Reprinting Tarmogoyf at a mythic rarity in a small(er) set should actually raise the price in the long run. The people that want goyfs (especially foil) should be buying them now (and many are!).
Nah, they should make it a rare. Win-win for everyone except tarmo-owners, which is 0.00001% of the magic population and is neglectible. It will move all the value of the set to tarmo, making all other cards relatively cheap and readily available due to the tarmo lottery. Win for all players. It will increase the tarmo-amount pretty big, which means a huge drop in price. Win for modern players wanting one. And it drops the price of many modern decks sporting a tarmo playset. Win for WotC and modern attendance. $25-30 should be the top price of a modern card and WotC should do everything to bring cards to that price range and make some money in the mean time.
Your % is nothing but excessive hyperbole. Beyond that, believe it or not, you don't NEED Tarmogoyfs to play a competitive modern deck. I don't understand why people get so hung up on specific cards like this. Go play Tron or Infect or something instead. Better yet, be adventurous and come up with something awesome on your own. If you really, absolutely, positively NEED to play a deck that uses Goyfs for some reason, proxy a set for play testing, shell out the $600 for a set a few days before your tournament, then sell them once you're done using them for exactly the same amount that you paid for them. Hooray, it literally cost you nothing to play Goyfs. I seriously don't see the problem here. And if you don't have $600 to spare for a week or two, you should probably be focusing your financial efforts elsewhere instead of MTG in the first place.
There's so much complaining about how much it costs to play Magic, and yet, it's literally one of the few hobbies that you can invest in, get a bunch of enjoyment out of, and probably sell your collection for MORE than you paid for it down the road if you were smart about where you put your money to begin with.
Couple of guys playing infect, had of course bought Inkmoth Nexus before the spikes. One guy with Affinity all old school Darksteel cards that he has had for years and years.
I feel like the door is slamming shut for growth in the scene. The financial barrier to entry is just too much for many people. If you're not already inside crossing that threshold is very difficult.
I think the pent up demand thing is probably real to a certain extent here and what does it highlight?
[BROKENRECORD] Modern Masters 2015 was a complete and utter failure at reigning in card prices and making modern more accessible [/BROKENRECORD]
WoTC should be ashamed of themselves for what they have done. The excuses they have trotted out have been poor and borderline insulting to the player base.
Anyone complaining about the initial cost of breaking into modern or Magic in general needs to also factor in one thing: There's also a pretty huge chunk of the Magic player base that is less concerned about the initial investment cost of getting the cards and more concerned with knowing that their cards will hold value. I know MANY people who would be far more upset knowing that their cards could all lose their value overnight than they would be upset by spending a little more up front.
Magic isn't just a game. It's a collectible card game. Cards having and maintaining value is a good thing for the health of the game, not the other way around. If you want an example of a CCG done wrong in this regard, look no further than YuGiOh. And as Morphling just said, most of these cards don't start off super crazy either. In the case of many of them, such as Ravager, he's correct in saying that players have quite literally had a decade to grab them if they really wanted them.
The sites using the price graphs need to stop this absurdity leading to market panic.
If somebody buys out TCG player then posts the cards back for double the price that becomes the new price and the graph goes vertical.
There needs to be a stop put on the price graphs when it reaches no stock.
What has happened is I've lost all faith in price discovery.
Maybe just use your brain and filter out bad data. Would you prefer no data.
Yes that's what I'm saying. No data is better than these spikes feeding into the speculation bubble telling people cards are worth ridiculous amounts.
If a buyout happens and people start buying cards at the new price, then that IS what they are worth, "ridiculous" or not. You can say that the little graph is "feeding the speculation bubble", but I could just as easily say that the graph is doing nothing more than reporting what's actually happening with the market value of the card. I'll take more information over less information 100% of the time as it pertains to Magic cards.
"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught."
You might lose out on a few bucks by not relisting it and trying to get more, but I'd argue that if you're the type of person who thinks it's ok to be shady and pull these sorts of shenanigans you've already lost out on a whole lot more than a few bucks.
