Category: MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge - Life... Successfully

MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge #12 - Arbitrage Aid!

11/29/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

We begin part #12 of our MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge on a sad note… I finally bit the bullet on my Deadeye Tracker spec. I initially invested 0.76 tix, or 0.19 tix a piece. I decided to finally cash in at 0.08 tix. It was the best I was going to do in the near future. This is a whopping 0.45 tix loss, but the 0.3 tix we recouped went to good use already!

That’s right, folks, we made some PROFIT!

Here’s 3 arbitrage wins today!

Our 4x Attune with Aether we bought for 0.004 tix total we got to cash in for 0.136 tix. That’s a 0.132 profit! I also picked up 4 more copies at the same rate as before. It’s the #1 card played in Standard at the moment, so I’ll get another chance I’m sure.

But that’s not all! We got to flip 4x Larger Than Life, also from Kaladesh, for a 0.098 profit. That was unexpected.

Even MORE unexpected was our flip of 4x Burning Inquiry from Magic 2010. I spent 0.032 tix and ended up with a 0.088 profit. After buying the 4 Attune with Aethers that’s a total arbitrage profit of 0.314 tix! No, it doesn’t cover the Deadeye Tracker loss. But it puts us back on track!

I also decided to make another Standard spec. This one only set me back a total of 0.08, 4x Tocatli Honor Guard from Ixalan. I’ve been watching this card awhile. It’s been at 0.02 tix for a bit, but it passed 0.1 tix for a bit early in November ‘17. Also, people are buying a lot of them. This makes sense. The effect is good enough that the Guard should see more Standard play in the future. Also, the buyin is low enough that striking out here is not going to hurt us.

As far as Deadeye Tracker is concerned, I see him falling back to 0.03-0.05 tix or lower and staying there for awhile. I just needed to reinvest those funds. That being said, there just isn’t a good home for him at the moment. I likely will buy back in if he hits 0.01-0.03 tix. This guy is too good to be a penny or two.

Now that we’ve freed ourselves from that, I also wanted to talk about a Modern spec in Terminate from Alara Reborn. It bottomed out at 0.06 tix and I bit. Only 0.24 tix for a playset of a Modern and Pauper staple is a steal. This guy has a lot of printings, but the others haven’t fallen this low. Honestly, I’ll flip these at 0.15-0.20 tix each. This has been in that range recently and has been as high as 0.6 tix each. It’s a very low risk spec that I could cash in at 0.07 tix today if I felt compelled.

We actually still have nearly 1.5 tix to spend, too! I’ll go into what our portfolio looks like in part #13.

Any MTGO penny stocks on your radar? Let us know in the comments!

MTGO 1 Tix Collection Challenge #11: A Fair Modern Flip

11/24/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

Despite my failings with Standard specs so far, we’re definitely ahead in the MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge. We cashed out an Event Ticket fairly early and only had to reinvest it for my latest spec, which was successful. I’ll get to it in a moment.

Captain Lannery Storm was a risky spec that I was able to break even on. Deadeye Tracker, which I though much safer, has been a total bust. The best chance I’ve had to cash out was still a loss of about 0.4 tix so I’m banking on this one-drop blowing up with Rivals of Ixalan.

Arbitrage has been a black hole lately, so I had to make a good spec to keep this challenge from stalling out indefinitely. I found it with Chromatic Star, specifically the Time Spiral version.

Chromatic Star sees play in Tron decks in both Modern and Pauper. It’s a fairly staple card. But when it dipped to 0.04 tix recently I jumped all over it. That’s the lowest it’s been in a long time. Almost immediately I saw copies being bought up. I was in at only 0.14. A few days later, the price came back up to around 0.15 tix or so. I was able to cash the Stars in at 0.1125 tix per copy on a hotlist. That’s a 0.31 tix profit! I couldn’t turn that down.

It’s really worth checking the top played cards in each format. MTG Goldfoish has a great list. Typically, Standard staples tend to be the most volatile so the risk/reward is much more variable. Modern, Legacy, Vintage, and Pauper tend to be more stable. As players buy in and out of decks sometimes staple prices will crash. My favorites to buy into are those that only have a couple of printings, like Chromatic Star. Like with any spec, though, you need to be sure you’re buying in at a floor.

Also, with uncommon and common specs, you often need to sell to a hotlist since most buylists will only pay you a fraction of what the card actually sells for. One perfect example is Chromatic Star, which I would have had to sell at 0.02 per copy to a regular bot. Not taking a 0.06 tix for no reason. So while I could have waited for a potentially high spike, I’m more than happy with my decision-making process here.

With these new funds I made a couple of investments in staples. While they’re not on hotlists right now, cards like Opt and Spell Pierce see play in multiple formats and can be found for fractions of pennies right now. I also bought bits and pieces of some budget Modern decks. I’ll go into more detail in a future article.

As ffor the rest of our portfolio, I had a chance yesterday to cash in my Herald of Secret Streams for 0.12 tix. Considering I sent only 0.04 tix on them, that’s a 200 percent profit. However, I feel that the Merfolk from Rivals of Ixalan could make this into a very playable card. Players are already interested in it, and there’s been a spike to around 0.13 tix each already, but it wasn’t a spike I was able to capitalize on (buylists didn’t really reflect the spike). Only getting 0.08 tix on a potentially explosive spec would feel bad and considering that I’m stuck with Deadeye Tracker for a bit, I really want this one to do well.

