I don’t have a lot of time, I have a deadline to meet for my SCG Column, but I feel like you guys deserve a deeper explanation. Thanks for being willing to discuss this with me in a constructive way.
I’ve given you guys the “hard” side of my trade philosophy and you’ve seen it in action in trade 60 of the Pack to Power series. This naturally brings up questions about how healthy my actions can be for the community.
This begs the question “is this type of trading is bad for the community?” My trade partner could find out that he lost on the trade and he could become “disillusioned” with the game. This is definitely true for new players but not true for players who have been part of the game for a while. Take the guy in trade 60 for example, his name is John.
John and I have actually become pretty good friends; he goes to my local shop. I just played EDH with him last week. He was a big fan of Pack to Power and he was happy to advance me in my quest. We were both shocked by the price of Jitte at the time, I figured $20ish tops. I have a good relationship with the guys at my shop.
I am the most active trader at my shop; the guys know that I bust their balls in regards to pricing and they give me crap for being a “greedy bastard”. They even use my name as pseudonym for trying to get value in a trade. There is plenty of truth to their jabs but it’s all in good fun. They know that they can get what they need from me and that I will do whatever it takes to help them meet their deck building goals.
As far as new players go, I don’t try to gain value on them. I am happy to give them free cards or spend time explaining the finer points of the game. I love Magic and I love the Magic community, it would be foolish for me to do things that would hurt the game. Even from a sheer business perspective, it’s better to keep people happy and keep people playing the game. It’s also important to keep people coming back to me for trades. If I piss everyone off then how will I make profit from trading?
There is a delicate balance in all this. I have my trade philosophies, but I am not willing to compromise the community for them. Sometimes I need to administer grace in certain situations. I’ve allowed people to go back on trades, given people more cards after the trade was finalized to make them happy, given people free cards (I’ve given out at least 8 Jace, TMS on twitter over the last year, for free) – I don’t like talking about these things because it can be misinterpreted as “medina trying to cover his back” but it’s the truth and without the truth you don’t get a full picture of how I do business.
Anyways, All I am trying to say is that there is more to me and how I do business than trade #60 and I encourage you to try to get to know me better (you can do this by following me on twitter). I’ve talked about alot of this in my writing and one particular article comes to mind. If you have time, give it a look.
I still have to go to work every day, so even with the schedule, I wouldn't be able to follow you around and enlighten your trade partners.
I think the biggest problem with your series and your ethics when it comes to trading is that you willingly and knowingly rip people off. Not only that, but then you basically brag about it in your articles.
Trading a $15 dollar card for a $20 dollar card and not saying anything about the price difference is one thing, but taking a guy for nearly $50 bucks? That's a little ridiculous. Why didn't you speak up there? I mean, I know it's your goal in the trades to come out ahead, but even you gotta see the obvious advantage you had over this guy. Seriously, why didn't you say to the guy, "Pick out a couple more, I got you by like $40 dollars here." I agree that the information is out there and he should have taken the time to know what his cards were worth, but it's obvious that he had no idea. I think as a trader and even a savvy card shark like yourself, it's then your job to educate that person instead of using his lack of knowledge to your advantage. That's when it starts to become a shady business.
I goto work every day. I've worked a job since I was 16 years old, sometimes two.
As far as trading goes, my philosophy is very simple. It's based on 3 pillars of truth.
1) The value of a card is relative, meaning that a cards "worth" is measured differently by different people. Rather than try to be a reader of minds, I simply ask my trade partner's what they value the card at. Sometimes they use money to measure it, sometimes they simply line it up against other cards and sometimes they'll take a slice of pizza for it.
This is where people really misunderstand what I do. If someone asks me to value a card, I simply tell them what I am willing to pay. If they ask me the market value, I will tell them to the best of my knowledge what it is. Sometimes they accept, sometimes they reject my pricing and sometimes they counter. All of these responses are OK. Which leads me to truth number two.
2) No one is forcing anyone to trade. People have the ability to say "no" - they should exercise that ability if they are not OK with the trade. If they are OK with the trade then my relative value has matched their relative value and all things are in sync in the universe. If they are concerned with monetary value more than relative value then I expect them to know what cards are worth monetarily, thats three.
3) There is no reason for someone to lose money on a trade if they truly don't want to. Do your homework, don't expect me to do it for you (the collective). If you know that you are not knowledgeable in pricing and you don't want to lose value in trades, then don't trade.
