But was your store online or was it a local store? The margins for people like me are very small since I have to deal in large volume and pay more to keep cards in stock.
This is a great topic to talk about, for paper and for MTGO. I owned a store for 8+ years, so I do have some persceptive on it. One of the catch-22s in this, especially for paper, is that nine times out of ten the speculators can also be your biggest customers. You REALLY dont want to upset these guys, they can be the ones who end up paying your bills. It is great to make sure you have the cards in stock when customers have them, but making sure you have a couple $2 cards for people it a lot different than making sure the guy who spends $1k a month stays happy. Something you have to balance.
p3p2 is incorrect as well. Axe is just way too slow for draft; admittedly, this is a slow format, but that means more that you're doing powerful things on turns 3 and 4-- too powerful to put your eggs in one basket by playing and equipping a Warlord's Axe-- assuming you even had a 2-drop. If you didn't play a significant creature until turn 3, you're equipping up for... what... a 6/3 or 5/3 on turn 5? It's a real rough tempo swing to lose or bounce a creature with that much mana invested, and there are enough Aether Adepts and spot removal that Warlord's Axe just doesn't get it done.
Plummet is maindeckable.
Rating this article highly for good introspection on a 1-2 deck. Tired of reading write-ups where people get 7th pick Blinding Mages and hold 'em up as something we can all learn from.
but this is assuming that a dealer's entire inventory is always on sale, and that they never hold anything back. I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I would be very surprised if it were. Can you shed some light on this, Heath?
I know some paper dealers, and their entire stock is never on sale. They always hold some big movers/power cards back so that they have some to sell in case there is a run on the card/major price increase. Which is fine, but that is also speculation.
It's basically looked down upon and your order will get cancelled. Also dealers know not to use coupons etc at other dealers websites. What is ok is to do your restocking on another website or if you oversell. I have plenty of dealers that do that on my site and it is a win/win for both of us.
Also just a reminder that most of the speculation I'm talking about is paper cards since this situation happened to my retail store. A lot of the same points can also be applied to MTGO though.
There is a big difference. When dealers, such as MTGOtraders, hold cards they are still available to the community. That inventory is available for purchase at any time. When speculators hold cards the cards are not available to purchase and removed from the community until the price reaches a point where the speculator wants to sell. Only then are they again available.
I didn't know about the max 8 purchase rule because I don't ever buy more than a playset. I like that a lot, I'm sure it helps me find the cards I want to buy. Thanks.
Very interesting topic. I can see both sides of being a speculator and a dealer. Since I don't know the details on running a store, nor am I a speculator, I will add only one comment. It seems that both could be considered legitement arguements and ways of doing business. I guess it depends on whos shoes you are in.
I assume that shopping up the price scenario will be minimized by the fact legal lists are fixed every quarter - (perhaps every year).
likey
spoils of the vault
Necropotence
Mirari
zuran orb
warped devotion
rootbound crag
endless whispers
animal magnetism
greater good
through the breach
proteus staff
hypergenisis
Yes this makes sense of course but when you offer your entire stock to the world then you will be putting pressure on the number of cards you can keep in stock for your shop customers as you customer base is nearly infinite via the world wide web.
I'm thrilled that you're considering giving the format a shot. For your scenario all I can say is: "Fear is always with us."
If it gets to the point that people are working that hard to skew things I suppose I'll just have to throw up my hands and say: "Heirloom is a smashing success!"
(and if the PRE organizer/s figures out what happened and who did it I'm sure those players can be uninvited from that event)
and I'm totally with you on that. Dealers perform a very valuable function to pretty much everyone. I was just pointing out how silly it is for people to get up in arms when some random guy is holding 20 copies of a card (which is not enough to make any difference in the price of the card), but not care at all when cardbot has 100 copies.
Heath is trying to keep cards in stock so that he can keep his regular customers happy. Ultimately, it's the regular customers that are going to keep him in business and not speculation purchases. Therefore his actions seem perfectly reasonably to me.
Speculation is only harmful when dealing with necessary goods. TCG cards are fully a luxury item, thus this is captitalism at play. They (the speculators) take the risk, and can reap the rewards if correct.
Also, in this day and age, the internet has widened the supply side such that brick-and-mortar stores have already adapted to its presence. The shrill cry of "whatever will happen to my store" has been beaten down by Star City Games, Ebay, et. al. - everything else is just whining.
I agree, BUT, one could make an agruement for the millions of reasons that speculators do what they do. Feed their family, pay for college, pay their bills, etc. Bad ones can be made too. Wow, $73 bucks! I closed 2 years ago, and we were right at $65per, but we did buy about 4 pallets worth of product for each new set. quick question too, what about another dealer that speculates and buys from other dealers?
I see it as a challenge, and if I find the time to try it, I probably will. Time is the issue, though, as I don't have the time to play all the Magic I want to play.
A potential problem comes to mind though:
Knowing how dirty deeds tend to find their way into anything competitive (at least when value is involved), here's a scenario.
As Heirloom events happen, some stronger archtypes become apparent. Let's say there's 5 or 6 popular, successful archtypes, and a handful of second tiers ones. Three or four of the suuccessful ones use a couple of the same commons. My clans spends several dollars at the mtgotraders to deplete them of their stock of those commons. This might bump the price to be illegal*, thus removing some popluar arcthtypes from the format for the next month. My clan comes up with a deck that works when the other popular ones are gone from the format, and we falsley dominate an event**
Okay spending several dollars might deplete any possible gain in value, but my point is that IT'S POSSIBLE.
* buying out stock DOES affect prices, as illustrated by a recent transaction of mine. I was buying 3 copies of a M10 rare for $1 each. After my transaction, the store only had M11 copies of that rare left, and they went for more than a dollar.
** Anyone that knows me or my clan realizes that dominating an event is not something we ever do. However, my scenario is valid :)
There are a few major differences. Dealers try to hold all cards and keep everything in stock to serve players. Dealers also host FNM's and other magic tournaments that support the game and have to pay rent, bills, etc associated with running a business. A speculator has nothing to lose and if he "goes out of business" it effects nobody. If a dealer with a brick and mortar store goes out of business it effects all the local players associated with that business.
Also the 50%-70% is a bit high. Our current margins are in the 20% range. Boxes cost around 73 bucks now for dealers also.
I think another important thing to remember is that dealers are speculators too. They buy cards from players at 50%-70% of their current market prices and hope to resell them at a higher price in the future. When a card goes from .05 to 2.00 online there really is not much of a difference to the market between a speculator holding 20 copies of the card and a dealer holding 20 (or more likely many more) copies of the card in inventory. So if we are not mad about dealers holding more than 8x copies of a card (and I assume we are not as I personally love dealers) it makes no logical sense to get mad about a speculator doing the exact same thing as there is no real difference between the two.
I dont have a side to either, but I will say this; you did previously price the cards at a price point that you were happy with and, I assume, were making money on them. Back when I had a store and Betrayers came out, I had a stack of Jittes marked at $4 per. Then the weekend hit of the tournament when everyone realized just how good they were. I was more than happy to sell out to the "speculator" that got them first, I had $2 per into each. I adjusted my buy price to the current demand and went on. From the consumer side, could they not argue as to why when something is "hot" why does the dealer have to make more money on it? For example, when Star City pre-sells a box, usuallly $89 I believe, if it is hot, they jack the price up, even though they are still paying $65 per box and dont have them in stock yet. Should the buyer be angry? Kind of like these cards, you had $x into them, were happy to sell them at $y, but someone got the jump, you still make $z profit, but were unhappy that is wasnt $zx10(I just picked a number here). Now in your arguement, do you limit the amount that someone can buy and still sell the product at $y? No, you will raise the price to what the market will bear and sell it at the same price the speculator does. Either way, the consumer will still pay the same price, just who holds the profit at the end is different.
I agree with you Heath as you have a community and a "real" shop rather than being a purely online dealer. Which means your community should come first before "online" buyers if you see what I mean.
At the end of the day it all depends on what you want from your business and how you run it. I have the same view point as you where I would rather sell to 8 happy customers than one speculator any day of the week.
I will try to have a list up somewhere by next article's publishing (hopefully next week).
Channel is banned because it has only been printed in a premium set(and maybe a promo?) It would have to be released in a main set like MED, an expansion or base set to be considered based on its price. (it's not even considered a mythic for Heirloom since premium and premade decks do not establish rarity for Heirloom.