With this success and a few other arbitrage fails that I was able to break even on or make a fractional profit, this leaves us with about 0.84 tix to spend. This is great, because we have about 1.275 tix tied up in our other specs and staple holds. I’ll break this down in another article, but this essentially means that from 1 event ticket, we’ve created a little over 2 tix in value, which is fantastic! Our Deadeye Tracker spec is killing us, but even then, in terms of retail value of our holdings, we’ve tripled our investment!

This challenge is going OK, and we’ve “won” already. But it’s definitely not going as well as it could have since I made a couple of poor spec decisions and arbitrage has been doing nothing for me recently. Considering I’ve made 10-15 tix over a period of 2 weeks doing nothing but arbitrage before, we may see some opportunities coming up to get this train rolling again!

Stay tuned for #12!

MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge #10 - Chandra's Defeat & Whirler Virtuoso

11/16/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

Our Magic Online 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge has been on hold for a bit. Despite cashing out an Event Ticket and making our collection self-sustaining, our investments aren’t doing much. Deadeye Tracker has really cost us - 0.19 tix each for a total of 0.76 tix. As of this writing, I can only recoup 0.32 of that investment. Since he’s slowly showing up more often in Standard, I’m still confident he’ll hit a target sell price of 0.4 tix. I was hoping for 0.6, but I’ll take what I can get. Therefore, we’ve really been hamstrung.

Iconic Masters was just released on MTGO, so we’ll be investing in some cards that are likely going to crater as the set continues to be opened. But until that time, we’ll hold onto the event ticket that we were able to cash out. So, I only had about 0.2 tix in bot credit to play with. I decided to make two investments, both in Standard staples” Chandra’s Defeat & Whirler Virtuoso.

Chandra’s Defeat is the riskier of the two investments. While it’s in the top 10 spells in Standard, it’s a narrow card. But as an instant that deals 5 damage to a red creature or planeswalker, it should continue to see play for quite some time. A buy-in of 0.12 tix total is higher than most of our penny stocks, but I’m willing to cash these in for as little as 0.05 tix each. We’re aiming for 0.1 tix or higher, and it’s not uncommon for playable standard staple uncommons to become 0.15 or 0.2 tix each. I like this card and with Hour of Devastation finally settling price-wise, I’m happy to grab a playset. The risk is fairly minimal.

Whirler Virtuoso is an extremely low risk investment. I only spent a total of 0.008 tix on four copies, and may even buy another playset later. These are already buying at 0.01 tix EACH on some bots. It’s a staple of Temur Energy and 4-color Energy decks. While this may not mean much, he’s even on the rise in Paper. Not bad for a Standard uncommon that doesn’t see Modern or other format play. The target here? I’m hoping we can get 0.1 tix each, but at such a low buy-in, who really cares?

As other standard staples crash with obvious potential rebounds, we’ll take a look. I was going to go in on Harnessed Lightning when it dipped to about 0.1 tix for a bit, but our funds were tied up in Deadeye Tracker and we missed that chance.

How do you feel about these two cards? With only 0.13 tix on the line, I’m perfectly happy with any gains at all. We have that ticket in reserve if there are no-brainer buys that come up. But I’m really banking on Deadeye Tracker doing what I planned on him doing all along.

More MTGO 1 Tix challenge when there’s something substantial to say!

MTGO 1 Tix Collection Challenge - Investing Online VS in Paper (Part 9)

11/12/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

I have to say this first: Oops, I did it again.

In this MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge, I was very high on Captain Lannery Storm from Ixalan. I bought into her at 0.14 tix each, only to watch her fall to 0.07 tix. She did recover enough for me to make a 0.02 total profit. But I bought in too early. I didn’t think that would be the case with Deadeye Tracker at 0.19 tix.

Then on the 10th, he fell to 0.05 tix. Ouch.

While Deadeye Tracker is starting to see more play, as I predicted, and will recover, I’m really kicking myself. How do I keep picking so badly?

That’s why I’m putting moves on hold today and discussing online vs paper card investments and how they wildly differ.

Deadeye Tracker is Still a Good Card!

The reasons I bought into Deadeye Tracker are still good ones. He’s a one-drop that doesn’t require others of his tribe to be effective. Already, he’s proving to be a useful sideboard card in four different deck archetypes in Standard. But he’s main-deck worthy, I believe. He just hasn’t found a home yet.

One-drops that are good in the mid to late game are really important. The drawback to Deadeye Tracker’s ability is that it requires your opponent to have two cards in the graveyard. But paying 1B to explore is great, even if you have to tap. Many other cards with explore work when they enter the battlefield, and this is repeatable. Explore is a cool mechanic because either you beef your guy and either put a card back or in the graveyard or you get a land to your hand. It’s not always instant card advantage, but in many cases it can be.

But the reason I really like this card is that it has potential in other formats. Modern, Legacy, and even EDH could warrant running this card. I realize in Modern and Legacy he might eat a Lightning Bolt, but that might be worth it if you’re boarding him in against Dredge, Reanimator, or another deck that relies on its graveyard. In EDH, he’s great in Pirate Tribal decks, but I can see him working in some other decks, as well.

Honestly, though, his day in the sun will likely be Standard. And because he’s not seeing widespread main deck play yet, the Tracker’s price is bouncing around. Any time he’s being drafted and his price rises, people cash them in and his price dips. I thought maybe he was good enough for people to not want to sell, but I was wrong.

On the other hand, in paper, his demand has been pretty flat. Copies are hitting the market about as often as they’re leaving and he’s still over $1.

The fact is, people really don’t like selling $1 cards. On MTGO, it’s so quick and easy to unload cards and buy back later that even cards that are on the fringes of Standard see huge peaks and valleys in their price graphs.

