Alara Reborn is here!

I have just finished getting all of the Alara Reborn singles up on Don's Magic and Sundry. Over at eBay I have booster packs, complete Common sets and complete Uncommon sets available. After opening 5 boxes' worth of booster packs, I obtained at least one copy of every card in the set except for 1 Mythic Rare card (Uril, the Miststalker), although I did get a copy of that card in Foil.

Alara Reborn is a rather different expansion. It's the first set ever that's "all gold" - that is, every single card is multicolored. In the past multicolored cards (first introduced in the Legends expansion way back when) have been a part of most sets, but usually only a small percentage of the cards. That means this set has no Land cards at all (Land cards, to date, are all colorless) which is rather rare these days.

My favorite card in the set is hard to pin down. I think it is most likely this lady:


This probably has something to do with my aforementioned fondness for the Serra Angel, since Jenara is an Angel herself, but she's also a kick-butt creature in her own right, and also one of the most popular cards in the set. The fact that you can, any time you have a leftover 1W in mana lying around, put a +1/+1 counter on her, so she grows over time....nasty! And, as you can tell from the red expansion symbol, the card is a Mythic Rare, so it's going to be much harder to get your hands on than most other cards in the set. As of this writing I have three copies available.

Another popular card in the set is the Meddling Mage.


This is actually a reprint of a card first introduced in the Planeshift expansion. I noticed last weekend (the weekend of the Pre-release, when the complete spoiler list for the set was let out) that I was getting more "hits" on the store's website from people searching for "Meddling Mage", and then someone finally bought the two copies of the card (in Japanese) that I had available. Then I looked at the spoiler list and found out why! Now that the card has been reprinted, it is once again "tourney legal", and those older cards (which were always pretty popular anyway) are now viable in a lot more decks, so they should show a marked rise in popularity. Too bad I have none of the older ones left - but (right now) I do have 4 copies of this new one available.

In other news, I continue to hack away at the large collections (including one of over 100,000 cards) that I have recently obtained, getting rares & foils listed in the store, and preparing to make a large number of complete Common & complete Uncommon sets for many different expansions. I should be busy for months getting these cards processed!

I have abandoned by Google Adwords experiment. While it was undeniably increasing traffic to the store (I had a few days where the total number of page loads went over 1,000), practically none of this traffic led to any sales (I think only 1 or 2, maybe). I just can't justify paying $0.20 or more per click when these clicks aren't generating any money. I'll just have to rely on word-of-mouth and regular Google searches to bring people to the store.

Oh, my gosh - I'm DONE!!!!!!!

The "Great Shift" was just finished. All of my single card inventory has now been moved over to www.donsmagicandsundry.com (with only a few Conflux cards that I feature on eBay as an exception).

I cannot believe this! How long have I been working on this? Okay - I just checked my own blog. I announced my decision to move all the inventory over on January 1. Here it is almost the end of March, so 3 months.

Actually, it feels like a lot longer!

Anywhoo - this is AWESOME! My wife is quite sick of my happy dance, however.

In other news, I have recently signed up with Google AdWords, and have an ad campaign going on various and sundry (no pun intended) websites as a result. They offered me a $50 credit to try them out, so what the heck. The way this works is that I pay per "click" from the ad, whether that "click" leads to a sale or not. I've bid a maximum of $0.20 per click, and capped my bill at $15 per day - we'll see what happens. As of this writing I've had the ad running since last Tuesday (so not yet a week) and had 31 "clicks" for a total of $4.70. To the best of my knowledge none of those clicks has (yet) resulted in a sale.

Which leads me to another project (minor in comparison). I need to "jazz up" my home page so that people have more of a reason to search and (of course) buy. A lot of people are getting to the home page and then leaving, not even searching for a single card. I'm not sure yet how to fix this, but I'm working on some ideas.

Got to go and clean up a little bit of the "color" field for searches. I decided mid-way that I needed to keep "multi" color cards listed in WUBRG order (that's White, blUe, Black, Red, Green for you non-Magic readers), but some of the earlier entries say "Multi Green White" instead of "Multi White Green", for example. To make searches consistent, I need to standardize all of those. That clean-up should only take a half-hour at most, I'm estimating. I'm right now downloading my entire inventory as a spreadsheet, then I'll sort by the color field, and just find the ones that need to be edited, chop the rest, make the edits, upload those files, and "Bob's your uncle" as they don't actually say in England.

Then tomorrow I need to focus on some other things. My Brother-in-law and Mother-in-law each have given me items they'd like sold on eBay and I've been putting that off to get my stuff done. I need to switch gears and work on the other stuff for a while.

But, for tonight, I will bask in the glory of BEING DONE! Did I mention that?

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

...is the most popular (or at least the currently highest priced) card from the new Conflux set which was just released. Let's take a look, shall we?

Rather a nasty looking character, isn't he? He's the big bad evil genius behind the problems facing the Alara planes in the back-story to this set.

The card is a Mythic Rare, and if you remember your lesson from before, that makes it 8x more rare than a Rare.

And somehow I managed to pull 4 copies of it in less than 5 boxes that I opened. What are the odds? Let's see...I opened 177 packs - that's 177 Rares/Mythic Rares. If 1/8 are Mythic Rares, then I should have pulled ~22 of them. There are 10 possible Mythic Rares, so theoretically I should have averaged just over 2 copies per by random distribution. I did, indeed, pull 22 Mythic Rares (that much worked) and I got 2 copies of most of them. However two of them I only got 1 copy each of, and two I got 4 copies each of (Child of Alara being the other one besides Nicol himself).

Nicol Bolas actually has a bit of history in Magic: the Gathering. He first appeared as an "Elder Dragon Legend" (later renamed "Legendary Elder Dragon") in the Legends expansion. That card was reprinted in the Chronicles expansion, and again as a Timeshifted card in Time Spiral. The original Nicol Bolas looked like this:

He doesn't look quite so menacing in this one, does he? In the back-story for Time Spiral, Nicol Bolas gained the "Planeswalker spark" and left Dominaria to find some other plane to take over - and he has set his sights on the Shards of Alara.

In other Conflux news, I also got 4 copies of the second-most pricey card in the set, a regular Rare called Noble Hierarch (and got 2 additional copies of the Foil version). This just amazes me. I think I got VERY lucky with the case that I ordered. And there are (at the moment) still 39 booster packs left of that case available for sale at my eBay store! So you, too, could partake of the lucky case!

I opened enough packs to make 21 complete common sets and 8 complete uncommon sets and still have cards left over to stock the singles section in the "branch store" (which is fast becoming the main store, actually, so maybe I should stop calling it that?). And I have at least 2 of every Rare available (and more than that for most of them).

Conflux is the first set that I have put ALL of my singles for up in the regular store. The last couple of sets I put Rares, Mythic Rares and most Foil cards up on the eBay store initially. But in keeping with my new policy (and the Great Shift project), I am no longer listing singles on eBay unless to put them up for auction or Buy It Now. No more Store items for single cards.

I love my customers!

Josh, a return customer of mine, just let me know yesterday that he's a graphic designer, and he wanted to make a new store logo for me as a gesture of appreciation. Here's the result:

Is that cool or what? I've already got it swapped out at the main store pages, and will swap it out at the top of this Blog as soon as I figure out how to do so :-)

Thanks, Josh!

On another note, I'm now on Twitter - so if you'd like to follow me there, go to http://twitter.com/TheSundry and you can start following the fun. I was giving running updates during my crazy Conflux opening party (only one guest: me!) yesterday.

I'll give a more detailed report on Conflux later (either this evening or tomorrow, hopefully), but I have to spend the day taking photos of the new cards and processing them, and getting them listed. Fun, fun, FUN!

I'm Google-icious!

So, the exciting news is that ProStores has a system in place through which one can upload their store's inventory into Gooogle's shopping system, so that their items show up in Google shopping searches. So, naturally, I have (finally) done this, and the store's web traffic has increased as a result. I am very excited about this. I even had my first sale this way this morning, where a customer bought a $0.40 card. It's not much, but it's a start!

If you'd like to see such a search result (the one that actually lead to my sale this morning, actually), then check out this Google search.

Also, somehow when we restructured the store so that everything was through the donsmagicandsundry.com URL, the items became more "search-friendly" as far as Google is concerned, so my items are showing up more readily in regular Google searches as well. An example can be found in this Google search.

Please note that both of these searches work as of this writing, but who knows what the results may be days/weeks/months from now, so if you're clicking these a good deal of time after January 25, 2009 then don't be surprised if they don't work.

Here's hoping increased traffic leads to increased sales as it should!

As for The Great Shift (the name I've given to the major project I have moving my singles inventory from the eBay store), I have finished the last 5 expansion sets now and just today I got Coldsnap moved over. I'll start on Alliances and Ice Age next to finish the "Ice Age Block". After that I'm not sure yet - I've decided to bounce around a bit instead of just heading backwards or forwards through the sets. A lot of hits to my store over the last couple of days have been for non-English cards, so I may get more of those listed before I do more English ones. We'll see.

Store update - computer woes

Last week on Monday I was advised that it might be a good idea to back up my important files off-site, and a company called Carbonite was recommended. I signed up for their free trial and started the initial backup process, which can take several days, since it runs in the background while the computer is not in use.

I decided to leave the computer on all Monday night to let the backup continue and maybe speed things up.

I then proceeded to run the computer hard all Tuesday, as I am trying to get all the single card inventory out of eBay and over to the "branch store" (as you may recall from an earlier update).

Somewhere in all of this I must have overheated something, and when a Windows update came in Tuesday night requiring the computer to be restarted, it decided that it had had enough, and died.

A man who runs an e-store, with a dead computer. This is definitely in the NOT GOOD category.

Wednesday I get by on borrowing my wife's laptop for the day. Thursday I resurrect an old Gateway PC we have lying around the basement that was still running WINDOWS 98! and used it for the day. Finally on Friday I obtained a newer, faster, nicer computer (upon which I am writing these words). I have nearly filled up the hard drive trying to get all my old files transferred over - so I'm looking at turning the hard drives from the old computer into external hard drives for this one, or just getting a nice external myself...we'll see (there's no room inside the new computer for a second drive).

On a more positive note I am on a roll with getting inventory transferred over. I have now completed all Core Sets, so everything I have available from Unlimited Edition up through 10th Edition (I don't have anything in Alpha or Beta right now) is now for sale at www.donsmagicandsundry.com. I have decided to work my way backwards through the expansion sets, so I have already gotten the most recent expansion, Shards of Alara, up (just finished earlier today) and will attack Eventide next.

I still haven't managed to get the kinks out of the search process, so although it looks like you can search for multiple colors you can't really just yet, unless you enter them all on one line and it happens to match the same order I entered the keywords in (in other words, searching for "Multi White Blue" does not produce the same results as searching for "Multi Blue White"). Anyone reading this a programming guru who can tell me how to overcome this problem?

Tomorrow look for my report on my first tournament - on Friday I went and signed up for my DCI membership and participated in Friday Night Magic. And if I do say so myself, I didn't do too badly for my first time out!

Another bold new direction...

Or, perhaps, a foolish one?

The local comic shop where I get my weekly "fix" (come on - you already know I read comics or you haven't been paying attention!) also sells Magic: the Gathering booster packs. [Most comic stores have to also sell gaming and various sci-fi & fantasy stuff to stay afloat.] Free Plug for the gang: Beyond Comics in Gaithersburg!

I was approached by the owner, who knows I run my Magic store, to see if I would be interested in running a series of Magic tournaments at the shop. I'd be allowed to sell my singles there (but not my boosters - wouldn't want to compete with the host, now, would I?) and it would help the store by bringing in a regular clientele (theoretically, anyway).