Why should dealers who choose to limit to 8x be looked down upon? I agree with what your saying flippers but at the same time if a dealer wants to run his busines a certain way he should have that right. I would rather sell 32x cards to 8 happy customers instead of have 1 happy speculator that is able to turn my singles back on ebay.
This is a great topic to talk about, for paper and for MTGO. I owned a store for 8+ years, so I do have some persceptive on it. One of the catch-22s in this, especially for paper, is that nine times out of ten the speculators can also be your biggest customers. You REALLY dont want to upset these guys, they can be the ones who end up paying your bills. It is great to make sure you have the cards in stock when customers have them, but making sure you have a couple $2 cards for people it a lot different than making sure the guy who spends $1k a month stays happy. Something you have to balance.
p3p2 is incorrect as well. Axe is just way too slow for draft; admittedly, this is a slow format, but that means more that you're doing powerful things on turns 3 and 4-- too powerful to put your eggs in one basket by playing and equipping a Warlord's Axe-- assuming you even had a 2-drop. If you didn't play a significant creature until turn 3, you're equipping up for... what... a 6/3 or 5/3 on turn 5? It's a real rough tempo swing to lose or bounce a creature with that much mana invested, and there are enough Aether Adepts and spot removal that Warlord's Axe just doesn't get it done.
Plummet is maindeckable.
Rating this article highly for good introspection on a 1-2 deck. Tired of reading write-ups where people get 7th pick Blinding Mages and hold 'em up as something we can all learn from.
but this is assuming that a dealer's entire inventory is always on sale, and that they never hold anything back. I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but I would be very surprised if it were. Can you shed some light on this, Heath?
I know some paper dealers, and their entire stock is never on sale. They always hold some big movers/power cards back so that they have some to sell in case there is a run on the card/major price increase. Which is fine, but that is also speculation.
There is a big difference. When dealers, such as MTGOtraders, hold cards they are still available to the community. That inventory is available for purchase at any time. When speculators hold cards the cards are not available to purchase and removed from the community until the price reaches a point where the speculator wants to sell. Only then are they again available.
I didn't know about the max 8 purchase rule because I don't ever buy more than a playset. I like that a lot, I'm sure it helps me find the cards I want to buy. Thanks.
I can't now, Paul took it away.. Now all I see is Peter Griffin singing The Bird... DAMNIT!
Ah well, already told him to suck a fattie and troll seems to have vacated. Go Team Passive Aggression! /jumpinghighfive
Go ahead Westane. i even give you permission to say what I wanted to say.
Very interesting topic. I can see both sides of being a speculator and a dealer. Since I don't know the details on running a store, nor am I a speculator, I will add only one comment. It seems that both could be considered legitement arguements and ways of doing business. I guess it depends on whos shoes you are in.
The bird.
I assume that shopping up the price scenario will be minimized by the fact legal lists are fixed every quarter - (perhaps every year).
likey
spoils of the vault
Necropotence
Mirari
zuran orb
warped devotion
rootbound crag
endless whispers
animal magnetism
greater good
through the breach
proteus staff
hypergenisis
Yes this makes sense of course but when you offer your entire stock to the world then you will be putting pressure on the number of cards you can keep in stock for your shop customers as you customer base is nearly infinite via the world wide web.
Hey Rpitcher,
I'm thrilled that you're considering giving the format a shot. For your scenario all I can say is: "Fear is always with us."
If it gets to the point that people are working that hard to skew things I suppose I'll just have to throw up my hands and say: "Heirloom is a smashing success!"
(and if the PRE organizer/s figures out what happened and who did it I'm sure those players can be uninvited from that event)
Xaoslegend-
and I'm totally with you on that. Dealers perform a very valuable function to pretty much everyone. I was just pointing out how silly it is for people to get up in arms when some random guy is holding 20 copies of a card (which is not enough to make any difference in the price of the card), but not care at all when cardbot has 100 copies.
I don't really see what the big deal is.
Heath is trying to keep cards in stock so that he can keep his regular customers happy. Ultimately, it's the regular customers that are going to keep him in business and not speculation purchases. Therefore his actions seem perfectly reasonably to me.
