This past year has been filled with great experiences and I hope you can say the same. I’ve been fortunate to be able to play more Magic this past year than any of the other thirteen that I’ve been playing. This year has been the year of the shop, where my friend and I opened our gaming shop. The not so great part about this experience is that I haven’t been able to travel to as many big events as I would like to. Now that the business is expanding and we have hired some guys to help us out, I should be able to travel some more in 2015 and I’m pretty excited about that.

Throughout 2014 I’ve learned some important things about competitive Magic as well as Magic finance. Today, I will share with you what I learned this past year.

1. How to Run a Magic Business

As you might imagine, running a business is time consuming. Unless you love what you are selling, it will be hard to stay on target. Fortunately for me, the primary product I’m selling is Magic the Gathering, the best game ever made. That may be a bold claim, but I firmly believe it.

It’s great being able to hang out and play some cards while I’m selling some cards. For those of you reading articles here on Quiet Speculation, this may seem like the perfect combination and it really is.

One of the main reasons that I got into Magic so quickly was because I loved the trading aspect of the game. The best trading days may be behind us but trading isn’t dead, it’s just in a decline. Most players are of the mindset, why waste time trading when I can walk ten feet to a dealer and get exactly what I want. This mentality works well for me now that I’m on the dealer side. Trades are still available though, you just have to look a little harder and analyze what you are trading and what you are getting a little bit closer.

It can be tricky to run a business with only one product. In one regard, you can specialize in that product so that anyone looking for it knows to come to you. Contrary to that, it’s hard to keep a business afloat with only one product to sell. Even as popular as Magic is, most shops cannot stay open without branching out. I’ve seen lots of different setups. The most common is Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and board games. There are others though like pairing Magic with video games, comic books, skating equipment, or even fishing gear.

The best thing to do if you are trying to get your business off the ground is to start small and expand into the markets that your customers want you to be in. Many of the products we have in my store are ones that have been requested by one person or by a group of friends. If you have multiple people asking about the same thing, it’s usually a good idea to get it in stock quickly so they don’t find another place to buy from.

How do you grow your business? To answer that, let’s get right into number two.

2. Buy Low Sell High

In addition to stocking the products your consumers will purchase, an important part of any Magic business is the concept of ‘buy low, sell high.’ This may be a basic business concept but I talk to lots of people who never thought about it applied to Magic. This is the wizard behind the smoke of every buylist.

The main strategy with any buylist is to buy cards for less than you will sell them for. Clearly this is nothing new, but actually seeing this process in action is quite a powerful thing. Maintaining a buylist takes not only some skill, but also diligence and foresight. As with anything in life, the more you work at it the better you will become.

For the majority of cards you will be buying, offering 50% of the cards' value will get you on the right track, but even that commonality doesn’t hold up for all cards. Here’s a couple of examples. Often, for $2 cards, the buy price is $0.50, which is 25% of the price, but the buy price for a $60 card would normally be around $40, which is 67% of the price. As Magic finance readers, I’m sure you are aware of this concept but you may not have thought about it in this manner.

The short version is, managing a buylist is complex and you can’t buy at one percentage for every card or it will be extremely difficult to stay afloat.

This strategy can be used for trading as well. Most of you probably do this without realizing it, but once you realize this is what’s going on, it will completely change your approach to trading.

The best time to trade is when you have in-demand cards that you can trade into the hype and hopefully this will be when they are at their peak. The cards you should be trading for are ones with longevity as well as ones you’ve identified that should be going up in value.

Take Whip of Erebos for example. This is a card that early on was identified as potentially integral to the Standard format. If you noted this was true, you should have been trading for them when they were $1.50 to $2. Now, they are almost $5 and likely near their peak, though that remains to be seen.

Note that there’s no ripping people off here with this strategy. At every point, you are trading for cards at their current value. If you are able to successfully trade like this though, it will make you just as much money as sharking people but this way will end up with you having more friends instead of enemies.

3. Modern Is Growing

[cardimage cardname='Engineered Explosives'][cardimage cardname='Birthing Pod']

Much of this past year, I’ve spent writing about the Modern format. The main takeaway from that statement is that the format is growing at a very quick pace. Modern Masters absolutely did its job and got players excited about the format. I expect the second edition of MMA will follow suit.

One of the best place to put your money is into Modern. Despite reprints threatening the value of your cards, so far all of the MMA cards have rebounded back to their original price or even higher. MMA2 shouldn’t rebound quite as far, if what we’re hearing about the expanded print run is true, but picking up cards from the set when they are readily available in trade binders should certainly be your goal.

Modern is the format that makes speculation possible. Before you commit to your next spec, you should probably ask yourself if you should really dive in unless it’s a card played in Modern. We have had many price spikes in this format, whereas in Standard, they are much less frequent.

As a final note on Modern, if you have not gotten into the format yet, I suggest you utilize MMA2 as your springboard to dive right in. As I’ve said, the format is going nowhere but up and so there’s no better time than the present. Take your time and acquire cards as you can, but choose your angle of attack and start down that path sooner rather than later.

4. New Strategies FTW

[cardimage cardname='Soul of Innistrad'][cardimage cardname='Liliana Vess']

With more and more new players, that’s more and more copies of the deck that won the event the past week getting sleeved up. Not many new players I’ve seen are paving the way on brewing decks and finding new ways to achieve victory in Standard. That leaves those of us still brewing in a great place to get more angles on the format.

On a similar note, bringing a well-tested brew is even more potent than you might think because all of these new players don’t have experience battling with a variety of decks and when you put them in situations they are not prepared for, they don’t know how to handle them.

It’s so much fun for me to find new strategies or new takes on an existing strategy. I enjoy battling with decks that players haven’t seen before and as the past has taught me, that’s when I’m the most successful as well. You can be sure that 2015 will be full of new brews from me here on Quiet Speculation.

5. Time Management

Life is extremely busy but we make time for the things we value the most. If Magic finance is important to you, you’ll make time to follow and analyze the trends as well as trade or buy as many cards as you can make a profit from. If competitive play is important to you, then take advantage of the plethora of high profile events that will be happening over the next year and make your push to top-eight some of them or qualify for the Pro Tour. No matter what you’re doing, make goals for yourself and try to achieve them.

In 2014 I prioritized my personal life and growing my business over success in big events. The events I did go to, I prepared for and tried to win, but I didn’t make it to all of the events I would have liked to. Instead, I went to my best friend’s wedding as well as some important family functions.

Many times, the business took priority. The nice thing about prioritizing the business this past year is that in 2015 we will be holding more of our own TCG Player events, SCG IQs, as well as PPTQs. Having these events locally is great and allows me to not have to travel as much to play against tougher competition.

In 2015 I have set some goals for myself and I’m sure I will aspire to others as well. First of all, I plan to win a PPTQ. Not only am I having one at my store, but there are a number of others locally that I can attend. Playing in the regional PTQs seems like an amazing experience and I’m confident I can do well.

Secondly, it’s my goal to not only attend the TCG Player Championship, but also qualify for their Invitational by doing well at their other events. Finally, I will continue to put tons of effort into growing my business and make it even better in year two! What are your goals for 2015? Post them in the comments below.

Until next time,
Unleash the Force on 2015!

Mike Lanigan
MtgJedi on Twitter
Jedicouncilman23@gmail.com