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Greetings, Defenestrators!
I want to talk to you today about something that is quite possibly the worst possible metric for determining card desirability.
Almost Gone
I don't use this phrase when I talk about cards. I didn't ever think to use it, really and I didn't really realize how much I disliked it until recently. I am sure in the past I have used similar phrases, though; "The internet is sold out of X" for example. These are phrases that make it seem as if everyone but you is buying their copies and you had better get yours fast before they're gone.
Declaring something "almost gone" is the technique QVC uses to push its bronze-coated precious moments figurines and lethal cutlery. QVC doesn't want to convey how many are left, or, more importantly, how many they had to begin with. They're trying to frighten you into making a purchase impulsively. Not only that, they aren't "warning" you because they are looking out for you. They want to trick you into buying their knick knacks.
Are you going to let pushy sales techniques as old as the act of bartering itself trick you into buying something you don't need? No? So why do it when the part of QVC is played by a financier on Twitter and the part of a Franklin Mint commemorative plate depicting the OJ Simpson verdict is played by a Tiny Leaders card on TCG Player?
You Probably Think This Article Is About You
I can see why you may think your tweet is responsible for the aggression in the article, but if you think this article is about you just because I posted a screenshot of your tweet and titled it based on something you said in said tweet, you just gotta ask yourself why I wrote it that way.
This isn't about you, JR.
As much as JR was being so cryptic that his tweet made you choose two of any four modes, his motive is beyond reproach. Okay, maybe not beyond it, but I can personally vouch that he's not trying to make a card spike by "leaking" the information here.
The card in question, by the way? Not important. If I told you what it was, it would undermine the point I am trying to make here, which is that when there are few copies of a card on TCGPlayer, people take that as a sign and they should not always do that. There are a lot of other factors to consider.
Consider the Card's Age
If we suddenly had a run on Trail of Mystery we would not be all that surprised. Morphing stuff becomes more and more relevant as the block reveals itself, the card was my pick of the week on the podcast a while back, Whisperwood Elemental is establishing itself as a real card; in short, the run would make sense. It doesn't seem forced or artificial and the explanation for its low volume on TCG Player would be explained by its popularity.
But that is an in-print card from a recent set and with a ton of people cracking those packs on their quest for fetches, one would expect a ton of loose copies for sale. A low volume is indicative of a run.
A run on a card like Sorrow's Path is old, not in demand and probably is the most terriblest card ever. But there are fewer copies of Sorrow's Path on TCG Player for sale.
You don't need an explanation for why there are fewer Sorrow's Paths than Trail of Mystery for sale; it's obvious. But why aren't we as reductive when we see someone post or tweet that "OMG, fewer than 80 copies of Order of Whiteclay on TCG Player"? Order is an older card than Trail and there weren't a ton of loose copies listed just because they weren't all that worth listing not too long ago. This effect is exacerbated even more by our next factor.
Consider Novelty or Rarity
There are even fewer copies of foil Order of Whiteclay. Does that mean that the foil copies are selling preferentially because the card is such a baller in Tiny Leaders? You know better than to expect there to be an equal number of foil and non-foil copies, but for whatever reason people lose that perspective and get caught up in a QVC sales pitch.
"OMG, only 5 foil copies of Order of Whitely left on TCG Player". Well yeah. How many were there before the supposed "run" on them? 9,000 copies? 100? Or were there 10 and now there are 5? Who bought the other 5? The guy who wrote the tweet?
Consider the Source
I know JR isn't trying to jack the price up on a card he has a position in. JR is like that dude in the second Hunger Games movie; he hasn't traded in anything as common as money in years. Or something. Anyway, when I see him tweet about low volume of a card and he won't even tell anyone the card's name unless they guess (Travis and Sigmund quickly ran out of @#$%s to give and packed it in) I can reasonably assume he's tweeting academically. But the source isn't always so clearly someone who doesn't have a position.
Whenever you see a random person tweet or post about low volume of a card, usually on TCG Player, there is a lot to consider. It used to be for people to panic, the entire internet would have to sell out. You'd see out of stock notices on ABU, Coolstuff, Troll and Toad--you name the store, they'd be sold out. People would have bought out Cardshark for Pete's sake.
Nowadays, someone will buy out TCG Player and all of those other stores change their price and breathe a sigh of relief that someone signaled them by buying out the one store people take notice of before buying them out. If TCG Player isn't bought out entirely, you may see people start to restock at a higher price.
Who "leaked" the info? The person with a dozen copies selling for three times the previous price who is letting you know to buy a few last MP copies so the rest of the people late to the party can buy their jacked-up priced copies when the buying frenzy starts? Probably not. But how do you know?
Consider What You're Not Being Told
Five foil copies spread over three dealers sounds really low. It sounds like there is a real limited opportunity to buy the last few remaining copies before the internet is entirely sold out of the card. You're lucky you checked Twitter or you would have had no idea! Five copies left is practically nothing!
