I actually finished the great relisting project! It's amazing! I don't know what I'll ever do with all of my free time now...
Oh, that's right - catch up on all my new backlogged inventory - that's what!
You really should have seen my happy dance yesterday afternoon when I got the last of the cards put up in the branch store. I'm sure I mortified my whole family. But this thing has been keeping me busy every night for ~3-4 hours, most days on weekends, and any other available free time for the last several months. I am SO relieved to finally have it done!
Now pretty much all of my uncommon cards are now available at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ along with the commons and basic lands, and quite a few cheaper rares as well...I have a much decreased single card inventory available at the eBay store compared to just three months ago.
Oh, by the way - the solution to my inventory limit problem (see my last post) was to pay ProStores more money every month and upgrade my store level. I now have an inventory limit of 50,000 items, which I hopefully won't hit for quite some time!
I can now get back to listing a whole bunch of foils I have sitting around ("Lot 46") as well as some new cards I've never had available before (so they need the full photo-taking treatment). Then I need to tackle the remains of "Lot 47" which is now nothing but basic lands and common cards that I want to make Complete Basic Land sets and Complete Common Sets out of.
Then I have a large number of non-English cards that will need to get processed - a bunch of Japanese, Russian and Portuguese in particular, but many French, Italian, German, etc...including a lot of 4th Edition cards in Japanese that should prove popular due to their black borders (reminiscent of the Chinese 4th Edition I wrote about long ago).
My biggest business lately has been in unopened packs. I now have booster packs available for every expansion set except Arabian Nights and Antiquities (which sell for ~$200 and ~$50 each, respectively), including the almost as popular Legends boosters that I have listed for $57.50. I'm hoping the demand on all of these will pick up as the holidays approach us. I can see the effects of the economy crisis in my sales - most of my really big purchases lately have been from outside the US, rather than in.
That's all the news that's fit to print right now...more as it happens. Hopefully I'll now have some free time to right a few more Blog entries focusing on individual cards and the like soon...
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
I may have a MASSIVE problem
Just a quick one today...
I have gotten up to the Mirrodin block of cards in the great relisting project, and hit a major snag. As I was uploading the Uncommon cards for Mirrodin, only 14 of the 84 cards I was uploading were processed.
When I read the report to determine why the others didn't load, I was greeted with the message: "Reached maximum number of Products (10,000)".
Holy $#!+ - I'm not sure what surprised me more...the fact that I have a limit to the number of cards I can put up, or that fact that I've now got 10,000 cards listed!
I have an email in to ProStores, the company that hosts my store. I vaguely recall a message in the opening documentation from them that said there was a limit (which I never thought I'd reach at the time), but that I could contact my ProStores agent if I would need a higher number. Hopefully something can be done here, or else I don't know what I'm going to do with the remaining cards I still need to list from before, not to mention cards in future sets.
Why is nothing ever easy?
I have gotten up to the Mirrodin block of cards in the great relisting project, and hit a major snag. As I was uploading the Uncommon cards for Mirrodin, only 14 of the 84 cards I was uploading were processed.
When I read the report to determine why the others didn't load, I was greeted with the message: "Reached maximum number of Products (10,000)".
Holy $#!+ - I'm not sure what surprised me more...the fact that I have a limit to the number of cards I can put up, or that fact that I've now got 10,000 cards listed!
I have an email in to ProStores, the company that hosts my store. I vaguely recall a message in the opening documentation from them that said there was a limit (which I never thought I'd reach at the time), but that I could contact my ProStores agent if I would need a higher number. Hopefully something can be done here, or else I don't know what I'm going to do with the remaining cards I still need to list from before, not to mention cards in future sets.
Why is nothing ever easy?
Monday, October 06, 2008
Shards of Alara is up!
The newest expansion to Magic, Shards of Alara, has finally arrived. On Friday I received my pre-order of one case of booster pack boxes and one box of tournament decks. I opened up all of the decks and 4 of the 6 boxes worth of boosters.
All of the regular basic lands, commons and uncommons are up at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ and the rares, mythic rares, and foils are up in my eBay store.
The best card I opened was perhaps the most popular card in the whole set: a foil version of the most popular Mythic Rare card, called Sarkhan Vol. Here's what the card looks like:
Copies of this card have sold for as much as $70+ at auction recently (some were available before the release date), and there was only one available in an eBay Store when I went to list mine. They were asking $69.95 for theirs. I had listed my non-Foil version for $32.50, so I doubled the price to $65, keeping mine under the other seller's.
All of the regular basic lands, commons and uncommons are up at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ and the rares, mythic rares, and foils are up in my eBay store.
The best card I opened was perhaps the most popular card in the whole set: a foil version of the most popular Mythic Rare card, called Sarkhan Vol. Here's what the card looks like:
Copies of this card have sold for as much as $70+ at auction recently (some were available before the release date), and there was only one available in an eBay Store when I went to list mine. They were asking $69.95 for theirs. I had listed my non-Foil version for $32.50, so I doubled the price to $65, keeping mine under the other seller's. You may be wondering why I haven't included a link to the listing for this item, as I usually do. That's because it sold less than 12 hours later to a customer in Greece!
What makes this card so popular? Well the card itself is very useful, as you can use it to add a nice dragon Creature to your side of your magical battle. But from a rarity standpoint, look at it this way...the card is a Mythic Rare. Mythic Rares shows up in 1 out of every 8 booster packs. There are 15 different mythic rares, so based on odds, you'd need to open 120 packs to be sure of getting a copy of Sarkhan Vol.
But now consider the Foil part. On average you'll get one Foil Rare in every box of booster packs (or 1 in 36 packs). If a Rare is replaced with a Mythic Rare every 1 in 8 packs, this means (theoretically) that you'd need to open 8 boxes' worth of boosters to get a single Foil Mythic Rare. To get the specific Foil Mythic Rare you're looking for, then, you'd need to open 15 x 8 or 120 boxes of boosters.