So while these are great to pick up in paper as a Standard spec and could be a big winner in Standard in the near future, I bought too soon online.

To remedy this, I’m going to only buy specs that are already 0.01 tix or have been bottomed out for some time (like a week). I’m also going to avoid Ixalan for now. It’s still being drafted so much that new copies are making seemingly good picks too risky. I’m already on the picks I want in the other Standard legal sets for now..

But what about beyond Standard?

First, let’s see where our portfolio stands:

Attune with Aether    KLD    0.001 x 4    0.004
Search for Tomorrow    MMA    0.002 x 3    0.006
Invigorated Rampage    AER    0.002 x   4    0.008
Tainted Sigil    ARB    0.002    4 x   0.008
Minister of Inquiries    KLD    0.002 x 4    0.008
Kumena's Speaker    XLN    0.002 x   4    0.008
Merfolk Branchwalker    XLN    0.002 x   4    0.008
Essence Extraction    KLD    0.002 x   4    0.008
Refurbish    KLD    0.002 x 4    0.008
Blighted Agent    NPH    0.002 x 4    0.008
Fairgrounds Warden    KLD    0.002 x   4    0.008
Negate    MOR    0.005 x 4    0.02
Entrancing Melody    XLN    0.01 x 4    0.04
Arcane Adaptation    XLN    0.01 x 4    0.04
Old-Growth Dryads    XLN    0.01 x 4    0.04
Shadowed Caravel    XLN    0.01 x 4    0.04
Walk the Plank    XLN    0.01 x 4    0.04
Herald of Secret Streams    XLN    0.01 x 4    0.04
Oviya Pashiri    KLD    0.01 x 4    0.04
Mana Leak    8ED    0.01 x 4    0.04
Deadeye Tracker    XLN    0.19 x 4    0.76

I made some more arbitrage picks, and the hotlist bots are simply getting their fill before I get to them! It’s been very frustrating, but after breaking even on some and hitting on others, I was able to cash out an event ticket!

This is both good and bad. It means that we’ve successfully made back our event ticket, so our collection is completely self-sustaining now. But the bad part is that we have nothing more to actually spend unless I cash that event ticket back into a bot. It means either I hit on some more arbitrage fodder or wait for Deadeye Tracker to rebound so I can cash in and reinvest

Or one or more of our other picks.

You may see Kumena’s Speaker and Merfolk Branchwalker on the list. These aren’tr arbitrage. These are actual specs baed on the Modern Blue/Green Merfolk decks ggetting some attention. These are so cheap that I couldn’t resist. The rest of the list up until Negate are just waiting for a hotlist to want them or I can cash them out at break even or a tiny profit.

As for our actual specs, Herald of Secret Streams is looking good as far as demand. Whether he’ll actually see play yet is unknown, but he’s a great hold. He’s a good pick in paper, too, as he could become a key part of an explore-centric Merfolk deck, since explore can give creatures +1/+1 counters. I could cash out my set for 0.12 tix and profit but that’s not worth it to me.

Entrancing Melody keeps bouncing between 0.01 and 0.02 tix. There’s demand but drafters are still dumping them. I really like this in some cintrol build and my buyin was pefect. As a card with an X cost, I really like this in EDH, especially in paper.

Arcane Adaptation is a fun build-around enchantment. It’s cute with Turntimber Ranger in Modern, but I’m banking on a good rogue deck built around this in Standard to allow me to cash in on this 0.04 tix total investment. I don’t like it in paper yet as it may drop a bit further. But I’d keep them if you have them because people will want multiple copies.

Olf-Growth Dryads is pure speculation. Green Stompy in Modern, perhaps? No one noticed. Will some Green Stompy deck emerge in Standard? Not while energy is around I think, but nothing to lose here. In paper? Demand is flat and I don’t like there yet.

Shadowed Caravel may have to wait awhile with so many string Kaladesh vehicles, but this plays in with explore. It also works well with Herald of Secret Streams. I really think there’s a +1/+1 counter synergy here that isn’t yet able to be exploited in Standard. This could be a key piece in that. In paper, I don’t hate it, but I wouldn’t actively invest. Just squirrel away copies.

Walk the Plank was a bargain and while it’s not premier removal, it does see some play. This is a card that I like better in paper, but even as an uncommon, cards like these can get silly on occasion on Magic Online. A Magic Online promo version hurts MTGO spike potential. But it won’t take much of a spike for me to sell. In paper, this is a steady card. It’s better than Doom Blade in a lot of EDH decks, but it’s Sorcery speed, which hurts its playability somewhat. It doesn’t hit Merfolk, but it hits a lot of stuff. In both online and paper, it just needs to be in the 75 of a tournament winning deck to make money. If not, I lose almost nothing online. I’f only buy this in paper if I really needed it for a deck, though

Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter has been seeing some play in Green-White Aggro decks in Standard. At a penny I was happy to buy in. As a Legendary Creature, you’ll probably only see two or at the most three copies going in a deck. I don’t think her ceiling is incredibly high, but token producers are always cool. In paper, she’s dirt cheap with lots of EDH potential. But online, I’ll take a little profit here.

My last penny stock was an accidental one n Mana Leak. This permission spell is still played a ton in Modern. But I’d be selling at a loss for no good reason without a hotlist wanting it so we’re stuck with it without a huge Mana Leak buyout. The 8th edition version is one of the better ones to be stuck with as it does appear on hotlists often and people love the classic art. I can easily turn a 0.08 to 0.12 tix profit here.