Hang on, though. How many copies were there last week? The week before? What is the peak number of copies? What is the historical lowest number of copies? How fast are they selling out? 100 in the past day? Two a year? All of this information is just as important as the quantity left for sale, but since no one knows this info, they tend to ignore it, to their detriment.
If 200 copies reduced to 5 in 24 hours, you're a sucker if you don't buy those 5 copies. If 7 copies reduced to 5 copies in 6 months, you're a sucker if you do. You may think you're getting a hot tip, but you may be doing someone else's dirty work, buying up the MP copies they don't want to sell and signaling a price correction for them.
Or, we could be even more parsimonious and not chalk up to corruption what we could chalk up to simple incompetence; they could just be observing a low volume of copies and not even understand the ramifications but simply want to be helpful and let people know a card was "almost gone".
Either way, you don't know all the information you need to make an informed decision. Dare I say buying under those conditions is buying irrationally? Even if your buying is not necessarily serving someone else's agenda, you may be making an error.
Worse, you may cause an irreparable price correction that is not based on reality but may never correct itself, making the price of the card higher forever for the small number of people who would have slowly bought in and who now have to buy in much higher without realizing a high enough degree of profitability to have even made it worth it for yourself. In other words, are you screwing up?
Don't Screw Up
Sigmund likes to say, "Don't chase," and I think that is good advice. You will get orders cancelled if you chase, you will end up being a bag-holder if you chase and you will serve others' agendas if you chase. The smart play is to buy in ahead of the hype and be in a position to sell when the card takes off.
Is this hard to do? Yes, absolutely, but it's how to make real money. You still need to pay attention to events and trends and the metagame and even what randoms and pro financiers alike are tweeting. But you're not obligated to chase a spike in prices and you're certainly not obligated to buy cards just because someone signals that the volume is low. You don't even know what you don't know at that point.
Do some poking around. Is the volume low everywhere? Are multiple sites sold out? What about European sites? Are any players tweeting about the card or is it another "OMG buy every legendary creature with 3 CMC" situation like we've seen the last few weeks? Is the card rare enough that we don't expect to see a high volume of copies under any circumstances? Do you trust the person who signaled the low volume? Do you trust them to know the difference between low volume due to demand and low volume due to novelty and rarity? This is a lot of gut-checking to do, but it's the nature of the market these days.
The card JR was tweeting about? Foil Hinder. Better go buy those last few copies. I hear the card is almost gone.
Great piece, love the subject and very important advice. Also thanks for the references. 🙂
It’s also worth noting that just because there are only 5 copies left of a card on TCG Player doesn’t mean it’s nearly close to selling out. JR messaged me the name of the card he was citing on Twitter – there were, in fact, only a few MP/HP foil copies left as he stated. Except there were like 17 copies on ABU Games. Suddenly the prospect of inciting a buyout is a bit steeper because more capital needs to be committed to truly make a run on the card.
Otherwise you’re stuck holding cards you overpaid for while the rest of the market barely feels the bump because copies were available elsewhere.
Then again, it IS TCG Player that moves markets because that’s what MTG Stocks uses every day to update pricing. Perhaps this could be a good next article – the props and slops of basing an MTG economy off TCG Player. Hmmmm….
I agree that an article about the vagaries of TCG player/MTG stocks prices needs to be addressed. (I also agree this is a great article.)
Here is another example for you about the problems with TCG player/MTG stocks. High end, low volume cards not at risk of a buyout. Take a look at the price chart for Time Vault, both Beta and Unlimited. Now take a look at what TCG player has in stock. Note that there are no NM or LP versions of either card on TCG player right now. Did the demand for these cards tank 20% in a month? NO! The NM copies just got sold, causing the price average to drop to the level of Moderate play copies.
Now check the ebay prices for NM unlimited copies. Not 1 below $400, and most are at least $500. Obviously TCGmid/MTG stocks is not strictly accurate about the value of Time Vault.
I propose that it is time for a new algorithm that contains price memory on MTG stocks.
This would slow the insane spikes of some cards and help people actually gauge the real value of a card rather than the “hype” value. Display the numbers produced by the standard algorithm side by side with the “price memory balanced” algorithm and then let people decide for themselves what a card is actually worth. There would have to be lots of tweaks to this new algorithm to get it right, but I think its definitely something that needs to happen.
What you said sounds good on paper but in reality “almost gone” is very often an indicator of a card about to spike. I can think of 100 examples. How you just dismiss that as frenzy and hype makes you sound like someone who talks and writes a lot about card finance, but isn’t actually involved on the trenches
I think you are being overly critical and slightly missing the point. The author is not denying that the concept of “Supply and demand” is worth considering. He is claiming, basically, that your average speculator doesn’t have a full picture of the supply. This can generate the illusion of a shortage which may cause you to make some ill-advised financial decisions. He’s just cautioning against thinking you have all the information when you may not, so there’s no need to make assumptions.
I like the word of caution too on the motives of people claming a shortage exists. Hmm, what possible reason would one have to broadcast a lack of availability for a certain commodity…?