So, I will soon be embarking on a fact-finding mission to attend a tournament at a gaming store that's a few towns south of here. They run regular Friday Night Magic tournaments, as well as more major pro-tour qualifier tourneys and even host Magic pre-release parties. I'd like to attend a FNM shindig, and also attend their Conflux pre-release party at the end of the month (Conflux is the next set to be released, to come out the first week in February - the pre-release events are the last week in January).

I've never been to any kind of official Magic event before, despite being in the business of selling cards, packs, etc for years now. Since I don't play too often any more, I've been a little nervous. But if I'm going to be running one of these things, I think I ought to see how they run at a place that's been doing it (and doing it well from what I understand) for a while now. I'm not sure yet if they are deserving of a Free Plug so I will refrain for now (especially if I find out they deal in Magic singles also - I can't advertise my competition!!!).

I will, of course, report back once more is known....

Okay - one other note. Is anyone else saying to themselves "WTH?!?! Not only is this the fourth post in one month, but it's the second in one DAY?!?!" Yeah, I know, I'm freaking myself out too......I guess I just am THAT excited about all this stuff!

I'm so excited!

And I just can't hide it!

Okay - enough of the lyrics (but now that song's stuck in your head, isn't it? Bwa-ha-ha-ha!).

This weekend we relaunched Don's Magic and Sundry.

• The whole site got a major overhaul, with a new "Theme". I think the new layout looks MUCH more professional. There's a "Shopping Cart" button, many more cards show up per line on a search, the colors are SO much more attractive than the old look....
• The old Abilities and Shipping pages (along with this Blog) were brought into one site [they used to be housed on a separate server from the Store itself]. This allows the Abilities & Shipping pages, for example, to have the Catalog links in the left-hand margin like every other page, making the place feel more like a cohesive unit. Also, hopefully, making it more likely that people who find the site through a Google search for a Magic Ability will then proceed to go shopping!
• The new, stronger, Advanced Search (see last post) continues to become more useful as I get more and more inventory updated with the proper tags that the search can recognize. As of this writing I've made it through 8th Edition in the Core Sets. Once I get through 10th Edition I will start the expansion sets, and I think I'll start with the latest (Shards of Alara) and work my way backwards.

If you haven't yet, PLEASE pop over to http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ and take a look. You won't (I assure you) be disappointed.

On a related note: My wife (who usually prefers to hide in the shadows here and will probably not be thrilled with the mention here) dedicated many hours of service in this endeavor. She is my webmistress, and while I continue to learn more and can do more myself, she is the one who worked so hard on getting the theme to work, getting the Blog moved over, setting up a new mailing list process (the old one had to be sacrificed in the move - thankfully only 8 people were registered!)...I owe here a HUMONGOUS debt of thanks, and so here, publicly, I give it. Thank you my dear, I really appreciate your time and effort (especially for what you no doubt still think is just a silly hobby. ).

Okay, enough sappy stuff. Go look at the site. Ooh, aah, buy something...

Excitement abounds - new search at The Sundry

[Yeah - I know - two posts in one month. Can you believe it??!!!!!]

As part of the move to get the "branch store" busier, I have decided that the Advanced Search function needs to be more user-friendly, and more useful as well. Towards that end, I am, as I go along getting the eBay inventory moved over to http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/, adding four "tags" to each inventory item. These will be searchable, and should increase the flexibility of a customer's quest to find the perfect card. You can check out the new search page at: http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/donsmagicandsundry/Catalog

The four "tags" (technically called "Custom Fields" in the ProStores jargon) are:

1. Color: This has five search fields, and a user can enter into each of the fields any of the five colors (White, Blue, Black, Red and Green) or "Colorless", plus "Multi" if the card is more than one color. So far I haven't been able to fine-tune the search process, and if you enter "White" for Color 1 and "Red" for Color 2 you get all items that are White and also all that are White and Red. What should happen is you only get the items that are White and Red. I need to work out this kink.
2. Card Type: This has two search fields (I may add one more later) and a user can enter into each of the fields any of the eight card types (Artifact, Creature, Enchantment, Instant, Land, Planeswalker, Sorcery, and Tribal). As with color, a card may be multiple types (a "Tribal Sorcery" for example), so this should, if Tribal is entered as Type 1 and Sorcery is entered as Type 2, produce only cards that are Tribal and Sorcery, but I suspect that doesn't work right yet either.
3. Card Sub-Type: This has three search fields and a user can enter into each of the fields a Creature type (like "Goblin" or "Elf") or several other sub-types that distinguish one card from another (some Enchantments are "Aura", and some are "World"; any type of card may be "Legendary").
4. Rarity: This has only one search field, and a user can enter any of the five rarity types (Basic Land, Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Mythic Rare). This is a somewhat redundant search, since I include this information in the title of each inventory item (example: "Llanowar Elves - 10th Edition - Common") but just in case it's not obvious that the rarity is searchable within the name, I am including it as its own Custom Field.

What has me baffled at the moment is that searching for two different Custom Fields produces a Boolean relationship I would expect. In other words if you search for Color: White and Card Type: Creature you get all the cards that are labelled as White and Creature, but not cards labelled White that aren't labelled Creature, or Creature but not White. That's what I want if you search within a single Custom Field as well (Color: White and Color: Red yields only things that are White and Red) but I haven't gotten it licked yet. I may not be able to.

So now, in addition to moving over 3000+ items from eBay to the other store, I also need to edit the 50,000+ items already over there. I may be done before 2010. Wish me luck!

A New Year, a New Direction

I can't believe I'm doing this to myself....

I have decided, due to various factors including eBay's crazy changing of rules all the time, that what I need to do is take all of my single cards down off of my eBay store and move them to the "branch store" at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ instead.

I am staring down the barrel of another great "culling" by eBay of my inventory. As you may recall, last year (October?) I lost about half of my inventory as eBay took down any items that were listed at under $1. Well, eBay's latest policy change is that personal checks and money orders (in short, non-electronic payments) are no longer acceptable for eBay transactions.

The problem is that for the last who knows how long, my boilerplate "checkout message" has said that PayPal is preferred, but that checks & money orders would be accepted. If eBay lives up to their promise, then come January 16th any of my items with this wording will be taken down, and I'd have to relist them all at that point.

My only other option would be to edit 3000+ items one at a time, because the checkout instruction message is not one of the things you can edit by a bulk edit. And even if I could, I would be unable to edit the message on any item where even one of them had sold (you may recall me hitting that problem last year when the USPS got rid of "Air Mail Letter" and replaced it with "First Class International").

So, essentially, I have finally had it with eBay as far as having a massive inventory over there is concerned. I will still leave up my booster packs and complete common sets as they are more easily dealt with over there. But the bulk of my inventory will move to the "branch store". The big pluses include:

• Easier to control inventory (adding/subtracting cards)
• Easier to bulk edit if need be (I can download my inventory as a spreadsheet, do a massive "Find/Replace" and upload the file back up and there you go!)
• I can still move selected items over to eBay, but if purchased they will be taken to my branch store's checkout, and may then go further shopping over there
• Fees on successful sales MUCH lower through ProStores than at eBay (or as some have taken to calling it, "feeBay")

This decisions brings with it some pains in the butt, however:

• The branch store's website needs some revamping to make it more attractive and user-friendly to encourage more people to buy there
• I have 3000+ items that need to be moved (UGH!) - which means modifying the old photos to the "branch store" standard, typing the descriptions, etc.
• I need to increase advertising and the like to bring customers to the branch store, because it doesn't have as many purchases as I need to justify it

All in all, I now have my work cut out for me again. And to think I was wondering what I was going to do with my free time now that I finally got all my English cards up!

I'll try to make regular updates as I can to let you loyal readers (all 2 of you!) know how things are progressing. Hopefully I can get a large number of cards moved over before the forced purge from eBay later this month.

Give the gift of Magic!

It's the holiday giving season, and you know you have friends or loved ones who are either:

1. as into Magic as you are, or
2. clue-free on what to give you, their Magic-loving friend/child/spouse/whatever.

Have no fear! Don's Magic and Sundry is here to help!

Over the last few weeks I have finished the "great relisting" project, and now pretty much all Uncommon cards from Core Sets Revised through 10th and expansion sets The Dark through Shards of Alara are available at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/, joining the Commons and basic lands from those sets. Cheaper (under $1) Rare cards from these sets and cheaper foil cards are also available at this "branch store." There are literally tens of thousands of single cards waiting for your wishlists and purchases.

My eBay store continues to hold most of the Rare cards and foil cards. In fact, I recently added over 1000 new foil cards and complete common sets from many different Core and expansion sets. I still have a great selection of pre-constructed decks and starter/tournament decks. And I've got booster packs for all sets from Revised through 10th, and from Legends through Shards of Alrara, including Unglued, Unhinged, Portal, Portal Second Age and Starter 1999.

Finally, for the true die-hard, I have a complete, Near Mint, Collector's Edition for sale. This set reprints the entire Beta Edition, including the power nine (Black Lotus, Mox Emerald, Mox Jet, Mox Pearl, Mox Ruby, Mox Sapphire, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk and Timetwister) as well as all 10 original Dual Lands. It's a must-have for the avid Magic collector.

Here are quick links for you to use (or share with whomever might be stuck trying to figure out what to get for you [nudge-nudge-wink-wink]):

• Complete common sets
• Foil cards
• Booster packs
• Starter/Tournament decks
• Preconstructed decks
• Collector's Edition

Guess what? I'm DONE!

I actually finished the great relisting project! It's amazing! I don't know what I'll ever do with all of my free time now...

Oh, that's right - catch up on all my new backlogged inventory - that's what!

You really should have seen my happy dance yesterday afternoon when I got the last of the cards put up in the branch store. I'm sure I mortified my whole family. But this thing has been keeping me busy every night for ~3-4 hours, most days on weekends, and any other available free time for the last several months. I am SO relieved to finally have it done!

Now pretty much all of my uncommon cards are now available at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ along with the commons and basic lands, and quite a few cheaper rares as well...I have a much decreased single card inventory available at the eBay store compared to just three months ago.

Oh, by the way - the solution to my inventory limit problem (see my last post) was to pay ProStores more money every month and upgrade my store level. I now have an inventory limit of 50,000 items, which I hopefully won't hit for quite some time!

I can now get back to listing a whole bunch of foils I have sitting around ("Lot 46") as well as some new cards I've never had available before (so they need the full photo-taking treatment). Then I need to tackle the remains of "Lot 47" which is now nothing but basic lands and common cards that I want to make Complete Basic Land sets and Complete Common Sets out of.

Then I have a large number of non-English cards that will need to get processed - a bunch of Japanese, Russian and Portuguese in particular, but many French, Italian, German, etc...including a lot of 4th Edition cards in Japanese that should prove popular due to their black borders (reminiscent of the Chinese 4th Edition I wrote about long ago).

My biggest business lately has been in unopened packs. I now have booster packs available for every expansion set except Arabian Nights and Antiquities (which sell for ~$200 and ~$50 each, respectively), including the almost as popular Legends boosters that I have listed for $57.50. I'm hoping the demand on all of these will pick up as the holidays approach us. I can see the effects of the economy crisis in my sales - most of my really big purchases lately have been from outside the US, rather than in.

That's all the news that's fit to print right now...more as it happens. Hopefully I'll now have some free time to right a few more Blog entries focusing on individual cards and the like soon...

I may have a MASSIVE problem

Just a quick one today...

I have gotten up to the Mirrodin block of cards in the great relisting project, and hit a major snag. As I was uploading the Uncommon cards for Mirrodin, only 14 of the 84 cards I was uploading were processed.