I did say in Part 8 that I’d get more aggressive with penny stocks. I will, but I need to clear out some arbitrage picks first.

In the next part, I’ll discuss why I pick the arbitrage picks that I do. I don’t just blindly buy them, after all. Some of them are really good paper targets, too. Hopefully I’ll cash out enough to make some penny stock buys!

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 8

11/9/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

After a two-day break from the 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge on Magic Online, we find ourselves in a good position. We dodge a bullet with one of our big specs, our main spec looks solid, and overall, our other picks are looking good, too. First, let’s take a look at the dodged bullet.

I was really a believer in Captain Lannery Storm. While she actually would’ve been a great stock to buy into at 0.07 or 0.08 tix each, we bought in at 0.14 tix each. The highest her retail price hit was 0.2, but at no time could we sell for more than 0.15 tix each. I wanted to get at least 0.25 tix a copy for a fair profit. But during the past week, we watched her dip by half and slowly tick back up. Not seeing enough play right now, I decided I would have to exit, even if there was a slight loss involved.

Fortunately for us, I was able to out our four copies of Captain Lannery Storm for 0.1445 tix each. This gives us a tiny 0.018 tix profit. While that seems insignificant, that brings us 0.578 tix back to spend. My risky bid didn’t pay off. When you’re dealing with penny stocks like this, buying in too early is a real risk. The bummer is that I could have doubled my money here. But I can’t hold and risk a loss for profit that may never come.

Without good arbitrage opportunities the past couple of days we only had 0.2 tix to spend. While that’s enough for a couple of 0.01-0.02 tix possibilities,, I had to wait and see. Deadeye Tracker, our new main spec, is doing better. It dropped to 0.17 tix briefly after we bought in at 0.19 tix. But it’s hovering around 0.20-0.21 tix mostly.

Deadeye Tracker has a much stronger demand profile. What I mean is that people aren’t offloading many copies. While Lannery Storm is definitely a potential Standard breakout, being a four-drop limits where she can go. One-drops with the upside of Deadeye Tracker are a lot more versatile, especially those who can bring you card advantage through the explore mechanic.

This card is more powerful than his price suggests and a lot of players already know that. This guy could breach 1 ticket each. What’s our target for him? I’m willing to see just how high he goes. But creatures like him tend to hang out in the 0.75 to 1.25 tix range. More than tripling up is fine with me, but the point of a spec like this is to go for a massive gain to fuel our efforts.

With three arbtritage fails in Ancient Stirrings (0.032 total), Minister of Inquiries (0.008 tix), and Attune with Aether (0.004 tix), I missed out on a potential 0.3+ tix boost to our coffers. Still, we have almost 0.8 tix to spend. With only 1.13 tix invested, this means we have plenty of room to grow our portfolio. I’m also going to be more careful in ensuring specs are relatively bottomed out before I buy in again.

Our penny stocks are all up a bit. But of all of them, Entrancing Melody has already been a good stock for us. I already had a chance to cash in at 0.017 tix each after buing in at 0.01 tix each. But that’s not nearly enough to dump it now. With a new buy-in of 0.03 tix, I will hope for at least 0.1tix, but our realistic target is 0.05 tix. Getting 0.2 for a 0.04 investment is awesome. Any more is just amazing. The rest of our penny stocks, including our accidental ones for arbitrage purposes, are mostly up in retail but I’d be barely breaking even to sell a few of them. So holding them doesn’t hurt us.

Any new investments today? There’s a great penny stock that I finally decided to buy into.

Oviya Pashiri, Sage Lifecrafter has always reminded me of a poor man’s Rhys the Redeemed. No, she’s not as good as the token-doubling Elf, but she does make tokens, both big and small. She’s a solid early play as a one-drop with 2 toughness and is popping up in some Green/White Aggro lists.

She’s really only peaked as high as 0.03 tix, but keeps dancing between 0.01 and 0.02 tix all the time. I didn’t want to buy in at 0.02 tix, which is why I kept holding off. But at a penny, I really can’t go wrong. I don’t have a price target for Oviya, but I know people are playing her. This is a Standard spec I’m willing to hold for a bit since she’s really not done much since her Kaladesh release and the investment is tiny.

There are a couple of other interesting penny stocks I’d like to take a stab at, but are at 0.02 - 0.03 tix currently. While these could be acceptable losses if they pan out, I know from experience that I could be selling off these at 0.003 to 0.006 tix each. At a penny investment, that’s palatable. But any higher is just throwing away bot credit.

A lot of perfectly good cards bottom out at a penny. Even the Standard staple Rogue Refiner was a penny for a bit, and now he’s up over 0.3 tix. It’s identifying the valleys of cards that should be 0.25 tix or more at their peak is where the money is made in this game. I could just buy every possibly playable card that’s 0.01 tix and hope for the best, but timing is everything. You have to buy in early, but not too late, but not so soon that you’re tying up funds.

In our next part of the Challenge, we’ll be getting a bit more aggressive with penny stocks. Captain Lannery Storm hampered us a bit too much and arbitrage has been pretty useless. So while it will take longer, finding truly good penny stocks is the way to go looking forward.

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 7

11/6/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

After having modest success in our MTGO 1 Event TIcket Collection Challenge, I decided we needed to shake things up with a big “make or break” spec. While it could end the challenge almost by itself, I’m confident that this pick will help get this portfolio rolling!

I decided the first thing to do was cut Scrap Trawler from our portfolio. While it’s a nice long-term card to hold onto, and it has lost us nothing, I decided to break even so that I could free up 0.2 tix of bot credit. Also I was able to cash in my four copies of Essence Extraction for a 0.102 tix profit, which definitely helped our cause, as well as four copies of Thopter Arrest at a break-even price.

