Anybody who has ever collected M:tG can attest that extra "stuff" just seems to pile up. The processes of drafting, taking decks apart, buying collections, and trading culminate in excess cards continuing to grow over time. While the idea of "things piling up" tends to have negative connotations (bills, paperwork, emails...), in the case of extra Magic cards this "piling up" is truly a blessing in disguise.

I like to think of the portion of my collection that isn't cards I'm planning to use or cards I'm looking to hold onto as a long-term investment in a way similar to spare change.

Pennies and nickles are annoying to deal with but if you stack them up for long enough over time they start to add up to a nice sum. Once you've got a bundle of change stored up, the question becomes "how am I going to liquidate it?" You've got options; you can roll it and take it to the bank, you can save yourself time by dumping it into a Coinstar machine and letting them take a small cut, or you can try to spend it bit by bit.

Extra Magic cards are no different. You can list and sell them online, you can sell them at a discounted rate to a dealer , or you can tuck them into your trade binder and try and trade them away one at a time. These are all viable routes depending upon the motivation and amount of work a collector wants to invest into getting rid of their extra stuff.

Today I'm going to focus on tips to ensure that you get the best value if you choose to sell cards to dealers at a Magic tournament such as a Grand Prix or a large convention. While selling to dealers is rarely going to be the most profitable route, it is surely one of the easiest way to quickly liquidate a ton of cards and is certainly a useful tool for M:tG prospectors and investors to have at their disposal.

I've worked extensively on both sides of the dealer booth. There are certainly tricks and tactics a buyer can utilize to ensure a maximum till.

Strike When the Iron Is Hot or Cold

I consider two types of cards prime candidates to unload to dealers. The first class of cards are cards at their peak value and demand.

It is likely that Narset Transcendent has nowhere to go but down moving forward, however there is still a considerable demand for this card and it maintains a reasonably high buylist price. Cards that meet this kind of qualification and are trending downward are great to unload while they still have value going for them.

I like to open product when a new set comes out, and one of the first things on my mind is always to unload singles I don't need immediately that I think will trend downward quickly. If I can't find players who want to trade for them, my next step is usually to sell them to a dealer before they begin their steep decline.

I couldn't find any players who actually wanted to trade for this card but I was able to find a dealer willing to pay $2.50 each. Considering the fact that the card has basically ended up teetering on the edge of bulk, getting out of the copies I opened for a good amount was a nice little deal for me.

If you can hit the right cards at the right time when dealers  really "need" them you can really maximize your value. For instance, at the last SCG Invitational I found a dealer who was paying $2.00 on Roast because they were completely sold out and players who needed them for their decks were willing to pay $4.00 at the last minute. Even if I would have put my Roasts on eBay I would likely not have gotten that much!

The key here is to identify cards that are at their absolute peak of price and popularity and then to strike while the iron is still hot. Another good example of this philosophy is dumping expensive cards right when you find out they are going to get reprinted.

Months ago when I first found out that these two popular Standard planeswalkers were going to see a reprint in an upcoming duel deck, I wanted to dump my extra copies as soon as possible because it was pretty clear that their values would inevitably tank. I ended up dumping them to a dealer at a Grand Prix and still getting a very high buylist price for them.

Selling cards like this to dealers is great because if they decrease in price like you anticipate, you end up getting close to face value for them in the long run.

The second type of card that I like to sell to dealers are cards that have literally nowhere to go in the foreseeable future. These are the kinds of cards that are simply too good to be bulk rares but are very difficult to trade or sell because they require a very niche buyer.

These are all interesting cards because they have an audience, but the problem is that the audience for these cards may not be people that you or I would ever routinely encounter in real life. The people who want these cards are folks who get together with a few friends once a week and play at the kitchen table.

I've put in a lot of hours at the card shop and I can tell you that the people who buy these cards (and there are a lot of them) stop in on their lunch breaks and buy four or five singles a week. While this group of players may be nearly invisible to the majority of the tournament community, they spend a lot of money in the Magic economy and their dollars speak loudly.

The casual players and the cards they like can be seen if you look hard enough at a buylist. It isn't that the writer of the buylist is overpaying on a terrible card--rather, that buyer is selling a ton of that terrible card to casual players and needs more copies!

Since it is very unlikely that you'll be able to trade these cards to casual players in person, it's often best to just cut our losses and concede that the big dogs have the market locked up when it comes to selling to casual players.

Also, keep in mind that I specifically mean actual bad cards and not Commander staples. Commander players do attend events and participate in the tournament community and you absolutely can trade with them! In fact, my personal belief is that Commander cards are among the best Magic cards to trade for and speculate on.