When I read the report to determine why the others didn't load, I was greeted with the message: "Reached maximum number of Products (10,000)".

Holy $#!+ - I'm not sure what surprised me more...the fact that I have a limit to the number of cards I can put up, or that fact that I've now got 10,000 cards listed!

I have an email in to ProStores, the company that hosts my store. I vaguely recall a message in the opening documentation from them that said there was a limit (which I never thought I'd reach at the time), but that I could contact my ProStores agent if I would need a higher number. Hopefully something can be done here, or else I don't know what I'm going to do with the remaining cards I still need to list from before, not to mention cards in future sets.

Why is nothing ever easy?

Shards of Alara is up!

The newest expansion to Magic, Shards of Alara, has finally arrived. On Friday I received my pre-order of one case of booster pack boxes and one box of tournament decks. I opened up all of the decks and 4 of the 6 boxes worth of boosters.

All of the regular basic lands, commons and uncommons are up at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ and the rares, mythic rares, and foils are up in my eBay store.

The best card I opened was perhaps the most popular card in the whole set: a foil version of the most popular Mythic Rare card, called Sarkhan Vol. Here's what the card looks like:

Copies of this card have sold for as much as $70+ at auction recently (some were available before the release date), and there was only one available in an eBay Store when I went to list mine. They were asking $69.95 for theirs. I had listed my non-Foil version for $32.50, so I doubled the price to $65, keeping mine under the other seller's.

You may be wondering why I haven't included a link to the listing for this item, as I usually do. That's because it sold less than 12 hours later to a customer in Greece!

What makes this card so popular? Well the card itself is very useful, as you can use it to add a nice dragon Creature to your side of your magical battle. But from a rarity standpoint, look at it this way...the card is a Mythic Rare. Mythic Rares shows up in 1 out of every 8 booster packs. There are 15 different mythic rares, so based on odds, you'd need to open 120 packs to be sure of getting a copy of Sarkhan Vol.

But now consider the Foil part. On average you'll get one Foil Rare in every box of booster packs (or 1 in 36 packs). If a Rare is replaced with a Mythic Rare every 1 in 8 packs, this means (theoretically) that you'd need to open 8 boxes' worth of boosters to get a single Foil Mythic Rare. To get the specific Foil Mythic Rare you're looking for, then, you'd need to open 15 x 8 or 120 boxes of boosters.

Essentially - I got VERY lucky! First of all that I got a Foil Mythic Rare in only the equivalent of 5 boxes, and that the one I got was the most popular one.

Well, now it's back to the great relisting project. Wish me luck on that one!

And the results are...

...not quite what I had expected.

The From the Vault: Dragons cards did turn out to be quite popular. The grand total raw sales came to $91 - a good deal more than the $53 I paid for the set. Once fees are taken out, I still should show some profit, which is of course always nice!

One person ended up winning 7 of the 15 cards, another got 5, a third got 2 and a final person won 1. The person with 7 had a total of around $49, so they are clearly the winner of the special spin-down life counter promised to a winner of 5+ cards. Strangely enough, since no single person won 10 or more, no-one won the box, or the free shipping. I really thought that last one would be a big draw - buy your 15 Dragons cards then go crazy buying booster packs or something really heavy, and get it all shipped for free....but I guess not!

Anyway, I certainly can't complain about the results. It was just not quite what I thought I'd see. I felt for sure someone would try to get 10+ so they could get the box. It's really cool. So I guess I get to keep it :-)

On the great relisting project, I am up to the Invasion set, and should finish getting those done tonight. That leaves only 19 full expansion sets and then various piddly boxed sets, plus some non-English stuff (Italian Legends and Chinese 4th Edition being the biggest two problems). And all of this will be put on the back burner soon as the new set, Shards of Alara, is due out this coming Friday. I hope to get the descriptions of the cards typed up and ready before the cards actually arrive, if my usual source is as with-it as he was for Eventide. And maybe I'll get as lucky as I was with Eventide and get the cards a full day before the release date!

Oh, I promised to say a bit more about Shards of Alara in this post. The biggest deal is that Wizards of the Coast has decided to put a new level of Rarity into their cards. Since the beginning of the game there have been three levels of Rarity (4 if you count "Basic Land" as one): Commons, Uncommons, and Rares. These days a typical booster pack will contain 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons, and 11 Commons (or 10 Commons and a Basic Land for a Core Set like 10th Edition).

Starting with Shards of Alara, they are replacing the Rare in roughly 1 out of every 8 packs with a "Mythic Rare" - so this small set will be even more difficult to find than (and consequently, in theory, worth more than) a regular Rare. And a Foil version of such a Mythic Rare should be insanely valuable. Again, in theory.

Also, they plan to replace one of the Commons with a Basic Land in booster packs for all sets, not just the Core Sets. The theory being that since you essentially must have basic Lands to play, then not having them in boosters makes it more difficult for new players to get started.

The final big change being made is that this set (and ones to follow) will be smaller than the sets in recent history. There are simply too many cards in the game to reasonably expect someone to be fluent with all of them, and lowering the number in newer sets will help with that. For me this means it should be easier to get my hands on all (or nearly all) with the 5-6 boxes I plan on opening. That is one thing I appreciate a good deal.

From the Vault: Dragons

There's a new special boxed set in town, and it's name is From the Vault: Dragons.

This set is a reprint (or in one case, pre-print) set, bringing back to life in special Foil format 15 of the best Dragon (or Dragon-related) cards ever printed over Magic's 15 year history. The "pre-print" is a card (Hellkite Overlord) from the new expansion, Shards of Alara, that won't be released until early October.

And this boxed set is DAMNED hard to get your hands on! I pre-ordered my set from my usual seller about two months ago. At the time the pre-order price was about $23 for the 15 cards set, a discount over the MSRP for the product.

Then the set was sold by Wizards of the Coast (before its official release date) at a large sci-fi/comic book convention, limited to 100 copies per day, first come, first served. And then the distributors were shorted on their orders. And suddenly the pre-order price from my usual source went to over $100!

I was glad I had bought when I did.

Too bad my usual source got slighted by their distributor and my order got cancelled and refunded. So much for my great deal!

Anyway, I finally managed to get my hands on a copy from my local comic book shop. $53 with tax - not too bad given that the lowest I'd seen sell on eBay was for $51, with $8 shipping. Still, I feel rather crazy paying $53 for 15 cards!

So, I've decided to run a rather strange little experiment. This week (starting tomorrow, Saturday September 20) I will be auctioning each of the 15 cards individually. I'll start the bidding at a mere $0.99 each, and each bears this special deal text:

• If a single buyer wins 5 (or more) of the 15 From the Vault: Dragons cards I have available this week, that buyer will also win the special spin-down life counter that came in the box with the cards, at no additional shipping cost. In the event that more than one buyer wins 5+ of the cards, the buyer with the highest over-all $ total for their From the Vault: Dragons cards will win the counter.
• If a single buyer wins 10 (or more) of the 15 From the Vault: Dragons cards I have available this week, that buyer will also win the special spin-down life counter AND the original box that the cards & counter came in (complete with inner plastic case and paper insert), at no additional shipping cost.
• If a single buyer wins all 15 From the Vault: Dragons cards I have available this week, that buyer will also win the special spin-down life counter, the original box (with everything in it), and their total order will have FREE SHIPPING! Even if you then go on to buy more cards or booster packs from me. That's free shipping on YOUR ENTIRE ORDER if you win all 15 cards!

My hope, of course, is that this will encourage someone to bid like mad on the cards trying to get all 15 - and then go shopping at my store to maximize on the free shipping deal. We'll see how it goes, and I'll report back afterwards to let you know. If you want to follow the fun yourself, you can watch these items over the next week (this link won't produce any items until I list these cards after 2 p.m. EDT on Saturday 9/20). Hopefully I'll at least be able to recoup my $53!

In other news, the great relisting project (see my last post) continues. As of this writing I have completed all 10 Core Sets (Alpha Edition through 10th Edition), all 5 Starter Sets (Portal through Starter 2000) and 23 expansions (Arabian Nights through Exodus, and Coldsnap through Eventide). This does, however, still leave 24 regular expansions (Urza's Saga through Dissension) as well as the two Un-Sets (Unglued and Unhinged) and several boxed sets and the promo cards. I had hope to have this grand project finished before the next expansion, Shards of Alara, is released on October 3 - but as that is a mere two weeks away, things are looking grim. Therefore I still have over 2000 card listings (likely representing over 6000 cards) that still need to be made at the "branch store" at www.donsmagicandsundry.com. Oy!

Next time I report in, I'll let you know how the From the Vault: Dragons experiment went, and talk a little about the new set, Shards of Alara, and explain why Rare isn't the rarist kind of card any more.

I don't know where to start...

I have a GIANT task ahead of me right now.

As you may recall from a previous post, eBay recently changed their policy on Store listings. Items can no longer be listed for under $1. As a result, I have been adding more and more inventory to http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ as I get in new cards that I would sell for under a buck.

However, eBay has allowed Store inventory items that were listed before the policy change to renew every 30 days, and therefore a lot of cards I had listed remained available, a feature I think many customers found appealing since no-one else could then newly list that item for my price.

That all changed last night. I awoke this morning to find over 4000 emails in my inbox from eBay, telling me of the items that had been removed from inventory. Roughly 50% of my entire stock (actually probably well over 50%, since I have more copies of the lower priced cards - let's say 50% of my listings) have been removed.

All at once.

No warning.

SO, now I need to go through 4000+ listings and decide whether to:

1. Relist on eBay, upping the asking price to $1
2. List the cards on the "branch store"

I actually had this task on my mental "to do" list for when I finished processing Lot 47 (which is almost done), but I had planned to spread the work out over weeks, taking one set at a time and adjusting the prices or closing the eBay item to list the cards on the other store. That way the bulk of the inventory would stay accessible, and there'd only be a few minutes between taking them down at eBay and putting them up at the other store where they wouldn't be available.

Now, instead, I have thousands of cards that people can't buy until I get this fixed. Ye gads!

Needless to say (although I will anyway), I have my work cut out for me. I will temporarily put a hold on Lot 47 (all that's really left is to take photos of Uncommons & Rares I've never listed before to get them up, and deal with all of the Commons). Instead I will bury myself in the daunting task of getting my inventory cleaned up. Woo-hoo. What fun.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to slink off and cry quietly in a corner for a while...

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.

Happy happy joy joy - Lorwyn is HERE!

Yesterday was both a good day and a bad day. Let me tell you about the bad first...

If you've been following this Blog for a while at all you know that I once, a couple of years ago, received a negative feedback from some crazy woman who never sent me a check, then was amazed that her item didn't ship. She left a nasty negative feedback, and apparently did this for several other sellers and her eBay account was closed down as a result. But, still, I had this one mark against me and a mere 99.9% positive for my eBay account. This made me seethe. But just a few weeks ago my score crept up high enough (I guess over 99.95%) that the score finally rounded up to 100.0% again. Yahoo!!!

That is, until yesterday. Some bloke who bought some cards, and later asked why they hadn't arrived, although the USPS tracking site says it was delivered. I don't know, I tell him - ask at his post office, maybe they can advise (maybe they marked it delivered, but couldn't fit it in the mailbox? Maybe it was left on his front porch and stolen? How am I supposed to know).

Well, it seems that this is not good enough for him. So yesterday I get a negative feedback rating with this message: "cards never arrived, i'd rather have a refund instead of having to track it down"!?!?! How, I ask you, can it be MY fault if the USPS messes up on his end? Or if the package is stolen? I sent the cards he ordered and paid for - I arranged for a tracking number to follow. I offered to insure the package (not taken). What more am I supposed to do?