So what are today’s specs? We’ll start with the little one.

Herald of Secret Streams is a Merfolk and I have high hopes for their tribe. I’ve had this card on my radar for awhile, but at 0.03 tix I wasn’t confident. But at 0.01 tix each, I certainly don’t mind holding onto a playset. Even if it doesn’t pan out, there’s really no less here. Plus, it’s selling out pretty often for a card that sees no real play. It does, however, already see play in some popular Commander decks, such as Ezuri, Claw of Progress, so there is a non-zero amount of people picking up copies. This is because +1/+1 counters are a big deal in Commander, although not quite at the top of the 1v1 competitive Commander metagame. Still, there are people using it and that’s likely where many copies are disappearing to instead of sold to bots.

Our “make or break” pick? Deadeye Tracker!

I love this card. At 0.19 tix each, it’s a whopping 0.76 investment made possible by our arbitrage trades. While this purchase leaves us with only about 0.2 tix left to spend, I am very confident in this buy for several reasons.

First, this card does already see standard play in a couple of different Standard archetypes: Esper Gifts and Blue/Black Control. However, so far they have been mostly relegated to the sideboard. But as a card that hit 0.6 tix per copy not that long ago, it’s not unrealistic to expect this card to at least double if not triple in price. Our target here is probably that 0.6 tix per copy. That would get us 2.4 tix, with a net profit of 1.64 tix. That would be an enormous boost and allow us to buy into other specs in the 0.1 to 0.25 tix range.

Also, Lannery Storm is on her way back up, peaking at 0.15 yesterday before slipping back to 0.1. But since the buylists are remaining fairly steady on her, I’m willing to wait and see if she at least regains a 0.14 buy price so that I can cash out. I still believe she has a lot of room to grow, but her prospects are not as good right now as I first hoped.

As with any specs, there’s a waiting game. But I bought in a bit too early on Lannery. With Deadeye Tracker, there’s an extremely low inventory everywhere. It’s also a one-drop with a wide range of playability. Any deck can use a 1/1 that can explore and exile cards from an opponent’s graveyard. This guy can be a 2/2 very easily, if not a 3/3. And recall our friend Herald of Secret Streams, who makes creatures with +1/+1 counters unblockable. If we get enough explore creatures in Rivals of Ixalan, not only will this be a good card, but so will the Herald.

Since we are banking on Deadeye Tracker to make big gains and Captain Lannery Storm to at least rebound, we may be a bit quiet on the 1 Ticket portfolio for a bit. After a week, let’s see where our portfolio stands:

Deadeye Tracker    XLN    0.19 x 4 = 0.76
Captain Lannery Storm    XLN    0.14 x 4 = 0.56
Entrancing Melody    XLN    0.01 x 4 = 0.04
Arcane Adaptation    XLN    0.01 x 4 =    0.04
Old-Growth Dryads    XLN    0.01 x 4 = 0.04
Shadowed Caravel    XLN    0.01    x 4 = 0.04
Servant of the Conduit    KLD    0.01 x    4 =    0.04
Walk the Plank    XLN    0.01    x 4 = 0.04
Herald of Secret Streams    XLN    0.01 x 4 = 0.04
Everflowing Chalice    WWK    0.006    x 4 = 0.024
Ponder    LRW    0.006    x 4 = 0.024
Nature's Claim    WWK    0.005 x 4 = 0.02
Search for Tomorrow    MMA    0.002 x 4 =    0.008
Tainted Sigil    ARB    0.002    x 4 = 0.008
Disfigure     ZEN    0.001    x 2 = 0.002

With 1.686 tix invested, we’ve already grown our portfolio almost 70 percent, entirely on the strength of arbitrage plays! Even if our two big plays fail badly, we can still recover thanks to our penny stocks and remaining arbitrage targets. I particularly like Servant of the Conduit, due to the success of Sultai Energy. I also like Walk the Plank long-term.

Our penny stocks could go nowhere or make us tidy little gains. There’s also a lot of unrealized profit in our remaining arbitrage targets, since I already have bots I could sell them, too, but that would spread us too thin. So we’re actually doing really well, which is why I can justify a huge outlay into a potential Standard breakout. That’s also why I’m willing to risk my 0.56 tix on Lannery Storm, even as we’re staring a 50 percent loss in the face.

Yes, we could play it safe, but that would make for a rather boring series, wouldn’t it?

Have you started your own little collection challenge with a small number of event tickets. Or have you may a bigger investment to hopefully make bigger gains more quickly? Let us know in the comments!

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 6

11/5/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

So our MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge is sort of stalled out at the moment. It doesn’t really have much to do with Captain Lannery Storm going down to 0.07 tix per. The main issue is that our arbitrage flips aren’t panning out. I’ve gathered a lot of hotlist picks and none of them have panned out at all. Fortunately, I was able to sell some of them for a tiny profit (fractions of pennies). So not all is lost, and all of these pickups were good cards. Here’s what I have left from our “accidental investments.”

2x Disfigure at 0.001 per
4x Essence Extraction at 0.002 per
4x Search for Tomorrow at 0.002 per
4x Nature’s Claim at 0.005 per
4x Ponder (LRW) at 0.006 per
4x Everflowing Chalice at 0.006 per
4x Servant of the Conduit at 0.01 per

That’s about 0.126 tix tied up in potential arbitrage flips. Fortunately, I think that these will come around on hotlists again. If not, I’m happy with breaking even or taking the tiny 0.02 tix or so of profit I eked out of the others.

