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Is Standard getting stale? Joey and BHJ delve into the Standard and Legacy results of SCG DC and then discuss a few of the Dark Ascension standouts that may be just the remedy we need to freshen up the format!

Coverage of SCG Washington, DC

Full Dark Ascension Spoiler!

Featuring music by Tha Gatherin’
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Joey and BHJ go over the results of Grand Prix Orlando and SCG LA, and then dive into another batch of Dark Ascension previews!

Coverage of Grand Prix Orlando

Coverage of SCG LA

Dark Ascension Spoilers

Featuring music by Tha Gatherin’
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Welcome back to Dual to Deck. FNM this week was a little crazy, so I didn’t really get too many trades in. Before I get to the 2 trades I did get in, I wanted to discuss the issue of trading between Dual to Deck and my personal stock. After talking to a few people and some negative reactions in the comments, I am going to discontinue this practice. Trade 21 will be the last trade I do between this project and my personal trade binder until the very end of the project when I am ready to get cards for my Legacy deck. I made trade 21 before my last article went up (and started getting negative responses) and have since traded away some of the cards I got in that trade. There’s no going back on these trades, they’re done and in the books, but there won’t be any more in the future until the close of the project. I will miss out on some potential deals with this decision but since I’m doing this trade project publicly, it’s probably better that it stays as organic and legitimate as possible. With that out of the way let’s get to the trades.

Trade #21

My
1x Garruk Relentless-$25.00
1x Angelic Overseer-$3.50
1x Essence of the Wild-$1.50
Total-$30.00
His-me/my playgroup
1x Zur the Enchanter (foil)-$30.00
4x Phantasmal Bear-$1.00
4x Porcelain Legionnaire-$1.00
2x Oblivion Ring-$3.00
4x Vapor Snag-$2.00
4x Vault Skirge-$1.00
2x Merfolk Looter-$0.30
4x Ponder-$4.00
Total-$42.30
+$12.30

From the numbers this trade looks horribly skewed in my favor, but let’s take a look at it from some non-retail price perspectives. If we look at it from a buylist perspective the numbers are almost even, with me giving $14 for a little over $16. From the cash perspective we are again about even, my $18 for his ~$20. The reason this trade is actually much closer than the numbers let on is that while all those commons and uncommons may have $1.00 or so prices, they are not actually worth anything near that. The only way you’ll get retail prices on most of these is in trade, if you tried to sell these for retail yourself expect to only get laughed at.

As for why I picked this stuff up if it doesn’t really have much value–they move. Most of the commons/uncommons in this trade I have traded or sold playsets of in the last 2 weeks. They may not have actual money value but they do have good trade value. U/W Tempo in all its forms is the hot deck right now and I want to be stocked appropriately. The Zur is a pickup I normally wouldn’t make unless I wanted it for my personal collection. You can only get the full $30 out of it from a collector or EDH player; both groups are smaller niche markets. Since there was some risk involved I didn’t want to give more than $20 on it in trade, knowing worst case scenario I can buylist it for $15. If I wasn’t planning on hitting a few Star City Opens and Grand Prix this year I probably wouldn’t have touched it. The Garruk and Angel were picked up since my playgroup may end up using them, and the Essence will go into one of our EDH decks.

Trade #22

My
1x Garruk Wildspeaker-$4.00
1x Mindbreak Trap-$5.00
1x Bloodghast-$3.00
4x Ponder-$4.00
Total-$16.00
His-Robert
1x Misty Rainforest-$13.00
1x New Phyrexia booster pack-$4.00
Total-$17.00
+$1.00

Robert contacted me on Twitter asking if I still had the Green Sun’s Zenith from trade 14. I told him I did and would hold it for him till we met up Friday at Collectors Corner. When we actually sat down to trade he threw me a curve ball. In addition to a normal trade, he wanted to trade an unopened booster pack. He had Scars, Besieged, and New Phyrexia and said he didn’t care which was traded. I told him I couldn’t do a pack in a trade for the Green Sun since it was a Legacy staple, but if he found something else I’d be willing to add a fun twist to the project. With this in mind I was still busy looking through his trades for something I’d take for a Green Sun and came up with a Zendikar fetchland. In the end, Robert decided not to pick up the Sun but instead go for some casual and Modern cards. I chose New Phyrexia since it has the most value spread through the commons and uncommons, whereas Scars and Besieged had its value mostly in mythics and rares. Keith was watching the trade and looked excited that I was willing to pick up a lottery ticket. When the trade was over, before I could leave or consider being a miser and just keeping the pack unopened to trade as is, Keith told me I had to open it then and there. This was more for fun anyway, so I agreed. I was greeted with the following:

And…this is why I don’t gamble. I somehow managed to miss every money common and uncommon in the set. The overall value of the pack was around $2.00 making the trade a loss of $1. Like I said, if anything serious had been on the line I wouldn’t have done this, but for a set of Ponders (while a Legacy card, has been printed into the ground) it was worth a few laughs. I fully expected the fail music from The Price is Right to start going off after looking at the pack contents, but it did add an interesting story to the project and could have just as easily ended with me rocking a foil Sword of War and Peace.
Before I close for the week I wanted to touch on a certain spoiler from Dark Ascension. Grafdigger’s Cage seriously made me wanna flip a table as soon as I saw it. After a full night of raging and bitching on Facebook and Twitter, I decided to take Bigheadjoe’s advice to stop bitching and start brewing instead. There was a real chance that this card made Reanimator and Dredge lousy decks, and since they were 2 of the 3 possible end goals of the project I wanted to get some testing in. Reanimator was hurt the least since it already plays counter magic and has the Show and Tell plan in the board to fight extreme graveyard hate already. The real test was Dredge, and surprisingly it wasn’t so bad. The closest thing to compare Cage to for its effect on Dredge is Leyline of the Void, except it doesn’t actually remove the cards. This means you can stock your graveyard freely and the turn before you wanna go off, Chain of Vapor the Cage and you’re set. If they have Cage plus something like Tormod’s Crypt it is tougher but if they had Leyline and Crypt, you probably weren’t winning anyway. All in all I would say I overreacted and both Dredge and Reanimator are still viable deck choices so long as you are prepared.
With that in mind, please don’t let the Cage bias your decisions when voting. I’ll see you next week when I hopefully will have more trades. Any and all comments are welcome, as you can see I take all feedback into account, even hate and trolling. Remember to vote by next Thursday the 26th, if I don’t get enough votes, a 6 sided die may decide the fate of this project and we have all seen how bad I am at random chance.

“Rebar” at Collectors Corner
@Brass_Gnat on Twitter

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Joey and Bigheadjoe are back to discuss the ever-evolving nature of Standard, what’s missing from the top 16 Legacy decks from SCG Atlanta, and of course, Dark Ascension previews!

Coverage of SCG Atlanta

Dark Ascension Card Image Gallery

MTG Toolbox iOS App announcement

Featuring music by Tha Gatherin’
http://twitter.com/thagatherin

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2012 is here and I’m back for trades. To kick off the New Year, I’ll be conducting a poll on which Legacy deck should be this project’s end goal. I’ve got 3 in mind and I’m sure you’ll notice a common theme among them. But before we get to the decks with price breakdowns, I have some inaugural trades.

Trade #17

My
1x Grimoire of the Dead-$3.50
Total-$3.50
His-Me
1x Inquisition of Kozilek-$2.00
4x Vapor Snag-$2.00
4x Phantasmal Bear-$1.00
2x Civilized Scholar-$0.50
Total-$5.50
+$2.00

This trade was in preparation for a bigger trade with Richard. He’s working on U/W and basically needs the whole deck. I happened to have a few things in the Dual to Deck binder and he had a few nice things left from the Commander precons so I made a deal for one of those out of the Dual to Deck binder and the rest of what he needed for the deck from my personal stock. Spoiler alert: the card I got in the following trade is pretty sweet. The Grimoire was picked up due to the usual reason of me being a collector and the OCD that says you gotta catch ‘em all. The Inquisition was a good pick up and as one of the better 1 mana discard spells; it should pull its weight in this project.

Trade #18

My
1x Phantasmal Image-$10.00
4x Dissipate-$4.00
4x Phantasmal Bear-$1.00
4x Vapor Snag-$2.00
4x Civilized Scholar-$1.00
Total-$18.00
His-Richard
1x Flusterstorm-$20.00
Total-$20.00
+$2.00

I told you it was a sweet one. Along with the Spy Master and Scavenging Ooze, this is one of the only new cards from the Commander set to see Legacy play. It was recently printed as a judge promo but the price of the originals have hardly moved. It was printed as a 1 of in 1 deck in a limited print run. This makes them pretty rare and a very nice asset for the binder. Even better for this project, people seem to be starting to run 2 or more of these guys instead of just 1. I am very happy to have this in the binder and truth be told, would probably have even been willing to lose a few dollars in value to pick this up. The fact that I got it for basically an Image and a Grimoire makes me all the happier.

