Financial Advice: Don’t Do What I Do = You Will Save Money!

I love Magic, the game, the cards, the community and all the rest. I love it. Since coming back to the game, I have been involved with so many wonderful things and have met a ton of amazing people. I love brewing decks; I love listening to podcasts; and I am interested in the financial aspects of the game. There is one thing I must admit, however, and to some this will not be much of a surprise:

I am a pack cracking idiot.

So many people love to share their stories about good financial calls on cards. They love making predictions and proudly point to their claims as clairvoyants and savants. I have made a few calls: Jon Stern is my witness during the prerelease when I said that [card]Runechanter’s Pike[/card] would be a card. I was right! It was a major player; however the deck I myself came up with was a TERRIBLE mishmash of cards and nothing like the Delver decks that took advantage of the equipment.

Getting to the point, this article will not be about brilliance, smarts or savvy. Instead, I am going to write about something that people seldom talk about and never care to admit. We all make mistakes, and I am going to talk about a lot of mine.

Spend Wisely, or Opportunity Cost

Building back up my collection was the first step after returning to the game. It involved trading cards and obtaining packs to get back into Standard. New Phyrexia was released, but there was one card I kept hearing over and over and over at the time: Jace… Jace, the Mind Sculptor. At this stage he was not banned and was only near $80. That was nuts! No way in Hell was I going to spend $80 for 1 card! I had been going to a local store, but they didn’t have Worldwake packs, so while recovering from my stroke I heard the Eh Team guys mention Face a Face quite a bit. I decided to visit once I was able to. It was the first time I met Peter Sachlas, who was friendly and helpful and had all the Worldwake packs I could want… for $10 each. BINGO! I was going to spend some cash, build my collection, and score a Jace. I was a GENIUS.

Pack after pack, dollar after dollar, I got cards that were useful, and my collection grew but no Jace. I spent $300 that day. I could have had four Jaces if I’d wanted. In the end I had one Stoneforge Mystic to show for my efforts and a lot of semi useful cards that were rotating soon.

I continue to shop at Face to Face Games because I love the atmosphere and they have great service, especially for someone like me who time and time again loves to give them money and in ways far more idiotic than the Jace story above.

How do I know when to control myself better? That is the problem. Within the last month I have continued to do the absolute stupidest things for my collection.

You would think I would learn, but when Modern Masters hit I made the same mistake. When Dragon’s Maze was released, I was lucky to obtain three Voice of Resurgences cheaply and through luck. The Modern Master packs were too enticing. FOIL TARMAGOYFS? $500?! Boom! I traded all three Voices in and cracked 10 packs of a new box. No Goyf, but some nice cards that (you guessed it!) got traded in for new packs. At the end of that adventure I had zero Voices and zero value in Modern Masters except for a foil Academy Ruins. I was not coerced, forced or tricked. It was my own choice, but facts are facts and I was an idiot. I might as well go into the store next time, give Sal $50, and ask to clean his toilets.

Trading Cards for Other Games (and for the GF)

My fiancée doesn’t play magic for a variety of reasons. She might not be into the game, she might not like the game, I might be a bad teacher. Quite frankly there could be a zillion other reasons. Trying to force your significant other to share this hobby just isn’t a good idea.

How many of us want to expose the special someone in our life to the particular brand of social activity we deal with at our local stores? I love the game, but I also love my fiancée and have been told more than once when I get home from Magic that if I want special happy cuddle time I need to make sure I have no lingering “nerd turd” attached to me.

I have tried to force the issue. No, you pervs, I don’t mean force special happy cuddle time while smelling of nerd. I meant that I have tried to get her to play. I have bought her cards and made her some decks but no luck. I again thought I was a genius as I started to collect a new fresh game with her. If we took this approach and started on the same level, then I would be able to convert her to the gamer side for sure. Being the financially responsible guy I am, instead of spending cash, I decided to trade in cards for credit. $500 in trades later, I had enough to get her and myself enough of the new card game to get us started.

For a time this worked. We played together, but she was not into it. The game was fine for her as long as I continued to fund it with cards and not spend further cash on it. Life got in the way again, and frankly, she just didn’t want to play the new game after a while. (Clearly the game wasn’t as good as Magic.) I now had a ton of cards from a different game doing nothing. I eventually sold them and made back $180, a far cry from my $500 card investment. Once again I had basically given the card store money for no reason.