Informal poll here: how do you deal with users with "OMG READ THIS FIRST" type usernames who insist in their profiles that you follow rules not dictated by Pucatrade? For instance:
send me pics before sending
you must use x service if value over Y
don't trade with me unless you send same day
etc
I read the profile, and can pick from the tone they've taken. If they're being anal, I close the tab and never go near them again. So you want your cards to be fresh out of a pack within the last five minutes and blessed with the tears of the local saint before I post them? Congratulations, go and hit up SCG or something. I'm your potential trade partner, not your peon.
If they've got reasonable reasons for their rules, and they're trying their level best to be friendly otherwise, fair enough (e.g. MidoriMage, otherwise known as frenchoza on Puca, who on-trades a lot of his stuff to a store in Japan that grades his cards hard... what up MidoriMage, package on its way to you from Australia as I type!)
The problem with NOT putting some sort of note/disclaimer in your profile about wanting only strictly graded NM cards is that people will send you trash and think nothing of it. Most people are players, not collectors, and most players are still fine with receiving very lightly played or NM- cards passed off as NM. There are those of us out there who aren't ok with that though. I'm one of these horrible people with a note in my profile about the condition I'm looking for, but I'm not doing it to be a jerk or to be anal, I'm doing it because it HAS cut down on the amount of played cards I've received and I'm trying to save us both time, hassle, and shipping costs by needing to send them back. When I send cards, I assume others with profile requests are simply doing the same. If you know ahead of time that your recipient likely won't be happy with what you're possibly going to send them, isn't that a good thing so you can simply avoid sending it in the first place? I tried to make the tone of my profile straightforward and not anal, but I'm sure some people still interpret it as the latter. Regardless, PucaTrade has been awesome for me in my quest to finish my NM Legends/Antiquities/Arabian Nights sets, and I'd say 75%+ of the people who have sent me cards have been really awesome about making sure the condition was NM or better and I greatly appreciate that.
If you're sending an English NM card, don't even bother reading their profile. That's how I deal with it. If you get crap, they get to pay postage to send your cards back and get to deal with the PucaTrade admins, so it's not such a big deal. I send every single trade that's under $30 in value PWE and haven't had any complaints, including 3 $7 cards to a guy who demanded that I use tracking and a bubble mailer for anything over $10. He didn't ***** when he got my PWE in the mail, though.
This week I did wait 4 whole days to send and someone opened a Case against me. So I ignored the messages he sent me and shipped out the same day. There were no admin or mod replies. I really doubt they care that someone got their undies in a ruffle about a slightly late send. Furthermore, if someone is in Austria and receiving a trade from the US, they don't really get to complain about things arriving or not in a timely manner. My schedule isn't dictated by my trading on PucaTrade and you shouldn't feel the need to conform to the individual's values of appropriate trading. The website itself defines minimum conditions and those are enough.
Wow, you sound like a delight.
While it's a bit crazy to have a case opened against you after "4 whole days", you can't say that you are going to adhere to PucaTrade rules in one sentence, then get YOUR panties in a bunch when you don't follow those same rules and your trading partner is unhappy about it. Puca rules clearly state that you should be shipping your cards out within 48 hours after initiating the trade. If you can't do that, you probably shouldn't be initiating the trade in the first place. That's not on them, that's on you. I'm pretty sure most reasonable people understand that stuff happens and people have busy schedules. But if someone sends you a message asking about shipping times after 48 hours has passed, you could at least be polite, apologize for the slow shipping, and assure them that the cards will be in the mail soon. 99% of people will simply thank you for the response and move on and it took you a whole 10 seconds to respond.
Informal poll here: how do you deal with users with "OMG READ THIS FIRST" type usernames who insist in their profiles that you follow rules not dictated by Pucatrade? For instance:
send me pics before sending
you must use x service if value over Y
don't trade with me unless you send same day
etc
I've run across some "rules" that were simply scams and reported the users, but more often lately I'm just seeing people who don't seem to understand the service they signed up for and want to dictate their own rules. I'm personally not a very big fan of being told what to do, and am tempted to just ignore these profile commandments and just make sure I follow the Pucatrade minimums for shipping time, packaging, condition, and so on. However, I'm unsure how puca admins would respond to a case where I followed their rules but not the recipient's list of additional demands.
