Which MTGO stores give you the most mana and merfolk (and Angels) for your money?

Thank goodness it’s May! That let me tap into the new month’s funds and start fleshing out some solid decks for the casual room – plus check out the MTGO stores to see who gives me the most cards for my money …

I've just completed the last in-game trade for my first MTGO shopping review. One consistent thing about all four sites I visited was their professional and prompt service. From the first order confirmation to the last delivery from all four sites took less than two-and-a-half hours.

I started my shopping review with a goal of spending my last 10 initial dollars on as much product to complete my casual decks as possible. To that end, I made a shopping list of commons, uncommons and rares in those decks that I thought a budget player would like to assemble at some point. I then went to each of the four sites and priced the items. I decided I would buy the lot of items from the shop with the best overall value for the lot, with an emphasis on availability and price. I’ll show you my initial list below, along with the advertised prices for each card. The prices shown are single card prices. If a card belongs in multiple sets, I selected the cheapest variation of each.

As you can see, the individual card prices are pretty close together for most cards. The biggest percentage differences were in the highest and lowest priced cards. Of course, there’s only a seven cent difference in the price of a Spirit Link – but that’s more than a 200% markup from the lowest to highest price. The price of the Platinum Angel was only a 33% swing from high to low, but that’s a full 50 cent difference between $1.50 and $2.00.

Okay, so who's the winner of Thrifty Djinn's hard earned cash? The answer is actually ‘All Of The Above.’ – But some stores won more of my cash than others!

Based on my criteria, ABU gets the first-place award because they presented the lowest price for all the cards I wanted.

Cardhoarder gets second place and was oh-so-close, and if not for the absence of a certain red instant – they would left me perfectly impressed. If they had had the two extra copies of Incinerate I was looking for, they would have finished a few cents cheaper than ABU.

Cardshark finished a solid third, and along with ABU, were the only two stores to have all the singles I wanted to buy in stock and showing online. In this case, ABU had the best price after their 10% discount for PayPal and was a bit more straight forward in how they work. Cardshark could have actually been cheaper, except that they add a 35 cent surcharge on to each different vendor you purchase from, and a one dollar minimum for each of those mini-transactions. (I’ll explain more in my detailed review of each store – but Cardshark is a different animal from the other three stores in the way they’re set up to do business.)

Finally, MTGO Traders was a solid fourth place -- and could have easily finished first because they had consistently good prices, but they were showing as out of stock on a lot of items. The prices for their cards and PayPal discount put them in the running, but unfortunately (as I’ll also explain later) they’re the store seemingly most (and worst) affected by the programming issues in MTGO’s v3 release.

Okay, on to the store by store review! (Click on the stores name to jump to their site)

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ABU (ABUgames)

This was the store that had everything I wanted at the lowest price. Their website was clean, and their search engine for finding cards pretty straight forward. Items were easily placed in the basket and ready for checkout. The list of all the prices from the cart to the checkout was itemized and easily understandable. One thing to note, is that ABU's (and some of the other site's) base price for their cards is measured in MTGO tickets. That makes it easy for people in game to have the extra security of keeping the transaction completely within the MTGO client – but it can make the initial price seem a bit higher if you’re planning to pay with your credit card or directly through PayPal. Like all four of the stores I visited today, ABU accepts PayPal payments – and in their case offers a flat 10% for paying in PayPal over tickets.

I placed my order through the store and then payment through PayPal and then was instructed to meet with the store’s account in game. One of the funny experiences in trading this evening was looking at the ratings for the ABU store account. Not many store accounts have over a 1,750 limited rating. Delivery of my items was prompt and courteous. It took less than 30 minutes to receive my cards after ordering them at 6 p.m. on a Friday night. The folks running ABU said they didn’t offer any set discounts – but relied on their consistently low prices to keep customers. One other big bonus is that ABU offers full playsets of commons and uncommons – cheaper than eBay, at least in my experience from last week. Their 10% PayPal discount and wide selection made them a solid choice to spend the majority of my hard-earned MTGO budget this month.

Cardhoarder

The Cardhoarder site was probably the best designed site of the bunch, and their prices were the lowest card-by-card most of the time. The only thing that kept me from spending my initial money there was a shortage of Incinerates according to the store’s website. Since I wanted to be able to review each of the store’s ability to deliver product – I went ahead and dipped into The Thrifty Djinn’s cache for the month of May. In this case, I bought a play set of Vesuvas for my decks. I think the Vesuva/Cloudpost combo is one of the most consistent high-mana engines in Extended – and a lot of my budget decks will start with this six dollar combo.

The Cardhoarder site is colorful, efficient, clean and easy to navigate. I can easily say that this site is only a few Incinerates away from being the best of the bunch – pretty close to hands down. Their search engine and navigation helps you to find cards quickly, and each selection has a full card graphic link to place your selection in the card. Cardhoarder also accepts event tickets and PayPal – plus they take Euros. They offer a 13% discount for cash (non-ticket) purchases – making their first-rate prices even better. The only negative about their site was when you place the first item into the basket, the confirmation pop-up box often comes right up over where you want to click for an additional item. Like ABU, completing the selection process takes you straight to PayPal to pay for the transaction. The Cardhoarder account in game completed my transaction in less than an hour after receiving the funds – and it would have been even quicker, except that I was AFK for a bit playing paper Magic with my son. All-in-all, I give my highest budget recommendation to Cardhoarder – they have a slick site and great prices – and more than 90% of the cards I wanted in stock.

