Puca ~ Puca ~ Puca

I'm back with a new post to kick off the new year!

To start off, I would like to do a closure that I have failed to do previously for year 2014. 2014 has been a great year for me in MTG, but not so much for my personal life. That's why I decided to hiatus for about 2 months to patch things up in my life and also to take the time off to explore new things for this coming year. Well, problems may be there, but things still have to continue and be done. I cannot give up something that I have started and just leave things hanging. I will want to continue in updating the blog at least for another year or so to journal my journey in both finance and game-play.

• Trading!

The past 2 months have been really fruitful for me. I think we do recall the dry-periods when I mentioned there were no trades going out in either forms of bulk rare or solid cash deals. It was at that point when I am exploring several platforms for trades in both locally and internationally to move my cards. To me, the plan was simple, move the cards or I'm stuck with paper that is essentially useless. I also have to come to terms that while sitting on a few thousand pieces of bulk was quite fun at first, lugging around is definitely not. The pain of having to lug around so much cards everywhere I went eventually got me feeling very stupid about the idea. 

$50 off from my bulked rares (~400 pieces) for my Snapcaster Mages buy-in at ~$105/playset ($160 originally)... While I don't exactly call it a profit, I would find it worth the value in holding the playset than the 400 pieces for the next X months.

I didn't give up on the bulk rare project though. Instead, in the last-minute decision after Modern Masters 2015 was announced, I decided to filter out the not so good rares and bulked them out for a good price discount in my purchases from a friend's game store. That was the first step in changing my trading tactics.. I also decided to shy away from the local community to give myself room to explore other options. While the local community, at best, is very convenient to trade with and easier to access for cards, I have a harder time to move bulk and the lesser-demanded cards, which takes up a majority of the cards I have for trade. I could just bulk everything (which I did as mentioned earlier for most of the less-useful bulk) and restart my trading, but that is just going against what I wanted to do initially; to use bulk as currency. So hence, after above mentioned trades, I did other smaller bulk-out like: 

• 56 bulk pieces for 2x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx ($3.50 ea)
• 44 bulk pieces for 1x Baneslayer Angel (price reduction from $13 to $7.50)

Eventually I came across trading platforms like PucaTrade and Deckbox. It was rather tough to start off the engine in trading there at first. Both platforms require very different things to start off. Deckbox needs reputation points to be trustworthy enough to be considered good trading partner, which ironically comes from completing trades. PucaTrade was simpler in the sense that you need points. However, to get points, you first have to give cards to people in exchange for points before being able to receive anything. I do make a few mistakes that cost me money at first; like sending cards below the value of what I paid for postage and yea, I also did a miscalculation in the prices as on these platforms, the pricing of the cards are rather different than what I see in trading here locally. 

But, I have to commend that the community so far have been mostly great! I really enjoy trading in the two platforms and I realized for the past 2 months or so, I barely touched the local forums for trade. I'm moving more cards within the shorter time frame on these platforms than I do here locally! Yes, I am able to move some of my bulk rares for rather nice items:

One of the first few trades I did on Deckbox.. I was trying to see what I can get out of my bulk rares and honestly, with the right trading partner, it's really a surprise! 

Proof number 2 that I can really get some nice things for my bulk rare. While for this list, some othe stuff isn't bulk, I couldn't move them here locally. Hence, to the other guys on the other side of the planet is a much better choice

  

I also manged to get a few trades which eventually got me the better value:

Top trade is an example of the few mistakes I made in calculating the prices. It was a fair trade still.. The bottom one simply yield me a nice profit as a good reason why I want to move cards overseas

For PucaTrade, this is what my trade list looks like so far. Of course, more trades and cards are going in and out, so I cannot capture all of it. But, basically, you get the picture. I'm hoping to get some interesting cards out from my traded cards. 

• MTG-Reddit Finance

Okay, this section will be a really short one. I'm not specifically just referring to the reddit page which I jumped upon for financial updates, speculations and market watch. I'm also referring in general to websites like MTG-Price, MTG-goldfish and the likes. With so many financial pages easily available, directing my blog at that direction is basically just knocking my head against a brick wall and hope for something to happen. That's insanity. In any case, the point for me to bring this up is that time is not on my side. I have more work piled up on my side and I need to streamline my data collection and analysis in order for me to keep up with the analysis of the card trends. 

I personally have missed the boat for a lot of cards as by the time I hit a sound analysis, I'm too late to board the early ship. So basically, I have to find ways to optimize my market research to have more time to analyze and speculate in possible pick-ups or  trends. No, I do not think I did well in speculation, but I do and will follow most of my own opinion and advices and I do have my own hits and misses. I'll be honest. I don't expect myself to have a 100% hit rate. It's impossible, but knowing how to adapt to the meta changes is more important. Having knowing the changes in the meta, we'll know the possible trends coming and be prepared for it.  Personally, I'm still holding on to cards that I have speculated as shown in the blog post; http://project-zer0.blogspot.sg/2014/10/my-next-move.html. 

