Hey everyone, I want to first off apologize for missing last week. I, like many of you, played a little too much magic last weekend with the pre-releases happening and took time Sunday to catch up on sleep. So now I have two weeks worth of cube trades to talk about.
First, I want to share some thoughts about the best ways to attain cards. This depends on a couple things, first the amount of money you are willing to spend, second how many cards you currently have in your collection (for trade or otherwise), and third your own personal affinity for trading. So if you don’t have a lot of money spend you are left with two options, buy cards when you can or trade for the stuff you need. Pretty obvious, right? What happens if you just don’t like trading? Well don’t trade, buy the stuff you need when you can, done deal. But if you have some stuff and want to trade it into some loot for your cube here is some advice:
- First, when you talk to your trade partners let them know that you are looking to build a cube. People generally look to help others out when they can. Letting people know you have genuine purpose for their cards not only makes them more open to make trades with you, but also more open to making good, fair deals.
- Don’t just get lost in only attaining cards for the cube and don’t worry about getting multiple copies of a certain card, especially if it is a chase rare or something that is playable in multiple formats. Lots of people get bogged down with only acquiring one copy of each card necessary for their cube and then their trade binder goes stale and they don’t get many trades to happen. Always trade cards that have niche appeal for more popular cards that you can trade to anyone if your trade partner is looking for them. This seems obvious but so many people don’t do this just because there isn’t anything in someone’s binder they are looking for.
- Remember, you are going to be seeing many of these same people over and over again. I don’t want to remind everyone of this, and most people don’t need reminded, but be kind, respectful, and thank your trade partners. Building good relationships will only help you in your quest, trust me on that one.
- A lot of people will give you suggestions about what type of cards you should include in your cube. In my experience, these suggestions usually occur when they have that card in their binder and they’re looking to get rid of it. Be careful about this, sometimes (probably most) it is an honest attempt to help, but don’t feel pressured into including the card. This is your cube and it should play how you want it to, you made the list, you spent the time, so you should enjoy it the most. If the suggested card(s) isn’t going to help you enjoy your cube more, you probably shouldn’t be including it.
Those are a couple things that have helped me out thus far in the process, but that’s not the only reason you are here right? You want to know what kind of fat loots I was able to pick up in the past couple weeks, right? Well I suppose I can share 😛 here are my top five favorite pick up from the past couple weeks (you can see my entire progress here):
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Well the last one isn’t a huge deal but I was super excited to find it in the box of cheap bulk at my local game store, this is also a great way to pick up all of the commons and uncommons you may need!
Until next week,
Jonathon
