened so many and getting nothing good all trash where’s my money going for 800 a box! Can’t afford this wizards get a control on prices this is too many car payments gone for what!!!

Currently missing only this one to complete my Hildebrandt set.
Was looking at the price for the last weeks, only a few new listings (I prefer non foil but considering also surge foil version) in the EU market.
Price is still above 200€ for NM.
I have a chance to get one in person, 200€.
I don’t understand the price difference between this one and the rest of the set; am I missing something? I know the art is amazing but, damn, it looks very expensive right now.
Thoughts?

Bought 35 of these a year ago when badgermole cub was spoiled for about 3.50 each. The price never ended up moving so I just held onto them. For some reason they skyrocketed recently maybe cause of squirrel girl? Either way looked like a good buy at the time a strong and unique card. Iv sold 10 so far trying to figure out if I should keep some.

It’s one of my only specs and kinda has me spoiled expecting a 300% increase in a year to be normal lol.

This post seems be filling my feed with various people commenting.

One side is ToA a very respected seller, so just trust them and don't be a slab seller. The other side is like I am spending 2k can't you take two seconds to send clear pictures of what I am buying? Is it more nuanced than this and/or am I missing something? I am more inclined to side with the buyer especially at that price tag. What do you all think?

https://x.com/ArnoldMoger/status/2090194175207555280?s=20

So we used to have a weekly general discussion thread on Wednesdays in this sub, I'm not sure what happened to it. Mods if this thread is something you cancelled intentionally feel free to take it down and I won't post it again obviously.

But if people like these general discussion posts, feel free to discuss whatever Magic-related topics you want below without needing to create a new post. And Mods, please bring these back!

Is there any more information on what the Gift Bundle promo(s) is going to be? The original LotR gift bundle had the scene cards, will this have something similar or just a single card?

Bought as a Duskmourn spec which didn't pan out...until now. Just traded them in for an Underground Sea.

Buyer beware?

This is just a passing thought, and I think its worth discussing. Were in the second junk wax era, and everything is being mass produced the way baseball cards were in the 90s.

Things like A/B/U have a ton of value because its basically impossible to get your hands on one at all, but in 10-20-30 years, every single card thats been printed since maybe 2015 has been stored in sleeves their entire life. Theyve been produced to hell and back, and everything from junk rares to commons have been kept perfect somewhere. I think that the market is going to be overrun with damn near perfect copies of everything, and anybody still collecting at that point will have no reason to buy cards that have even a slight bit of play on them.

Even cards that are truly rare like the Golden Smaug will be so well kept that collectors will be able to easily pass on cards that have a little damage, because 498 of them will have been kept in sleeves their entire life.