Trade #19

My
1x Sensei’s Diving Top-$12.00
1x Spellstutter Sprite-$2.00
1x Curse of Stalked Prey-$1.50
Total-$15.50
His-Dale
1x Past in Flames-$8.00
1x Stoneforge Mystic-$6.00
1x Mindbreak Trap-$4.00
1x Martyr of Sands-$1.00
1x Gitaxian Probe-$1.00
1x Cosi’s Trickster-$0.50
1x Burning Vengeance-$0.50
Total-$21.00
+$5.50

The Past in Flames and Stoneforge are solid pick ups that really shouldn’t require explanation. One’s a staple in Legacy, the other an eventual player in Legacy and current “it girl” in Modern. The Trap is more for Modern as well but does see some Legacy play. The rest is pure speculation. Will a Martyr/Proc deck be good enough in Modern post-bannings? I don’t know, but it is very popular and people will want to try it out. Probe has started seeing some Legacy play and post Standard rotation I’m hoping it will retain its value accordingly. The Burning Vengeance deck was almost a real deck early in the season and with another set of graveyard mechanics on the way, I want to be stocked on these guys. The Trickster might look embarrassing, and believe me I got funny looks when I pulled it out, but Corbin Hosler has been championing Fish in Modern and he says this guy is good as a 2 of. If Fish does take off as a tier 1 Modern deck I can see this hitting $2. If it ends up a flop I’m not too upset since I basically got it as a throw in on a solid trade.

Trade #20

My
1x Fiend Hunter-$0.50
1x Runechanter’s Pike-$1.00
1x Runechanter’s Pike (foil)-$3.00
Total-$4.50
His-Me
1x Bloodline Keeper-$4.00
1x Go for the Throat-$1.50
Total-$5.50
+$1.00

This was another prep trade. This time picking up cards for Austin and Richard again. Pike has started becoming popular in the U/W builds and Austin was working on getting his Humans deck up to par. I didn’t just do straight Dual to Deck trades with either of them because Richard didn’t want a foil pike so I had to switch it with one of my non foils and Austin wanted a bunch of commons with the Hunter that weren’t in the binder. I ended up picking up some promos and small things for my personal collection in that trade so it wouldn’t have worked with the project anyway. I know it seems like I’ve been doing a lot of trading between myself and the Dual to Deck binder but it has been very hard to keep the 2 separate. There’s nothing more frustrating than thinking you have all the cards for a deal, then realizing some are in a separate binder and must be kept separate. Doing these trades with myself for the pieces is a decent compromise. I don’t want to turn away business and I don’t want to make this project seem superficial. If anyone has better suggestions for how to handle these situations, feel free to comment or message me.

With the trades out of the way, it’s on to the Legacy decks. Legacy is supposed to be the second most busted format, after Vintage, so I want to be doing something that seems unfair when I’m playing. With that in mind the 3 decks I’m considering are Dredge, ANT, and Reanimator. The first really isn’t even playing Magic anymore, and something about that just makes me smile. ANT can win on turn one and Reanimator can have the game on lock down by turn 2. I’m going to list a stock deck with prices for each card to get a general ballpark of how much value I’ll need to get them. Once you guys pick a deck for me and I get in more playtesting I’ll post a revised list and a sideboard.

Dredge
4x Cephalid Coliseum-$12.00
4x City of Brass-$20.00
4x Gemstone Mine-$12.00
1x Flame-Kin Zealot-$0.50
4x Golgari Grave-Troll-$12.00
3x Golgari Thug-$6.00
4x Ichorid-$32.00
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria-$8.00
4x Narcomoeba-$12.00
4x Putrid Imp-$4.00
1x Sphinx of Lost Truths-$0.50
4x Stinkweed Imp-$4.00
2x Tireless Tribe-$1.00
4x Breakthrough-$12.00
4x Bridge from Below-$72.00
4x Cabal Therapy-$24.00
4x Dread Return-$6.00
4x Lion’s Eye Diamond-$140.00
Total-$378.00

This is an older list and is a more all in type list but the Diamonds included here should allow for some flexibility in price on the final version I come up with. I do like Manaless Dredge but if they have the hate, you really can’t fight through it as well as if you were normal Dredge.

ANT
3x Island-$0.30
3x Misty Rainforest-$39.00
4x Polluted Delta-$180.00
2x Swamp-$0.20
2x Underground Sea-$280.00
2x Verdant Catacomb-$16.00
1x Ad Nauseum-$1.00
4x Brainstorm-$8.00
4x Cabal Ritual-$8.00
2x Chrome Mox-$24.00
4x Dark Ritual-$4.00
4x Duress-$2.00
1x Ill-Gotten Gains-$3.50
4x Infernal Tutor-$20.00
4x Lion’s Eye Diamond-$140.00
4x Lotus Petal-$12.00
4x Ponder-$4.00
4x Preordain-$4.00
1x Tendrils of Agony-$1.00
3x Thoughtseize-$90.00
Total-$837

The Chrome Moxen are sorta like training wheels at this point. They will eventually turn into a Grim Tutor and a Chain of Vapor, but until I can combo with this deck in my sleep they are Moxen.

