After spending my first 20 dollars/tickets on cards within the client, I'm planning on spending the last $10 of my initial start up on eBay or in one of the MTGO stores.
My first goal in building a budget MTGO collection is to try and finish as many 4x common playsets as I can. One of the best places to find those pre-built collections is eBay. So with PayPal account in hand, I wandered over to the den of iniquity that is eBay to see what I could get.
One of the best advantages of eBay is that their seller ratings give you some idea of how reliable the different sellers are. Personally, I don't buy from anyone on eBay with a zero or low feedback score, and any account that has just been created or had its name changed in the last month will scare me off as well.
Fortunately most MTG and MTGO sellers on eBay are relatively reputable and have good feedback ratings. So while not as secure as the reputable MTGO web-based stores, the chances of successfully completing an auction are good enough to make it worth your time.
One quick note -- you can get scammed on eBay, but you can protect yourself as well. The best way to protect yourself is through your credit card. Check with your credit card's bank/issuing agent about their policies on returned/fraudulent digital items including the MTGO store itself, along with the differing policies on PayPal and eBay transactions. My credit card will cover me for PayPal charges against my card in the event of an eBay purchase for physical items. However, they won't for digital goods. MTGO product kind of fits in the middle, and the representative I spoke with said that if the seller was listed as a 'Secure Seller' than MTGO goods would be covered. They also said an individual seller would be covered up to $50 on a single purchase. Regardless, checking with your credit card company is a good thing to do before venturing into the wilds of the online marketplace.
Okay, back to eBay. For the purposes of this experiment, my target was the TSP block of cards. I was reasonably certain that I could get one of the 4x common sets in the block for less than the estimated $10-15 dollars I would spend in tickets to get it online. Fortunately, there was one dealer offering just that over the weekend. Since Time Spiral was the big block, I put in a maximum bid of $7.50 for that set and a max bid of $5 on the two smaller sets in the block, Planar Chaos and Future Sight.
I was "in the lead" with all three auctions with only two days left to go. Things were looking good, coming into the last day of the auction. I was winning the Time Spiral auction with a bid of $4.88 and both the other two auctions with bids around $3. To be honest, I thought that was a reasonable price and likely to survive the final 12 hours.
Little did I know.
Actually, I did know that almost every auction on eBay gets the major amount of attention in its last hour. This case was to be no exception. With about 45 minutes to go in the auction, I was outbid on the Planar Chaos set. With about 20 minutes to go, the Time Spiral set was gone too. Shortly there after, the future of my owning a Future Sight common set went poof too.
In the end, the Time Spiral set went for $8.33. That's not bad for 400 commons plus land. The Future Sight set went for $5.50 meaning that the only person to outbid me won the auction. The real shocker was the Planar Chaos set. It went for a whopping $15.51! Who the heck would bid that much (and maybe more) for 240 commons? The answer was that the same guy won all three auctions. So he got a full TSP block playset of commons for $29.34. Maybe it's me, but I'm not telling anyone to spend that much on MTGO right now. But hey, I'm happy he got his set -- and it's still cheaper than some of the 'Buy It Now' prices you see for 4x common sets on eBay.
The good news is since I didn't spend any of my remaining $10 budget on eBay this month -- it's all going to go to one lucky store. Of course, you'll have to check in later this week to find out which store it will be -- because I don't know myself.
All I know is that The Thrifty Djinn is going shopping -- and everyone enjoys shopping for a bargain, right?
Later,
Don!
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11 comments:
As a budget player myself {Scartore on MTGO), I love your blog already and plan to follow your exploits.
With all those commons, you should check out http://www.pdcmagic.com/
good way to have fun in a competitive environment w/o breaking the bank.
Hey Blotz!
Oh, I plan to spend a lot of time poking around the PDC community, and I'm sure pdcmagic.com is a part of that.
I personally think that's one of the most fun formats to play -- and where one person with a good rogue deck can really make some noise.
Later,
Don!
If you win one of those 4x common sets, how long does it take to transfer all the cards with 32 card trading limits?
As far as I can tell, it will take about a minute to move two sets of 32 cards in the MTGO client, if both sides are paying attention to the dialog boxes. So, around 5 minutes to move a small set of around 220-240 cards, and around 10 minutes for a large set.
A lot depends on the dealer. If they have only the cards you need to take up for trade so that you can mindlessly click through it, it's much faster.
However, if it isn't set up well, and you and the seller/trader have to go through each pick -- you can more than double that time.
At least now, supposedly, in the latest v3 build -- the memory leak in trading is gone. Before, you had to shut down the client every so often because it would slow down and then completely freeze your client after a point.
Hurray for progress!
Later,
Don!
That doesn't sound as bad as I thought it would be.
Awesome blog by the way, will continue to check it out!
I question the need to buy 4x of every Time Spiral Block common.
There are many commons that you just won't play.
I'd focus on quality rather than quantity.
It's true that there's a lot of 'not so good' commons in any set -- but I like the idea of working towards a complete set anyway. But, I highly encourage folks to get whatever cards they want to get with their money. If you think a card is chaff, then don't worry about adding it to your collection.
However, I remember that a lot of people thought Necropotence and High Tide were both pretty poopy when they first came out -- and they eventually had entire formats built around their dominance at the PT level.
If course, I don't think at this point that Chameleon Blur is going to be a card that ever defines a format -- so if you want to skip getting four copies of that and save the 5-8 cents -- go right ahead. Of course, you haven's seen me post my infamous Chameleon Blur/Atog-a-go-go deck on this site either ... LOL!
Later,
Don!
Are you planning on trying any tournaments eventually? Could be a nice payout.
Just started reading your blog and the eBay article caught my attention. Search around for bid sniping programs that let you specify a time to place the bid as well as your valuation of the auction. They save you a lot of time overall since eBay's default bid system is terrible--this is expected, though, since they want to help the sellers.
Tourneys?
Maybe some player-run tourneys, especially PDC or such pretty soon.
I'm not sure if I'll be playing in any 'official' tourneys within MTGO for quite a while. Unless I can suddenly figure out a good deck to build on the cheap, I don't think I'll be able to compete.
With that having been said, I have some ideas for a competitive rogue deck based on a limited merfolk build. The problem is that it's very draw dependent and timer intensive. That, and I'm wary of any deck based on creatures when there are more than 8 possible Wraths in a given standard environment.
As far as eBay goes, if you really, really want an item -- there's a number of automated tools you can use to "snipe" auctions at the last minute, or you can just babysit it yourself with the newer built-in html bid assistant.
The problem with that is that you can easily get caught up in the competitive nature of eBay, which always favors the seller. Plus you can fall prey to the various bid upping scams that come around every so often. I figure that might have had some part to play in that guy paying $15.51 for a 4x PLC commons set.
As far as I'm concerned with eBay, I'll either want something enough to 'Buy It Now' or I'll make my one good bid offer on it -- and if I get it, great -- if not, it's not worth being bothered over.
Later,
Don!
Another place to look for cards is www.cardshark.com. I've purchased a number of mtgo cards there, and have had pretty good luck.
Not as cheap as 64 for 1, but if you have specific stuff you want/need, it's an easy way to find it.
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