Arbitrage. Noun. The simultaneous purchase and sale of the same securities, commodities, or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices. In “Finance 101” terms, this basically means that we’re going to buy something at one price from some entity, then immediately turn around and sell that exact same thing to somebody else…
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What’s the first thing you decide to do when you cement plans to attend a grand prix? If you’re a player and not a financier, the answer might be “figure out what deck I want to play, and start testing for various matchups.” If the event is local and within your home city, you might…
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As I’m sure all of you are aware, the pro tour was last weekend and with it came an bunch of unsustainable spikes. What does that mean exactly? I’m glad you asked! The Hype Many cards spiked over the PT weekend based on the amount of play and success they saw. Among them are [card]Pearl…
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Hey there! Thanks for stopping by this article. Whether its your first time checking out this website, or you’ve been reading my articles since November, I appreciate you all the same. I tend to repeat a lot of things week after week (Craigslist and Facebook are your friends, every person’s goals and resources in MTG…
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Improving your negotiation skills is a great way to level up at Magic finance. The ability to make better deals, even just slightly better, will pay huge dividends over time because you can use it again and again. Today I’m going to talk about keys to successful negotiation at the dealer booths and trade tables….
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Welcome back, everyone! As we close the book on M15’s set review, I’d like to address a couple pieces of feedback that I received on these last two articles, and how my opinions might have been influenced since then. I’m certainly not perfect in my card evaluation skills, and that’s one of the reasons I…
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About Last Week Welcome back, readers! Well, hopefully I still have a readerbase after last week’s article. If you’ll read last week’s Reddit thread for the article, you’ll see that several people brought up very valid arguments against my theory, and slapped me with some issues that I had left out. It’s enough for me to…
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Newton’s First Law of Motion states, “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion.” At two separate parts in my financing “career,” I have slowed buying cards in order to catch up on other things. The second time this happened, I had a lot of unexpected expenses come up and had just…
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When a newborn Magic players opens her eyes for the first time, it’s difficult to not be overwhelmed with the price others will pay for multicolored cardboard. If you read the title to this three-part mini-series, it’s obvious I’m not here to justify card prices or imply the financial requirement to play this game. I’m actually…
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I’m going to start this week’s article by linking to another person’s article from another website. Last week, Travis Allen explained how the margins on speculation are often lower and riskier than someone who is not accustomed to the workings of MTG finance would expect. As somewhat of a follow-up to that article, I’d like to…
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It’s round four at SCG Detroit. Across from me is Joe, who is playing Mono-Black Devotion. He swings in with a [card]Nightveil Specter[/card] to deal two, but what do I care? I’m playing Gruul Aggro with [card]Skylasher[/card], [card]Titan’s Strength[/card], and [card]Armed // Dangerous[/card] in hand. He plays a second [card]Nightveil Specter[/card] and I panic. I…
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Welcome back! Last week I briefly discussed how there are different kinds of speculation targets, and why they should be targeted in varying ways depending on factors such as your budget, whether you trade or buy, and whether you’re looking for long-term holds or quick flips. I had planned to go more in-depth and have…
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This is part four of my Inventory Management series. Parts one through three are here, here, and here. Read them first if you haven’t already. I really appreciate the feedback I have been getting and I’m happy to answer questions. Today we’re talking about sunk cost. Sunk cost is not just an inventory management topic,…
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Welcome back, podders and speculators and financiers all! My last two articles got much less response than normal, probably due to the fact that I strayed from what I consider myself skilled in. I’ll stick to teaching you guys how to make money, and not actually playing the game. Now, let’s get right into a…
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The time around the release of a new set is one of the best to be involved with our favorite trading card game. New product being opened, new decks breaking the format, and best of all, money to be had. The question is, what do I buy? What will be good in the upcoming meta?…
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Hello again! For those of you who took the time to read my last article and still bothered to click on the link to my second piece, I thank you. I hope I was able to share enough information to make it worth your while. If you’re just jumping on this article series (if you…
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