Time and time again, there are cards with low quantities in stock on tcgplayer. Speculators notice, buy the card out, the price spikes and then the price sticks. I understand that the cards listed on tcgplayer are just the tip of the iceberg of supply for any given card.
But I disagree with the way Jason argues in this article that low supply is something that should be brushed off as either
A. Cards in low supply because they’re old
B. Cards in low supply because there’s just not a lot out there, but there’s no increased demand for them
C. Card that someone bought out to create a frenzy and artificially spike prices
The truth is that a lot of times low supply on tcgplayer does usually indicate something. If it didn’t, then why is it that cards in low supply frequently spike soon after? Scourge of the throne was in low supply at $5. The supply isn’t so low anymore, but the price is doubled. Order of white clay was in low supply at $5 a month ago. I sold a copy at $30 yesterday.
If low supply is really “the worst metric for determining card desirability” then why do cards in low supply spike all the time and the prices stick more often than not? Low supply is the best metric.
Ironically, just today a card that was in low supply disappeared from tcgplayer. There were only 5 copies of judge foil command tower left at around $20. They’re gone now. I bet supply won’t be so low a week or month from now, but the price will be considerably higher
If you think, as you claim below, that low supply is the best metric, you sound like someone who is a follower and considers buying into hype being “involved on [sic] the trenches”. I think you should probably reread the article because there is a lot you are glossing over. You can think of 100 examples? That’s great – maybe that is why I included an entire section comprising nearly half of the article about how you need to take other factors into consideration such as how old and rare the card is instead of just running around like a chicken with their head cut off saying ” Zomg, only 5 copies” when there have been 5 copies for the last 3 months.
I don’t think were on the same page man. I can understand your perspective. For the average/noob speculator, you shouldn’t go deep on whatever flavor of the month crap pops up on mtgstocks, and happens to have a low supply on tcgplayer (evolving wilds, guttural response, whisper silk cloak, dead bridge chant).
But for people a little more involved in mtg finance, low supply is often the first sign that a card is about to spike and if you’re in the right place at the right time you can buy up the cheap copies and make a profit when they spike.
All depends on who your audience is I guess!
I wanted to add that I nearly sent a PM to the site’s admin about a (woefully misdirected, if targeted) ad on the site, after I was told that my subscription removed ads. Then I realized it was actually part of the article hahaha. Good stuff.
Boom. QVC’d
I just realized something – mtgstocks doesn’t show foils on their standard interests page. So here’s a datapoint that we can observe and take note of. Only a few people noticed how little supply there was of Judge Foil Command Tower. There is now one seller with the card in stock at $59.99. Chances are they won’t sell, and without mtgstocks alerting people to the buyout there will be no mad rush to find copies. So if other sites don’t sell out and copies continue to trade in the $20-$25 range, then we’ll know that mtgstocks is driving some of this wild behavior.
http://mtgstocks.com/interestsfoils
I have to agree with Mark, by the time you do all the Jason Alt analysis and consider the Almost Gone factor (Another catch phrase), the ship would have sailed a long time ago. In my opinion we are all in the Speculation business so there are some amount of risk involved, if being too risk averse is the way to go now then whats the point of paying subscription to read QS articles? I would actually like it better to hear these things like what JR did since at least that gives you a chance to act on something or even analyze it. Analysis is something done individually and your guidelines are fine but is it too detailed? Also, I’ve read your article multiple times and frankly it sounded cocky and condescending. Granted you are a mtg finance expert and you get paid for it but its your responsibility to take criticism too.
I notice a lot of the critical responses focus a lot on cards that are actually selling out. It’s not like there is a run on foil Hinder all of a sudden; what’s likely is that there have been 5 copies for weeks, not that there were 300 yesterday and you’re going to miss the boat if you don’t buy those 5 copies now. That analysis took about 3 seconds, so I doubt that was the difference between missing out and snagging the last five copies of a hot card.
This isn’t about being risk averse, it’s about not being a sheep and thinking for yourself. If you can reasonably deduce there were more than 5 copies yesterday, sure, buy in. But too many people use the phrase “Almost Gone” to disingenuously trigger buying behavior in the follower population and I’m urging you to exercise caution.
we’re not all in the speculation business. it’s too risky and demands too much dedicated time.
I’ve learned to detect spikes and use that to SELL. I accepted that I can’t profit from every spike, and it’s not smart to try to do that. If you notice a shortage, there are two options:
A) price will go up
In this case, the hype will only last a few days. Too late to sell the cards you bought just before the hype. I have some cards that raised in price, but there is just not enough demand anymore.
B) nothing will happen and you receive a bunch of stupid cards you spend money on.
Even if I have 2 successes for every failure, it’s still too much to spend my time and money on.
I rather collect craprares and see if something is spiking that is in my craprare box.
Selling into hype is almost always the play. Sometimes buying those last 5 copies and THEN selling into the hype is the real play and I want to make sure my readers aren’t buying after someone does that.