For the last couple of weeks, I was running HOT, but as every magic player knows, you can’t run forever. This week I bring you a meager trade report from a crappy weekend in St. Louis. Don’t get me wrong, the company was good and I was thankful that a certain young lady at the registration booth didn’t rip my head off for continually losing my belongings, thanks Allison. No joke I lost a box of rares and my Blackberry and they were both turned in to the lost and found. I was super excited to see that there are good people out there, not just dudes who make their opponents discard with Esper Charm, when they clearly meant to draw. Speaking of totally unrelated things, the shout-out section... you might have noticed that I killed it.

It became too weird to maintain and it seemed pretty useless. If I meet you on my journey, I want you to know that I am officially psyched that we met and that we got to BS or do some trading. I wish I could just sit and write about all the people that I meet and all of my meaningless adventures, but we have work to do here. I am trying to get to some power nine and impart some semblance of wisdom to you in the process. Instead of the shout out section I think I am going to try a little question and answer section. Let jump into that now.

Desert from the comments last week asked this question:

I am going to answer your question first and then talk about why. It was a great decision to turn this person down. You may think you have no use for a Baneslayer, but you do. There will come a time when you want a Baneslayer Angel, whether it be for a new deck or an EDH deck or even to trade for a Vengevine or trade toward a Jace 2.0, the time will come. When that time comes what good is this pile going to do you:

2 Akroma, Angel of Fury 4.99

3 Jace Beleren 7.99

Let’s pretend that for a second he actually offered you full value for your card, which he didn’t (BSA 37.99 vs His 33.95), this trade would still be bad for you because you are doing what’s called "Trading Down." You are taking a valuable card and turning it into a bunch of less valuable cards. The problem with this stems from a very basic fact, which is rooted in the secondary market. As someone who sells cards, I often don’t like trading down because that means I have to sell a bunch of small cards instead of one big one; Its extra negotiation time for each card, extra postage if I sell to two buyers and multiple discounts if I happen to give them. Even if I got 37.99 in trade for a Baneslayer Angel I would still lose money because of the reasons that I listed.

Now not everyone is a seller but that’s where all unwanted cards end up and players know this. A savvy trader knows that it’s much easier to sell/trade a big dollar card then it is a bunch of small cards. This is why you should not trade your BSA down, because you will lose value in your collection, not to mention the fact that you are trading for Akroma which is almost a bulk rare. My recommendation is to try to trade it toward an expensive card that you want ("trading up") and if you do trade it down get 150% value out of it, though I still don’t recommend this. It takes skill to trade down and make profit.

Ok, that was a lot about "trading up" and "trading down" but the content is relevant considering the fact that I am trying to "trade up". This means that my cards are really not worth what Cool Stuff Inc. says that they are. Instead they are worth whatever the guy who has the Power says that they are. I am sure it will be significantly less. I am ok with this, because I understand that the guy with Power will essentially be doing me a favor to "trade down" and I have to try to make it worth his while. I hope all that was clear.

Let’s talk trades.

This is going to be a little bit of a white bordered week. No one likes white bordered cards, except some people. I know it doesn’t make sense but there are actually people out there buy these things up or else dealers would not be willing to pay for them. The great thing about white border cards is that they are really easy to trade for. Something that I used to do while trying to build my collection would be to trade for white border cards and then play with those and trade the black border ones. In this trade I am putting my bulk to work for some legacy and vintage staples.

My (.49) Selective Memory .49 His (2.98) 2x Hurkyl's Recall 1.49 Net +2.49

People hate white borders but they love foily promos! I traded my DCI Pathrazer of Ulamog for three cards out of his "junk" pile. In case you didn’t know Nevinyrral's Disk is not junk. It’s an EDH staple and a casual favorite. I never turn down some one's junk pile. There are always gems in it.

My (1.49) Pathrazer of Ulamog Foil Promo 1.49 His (14.97) 3x Nevinyrral's Disk 4.99 Net: +13.48

I don’t want to compromise the "legitimacy" of this project by giving free publicity to people who trade with me, but I will say that I got to trade with a pretty cool guy who does awesome things with event coverage. I won’t say who it was but if you look closely at the trade you might be able to make a pretty good guess. Anyways – Turns out that he needed an Infernal Tutor, this card is key in the Legacy Storm / Tendrils deck. I traded him for his sealed foil Psychatog and a Ray Token. Ever since I started watching GGS live, I have always wanted one of those dang tokens. The Psychatog will trade well, this is the version that is preferred for some cube builders.

My (4.49) Infernal Tutor 4.49 His (3.99) Psychatog DCI Foil 3.99 Ray Token Priceless Net: -.50

CSI says I lost on this trade, but they aren’t accounting for the fact that Mystical Tutor is banned so now ANT is pretty much dead. I expect Infernal Tutor to drop in price and I am sure I can find a Foil Sucker to take the Psychatog off my hands.

The more I look at this last trade, the more I wonder, "What the hell was I thinking?" I don’t really know, so let’s use this as a "What not to do scenario." I traded down two very nice EDH cards for a couple of bulk rares, this might have been good if I got double the bulk but as it sits, this was a bad move.

My (4.98) Lightning Greaves 3.99 Intet, the Dreamer .99 His (5.41) Echo Mage 1.49 Baneful Omen .49 Death’s Shadow .49 Djinn of Wishes .49 Hive Mind .49 Archmage Ascension .49 Capricious Efreet .49 Mordant Dragon .49 Lullmage Mentor .49 Net +.43

That’s all for this week, let’s hope for a better week of trading next week! Thanks for keeping the feedback coming and thanks for reading.