But, because of financial restrictions, I won't be holding as much copies as I hoped to hold. I would say that so long as I am able to make a good profit out from the cards, selling it or trading out on Deckbox/PucaTrade will be a good option to acquire other cards.

As mentioned, I'm not as active in local trading in the past 2 months, I'm still in a lookout to by in bulk collections from the local scene. However for singles and more in-demand cards, I'll probably turn my attention to the international market for better opportunities there.

• My Arsenal

I'm sure you all know that I'm piloting a 5-colour reanimator deck for modern. It's a good deck and I enjoy playing it. However, it's not well-positioned in an aggro meta. I'm not going to dismantle the deck still. Actually honestly speaking, I am not positioned as an aggro / control or combo player. I can and I do play or have an experience with playing the different archetypes, but not well; just have some minimal experience. As I type, I'm on a lookout on acquiring pieces for a new deck. This deck will be my second modern deck, which I will make it as a standby in case my reanimator deck is unable to perform in the meta. The new deck

I'm still bent in foiling my EDH deck, but as I'm making some editing and changes to the deck, I'll be foiling out the priority pieces first before going to the edited pieces or the cards that are not confirmed to have a slot in the EDH deck. I made it clear with my play group that I will only have 1 EDH deck and I will be invested in it because eventually, I want to play EDH for the political fun in multiplayer mode rather than winning games. Likewise for Modern, I want to use it it as a platform to make friends and have fun... not to be very competitive and just aim in winning..

I actually have a tiny leaders deck in the making and this will make its appearance one the local scene takes up and recognises more tiny leaders as a new and playable format. I'm rather optimistic for the deck as it is a good excuse for me to use a lot of cards which I failed to use them or have a deck for it. Whole on all, you'd realise that I'm not really a hardcore competitive player. That, I'll admit. I never found the joy in competitive. Partly is because I doubt my ability, but more importantly, I prefer to enjoy the play with the community than winning. I would say that if I were to be competitive, I would have taken a different route altogether.

• Featured Articles / Earnings

To be honest, I'm not earning anything from doing blog entries. This is just solely in promoting my opinions to the community and journal my journey as a trader and player in MTG. I don't see myself as a full-time blogger and I have other commitments to earn money from. However, it would be great to earn some pocket cash from here, but as for the moment, it's relatively hard to do so due to the nature of my blog (MTG or card game related blogs are qute hard to reach out to the mass community. The searches are quite hard to have my blog as a top search.) basically prevents my blog in reaching a high profile view and followers as compared to other bloggers who blog about more common topics like food, make-up, life, etc... 

I want to give the internet community a unique twist in the blog entry about my life, but more about my life as a MTG player and as an up-coming trader who have aspirations to learn more about trading and speculation. I don't seek this to become my main income or of any sort, but if I do make a small income from blogging, it would really make my day. So hence, for 2015, I'm aiming to increase my viewership and reach to have more followers and unique viewers. At the moment, I'm using Nuffnang as my main advertisement sponsor. Adsense rejected me 3 months ago for the reason of lack of content... (ridiculous!) and also for the lack of reach in searchability.. I will look into that as part of fixing my blog in 2015. I'm also applying for gushcloud any other possible services to net me income for my effort in promoting MTG and also just about blogging. Honestly, I actually do believe that I have some unique points about my blog. I have yet seen another that does coverage about his/her personal aspirations. financial spectulation and also personal reviews on upcoming set. Correct me if I am wrong, but I actually believe that I am actually well positioned as a unique blogger that has done that to give the community a unique twist and point of few about MTG itself.

Sure, some content may requrire improvement, but given that this was my first year of blogging such topic, I still need to learn and experiment. For 2015, I'll seek to improve my content to be more engaging and unique for you readers!

To sum up, 2014 has been a year of experimenting and taking steps unknown to most people to be unique and original. I am actually quite well-known for my Project: Zer0 in the local community and I thank for the support given in any way by the people here and in overseas. 

For 2015, I aim to expand my reach internationally and gain more viewers! Side note; if anyone in Germany is viewing this, Guten Tag! I'll be heading there for a 4-month attachment later this year somewhere during Oktoberfest! If anyone is kind enough and willing to be-friend me, let's be pen pals! Like the old days, we send email or letters to each other to communicate and make friends! Of course, my plan is to tour Europe, so guys, if I am reaching out to you people in Europe this far from Singapore to Europe, drop me an email or a reply on this article here below to start chatting! I love making new friends and I really wish to expand my circle of friends to overseas! I also love to know your unique cultures and stuff so I am better prepared when I'm at Europe for my attachment later this year!

To wrap up, let's have a wonderful 2015! Happy New Year!