Reanimator
1x Bloodstained Mire-$15.00
1x Flooded Strand-$40.00
2x Island-$0.20
1x Marsh Flats-$9.00
1x Misty Rainforest-$13.00
4x Polluted Delta-$180.00
2x Swamp-$0.20
1x Scalding Tarn-$13.00
4x Underground Sea-560.00
1x Verdant Catacomb-$13.00
1x Angel of Despair-$4.00
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite-$16.00
1x Empyrial Archangel-$4.00
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria-$8.00
3x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur-$8.00
1x Sphinx of the Steel Wind-$10.00
3x Animate Dead-$6.00
4x Brainstorm-$8.00
4x Careful Study-$6.00
3x Daze-$9.00
4x Entomb-$120.00
4x Exhume-$8.00
4x Force of Will-$240.00
2x Ponder-$2.00
4x Reanimate-$16.00
2x Thoughtseize-$60.00
Total-$1368.40

And there it is, a Legacy Deck that runs 4 forces and 4 blue dual lands. I don’t know if the reanimation targets are how I like them but all the spells seem good. Choose one of these 3 decks and leave your vote in the comments section. I’ll leave the poll open for 2 weeks, so get your vote in before January 26th! After I have all the votes tallied, the winning deck will be announced and I’ll begin serious testing with it. A month or so later a revised decklist with sideboard will be posted. Thanks for reading and remember to leave your votes in the comments section.

“Rebar” at Collectors Corner
@Brass_Gnat on Twitter

Welcome to the last Dual to Deck article of 2011. By the time this gets posted we will have already rung in the New Year, but below are the last six trades I made in 2011.

Trade #11

My
1xStromkirk Noble-$6.00
Total – $6.00
His-Joe
2x Nephalia Drownyard-$3.00
1x Gavony Township-$2.50
Total – $5.50
-$0.50

It looks like I took a loss here in my trade with Joe. This was not another trade to give back value from the Inkmoth trade, this was a speculative trade. Drownyard, along with Stensia Bloodhall is $1 cheaper than all the other rare ability lands from Innistrad. I don’t see Bloodhall doing too much but Drownyard’s effect is too powerful, especially in this block, to be that much worse than Wolf Run, Mooreland Haunt, or Township. I would pick these up now for $1 each or less and hold on to them. There will most likely come a time when this card is the hot land and you can ship them for $4 or $5. Previous examples of this are Wolf Run right after worlds and Haunt after U/W Illusions really started showing its power. Noble is relatively set in its value and will probably only fluctuate $1 each way over the next few months until Avacyn Restored is about to release when it could climb back up to $10. I would say that if you can pick them up at $5 and don’t mind holding them for four months, then it’s a good investment. I can’t afford to sit on cards that long with this project. I expect the lands to move sooner and as a result of deck performance, not a dwindling supply.

Trade #12

My
1x Marsh Flats-$9.00
1x Quicksilver Amulet-$2.00
Total – $11.00
His-Joe
1x Batterskull-$15.00
1x Woodland Cemetery-$4.00
Total – $19.00
+$8.00

Another trade with the same Joe! This trade happened a week after the previous trade, but in an effort to get caught up in the articles and try to provide fresh weekly trades, I’m combining three weeks of trading. Joe also happens to be one of the people at Collectors Corner that trades frequently and has a well stocked binder. In this trade Joe was looking to pick up the Flats for Modern and the Amulet for some goofy deck I’ll probably end up losing to at FNM. I wanted a solid Legacy/casual card for the Flats and Batterskull fits that bill. There are 4 or 5 different versions of Stoneblade running around in Legacy and each one needs a Batterskull so its value should be safe, even post rotation. The Amulet does what casual cards do when you find the right buyer: trade above their listed value. I grabbed the dual because unless they are reprinted in Magic 2013 they will stay $5-$7 cards the whole time they are in Standard. The price is lower now because the market is saturated with Innistrad product. Dark Ascension is just around the corner and with the announcement that Avacyn Restored will be a standalone set (draft wise), fewer and fewer of these will be opened, allowing their price to slowly creep back up.

Trade #13

My
4x Brimstone Volley-$2.00
4x Geistflame-$1.00
4x Ancient Grudge-$1.00
3x Reckless Waif-$1.50
Total – $5.50
His-Robert
1x Glacial Fortress-$3.50
1x White Sun’s Zenith-$1.00
1x Heartless Summoning-$2.50
Total – $7.00
+$1.50

Robert was trying to get a red deck together but didn’t have much in his trade binder. He’s been borrowing decks from the regulars and wanted to have his own deck. Red Deck Wins is the cheapest competitive deck and with a swap of Waifs for Nobles the deck is usable until the rare vamps can be tracked down. I honestly thought the Fortress was around $2 since they have been reprinted into the ground, so I ended up making a little more value than I intended on this trade. If you know a player is just starting out and doesn’t have much, PLEASE, please, please don’t pillage their binder for all valuables in exchange for your junk that they think is cool. All the red cards I traded are playable in respectable decks and with the values I thought his cards were at, at the time, the trade would have been even. That aside, I knew someone looking for Glacials, and the White Sun and Summoning were speculative trades. White Sun is the finisher of choice in the Cuneo/Martel U/W lists circulating, and while no one has come up with a good list for Heartless Summoning, it’s too good of an effect to not do something somewhere. I wouldn’t advise picking them up now, unless you know someone who wants them or you can get them as throw-ins. I know a few people who would be interested in a deck that uses this so I felt safe grabbing one here.

