I am a relatively new player. I slowly built a Standard Selesnya deck worth about $300 through trading (including all Zendikar full art basic lands) , I left the deck in my car and it was broken into and stolen. The rest of my collection is probably only worth less than $50 (none of this is really relevant to my questions, I just need somewhere to cry it out).

I'm considering trading the few cards I have left worth a little bit of money for MTGO cards or tix as I just recently signed up. My questions are 1) Do people trade physical cards for tix or digital cards on here? and 2) how much less are digital cards worth than their paper counterparts?

Also, once I have a deck built on MTGO is there a way to play casual games for free or does everything cost money (I'm broke)? And I've heard some seasoned MTGO players will give common and uncommon cards away for free to help newer players...anyone care to donate some junk cards to a new player?

First of all, sorry to hear what happened. Sometimes, people suck.

I'm not an MTGO player (though I've been considering it), but I do know that some traders deal in MTGO tix. I've seen trades go both ways (i.e., tix for cards, and cards for tix). Knowing this community, I'm sure you'll find someone with whom to connect soon.

I've heard too many stories of stolen decks and collections lately. One of my sons had a stack of trades stolen at a LGS right after he completed trading for them (I believe Friday nights are just too risky for trades--too busy, with so many people clamoring about).

[SIGH][/SIGH]

I live in an extremely small town so the threat of stolen cards is minimal, but with the time and effort and money put into them, I'm sure to take them in with me each night.

Good luck recovering from this, it's devastating.

Thanks HikingStick.

Vex, I didn't leave them in the car overnight. I left them in there while I went into the grocery store for an hour.

newspaperblanket wrote:
1) Do people trade physical cards for tix or digital cards on here? and 2) how much less are digital cards worth than their paper counterparts?

Yes, but usually it's not like 1 Snapcaster for 1 Snapcaster. Usually you'll end up getting Tickets equivalent to the paper card trade value. Say, someone might give you ~20 tickets for your paper Snapcaster. Snapcasters are ~6 tickets on bots, great for you. This works the other way also though, there are plenty of cards that are more expensive online than paper.

newspaperblanket wrote: Also, once I have a deck built on MTGO is there a way to play casual games for free or does everything cost money (I'm broke)? And I've heard some seasoned MTGO players will give common and uncommon cards away for free to help newer players...anyone care to donate some junk cards to a new player?

Yes. There is a casual room where you can just play matches based on the format of your deck. There is also a tournament practice room. These matches are free, but offer different experiences. If you bring a netdeck to the casual room, or even a deck that looks competitive, people won't finish matches with you. And on the other hand, if you bring a casual deck to the tournament practice, people won't play with you either.

There are bots you can find that will give you like ~60 commons of your choice. Just look up freebot or something similar in the trade area. Also, you should have some event tickets, and if you can get more (through trading or buying), getting commons is very easy. Most commons are .01-.1 tickets. So you could easily get 10-100 commons for $1 (1 ticket).

newspaperblanket wrote:1) Do people trade physical cards for tix or digital cards on here?

I've seen a few people offering that, check their profile.

2) how much less are digital cards worth than their paper counterparts?

This can vary wildly, but in general most cards are somewhere between cheaper (Wolfir Silverheart = $5 paper, $2.50 online) and WAY cheaper (Aether Vial = $15 paper, $2.50 online!). The exception is mythics, which tend to be similar prices online and sometimes even more expensive. This is because not only are they cracked in packs less often, they get removed from the system via set redemption so there are even less to go around.

Also, once I have a deck built on MTGO is there a way to play casual games for free or does everything cost money (I'm broke)? And I've heard some seasoned MTGO players will give common and uncommon cards away for free to help newer players...anyone care to donate some junk cards to a new player?

Almost anything that isn't a tournament queue is playable for free, so you have a lot of options, but the attitudes among the rooms is really weird as projhex says. There are a lot of bots that will give out commons/uncommons, and some players will try to give away draft leftovers.

for mtgo pricing check www.supernovabots.com and www.mtggoldfish.com (which use supernovabots pricing)

Good info, thanks for the answers, everyone. Looking at the interface is a little intimidating at first (especially seeing how the wrong move could potentially cost you money).