It's pretty presumptuous to say, "I don't want to learn pricing (if you wanted to learn you would). I'm going to trade anyway and if you don't make sure that I'm getting a deal then you're a douche!"
Trading is not a requirement. My trade binder is not something that you automatically (the collective) have a right to. It's a service that I provide. I allow players to use their cards as currency, and there is an exchange rate for that service.
Great. But for me, even when my trading partner doesn't bring his/her knowledge (or obviously doesn't have enough) I'll enlighten them... even at the cost of the trade if need-be.
Like I said before, 95% or more of your trades would've happened exactly the same way, regardless. But for those 5% that didn't know what kind of trade-savvy shark they were swimming with, a little honesty would've both educated them, and increased the integrity of the trading community as a whole. And as you said, education about the process of trading was a benefit of the project itself. There's no reason that education couldn't take place during the process, rather than as a result of the project.
Like you said, we're all part of the MTG "brotherhood" of sorts. I have an equal desire to A) see your project be a success, and B) defend the level of trading professionalism I extend to my trading partners. That's all.
A) The project was a huge success, I did get there, thanks to my trade partners.
B) I understand what you are saying about letting people know, but anyone who is familiar with my work via SCG, ManaNation or Twitter, knows that I never withhold financial information from people when asked.
If someone asks me a question at the trade table I answer it honestly and to the best of my ability.
I spend hours every week- producing articles with the latest card trends (see below), doing Podcasts where I comment on the topics of MTG Finance, and updating my Twitter following on what cards to pick up and which ones to ship.
My approach is this. I spend all this time weekly giving the information out, so when I hit the trade tables, you guys are on your own. I am a reasonable and polite trader and I'm always willing to work with my trade partner. All my partner has to do is bring his / her knowledge.
I think it's cool that when this is all over, you can say that you turned a booster pack into a mox. I really do.
But for me, I'd like to add the caveat that I did it with all trading parties being satisfied with the trades along the way.
That would be important to me. It may take a little longer, but it's something I'd take pride in.
You make a strong point.
To be fair, I haven't read any comments from any of my trade partners that showed dissatisfaction with a P2P Trade.
There was only one comment that could even be considered and it was because the price was not available so I posted the more expensive English version price, to which they responded "Wow, I didn't know X card was worth that much." I clarified about the price difference between English and the other language.
Bro, that just makes it look like you think everyone is stupid.
you could have given the same information out, about looking out for bad traders, without being an unfair trader yourself. if you really wanted to inform readers about this unfair process.
NO!! i dont agree with you jmendina, you inspire in others, hateful thoughts.
it is wrong to advocate personal greed, and taking advantage of other people.
you spend your whole life trying to rort magic trades.
you do not help make ppl "Savvy" as you say, you encourage ppl to rip off other players, as though it were the prime importance of playing magic.
learn what "Good Sportmanship" and the word "Honesty" means
also, dont try to treat me like a naive idiot, jmendina, you are as easy to read as book. you do not "inform" players, you gloat over ripping ppl off..
i can easily tell the diffence,
also if your ever in Australia at a PTQ, i would *love* to catch up with you in person, i take great offence from attitudes like yours
Ponder
I've received countless emails about people that I have educated or inspired through my writing. The truth is self-evident here.
As for thinking people are stupid, I don't think that the lack of knowledge in some area of magic, makes a person "stupid". I know that some people don't understand the finance side of magic (maybe thats not you, this is ok), I bring something of value to those people.
It sounds like my writing is not for you, and I'm OK with that.
I promote education. I encourage people to educate themselves and use that knowledge to gain value via buying, selling and trading Magic cards, nothing more.
I know there are trading sharks out there. I've traded to my advantage multiple times before. But in all cases, I make sure the people I'm trading with are aware of the value of the cards.
I don't have a problem with trying to turn a booster pack into a black lotus. It's pretty cool, actually.
But when you start discussing how you hope the little kid you just ripped off doesn't find out how much you really value the cards you just traded for ...or when a trader's undervaluing of a card makes "cash register noises" run through your head... that becomes a different matter entirely.
I'm all for: Help me with my pack to power quest! I want to make lots of incrementally advantageous trades until I have power! So long as the people you're trading with know that they're getting the short end of the stick. Even if it's only a little at a time.
For example. If you wanted to trade me $90 worth of Lords of the Pit, I'll give you $100 in trade for 'em. I collect pit lords, and it's a fun and interesting trade that I'm down with. I know I'm getting the raw end of the deal, but I'm fine with it. I doubt you could say the same for the small business owner who unloaded his Jitte for $12, or the little kid who had his Linvella ripped for a Temple Bell and a Sundering Titan.