What's even more galling is that this user has a feedback rating of 18 (1 of which is mine - I left a positive when he paid...I'm starting to understand why some sellers wait for positive feedback for themselves before leaving it for the buyer), and he's only been an eBayer since May 2007, so he's a newbie, doesn't know how things work, doesn't understand that he should try to work things out with a seller before leaving negative feedback...basically he REALLY pissed me off.

But I'm not bitter. Really. Ask anyone.

Okay, enough of my rant, sorry. So why was yesterday a good day? Because my Lorwyn cards arrived! Woo-hoo! After opening up my three boxes (I love the fact that these showed up on the release date!) I have all of the 121 commons (no surprise there - probably at least 4 of each, actually) and all of the 80 Uncommons (only 1 of a couple of them, but all), 69 out of the 80 Rares (not too shabby, really) and around 35 foils (mostly basic Lands and Commons, but some Uncommons and 1 Rare). This includes three copies of the second most popular card (judging by current eBay prices - in the $10-13 range), Gaddock Teeg. [The most popular, Thoughtseize ($23-26 range), I only got one of]. And I got several copies of the Lorwyn Dual Lands, which will be the topic of my next post.

Lorwyn is coming!

This Friday (October 12, 2007) marks the official release of the newest Magic: the Gathering expansion set, called Lorwyn.

This is the first set of a new "block", and as such is a rather large set, and includes its own basic Lands. The set will be available in 15-card booster packs as well as large "Tournament Decks". The latter typically is the only way to get the basic Land cards. I have pre-ordered two boxes of booster packs and a box of tournament decks, so I should be well stocked in short order to start selling Lorwyn singles. I'll have a couple of more posts on the subject of this expansion over the next few days as we lead up to the release, and as I open up my packs and see what cool cards await!

Store Update: I just today finished getting the last of Lot 26 listed in the Store. I have three more lots to go - two lots of all Foil cards, and one largish lot of all Foils & Rares. I also have new stock of unopened packs coming (I just recently won boxes of 10th Edition, Unhinged and Planar Chaos) so I have more of "Lot 7" to go. I'm particularly proud of the Unhinged box, as I paid less than $1 per pack for the 36 packs in the box - and each pack contains a basic Land card that I can sell for $1 each. Not too shabby.

The 10th Edition cards have been selling quite nicely. I have had several orders consisting purely of dozens of 10th Edition cards.

I've been having several auctions each week up, mostly consisting of complete common sets, unopened booster packs, and promo Foil card singles. These auctions have often gone well, and have brought customers in to buy more from the Store, which is of course one of the main reasons for having them.

This week I'm trying a new experiment - I have several "playsets" of four copies of a given 10th Edition uncommon card. Since I've bought so many boxes of 10th Edition at this point, I have WAY too many uncommon cards, and it seemed that selling playsets would be a way to cull the herd somewhat, as well as advertise that I have lots of 10th Edition available for sale.

More on Lorwyn tomorrow!

Store update, anyone?

Okay, it's been a while since I gave everyone who's interested in such things a Store Update. And today's a good day to do one, since I have something to celebrate:

I'VE FINISHED THE MAJOR OVERHAUL!

Yes, I have finally edited every last one (I hope) of the 5000+ magic card entries I have available on eBay, fixing the shipping options to match the new USPS "First Class International", and updating the wording on the generic text in the descriptions. It was a long, arduous process, but at long last it's finished.

Now I can shift focus and get back to adding new cards to the store. I still have literally thousands of cards to get up, most of them Uncommons, Rares and Foils. First order of business, though, will be to get the common cards from Legends and The Dark up onto donsmagicandsundry.com - I finally decided during the overhaul to take them down from eBay and put them up at the new store. So I need to edit the old photos to match the new Store's standards, and get the things listed. This includes a lot of Italian Legends and The Dark common cards as well.

I've made a bunch more purchases since I last updated here. I believe the last I reported I had purchased Lot 23. Well, there's been quite a few more since then. I'm more focusing on unopened packs and batches of Rares/Foils/Promos these days...

• Lot 24 has become now a sort of generic Lot number for unopened packs that I buy and auction still unopened. I find people offering larger lots of packs, then sell them individually at auction and (hopefully) make a profit. For example, someone had a batch of 34 unopened booster packs of Urza's Legacy (that's 2 short a complete box). Unfortunately for him (fortunately for me), he misspelled Urza's Legacy as "Urza,s Legacy", so I think a lot of searchers missed his auction. The set ended up going for less than it probably should have, but that means that when I sell them off one at a time, starting the bidding at $5, I should make some profit.
• Lot 25 was a "deck" someone had up that included "29 special cards". There wasn't much of a description, but the price was very cheap, and no-one else bid on it, so I got it at the minimum. Unfortunately the "Nevinyrral's Disk" they advertised was from some Pro Tour set that's practically worthless, and was in such beat up shape I couldn't sell it anyway. SIGH. I might be able to get my money back on this one.
• Lot 26 was a whole bunch of uncommons, (2100+), rares (300+) and foils from recent sets. A couple was needing to get some money to pay off their debt, so decided to dump their rather expensive Magic habit and sell off their cards. It seems they bought boxes to collect complete sets - and didn't play with them. What I bought were their extras, which were in incredibly good shape (I'd say Mint if I didn't reserve that term for cards I took out of packs myself).
• Lot 27 was a small batch (38) of Foils - including a 9th Edition Serra Angel. Since I collect those, this was an added bonus.
• Lot 28 was another batch (95) of Foils I bought from a guy that I also bought over 100 unopened packs from. The unopened packs get filed under "Lot 7", the generic Lot number for unopened packs that I then open myself to sell the individual cards.
• Lot 29 was a small batch of Foils (26) and Token Creature cards (8).
• Lot 30 was a batch of 198 Foils and 5 Promo cards.
• Lot 31 was around 1000 Rares and over 300 Foils. I've been auctioning off many of these Foils over the last several weeks. Many are Friday Night Magic (FNM) promo cards, or Pre-Release cards. When a new set is released, Wizards of the Coast throws Pre-Release parties, and these special promo cards, Foil jazzed-up versions of a rare card from the set, are printed for those events. They even had fun for a while using never-before-used languages, like Hebrew and Latin!
• Lot 32 was a small (37) batch of Foils.
• Lot 33 was a batch (325) of Foils and a few assorted other Rare cards.
• Lot 34 was a box of 9th Edition. This Lot still galls me a little, and I'll tell you why below.

Okay, why am I so upset about Lot 34? This guy lists this item, starting the bidding at some high amount. He claims that he considered getting into Magic, and bought this box (and another box of some other set - he listed two at the same time), opened the packs, then never played the game. So he wants to sell them off. He says that this box contains all the cards originally in there. I emailed him asking him to let me know how many foil cards there were, and what they were. Also, what are the Rare cards? Since he opened the packs, I might as well take advantage and see what he's offering. No response. The box doesn't sell. A week or so later I see it up again, this time with a more reasonable starting bid. So I email him again. This time he replies, and says there are no foils, but he sends me a list of Rares.

Two problems here. First of all, the odds of opening up an entire box of 9th Edition and not getting a single Foil card are EXTREMELY low. Maybe impossible, I don't know. Secondly, the list of Rares has only 35 cards listed. As there should be 36 packs in a box, and one Rare per pack, there should be 36 listed. I emailed him for clarification on the last point, and he replied that there were two copies of one of the cards, so there were indeed 36 Rares. Okay, I bid (the Rares were good ones - Wrath of God, four different Pain Lands, Royal Assassin - basically the Rares alone would cover the asking price) and won.

Now, when I get the cards, my son and I immediately fall to sorting them out. Most of our work has already been done for us, however, and the work goes quickly. Then I count the cards (yes, I am that obsessive). There should have been 108 Uncommons (36 packs times 3 Uncommons per pack). There were 111. There should have been 36 Basic Lands (1 per pack). There were 51. There should have been 360 Commons (10 each pack). There were 371. And to make matters worse, three of the Commons come from a 9th Edition sub-set, only available in the boxed set version.

So, this is obviously not the original contents of a box of 9th Edition. But I actually come out ahead (there's more cards in every category except Rares). So I'm torn between being pleased with the purchase (I think it was a good one) and being ticked off at the guy for so obviously lying about what he was selling.

Right now I have a bid on a factory sealed box of 9th Edition - if I win it, it will be amusing to compare what I get (especially in the Foils category) versus what I got for Lot 24. I am also keeping an eye on a huge Lot of Japanese 4th Edition cards. You may remember my foray into the Chinese 4th Edition cards (first mentioned in this post from October '06). Well, the Japanese 4th Edition have the same draw - the black borders, the Asian mystique. If this lot doesn't get bid up too high I will grab it up and sell them individually as I have been on the Chinese ones.

On another note entirely, the traffic to the Abilities page on donsmagicandsundry.com continues to amaze me. From the tracking I'm doing, I see double-digit hits on that page nearly every day, almost all from Google searches for Magic abilities. It's very cool - I just wish it was resulting in sales from donsmagicandsundry.com as well. I think some of the hits end up becoming eBay customers, but I'm still confused as to why there has been so little interest in the cards at the new Store. If anyone reading out there has any ideas, give me a holler, please!

Well, I think I've managed to babble on quite a bit tonight, and there may be few of you still reading at this point, so I'll sign off for now. Hopefully these posts may come a bit more often now that the major overhaul is done (although maybe not - I may be getting a part-time job soon!).

Magic Game Day Scavenger Hunt

All right - something odd. I have recently been editing many of my listings on eBay, because I had to update the shipping options (see my earlier rant on the USPS changes). One of the listings I updated was for the Legends Rules card. This was a card included in every single booster pack of Legends that explained some new rules introduced with that set. Because every pack had one, and both Alan and I had bought lots of Legends, I have well over 100 copies of this thing

Shortly after the listing was updated, I started getting several orders for it (I had only gotten 3 or 4 in the previous year). Several people bought just one copy, some bought four, some bought one copy of this plus another single card (Spanish Lord of the Pit or Stampeding Wildebeests). Almost 10 purchases within a week-and-a-half. I could not figure out what had suddenly made this card so popular.

So, off to Google, answerer of all that is mysterious. A quick search finally revealed the answer. As part of the celebration and kicking off of 10th Edition next month (July 14 to be exact), Wizards of the Coast is sponsoring a Magic Game Day Scavenger Hunt. The link takes you to the official rules page, but here's the short version: be the person to bring in the most of 30 items to a participating retailer on 7/14/07 and win a nifty Magic Backpack. And, of course, the Legends rules card is one of the 30 items!

So, mystery solved...and new worked created. Why? Because I have a LOT of the other items on the list, that's why! And many of them are things I had never thought to put up before. Empty booster packs, display boxes, starter deck boxes, rule books...all these things that I've had lying around, many from Alan's collection ("Lot 4" as it's known around here). So, quick scramble to get these up - after all I have to sell them immediately if they are going to have any chance to get into people's hands in time for the contest. I actually created a new Store category called Scavenger Hunt to highlight these items.

My (educated) guess is that any of the specific individual cards they ask for (like Nekrataal or Mogg Fanatic) are going to be reprinted in 10th Edition.

