The cost of cards

[browncoat]

Alex talked about the cost of Magic in episode 52 and how "cardboard crack" addicts should try not purchasing cards for a month. I find this interesting as I rarely buy cards. In fact the most I have spent on a single is $1.50 on a gravetroll. To obtain cards I find that trading allows me to get most cards I need for decks for any format (except vintage). I realize that buying baneslayers and tarmagoyfs can overload a budget but I spent $43 on Magic in 2009. $3 of that was for Zendikar singles (a stack of most of the good commons in the set). The other $40 was for 4 drafts that netted me a ton of good cards. While I generally don't have all the power rares, I still can build competitive decks.

How much do you other forum users spend on magic in a month or year? How do you keep costs down?

[Truthhunter]

(2010-01-09 02:30 AM)browncoat Wrote:  Alex talked about the cost of Magic in episode 52 and how "cardboard crack" addicts should try not purchasing cards for a month. I find this interesting as I rarely buy cards. In fact the most I have spent on a single is $1.50 on a gravetroll. To obtain cards I find that trading allows me to get most cards I need for decks for any format (except vintage). I realize that buying baneslayers and tarmagoyfs can overload a budget but I spent $43 on Magic in 2009. $3 of that was for Zendikar singles (a stack of most of the good commons in the set). The other $40 was for 4 drafts that netted me a ton of good cards. While I generally don't have all the power rares, I still can build competitive decks.

How much do you other forum users spend on magic in a month or year? How do you keep costs down?

I spent around $25 in 2009. I bought an Odyssey Theme Deck, a Mercadian Masques Theme Deck, a Betrayers of Kamigawa Theme Deck, a few random commons, and uncommons, a Coldsnap booster, and a Shadowmoor Booster that came with 30 random cards. Since I play casual, I don't need expensive cards. I also don't have set restrictions, so i just buy what catches my eye. Also I am cheap as hell. Magic and my Car are the only places I spend cash.

[Xx_dreamclaw_xX]

i'm a spike so i spend quite abit on cards. in 2009, i spent maybe SGD$200+... including 2 ZEN booster boxes and loads of singles...spen maybe SGD$40 on 4 pyromancer's swath and 2 lotus blooms. also spent about 30 bucks on bogardan hellkites....im not too sure on the conversion rate sorry.

[Disturbedone0777]

Magic hasn't been around in my life again for that long. Which is why I say that I know I spend too much on it. Here is a break down of the last few months alone
IN PERSON
2 x Zendikar Booster Box
2 x World Wake Booster Box
(I always like to get 2)
4x Every Sack Land
4x Every M10 Land

ONLINE
5 x Draft at least (14.99 no tax online)
3 x Zendikar seal events (29.99)
2 x Worldwake Pre-release (30.00)
and according to the latest bank statement I"ve given magic online about $100 in singles, but my collection online is very extensive. I have play sets of nearly everything that's worth having.

[Rich]

Since last september I've gone through a pre-release, a release, 2 booster drafts, 2 theme decks, a planeschase deck, $30 on 1000 random cards with 25 rares, $70 on another 900 or so cards, and probably closer to 20 booster packs. So far. I still prefer spending my money on this rather than when I was playing WoW.

[Dark Wolf]

Since I just started playing in 2009, I've probably spent over $500 worth of cards. However, I ended up selling almost all of my cards except for about $60 worth to a friend of mine for the same price I bought them at, or nearly. So I pretty much evened out at about $60. I think as a player you have to just decide where your priorities lie. Magic, contrary to some people's belief, isn't the most important thing in life, and I think we as players have to take that into account and realize that no matter how much money we pour into it, it's still just a game and a hobby. We can't let it take over our lives to the point where our work/school habits, relationships (particularly if you are married like myself), or anything else that truly matters. I mean if you're a pro Magic player, I guess you're just doing your job. Lol. However, for the rest of us, I would encourage everyone to remember to keep Magic in perspective, and to remember that if you're running low on money, this is one place that you can afford to wait.

[Singthesoul]

Let's see. It hasn't been until recently that I've even considered buying single cards. (I used to not like doing research as to what would work REALLY well in my deck). But now I have to go and buy a couple doubling seasons for my saproling deck >:3

In the last two years I probably have spent 200+ in magic cards. Again, because I never really considered buying just what I needed, but I like having the selection of cards

I'm getting back into wanting to buy them all the time Thankfully for me I don't live on my own yet so I can splurge every once in a while.

