The Myth(ic) of Unobtainable Cards

First of all, I want you all to know that this is going to be my last post on Otherworldly Journey. I won't be deleting it in case I decide to fire it back up someday, but after this post you can find my writing on http://iwantmymtg.com So, Trick, you can add this blog to the "Dead Blogs" list (after you add this post to TWIM hahaha).

There has been a lot of talk in the last 24 hours about Mythics, and Lauren Lee correctly predicted the slew of blog posts that would follow such a discussion. Are they too expensive? Do they create too high of a barrier to entry for Standard?

Let's play the priest for a second, and marry this discussion to Jon Medina's recent articles about trading. (You can find those on his own site, mtgmetagame.com and on quietspeculation.com

(Lauren and Jon, I now pronounce you man and wife? Awkwaaaard.....)

Well I'm here today to tell all of you that you can have any card you want.

Want to guess how much money I make currently?

Take a guess...
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...about $60.

Seriously. Want to guess how much of that money I spend on Magic cards?
I'll spare you the scroll down and just tell you: $0.

I'm a smoker. I need that $25 a week for cigarettes, and another $15 or so for the bus. I spend $6 to enter FNM every week.

To be fair, I have no bills to speak of. I steal my internet from my neighbor, and hate cell phones. I live in my mom's friggin attic, which sucks, but allows me to play as much Magic as I want. Also, I sell cards to online dealers on occasion to make a little extra cash.

Want to guess which deck I play? Mythic Bant. Not just Mythic Bant, but Mythic Bant with 4 Elspeths. I keep thinking I should call it "NY Yankees" because of all the high $$$ cards in the deck. I'm gonna buy the damn championship!

How can I play such an expensive deck? I RIP OFF 12 YEAR OLD NOOBS OF COURSE!

Kidding.

I can't remember many specifics, but I have some general advice to give anyone who wants to run money cards but doesn't want to spend money to get those cards. (My apologies to Jon if I am rehashing any of his points from his trading blog posts, but these points just can't be emphasized enough. Seriously folks, read the posts of his that I linked at the top of this entry, they are vital reading.)

1) Trade up - Seriously, this is so easy once you get the hang of it. If you can trade 4 fetch lands for 2 Maelstrom Pulses, you can probably trade the 2 Pulses and another Fetch for a Jace. This is a high end version of this tactic. The best kind of trades are the ones where you can get a $10 card for 10 $1 cards. People do these trades every single day, and both parties are completely happy to do them.

2) Get your binder in order! - Here's my MINIMUM recommendation (and how I sort mine): Sort your Standard trade fodder in the front of your binder, with you Extended/Legacy/Etc. (is Vintage really still a format?) behind it. Sort both sections W/U/B/R/G/Multi/ART/Land. I don't really feel it is necessary to sort these Color sections by set, but if you have a ton of stuff from each set, then sure. It's all about presentation, remember. We're all salesmen on the trading floor, and if it looks like you have a thin binder, people will assume it's been picked over already.

Here's where I stray from J. Medina's reasoning a little bit. Keep a section of your binder (or a separate binder) for "non-trade" stuff. Non-trade doesn't mean NEVER for trade. What that means is that if someone doesn't have anything you REALLY need, don't even show them that section. Save this section for your playsets of cards you are hesitant to let go, but will pull the trigger on if the right deal comes along. Also, this is a section to put newly acquired cards in. When I show someone that section, I tell them to feel free to ask about anything back there, but to not be surprised if I say no to everything they ask about. I only show that section off if someone has a card I REALLY need. Giving them the warning that you have veto power over that section allows you to have maximum control over what you are letting go of for what you need, and gives you multiple paths to take in a trade. For example, if someone has card X I need, and points to cards A, B, and C in my "non-trade" section, I can say no to all 3, but then decide which I would miss the least for the card I badly need.

3) There are Timmys EVERYWHERE - If you are looking for chase cards, Timmys are the way to go. My friend Gary STILL isn't convinced that Jace TMS is a good card. Gary is definitely more of a Spike than most Timmys, because HIS rogue decks win sometimes, but he seems to be repelled by the more expensive cards from most sets. A lot of players are the same way. They see the $60 card that they pulled from a pack as the only one they will ever wind up owning, and figure that trading it away for $60 worth of playsets that they can use in their decks is the way to go. Find 4 people like this, and you have your playset.

4) Don't be afraid to pull the trigger on a deal in your favor - I know some people look at J. Medina's blog posts as a journal of him ripping people off. Some people HATE foils. Some people will trade their foils away in a heartbeat for more useful cards. Also, LOTS of people don't have any idea how much their cards are worth! I have watched, dumbfounded, as people have traded a Baneslayer for 2 Banefires! (This was back when BSA was $25, true, but STILL!)

I would probably see trading differently if I wasn't the person being ripped off in trades for 14 years.

For YEARS AND YEARS I was the person who had no idea how much my cards were worth. I was a pure Timmy, and I only wanted the big, fun cards that I liked to play with (mostly monogreen cards, and mill). I remember trading Abeyance when it was probably $20 for next to nothing because I thought it was "stupid." The people who agreed to these trades are not bad people. I look back at those times as a lesson to be learned, and trade karma to now attempt to swing back into my favor.

With the dawn of on demand pricing thanks to smart phones, and simply the ability to track any card's price online using any number of sites for reference, there is no excuse for people to not know what their cards are worth. Never lie to someone about card values, but if someone never asks they clearly don't care. Everyone has their own scale. Some people use Ebay, some people use findmagiccards.com price averages, some people use Starcitygames.com prices, and some people just don't use prices at all. If your trading partner is ok with a trade the trade is never a rip off. I can't look back and think I was being ripped off in any of the bad trades I made, because I said "ok" to every single one of them. Otherwise it would have been theft and not trading.

So anyway, I am getting a little tired of writing this. My point has hopefully been made. You can honestly get any card that you want. You just have to want it bad enough, and patiently jump through as many hoops as you have to in order to obtain it. Trades chain together, and they shouldn't be looked at individually. Also, remember you can always say "no" to any trade you want. Looking through someone's binder doesn't make you obligated to trade with that person. The surefire warning signs are when the person you are trading with values everything they want from you lower than you do, and everything you want from them higher than you do. I just close my binder, say, "no thanks, but thanks for looking anyway!" and walk away. That is your right.

Anyway, thanks for reading Otherworldly Journey. You can now find me over at http://iwantmymtg.com since it's a much better name. Our podcast is also available there. Maybe this blog will be back someday.

Bigheadjoe