Cardshark

Cardshark is the odd duck of this bunch. They’re not a single store, they’re more of a middle man for buyers and sellers in game. The biggest advantage of the Cardshark business model is that you’re almost guaranteed to have every card in stock – in this case, they were one of only two in the survey who could say that. The disadvantage is that you’re actually liable to pay more for what you’re looking for if you’re not careful. For example, Cardhorder (the store above this one in the review) is one of the accounts that uses Cardshark as a middle man. You can always get the card cheaper directly from Cardhoarder – but if you didn’t know any better, at least Cardshark provides a solid matchmaking service. The other disadvantage of Cardshark is the matchmaking fee of .35 it charges for each transaction, plus the one dollar minimum fee. You can avoid a large chunk of that by sticking to the same dealer within Cardshark and by making all your smaller common/uncommon purchases together. Something that's made easier through the pop up box that's displayed when you make a selection. I'd advise sticking to the same dealer throughout when possible to make the most of your money.

However, I don't you can’t beat Cardshark if you’re simply looking for the best price on a single card. Since so many different dealers are essentially competing for your business right there on the one site, the competition for your dollar can be fierce for bigger ticket items. (Especially for the two-mana green creature who will not be mentioned on this site ...) I would highly recommend Cardshark for making a purchase of more than $10 or so, simply because of the different way their model operates insures a good price.

One thing the site does well is in how it grades different dealers. CardShark has three preferred levels of sellers: Great Whites, Hammerheads and Landsharks -- and gives them an icon on the end of their name. Look for the dealers with the GreatWhite symbol and you’re pretty much assured of getting a good deal.

In my case, I bought two Akroma, Angel of Fury cards and a Luminous Angel from ccgbot through Cardshark. Like the other stores, the service was prompt and courteous. After entering the trade, I realized I had bought the wrong version of Akroma (I wanted Akroma, Angel of Wrath) and he offered to help me change the selection. I told him it was my mistake – but appreciated his desire to make the customer happy. Ccgbot is definitely a good example of the best sort of seller from Cardshark. He said he was just getting started in his relationship with Cardshark from MTGO cards, and only sold about $100 in digital cards through them to date – however, he said he had sold more than $3,000 in paper cards, so this is a good indicator of a seller with a long-term investment in Magic as a whole. In the end, I may not like Cardshark as much as the other sellers for my budget needs, but for a single card value – they may be the ones to beat.

MTGO Traders

I’ll be honest, I think these folks might be the nicest of the bunch – but they’re definitely the one’s hurt most by the issues with v3 right now. The MTGO Traders site is clean, easy to navigate and their prices are consistently low. Unfortunately, their web site isn’t able to keep up with the store’s holdings online – so they don’t seem to have as much in stock as the other stores. That’s the only real knock I have on the entire site – it’s just about as easy to use as Cardhoarder’s site and the prices are similar and maybe better depending on the card selection. It was really easy to put about five dollars of Angels and Elves into the cart, and quick enough to get though the site and PayPal to pay.

MTGO Traders advertises store hours of 9am-3am Monday to Friday, and 11am-2am Saturday and Sunday (EST - GMT -4). In this case, the store account was already online and ready to trade almost as soon as I sent the payment to the store. One valuable piece of info I overlooked was that there's a coupon code box inside the shopping cart, you need to type 'paypal' in the box and click on "apply coupon" to get a 12% discount. The discount applies on orders over $5 and to cards only, so it doesn’t count for tickets boosters, starters or bot credits – all of which you can buy from the store. Fortunately for me, the staff noticed my mistake and credited the discount in CardCaddy, the store’s automated bot online – that will let me get a few cards later!

Another feature the folks at MTGO Traders have is a monthly contest where folks who spend more than $50 (unfortunately, that rules out The Thrifty Djinn … DOH!) can win a Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Ipod Touch or a $400 mtgotraders.com gift certificate. So if you’re the kind of person who is going to make one big splash in cards, and you want to get that extra lotto feeling from your purchase – MTGO Traders might be the place for you. All-in-all, these are a great bunch of folks to shop with – and I sincerely hope they get past the v3 blues and back at full capacity soon.

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Okay, so there you have it. The first Thrifty Djinn store shopping spree and store review. I think each of the stores has a lot to offer the MTGO community, and as a whole they provide a valuable service to budget players everywhere. I’d recommend any of the sites to anyone looking to make a purchase in MTGO cards – the prices here are universally better than eBay, and short of buying packs and such from the online store – offer the best bang for the buck to the budget MTGO player.

Unfortunately for The Thrifty Djinn, this economic exercise has sploinked my initial start-up budget, and the first $15 monthly stipend. Fortunately, I have a lot of cards to play with with my money – and the next month is just a few short weeks away. This won’t be the last store review for The Thrifty Djinn – and I look forward to seeing how these stores and others fare in future visits.

Later,

Don!