Good news, though. We made some more penny stock investments from Ixalan. All three are ones that have shown up on hotlists.

Arcane Adaptation is a card that’s already seen some play on Saffron Olive’s Against the Odds. It has a tidy little combo with Turntimber Ranger in Modern, making infinite 2/2 Wolf tokens and giving the Ranger infinite +1/+1 counters. It’s an awesome little enchantment, and there are other ways to take advantage of it, so I’m happy sinking 0.04 tix into a playset for the long-haul.

Old-Growth Dryads just feels like a good card to me. Heck, it’s a one-drop for a 3/3! Yes, giving your opponents a free Rampant Growth (basic land into play tapped) is a bit of a drawback. But this has Green Stompy written all over it, and that’s already a deck in Modern (Mono-Green Devotion). It’s been on hotlists and while it hasn’t really seen any play yet, I can see this doing work in Standard at some point too. I may even invest in a second playset of these.

Shadowed Caravel is a neat little vehicle overshadowed (pun intended) by those from Kaladesh. It requires that you really build around the explore mechanic, but it can become a handy little beater. While it may never do much and could be sitting in our binder forever, I’m happy to cash it in if it just goes up to something like 0.05 tix. Really, though, this is a long-term hold, just like the other two.

Because two of these cards have Modern upside, I’m happy to hold them for a long time. We’ll be seeking out some more penny stocks this week, especially ones that have long-term appeal beyond just Standard. Hopefully our hotlist flips - or some new ones - give us a shot in the arm for spending power.

As for Lannery Storm, I feel confident that we’ll be at least able to essentially break even on her. Sometimes you take a risk and you whiff. But she’s just good enough that I’m not cutting my losses just yet.

See any cards we should be looking at for penny stock investments? Let us know in the comments?

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 5

11/3/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

The MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge is going fairly well. Or is it? We may have bad news about my risky Captain Lannery Storm play… But first, good news!

For arbitrage plays, last night, I bought 4x Needle Drop for 0.016 total, and sold for 0.15 tix. That’s a 0.134 tix profit! While that doesn’t sound like much, it’s potentially 3 or 4 new potential specs that we can now buy into!

This morning, I made three more hotlist plays. One didn’t work out, Radiant Fountain, so I’m now “invested” in 4 copies of the Magic 2015 land for 0.016 tix. But this card is on hotlists enough and actually sees play in a couple different formats, so I’m OK with wasting that little bit. The other two buys worked out, 7th Edition Shock at 0.01 per and Diabolic Tutor (again!) at 0.003 per. For only a 0.052 tix investment, I came out with 0.24 tix. Even with our little failures here and there, these plays bring us to a new total of 0.879 to spend! So we can go a little deeper now.

But as for Lannery Storm, she fell to 0.08 tix this morning! We can cash out for 0.07 tix each, but that means we lost half of our initial 0.56 investment! It’s OK, though, we’re not going to panic.I’m holding at the moment. Here’s why:

Ebbs and flows happen with cards like this all the time. Cards in Standard that hold some promise tend to see some back and forth movement. Since Storm isn’t currently seeing any play in top decks, people decided to cash her in at 0.13 tix each, so now the stock is back up. However, because there are still buyers at 0.07 tix when she’s retailing at 0.08 tells me that this is not a card to dump just yet. She has enough upside that I’m willing to risk her dipping to penny status first before she hits it big.

Remember, my price target on Storm isn’t that aggressive. I’m happy getting 0.25 tix per, so I’m not going to get greedy. But we definitely need targets that quickly appreciate so we can move on and build our portfolio fairly quickly. Our top spec cutting in half so quickly hurts, but I’m going to see if the new low price gets people to buy in again. It just takes one deck to 4-0 a daily event...

Since our arbitrage plays are making us some quick gains, and others are still in reserve just waiting for the hotlist bots to want them again, we can actually still invest in a couple more things today. However, I’m happy to sit today out. There’s no reason to go deep in anything at the moment with our small bankroll. Perhaps I’m feeling a bit of regret in the Lannery Storm purchase not turning us a little profit quickly, but this is part of the game. I’m willing to wait a bit longer and see what the weekend brings!

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 4

11/2/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

So far, our Magic Online 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge is on track! Our biggest investment, Captain Lannery Storm at 0.14 tix each, is up to 0.19 tix each. We’ve made some small, but significant arbitrage trades that are building up our buying power. Yesterday we flipped some 8th Edition Diabolic Tutors (huge commander card) and bought into a playset of Walk the Plank from Ixalan at a penny each.

We did a little better on the arbitrage front today and invested in yet another Ixalan penny stock that just came on my radar!

Signal Pest from Mirrodin Besieged is probably the safest card I’ve flipped in arbitrage yet. Its played often enough in Modern that it sees occasional price hiccups here and there. I was able to secure 4 copies of the Pest for 0.08 tix total. I received 0.21 tix elsewhere. That’s a tidy 0.13 tix profit and it didn’t hurt my bot credit balances much.

I also “invested” in 4 copies of the Modern Masters sorcery Search for Tomorrow at a grand total 0.08 tix. I had an eye on flipping them for a whopping 0.11 tix profit but got stuck with them. I can out these at my buy price immediately and take no loss. But since this is a card that does see play in Modern and certainly in Commander, natural demand should make this a hotlist winner again!

So our penny stock for today is one that could very easily take off in the right control deck: Entrancing Melody!

