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Deckbox Forum » Posts by Borgin
Six trades completed now! Let me know if you want anything. Things are moving quickly, so hurry up before all the cards you want are gone! 
[edit]
Added a bunch of wants; these are things I'm semi-interested in, so if you have them, let me know.
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Also, if you have foils of any of the cards I'm looking for, I'll definitely trade for them. Also, any "EDH" type foils I'm always interested in, so let just submit a trade and we can work something out!
I wanted to build a multiplayer "kill everyone" deck for a while to show people that multiplayer =/= slow. Cards like Flame Rift, Exsanguinate, Comet Storm, Manabarbs, stuff like that. I was originally going to play it with 4 Sol Rings and stuff like that (as the people who play "casual" essentially play vintage) just for extra gas, but decided against it. Seemed like a cool way to show my playgroup that multiplayer games can still end quickly, and you can still play powerful, aggressive decks.
Yes, almost all of my cards are for sale. I generally go by tcgplayer's lows but I'll send an invoice and try to cut you a deal.
I'm not trying to be intimidating, though I do understand that I am a little less "casual" than other users/players. Things have picked up from a kind tip from another user, though, so thanks to them!
I understand that losing value on trades is often not what players want to do, especially when deckbox puts the value of the card right next to it. In person, I've found that "trading up" works a lot better, even when I'm completely transparent about pricing ("My cards are worth 20 and yours are worth 25. Is this cool with you?")- for whatever reason. It's hard to convey charisma over the internet, I suppose!
I am hesitant to trade the Seas, but if you throw enough value at me, they are certainly available. Certainly no less than 20% on my side, as frankly I think I overtraded to get them in the first place... 
Generally speaking, my duals, Onslaught fetches, and Rav shocks are really the only cards I'm really hesistant about trading, and while there's lots of stuff I'd like to keep... well, I run a business first and a hobby second.
I value both parties' cards at tcgplayer minimums. I am looking to make a profit, not straight up rip people off. Hopefully people find my services useful and not shady or underhanded.
I'm willing to trade just about anything in my inventory, and will trade for anything as long as I am gaining some non-significant amount of value, or consolidating value. I'm basically a vendor, but am looking into ways to expand my customer- and contact-base.
Copy/pasted from my thread on the deckbox trading thread:
A few things:
-I always use tcgplayer minimum prices when evaluating trade "fairness".
-I am happy to trade for any valuable cards, regardless if they are on my wishlist or not (valuable = over $10 on the low)
-When not trading for cards explicitly on my wishlist, I probably won't trade unless I am gaining ~20% value. This sounds like nothing but a giant ripoff, but two things- one, I'm willing to take any valuable card, some of which are notoriously hard to trade in smaller trading communities; and two, I have a very extensive collection and virtually everything is for trade. I do a large volume of sales online already, and if my trades are not gaining me value I couldn't get just by selling my cards and buying what I was looking for, then all the trade does is add more work for me. This also means that I'm willing to trade cards like Force of Will for, say, three playsets of Kitchen Finks or something like that.
-My inventory is but a fraction of my collection. I have common/uncommon playsets for every set available in standard, and multiple playsets of virtually every nonrare "staple" card for every format. Cursecatcher, Imperious Perfect, Kitchen Finks, Shrine of Burning Rage, Gut Shot, Beast Within, Timely Reinforcements, Counterbalance, Daze, Hymn to Tourach, and more. If there's something you're looking for, just ask.
-I also buy cards, singles or bulk, though not at "full price".
If you're interested, suggest a trade and we can try to work something out. If there are cards that aren't listed you're wondering about, just ask, though most of my high-valued cards are already up on deckbox.
I have a huge amount of these (like, all but two?), but it will be semi-difficult to locate them all (150k cards to sort through). I can try to find as many as I can, assuming you would value the cards enough to make it worthwhile to find them... 
Borgin, you'll have to define this better for me. Are you going to a card shop or online buying these junk bulk rares (or just FNM, because maybe I'm missing out)? I have to see if these options are open to me because I'm intrigued.
I almost always buy my "bulk" stuff from tcgplayer.com. Basically, right when a new set gets released, there are a lot of rares that are semi-playable that you can get for a quarter, and "bad" rares (albeit rares people still like building around casually) are like ten cents. A card like Requiem Angel isn't "bad" by any means, it simply isn't the best six-drop available in standard so it's basically worthless. A playset of these sets you back 52 cents. I often trade full playsets of cards like this for a single "playable" card- something like Hellrider, or Dungeon Geists, or Sulfur Falls, and people are usually quite happy about it.
I usually buy enough rares to fill out my trade binder- often about 300- and it costs me about 70 dollars each time I buy this quantity of cards. It works very well because I am offering a service- other players may want a playset of Requiem Angels, which are only worth 13 cents, but don't want to pay the 3 dollar shipping fee associated with that purchase. Players are happy trading for virtually any rare at at least a dollar in value, so this makes "bulk rares" give you a huge return on your investment. For example, I bought zero packs of Dark Ascension but I have 3 Huntmaster of the Fells, 3 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad, 18 Lingering Souls, 3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (one of which is foil), 8 Hellriders, and many more of the more valuable cards from the set.
Of course, this can be a lot of work. It's all about trading up, and often you are only making a dollar or two at a time. You also have to be able to find people who want some of these cards- I've found that there are a few specific players in my area who enjoy playing with some of the more overlooked rares in standard, and I've figured out the sorts of cards they enjoy playing. Sometimes you're only able to find one or two people who are looking for what you have. However, if you can get in fifty trades a week, you stand to make a substantial return.
Told you so. 
As one who is very concerned with getting "value", here's my strategy whenever a new set comes out.
-Evaluate all rares in the set. Are there enough "chase cards" (things like Huntmaster of the Fells, or Snapcaster Mage) to warrant buying a box (usually, more than ten for a large set or 7/8 for a small set)?
-Are there any commons or uncommons that might make a box worth buying (cards like Gitaxian Probe, Lingering Souls, Gut Shot, Dismember)?
-Is it a small set (very relevant; smaller sets are often underdrafted and thus worth automatically more money)?
-Are the mechanics of the set "broken" (often, set-centric mechanics are awful, but occasionally some are very busted like Dredge, Persist, and Undying)?
Considering a box is usually about a hundred bucks, a set has to be very good to meet my criteria for being "worth buying". Often, I'll buy a box for the first set in the block, and then simply buy a set of common/uncommons for the later sets and buy the "junk rares" from the next sets, which often wind up being quite good (I bought 32 Dungeon Geists and made about 150 bucks off them, for example).
If a box isn't worth buying, just getting 300 "bulk rares" from a new set is almost always worth your time. I'll buy semi-playable cards for 30 cents a piece, trade them at two dollars, and make a huge return. For example, tonight I traded a playset of Markov Blademasters for a Garruk Relentless and two Dungeon Geists, which is about a 500% return on my investment (I paid 75 cents a piece for the Blademasters). This isn't difficult to do at all.
Oh, and through tcgplayer, lots of vendors offer free shipping if you spend fifty dollars or more. This might be a bit too expensive for your blood, but as I make a large number of purchases on a regular basis, it's saved me quite a bit of money.
Borgin wrote:Also, SCG and CFB have terrible, terrible prices. SCG especially, with prices for valuable cards often five or ten dollars above tcgplayer's lows.
My understanding is that buying from TCG is like buying from amazon. Every card may come from a different vendor. if that's true then you will pay tons of money in shipping fees when attempting to acquire many cards at once. This probably makes SCG and CFB better in that instance but it really depends on what you're buying.
The only way to know for sure is to do the math and see what's cheaper in the end.
You do realize that tcgplayer now offers a "calculator" that automatically determines the cheapest way to order all the cards you've put into your cart? Like I said, SCG is almost always at least 30% above market- often higher in low-price scenarios- and since tcgplayer will do the legwork for you, why not just type the cards you need and see what the cheapest it'll cost you will be? I've gotten my cart from 140 down to 80 before, and that's a huge savings just by switching vendors.
I used to love buying boxes, but I've found it's generally much cheaper to just buy singles of the cards you want. Seriously.
Also, SCG and CFB have terrible, terrible prices. SCG especially, with prices for valuable cards often five or ten dollars above tcgplayer's lows.
You can just choose to have the "low" price displayed on all cards, which frankly I think is more accurate. Settings->Magic the Gathering Preferences.
Just joined a few days ago, working on getting my inventory relatively accurate. It's tough with as many cards as I have.
Until things get fixed in this regard, everything in my current inventory is indeed available for trade. Once I can import my inventory into my tradelist, please only go by my tradelist.
A few things:
-I always use tcgplayer minimum prices when evaluating trade "fairness".
-I am happy to trade for any valuable cards, regardless if they are on my wishlist or not (valuable = over $10 on the low)
-When not trading for cards explicitly on my wishlist, I probably won't trade unless I am gaining ~20% value. This sounds like nothing but a giant ripoff, but two things- one, I'm willing to take any valuable card, some of which are notoriously hard to trade in smaller trading communities; and two, I have a very extensive collection and virtually everything is for trade. I do a large volume of sales online already, and if my trades are not gaining me value I couldn't get just by selling my cards and buying what I was looking for, then all the trade does is add more work for me. This also means that I'm willing to trade cards like Force of Will for, say, three playsets of Kitchen Finks or something like that.
-My inventory is but a fraction of my collection. I have common/uncommon playsets for every set available in standard, and multiple playsets of virtually every nonrare "staple" card for every format. Cursecatcher, Imperious Perfect, Kitchen Finks, Shrine of Burning Rage, Gut Shot, Beast Within, Timely Reinforcements, Counterbalance, Daze, Hymn to Tourach, and more. If there's something you're looking for, just ask.
-I also buy cards, singles or bulk, though not at "full price".
I'm working on my inventory all the time, continue to check back for updates. I try to keep it as detailed and accurate as possible, as many of my cards are foils and I have a number of Japanese/Russian/Italian Legends cards or otherwise unique items...
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Just finished sorting out a ton of commons and uncommons. All "staples". 42 Cursecatchers. 56 Unmakes. 14 Daze. 8 Mishra's Factory. Stuff like that. Will be slowly adding it to my inventory, hopefully done by the end of the weekend.
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Either the site gets very little traffic anyways, or nobody wants to trade with me. If you have cards that are worth something and want something of mine, go ahead and propose a trade. I'm not always looking to make a profit, sometimes just consolidate value or get rid of excess or whatnot. Let me know you're interested! It is discouraging to spend so much time on my inventory if nobody looks at it.
Well, based on the actual value of your deckbox (which is 185.68, as I generally go by the "low" pricing), I'd offer you, say, 80 bucks. You don't have anything particularly valuable, a lot of bulk rares mostly and a few "midrange" cards. Shrug, it's an offer.
There's also Delver. Used to be u/r, now it is generally u/w with invisible stalked and geist or saint traft. Zombies is also very much a deck, playing geralf's messengers and phyrexian obliterators. I've seen humans as well, largely because champion of the parish allows for disgustingly aggressive starts. Slightly more fringe are grand architect builds, unburial rites/frites, vampires, and monoblue runechanter pike aggro. I could go on!
Fantastic! I didn't even realize that stuff from your inventory wasn't automatically added to my tradelist until I went and did nearly 700 cards.
As long as I'll be able to port over all the "details" I filled in manually, I'll be more than happy!
If you are still interested in selling your inventory, I am interested in buying.
Well, I'm unsure what you'd want for everything, so here's something to start:
500 USD, payable immediately via PayPal.
Assuming you want to move everything quickly, I will buy it all.
When I'm looking at my inventory, I see that I can check a "check all" box, but then all I can do with that is either remove everything or put it in a deck. Why not add the ability to add all the cards to your tradelist right from the main inventory page? With a collection the size of mine, manually clicking each individual card to add to my tradelist is very, very time consuming.
I see there is a "workaround" involving copying and pasting (now that I take the time to doublecheck if this has already been brought up), but this is nonintuitive and messy- I have to delete my whole tradelist first. Ouch.
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Just looked into the copy/paste solution, and it's terrible. First off, I have multiple copies of lots of cards, from multiple sets, some foils, some promos, etc. For example, I have 7 Progenitus but 3 are from the FTV: Legends set. The print view of my inventory gives no indication of this, so I'm assuming that if I DO copy and past this back into my tradelist, I will have to again manually redo every detail of every copy of every card. This is actually more work than putting my cards into my inventory in the first place! I'm upset because I was really looking forward to using deckbox to set up trades and build decks, but if managing my inventory is this big of a headache, I don't think I can put up with it for very long.
You might say "but once you get everything set up, you don't have to worry about it!", but this doesn't really work for me. I do a huge volume of trading, and cards are in and out of my possession in triple digits each week. This means that either I just have to place everything in my tradelist (which I'd normally be okay with, but there are times I don't want to trade cards I get, surprise surprise), or do all of this manual work just to get things organized.
Please! Help!
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Okay, I am now discovering there is a slightly more intuitive way of adding cards to your tradelist than the "copy/paste" unholy mess, but it still doesn't carry over condition/set/language/other details (apparently on the "inventory" page, you can simply change the # tradeable)! I just spent like 3 hours getting my inventory all ship-shape...
Deckbox Forum » Posts by Borgin