Eventide is now available!

The newest expansion to Magic: the Gathering, Eventide, is now available at Don's Magic and Sundry!

Eventide expands on the themes developed in the Shadowmoor expansion, and is the second an d final) expansion in the Shadowmoor "mini-block". It introduces the new keywords Retrace and Chroma, and makes more extended use of the Wither and Persist keywords introduced in Shadowmoor, as well as the untap symbol!

Eventide booster packs contain 1 Rare card, 3 Uncommon cards and 11 Commons. In addition, each pack contains either a Creature Token card or a "Tips & Tricks" card. In random packs a Common card is replaced with a premium "Foil" copy of one of the Rares, Uncommons or Commons.

There are 9 Token Creature cards (2 are reprints on the front from Shadowmoor), 8 "Tips & Tricks" cards, 60 Common cards, and 60 Uncommon cards in the set. As I write these words, all are currently available at Don's Magic and Sundry and ready for purchase.

The Rare cards are available at my eBay store, as well as the Foil cards that I got from my opening spree after I received my boxes. Unopened booster packs are also available, as are Complete Common sets and complete Uncommon sets.

More Store update info

For those who are interested, here's some other updates besides the big headaches eBay has given me lately...

• This week I have up for auction the last of my REALLY big ticket items, an Alpha Edition Plateau (one of the original 10 Dual Lands). It was originally listed in the store at $150, but had been there for over a year. We'll see how it does at auction. As of this writing it is up to $41.06 with 1 day and 19 hours to go...
• I now have a full-time job on top of the Store, so I have been severely challenged to find time to do anything more than pull orders lately.
• Ironically, business has been better than ever since I got the full-time job, so it almost seems that every spare waking moment is spent pulling orders.
• I made many other collection purchases lately, so I am up to (I believe) Lot 45 now.
• Another big change is that I have drastically expanded my inventory of unopened booster packs. I have bought entire boxes of boosters for almost every set from Alliances through Scourge so far, and have them listed at the Store and also put many up for auction every week. They have so far been immensely popular.
• The last Lot I purchased, which I have mostly sorted now, includes many cool Promo cards, as well as a whole bunch of Foils and cards signed by the artists. In some cases they are signed foils, and of very popular cards in their own right. So, hopefully, they will bring in a pretty penny when put up for auction.
• Morningtide, the second half of the Lorwyn block, has thus far been somewhat of a disappointment. The Lorwyn set produced several insanely popular cards, and generated a great deal of income very quickly. There were quite a bit fewer cards of that ilk in Morningtide, and of course I pre-ordered an entire case based on the popularity of Lorwyn! I should be able to turn a profit on the case eventually, but nowhere near as quickly as I had expected. Now I have to decide what to do for my Shadowmoor pre-order, as that set gets released in May...

And a follow-up to my entry from earlier today...I don't know if Fourth Edition is being treated somehow differently, but I was able to bulk edit those cards tonight without difficulty. These cards, at least, are listed under the "Other" subcategory to the chain I mentioned there, rather than being unclassified at all. Maybe eBay saw the error of their ways, and reclassified everything that was already listed so that at least the category makes some degree of sense?

Problems & good news with eBay

Well, there's good news and bad news to share thanks to some changes made recently at eBay.

The good news mainly consists of new lower listing fees for auctions and fixed-price items for Power Sellers. Since I recently reclaimed that exalted status, I share in these bonuses. Now I spend less to list my items every week when I make up my auctions. The biggest savings comes in the form of free Gallery photos for each listing (in fact they're automatic anymore - I don't even have to choose the option). That saves (if I'm remembering correctly) $0.20 per listing, and I typically list 30 or so items a week, so that's a savings of $6 or so per week. That can add up.

So, I'm happy about those changes. There's two major ones, however, that I am seriously less than thrilled about.

First of all is the new low limit on listing Store Inventory items. I (and other Store owners) can no longer list items in the Store for under $1. That constitutes at least 50% of my inventory! On a recent online help chat with an eBay agent, I was informed that as Store Inventory items came up for renewal at the end of their 30-day cycle, they wouldn't get renewed if they were under $1, and would show up in my "unsold items" page. So far this information seems to be erroneous, however, as just in the last 24 hours several under $1 Store items have renewed safely.

However, I can't list any new items at under $1, so as new inventory comes in, I have to decide what to do. As I've mentioned before, I usually run a price check on a card before I list, and try to price myself somewhere in the middle of the pack. If all other Store owners are in the same boat I am, then eventually there will be no under $1 listings....so does that mean we will all cease to list these items, or will we all sort of agree (without communicating with each other) to price anything that would normally have been under $1 at $1?

Personally, I think what's going to happen is suddenly my inventory at www.donsmagicandsundry.com is going to be burgeoning as more than just commons will be listed there. Any uncommons and rares that would normally be under $1 are going to have to be listed there. Hopefully this will act as an added draw to bring more customers there.

The second, and possibly more irksome, problem is that eBay has just recently revamped the Magic the Gathering categories. In the past (for as long as I've been listing on eBay), the category that any given card would go in would be:

Toys & Hobbies -> Trading Card Games -> Magic the Gathering -> Individual Cards -> NAME OF SET THE CARD CAME FROM

I guess that the powers that be at eBay were getting tired of constantly having to add new options for the last subcategory, as new Magic sets came out (for example, 10th Edition, Planar Chaos, Future Sight, Lorwyn and the new set Morningtide never got their own listings), and they completely redid the last piece, so that the category now is:

Toys & Hobbies -> Trading Card Games -> Magic the Gathering -> Individual Cards -> COLOR OF CARD

So the final subcategory would be, for example, "Black (Swamp)" or "Multicolor" or "Artifact".