Here's the list of the 30, with comments and/or links to the items if I have them available:

1. Arabian Nights Fishliver Oil card - I used to have several, but all have sold
2. Empty booster display box of any expansion from Alpha to Mirage - I have ones from Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Ice Age and Mirage available
3. An Alpha, Beta, Unlimited or Revised Starter Pack deckbox - I have Alpha/Beta, Unlimited and Revised all available
4. Booster pack wrapper of Arabian Nights, Revised, Unlimited, Beta or Alpha - unfortunately I have none of these
5. Magic rulebook with Bog Wraith on the cover - up for auction at eBay
6. Magic rulebook with Shivan Dragon on the cover - up for auction at eBay
7. Arabian Nights Mountain card - none; bummer
8. Legends Rules card - as mentioned, available at eBay
9. Invasion Reya Dawnbringer card - I've never had one of these. I'd like one, though!
10. Exodus Paladin en-Vec card - none :-(
11. Onslaught Festering Goblin card - available at donsmagicandsundry.com
12. Visions Nekrataal card - up in eBay
13. Lord of the Pit card illustrated by Mark Tedin - from Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Fourth Edition, or Fifth Edition. I have several up.
14. Tempest Mogg Fanatic card - available at donsmagicandsundry.com
15. Alliances Guerrilla Tactics card - both versions available at donsmagicandsundry.com (thus the two separate links)
16. Scourge Siege-Gang Commander card -
17. Giant Growth card illustrated by Sandra Everingham - from Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, Fourth Edition, Anthologies, or as a DCI FNM Promo; I have several available at donsmagicandsundry.com, including Chinese Fourth Edition
18. Visions Stampeding Wildebeests card - up at eBay
19. Mirrodin Platinum Angel card - never owned one :-(
20. Fifth Dawn Crucible of Worlds card - I'm afraid not :-(
21. Urza's Legacy Treetop Village card - don't have it :-(
22. Ice Age Adarkar Wastes card - not this one either (I used to!) :-(
23. Apocalypse Caves of Koilos card - one of the pain lands I've never owned :-(
24. Largest collection of 1 single non-basic land card - this one's kind of up to the individual, I think
25. Duelist Issue Number 1 - thanks to Alan I have this!
26. Entrant with Lowest DCI Number - up to the individual
27. An officially licensed Magic comic book - I've sold all of mine already!!!
28. Clothing with Magic artwork on it - I don't have any myself, let alone some to sell
29. Four different Friday Night Magic cards - I've never done FNM :-( I do, however, have a couple of promo cards that I've gotten in Lots!
30. Three spin down Magic life counters with different expansion symbols on them - never owned any

Anyway, many of these are special auctions that end on this Saturday night (June 30, 2007) so they'll only be up for a limited time. Others are regular store inventory items, and will remain up if they don't sell soon.

Here's hoping people are actually interested, and I'm not going crazy!

Goggle's number one hit...

Okay, time for a quick Store Update for those who care about such things.

The big cool news is this...try this out. Open a new browser window, go to www.google.com, and then search for the words: magic ability flying. Go ahead. I'll wait....

IS THAT COOL OR WHAT?!??!!?

This works for all sorts of Magic abilities: Flying, Flanking, Horsemanship, Banding, Defender... So nifty! How did I find this out? Because my Store "Abilities Page" is getting dozens of hits off of Google, so I tried it myself to see why. And now I know.

How did I get to be number 1? Well, best guess is that I:

1. Used the proper keywords that a person might search for; and
2. have literally thousands of links to this page via my listings on eBay and at www.donsmagicandsundry.com as well.

You see (and I didn't know this when I started this - it's just a BIG added bonus), part of the formula Google uses to calculate how high to rank a page is how many other pages link to it. Since over 50% of my listings on eBay have at least one link to this abilities page, that's thousands of links there that the Goggle web robots pick up on. It makes my Abilities Page look all important and stuff.

Now if only those dozens of visitors would then go and buy something from the Store...

In other news, Lot 7 is complete (at the moment - I have bids on several auctions ending today that may net me some more unopened booster packs). I still have several thousand cards to process and get up, however.

The Lot from Canada (Lot 19 for those keeping score) had a bit of a strange tale. It never showed up even after five weeks, and assurances from the seller that it had been sent. I felt I had to file a claim with PayPal, since I only have 45 days in which to do so. The seller got back to me very quickly - turns out (according to her) that the package got returned to sender, and she had been gone for a few days for work. So, she shipped the cards by FedEx OVERNIGHT DELIVERY! I've never had an overnight package before. Very exciting. And it must have been expensive for her to whip - so kudos to the seller for getting the stuff to me. Unfortunately the shipment was a few cards shy of what was promised, so she's (supposedly) sending a few more by regular post.

And last night I had the very unfortunate discovery that I had misfiled 32 cards in my "Foil Cards" category on the eBay store, and included the word "Foil" in their description (this is the potential problem with copying a previous entry to make a new one). So I had someone buy a $12 card that he was expecting to be Foil [I could argue that he should have known better - no way would that card sell as a Foil for only $12, but I digress], and is disappointed that it is not. One piece of good news, though - the mistake was discovered before he sent payment, and therefore before I sent the card, so we just have to cancel the eBay transaction and all is well. But I had to spend a half-hour or so last night editing the remaining 31 files to correct them before someone else bought a "Foil" card that wasn't!

Otherwise, I just continue to chug along. Sales have indeed picked up since I started adding more inventory and have regular weekly auctions up. Yesterday the Alpha Edition Vesuvan Doppelganger finally sold just yesterday for $150 - it's been up since I got Lot 4 way back a year ago! Of course the buyer hasn't yet paid for it...

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.

Lot 11, where are you????

Okay, I promised a Store update for those who really get into these things (of course, I promised the "Create your own Dragon Cycle" as well, and we see how well THAT'S gone!).

The truth is that I've been extraordinarily busy of late. First it was with class stuff - my last week of classes had two take-home tests, two research papers, a lab notebook for two courses and then studying for two finals in the same day. Oy! But I got A's in both classes, so I can't complain too much, I suppose.

Anyway, what with all of that and not getting my contract renewed with my writing gig, I'm back to having lots of free time and no regular source of income. So, why not try to make this store stuff really work I think to myself. How to do that? Better advertising for one (thus the return to the Blog, and the recent more search engine friendly URLs at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/) but also....MORE STOCK! That's right - I decided that getting in more cards that would draw in customers would help. So, I went on a little bit of a buying spree. Here's how it happened...

It actually started with a 5000+ card lot from someone in New York. Lot 11, as it was to be called, included many unopened booster packs and what looked to be very nice cards. So, I bid that sucker up to like $314 and won (it included free shipping), and paid immediately. I waited. And waited. No word from the seller. Finally, after two weeks and several unanswered emails, I filed a complaint with PayPal. That then led to a claim (or is it the other way around?). Anyway, I finally got my money back from PayPal so at least nothing was lost. But Lot 11 will never be.

BUT, this freed up money which I had, in my mind at least, already spent. SO, off to look for more bargains.

First I found a whole bunch of cards from a variety of sets by this one guy. I put in minimal bids, figuring if I lost, no big deal. Instead, I won several, and got lots of good cards from Ice Age, Alliances, and Mirage that have been dubbed Lot 12.

Next I found a group that had two sets of 1000+ cards each, who obviously knew nothing about Magic. They had bought a Scrye magazine to identify the cards, and had misidentified cards in the reprint series Chronicles as being from the original sets Arabian Nights, Antiquities Legends, and The Dark. They did, however, have an (almost?) entire set of the Deckmasters special boxed set (including the metal tin it originally came in). These cards are in Near Mint condition and very hard to find. Lot 13 also included one of the Revised Edition dual lands, Bayou. I think the dual lands will be the subject of their own Blog entry someday...

Lot 14 was a set of 460 Rare cards that someone was trying to sell for the second time. He had a reserve price on the thing, but someone had asked him how much it was, and he published the answer - $100. I bid high enough to be the "high bidder" but not win it. I hoped he'd extend to me a Second Chance Offer for my high bid - and he did. Woo-hoo! This is the Lot that produced the two Flash cards I wrote about last time.

I found a guy who was selling his collection of Coldsnap cards. He basically had the contents of an entire booster box worth of these, up for sale as three lots - one of all the commons and uncommons, and two for rares. No-one had bid on any of them, so I was able to get them for the minimum bids. With shipping the whole thing (around 540 cards, including 30 rares) came to about $17. So the commons from Lot 15 are up at the new store and the rares and uncommons are up on eBay. This included a copy of a card called Ohran Viper that should hopefully sell for $14, almost paying for the entire set by itself.

Lot 16 was a huge collection of over 4500 cards that I got for a little over $60 plus $30 for shipping. FedEx delivered these babies from California, and I'm still working on sorting them all out. LOTS of Black cards, and lots of repeats. Many are in obviously played condition and may not be sellable in my opinion. These often go to my older son, who is loving learning to play Magic and even beats his Dad sometimes.

When a new set is released these days, Wizards of the Coast likes to set up and sell pre-made "Theme Decks" that you can open up, shuffle, and play right away. You are guaranteed to get the same batch of cards in every box of the same Theme Deck, so there's no surprises. I bought a box of unopened Planar Chaos theme decks, broke them open and am selling them individually. Except for two I set aside for my son and I to play with :-) This was Lot 17.

Lot 18 is a set of 1000 cards which hasn't come in yet. I have emailed the seller and he apologized for the delay - he had said in the listing that he was selling an "unsearched" collection for a friend (meaning he supposedly hadn't pick through and gotten all the best stuff out), and to make sure that there were rares included he was going to through in some from his own collection. He had almost mailed them without remembering those, he says, so he had to break out his binders and pull those. Thus the delay. I hope there's some goodies in there when it gets here.

Lot 19 is a set of 310 rares from someone in Canada. They also haven't yet arrived, but given that they're from out of the country, this isn't a panic area yet.

And, finally, Lot 20 is a whole bunch of cards which includes a Chaos Orb (a very cool long out of print card) and some others, judging by the photo, that should turn a nice profit. However, they were supposedly sent out from New York on Friday 5/11 and still aren't here by Saturday 5/19 - over a week to travel halfway down the east coast? Seems excessive....

In addition to Lots 12-20, I've also purchased over 250 unopened booster packs that I have lumped into "Lot 7" for bookkeeping purposes. This includes a whole box of 8th Edition and an unopened box of the brand new (just released in early May) set called Future Sight.

So, in other words, now that I tally it up, I have purchased in the last two weeks around about 10,000 additional cards for the Stores.

Quick store update

Tomorrow I plan to write the next in my series of entries on Cycles. But first a quick update on recent developments (this one's for you, Petunia!).

All of the cards from Lot 7 and Lot 8 have been put up. I still have Lot 9 (the set of Russian 9th Edition cards) and Lot 10 (a bunch of Mercadian Masques, Tempest and Stronghold rares) to go.

On the new store front, I have now moved over all common cards from the Core Sets Unlimited through 9th Edition, as well as all expansions from Ice Age to present. I still want to move some more, but I have under 300 common cards left on the eBay store at present.

The really big cool news is two-fold. First of all, Lot 11 - a lot of 5000+ cards, including 50 unopened packs, that I won this past weekend. I can't wait to get those guys and start processing (yes, I know - it's an illness - what do you want?). And the next is....I have my first official advertisement! I know this Blog kind of serves that function, but now I have an honest-to-goodness ad! The fine folks over at Farpoint Media (I've mentioned before that I listen to some of their podcasts - Slice of SciFi, Wingin' It, etc.) have a "ClickGrid" up whereby listeners can donate money to buy Michael a new sound board. In return, you get space on their grid to put up your logo and turn it into a link to your site. So, Don's Magic and Sundry has purchased four squares of space. The logo is up (you can see the grid at www.sliceofscifi.com if you'd like) right now, but I'm going to try to change it if possible. It turns out that my logo, when shrunk to a 10x40 pixel rectangle, is an illegible blob. So, back to the drawing board if the fine folks at ClickGrid will allow me to. Anyway, I hope to see an increase in traffic to the new store thanks to the ad. Worse case scenario - I have a $60 business expense to take off on next year's taxes!

