I’m coming off a crazy weekend. I was on the coverage team for Wizards at Grand Prix Washington D.C., and it was a very busy weekend work-wise. But don’t worry, while I was doing coverage I also took note of some financial trends I noticed while hanging out on Friday.

No running theme today; just some quick hits of things that caught my attention from the weekend and the sentiment among the dealers I spoke to.

1) Fetchlands. Specifically, Onslaught fetches. You know, the ones that keep going up in price and are supposed to be stable? Think again. No one wanted to touch these. I had a Flooded Strand and Polluted Delta to sell, and it was way harder than you’d expect. In fact, it took me four trips to a dealer booth to find one to buy the cards at the prices you’d expect. Several buyers, including several who are members here (shoutouts to Paul, Kyle, Thomas for putting up with me this weekend), told me they just don’t want a piece of the fetches at

The reason? It’s not even that they believe allied-colored fetches are coming in the fall, it’s that the risk-to-reward is simply too high right now. It takes time to move $100 cards, and when a reprint would bring something you paid $60 for down to $15-20, you have to consider if you really want to buy that. A lot of people didn’t.

2) Excitement for Magic 2015 is high. There are so many money reprints, casual favorites and new staples being printed. I’m pretty sure this is the best Core Set since Magic 2010. Not only will this impact Constructed, I can’t wait to have singles from this set two or three years from now, because it’s all gold. Like I said in a free-side post, the #hypetrain is here, and I’m happy to play conductor (my set review will be out next week).

3) Buy prices on Return to Ravnica block are already tanking. I cleaned out a decent bit of my RTR block from the store to take to the event to sell, because I figured it’s better to take buylist now rather than hope to sell at retail in the next two months. After all, the downside of that failing to happen means holding a bunch of stuff that’s going to plummet.

This is kind of a new situation for me, because typically I’d unload this stuff in May or early June, but having a store to sell cards out of makes it a more difficult proposition since I have to balance protecting my value with having what my customers want.

Anyway, I decided it was time to unload some of the stuff that would theoretically tank hardest. So I was more than a little surprised to see just how far Sphinx's Revelation has fallen. Seriously, I was happy to take $6 apiece on them given how far it has dropped. I know retail prices for the block haven’t plummeted yet, but buy prices are doing so and retail won’t be too far behind.

4) I know a lot of people complained about the video coverage not starting (among other things), but I’m pretty proud of the work (Gathering Magic leader and former QS editor) Adam Styborski and I did at the event. I think this story I wrote about the fundraising efforts being done to support Mariah, a 17-year-old Magic player who was seriously injured in a hit-and-run accident, was especially important. Sharing stories like this is why I got into journalism and exactly the kind of coverage I wanted to bring to Magic. Any feedback on the text coverage is appreciated.

5) Aether Games has one of the coolest test prints I’ve seen in forever. If you don’t know, there is an extremely small number of cards on the market that are "test prints." That means that some leaked from when Wizards printed them with different borders/layouts to determine what they wanted to eventually use. These are super rare, and if you’re at a GP you won’t regret swinging by their booth to check it out.

Grands Prix and Buylisting

Okay, consider the quick hits over, because there’s another larger topic I want to touch on.

Is the age of selling at Grand Prix over?

Not long ago, it was almost universally better to take your cards to a Grand Prix to sell them. You could barter with dealers and shop around for the best prices. And you got paid immediately. It was a great setup.

All of that is still true, and I wouldn’t say that selling at GPs has gotten any worse. But selling online has gotten much better. In particular, the advent of buylist aggregators (including our own MTG.GG) has changed the game to an extent.

Rather than pour over a bunch of papers to find the best prices, I can instead do it online much more quickly, and with mtg.gg even have my buylist automatically sent to the dealer. Plus, a lot of the random commons and uncommons that are worth money aren’t really what dealers are looking for at events, so stuff gets thrown into the cheapest pile possible rather than the 50 cents you could’ve gotten for it online. That adds up pretty quickly.

I don’t know that I really have an opinion here one way or another. Some stuff, particularly high-end cards and foils, are likely better to move at GPs. But a lot of the other stuff may be better served to ship online. Sure, you have the post office hassle and the delay in payment, but in exchange I’m pretty sure that payment will just be much higher. What’s your experience? Similar or do you prefer one or the other for any particular reason?

It was great to see everyone I did at the Grand Prix, and next time I hope to catch everyone I missed this time around! Grand Prix Portland; that’s all I’m saying.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter