Everything is for Trade

It has been said, everything has a price.  When I trade Magic cards, all of my cards are for trade.  I don’t want to trade away all of my cards, but there are times when the value you are offered is just too good.

This last weekend was the Mirrodin Besieged prerelease. There were around 60 people who showed up to the small shop I frequent.  I had not planned on trading much.  But, I also had not planned on a large turnout.  The majority of my trades were unproductive.  I received a few cards for random decks, but no one had any of the remaining cards for my Arcum commander deck.

The whole day, I overheard someone asking every player they met  if they had a Karn, Silver Golem for trade.  My only Karn was inside the Arcum deck, so I ignored it at first.  After 3 hours of hearing him ask everyone for the card, that he needed to be his General for his commander deck, I finally sat down to trade with him.  I pulled out the FTV Karn ($2.99 on SSG).  I have never seen someone more relieved to see a card of this quality.  I asked to see his trade binder. He told me he did not have a trade binder.  He told me he only had one card for trade.  I was feeling a bit annoyed when I asked what the card was.  It turns out his one card for trade was a Primeval Titan ($44.99 on SSG)!  I try to be as fair as possible when I do trades, so I asked him to look through my trade binder and pull out whatever he would like.   After five minutes of looking, he had only pulled out a small stack of cards.  I made sure there was nothing else he wanted.  I did not hide that fact that his card was worth a bit of money.  There were  5 or 6 people huddled around the trade who seemed to think it looked about fair.  He added a few more cards to the trade and we agreed on this;

His:

Primeval Tian (44.99)

Mine:

Mimic Vat

Semblance Anvil

Karn, The Silver Golem

Steel Hellkite

Summoning Station

Blasting Station

Etched Champion

Darksteel Juggernaut

Core Tapper

Magistrates Scepter

Total – ($22.66)

Trade value - +22.33

Keep in mind, I was trading something out of a deck, he didn’t know anyone else who had the card he needed, and he walked away as happy as can be.  I don’t normally gain this much value from a trade, especially when I am always willing to have people look up prices. In case anyone was worried about the deck operating without one of its legends, I traded for another Karn the next day at a more reasonable value. 

This interaction made me think about having leverage in trades.  In the current economy, many people do not have the cash available to buy the cards they want.  If this guy had a credit card, he could have simply bought the Karn from an online store and been happy.  H did not have the means to buy the cards he wanted, so he was forced to trade.  You can get great deals on cards if you have 2 things, money and patience.  Eventually, the card you are looking for can be found for a cheaper price.  If you don’t need to trade for a card, you can value cards less during trades.   There are few negotiating tools more effective than the ability to walk away from a deal.

                Thanks to EBay auctions and the “Best Offer” selection on some “Buy it Now” listings, I have both a Korean FBB Scroll rack, and a Korean FBB Mana Vault in the mail.  This leaves 10 cards for the deck to be complete.  5 of those cards are lands, which are not entirely required.  I expect collecting the last few cards to involve using my PayPal account.  If there is any topic you would like me to address as this blog comes to a close, please comment or send me a message.

Thank you for Reading!