The Early Bird Gets the Dollar Bills

When selling at a big event, a greater the number of dealers is better for the sellers. More dealers means more competition between them to earn your business. The price to set up a booth at a large event is ridiculous and the primary reason that dealers pay that amount isn't because they want to sell cards, but rather because they want to have the right to buy your cards.

One way to maximize your value when selling is to arrive at the event early and be among the first people selling cards at the site. Nearly every booth will show up to the site depleted or sold out of certain cards that they badly want to restock.

For instance, if a dealer at a Standard GP is sold out of Stormbreath Dragon at the start of Friday morning, they are going to have a ridiculously high buy price on that card because they literally have none to sell. They may be paying $16 just to get a couple back in stock, but once they've bought a couple at that price they will inevitably lower their price since they don't need it as badly anymore.

99% of the time when a vendor booth has a very high price on a card it is because they are sold out and they feel there is a very high demand for the card to justify their high buy price.

It is also significant that at the start of the day dealers have more cash to spend on singles than they do when the event is winding down. Most dealers have a budget for how much money they want to spend on singles, and when it is gone--well, they don't have any money left. It only makes sense that the purse strings are going to start to get tighter once they get down to the last $1000.00 than at the start when they have $10,000.00 to spend.

The Quest for the Best Buylists

There will be a lot of dealers with a lot of different buylists floating around at a Grand Prix, and there are a ton of different ways to sort through this information to find the best deal. It all depends on how much work and energy you want to dedicate to go through each buylist and find the best price possible on each card.

Generally speaking, when I sell cards I'm looking to be as efficient as possible and don't want to turn selling cards into a 18 hour long grind-a-thon. Like I said, the more energy you put in the higher your profits, but when I attend a M:tG tournament I generally want to split my time and attention between making a little bit of cash, hanging out with my friends, and playing cards.

One tip I've found that really helps is to go to the trader table and ask the individuals with the biggest trade binders: "So, which vendor has the best buy list?" It makes sense that the most serious finance people in the room would know this kind of information.

Over time and through lots of trades and conversations I've developed pretty good relationships with a lot of the knowledgeable Magic finance guys and sharing information with these people can really generate a lot of value for both parties. When I figure out a nice little tip I'm always sure to pass it along to the people who share tips with me.

If you haven't developed these kind of connections yet, don't sweat it. One really great way to get this important information is to do a trade with somebody who looks like they would be in the know about which dealers have the best buylists at the event. If you hook them up with a little bit of value on the trade they will typically be pretty cool about passing along that kind of information to you.

I know, I know giving somebody value in a trade?  If you can get somebody to share with you the research they've already put in about which dealers have the best buylists and save yourself the trouble of doing all the leg work it will easily be the best five dollars you spend all weekend long (excluding of course a nice craft beer with dinner after you make Day Two of the GP!).

If you want to go deep on maximizing your profits you can simply pick up a printed copy of everybody's buylist, figure out who is paying the most on each card and then sell each card to whoever has the best price. If you go this route your expected profit margin is probably between 20-30% higher than if you just sell to one person. Not that big of a deal if you are trying to sell $100.00 worth of cards but if you are looking to liquidate a gigantic portion of extra cards worth $3000.00, it is worth the labor.

Online Buylists as a Point of Reference

I like to get all of my buying and selling in with one or two sit-downs with a couple of vendors. I just don't typically have the time to hit up each and every dealer at a Grand Prix to sell my cards. I know that I'm not maximizing the amount of money that I'm getting but I try to get as close as possible without putting in the extra time and energy. Don't forget that your time has value and missing out on playing games and having fun with friends has a cost as well.

No one dealer can ever have the best price in the room on everything because if they did they would be paying too much! Simply put, that isn't how supply and demand and economics work. The key is to isolate the couple of dealers who appear to have 'more aggressive' buylists and get your cards over to them.

I like to use the SCG buylist as a frame of reference when I'm deciding what to sell and how much I want to sell it for. The SCG buylist has a lot of awesome things going for it: it is super easy to use and they basically make an offer on nearly everything of note. However, when there are 30 vendors all competing to buy your cards you can almost always get a better rate for your cards than the prices on the SCG buylist which is why selling to a dealer booth on site is a useful thing to do.

My general goal when I'm selling cards to dealers at a Grand Prix is always to make sure that I'm getting a higher rate than whatever the SCG buylist offers to pay. If you absolutely want to off a bunch of cards you can always keep the SCG buylist in your back pocket as an option because it will always be there as a safety net.

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Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, where I'll cover the actual logistics of interacting with dealers and how to negotiate for the best offer.