But hey bro, that's just me.
I am defending the content as a whole. The Pack to Power series is educational and entertaining (for most).
The things like "cash register noise" and such were added for entertainment value. I never intended on selling the cards so to take the phase "cash register sounds" literally is a little off base.
What I want to avoid doing here is defending every individual trade (there's alot), if we put this in terms of relative value then these trades make more sense. I also want to point out that I was not allow to trade with children. All the people that I traded with were High School age or above. They were competent individuals who always have the option to say "no" or check their smartphones, friends or computers for pricing data.
When someone choses not to do this, they put themselves at risk to lose value in a trade. This says one of two things to me:
1) They don't care about monetary value.
2) They are too lazy to get the data that they need. (Not my problem.)
I often take losses on trades when trading for something that I need or want. I allow others to do the same.
I don't expect me being here or anything I say to change your mind about the series but I figured I would add my .02 for people who have the same questions/ reactions that you do.
This is fair. I don't dislike you as a person. I don't know you.
But I know all I need to know about "Pack to Power" to understand completely that it's something I fundamentally disagree with. That's all.
This is fair, but let me ask a question.
Do you think that raw nature of Pack to Power helped or hurt the readers?
Here's a perspective to ponder. As a reader, you get to glance into the mind of a trader, you get to see the tactics that use to gain value, you get an uncensored look at the thought process behind each deal that was made.
If I kept quiet and didn't write this series would the readers of Pack to Power be as savvy as they are today?
this raises a bit of a quandary. it's one thing when we're discussing him as a magic subject, it's another when he actually shows up. does expressing strong opinions about a magic writer become flaming when that writer is on the forum with you? is there a certain level of fame where you're exempt from those kind of concerns (i wouldn't hesitate to call tom cruise a loony nutjob, for example)? are "bloodsucking," "scum," and "dirtbag" flaming or are they just objective descriptors in this case?
he seems to be taking it well, in any case. so i guess we don't have to worry about it too much. i'd stay away from that trade thread, though.
I really don't mind threads like this. I get flamed in my own article comments, some weeks so I'm pretty used to it.
I know that some people don't "like" me or respect what I do and I'm OK with that. Your opinion (the collective, not you personally) of me doesn't change my perception of you (again, the collective). The one thing that we all have in common is that we love this game, it's a big part of all of our lives. I try to focus on that and view you guys as "brother's in arms" under the banner of MTG. Instead of trying to figure out which of you guys are douche bags and which are not.
Admittedly I have it easy, because I don't have a blueprint of your thoughts (in written form) to pick apart and pass judgement on. Instead, I can blissfully believe that all of you are good-hearted / well-meaning gamers. You on the other hand, have my written body of work to "judge" me by and It's understandable that some of you have come to the conclusions that you have. It would be silly for me to fight these conclusions or try to disprove them. I know that your "judgment" of me is incomplete because you don't know me personally and it's silly for me to expect any of you to go through the trouble.
At the end of the day, I dont hold any ill-will toward any of you guys.
Anyways, enough of this serious talk. Who wants to trade?
Wow. I'd love to be the guy that's watching the trade and then tells the guy getting ripped off just how badly he's getting ripped off right before he agrees to the trade. As a matter of fact, if I were independently wealthy and didn't have to spend my time earning a paycheck, I'd now love to make it my current mission in life to just follow Medina around at tournaments and conventions and be honest to his partners. That might ruin his current article series, but it'd make the Magic scene a better place with one less douche running around.
I can post my tournament schedule if you like. Then you can fulfill your purpose in life.
Forces aren't 60, they're 40 for nice ones. I don't think they'll go down, even if/when they print a Judge Foil.
Bidding Wars can't be used to calculate average prices, and neither can BIN's. You should be using median prices instead of average prices, people. It's just simple statistics. Having had bidding wars several times on Ebay for Beta duals, I know it happens. There are multiple people looking/wanting the same card, and sometimes you have to have that copy. Sometimes I've gone $40 over what I wanted to pay because I wanted THAT copy, since I either need it for a set and it's nice, or I just want a NM copy. Sometimes, the other person wants it more, but you have to think about the *usual* price.
-Matt
How many are you selling for $40? Ill buy them all.
AMEN!
I don’t have a lot of time, I have a deadline to meet for my SCG Column, but I feel like you guys deserve a deeper explanation. Thanks for being willing to discuss this with me in a constructive way.
I’ve given you guys the “hard” side of my trade philosophy and you’ve seen it in action in trade 60 of the Pack to Power series. This naturally brings up questions about how healthy my actions can be for the community.
This begs the question “is this type of trading is bad for the community?” My trade partner could find out that he lost on the trade and he could become “disillusioned” with the game. This is definitely true for new players but not true for players who have been part of the game for a while. Take the guy in trade 60 for example, his name is John.
John and I have actually become pretty good friends; he goes to my local shop. I just played EDH with him last week. He was a big fan of Pack to Power and he was happy to advance me in my quest. We were both shocked by the price of Jitte at the time, I figured $20ish tops. I have a good relationship with the guys at my shop.
I am the most active trader at my shop; the guys know that I bust their balls in regards to pricing and they give me crap for being a “greedy bastard”. They even use my name as pseudonym for trying to get value in a trade. There is plenty of truth to their jabs but it’s all in good fun. They know that they can get what they need from me and that I will do whatever it takes to help them meet their deck building goals.
As far as new players go, I don’t try to gain value on them. I am happy to give them free cards or spend time explaining the finer points of the game. I love Magic and I love the Magic community, it would be foolish for me to do things that would hurt the game. Even from a sheer business perspective, it’s better to keep people happy and keep people playing the game. It’s also important to keep people coming back to me for trades. If I piss everyone off then how will I make profit from trading?
There is a delicate balance in all this. I have my trade philosophies, but I am not willing to compromise the community for them. Sometimes I need to administer grace in certain situations. I’ve allowed people to go back on trades, given people more cards after the trade was finalized to make them happy, given people free cards (I’ve given out at least 8 Jace, TMS on twitter over the last year, for free) – I don’t like talking about these things because it can be misinterpreted as “medina trying to cover his back” but it’s the truth and without the truth you don’t get a full picture of how I do business.
Anyways, All I am trying to say is that there is more to me and how I do business than trade #60 and I encourage you to try to get to know me better (you can do this by following me on twitter). I’ve talked about alot of this in my writing and one particular article comes to mind. If you have time, give it a look.
http://mtgmetagame.com/the-myth-of-ripping-people-off-tricks-of-the-trade/
I goto work every day. I've worked a job since I was 16 years old, sometimes two.
As far as trading goes, my philosophy is very simple. It's based on 3 pillars of truth.
1) The value of a card is relative, meaning that a cards "worth" is measured differently by different people. Rather than try to be a reader of minds, I simply ask my trade partner's what they value the card at. Sometimes they use money to measure it, sometimes they simply line it up against other cards and sometimes they'll take a slice of pizza for it.
This is where people really misunderstand what I do. If someone asks me to value a card, I simply tell them what I am willing to pay. If they ask me the market value, I will tell them to the best of my knowledge what it is. Sometimes they accept, sometimes they reject my pricing and sometimes they counter. All of these responses are OK. Which leads me to truth number two.
2) No one is forcing anyone to trade. People have the ability to say "no" - they should exercise that ability if they are not OK with the trade. If they are OK with the trade then my relative value has matched their relative value and all things are in sync in the universe. If they are concerned with monetary value more than relative value then I expect them to know what cards are worth monetarily, thats three.
3) There is no reason for someone to lose money on a trade if they truly don't want to. Do your homework, don't expect me to do it for you (the collective). If you know that you are not knowledgeable in pricing and you don't want to lose value in trades, then don't trade.
It's pretty presumptuous to say, "I don't want to learn pricing (if you wanted to learn you would). I'm going to trade anyway and if you don't make sure that I'm getting a deal then you're a douche!"
Trading is not a requirement. My trade binder is not something that you automatically (the collective) have a right to. It's a service that I provide. I allow players to use their cards as currency, and there is an exchange rate for that service.
I hope that give more perspective on my stance.
Agreed
A) The project was a huge success, I did get there, thanks to my trade partners.
B) I understand what you are saying about letting people know, but anyone who is familiar with my work via SCG, ManaNation or Twitter, knows that I never withhold financial information from people when asked.
If someone asks me a question at the trade table I answer it honestly and to the best of my ability.
I spend hours every week- producing articles with the latest card trends (see below), doing Podcasts where I comment on the topics of MTG Finance, and updating my Twitter following on what cards to pick up and which ones to ship.
My approach is this. I spend all this time weekly giving the information out, so when I hit the trade tables, you guys are on your own. I am a reasonable and polite trader and I'm always willing to work with my trade partner. All my partner has to do is bring his / her knowledge.