Trade #14

My
1x Gavony Township-$2.50
1x Glacial Fortress-$3.50
1x Mayor of Avabruck-$3.00
Total – $9.00
His-John
1x Green Sun’s Zenith-$6.00
1x Grim Lavamancer-$3.00
1x Rakish Heir (foil)-$1.50
4x Brimstone Volley-$2.00
1x Reckless Waif-$0.50
Total – $13.00
+$4.00

John was the one I picked the Fortress up for in my last trade. I flipped through his book and didn’t see too much besides some midrange-priced stuff, and since John does all his trading with a smartphone, we had to go up to work out a deal. Making a trade larger adds more flexibility in what is being traded and helps stop arguments over $1 or some change. A smartphone can present problems when trying to trade for value but if you’re pleasant to deal with and know your stuff you can still make money in these trades. This time the smartphone helped me out since the prices in my head for Fortress were lower than actual and higher than actual on Lavamancer. John knew about the project and knew I picked the Fortress up for the U/W humans deck he was trying to get together, so he was happy to make a deal. The Fortress wasn’t an issue since he was willing to go $4 or $5 on it but after we checked everything on Starcity, I noticed that Lavamancers had dropped from $5 to $3. In the original trade I still would have gotten $2 of value, but John noticed my red section was kinda empty and offered some extra red commons/uncommons to help fill it back in. Oh, and the reason I picked Green Sun and Lavamancer is their Legacy playability.

Trade #15

My
2x Inkmoth Nexus-$32.00
Total – $32.00
His-Keith
1x Garruk Relentless-$20.00
1x Phantasmal Image-$10.00
2x Isolated Chapel-$10.00
Total – $40.00
+$8.00
Keith had been interested in the pair of Inkmoths since I got them almost a month ago. Too bad for me that the price has fallen a bit on them since then:-p I wasn’t willing to part with them cheap, after all they are a 4 of in Modern affinity, otherwise known as the only Modern deck to top 8 a pro event and not have cards from it banned. Modern PTQs mean the falling price could rise back up, with $24 as a reasonable ceiling. I wanted $40 out of them in trade and I’m mostly happy with what I got. The Image is a good pick up both for the fact that it’s in a dominant type 2 deck and it sees play in Legacy as a 1 or 2 of to kill legends or just be an extra ‘goyf. Innistrad duals, again barring reprint, will hold good value for the next year and a half. The Garruk is where I’m a little worried. I needed something big in the trade and Keith had recently sold a lot of cards making his big boy binder slim pickings. Things that make me feel somewhat ok with Garruk are that he’s a walker, so he’ll always have casual appeal, will probably be the only dual faced planeswalker printed, and is not actually bad in the current Standard environment. I will be happy if I can ship him off at $25-$30.

Trade #16

My
1x Daybreak Ranger-$1.50
Total – $1.50
His-John
1x Spellstutter Sprite (FNM promo)-$2.00
Total – $2.00
+$0.50

The last Dual to Deck trade of 2011 turned out rather boring. Flash-forward a week or 2 from the last time I traded with John and he hates U/W Humans and doesn’t want to play it. He was now interested in making a U/G or possibly a U/G/r tempo/control deck. John had also just recently sold cards, but not just his high end stuff, pretty much everything. I really wasn’t looking to pick up in print commons and uncommons for a rare at this point so that left me with few options. I grabbed a promo Sprite because they have been seeing play as a 1 or 2 of in Legacy and there is hope for a blue deck in Modern now that Nacatl is banned. The real question is if Legacy players prefer foil of the original art or this alternate FNM art, guess we’ll see when I head to some Opens and GPs.
That’s all I have for Dual to Deck this week and this year. Hope your holidays were fun and not too hectic. It was a good almost 2 months for the project, adding about $85 to the binder. To kick off 2012 I’ll be holding a reader poll to pick the Legacy deck that will be this project’s end goal. While I’m not completely finished testing, I have found 3 decks that I enjoy and are competitive. Look forward to that and a year of awesome trades in 2012. As always, any feedback is welcome, even if it’s just to tell me I’m terrible at writing/trading, I want to hear it all, good or bad in the comments or on Twitter.

“Rebar” at Collectors Corner
@Brass_Gnat on Twitter

Welcome back, readers. I was successfully able to make it to Collectors Corner this week and I was eager to make up for lost time. I did my trading in between rounds at FNM, so without further ado, here are trades 6 through 10.