Anyone run into a situation like this?
Edit: for clarity I'm talking about $5-50 cards from modern-era sets here. I fully understand some extra negotiation on P9 or summer magic or the like.
Or, you could just be a decent human being and try to honor their requests if you're wanting to trade with them. And if you aren't willing to honor their requests, the alternative is also pretty simple: Just don't send them cards and move on. Why go looking for a bad situation when you could instead be that awesome guy who actually did what the person was hoping you'd do, or at the very least maybe open up a dialogue with them and speak to them about it if you have concerns?
Someone just sent me two cards worth 95 points each, 190 total, via certified mail. $3.45 + postage costs, so $3.94 shipping on about a buck fitty worth of points. I don't understand. They could have literally sent them without certified mail, had them get lost in transit and gotten no points for them, and still come out ahead versus certified mail.
I'd like to trade up towards a Judge Force of Will using Pucatrade, but I'm wondering whether that would ever happen. I'm afraid I'd just end up with a ton of points, and no one offering any.
The alternative is to sell on MKM, and just buy it at the end. In that case, you can clearly see how many are available, and cash out if needed. :/
Right now, it doesn't look like there is currently anyone on Pucatrade who has a promo FoW on their want list who actually has enough points. That means if you were to accrue 850k points today, yours would be the only want visible. The second part is to actually have someone part with one, since right now pucatrade there's only 25 of them on haves lists. I've gotten a timetwister and am currently in the talks about a mox pearl, so there's definitely people out there willing to part with high end cards.
I am curious to know how many of those high end cards have been traded outside of the US. It seems to me that being outside the US really hurts your chances of getting these cards.
I can only speak for myself, but the added risk of shipping internationally would certainly be enough to prevent me from shipping high end cards outside the US. It's not that I don't trust international people or that I want to intentionally discriminate, but unfortunately there's just zero incentive to send something internationally if I can instead send it within the US. It's cheaper, safer, and there are more options (cheap insurance) to cover my own butt if something does go wrong. And unfortunately for international people, there's enough demand for most cards within the US that shipping internationally just doesn't make sense. I haven't sent a single card internationally on PucaTrade.
The only issue I've had with Puca is Postage Due. It seems that everyone thinks you can slap a stamp on a PWE and ship anywhere in the US. It is simply not true. Postage is actually $.71 if the envelope is over 2 ounces, or if it is marked Do Not Bend or Non-Machineable, or if the envelope contains something that makes it inflexible (like a hard plastic toploader). Puca's Shipping FAQ is wrong, and most people don't care to actually read the guidelines put out by USPS. I've had many exchanges with people over this. With two exceptions, my last 32 trades have all arrived Postage Due.
Your specific post office is the one screwing you in most of these instances, not the sender. Yes, if it's 2 ounces (which would mean probably 8+ cards) then they need the extra 22 cents on there. One top loader or one card saver type plastic case with 1-4 cards is 100% absolutely machinable and less than 2 ounces though and does NOT need postage beyond 1 49 cent stamp. If this was the case, credit/debit cards would be arriving postage due everywhere too, but they're perfectly fine with their normal metered letter postage rates as well. You've probably got a crusty veteran postal worker at your location that has decided to go rogue by being insanely strict with the rules and charging anyone they can just because they are angry with life and they can reasonably interpret the rules as they do. Regarding the post office, if there's one thing I've learned over the years from shipping tens of thousands of packages all around the world, it's that the specific post office employee(s) you deal with can make a HUGE difference between paying one price vs another and interpreting the rules one way vs another. I live in MN just like you, and down in Shakopee where I live they have no problem shipping my small flat bubble mailers with 4 cards in them worldwide as "non-machinable letters" for $1.36 (or whatever it is now) but in Bloomington they refuse to ship them any way other than the "package" rate, which is $6+.