Okay - all for now. Look for the "Build your own Dragon" Cycle coming soon!

Busy at The Sundry

Things have been extremely busy of late around here, but I figure as I'm now on Spring Break I don't have too much excuse for not at least getting a Blog entry up.

Since last I wrote, I've added hundreds (if not thousands) of cards to http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ - despite the fact that I have, to date, had exactly one customer. To address this issue, I plan on starting some more marketing, to include some Blog entries aimed at drawing people in. Look for some product highlights in the days/weeks to come. Hopefully they will be educational/interesting as well as blatant attempts at getting hits off of search engines :-)

Also new has been the recent acquisition of a LOT of new cards. While Lot 6 is still a work in progress, Lot 7, Lot 8 and Lot 9 have been acquired. Lot 7 was actually several purchases from several different sources, but all had one thing in common. They all consisted of unopened, factory-sealed booster packs of Magic cards. This has two major advantages for me as a store-keep. First of all, I know they're going to be in great shape. Unless major trauma happened to the pack itself, I don't have to worry about scratches or whitening on the cards from play, or from just being handled a great deal. Secondly (and perhaps more importantly), I am guaranteed to get a "normal" distribution of Rare and Uncommon cards. For the last several years, a typical booster pack contains 11 common cards (10 + a basic land card for the Core Set packs), 3 uncommon cards and 1 rare. Randomly inserted in these packs are "premium" cards, more commonly called "foil" cards due to their shiny metallic highlights. These are augmented versions of normal cards in the set, and have odds of appearing in a pack ranging from 1 in 70 to 1 to 100 or so.

So, when I opened these packs, I got all sorts of goodies, including lots of foil cards, including some foil rares - the rarest of the beasts, as it were. These unopened packs included cards from the Core Sets of 7th Edition, 8th Edition, and 9th Edition, as well as the expansions Nemesis, Legions, Betrayers of Kamigawa, Saviors of Kamigawa, Ravnica: City of Guilds, Guildpact, Dissension, Coldsnap, Time Spiral, and Planar Chaos (the latter of which was just released in February, so they were brand new). Some of the cards I got in there sell on eBay for over $10 apiece (a few over $20), so if/when they sell, they should turn a handsome profit.

Lot 9 I am a little less pleased with - and I've only myself to blame. For some reason I got into a bit of a bidding frenzy for a while, and bid on this auction that in retrospect I probably shouldn't have. It included an unopened booster pack from every expansion from The Dark through Coldsnap, as well as every Core Set from Revised through 9th Edition, and also some unopened pre-constructed decks (decks consisting of 60-75 cards that are of a known distribution, not random - you can open the box and begin playing with the deck as is, without needing anything else). 59 items total (48 booster packs and 11 decks). Now, a Revised Edition unopened booster pack goes for around $20, as does a pack of The Dark. And the Urza's Saga, Urza's Legacy and Urza's Destiny packs all go for around $10. But most of the others go for, if you're lucky, around $5. I paid $290 + shipping for the whole batch. So, in theory, if I were to get $5 for each of these 59 items, I would come close to breaking even. I opened the packs that were valued under $5 hoping for great cards that would bring in more individually than as an unopened pack, and the higher valued ones I'll try to auction or sell unopened. Hopefully I'll not lose money on this one.

Finally, Lot 10 was from a wonderful guy in Louisiana who was selling a lot of 4 copies of each common card (except one) in the Unhinged set (a joke set like Unglued that I have mentioned in a previous post). I had not owned any Unhinged cards before, so this was a perfect way to get my feet wet, as it were.

As of about an hour ago I paid for what I promise will be the last of the new inventory for a while (with one possible exception I'm not ready to talk about as yet, suffice to say it may be as good as Lot 4 was). I haven't decided whether to lump these in with Lot 7, or dub them Lot 11. They are a whole bunch of brand new cards from a guy who, as far as I can tell, opened up several boxes of assorted booster packs, took out the cards he wanted (or could bring in a good price individually) and sold the rest as one big lot. So I won 444 common cards, 127 uncommon cards and 31 rare cards from the Mercadian Masques expansion, as well as 27 Stronghold rares and 20 Tempest rares. These are, reportedly, in fresh-out-of-the-pack, unplayed, mint condition - exactly what I would have gotten had I bought the booster packs myself. But these were a lot cheaper than buying the boosters would have been.

WHEW! Things just keep on hopping! Keep your fingers crossed for me, and hope that more traffic comes to my two stores (http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ for most of my common cards, and Don's Magic and Sundry at eBay for uncommons and rares, and a few commons). Subtle how I get those links in there, huh?

Still no sales

Still nothing sold at the new Store. I'm not sure if it's a matter of not getting the customers there in the first place (which I think is the likeliest explanation) or if something is turning them off once they get there.

In the meantime, I've managed to get over 1000 card entries moved over from eBay, or added from Lot 6. Still all commons, as will be the case for a while, anyway.

Work on the store has slowed down of late, as the semester has begun, and my new job duties take over as well. There are still approximately 1500 cards left in Lot 6 that need to be photographed and catalogued. Maybe I'll be done by June!

My latest project (or latest insanity)

I have signed up with ProStores, an eBay company, to create my very own online store! This should, in theory, increase my profits by reducing the amount of money I spend on fees. The store costs ~$21 a month to maintain (the first month is free - which you really need because it'll take that long to get the dang thing fully up and running!), and has a fee of 0.5% for finished transactions. That 0.5% is a far cry better than the 10% Final Value Fee an item gets charged at my eBay Store! Also, I'll save the $0.06 per item listing fee every 30 days, which is a big savings when your inventory is over 4000 items! The only question that remains is whether the savings offset the additional $21 per month. We'll see.

Of course, now that I think about it, moving only 350 items over would save me $21 in listing fees per month right there. Wow! This may actually be a much better idea than I originally thought!

So now I am in the process of moving a good deal of inventory over from the eBay store to the new store at http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/donsmagicandsundry/Categories (like how I slipped that plug in?). As an alternate route, you can go there by going to www.donsmagicandsundry.com and clicking on the "Shop" button at the top of any page.

The store has a shopping cart, and I have programmed in my handy shipping tables. So, theoretically, someone should be able to go there and buy already, as I have a few items put into inventory.

In theory, once this is fully up and running, buyers will be able to see my available eBay store items from the ProStores store. And any items that I move from the ProStores store over to the eBay store will send buyers to a shopping cart on the ProStores store when they purchase.

Probably the biggest single decision maker involved in this has been the fact that since ProStores is an eBay company as well, they've integrated things very well with eBay and PayPal. Therefore it's rather simple to import items from eBay over into the ProStores store where I can edit them a bit and make them available.

Of course, this means that I have now a lot more work on my hands - moving and editing inventory over from eBay to ProStores. And I still haven't completely finished processing Lots 5 and 6 yet! I am almost done with Lot 5, though.

AND...as if this weren't enough....I HAVE A NEW JOB!!! Woo-Hoo!!! I am now the project writer for an online science education website (that I don't want to link to from here as they may not appreciate that all that much). I get to work from home, writing lessons on Chemistry, Earth Science, Biology, and more aimed at college undergraduate level students. I set my own schedule, so I can keep the Stores up and running at the same time (and somehow fit in the last two Biotech courses this semester - OI!).

Needless to say (although I will anyway), I am going to be a very busy man over the next couple of months! So don't be too surprised if Blog updates are even fewer and farther between :-(

The Magic of childbirth...

No, no - I've not become a Papa for the third time. But one of my customers has for the second.

I was having a pleasant email "conversation" with a potential customer from the UK, when suddenly his last message ended with: "Oh dear! My wife's bag of water just went!!! She's having a the baby now!!! Chat with you later my friend!!!"

Well, yes, I suppose that discussions of Magic cards should take a second seat to the birth of your child.

This happened back on Dec. 30, and I wasn't sure if I'd hear back from him or not. Lo and behold, today I get an email with pictures of the newborn! I tell you, I love my customers! The best in the world. So cool!

In other news: I got a 4.0 in my Biotech classes (yeah!), I'm one of two finalists for a Staff Writer position that I really really hope I'll get, almost all of the Rares & Uncommons from Lots 5 and 6 are finally up in the Store (leaving a couple thousand commons still to go...), and sales have been pretty steady at the Store. So, all is pretty well as we head into the new year.

So, with that, I'll leave you with a Happy New Year - all the best to you all from The Sundry!

The commission is complete!

This past Sunday the last three cards from Alan's commissioned items sold and were paid for, completing the job I signed on for. His grand total take for the commissioned items was slightly more than he was shooting for, which makes him very happy I am sure!

In other news, I continue to peck away at Lot 5 and Lot 6. I have given up hope of getting them up for the big Holiday season - especially since Hanukkah is already here and Christmas is less than a week away.

There has been a marked increase in Comic Book sales over the last couple of days, which has been refreshing. Hopefully that will continue for the next week at least.

I spent almost all of this past Sunday getting my Magic Abilities page updated. As I was taking photos for the Champions of Kamigawa common cards, I noticed several abilities that I hadn't previously recorded (notably "Bushido", "Ninjutsu" and "Splice"). I then looked forward at the next several sets and discovered that at least one new ability was added in every set! I then found a handy Rules compendium on the web that summed up the various abilities, and led me to several more in older sets that I hadn't yet added.

Basically, the abilities page about doubled in size when I was all done!

I've not yet received any comments on the Abilities page from users. I've started including links to it in item descriptions (if you check out the Eater of Days card you'll see links to Flying and Trample). Hopefully that will increase traffic to the website and prove a useful reference to people.

Well, that's all for now. Off to process more photos and try to get more cards added to the Store!

Quick update

Just a quick update as I'm tired and overdue for bed...

The rest of "Lot 6" arrived and has been sorted out. Now I can get back to adding inventory to the Store. The latest large addition was the common cards in the Mirrodin expansion.

The new website is taking shape. I'm particularly proud of the Magic Abilities pages I came up with. I hope it will be of use to customers. Ultimately I want to make it so that a potential customer could click at the end of the definition of, say for example, "Flying" and be taken to my Store with a search for all cards with "Flying" in the description. I owe major thanks to my wife is is acting webmaster for the site. The design is hers - I just write some of the content!

I may have a regular customer! A gentleman in Pennsylvania (hello, Chad!) made a $100+ order last week, and says if he likes what he gets, he may be back on a weekly basis! He's actually already put together the next order. Wow!

Okay - perhaps more tomorrow when I have more than three functioning brain cells...

The Website is active!

Okay - this is a quick one. The new www.donsmagicandsundry.com is a go! Of course, there's no real content there yet, but there will be in the days to come.

No sales in the past 24 hours. I didn't even have anything to take to the post office today! Yeesh!

"Lot 6" just got bigger

Well, not "just" - it got bigger on Monday, actually. What do I mean? I went back to the same guy and bought another 3000+ card lot from him, and I'll just lump it all in with the others for bookkeeping purposes.

Yes, I know I have not yet finished processing the last two 3000+ card lots. What's your point?

Anyway, I have been chugging away, getting cards added both by increasing the number available for cards already in the Store, and by adding entirely new cards into inventory. In some cases I already have a TurboLister file for the card, but I had previously sold out of it, so I don't need to take a new photograph, or write a description, and that's speeding things up immensely.

