So I like many people have a cycle of playing standard, getting bored and then cycling to EDH again. I am a competitive player at heart. EDH doesn't involve enough of a competitive atmosphere for me where I play so I gravitate towards the more competitive formats.
Here is the dilemma. I got into MTG to not break the bank fully with a hobby. Aka what I have will hopefully maintain value. This is why I partially gravitate to EDH because I know if I get a Candelabra of Tawnos for instance it probably won't ever go down. I think mtg is unique in the fact most popular games now are purely digital/goods items which have no liquidity like a ccg.
How do you combat this cycle is you fall into the same boat as me? Basically you try to collect for value without losing too much value in the process. I am considering purely playing competitive EDH online and keeping the cards as novelty only occasionally going down to the store to play.
So I like many people have a cycle of playing standard, getting bored and then cycling to EDH again. I am a competitive player at heart. EDH doesn't involve enough of a competitive atmosphere for me where I play so I gravitate towards the more competitive formats.
Here is the dilemma. I got into MTG to not break the bank fully with a hobby. Aka what I have will hopefully maintain value. This is why I partially gravitate to EDH because I know if I get a Candelabra of Tawnos for instance it probably won't ever go down. I think mtg is unique in the fact most popular games now are purely digital/goods items which have no liquidity like a ccg.
How do you combat this cycle is you fall into the same boat as me? Basically you try to collect for value without losing too much value in the process. I am considering purely playing competitive EDH online and keeping the cards as novelty only occasionally going down to the store to play.
Unfortunately for you, Standard is a money pit. The cards are expensive and will fluctuate in value quickly. If you're looking for a competitive format where the cards maintain their value, try Legacy. Now's a pretty good time to enter, as a lot of non-reserved cards just got reprinted in the last year, so their values are pretty low. Reserved cards will, in general, maintain their values. If you want to try to squeeze the money out of your standard cards before they rotate/get banned, you'll have to be plugged in pretty much constantly, and you'll spend way more time than is fun on this hobby.
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You can replace "Legacy" in all these replies with any non-rotating format. Modern is an alternative and in a lot of places you are more likely to find a larger group of players. It's a little bit more risky because the format changes more than legacy and legacy is so high-powered that bans are rarer.
For the price of a legacy mana base, you can have a full modern deck. (Some modern deck are very expensive too, but not having to play 50-100 per land makes it cheaper.)
You can replace "Legacy" in all these replies with any non-rotating format. Modern is an alternative and in a lot of places you are more likely to find a larger group of players. It's a little bit more risky because the format changes more than legacy and legacy is so high-powered that bans are rarer.
For the price of a legacy mana base, you can have a full modern deck. (Some modern deck are very expensive too, but not having to play 50-100 per land makes it cheaper.)
I understand that you'd like to promote Modern (Modern is fun!), but I'm going to explicitly disagree with you here. Modern has two more avenues than Legacy for cards to lose value - reprints and bans. Modern Masters is a biannual set that is designed specifically to get more copies of Modern cards to players. Modern also has a banlist that's touched much more frequently than Legacy, and has a habit of kicking the legs out of some of the best decks.
I'm not saying that Modern is inherently inferior to Legacy, but the OP's two criteria were as follows:
1) Highly competitive.
2) Collection can't crash in value.
1) Lets out EDH (the OP has already tried it, and hasn't found a competitive enough group)
2) Lets out Modern, a format where reprints are not only possible but frequent. If you're holding Modern staples when a Masters set comes out, you will lose value. Maybe it'll come back, but you will lose value.
Legacy is the answer to this particular question.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Here is the dilemma. I got into MTG to not break the bank fully with a hobby. Aka what I have will hopefully maintain value. This is why I partially gravitate to EDH because I know if I get a Candelabra of Tawnos for instance it probably won't ever go down. I think mtg is unique in the fact most popular games now are purely digital/goods items which have no liquidity like a ccg.
How do you combat this cycle is you fall into the same boat as me? Basically you try to collect for value without losing too much value in the process. I am considering purely playing competitive EDH online and keeping the cards as novelty only occasionally going down to the store to play.
Unfortunately for you, Standard is a money pit. The cards are expensive and will fluctuate in value quickly. If you're looking for a competitive format where the cards maintain their value, try Legacy. Now's a pretty good time to enter, as a lot of non-reserved cards just got reprinted in the last year, so their values are pretty low. Reserved cards will, in general, maintain their values. If you want to try to squeeze the money out of your standard cards before they rotate/get banned, you'll have to be plugged in pretty much constantly, and you'll spend way more time than is fun on this hobby.
For the price of a legacy mana base, you can have a full modern deck. (Some modern deck are very expensive too, but not having to play 50-100 per land makes it cheaper.)
I understand that you'd like to promote Modern (Modern is fun!), but I'm going to explicitly disagree with you here. Modern has two more avenues than Legacy for cards to lose value - reprints and bans. Modern Masters is a biannual set that is designed specifically to get more copies of Modern cards to players. Modern also has a banlist that's touched much more frequently than Legacy, and has a habit of kicking the legs out of some of the best decks.
I'm not saying that Modern is inherently inferior to Legacy, but the OP's two criteria were as follows:
1) Highly competitive.
2) Collection can't crash in value.
1) Lets out EDH (the OP has already tried it, and hasn't found a competitive enough group)
2) Lets out Modern, a format where reprints are not only possible but frequent. If you're holding Modern staples when a Masters set comes out, you will lose value. Maybe it'll come back, but you will lose value.
Legacy is the answer to this particular question.