D-Roy: I don't have an article on that yet – expect one soon. My best advice is to not take people at what they say they have and take an opportunity to look for yourself. I'll detail how in my article. If you live too far away, you can ask them to spread out a lot of the cards and take pictures to send to you. Most people don't want to write up what rares they have.

Dan: you must know the bulk value of the whole collection you are buying. That means roughly knowing how many bulk rares will be in there, uncommons, etc. If it's picked over, you might have to work very hard to get any value from it. My article is going to have advice on estimating the value of a collection, sight-unseen, and what your minimum buy values should be. I suggest going to the store and looking at the entire stock if the owner will let you.

If you can see my email, i would love to hear a response!

Thanks!

Example: Description says "445 magic cards, some rare ones. I don't know the editions, but they are about 5 years old. $40"
Obviously that price is way out of whack, right?

Or

"2000+ cards, about 1500 are non-type 2. Majority of collection is common. I have quite a few uncommon. I have a few rares, some foils. $70 OBO."
How do you determine a good price when you don't have a very solid idea of the amount "sellable" cards (uncommons, rares, etc.)?

Sorry this reply got so long. Thanks!

Hopefully some duals are in my future because I have a feeling that most of the cards are going to be around the Fallen Empires range…

My best collection acquisitions have come from garage sales and craigslist. More often than not the collections I've found do indeed come from the "Dead zone" time period but with a little effort and by using the techniques you describe you can turn a nice profit.

My best acquisition of this nature was purely luck-based. I stopped in at my local Goodwill and asked to browse through a couple boxes in their collectibles glass counter. A small plastic box marked $2 yielded 59 basic lands… and a NM Karakas! I bought the other box next to it for $6–sight unseen. It had its share of Regrowths and a Wheel of Fortune–certainly enough to justify the cost. But now I make the Goodwill a weekly stop (usually on Mondays or Tuesdays) on my card collection gathering missions.

@Doug. A lot of those cards you linked such as Heartwolf are actually U1's which Wizards now calls 'rare'. Are dealers really buying U1's with thier 'rare' cards? In the past these have always been considered uncommons.