Welcome back, let's talk about the state of affairs. I've got to admit, I am getting a little worried that I am not going to make it. I am usually a “can-do” kind of guy, but with only a couple of months left and the binder looking pretty anemic I am just not sure that I can get there. I'll have to put my game face on for GP Columbus and Gen Con. These are my only real hopes of getting there. My goal is to prepare my binder for Gencon and go for broke at the convention, if the trading is as insane as they say then it should either seal the deal or get me close. If the trading sucks, then we can pack it up and call it a day. You can officially say that the gloves are coming off.

I will be milking my next succession of trades for everything that I can. I need to have a variety of cards in my binder for the diverse GenCon population. This means I'll be trading for cards that probably won't move locally, in hopes of a big cash out at GenCon. Before we dive into the trades let's pull from the comments of last week's article.

Last week I gave our friend Desert some advice about trading down. My buddy Doug Linn pointed out in the comments that it would be good to talk a little bit about Liquidity. Liquidity is basically trading cards that don't move as easy for cards that do. This is a separate concept from trading down but they can be combined. Doug's point was this, if you trade down for cards that are easier to move, then this will give you more opportunities to trade which will in turn, give you more opportunities to gain value. I wanted to bring this up and elaborate on this a little bit because I think that Doug brings up an important point.

My disclaimer is this: Trading for liquid takes skill. You have to know what is liquid and what is not. This requires that you know the metagame of where you will be trading. You also need to be familiar with pricing. It's rare that you will ever want to trade down and lose value, so it's important that when you are trading down for the sake of liquidity that you pay rock bottom value for the cards that you get. An example of this would be something like this.

My (7.99)

Jace Beleren 7.99

His (17.96)

4x Bloodbraid Elf 4.49

When you look at the numbers this trade looks insanely lopsided! In real life it really is not. You can value a Jace at $7-8 and Bloodbraids at $2. It's pretty easy to get the Bloodbraids at that price because they are uncommon and they are cycling out of type two. Little do those players know, they will probably need them back in extended. That's how you will get your $3-4 dollars out of them. The key to liquidity is getting cards that are easier to move. BBE will see more play than Jace 1.0; that's why this trade makes sense.

I will caution you to do your research before you attempt to do this. I typically don't attempt new traders with concepts like this because it's easy to liquefy into oblivion. There was a time when I was assembling collection to stock an ebay seller. I was liquefying my big cards into smaller cards plus value and then sending huge lots to the ebay seller for profit. I made the mistake of liquefying into cards that were close to rotation. My buyer was not buying lots and my trade stock was obliterated by the rotation. I had to rebuild my trade stock from virtually worthless cards, speaking of which let talk about this week's trades.

I thought this trade was a double up! But unfortunately, or fortunately, Cool Stuff Inc. has Lim Dul's Vault for 4.99. I have seen these at between 8 and 10, since the banning of Mystical Tutor this card has quietly slipped into its place as a substitute. I guess that I'll just have to be happy with the six bucks that I made.

My (11.97) 2x Ichorid 5.49 Terastodon .99 His (17.97) Lim Dul's Vault 4.99 Ancient Tomb 6.99 Spell Snare 5.99 Net +6.00

A kid actually approached me asking in desperation. "Do you have any Echo Mages?!" I was happy to pull out my Pack to Power binder. If anything can be learned from this trade it's: Know your binder! Coralhelm Commander has now found its place in the Legacy Merfolk deck. People still value him between $0 and Garbage. This was a quick win.

My (1.49) Echo Mage 1.49 His (2.99) Coralhelm Commander 2.99 Net +1.50

This kid is actually a pretty solid trader. He knows that I am a good source for stock so he approached me for a trade. We had to chew on this one a bit. He didn't want to get rid of the Kozilek but I had to have it. I offered him a configuration that didn't have the Visara, essentially forcing him into a trade down. He didn't like it so he re-configured by adding Visara. I had to really think about this. I knew that Visara was one of my few high dollar items but if you apply what we learned about liquidity, you know that the right move is trade for the card that moves faster. As a bonus we traded up into it.

You basically can't lose if you trade up for liquid. This is the Ice Cream Sunday with a cherry on top for any trader.

My (18.60) Visara the Dreadful 7.99 Halimar Depths .65 2x Djinn of Wishes .49 Open the Vaults 1.99 Ancient Tomb 6.99 His (25.45) Kozilek, Butcher of Truth 11.99 Life from the Loam 7.99 Renegade Doppelganger .49 2x Ob Nixilis, the Fallen 2.49 Net +6.85

I crushed this guy. I admit it, on the bright side, I am sure he doesn't care. He was the kinda guy that I want to trade with all day long. He's old school; he carried around about seven binders full of goodies from all over Magic's History. And here is the best part. He loves foils. This guy is the reason that I have a foil section in my binder, solely for when I find this guy I get paid.

He saw the foil Tog in my Pack to Power binder and he wanted it. I looked for cards that I could get a maximum value out of without setting off red flags. With these kind of traders (Old School Casual), you can't explain value systems to them they don't really care how much a card is worth. They come from the days when you would trade a Dual Land for a Dark Ritual because Dual Lands make one mana and Dark Ritual makes three. They are accustomed to one-for-one trades so even if the Tog was worth twenty dollars if I started pulling twenty one dollar cards he would say no.

I decided on the Crypt because Legacy Players love their Japanese and the Mosswort Bridge because Legacy players love their foils, yeah Mosswort Bidge is run as a four-of in the latest show and tell deck. Not to mention it's a four-of in Extended Combo Elves now. I positioned the two Cabal Rituals as throw-ins- two foil commons, who cares right? He didn't even really look at I what I took out. He was happy to get his Physchatog and I was happy to add some value to my Pack to Power binder.

The guy was an all around good guy we did some trading from my good binder afterward.

My (3.99) Psychatog Foil Promo 3.99 His (31.96) 2x Cabal Ritual Foil 10.99 Mosswort Bridge Foil 3.99 Tormod's Crypt Japanese TS 5.99 Net +27.97

This was a bulk trade for fun. I thought the Descendant was worth some change since it is run in a couple of marginal Legacy decks. I was wrong, “Oh well!” By the way, is anyone looking for a Korean Crypt Rats? This is the kind of stuff I want for Gen Con, that Crypt Rats is going to go a long way. Mark my words.

My(1.57) Clone .59 Gargoyle Castle .49 Mortician Beetle .49 His (4.46) Descendant of Kiyomaro Foil .99 Sejiri Merfolk Foil .99 Crypt Rats Korean 1.99 (Best estimate) Timbermare .49 Net +2.89

This is the crown jewel of my week. I broke a Jackson on this one; this is my first trade for a card over twenty dollars. It looks like Liquidity paid off when I moved the Kozilek to trade up to a Sarkhan the Mad. I need to move this before Jund rotate since I don't know what his future price will be.

My (17.98) Nevinyrral's Disk 5.99 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth 11.99 His (20.99) Sarkhan the Mad 20.99 Net +3.01

That's a wrap folks. I know that we are way over due for a final tally and more binder pictures. I am going to shoot for doing this next week. It actually does take some work and I have been crazy busy this week working on a new project that is going to be pretty freakin awesome!

See you next week. Thanks for reading.