In other news, there should soon be a donsmagicandsundry.com, and there will be some pages there that I have in mind with descriptive information on Magic: the Gathering, and I may even start my own little eStore with a shopping cart and the whole nine yards. I'll still keep a presence on eBay, because you can't beat the exposure you get there, but many other places (like Troll and Toad) also have their own websites. That would cut out a lot of the eBay Listing and Final Value Fees, reducing costs, and (hopefully) increasing profit. I will, of course, keep updates noted here.

Who'd have thought back at the end of April, that I would be possibly turning this into a legitimate business endeavor? I was just looking to clear out the last of my Magic cards and sell some comics I no longer wanted...I had no plans to actually become an honest to goodness merchant! But, here I am, racking up positive feedback, making sales, keeping customers happy - and most importantly, enjoying the heck out of it! Yes, sure, it's quite time consuming, but it's kind of fun at the same time. I enjoy "meeting" people from all over the world, I enjoy providing a quality product in a timely fashion. I'm having a blast!

Finally, here's possibly the best feedback I've gotten in a while. A gentleman in Spain (thanks, Paco!) bought a whole bunch of comic books earlier in November. He contacted me prior to ordering, asking if I'd use the USPS flat rate Global Priority Mail envelopes to send them. I'd never investigated these, as my policy since early on (when I had one too many comics get damaged in puffy envelopes) has been that I would only send comics in sturdy cardboard boxes. But, if it's what the customer wants, then it's what the customer gets. These things are pretty cool - only $9.50 to Spain for however much you can stuff into them (as opposed to $10.50 for the GPM sturdy cardboard box with only two comics in it)! So, with permission of Paco, I left out the backing boards I normally have the comics individually packaged with and managed to fit the entire order into two of these envelopes. Nervously I sent them on, not sure if they'd make it safely (they were stuffed rather full!).

Well, not only did they arrive safely, but he's very happy with them! First off, he sent me an email: "Hello, My order arrived last Saturday, and everything was perfect...Everything was as you said, or better, and I couldn't be happier. Thank you very much for everything, it won't be long before you hear again from me, already planning my next order. And I've already left feedback for you, as positive as I could come up with. Thank you very much for everything."

So, of course, I went to eBay to check on the feedback: "Impossible to even imagine a better seller!Excellent!Couldn't be more satisfied!" Wow! Is this guy great, or what? When I die, I want him working on my eulogy!

Well, anyway, that's the latest and greatest from The Sundry. Here's hoping that the holiday season brings many more sales my way...and that I can get enough of this massive influx of inventory up there to be sold!

"Lot 5" is here!

It arrived yesterday, actually - a full 15 days after I bought and paid for it. I'm a bit disappointed in the total time. I know the UPS delivery took about a week, and that's out of the seller's hands...but it took a full 8 days to send me my cards? That seems excessive to me.

Anyway, I forgot to take a photo of "Lot 6" all sorted out so you could get an idea what this looks like. But I have sorted out the Lot 5 cards and remembered to take a photo of this one. This is actually a bit more impressive because:

1. There's more cards overall;


2. There's more sets represented.

Lot 5 actually included cards from Legends and The Dark, two of the earliest expansion sets. It also included cards from Cold Snap and Time Spiral which are the two most recent expansions. All four of these were not in Lot 6 - and the Cold Snap and Time Spiral cards are the first I've ever had. Also for the first time ever, I have cards from Beatdown, a strange little reprint box set that they did back in 2000. Also included were some cards from Unglued, an expansion set they made full of joke cards, not intended for serious decks (sample card: the Scissors Lizard, an Artifact Creature that prevents Paper Tigers from attacking or blocking; "Nothing beats the lizard's shear power." UGH!). There were also cards from Portal, Portal Second Age and Starter, three beginner sets of which there are not many available on eBay.

The vast majority of these cards are commons, and many are in bad shape and I don't feel I can sell them. But there are some goodies, and I think the lot will pay for itself in rather short order (once I actually get the cards up, that is).

I decided to hold off on processing the Lot 6 common cards that weren't already in the Store until I had the Lot 5 cards to work with as well - I have to decide what's worth selling individually, what works as sets of two or four, and what have to be grouped together and (hopefully) sold as small lots. It's not worth listing a single card at $0.05 when it costs $0.06 to list it in the Store - but if I have 10 copies of that card, then they can all be listed together for that same $0.06, and now it's maybe worth it (of course, if they don't sell right away, and enough months pass getting charged $0.06 each month...).

Well, it's time to get back to some more sorting. My 6-year old son enjoys helping Papa sort these cards - he doesn't read so well yet, but he can tell which are the commons, uncommons and rares in the newer sets since the symbols are color-coded. So he gets to sort those out for me before I then go and alphabetize them.

"Lot 6" is in!

I got home from my Chemathon planning meeting tonight to discover a package sitting on my doorstep. "Lot 6" is here!

I will post a picture of the cards later, I think, so you can get a feel for what 3000 cards looks like. I've so far sorted them into piles based on their set. It includes cards from every Expansion Set from Fallen Empires through Dissension (which means some cards in sets I've never had before) and from the Core Sets Revised Edition through Ninth Edition. It is, as expected, mostly commons - but there's a fair number of uncommons and the promised ~50 rares. Unfortunately, three cards were damaged in transit (they slipped out from the stack and got folded badly on a corner) and of these two were rares. That was somewhat disappointing. Also disappointing was that in the description the seller stated:

"I normally throw in some Arabian Nights, Legends, Antiquities, and The Dark cards too if I find some when I am sorting through rows."

But there were none from these Sets, so I guess he didn't find any. Ah, well. Still a great set of cards for the price ($68.13 with shipping taken into account - or about 2.2 cents per card).

After I get the cards sorted by rarity, I'll then go through and see which cards I already have up in the Store - because those are the fastest to process. Then I'll see if any used to be in the Store, meaning I already have a photo and a Turbo Lister file already for them. Finally there's all the never-before-owned cards which will need the full treatment - photo, write-up, etc.

The delivery time doesn't bother me too much (remember I bought this Lot on Tuesday last week [Nov. 7 for those keeping track]). When I asked the seller, he said he ships on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Obviously Tuesday night was past his Tuesday shipping time, and Saturday was a Holiday for the fine people of the USPS, so he couldn't ship then either.

"Lot 5" is another matter. I bought that lot last Monday (Nov. 6). Yesterday (Nov. 14) I emailed to ask if they had shipped, and was there a tracking number? Last night I get an email that the cards have been shipped by UPS that day - with an expected delivery date of November 21. So a full two weeks after I pay for these I can expect to get them. No WONDER people are so impressed when the pay for my cards on Sunday and receive them on Wednesday, if this is typical of delivery times on eBay! Ah, well, that gives me time to play with Lot 6 some before they arrive, I guess.

Well, it's far later than I planned to be up tonight, so it's off to sleep....oh but first I have to let you know the really cool news - a gent in Spain (thanks, Juan) bought ~$120 worth of comics today. VERY exciting, especially since it includes all 10 2-issue sets (comprising the entire 20-issue series) of The Crusades. I was really hoping they would all sell to one person, so that the series stayed together - but I was leery of listing all 20 as one item.

Something new to save time

Well, I finally got off my lazy butt today (metaphorically speaking - as I was sitting in front of the computer, I was actually still on my lazy butt) and got something taken care of I'd meant to have done a long time ago.

A lot of my time gets spent answering the "How much would it cost to send me 8 cards to the Czech Republic" style of question, as well as looking up the answer for that very question whenever anyone asks or orders more than a single card. Also, I end up sending many partial refunds to people who blindly accept the shipping that eBay comes up with as correct, and send me way too much money (which always amazes me - if a seller says in EVERY SINGLE LISTING that they combine shipping, why would you NOT wait for an invoice from them before paying?!?!?).

So, anyway, to make things more streamlined I finally came up with my chart of Shipping Charges for Multiple Magic Cards and, to make it even more useful, posted it as a page at my Store. So, not only can I quickly get a shipping amount for making an invoice, but potential buyers can check or themselves without having to email me and wait for a response. I had to modify the Store text at the top of my pages to make the link to this new page more obvious - and I think I'll add a link to it in any future listings as well, in the section where I SAY THAT I COMBINE SHIPPING!

Did I mention that I note that on every single listing? Just checking.

Anywho, that's the big news for today. Four copies of the Chinese Fourth Edition Lightning Bolt that I put up last night sold today at $1 each, so that was good, too.

Chinese Junk?

Okay, I'm going to keep this short because it's late and I'm tired...

The latest Chinese Fourth Edition experiment was a bit of a bust. Of the 28 or so auctions I had up, only 7 sold - meaning I actually lost money for the week, as I had used the Gallery feature, making each listing cost $0.55. Bleck.

So, I have decided I need to reevaluate how to sell the cards. The first step was to list the Chinese Fourth Edition Common cards in the Store instead of at auction (meaning 117 new entries needed to be made). Most of them are offered as sets of 2, but some (the more popular ones) I have up singly.

So that's how I spent my afternoon and evening. Now I have to decide how to sell off the Uncommons and Rares.

One experiment this week - I am auctioning a Complete Common Set of Chinese Fourth Edition cards. Hopefully that will sell very nicely. Keep your fingers crossed!

Can you say "Lot 6"?

Otherwise titled: "The idiocy continues."

Okay, I just bought another lot of 3000 cards from a guy for $49.99 plus shipping. He says the cards are mostly near mint, and he guarantees 50+ rares in the lot, and says he includes some cards from older sets like Arabian Nights in there as well as the more recent stuff.

And he has a kid on the way and needs to make room. I can empathize.

I also bought two more boxes of Chinese 4th Edition at the same $135 per box as the first one. I'll set aside 5 or 10 packs for sale as unopened and open the rest for a Chinese Magic love fest. I should be able to offer the only Chinese 4th Edition complete common set on eBay by the time I finish. That would be awesome.

Final Magic note: I discovered today that Magic now comes in Russian as well. I did not know this, since I've not bought actual new cards in forever. Now my non-English section is incomplete. I need to get some Russian cards!

Final non-Magic note: tonight's Nucleic Acid Methods test was a mixed bag. Several questions I aced, one or two were iffy, and one I completely had no frakking clue. SIGH.

Okay, so I'm an idiot.

For some reason I will never know (masochist?) I was checking out eBay auctions of mixed lots of Magic cards. I saw an auction ending in under an hour that was for 3000+ cards, and the bidding was only up to $19 or so. What the heck?

So, I investigated. The reserve price was not met yet. Ah, suddenly all became clear. In case you don't know, eBay allows sellers to auction an item with a Reserve Price, a price that they will not sell the item for less than. And this price is not revealed to the bidders. So, a person can bid, and have the high bid, but still not be winning because they didn't bid high enough to meet the Reserve. From what I have seen, Reserve Prices are pretty much universally loathed by eBay buyers. I don't think I would ever use one. And auctions with them tend to not get as many bids.

The item represents a chunk of a large batch of cards the seller bought from a card shop that was going out of business. He bought ~17,000 cards, and wants to sell them off in lots of 3000+ each.

I thought about what I was willing to bid. The shipping would be $20 in and of itself (the seller will use UPS, and this package will be heavy). So, I tried bidding $50. Now I was the high bidder (my bid was $36.01) but the reserve was still not met.

I sent the seller an email. What are the rarities of these cards? 3000+ commons is not such a useful thing, necessarily. No reply. I debate with myself some more. I try bidding $70. Still not met. $80. Still not met. Okay, at this point I gave up. A total of $100 for 3000+ possibly all or mostly common cards...I'm not willing to risk any more than that.

The auctions ends. No further bids. The item does not sell. I go off to eat dinner.

