Welcome back readers! Hopefully the title this week says it all. In the last two weeks I jumped onto the MTGO train, though not in the ways many might expect. Despite my love of eternal formats and Commander, I have no intention (currently) of converting into an MTGO player. Then what is the point of this article, you might ask. Well, my jump into MTGO is a purely financial one.

MTGO offers many things I wish real world MTG was. Especially the MTGO trading system, which is equivalent to having a GP-sized trade area complete with multiple vendors and prices readily available. Even more importantly it's extremely easy to compare prices (thanks to the search feature), which is absolutely critical when you're trying to maximize your profit.

MTGO trades occur instantaneously, similar to the stock market. If I buy/trade for something on MTGO I own it immediately--there is no concern about them shipping the card while its price continues to rise thanks to the PT, or the like. This also means (to me) that locking in profit is much easier and can allow for lower profit margins per transaction because you have a lot more potential transactions thanks to the "always on" aspect of MTGO.

Now before I delve into my experience thus far, I feel it's important to explain why I felt the need to join MTGO despite numerous complaints about its overall architecture and numerous functionality issues.

It all began with Matt and Sylvain's "MTGO Market Report for April 15th, 2015". Every time they run this article series they post a graphic like the one below:

The first major thing that I noticed was the huge discrepancy between the MTGO price of a full set of FRF and the TCG Mid (which is what I typically trade at). Looking up the redemption policies here, I figured out that it would cost me $25 in redemption fees + $2.99 in shipping. Thus a full set of FRF could be acquired for $77.99, which is still cheaper than the TCG Low price of the whole set.

The other important factor to me was that FRF as a set has a lot of its money tied up in just a few cards. This is not one of those sets with a ton of $5-10 cards in it, but rather one with a $30+ card, two $15 cards, one $10 card, and several $5+ cards. This is critical because it means you don't have to sell a ton of the cards to break even. I also noticed that locally, no store can keep Ugin's in stock, so being the person with them would give me a lot of leverage with the local player base.

The next step was to download MTGO, which you can do here. It's a bit awkward that they charge you before you even get to try it out, but $10 isn't going to break the bank and you do get $5 worth of event tickets on your account. So right now the financials of MTGO are -$10. However, the old adage that "you gotta spend money to make money" seems apropos here.

WoTC will let you convert your money straight into event tickets, but luckily there's a thriving MTGO economy outside of that specific avenue and the going rate is a bit lower. I was able to buy tickets from a fellow QS member for $0.93 per ticket, (so 93% of the typical cost).

For those interested in how to do this here are the steps:

1. Find your seller (your best bet is the Exchange forums here on QS, but I did have to wait a few days until someone responded to my request to buy tickets--sometimes the exchange is more active than others). I emphasize this because depending on how you go about it, you may have to send your money first, which puts the risk of being ripped off on you. Thus it's important to deal with someone you feel is trustworthy (like someone who pays to be on QS and values their reputation).
2. Send your money (this may occur after you get your tickets, depending on how you and your seller coordinate).
3. Log onto MTGO, add the seller to your buddy list (for convenience). Assuming your trade is in real time, they should have a green circle next to their name. You then right click their name and scroll down to "trade".
4. You should see the event tickets in their account. You then drag the tickets into the "Trade to you" category, and you can right click on their event tickets and go 10 at a time (which is very helpful when buying a bunch of tickets). Then you hit submit and wait for them to accept.
5. Send your money (if you didn't do this in step 2).
6. Go to the trade screen again (which looks like this).
7. 
8. Add what you want to buy (in my case it was FRF Sets) into the search filter in the upper left hand corner and hit enter. Now you can see all the bots selling full sets of the set you've chosen.
9. Scroll through and find the best price (I bought mine from GoatbotsFullSets).
10. There is a limit to how many cards you can get at one time, so you might be forced to do several transactions, but in order to make sure you get everything hit "ctrl+A" for a select all and pull one set at a time into your "trade for" section. Depending on the set, you may be able to get 1-2 sets at a time (due to the card limit). Then the bot will calculate how many tickets you owe and you simply follow the same trade procedure mentioned above.

At the time of buying my tickets, the going rate for FRF sets was down to 46.5 tickets per set, so I purchased enough tickets so that I could buy four full sets with a few left over just in case.

46.5*4=186 tickets * $0.93= $173

So my current total investment is -$183. 

The next step is redeeming them. In order to do this, simply go over to the "store page" and click on the redemption option in the upper left corner (seen below).

You simply click on the set icon that you want to buy and pay your $25 times how ever many sets you purchased. Once you do that, MTGO will verify that you have the cards for all the sets and then process your payment with a $2.99 shipping fee added.

Note that the $2.99 fee is not based on a "per set" basis, so you don't pay $2.99 for one set and $5.98 for two...you simply pay $2.99 (though I've heard the rate changes when you redeem 100+ sets). This is important because it's much smarter to redeem a bunch of sets at once than one at a time.

Updated total cost: -$286

Once paid, I got my email from WoTC within a day or two. The sets shipped out of Texas and arrived (to me) within four days (which is considerably faster than the previous 4-8 weeks others used to complain about).

I emphasize the speed of delivery because this really does seem like a great way for stores to restock on cards if the demand is high enough that players aren't trading/selling them into the store. As a store owner it's critical to have a good offering of singles, as that tends to be where a majority of store profits are made.

I still have 4 Tix left, so my final cost per FRF set is roughly $69.75 per set. As of my typing this up the TCG Mid prices of the top 10 cards in the set are:

1. Ugin: $30.87
2. Monastery Mentor: $15.56
3. Soulfire Grandmaster: $10.99
4. Whisperwood Elemental: $11.2
5. Tasigur, the Golden Fang: $6.36
6. Warden of the First Tree: $4.11
7. Brutal Hordechief: $4.34
8. Shaman of the Great Hunt: $4
9. Crux of Fate: $3.29
10. Valorous Stance: $2.38

I break even if I can sell the top five cards of the set (which actually leads to a $5 profit).

A word of caution; it is my belief that FRF is special in that the top five cards alone allow one to generate a profit and that the paper prices can change as the metagame shifts. However, I feel like FRF as a set actually has a lot of good mythics with potential that hasn't been seen yet, so (to me at least) it appears to be a solid investment. And as shown, I've put my money where my mouth is on this one.