[Dark Wolf]

Lol...I hope you're prepared to pay a pretty penny for Doubling Season!

[articpenguin]

Well since I live pretty far from our closest gaming store, I usually tend to buy online (when I have the $) or trade.
A really good site I recommend checking out is EssentialMagic. It lets your import your cards and basically keep track of your collection, displaying the card total and overall worth of it. Why it helps is that many people who like to trade to it and they just look through and see if they have the card you like.
Plus trading is 10x cheaper then going out and buying booster packs and finding out you got a bad package with cards you aren't even going to use.

[Ferridge]

(2010-04-19 11:55 AM)articpenguin Wrote:  Well since I live pretty far from our closest gaming store, I usually tend to buy online (when I have the $) or trade.
A really good site I recommend checking out is EssentialMagic. It lets your import your cards and basically keep track of your collection, displaying the card total and overall worth of it. Why it helps is that many people who like to trade to it and they just look through and see if they have the card you like.
Plus trading is 10x cheaper then going out and buying booster packs and finding out you got a bad package with cards you aren't even going to use.

Is EssentialMagic for the US only?

[articpenguin]

(2010-04-19 13:45 PM)Ferridge Wrote:  

(2010-04-19 11:55 AM)articpenguin Wrote:  Well since I live pretty far from our closest gaming store, I usually tend to buy online (when I have the $) or trade.
A really good site I recommend checking out is EssentialMagic. It lets your import your cards and basically keep track of your collection, displaying the card total and overall worth of it. Why it helps is that many people who like to trade to it and they just look through and see if they have the card you like.
Plus trading is 10x cheaper then going out and buying booster packs and finding out you got a bad package with cards you aren't even going to use.

Is EssentialMagic for the US only?

It's mostly used in the US. Most trades happen in the US as well.

[StratGuy74]

I buy maybe four boosters a fortnight, so I guess in a year i spend about £260 a year on cards. Mind you, I normally trade my cards for store credit, thereby not actually spending money.
One thing that really gets me is sleeves. I don't dismantle decks, so every time I want a new deck, I spend four or five pounds on a set of sleeves. Mind you, i'm just lazy as hell. I should dismantle decks.

[articpenguin]

I spent about $30 last year. Not bad since I rarley buy cards. Trading is the route I usually go. Another great thing about the EssentialMagic site I pointed out above, is that it gives you the place with the lowest cost for a certain card.

[valk]

Too much just recently but about $100 australian dollars for 2009. Wizards must kill the pig here because our dollar has jumped against the greenbac yet boosters aren't any cheaper. Bloody scamps!

I'd like to actually tourny play now, so wanted to build up good stock and will actually consider buying singles for first time ever.

[Disturbedone0777]

So this has come to my attention again. Is it just me or does it seem like the value of cards is rapidly going up even for cards that aren't nearly worth what you pay for them? I'm starting to think that magic is just too expensive for me to handle at least in any competitive way that isn't a sealed event. I decided last night that I would try to start building a new deck so that I could play again in real life at the stores with some type of standard deck. So my choices aren't necessarily limited but when i play magic I like to have one of the top tier competitive decks. And it would seem that constructing any of these decks will take more then $300. That's insane! Why are we being expected to shell out nearly $300 to play a game? Yes you could argue that there are cheaper decks out there, issue being that most of them don't' seem to stack up well against the top tier decks. When I constructed my vampires deck, which was pretty good when Zendikar first came out, it took me only about $125 to actually get the deck together. I didn't draw anything special for it either. I payed for the Noctournus and I payed for the Bloodwitchs that I needed.

Still after buying the rares that i needed, and acquiring the uncommon that I need, I only spent around $125, and might have made a few trades. It didn't take me much. I'm starting to agree with the statement that Legendary cards are ruining magic. I think that rare is rare enough. It's hard enough to find a playset of anything good, even more so still if you make it so that you only print 1 copy of a card in every 72 packs.

I did post that thread about re-printing planeswalkers in a vault style set, though many reasons were given why that would be a bad idea. And I can agree with those, that it wouldn't be smart to sell them that way, but there should be something simliar. The duel decks are all well and dandy (I dig the alternate art stuff) but it's hardly worth it to buy the duel decks for a single card you could pay for by itself for less.

I'm thinking about just dumping my real life collection and going straight online for gameplay. At least the market in MTGO is much easier to deal with. Things are lower priced and most of the time I can find anything that I need.