I love cards that are scalable like this, especially when it involves stealing an opponent’s creature indefinitely! People have played enchantments to steal creatures only to have that enchantment destroyed. This card doesn’t have that drawback. There’s some demand for it, as I’ve already seen it on a couple MTGO hotlists.

Like many penny stocks with the upside of playability on MTGO, Entrancing Melody could be a big winner in a hurry. Worst case is we have to cash it out for a tiny loss. But I really like this card. Also, there’s Commander playability here, too.

There are some other cards still on my shortlist, but I’m waiting on a Captain Lannery Storm sale or some more sweet arbitrage deals before I begin to delve (pun not intended) into riskier investments. Keep in mind that with only 1 event ticket, I’m working purely off of bot credit at the moment, which limits my options. Once we start making multiple event tix, the real fun will begin!

Any MTGO cards on your radar that we should know about? Let us know in the comments!

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 3

11/1/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

In this 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge on Magic Online, we are using only a single MTGO event ticket as our seed money to build our online collection! In the first part, we made one arbitrage trade (bought from one bot and sold to another at a higher price within moments) and one investment. In the second part, we made a small flip, and one large investment.

Let’s review where we are:

Bought 3x Spark Elemental for 0.09 tix, sold for 0.225 tix
Bought 4x Spark Trawler for 0.2, 0.05 each as investment
Bought 4x Shock (7E) for 0.04, sold for 0.12
Bought 4x Captain Lannery Storm for 0.56 tix, 0.13 each, as investment

I also bought 4x Nyx-Fleece Ram (0.012) & 4x Nature’s Claim (0.02) as hotlist flips, but failed to sell quickly enough. They are now accidental investments.

We took a day off from the collection for Halloween and our investments stayed about the same. Storm went up by 0.02 tix each, so that’s a good sign. Likewise, Scrap Trawler went up to 0.06 with a buylist of 0.05! So, how do things look today?

Lannery Storm bumped up to 0.20 a copy. We’re definitely trending in the right direction. But is it time to sell? Not yet. We are looking to hopefully sell for at least 0.25 tix a piece. This is a safe but quite substantial price target.

Also, we had an arbitrage trade today: Diabolic Tutor from 8th edition. While it’s an odd target, we spent only 0.012 in bot credit for 4 copies and flipped them for 0.12 bot credit elsewhere. That’s an easy 0.1 tix. Do we reinvest this right away?

There are a number of Ixalan cards on my shortlist to invest in, as well as a couple others hanging around 0.10 tix each. But I’m holding fast on Lannery Storm as far as 0.1 tix and above specs for now. Let’s see if we can find a safe target or two around 0.01-0.02 tix each. There’s a pretty obvious one that I found from Ixalan: Walk the Plank.

Since I could buy into this very playable removal card for only 0.04 tix total, even though there is a promo version and the ceiling isn’t as high as it could’ve been, this is already played in Standard. This card actually spiked to 0.87 tix soon as Ixalan was released on MTGO. While I don’t know that it will reach that level again, good, useful removal is always highly sought after. While Fatal Push is a better card in many circumstances, this will see play at some point. I take very little risk buying in so low!

These two moves seem OK for today. I did hamstring myself a bit by tying up so much in 4 copies of one card, but I’m fairly confident in a 30 to 40 percent gain on Lannery Storm, which will let us buy into a far wider range of specs. Also, we should get plenty more arbitrage opportunities, as today as a bit short on them.

This is a short part for today, but I watching some cards to see how they develop. Also, Rivals of Ixalan spoilers could play a big role in card prices… so right now, it’s best to watch and see!

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! Part 2

10/30/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

In the first part of this series, we began our 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge on Magic Online! Through this series, we are using only a single MTGO event ticket as our seed money to build our online collection! In the first part, we made one arbitrage trade (bought from one bot and sold to another at a higher price within moments) and one investment. In this part, we’ll start making more moves.
Let’s review where we are:

Bought 3x Spark Elemental for 0.09 tix, sold for 0.225 tix
Bought 4x Spark Trawler for 0.2, 0.05 each as investment

This left us slightly in the red in our 1 event ticket challenge so far. But I would make that right back! How did I do that? With some arbitrage, of course!

The first move I made in arbitrage today was Shock from 7th Edition.

Shock is actually in Standard at the time of this writing, as it’s been reprinted in Aether Revolt. People really seem to like this particular artwork of Shock (I do, too), so it seems that it’s always in demand. Why the heck people keep buying and selling it on a regular basis, I’m not sure, but it causes some hotlists to want 0.03 tix for it when it sells for 0.01 (a penny) tix or less elsewhere. I took advantage of this opportunity to make a quick flip. I spent 0.04, but immediately made back 0.12. This is a total profit of 0.08 tix and it took me barely a minute.

(If you happen to find copies of 7E Shock on bulk bots, they are worth collecting since they are very often needed by bots!)

There’s also one other thing I need to point out. Just because a card is on a bot chain’s hotlist does not mean that you will necessarily be able to sell it once you actually hit up the bot. There have been a number of times where I bought a card to immediately flip to a hotlist and the bot was no longer accepting copies. You may think… uh-oh, I wasted credit! Fortunately, there are cards that come up on hotlists almost all of the time, and I’ll be sure to point out which ones those are!.There are some that if you can’t immediately flip them, you may as well hold them and see how they pan out! (This can actually work out quite well with Standard-legal commons and uncommons.)

This actually happened to me today. I bought 4 copies of Nyx-Fleece Ram and 4 copies of Nature’s Claim for a grand total of 0.032 tix. My return looked to be 0.24 tix, but unfortunately, the hotlist bot no longer wanted them. So for now, I’m out 0.032 tix. However, these are cards that I’ve flipped on hotlists before and they should come up again. If not, it’s the risk you take that someone will fill their quota before you can.