Where do the online only dealers fit into this are they in the same boat as speculators as they don't have the option of running events etc.
Speculation is only harmful when dealing with necessary goods. TCG cards are fully a luxury item, thus this is captitalism at play. They (the speculators) take the risk, and can reap the rewards if correct.
Also, in this day and age, the internet has widened the supply side such that brick-and-mortar stores have already adapted to its presence. The shrill cry of "whatever will happen to my store" has been beaten down by Star City Games, Ebay, et. al. - everything else is just whining.
I agree, BUT, one could make an agruement for the millions of reasons that speculators do what they do. Feed their family, pay for college, pay their bills, etc. Bad ones can be made too. Wow, $73 bucks! I closed 2 years ago, and we were right at $65per, but we did buy about 4 pallets worth of product for each new set. quick question too, what about another dealer that speculates and buys from other dealers?
Well done article, and interesting format.
I see it as a challenge, and if I find the time to try it, I probably will. Time is the issue, though, as I don't have the time to play all the Magic I want to play.
A potential problem comes to mind though:
Knowing how dirty deeds tend to find their way into anything competitive (at least when value is involved), here's a scenario.
As Heirloom events happen, some stronger archtypes become apparent. Let's say there's 5 or 6 popular, successful archtypes, and a handful of second tiers ones. Three or four of the suuccessful ones use a couple of the same commons. My clans spends several dollars at the mtgotraders to deplete them of their stock of those commons. This might bump the price to be illegal*, thus removing some popluar arcthtypes from the format for the next month. My clan comes up with a deck that works when the other popular ones are gone from the format, and we falsley dominate an event**
Okay spending several dollars might deplete any possible gain in value, but my point is that IT'S POSSIBLE.
* buying out stock DOES affect prices, as illustrated by a recent transaction of mine. I was buying 3 copies of a M10 rare for $1 each. After my transaction, the store only had M11 copies of that rare left, and they went for more than a dollar.
** Anyone that knows me or my clan realizes that dominating an event is not something we ever do. However, my scenario is valid :)
I think another important thing to remember is that dealers are speculators too. They buy cards from players at 50%-70% of their current market prices and hope to resell them at a higher price in the future. When a card goes from .05 to 2.00 online there really is not much of a difference to the market between a speculator holding 20 copies of the card and a dealer holding 20 (or more likely many more) copies of the card in inventory. So if we are not mad about dealers holding more than 8x copies of a card (and I assume we are not as I personally love dealers) it makes no logical sense to get mad about a speculator doing the exact same thing as there is no real difference between the two.
I dont have a side to either, but I will say this; you did previously price the cards at a price point that you were happy with and, I assume, were making money on them. Back when I had a store and Betrayers came out, I had a stack of Jittes marked at $4 per. Then the weekend hit of the tournament when everyone realized just how good they were. I was more than happy to sell out to the "speculator" that got them first, I had $2 per into each. I adjusted my buy price to the current demand and went on. From the consumer side, could they not argue as to why when something is "hot" why does the dealer have to make more money on it? For example, when Star City pre-sells a box, usuallly $89 I believe, if it is hot, they jack the price up, even though they are still paying $65 per box and dont have them in stock yet. Should the buyer be angry? Kind of like these cards, you had $x into them, were happy to sell them at $y, but someone got the jump, you still make $z profit, but were unhappy that is wasnt $zx10(I just picked a number here). Now in your arguement, do you limit the amount that someone can buy and still sell the product at $y? No, you will raise the price to what the market will bear and sell it at the same price the speculator does. Either way, the consumer will still pay the same price, just who holds the profit at the end is different.
I agree with you Heath as you have a community and a "real" shop rather than being a purely online dealer. Which means your community should come first before "online" buyers if you see what I mean.
At the end of the day it all depends on what you want from your business and how you run it. I have the same view point as you where I would rather sell to 8 happy customers than one speculator any day of the week.
Flipper_Giraffe,
I will try to have a list up somewhere by next article's publishing (hopefully next week).
Channel is banned because it has only been printed in a premium set(and maybe a promo?) It would have to be released in a main set like MED, an expansion or base set to be considered based on its price. (it's not even considered a mythic for Heirloom since premium and premade decks do not establish rarity for Heirloom.
Have a good one.
Xaoslegend-