Starting off

Collecting cards is a little like picking fruit, you go after those that are easiest to grab. According to Star City Games, there are 36 cards on the list that are $5 or less. These cards should both be the easiest cards to buy and the easiest cards to trade for. 
Local card stores usually sell bulk cards, separated by commons, uncommons, rares, and foils. Stores won’t organize or price out these cards, due to the time involved vs. the potential gain. You can normally find a decent number of cards selling below their resale value. I looked through several local stores’ collections and found the following cards priced at fifty cents to a dollar:
• Gargoyle Castle (Foil)
• Worn Powerstone (Japanese)
• Urza’s Factory (Foil)
• Myr Retriever (Foil)
• Island (Full Art Foil)
I visited four stores this weekend. My hope was that I would pick up 2-5 cards per store. It was a disappointment to only pick up five cards from the bulk section. Fortunately, there were 20% off sales at the shops I visited. The stores I went to were matching online prices. The online stores were all having Black Friday sales. The card I was most fortunate to grab was the Dream Halls. It was the only Korean card in the store. Dream Halls was priced at the same value as the English version + the 20% off! I was able to pick up the following cards at amazing discounts:
• Trinket Mage (Foil)
• Cryptic Command (DCI Promo Foil)
• Transmute Artifact
• Power Artifact
• Dream Halls (Korean)
• Mox Opal (Foil)
The stores were surprisingly empty, but there were a few people there to trade with. The only notable card I lost trading for these was a Wurmcoil Engine. In the future, I will do a better job at tracking exactly what I traded away to get the cards I traded for. I was able to get the following cards in trades: 
• Island (Full Art, Foil)
• Island (Full Art, Foil, Russian)
• Eye of Ugin (Foil)
• Mind Stone (Gateway Foil)
• Silver Myr (Mirrodin Chinese Foil)
With all the low hanging fruit off the tree, it’s time to start the real work of collecting this deck.
16 cards down – 84 to go.