How's Bayou? A look at the Dual Lands.

Okay, at long last, the promised post on the Dual Lands! When I got done writing this, I realized it was WAY too long, so I have split it up into two posts.

Our saga starts way back in the very first edition of Magic, Alpha. In this original set were introduced 10 rare cards, know collectively as the Dual Lands. Each of these land cards counted as two basic Land types, and could be used to produce mana of two different colors. For example, the Bayou (of which I have one up for auction this week) counts as both a Forest and a Swamp, and could be used to make Green mana (G) or Black mana (B).

Since there are five colors of mana possible (see my previous post on the subject), that's 10 possible combinations, and thus the 10 original Dual Lands. These lands are:

• Badlands (Swamp Mountain)
• Bayou (Forest Swamp)
• Plateau (Plains Mountain)
• Savannah (Plains Forest)
• Scrubland (Plains Swamp)
• Taiga (Mountain Forest)
• Tropical Island (Island Forest)
• Tundra (Plains Island)
• Underground Sea (Island Swamp)
• Volcanic Island (Island Mountain)

These 10 Lands survived through Revised Edition before they were declared too powerful, and taken out of print. They remain immensely popular, however, and the most recent versions from Revised Edition sell right now in the $25-$30 range; ones from Unlimited Edition in the $30-$45 range; and ones from Alpha Edition and Beta Edition sell in excess of $100.

Since they have been taken out of the set, however, several attempts have been made to create Lands that could make multiple colors of mana, with some limitation to them to make them a little less powerful. I'll look at these other attempts in my next post, Dual Lands Part II

The Colors of Magic

I have promised to write a post talking about the Dual Lands for a while now, but I think that in order for that post to make complete sense, a little bit of Magic background is necessary. So, I am going to first present this mini-Magic lesson on the Five Colors of Magic.

If you look at the back of a Magic card you'll see a symbol made of five colored dots (the symbol appears in the extreme left-hand side of my Store logo). These dots represent the five colors of Magic. Starting at the top and working clockwise you have White (although it looks a bit yellowish in the symbol), Blue, Black (appears more brown than Black), Red and Green.

Each of the five colors has its own strengths and weaknesses, its own specialties, if you will, in the type of Spells and Creatures that are available to it. Each has two colors that tend to ally with it, and two that tend to be its enemies. In the symbol, the five colors are arranged so that their allies are adjacent to them (one clockwise, one counterclockwise) and the enemies are across from them. And each color has a basic Land type associated with it, the simplest source of mana (magical energy) of that color.

For example, the color White has specialties in Order and Good. It is allied with Blue (which has a specialty of Reason/Thought, a good companion to Order) and with Green (which has a specialty of Life, a good companion to Good). Its enemies are Red (Chaos) and Black (Evil). White's basic Land type is the Plains.

The table below sums up the five colors and their attributes. Especially relevant to the coming Dual Land discussion is the idea of each color having 2 ally and 2 enemy colors.

Color	Basic Land	Specialties	Ally Colors	Enemy Colors
White (W)	Plains	Order, Good	Blue, Green	Black, Red
Blue (U)	Island	Reason/Thought, Water	Black, White	Red, Green
Black (B)	Swamp	Death, Evil	Red, Blue	Green, White
Red (R)	Mountain	Chaos, Fire	Green, Black	White, Blue
Green (G)	Forest	Life, Nature	White, Red	Blue, Black

As seen in the Wall Street Journal...

Okay - odd little story for you. It came to my attention that recently a person found this Blog through a link on a Wall Street Journal online article. The article is about a person whose workout regimen involves turning over playing cards to know how many reps of push ups to do. At the very bottom of the page are links to "related Blog articles." I believe this is a rotating thing, so there may no longer be a link to my Blog there, but at one point there was a link to my last store update - I think because the word "card(s)" got used so many times in that post. I was, to say the least, very amused to see "Don's Magic and Sundry" get a mention in the Wall Street Journal.

In other news...the Damnation that I wrote about earlier ended up selling for $16. Not bad. And the winner has already purchased one additional card and may add more to the order. Very nice.

A lot update:

Lot 18 has come in and was VERY disappointing. This was the 1000 card "unsearched" group of cards that the seller was going to add "some rares" to. I think "some" ended up equalling 5. And the rest of the 1000 cards were pretty much all commons and basic lands, no uncommons even. A great waste, and now I know not to buy from that seller again.

Lot 19 has still not arrived form Canada.