Trade #6

My
2x Desperate Ravings-$100
Total – $1.00
His-Dale
1x Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree (foil)-$2.00
Total – $2.00
+$1.00

Desperate Ravings was some of the hot new tech that came out of Worlds and some are even calling it the new Preordain. I think it’s good in certain decks but certainly not a Preordain level card in terms of power or range of usability. I think it will find a home in one or two control decks but won’t really catch on, so I don’t really see its price rising too much. I traded these two away at $1 each for a nice foil casual card that I expect to get $3-$4 out of from a hardcore EDH/Commander junkie.

Trade #7

My
2x Sulfur Falls-$12.00
1x Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur-$5.00
Total – $17.00
His-Chris
2x Inkmoth Nexus-$36.00
Total – $36.00
+$19.00

So…fair trades huh? This is probably the trade I am gonna get the most hate from. Before the ripper comments start I want to say that 1) Chris knew the values of all the cards involved in the trade, 2) Joe, the person he shares a collection with, was aware of the values and also agreed to the trade, and finally 3) I traded with them both several more times that night, so there was no ill will about this trade. I would never make a trade this heavy in my favor from my personal stock. I prefer to use speculation and trade between markets to make profit off my normal trades. This project is all about trading up in one way or another, so unbalanced trades should be expected. My trade ethic for this project will be that if the other person knows all the values and still freely consents to a trade that is massively in my favor, I will accept it.

Trade #8

My
1x Bloodgift Demon-$1.50
Total – $1.50
His-Joe
1x Gutter Grime-$0.50
Total – $0.50
-$1.00

This trade was with the Joe who shares a collection with Chris from the above trade. Despite what I say about being fine with massive value gain for this project, I was still feeling bad about the Inkmoth trade. I wanted to make sure there was no ill will from the earlier trade and wanted to give some value back. Joe wasn’t looking for too much from Innistrad but he did need a Bloodgift Demon. I told him to pick the crappiest rare in his binder and I would trade it for a Bloodgift. He settled on the Grime and we made the swap. We then went on to make some sweet Modern and Legacy trades out of my personal stock.

It’s important to make sure your trade partners are happy with the trades they make with you. Repeat customers are always better than a single big score, especially when you do a lot of trading in the same store or community. If you’re a serious trader, your reputation on the trade floor is worth more than anything in your binder. If you have a good reputation, you’ll get lots of opportunities for good trades and people usually won’t mind giving up a little value. If you have a reputation as a cut-throat shark, no one will want to trade with you and you’ll be forced to find a new place to trade. Once your reputation is tarnished, it takes a lot of work and giving up a lot of value to get it back.

Trade #9

My
2x Tribute to Hunger-$1.00
1x Nephalia Drownyard-$1.50
Total – $2.50
His-Austin
1x Stromkirk Noble-$6.00
Total – $6.00
+$3.50

Austin was working on his Solar Flare deck and had actually borrowed some of the cards from the Dual to Deck binder earlier in the night with the intent to catch up in trade later. He flipped through the book to see if there was anything else he needed and the Drownyard caught his eye. I think the Drownyards will go up, at least to the price of the other rare ability lands from Innistrad. Keeping this in mind I put the yard at $3 and the Tributes at $1 apiece. He didn’t really seem to care what values I put stuff at and just told me to pick something I wanted. I pulled the Noble, a few enemy duals, and a Lavamancer and told him to pick whichever he was least attached to. He again said he really didn’t care and to just pick the one I wanted. I chose the Noble since I already knew someone looking for one. Picking several cards of about equal value and giving your trade partner the choice is a good trade tactic. It lets them feel in control of the trade and generally gives a positive atmosphere to trading with you. You can also gain value with this method by picking a few cards that are staggered in value. Your partner will look at them comparatively and usually balance the values, making a $10 card much easier to get for a $7 card if it’s in a stack with a $7 and $8 card.

Trade #10

My
1xSnapcaster Mage-$30.00
1x basic Island (foil)-$1.00
Total – $31.00
His-me
1x Sensei’s Divining Top-$12.00
1x Marsh Flats-$10.00
1x Garruk Wildspeaker-$4.00
1x Slagstorm-$4.00
1x Quicksliver Amulet-$2.00
1x Bloodghast-$3.00
Total – $35.00
+$4.00

This last trade was with myself. I will admit that I totally dropped the ball on Snapcasters. I figured that they would be about the price of Fauna Shaman in its prime ($15) so I didn’t preorder any for $20. Well, turns out Snapcaster is an all-star in every format. Oops. I was also hoping the fact that it was a rare in a large set that was very popular would keep the price down. Not even Magic Online redemptions have put a dent in this guy’s price, and guess who needs three for his Solar Flare deck. I got zero in my Japanese boxes and neither me nor my friend have cracked any from Limited events or prize packs. No one at the shop had any for trade, but no one was interested in trading for the one in the Dual to Deck binder either. Chas Andres would borrow stuff from his Pack to Power binder to play with in decks but I really didn’t want to do that with this project. If it’s in the binder, I need to make money off of it, it’s that simple. This meant I had to trade for it, and after waiting a month with no takers, I bit the bullet and made the trade.