Cards for Gas

Here I want to relate a story of how I offered a few friends a lift to a PTQ out of town. Normally the group in the car splits the gas and other costs to help keep overall costs down. In one such instance, a friend offered me the value in packs instead of paying for gas. I greedily accepted the offer. Once again my mind lit up with potential value of getting and trading in chase rare cards for profit. In this case, I had accepted 10 packs to even out the amount of gas I was owed for the trip. I cracked open the packs and Boom! At the end of the day, in those 10 packs, which I thought would easily cover the $40 in gas, was a total value of about $12. Busted again.

One should also never trade cards for packs, as I do so often. It is silly, and again the temptation is to “go big” by gaining infinite value from your packs that surpasses the value of the trade. Simple logic or math or rational thought would easily alert you to how risky this is. Most likely you will end up with a card that isn’t even worth equal value, let alone scoring a big hit in extra value.

Hype Hype Hype! NOW NOW NOW!

New cards are spoiled, prices are put on major websites, and we all go with the flow. For some of us, it means we focus on a card that has potential and buy in. Realistically how many cards have shot up in value compared to the vast majority of cards that go down in value before any major tournaments are played. Cards like Skaab Ruinator were selling for $40 foil, but try getting $2 for that card now. The planeswalker cards often go for over $30, and I think M14 is one of the first sets in a long while that the new walkers haven’t captured the imagination of the community. They are hovering around $20 each. Don’t get me wrong; if someone were to put it in a deck that defines the format to come they would shoot up, but let’s face facts. I haven’t bought the new walkers yet, and if a durdle like myself hasn’t bought them, signs should point you towards waiting until they reach a reasonable price before moving in on them.

Be Organized!

I have a large, messy collection – boxes upon boxes of cards organized in the scientific method of putting whatever cards I can reach into the nearest box. It is a system that works for no one. If people need cards, I usually have them, but it takes me a few hours to find a playset of some uncommon that might be needed for a deck. The side effect is that I tend to get lazy and, instead of using cards I already own, I end up doing the quick and easy method of spending cash to get the cards prior to a tourney. Four Rancors? I got 20! And I still end up paying a few dollars from a dealer rather than digging through my collection.

The same can be said for sleeves. I have been told to stick to a single brand and color so I can more easily reuse sleeves for decks and whatnot. Nope, I like to mix and match and again end up wasting more money buying sleeves because I cannot be bothered to find the 10 or so I have misplaced of a certain type. I also have the problem of the artsy sleeves. A Varolz deck needs Varolz sleeves, right? But why? They won’t help me play better and they cost more. There is also the added negative of announcing what I might be playing ahead of the match, which doesn’t do anything for my game, since I rarely find my opponent so forthcoming with information about the deck they might be using ahead of the match.

Accept What You Do

Despite my tales of woe and misery, I want to state clearly that opening packs is and always will be a choice. Part of the reason I love this game is that thrill I get when cracking open a new pack, wondering what might be found within. The fun is in the anticipation you get when ripping open the pack and flipping through cards. As I said before, you can easily buy cards you need for a specific deck, but I find opening packs allows a person to enjoy other parts of the game. Trading, collection building, and even brewing are all aspects that one can enjoy while opening packs. When making decks, you might want to proxy certain cards, but you might also try other cards, which might lead to new ideas for the deck!

Another thing many including myself enjoy is to not simply open packs willy-nilly. Playing a game of Pack Wars, drafting or buying a sealed pool and trying to make a deck can all help with a player’s limited portion of Magic.

The last, best part of cracking packs is when you do get that sick magical pack: the one with the foil mythic or rare and another good rare that will make any player jealous. Not only is the sheer luck involved a blast to experience, but the occasional extra value is always welcome. (Unless, of course, you make stupid mistakes like some of the ones I mentioned above.)

In conclusion, I just want folks to know their limits. Yes, I have made some brain-numbingly silly choices, but they were mine to make and I did set limits. For example, I decided that going broke was okay only after my bills were paid and I had enough for food. Then I was okay with spending my disposable income on opening card packs. I do hope that anyone who reads this might learn from my own silliness and, in doing so, realize they might save or make more cash in the long run by simply being a lot more responsible in how they go about playing Magic.