r/mtgfinance

What happened over the weekend and what do you think about it? Was it just hype? What if it's a real change? What do you think will happen going forward? Also feel free to use this space to discuss anything MTG Finance related.

[[lullmage mentor]]

[[Namor the Sub-Mariner]] is one of the top 5 commanders on edhrec for the MSH set. i feel like this is a solid addition to that deck. plays to the strengths of blue, and provides a solid (albeit slow and maybe not so enticing for casual play) wincon for the deck. the card has a single printing in OG Zendikar, and supply is at least looking low on CK.

Thoughts?

I wanted to discuss what I believe to be the worst financial move in Magic history:

Ben Bateman.

We have all watched this man trade almost his entire collection which included a black lotus, for a serialized One Ring Borderless Poster graded 9.5. He then thought he was making a statement by cracking the slab which was going for over 100k to put in his deck to play with regularly.

Not much later, he begins making videos about opening LOTR Holiday packs to try to make his money back from trading his old collection.

Currently he is spending much less and is opening the regular LOTR collector boosters.

I think about this every now and then and say "wow, that was fucking stupid lol"

EDIT: Guys I'm not Bateman, I wish I was because *money* but I'm not. You're paranoid lmao

Any info is appreciated.

I need advice from anyone who sells on TCGPlayer. I have a small store that I use mainly to liquidate my uncle's collection for his cancer treatment. I've been putting a little bit at a time on there, and have not had any problems. I've had about twenty sales and all have gone well. Not many sales overall, but I feel good about them. Some of the cards have seen some play and some of the cards have just been sitting in a box for thirty years right after being taken out of a pack and I mark them accordingly. I even include individual pictures, front and back, for each one.

A few days ago, someone bought all three copies of a card I had on there and listed as near mint with pictures. I was selling each of them for seven dollars and fifty cents, below what others were selling them for. Two days ago, I get an angry email from someone calling me a piece of shit, demanding an immediate full refund because the cards were "moderately played at best," or he's "going straight to TCGPlayer." This has the energy of a mob shakedown. I had to walk an hour to the post office just to mail the cards because someone moved my stamped envelopes, and I was relieved I got the cards mailed in a timely manner and then I get hit with this.

If someone has an issue or question I try to respond as quickly as possible, but my sister is in the hospital from three strokes that came out of nowhere, and I've never had a complaint like this before, so I had to take advantage of the weekend because I'm supposed to have two business days to respond (yesterday is Independence Day and my sister's birthday and today is a religious holiday and I'm not supposed to be working today), so I think I have until the sixth or seventh to respond (even though the email reminding me to respond happened in the middle of Independence Day). I'm emotionally all over the place and I want to make sure I'm doing everything correctly for an optimal outcome.

I'm not sure what to say or do here. I need the money from the sale, but from what I understand, TCGPlayer always comes down on the side of customers over sellers. I had high quality pictures of the cards on the site, front and back, but I don't have them on my current telephone and I can't seem to figure out how to get them off of the site. I can see blurry thumbnails of the pictures I took, at least. Hell, I don't even know if having those pictures would help.

Do I ask TCGPlayer for help? Do I capitulate to what seems to me to be an entitled bad actor? How should I handle this? Hell, if I could issue a partial refund and give the cards to him for what they seem to be going for as "moderately played," as he indicates he believes they are, I'd still be making about $6 per card (minus the site's cut), and I could possibly by fine with that, but a full refund without getting those cards back seems to be the most likely outcome, but a ridiculous one in my opinion. What should I do?

The facts are simple:

1. Small set
2. Low power
3. Few art styles, few interesting motifs. You basically have the book style art which looks good and the dragon frame which looks bad and that's it in terms of interesting art styles. People are buying LOTR holiday collector boosters for high prices because of the many insane art pieces and lotr themed creatures that you can acquire, this is just not the case in this set. MSH has better, more interesting and just plain more art than this. Reusing the tarkir dragon border is also very lazy and makes it even lower value when you hit one of those because we just had a set with them. They are also literally reusing the one ring art and card.
4. Worst of all: Only one serialized chase which doesn't even have numbering which inherently means that it's less of an exclusive feeling when you get it. The price will still be high(ish) but it's lower than it would have otherwise been. The LOTR special boxes had tons and tons of different serialized cards that you could get. The Hobbit only has ONE(1). For that reason alone the gambling factor is reduced massively and let's be real, gambling is the only reason why people buy CBBs for high prices and actually open them.
5. Hobbits are thematically boring. It's a bit like making a full set about Robin instead of Batman but also Robin is 3 feet tall and has hairy feet. It's just not that appealing to pull hobbits. This is not going to pull LOTR fans like an actual Lord of the Rings set did. The "The Hobbit" movies were also far worse than the legendary lotr movies, interest will be much lower by the general population.

Sorry, there are just too many downsides for this set to be a hit. Far far smaller gambling factor, far less appeal for LOTR fans. This is more like a generic set release than true fan service.

Im into pokemon mostly and was curious if I were to buy alot of pokemon stuff and rip to make content. Wouldn't that be tax write off since i want to grow my channel and make profit off of YouTube videos? Or do I have to sell the cards too for it to be a write off?

Longtime Magic collector and investor and hyper Modern one piece and Pokemon investor as well (although that's almost everyone in those two TCG).

Have noticed that like traditional equity markets, there's very predictable sector rotation trends of money rotating in and out of the TCGs and between TCGs and that this can be exploited for Alpha.

Biggest example right now is Pokemon sealed product has been largely stagnant for half a year or more while money has been flooding into secondary collector markets such as MTG sealed products (ex: Final Fantasy) and certain one piece sets (ex: PRB01) and even Lorcana has been rocketing the past few weeks.

My plan because of this is to be more dynamic with shifting product around and trading in and out of certain games. MTG has been a huge laggard for years but the broader market is finally starting to bid into MTG as more single prices increase and the sealed products containing them start raising to match the EV multiple that other games place on sealed.

The other consideration is everything held in TCGs also competes with the actual equity markets and so I've been shifting in and out of Semiconductors and high bandwidth memory (which I'm the most bullish on) in and out of TCGs to increase or decrease personal exposure.

I'm looking at both the OP anniversary sets in the fall, MTG announcements of next years UB collaborations, and Sandisk earnings coming up as decision points to make larger moves in.

LGS is selling all 4 warhammer precon complete and sleeved for $275 each. Worth picking one up? All of them up?

What should we be trading for? What should we be trading away? What cards or events should I have my eye on? Also feel free to use this space to discuss anything MTG Finance related.

I sell lots of decks and sets so I need a ton of cards, but I often get sellers on TCGPlayer to cancel orders usually for "inventory" issues. I'm not even finding crazy deals, I'm usually buying cards for market. For the sellers out there, what's the problem with someone buying up a ton of your inventory of a handful of cards?