When I come back I have two emails waiting for me. First, a response from the seller: "To be honest, I don't know. Myself and others have been going through these and are still pulling out rares and uncommons. There are a lot of older rares that I wouldn't know that were rares unless I looked every single one up and I don't have that kind of time. It's a gamble. I bought 8 monster boxes from a gaming store that closed down and have no idea of what is exactly in all of the boxes." So, the lot will, most likely, be mostly commons. Remember, though, that in older sets the cards were not color coded for rarity as they are in newer sets, so many Uncommons & Rares may slip through, as he indicated.

The second email was a Second Chance Offer from the seller. He's willing to let me have the item for my "max bid" of $36.01!

Okay, I have to try this. Only $56 for over 3000 cards?!? Even if they're all commons I ought to be able to turn a profit on that!

So, I did it. "Lot 5" as it will be known will hopefully be in my possession before too long.

SIGH. I just don't seem to be happy if I don't have cards to process for this blasted Store. What is WRONG with me?!?!?!??!?!

Happy Birthday to me!

Okay, this is a shameless attempt at getting birthday greetings from around the globe - can you blame me?

But, in addition to being the anniversary of my birth, it was also a very Happy day at eBay. Well, Alan's City of Brass sold for only $18.50 (it had been in the Store at $40), so that was a bit of a disappointment. This week I have Shahrazad up (originally in the Store at $50). We'll see what happens.

But two experiments I tried this week went very well. First off, I auctioned some Complete Common sets from various Expansions. The person who won the Tempest set (for $5.50) then went on to my Store and bought the remaining three Tempest sets I had there at $12.50 apiece - so that was great. And the four Chinese Fourth Edition auctions I had up (Birds of Paradise, Animate Dead and Dark Ritual, plus an unopened booster pack) sold for almost a combined $30. Considering the entire box of unopened packs only cost $144 or so, that's not a bad start. I basically paid $4 per pack, or 27 cents per card for these things. The Birds of Paradise sold for $20.50, the Animate Dead for $2.92 and the Dark Ritual for $1.25 - each a good improvement on the 27 cent investment. And the unopened pack sold for $5.01 - itself not too bad (it might actually come out as a loss if I take fees into account, though, now that I think about it).

Well, anyway, I remain convinced that a profit is to be made on this box. I have 27 Chinese Fourth Edition auctions up this week - each starting at $0.99. Some are for two copies or even four copies of a given common card, as I don't think anyone is likely to bid $0.99 on a single copy of that particular card. We'll see how they go. I have a bid on another box of these things from the same seller I got this one. I may even try to get two more if I can. I think that with a large pool of these to draw from I can easily corner the Chinese Black-bordered 4th Edition card market on eBay!

Oh, and by the way - a Biotech course update for you. I have my second exam in Nucleic Acid Methods this coming Tuesday (that's the class where the first test I was sure I did horribly in). The second (pop) quiz in that class went not so well - 6/10. Ugh! But the first test in Cell Culture went very well - I aced the short answer section and only missed 6 of 54 multiple guess questions. Overall score was 95-96%. Not too shabby!

Oh, my God! I'm DONE!

Well, mostly.

I just finished getting the last of the non-English cards up into the Store. I now have lots of Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean cards up for sale. The last ones up were Italian Legends cards from "Lot 4" - one surprise was that Moat is worth in the $60 range. Who knew?

Anyway, I am ecstatically happy to have all that work finished! All that's left to do is deal with Josh's Dungeons & Dragons books, and decide what exactly I'm going to do with the black bordered Chinese 4th Edition cards I bought that arrived yesterday.

I opened up 21 of the 36 packs, and have some good cards in there. A couple of Serra Angels, a Birds of Paradise, a Sengir Vampire, a few other highly-sought-after cards. I also took 15 packs, set them aside unopened, and put them up in the Store asking $15 apiece for them. I have no idea if I'll get it or not, but I'd rather start high.

I'll put one of those packs up for auction, starting at $0.99, on Sunday and see what happens. Once I have a better feel for the Foreign Black Border (FBB) market, I'll know what to do with the cards I opened up.

Well, it's time to head off for a well-deserved break from Store business. The Boys and I made an apple pie, and it's baking as I write this. Hmmmmm....apple pie......

The French Renaissance

Okay - a rather odd post title, I admit...until you read what I have to say.

Today I finished getting the last of my French Magic: the Gathering cards up. The majority of them come from a Magic expansion called Renaissance.

In order to fully explain this I need to give you a little background info. If you're a Magic person already, you can probably skip these next couple of paragraphs.

When Magic: the Gathering started, it was only printed in English. The first versions of the game, now known collectively as the Limited Edition and separately as Alpha and Beta were published with black borders around the edges of the cards. When these cards were reprinted under the name Unlimited Edition, the borders were changed to white. Precedent was then established that the first time any card was published, it would be with a black border. This precedent was then extended to the first time any card was published in any given language, it would be printed with a black border. So, for example, when the next edition, Revised Edition, was released in English and also, for the first time, in Italian, German and French, the English cards were printed with white borders (because they had been previously printed in English). But the Italian, German and French versions were printed with black borders. In many cases now, these other language versions of these cards sell for more than their English counterparts because of the black borders. Normally, if all else is equal, non-English cards sell for less, it has been my experience.

As a side note, Revised Edition also "cycled in" some cards from the expansion sets Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and Legends. Since these cards had previously been published in English under these sets with black borders, they still fit the precedent to have white borders in Revised.

Okay, now here's where it starts to get a little funky. When it was decided to move on to the Fourth Edition of Magic, Wizards of the Coast wanted to "cycle in" some different cards from Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends as well as The Dark and also planned to return some cards that were taken out of the set for Revised (notably Ironclaw Orcs and Twiddle). The problem was that these sets were not published in any non-English language (except for Legends and The Dark which were published in Italian). As a result, cards that were going to be "cycled in" to Fourth Edition had never been published in German, French or (for the Unlimited, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities cards) Italian with black borders. So, to meet policy, they couldn't be printed with white borders along with all the rest of the Fourth Edition cards until they were first printed in those languages with black borders.

Enter Renaissance. Released only in German and French (and in a scaled down version, Italian), this expansion set printed the cards that they wanted to "cycle in" to Fourth Edition with a black border. These cards also bear whatever the appropriate expansion symbol for these cards from their original appearance (a scimitar for Arabian Nights, an anvil for Antiquities, a column for Legends, or a crescent moon for The Dark). So it might seem just by looking at the cards, that they came from those original sets, only in German, French or Italian.

As far as I can tell, I am the only person on eBay with any Renaissance cards up for sale. That makes it extremely difficult for me to price the blasted things! Is a black-bordered with expansion symbol Bird Maiden in French worth as much as one in English from the original Arabian Nights? Almost certainly not. But is it worth more that a white-bordered one in English from Fourth Edition? Almost certainly so.

Another problem - how to market these? Technically they are Renaissance cards. But most people don't know about that expansion! The closest English equivalent is Chronicles - a set published as a companion to Fourth Edition, printed in English and then Chinese of all things a year later, that reprinted many cards from the earlier expansions with expansion symbols but with white borders. It would be dishonest to imply that a card from Renaissance was actually from Arabian Nights, say - even though that's what it looks like.

Another issue is that I have been unable to find, anywhere, even at Wizards of the Coast's official Magic: the Gathering web site, a rarity listing for this set (that is, which cards were "common" and "uncommon" or even "rare") which is information I usually include in my listings. I finally settled on using the rarity from Fourth Edition, since that I could determine.

All in all, it's very perplexing. I settled on including the words "French", "Chronicles" and "Renaissance" in my item titles. If I'd had more room I would have included "Arabian Nights", "Antiquities", "Legends" or "The Dark" for whichever set the card originally appeared in.

By the way, for the sake of historical completeness, Fourth Edition was also the first one to be printed in Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. These, of course, had black borders, since they were being printed for the first time in those languages. I am eyeing right now an auction for an unopened, factory sealed, box of Chinese Fourth Edition booster packs. That's 36 packs (each containing 15 cards) of cards with black borders that sell for more than their white bordered English equivalents (double or better in many cases!). If it sells for a reasonable price, it could turn a healthy profit. I may well try to buy it.

Yeah, yeah - I know, I know - I swore I wasn't buying any more. So much for that!

Josh's cards are up!!!

Okay, the final cards from my friend Josh's collection are now in the Store. All I have left to get up are several non-English cards (first up - French!). I rediscovered several non-English cards from Alan's collection, so I guess my claim of "Lot 4" being finished was premature :-(

Several good sales lately, including a few of Alan's "commission" items. I'll be pleased when the last of them sells, and I can get Alan the rest of his money!

Toward that end, I put up one of them, the Bazaar of Baghdad from Arabian Nights up for auction this week. This card was in the Store for over $200, and I'll be very happy if it gets bid up that high. It's up to $132.50 as of this writing, which makes me happy!

On a completely unrelated note: the Nucleic Acid methods first exam which I was sure I bombed wasn't as bad as I feared - I actually got an 87/100 - amazing! The class average was 67%, with a high of 91, so I didn't do too shabbily at all!

Well, it's off to bed, now - far too many late nights these last few days, and I have Cell Culture lab in the morning. Ugh!

Lot 3 is finally done!

Woo-hoo!

Lot 3 is completely finished and up in the Store. Thank goodness! Now I only have Josh's cards to finish and a whole bunch of non-English cards, and I'm done!

In other news, the third (and final) Collector's Edition went up for auction this past week, and ended up selling for $576. Less than I'd like, but it's gone - and went for a good deal more than someone else's which sold a few hours before mine (for somewhere between $300 and $400). The other person limited themselves to US only, so I got the international market (it was won by a gent from the UK - hiya, Paul!)

I have decided that the number of sales from the Store does in fact increase when I have something tempting up for auction, so I think I will keep auctioning off big ticket items one at a time to draw business in. This past weekend sales were brisk, while last weekend (when I didn't have one up) I actually had a 24-hour period with no sales whatsoever!

Another update: my Philippine scam artist tried to feed be some bull$#it story. Here's his quote: "Hey there. Sorry for me not being able to complete our transaction. I'm unable to transact using paypal because I have been suspended for no apparent reason! I called paypal and told them about thisand they told me I have reached $5,000 worth of orders. The thing is, the only purchases i have madeusing this shitty system are the card that i have ordered from you and Nike 2nd hand shoes. Damn thispaypal. And all the while they're claiming that this damn system is 100% safe!" Never mind the fact that another seller had the same problem with him for two other cards. Never mind the fact that he (under another eBay ID) tried to scam me out of another card.

Anyway, I got my Final Value Fee back for the Alpha Mox Pearl, and tomorrow I should be able to get the one back for the Library of Alexandria (I could get the Mox back earlier because he responded to that Dispute, but he never responded to the one I opened for the Library, so I have to wait until the 8th day after it was opened).

Well, that's the latest and greatest. Tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to photograph the cards from Josh's collection that still need it, and then by this time next week I'll have them up in the Store as well.

Final Note: My Biotech courses go all right. Instrumentation is so far VERY easy (I've done all this stuff in my undergraduate job and even taught some of it myself), Nucleic Acid Methods is easy lab (again, all done before) but tough lecture (LOTS of memorizing - I HATE memorizing). I got 29/30 on our first quiz, but the first Exam (1 week later, without getting the quiz back first) kicked my ass. Cell Culture is interesting (lecture is VERY cool) but the lab is tedious. I've already decided that a future in Cell Culture is NOT for me. Actually, I'm nowadays thinking that a job doing instrumentation, or better yet, scientific Technical Writing would be great for me.