Lot 20 showed up - VERY nice. I think 6 of the cards will pay for the Lot, with the remainder being profit. I'm pleased with this one. The cards were not shipped very securely (all three large plastic boxes broke open in the cardboard box, and the cards had spilled out all over). Thankfully there wasn't any noticeable damage to any of the cards.

And there have been three additional Lots added since the last update.

Lot 21 was a couple of hundred cards that I got for the minimum bid of $5 plus $5 shipping. Included were two Foil 7th Edition Thorn Elementals. One was still in the plastic sleeve it came in originally as part of the 7th Edition Starter Pack. This one is up for auction this week. [I also have two cards from Lot 13 up this week: an oversized Starter 1999 Thorn Elemental and a Revised Edition Bayou, one of the Dual Lands that I promise to write about soon.]

Lot 22 looks to be a good deal. Someone had up a set of 1005 rares and 1000 uncommons, with a Buy It Now price of $425, "or best offer". I offered $350. He accepted. At that level he was willing to through in some bonuses as well. I have decided that I need to be much more choosy in my Lot purchases, as I am getting WAY too many common cards that just aren't selling at the new Store. I think I need to put together some Complete Common Sets from the various expansions and auction them off to reduce my stock.

Lot 23 is a group of 80 uncommons from Prophecy purchased from a seller in Las Vegas who has herself purchased from me in the past.

My Future Sight packs have come in, and I got enough cards to have at least one of every common and uncommon card, and well over half of the rares. Those will get up in the store eventually.

So, basically, I am busy, busy, busy right now. Thousands upon thousands of cards to process and get up in the two stores.

The USPS and shipping changes

On May 14, the United States Postal Service (USPS) changed a good deal about their shipping policies. What's very well known (at least here in the states) is that the basic first class stamp price went up two cents from $0.39 to $0.41. Still a far cry cheaper than any postage system anywhere else in the world, from what I understand, but since the rate went up from $0.37 to $0.39 just over a year ago (in January 2006) you can understand why there's some grumbling.

But more significantly, at least for me, were some major changes that affect how I ship things.

First of all, international shipping has been completely revamped. There no longer is such a thing as "Airmail Letter Post", which is how I used to send my cards to non-US customers. Now there is what they call "USPS International First Class". It's slightly more expensive (that rate went up as did all the others), but more importantly it means that EVERY SINGLE EBAY LISTING I HAVE IS MESSED UP! Every card I had up in the store listed "Airmail Letter Post" as a shipping option. Now that this does not exist, I have to edit every one of these listings and add the new International First Class option. I would think it would be easy enough for eBay to just edit this automatically, but NO, that's not how they do things. To make matters worse, if I have listed say 10 copies of a card as a single listing, and one has sold, I can no longer edit anything except the quantity and price of the item. So anything like this I have to end the listing and relist (being hit with a listing fee again). And remember that I have in excess of 3000 cards listed, so this is going to take a while. eBay's bulk editor doesn't really do me too much good because of the number of cards that have to be taken down and relisted. One bright note is that because of all the recent stock I've added to the store (see my previous post), I have to edit a lot of these listings any way to add the new inventory, so it's just one more thing to edit.

The other major pain is that in addition to raising the rate for first class mail, the USPS has also changed how they charge for items. Now your postage depends not just on the weight of the item, but it's size as well. There's a postcard rate, a regular envelope rate, a large envelope rate and a parcel rate - all for first class. If I send a single card in a puffy envelope, it's less than one ounce. But I can't send it for $0.41 - it's classified as a "large envelope" because it's larger than 1/4 inch thick. If it were over 3/4 inch thick it's classified as a parcel - even if it's under 1 ounce! And to add insult to injury, in order to get the nifty tracking number I get when I print shipping labels through PayPal, I have to send it at the parcel rate even though it isn't that thick(technically you can't get a tracking number for first class large envelope). So what used to cost me $0.66 to mail ($0.39 for postage, $0.13 for a "nonstandard envelope" and $0.14 for a tracking number) now costs me $1.31 ($1.13 for the first class parcel rate and $0.18 for a tracking number). Basically my shipping doubled!

Now, I only charge my customers what it costs me to mail these cards, so I'm not a seller who gouges on shipping to make money. But it certainly seems that way now to a potential buyer, I'm afraid! I may have to decide to do away with the PayPal labels and tracking numbers and drop down to hand-addressed "first class large envelope" rates. That would only be $0.80 for an envelope under one ounce.