Rabbit and the Turtle

In the previous post, I posted about tips and advice I have picked up from fellow traders. I would like to reflect upon them here. I'm sure many have heard about the fable about the rabbit and the turtle. A short summary, an overconfident rabbit who could have easily won the race has lost to the turtle, who went slow, but steadily finished the race. The story taught us that how slow and steady wins the race. I agree. However, I have learnt another lesson from that same story. Persistence is key. Going slow and steady don't win you anything unless you are persistent. This occurs to me in life; I'm slower than most people when it comes to learning and while I'm certain I don't have a learning deficiency, I am aware I pick up things much slower than many people. I get jealous at times, seeing people picking up new knowledge at a snap while I have to grind my way there. I put more effort in my work just to be on par with my peers. Sometimes, it can get rather depressing.

There will always be a silver lining however gloomy the sky is. I've grown to become persistent; whenever I have set a goal in mind, I work hard towards it. I'm willing to put in however much effort just to be as good or better than my peers. It's not about winning. It's about understanding myself better each time I compete, fight and struggle against my weaknesses to become better. I just want to show to myself that I can achieve with hard work and persistence. But sometimes life is not so simple. There are times where I find that however much hard work I put in, or no matter how persistent I am, it would never equate, results is the amount of hard work I've put in.

I'm learning to grasp the wisdom that every step I take must open doors. My motivation lies in my own persistence in reaching my goal. As much as I am concerned, I want to get there. My point in this is a simple reflection on how I started trading to my 6-months old Project: Zero. I started out trading and I did disastrously. I cracked boxes and speculated the wrong cards, incurring losses which I could not recover. Thankfully I was working at that time so I could afford the losses. I slowly learnt the market, took advice (reluctantly sometimes) and slowly worked my way. I still make mistakes and bad choices, but it is a learning journey that has changed how I saw things. I'd admit, the Project is not a novel idea by me; If you do a google search, there are similar methods out there that are doing almost the same thing. I'm taking that step to offer an option as a learning opportunity for me to learn from others, talking to them and sharing info with each other, while I learn to manage and move my inventory.
(Actually I did not know about the existence of the other schemes until I google-ed it up myself. I actually took inspiration from a walking store trader who was offering bulk rares in exchange for cards.)

This is true for anywhere in life too. Every choice I make should give me the option to grow myself as a stronger bargaining chip for future work, career options and maybe one day, maybe this could be a stepping stone for entrepreneurship? My options shouldn't be narrowed as my I grow up. I should grow my options as I build my capabilities. In reflection over the past week, as well as my heavy school commitments with exams are around the corner, my activity in MTG is rather slow at the moment, but it is a good resting point for me to reflect and plan in my next move.

With the following advice;

File the rares into albums (I'm using boxes atm), but standardize the price at $0.50 or $1 each to make things easier for myself.

I did work with this when I'm doing the test pilot for my project. It's easier, yes, but it means more folders to carry and sort. I want to reduce my workload in my inventory management. Yes, about that, time to streamline that (inventory management) too!

Work on cards that are easier to liquidate, rather than cards that have value but no demand locally.

Issue with Singapore market is that people tend to eye for only the best. Casual demand here is rather low. I actually believe that casual demand makes up most of the card prices. Competitive seasons have a large share too, but most cards are kept at their prices is also due to casual/EDH demands. I have a friend studying in Australia telling us how easy it was to liquid/trade casual cards for Modern staples. Back here, moving a Doubling Season can be a pain in the ass...
Most of the time would be that $40 card that everyone will play but earning that small profit margin is not really worth my time to go around buying at $38 and selling at $40 to earn that $2 unless it spikes overnight and I'm on the right trend. That only covers my transport. In the end, it's not even a profit. The first step I did was to reduce the amount of time travelling. I'd rather consolidate the trades to a single day and settle them to reduce the expenses. Second, I buy from players and shops when I'm at the shop. I won't specially go down to find the card. I would also look at online stores to see if there is any good deals to hop onto. Most of the purchase will be via mail so this also reduces the need to run around.
Third, I'm not keen in the $40 card to make the $2 profit. If it's a repeatable sales, if I can actually find that margin of $2 easily, I may still not consider unless I can move high volume, but the upkeep can be expensive. Hence, I target the casual/EDH market more. It may not seem much but if I can move a bulk amount of $0.50 cards at the same rate of that $40 card, I actually may get more. Bulk rares to me are the safest to work with. The upkeep for it is cheap, and as mentioned earlier, the returns even at minimal is usually a great percentage of the value ($0.10 of $1 is still 10%). So unless I have the money to play around with, or I'm hitting the goldmine with the speculation, I'm not really inclined to work with higher demand cards.

Modern is the best bet now.

Yes. But, it's really expensive to upkeep the inventory. I'm looking ways to dent the market. So far, no success. But my speculations are pretty spot on for the moment. When I meant upkeep, I mean the initial down payment, purchasing of sleeves and if I sell the card and I want repeat sales for that card, I have to spend another bomb just to buy the cards. (with a profit of course!)

In view of the 2 points above, I'm preparing to bulk most of my rare for some modern staples for modern season. I'll look to see how it goes in the coming months to decide in that decision

"Play or Trade?" Justification

This is a main justification I wanna pick up. That decision in whether I buy or trade or decline that card will be by this motivation. If I'm picking up for play, am I going to play for long? Factoring for the cost over the length of play it may seem worth it, especially in eternal formats like EDH and Modern. Also if under the justification of play, is the deck solid enough to see actual plays or is it still a goldfish thinking it's a shark? These are some thoughts in mind I must consider. 

In the justification to trade the cards, I have to ask myself if I'm planning to keep it for long term or resale, if the latter, I must be confident in selling out, or the cards will just sit there to rot. 

I'm inclined to be a better trader. I'm even more inclined to be a smarter trader. Persistence and willing to learn will be my guiding motivations to succeed.