Essentially - I got VERY lucky! First of all that I got a Foil Mythic Rare in only the equivalent of 5 boxes, and that the one I got was the most popular one.
Well, now it's back to the great relisting project. Wish me luck on that one!
Saturday, September 27, 2008
And the results are...
...not quite what I had expected.
The From the Vault: Dragons cards did turn out to be quite popular. The grand total raw sales came to $91 - a good deal more than the $53 I paid for the set. Once fees are taken out, I still should show some profit, which is of course always nice!
One person ended up winning 7 of the 15 cards, another got 5, a third got 2 and a final person won 1. The person with 7 had a total of around $49, so they are clearly the winner of the special spin-down life counter promised to a winner of 5+ cards. Strangely enough, since no single person won 10 or more, no-one won the box, or the free shipping. I really thought that last one would be a big draw - buy your 15 Dragons cards then go crazy buying booster packs or something really heavy, and get it all shipped for free....but I guess not!
Anyway, I certainly can't complain about the results. It was just not quite what I thought I'd see. I felt for sure someone would try to get 10+ so they could get the box. It's really cool. So I guess I get to keep it :-)
On the great relisting project, I am up to the Invasion set, and should finish getting those done tonight. That leaves only 19 full expansion sets and then various piddly boxed sets, plus some non-English stuff (Italian Legends and Chinese 4th Edition being the biggest two problems). And all of this will be put on the back burner soon as the new set, Shards of Alara, is due out this coming Friday. I hope to get the descriptions of the cards typed up and ready before the cards actually arrive, if my usual source is as with-it as he was for Eventide. And maybe I'll get as lucky as I was with Eventide and get the cards a full day before the release date!
Oh, I promised to say a bit more about Shards of Alara in this post. The biggest deal is that Wizards of the Coast has decided to put a new level of Rarity into their cards. Since the beginning of the game there have been three levels of Rarity (4 if you count "Basic Land" as one): Commons, Uncommons, and Rares. These days a typical booster pack will contain 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons, and 11 Commons (or 10 Commons and a Basic Land for a Core Set like 10th Edition).
Starting with Shards of Alara, they are replacing the Rare in roughly 1 out of every 8 packs with a "Mythic Rare" - so this small set will be even more difficult to find than (and consequently, in theory, worth more than) a regular Rare. And a Foil version of such a Mythic Rare should be insanely valuable. Again, in theory.
Also, they plan to replace one of the Commons with a Basic Land in booster packs for all sets, not just the Core Sets. The theory being that since you essentially must have basic Lands to play, then not having them in boosters makes it more difficult for new players to get started.
The final big change being made is that this set (and ones to follow) will be smaller than the sets in recent history. There are simply too many cards in the game to reasonably expect someone to be fluent with all of them, and lowering the number in newer sets will help with that. For me this means it should be easier to get my hands on all (or nearly all) with the 5-6 boxes I plan on opening. That is one thing I appreciate a good deal.
The From the Vault: Dragons cards did turn out to be quite popular. The grand total raw sales came to $91 - a good deal more than the $53 I paid for the set. Once fees are taken out, I still should show some profit, which is of course always nice!
One person ended up winning 7 of the 15 cards, another got 5, a third got 2 and a final person won 1. The person with 7 had a total of around $49, so they are clearly the winner of the special spin-down life counter promised to a winner of 5+ cards. Strangely enough, since no single person won 10 or more, no-one won the box, or the free shipping. I really thought that last one would be a big draw - buy your 15 Dragons cards then go crazy buying booster packs or something really heavy, and get it all shipped for free....but I guess not!
Anyway, I certainly can't complain about the results. It was just not quite what I thought I'd see. I felt for sure someone would try to get 10+ so they could get the box. It's really cool. So I guess I get to keep it :-)
On the great relisting project, I am up to the Invasion set, and should finish getting those done tonight. That leaves only 19 full expansion sets and then various piddly boxed sets, plus some non-English stuff (Italian Legends and Chinese 4th Edition being the biggest two problems). And all of this will be put on the back burner soon as the new set, Shards of Alara, is due out this coming Friday. I hope to get the descriptions of the cards typed up and ready before the cards actually arrive, if my usual source is as with-it as he was for Eventide. And maybe I'll get as lucky as I was with Eventide and get the cards a full day before the release date!
Oh, I promised to say a bit more about Shards of Alara in this post. The biggest deal is that Wizards of the Coast has decided to put a new level of Rarity into their cards. Since the beginning of the game there have been three levels of Rarity (4 if you count "Basic Land" as one): Commons, Uncommons, and Rares. These days a typical booster pack will contain 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons, and 11 Commons (or 10 Commons and a Basic Land for a Core Set like 10th Edition).
Starting with Shards of Alara, they are replacing the Rare in roughly 1 out of every 8 packs with a "Mythic Rare" - so this small set will be even more difficult to find than (and consequently, in theory, worth more than) a regular Rare. And a Foil version of such a Mythic Rare should be insanely valuable. Again, in theory.
Also, they plan to replace one of the Commons with a Basic Land in booster packs for all sets, not just the Core Sets. The theory being that since you essentially must have basic Lands to play, then not having them in boosters makes it more difficult for new players to get started.
The final big change being made is that this set (and ones to follow) will be smaller than the sets in recent history. There are simply too many cards in the game to reasonably expect someone to be fluent with all of them, and lowering the number in newer sets will help with that. For me this means it should be easier to get my hands on all (or nearly all) with the 5-6 boxes I plan on opening. That is one thing I appreciate a good deal.
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