While Snaps is a Standard-legal rare, he is also played in Legacy as a staple and thus trades like any other Legacy staple. I needed to trade other Legacy cards or high end casual cards to be able to make the trade without taking a huge hit in value. The fetch and Top are Legacy cards as well as good EDH/Commander cards. The Garruk, Amulet, and vampire trade well to casual players so they were worth close to full value in the trade. The Slagstorm was the only Standard card in the trade but it’s pretty hot right now so I felt okay picking that up as well for half value. The Island was a throw-in because I love foils and I always snag throw-ins when I can. When trading for Legacy cards the general rule is that other Legacy cards carry full value, popular casual cards carry 70%-80% of their value and Standard staples are usually only worth 50% of their price. I would never trade an older Legacy card for bulk rares but if you are trading a Legacy card for bulk rares you can reasonably expect to get a rate of $0.05-$0.06 on them instead of the usual $0.10-$0.12.

That’s all I have this week. As always, I would love to hear your reactions to the article in the comments section. If you have any questions or want me to cover anything specific in the world of Magic trade, leave a comment or hit me up on Twitter.

“Rebar” at Collectors Corner
@Brass_Gnat on Twitter

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Joey and Bigheadjoe discuss all the drama from the past week in the world of MTG, including Alex Bertoncini and the bannings in Modern. Afterwards, Jared Sylva joins in to help clarify the recent changes to the IPG for Competitive and Professional REL events.

In Contention #60

December 20 2011 DCI Banned & Restricted List Announcement

Changes to the Infraction Procedure Guide (PDF)

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Featuring music by Tha Gatherin’
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I’m not gonna lie readers, it hasn’t been a very good few weeks in the Dual to Deck project. I haven’t been able to make it to a card shop in almost a month. This really hurts because I was hoping to capitalize on the hype of Innistrad to get some good deals and really make the box trade worth it. Sadly, the only trades I’ve gotten in have been a few trades with casual players around campus. Nevertheless, for your reading pleasure here are trades 3 through 5.

Trade #3

My

• 1x Kessig Wolf Run-$5.00
• 1x Festerhide Boar (foil)-$0.25
• Total-$5.25

His

• 1x Birthing Pod-$6.00
• 1x Day of Judgment-$2.5
• 1x Stony Silence-$1.00
• Total-$9.50
• +$4.25

This trade was with a guy who was trying to get Wolf Run Ramp together for fnm later that week and was basically starting from scratch. I wish I had more of the deck in the binder but alas, I only had the deck’s name sake in the D2D binder. To give this trade a time frame, Wolf Run had just won Worlds so I didn’t have much trouble getting an inflated value on the card. I put the Wolf Run at $8, $3 more than it was currently retailing on Star City for. I’ve seen Innistrad dual lands trade at around that so there was some precedent and I fully expected him to counter offer since the price was obviously high. He accepted the $8 straight up so I went shopping. Birthing Pod is not getting much love right now so the price has dropped since the beginning of spoiler season, but with a full 2 sets to go in a graveyard block with the morbid keyword I still think they are safe speculative pickups at $5 or less. Day is a staple as long as it’s the current 4 mana Wrath effect, so despite the numerous printings it still trades well at $2-$3. The last card is an interesting pick, I needed a $1 card to finish up the trade and Stony Silence is one of those very niche cards that does one narrow thing but does it very well. When these types of cards have a market they trade well above what you can pick them up for from most people. He wanted one of the foil commons as a throw in last minute so there went green Uncle Fester.

Before going on to the next trade I wanted to stop to talk about the concept of precedent in trade. Regardless of prices or values, if you can show that a card is trading at x or above/below then it will be much easier to make trades at that value. If it’s been done before people will assume that’s how it’s done and won’t question it even if it seems a little off. This can also work against you if a card trades low in your area and everyone knows it, it will be impossible to get full value out of it. Precedent also only works for up to a few dollars worth of value either way. You can only get so much value this way before the nagging voice in your trade partner’s brain becomes a full on scream that makes them duck out of the trade.

Trade #4

My

• 1x Stromkirk Noble-$6
• 1x Kessig Cagebreakers-$0.5
• Total-$6.50

His

• 1x Jin Gitaxias-$4
• 1x Path to Exile-$4
• 1x Firespout-$1.5
• 1x Punishing Fire-$1
• Total-$10.5
• +$4.00

This trade was with someone who was in the process of dismantling his Commander precons. It had been awhile since I had seen an intact Commander precon so I wanted to talk to the guy about what he was doing. He said he had enjoyed playing with the precons as an intro to the format but wanted to make his own decks now. I offered the D2D binder and asked him which general he was interested in. He liked the way the Devour For Power deck played so I made some suggestions, but he said he had a box of Innistrad in the mail and considering my binder is all Innistrad at this point I was almost out of luck. He did find 2 things he wanted, the Noble and Cagebreakers. He was also getting into Standard and figured he would start with RDW and knew he couldn’t get a playset of Nobles out of a single box. He liked the effect of the Cagebreakers enough that he wouldn’t mind taking the risk that he would end up with multiples and wanted them as well.