It completely depends how much value you place on your time. If you want to just be rid of the stuff quickly, give it a good once over and pick out anything with known value and bulk the rest out on eBay. Flat rate boxes are the way to go.
If you don't place much value on your time and you prefer to squeeze every nickel out of it, or maybe you just enjoy trading it and whatnot even if you know it will be time consuming, PucaTrade will likely be your best friend. Even still, you'd have to be ridiculously active on PucaTrade to move any quantity of bulk piece by piece. I think I have the 15th most cards sent on that site and I'm still not at 5,000 cards total sent. 100,000 will take a long, long time. It's your best bet for turning total junk into valuable, usable stuff though.
Setting up a TCGplayer shop would work too, but you're going to have to be pretty organized. It takes a long time to list everything even if you are organized, and it'd be a nightmare if you weren't.
4x common/uncommon sets also sell well on eBay if you have enough of the same set to make some of those.
Hello and welcome back, Lantern of Insight. You are now a $10 card and your foil sister is pretty cute
Ok, wow, what the heck? I'm usually not that surprised by price spikes of certain cards - they are usually seeing a lot of play, slowly being bought up by actual players until a buyout happens. But what the heck happened here? I don't think I've ever seen a card go from being worth a dime to $5+ overnight. I'm not complaining, I probably have 50+ of these things sitting around, but I just don't understand this one. Is this card seeing heavy play? Will the price stick even a little bit?
It'll be fine, relax, they'll either send another box or you'll get a refund from paypal.
Cheers
Uh, not exactly. OP is screwed if the purchase price was less than $250 (which it appears to be) and the tracking shows as delivered. Signature confirmation isn't 60 cents either, it's over 2 bucks. Might have been nice for the seller to add it, but if you really wanted it you should have made sure to have him add it ahead of time. It's not the seller's fault that you live in an apartment complex and your package delivery system isn't secure. Honest sellers get blamed for FAR too much on eBay when most of it is out of their control.
To be bluntly honest, sellers on ebay should do everything in their power to make sure items are securely delivered to whom they are going to. That means insurance on more valuable items, and signature tracking also on more valuable items (and especially to valuable items going to an apartment). Apartments are notorious for having issues with actual packages, as yes, in many cases USPS mail people will just drop them outside the person's door. Some apartment complexes have accommodations for package delivery, but many don't. And I agree, for $15 shipping, signature should have been included in that. I know for myself, anything over a certain dollar amount I ship priority, insured, with signature tracking if its going to an apartment, and I even eat the extra cost for that because its not the buyer's responsibility to get it where its going securely, safely, and in one peace, its the seller's responsibility. That's just my opinion though as someone who tries to provide as high a level of customer service as I can (As I feel all sellers should do).
For the OP, I hope you are able to get the seller to work with you, or get ebay/paypal to help deal with the situation. Good Luck.
The seller did what they needed to get the package successfully delivered to the address it was intended for as proven by the tracking, and their shipping method falls within eBay's accepted rules. How is it possibly their fault that something went awry once AT the apartment building when they couldn't possibly know what the recipient's situation was like? It is absolutely the buyer's responsibility to make sure their package receiving situation is secure, not the seller's. There's absolutely no way the seller could know whether the package was being securely stored in a package locker, in an apartment office, or just dropped off outside someone's door. I don't live in an apartment, but my packages get dropped off outside my front door all the time. Should sellers be responsible if someone steals a package off of my front steps too? I'm all in favor of providing a high level of customer service and doing things the right way, but clearly this seller did. They shipped the package to the address provided and it arrived there. I wouldn't have added signature confirmation either. eBay/PayPal rules state that anything under $250 doesn't require signature confirmation, so that's what I go by. Heck, most of the time the post office completely ignores signature confirmation when I add it to my shipments and just delivers it without ever getting a signature anyway. 99% of the time it's nothing but a wasted $2.35 (or whatever it costs these days).
Your % is nothing but excessive hyperbole. Beyond that, believe it or not, you don't NEED Tarmogoyfs to play a competitive modern deck. I don't understand why people get so hung up on specific cards like this. Go play Tron or Infect or something instead. Better yet, be adventurous and come up with something awesome on your own. If you really, absolutely, positively NEED to play a deck that uses Goyfs for some reason, proxy a set for play testing, shell out the $600 for a set a few days before your tournament, then sell them once you're done using them for exactly the same amount that you paid for them. Hooray, it literally cost you nothing to play Goyfs. I seriously don't see the problem here. And if you don't have $600 to spare for a week or two, you should probably be focusing your financial efforts elsewhere instead of MTG in the first place.
There's so much complaining about how much it costs to play Magic, and yet, it's literally one of the few hobbies that you can invest in, get a bunch of enjoyment out of, and probably sell your collection for MORE than you paid for it down the road if you were smart about where you put your money to begin with.
Anyone complaining about the initial cost of breaking into modern or Magic in general needs to also factor in one thing: There's also a pretty huge chunk of the Magic player base that is less concerned about the initial investment cost of getting the cards and more concerned with knowing that their cards will hold value. I know MANY people who would be far more upset knowing that their cards could all lose their value overnight than they would be upset by spending a little more up front.
Magic isn't just a game. It's a collectible card game. Cards having and maintaining value is a good thing for the health of the game, not the other way around. If you want an example of a CCG done wrong in this regard, look no further than YuGiOh. And as Morphling just said, most of these cards don't start off super crazy either. In the case of many of them, such as Ravager, he's correct in saying that players have quite literally had a decade to grab them if they really wanted them.
If a buyout happens and people start buying cards at the new price, then that IS what they are worth, "ridiculous" or not. You can say that the little graph is "feeding the speculation bubble", but I could just as easily say that the graph is doing nothing more than reporting what's actually happening with the market value of the card. I'll take more information over less information 100% of the time as it pertains to Magic cards.
You might lose out on a few bucks by not relisting it and trying to get more, but I'd argue that if you're the type of person who thinks it's ok to be shady and pull these sorts of shenanigans you've already lost out on a whole lot more than a few bucks.
The problem with NOT putting some sort of note/disclaimer in your profile about wanting only strictly graded NM cards is that people will send you trash and think nothing of it. Most people are players, not collectors, and most players are still fine with receiving very lightly played or NM- cards passed off as NM. There are those of us out there who aren't ok with that though. I'm one of these horrible people with a note in my profile about the condition I'm looking for, but I'm not doing it to be a jerk or to be anal, I'm doing it because it HAS cut down on the amount of played cards I've received and I'm trying to save us both time, hassle, and shipping costs by needing to send them back. When I send cards, I assume others with profile requests are simply doing the same. If you know ahead of time that your recipient likely won't be happy with what you're possibly going to send them, isn't that a good thing so you can simply avoid sending it in the first place? I tried to make the tone of my profile straightforward and not anal, but I'm sure some people still interpret it as the latter. Regardless, PucaTrade has been awesome for me in my quest to finish my NM Legends/Antiquities/Arabian Nights sets, and I'd say 75%+ of the people who have sent me cards have been really awesome about making sure the condition was NM or better and I greatly appreciate that.
Wow, you sound like a delight.
While it's a bit crazy to have a case opened against you after "4 whole days", you can't say that you are going to adhere to PucaTrade rules in one sentence, then get YOUR panties in a bunch when you don't follow those same rules and your trading partner is unhappy about it. Puca rules clearly state that you should be shipping your cards out within 48 hours after initiating the trade. If you can't do that, you probably shouldn't be initiating the trade in the first place. That's not on them, that's on you. I'm pretty sure most reasonable people understand that stuff happens and people have busy schedules. But if someone sends you a message asking about shipping times after 48 hours has passed, you could at least be polite, apologize for the slow shipping, and assure them that the cards will be in the mail soon. 99% of people will simply thank you for the response and move on and it took you a whole 10 seconds to respond.