You make a strong point.
To be fair, I haven't read any comments from any of my trade partners that showed dissatisfaction with a P2P Trade.
There was only one comment that could even be considered and it was because the price was not available so I posted the more expensive English version price, to which they responded "Wow, I didn't know X card was worth that much." I clarified about the price difference between English and the other language.
I agree with this.
I've received countless emails about people that I have educated or inspired through my writing. The truth is self-evident here.
As for thinking people are stupid, I don't think that the lack of knowledge in some area of magic, makes a person "stupid". I know that some people don't understand the finance side of magic (maybe thats not you, this is ok), I bring something of value to those people.
It sounds like my writing is not for you, and I'm OK with that.
I promote education. I encourage people to educate themselves and use that knowledge to gain value via buying, selling and trading Magic cards, nothing more.
I am defending the content as a whole. The Pack to Power series is educational and entertaining (for most).
The things like "cash register noise" and such were added for entertainment value. I never intended on selling the cards so to take the phase "cash register sounds" literally is a little off base.
What I want to avoid doing here is defending every individual trade (there's alot), if we put this in terms of relative value then these trades make more sense. I also want to point out that I was not allow to trade with children. All the people that I traded with were High School age or above. They were competent individuals who always have the option to say "no" or check their smartphones, friends or computers for pricing data.
When someone choses not to do this, they put themselves at risk to lose value in a trade. This says one of two things to me:
1) They don't care about monetary value.
2) They are too lazy to get the data that they need. (Not my problem.)
I often take losses on trades when trading for something that I need or want. I allow others to do the same.
I don't expect me being here or anything I say to change your mind about the series but I figured I would add my .02 for people who have the same questions/ reactions that you do.
This is fair, but let me ask a question.
Do you think that raw nature of Pack to Power helped or hurt the readers?
Here's a perspective to ponder. As a reader, you get to glance into the mind of a trader, you get to see the tactics that use to gain value, you get an uncensored look at the thought process behind each deal that was made.
If I kept quiet and didn't write this series would the readers of Pack to Power be as savvy as they are today?
I really don't mind threads like this. I get flamed in my own article comments, some weeks so I'm pretty used to it.
I know that some people don't "like" me or respect what I do and I'm OK with that. Your opinion (the collective, not you personally) of me doesn't change my perception of you (again, the collective). The one thing that we all have in common is that we love this game, it's a big part of all of our lives. I try to focus on that and view you guys as "brother's in arms" under the banner of MTG. Instead of trying to figure out which of you guys are douche bags and which are not.
Admittedly I have it easy, because I don't have a blueprint of your thoughts (in written form) to pick apart and pass judgement on. Instead, I can blissfully believe that all of you are good-hearted / well-meaning gamers. You on the other hand, have my written body of work to "judge" me by and It's understandable that some of you have come to the conclusions that you have. It would be silly for me to fight these conclusions or try to disprove them. I know that your "judgment" of me is incomplete because you don't know me personally and it's silly for me to expect any of you to go through the trouble.
At the end of the day, I dont hold any ill-will toward any of you guys.
Anyways, enough of this serious talk. Who wants to trade?
lol
One of my Twitter followers was kind enough to point it out in an email.
It gave me something to read over my afternoon coffee, pretty entertaining stuff here.
That link was not current, I will be changing thread again in a week but if you just cant wait to trade with me, you can do it here:
http://www.magictraders.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/236000.html
Or you can just hang out there and tell people prices if you want.
It's Jonathan Medina, for future reference.
I can post my tournament schedule if you like. Then you can fulfill your purpose in life.
How many are you selling for $40? Ill buy them all.
Control V Control is always annoying. lol
It just comes down to who sticks a Jace. If you can stick a BSA then you have clear skys to swing through.
I built a deck that destroys Jund - Here is the story and card choice explanation. For those who are just interested in the list here it is:
4 Ethersworn Canonist
4 Lodestone Golem
4 Baneslayer Angel
Spells
4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Hindering Light
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Celestial Purge
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 Day of Judgment
1 Martial Coup
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Tectonic Edge
3 Island
5 Plains
4 Kor Firewalker
4 Negate
2 Luminarch Ascension
2 Pithing Needle
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
2 Journey To Nowhere
I want to do some testing with Flashfreeze over pithing needle in the SB. It would be good to counter a Ruinblaster or Slime after board.
Calcite Snapper is also a candidate for inclusion. This has annihilated Jund in testing. Let me know what you think.