This means that every single one of my 7000+ listings now is uncategorized, as the category I had assigned to them no longer exists.

And to add insult to injury, I run into the same problem now with this that I had last year with the USPS "Airmail Letter is now First Class International" problem...you can't edit a listing once it's had a sale. So any item that's sold at least one copy cannot be changed to put it into a new category.

As if all that weren't bad enough, changing categories is not one of the options in bulk editing, so I would have to manually open up every single one of my 7000+ listings individually and edit them to give them a category.

I have decided that this is just too much work, especially given that if eBay lives up to its threat over half of my inventory will start not renewing anyway. I am hoping that not too many people shop for cards by searching categories anyway. And at least my own Store categories that I get to invent for my listings are unaffected by the eBay shift. So, as I list new items they'll get the new categories, but the old listings will remain unclassified.

Oh, and another pain-in-the-neck side effect of this shift is that when I use TurboLister (the free program from eBay I use to make my listings) to relist a card I had up before, I can't bulk edit there either because the categories are all wrong. So I have to individually edit each listing I'm interested in first and give it one of the new categories, then I can select them all and do a bulk edit for any other changes I want to make.

Portal Three Kingdoms cards now available

I have recently acquired, and only just listed, some cards from the Portal Three Kingdoms starter set of Magic (hereafter abbreviated P3K). From what I understand, this is probably, with the exception of the original Limited Edition (Alpha) set, the smallest print run of any set in Magic history. It was only published in 1999 in four languages, English, Japanese, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese. From what I have gathered, this set was never offered for retail sale in the US.

As you would expect, then, this set has become wildly popular and cards sell for very high prices, comparably. Unopened booster packs of the set sell for in the $40 range. The most popular and sought-after card, a rare card called the Zodiac Dragon, sells for over $100 by itself. Unfortunately I didn't obtain one of these when I got my P3K cards!

"Lot 35" is actually two sets of cards that I purchased on eBay from two different sellers. One was auctioning off 6 lots - one of basic Lands, and one of each of the five color of Magic. These cards were in English. I won the Land lot, and the White, Blue, Red and Green lots. I was unfortunately outbid on the Black lot. The seller was a very nice individual, who sent me a partial refund when one of the cards in the Blue lot somehow failed to make its way in the package (one of the Rares, unfortunately, but he reimbursed me what I could have reasonably sold the card for, so it works out). The only other problem is that the basic Lands turned out to NOT be actually from P3K, but from a boxed reprint set called Battle Royale. The seller was unaware of this himself, and had this to say when I told him:

"That's hilarious. I bought those lands from Star City Games when I was trying to complete that P3K set. Obviously, they are oblivious of that info as well. If you would like to send them back, I can refund your money if you like. Let me know."

I did not take him up on his gracious offer, as I believe I will still be able to sell the cards (albeit not misidentified as they've apparently been at least twice previously).

The second batch of cards was a group of Japanese P3K cards. This batch was made up mostly of basic Lands and Common cards, and actually included some English Swamps. Many of the cards are the Japanese versions of English ones I got, making it easy to duplicate their entries and change the photo and language to make the new listing.

I have so far listed English Rare and Uncommon cards from P3K at eBay, and will soon get the English Commons up at www.donsmagicandsundry.com. This will then be followed by the Japanese P3K cards at both Stores.

While I'm giving a Store update, here's some highlights since I last wrote:

• I'm a Power Seller again! Sales have been very brisk of late, and I have once again risen to the ranks of eBay Power Seller (this time without the dubious assistance of selling a piccolo trumpet for my brother). I'm not sure if it's the increase in stock (the Lorwyn sales have helped a great deal), or the approaching holiday season, or the weakened US dollar leading to an increase in non-US sales, or all of the above...but I'm not complaining!
• I've gotten all of the Lots up to "Lot 34" listed now. The last to be listed, "Lot 33", was all Foil cards and should hopefully prove to be popular as gift items.
• "Lot 36" and "Lot 37" have already been purchased. These are collection of over 5000 cards (including commons) and a set of over 400 Rares and Foils, respectively. They should be processed faster than previous lots. As I get more and more cards in my database, the listings get faster and faster, as the photos are already taken and the descriptions are already written.
• I've pre-ordered a case of Morningtide, the next Magic expansion to be released at the end of January. I have discovered through 10th Edition and Lorwyn sales that it definitely pays to be among the first to list these cards on eBay. With few sellers to choose from in the initial week or so, sales are brisk and prices can be quite high, as people are willing to pay a lot to get the cards they really want RIGHT NOW.
• For some unknown reason the Squirrel Token photo I included in a previous post has been drawing a phenomenal number of hits to the Blog. I'm not sure why so many people are doing Google image searches for Squirrel Tokens, but it's bringing people in! If you're one of them - Welcome!
• Sales have actually been picking up at www.donsmagicandsundry.com of late. Again, I can't say for sure why, but I'm hopeful that it will continue to grow, and I can start sending over some of the higher ticket items from eBay and save a boatload on listing and final value fees. About 33% of my sales get lost to eBay and PayPal fees right now! That hurts!

Well, I think that's enough for one post. I promise to do my best to get another post up soon, this time focusing on one of the Lorwyn issues I said I'd write about that I haven't addressed yet.