Or, you could just be a decent human being and try to honor their requests if you're wanting to trade with them. And if you aren't willing to honor their requests, the alternative is also pretty simple: Just don't send them cards and move on. Why go looking for a bad situation when you could instead be that awesome guy who actually did what the person was hoping you'd do, or at the very least maybe open up a dialogue with them and speak to them about it if you have concerns?
I can only speak for myself, but the added risk of shipping internationally would certainly be enough to prevent me from shipping high end cards outside the US. It's not that I don't trust international people or that I want to intentionally discriminate, but unfortunately there's just zero incentive to send something internationally if I can instead send it within the US. It's cheaper, safer, and there are more options (cheap insurance) to cover my own butt if something does go wrong. And unfortunately for international people, there's enough demand for most cards within the US that shipping internationally just doesn't make sense. I haven't sent a single card internationally on PucaTrade.
Your specific post office is the one screwing you in most of these instances, not the sender. Yes, if it's 2 ounces (which would mean probably 8+ cards) then they need the extra 22 cents on there. One top loader or one card saver type plastic case with 1-4 cards is 100% absolutely machinable and less than 2 ounces though and does NOT need postage beyond 1 49 cent stamp. If this was the case, credit/debit cards would be arriving postage due everywhere too, but they're perfectly fine with their normal metered letter postage rates as well. You've probably got a crusty veteran postal worker at your location that has decided to go rogue by being insanely strict with the rules and charging anyone they can just because they are angry with life and they can reasonably interpret the rules as they do. Regarding the post office, if there's one thing I've learned over the years from shipping tens of thousands of packages all around the world, it's that the specific post office employee(s) you deal with can make a HUGE difference between paying one price vs another and interpreting the rules one way vs another. I live in MN just like you, and down in Shakopee where I live they have no problem shipping my small flat bubble mailers with 4 cards in them worldwide as "non-machinable letters" for $1.36 (or whatever it is now) but in Bloomington they refuse to ship them any way other than the "package" rate, which is $6+.
If you don't place much value on your time and you prefer to squeeze every nickel out of it, or maybe you just enjoy trading it and whatnot even if you know it will be time consuming, PucaTrade will likely be your best friend. Even still, you'd have to be ridiculously active on PucaTrade to move any quantity of bulk piece by piece. I think I have the 15th most cards sent on that site and I'm still not at 5,000 cards total sent. 100,000 will take a long, long time. It's your best bet for turning total junk into valuable, usable stuff though.
Setting up a TCGplayer shop would work too, but you're going to have to be pretty organized. It takes a long time to list everything even if you are organized, and it'd be a nightmare if you weren't.
4x common/uncommon sets also sell well on eBay if you have enough of the same set to make some of those.
Ok, wow, what the heck? I'm usually not that surprised by price spikes of certain cards - they are usually seeing a lot of play, slowly being bought up by actual players until a buyout happens. But what the heck happened here? I don't think I've ever seen a card go from being worth a dime to $5+ overnight. I'm not complaining, I probably have 50+ of these things sitting around, but I just don't understand this one. Is this card seeing heavy play? Will the price stick even a little bit?
The seller did what they needed to get the package successfully delivered to the address it was intended for as proven by the tracking, and their shipping method falls within eBay's accepted rules. How is it possibly their fault that something went awry once AT the apartment building when they couldn't possibly know what the recipient's situation was like? It is absolutely the buyer's responsibility to make sure their package receiving situation is secure, not the seller's. There's absolutely no way the seller could know whether the package was being securely stored in a package locker, in an apartment office, or just dropped off outside someone's door. I don't live in an apartment, but my packages get dropped off outside my front door all the time. Should sellers be responsible if someone steals a package off of my front steps too? I'm all in favor of providing a high level of customer service and doing things the right way, but clearly this seller did. They shipped the package to the address provided and it arrived there. I wouldn't have added signature confirmation either. eBay/PayPal rules state that anything under $250 doesn't require signature confirmation, so that's what I go by. Heck, most of the time the post office completely ignores signature confirmation when I add it to my shipments and just delivers it without ever getting a signature anyway. 99% of the time it's nothing but a wasted $2.35 (or whatever it costs these days).