I put the Noble at $7 and Cagebreakers at $1. He said he didn’t have much to trade besides what was in the Commander decks and some old prerelease stuff from New Phyrexia. The Commander decks were a gold mine of good commons/uncommons so I pulled a stack of those out to start. I then looked at his prerelease leftovers and found a Jin. Jin is an undervalued card that has room to grow since the Graveborn deck just released, hopefully making the Reanimator decks more popular. I pulled the Jin at $3 and then asked how many uncommons he would be willing to give up to fill the gap. He said 3 so I pulled 2 cheaper less impressive in Commander cards and a Path. He said he wasn’t interested in playing red or white in Commander so the deal was a go. With a Modern PTQ format coming in January, I’m hoping these cards pay out close to double later on. Worse case scenario, all 4 of these cards have seen play in Legacy and should hold their value.

Trade #5

My

• 1x Mentor of the Meek-$3.00
• Total-$3.00

His

• 1x Sol Ring-$6.00
• Total-$6.00
• +$3.00

This trade was with the previous guy’s friend. He was also taking apart some Commander decks but had no interest in any other format. He wasn’t sure if he liked any of the generals from the precons enough to make a new deck but already had a G/W token deck. He looked through the D2D binder and instantly had to have the Mentor. I also suggested Parallel Lives and Mayor of Avabruck, but he had already gotten a foil Parallel Lives on eBay and said he didn’t want any flip cards in his deck (which is fair, I don’t like them in cube or EDH either). He handed me a stack of leftovers which were mostly commons/uncommons with a few rares mixed in. He had a few Sol Rings in there so I grabbed one and offered the one for one. He happily accepted and then we played a few group EDH games where not even my Savra control deck could keep up with his token army or the cards he drew off his shiny new Mentor. This trade was a definite win on paper but I am slightly concerned that the market for Sol Ring may be dried up since there are so many out there from the precons, guess we’ll find out later on if everyone has theirs or not.

Trading with true casual only players is an interesting and potentially very rewarding experience. Many times they will not have bought new cards in a while or even be aware of what is going on in current sets. They don’t trade very often and usually don’t know the values of cards. Usually they won’t be interested in trading unless you know what they play and happen to have something from a newer set that is very good in one of their decks. They may not have much to trade and what they do have they will likely be very attached to. Trying to trade using values could end up being a mistake as either they don’t care what a card’s value is beyond the enjoyment they get out of it or talk of prices confuses and scares them. When I found out the first casual guy was also going to be playing Standard, I felt more comfortable talking dollar amounts on cards, but it still could have easily been a mistake that ended the trade. The second guy overheard my first trade with his friend but once I found out he only played EDH casually with friends I didn’t want to bring value into the trade with him. It’s true that if we were using money values that he may have asked for more cards to even up the trade but it just as easily could have upset him and made him not want to deal with me when he could just go to eBay. One for one trades with casual guys are the norm most often and value beyond enjoyment and pet cards don’t matter. The only thing I have left to say about trading with casual only guys is not to completely rip them off. They are usually good guys who just want to have some fun with this card game and though it would be easy to score old expensive cards for casual junk, don’t take advantage! It’s true I may have gotten double profit from my trade but it was a recently printed card that he had multiple copies of and had no plans to use (he had old school signed ones like a boss). It is my goal to do this project as fairly as possible without ever taking someone for everything they’re worth.

That’s it for this time. I should be able to make it out to the shop this coming week for some serious trades. Before I go, I wanted to ask how people like the format of the articles, with less actual trades and more theory. If you want them to be longer or more focused on the trades with less theory let me know in the comments.

“Rebar” at Collectors Corner
@Brass_Gnat on Twitter

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This week, BHJ goes over his experience at the SCG Invitational, and then catches up with some other attendees, including Mark Sun and SCG Invitational Winner and 2011 Player of the Year Alex Bertoncini! Be sure to listen all the way to the end for a very special interview between Richard Hagon and Paulo Vitor Dama Da Rosa! (Celebrity voices may or may not be impersonated.)

Coverage of the SCG Invitational

Drew Levin’s article regarding Alex Bertoncini

Special thanks and shout-outs to Dave Heilker and Eric Klug.

Much love to Rich Hagon and PVDDR

Featuring music by Tha Gatherin’
http://twitter.com/thagatherin

Contact us at yomtgtaps [at] gmail [dot] com

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