Because I was just setting the tone of the overall series, I didn’t really dive too deep into how I decide on choosing my “penny stocks” on MTGO. While I haven’t been successful with all of them (who is), I’ve been wildly successful on a few. Some I actually sold out of too early! But as we’ll learn in the course of this series, it’s better to sell for guaranteed profit nine times out of ten, especially when you’re doubling or tripling up on your investment!

Then sometimes, you have to take a big risk!

I bought four copies of Captain Lannery Storm from Ixalan for 0.14 each or 0.56 tix total.

This is a huge chunk of our portfolio now and it’s a huge gamble. Or is it? I couldn’t find another card in Standard that had such a low spread between sell price and buy price that was also this affordable. Storm reminds me of Kari Zev, Skyship Raider, once herself worth only a penny before spiking to over 1 ticket a piece. I sold her far too early, but even then, I made a healthy profit.

The difference with Captain Lannery Storm is that she creates a Treasure token whenever she attacks. While Kari Zev brings a 2/1 Monkey into play, the potential mana the Treasures create can be similarly valuable. Unlike Kari Zev, Storm has haste, and also even though she’s just a 2/2, whenever you sacrifice a Treasure, Storm gains +1/+0. They’re similar cards, but since Kari Zev is 2 mana and Storm is 3, they can be in the same deck. Kari Zev is still over 0.6 tix each, so it seems fair to think that Storm could carry a similar price point.

The thing is, Storm hasn’t found a real deck yet. She’s too good to not have a home, though. All it takes on MTGO is for a deck to 4-0 a competitive event with 2 or more copies in the mainboard for her price to jump. That’s what we’re looking for.

Between her and Scrap Trawler, plus the hotlist duds, we have 0.792 tix tied up. But thanks to some quick profits, we still have 0.423 tix to spend. For now, though, we’ll hold off and see how the big gamble pays off.

Stay tuned for our next installment of the the MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge!

Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge! - Part 1

10/30/2017

by ElspethFTW, Gaming Successfully Staff

At one time, I planned on writing a series about how you can build a fairly substantial Magic: the Gathering Online collection with just a single event ticket! How? Through thoughtful speculation on certain cards and finding arbitrage deals on others, I have in the past made 20+ tickets over the course of a couple of weeks using only one event ticket and the tickets and bot credit associated with the sales of the cards! I decided to start fresh and document this effort one day at a time!

So one of the best strategies I have to start building up some buying power quickly is to find cards that are buying and selling for substantially different prices. This is often the case with commons and uncommons which are in high demand. By buying them from one bot and selling them to another bot at a higher price, you generate some easy profit that you can then reinvest on a different target.

There was only one really good arbitrage opportunity that I found today. There were 3 copies of Spark Elemental available for only 0.03 tickets on one bot, but a hotlist was offering a little over 0.07 tix each! This was the perfect opportunity to swap 0.09 tix on one bot for 0.225 tix on another! Spark Elemental is a fairly played card in Pauper and the occasional Legacy or Modern burn deck. It’s a good card, but the price of this particular creature varies wildly on Magic Online, making it not very safe to invest in long-term.

Because people buy in and out of decks so often on Magic Online, many key commons and uncommons can fluctuate wildly in price, meaning that not all vendors can catch up. This happens in regular “paper” Magic, too. But on MTGO, you can take advantage of these opportunities immediately! This may not be the last time we make a little money with this guy! Also, as we go along with this challenge, you’ll see a lot of the same cards being bought and sold for very different prices.

While I could be very happy with increasing my spending power by over 20 percent right off the bat, I decided to reinvest this profit, plus a little more on four copies of Scrap Trawler from Aether Revolt. This artifact creature has already seen some play in Modern and the potential for it to skyrocket in price due to competitive play is certainly there. While it hasn’t done much at all in Standard, because it has Modern and other eternal format applications, this is a nice speculative target to hold onto for a bit.

My thought process for this card is that it has reached between 0.1 and 0.2 tix per copy before on several occasions. It also sees a fair amount of Commander play, and while that is not a major format on Magic Online, there is competitive Commander as a real format now. So, it doesn’t hurt to gamble just 0.2 tix when the return could very likely be at least 0.4 or 0.6. Of course, I’m shooting for much higher. I’m hoping that I can eventually out these at 0.5 tix each, but given the opportunity to sell out for a good profit, I’m sure I’ll take it. On the flip side, it could drop to a penny and stay there forever, but that’s unlikely.

The most important thing about the 1 tix challenge is to keep the tickets and bot credit flowing, as the ultimate goal is to stockpile enough credits worth of profit to actually purchase event tickets. You can then out these tickets through venues like MTGOTraders or MTGOTickets for cash! For this exercise, however, we’ll be reinvesting our profit entirely for the time being. Once we’ve reached a certain threshold of tickets, however, I may decide to cash out some if the tickets are buying for a good rate ($0.90 per ticket or more).

We are going to take more risks as time goes on, after all, since our initial investment is so low! However, I tend to like targets that are 0.10 tix or below per copy. This is because there’s a real chance of completely losing our bets and having to sell off failures for fractions of a penny. Therefore, we will take profits whenever we can unless there are clear signs that we can hold out for more,

Is this a challenge you’d like to take with me? Are there cards you’d like to purchase now that you feel are really strong bets to make a profit? Let me know in the comments! I’ll be back soon with the next part of my MTGO 1 Event Ticket Collection Challenge!