I've noticed lately (last couple years) that there's been an increase in "floor traders" at GPs - people who represent stores, walking around with large binders packed with value, making slightly-above-buylist-level offers to people.
I'm not sure what I think about the phenomenon. On the one hand, just because you have a store backing you, you can trade at 60% of value? On the other hand, it seems like this is pretty much the only way to trade up anymore - nobody else is willing to trade one expensive card for a boatload of lesser cards, and trading up always had a tax associated with it anyway.
So, what do you guys think? Are floor traders just an evolution of Jon Medina, sharking trades and grinding value out of people? Or do they provide a valuable service, by moving cards that are difficult to move and allowing players to trade into high-value cards?
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I've seen some of these people, tried to trade with one but he said he was only looking for stuff he can move. His binder was full of stuff like foil fetches and dual lands.
One of the smaller local LGS's is doing this. Lost out on a handful of popular but not pro level cards cards (such as Vexing Devil) I was seeking because he took all of his good binders to floor trade.
Initially, I thought he was sculpting his MtG stock, but I heard from one of his employees he returned from the trade show with more stock value in Force of Will Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh than he did in MtG. In other words, he shifted his single card stock from MtG to the others. Other things he's been doing leads me to believe he plans on dropping MtG altogether. No more MtG games. Higher card prices or just flat out wrong. Decreasing buy prices. Still buys MtG boxes like crazy, but packs are easier to sell than singles.
Could be other small LGS's looking to quickly reduce their inventory like my local one? Last I worked at a card shop was in the mid-90's. Card shops did something similar with POGS when they realized the market saturated and no one cared about them anymore. Some shops scrambled to shift their inventory as quickly as possible before the bottom dropped out.
Maybe these shops see something (or not) in MtG that's causing them to think the bottom will drop out so their shifting inventory to more lucrative games? That LGS I mentioned, the owner won't stop talking about FoW. So maybe he sees FoW as the next MtG or Yu-Gi-Oh?
I have mixed at best reception to this. A lot of it does come down to tact and presentation because when you're asking for essentially buylist prices, people won't be too happy. It does seems like every other person that hands you a binder at the trading tables that inevitably form up is "repping" a store. Most do generally have the courtesy to at least tell you that they're representing a store so at least that's good but for traders just looking to casually trade around and not in a hurry to move a lot of product at once, it feels awkward. I almost always politely decline or casually flip through and tell them I didn't see anything that would make me want to trade my stuff valued so lowly.
The only times i've seen stores floor trading go smoothly is when we get European traders trading with Americans and vice versa. Apparently the value system is very different in Europe and that difference just so happens to make the American traders really happy. I think at the last NJ SCG open, my friend had his entire binder of standard jank cleaned out for a couple legacy duals and high end eternal staples all without the trading up/down premiums involved. My friend was obviously extremely happy and the other guy was reppin a store so of course he was okay with that deal and i'm sure he wouldn't have agreed to it if he didn't think he would turn a profit from that deal somehow.
I have mixed at best reception to this. A lot of it does come down to tact and presentation because when you're asking for essentially buylist prices, people won't be too happy. It does seems like every other person that hands you a binder at the trading tables that inevitably form up is "repping" a store. Most do generally have the courtesy to at least tell you that they're representing a store so at least that's good but for traders just looking to casually trade around and not in a hurry to move a lot of product at once, it feels awkward. I almost always politely decline or casually flip through and tell them I didn't see anything that would make me want to trade my stuff valued so lowly.
The only times i've seen stores floor trading go smoothly is when we get European traders trading with Americans and vice versa. Apparently the value system is very different in Europe and that difference just so happens to make the American traders really happy. I think at the last NJ SCG open, my friend had his entire binder of standard jank cleaned out for a couple legacy duals and high end eternal staples all without the trading up/down premiums involved. My friend was obviously extremely happy and the other guy was reppin a store so of course he was okay with that deal and i'm sure he wouldn't have agreed to it if he didn't think he would turn a profit from that deal somehow.
I brought my box of Modern staples to the GP last weekend, in addition to my regular trade binder, thinking that maybe I'd toss in one or two to trade my way towards an Invention or two. I came across a guy who was floor-trading, and in a moment of weakness, handed him the box to browse as well as my binder.
He took literally all of it.
I mean, I'm not too upset, because I ended up with four UL blue duals and a Cradle, so I didn't exactly get screwed over, and he did take a bunch of jank that I'd been unable to move for years. I'm certainly happy with what I got. And they've all been very polite (well, all but one). I guess I'm just wondering if this is how trading goes in the future. You're either casually trading for lower-value stuff, or you're trying to get something good off a floor trader at 60%. So should I start saying that I represent a store, and then making offers at 60%? What's the difference?
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Table cost for vendors at a gp is what? $4000? this is a cheap way for a smaller store and individuals to make serious gains.
Yeek, gotta sell a share of stock to make that up.
I still think the smaller LGS in my area is getting out of MtG but I can easily see a number of smaller or less invested shops wanting to avoid such fees.
LGS cannot really survive if they don't sell MTG. The margins are razor thin but it is the sells the most. Yugioh may very easily die off completely in the next couple of years, Force of Will cards have very poor secondary market value and Pokemon is a bit too niche to focus on.
If there was one game I would actually do more of it would be the Pokemon TCG. The fact that you can get 6 cents for any and all Pokemon bulk and you are also get something like 50 - 70 cents for the pack code makes it so that you are virtually guaranteed a buck from every pack you crack. This makes it so that you only have to crack something like 60 bucks worth of hits to break even from your box. Some sets are better than others but still that guaranteed buck makes it super appealing.
My thought is if giving buylist prices, I'd rather have cash than cards. I can choose what to do with cash. With cards not so much. If it was like 65-70% or so I'd be more likely to trade.
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I don't know, when I've done it, it usually resulted in a sought after card for a bunch of smaller stuff at better-than-vendor rate. It was hard to complain. Still, as with any trading, everyone needs to be upfront with expectations. So far, personally, that has been the case.
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I don't know, when I've done it, it usually resulted in a sought after card for a bunch of smaller stuff at better-than-vendor rate. It was hard to complain. Still, as with any trading, everyone needs to be upfront with expectations. So far, personally, that has been the case.
This is exactly how I view it. I was able to pick up a playset of Marsh Flats for a ton of Standard/lower end EDH and Modern cards. I knew I was losing a chunk in overall value, but I knew exactly what I was getting into and more or less "paying a premium" to dump a bunch of $2-$5 cards for legit higher end staples.
Seems like a big risk to me. If one of those binders happens to be misplaced, left out of sight for even an instant, whatever, that is a lot of value that can just walk away from the venue.
I wanted to return to say that outside of most GP's, Signs indicate floor traders (store reps / mr. briefcase) are prohibited (if I recall correctly) and if caught, can be ejected.
Has anyone seen anything like that ever happen, though?
I wanted to return to say that outside of most GP's, Signs indicate floor traders (store reps / mr. briefcase) are prohibited (if I recall correctly) and if caught, can be ejected.
Has anyone seen anything like that ever happen, though?
I've never seen a floor trader kicked out of a GP. But most of the ones that I've seen bring less baggage than many competitors. Usually if I see someone wheeling a suitcase of cards around, they're getting a stack of cards signed by each artist in attendance and probably starting a cube game somewhere later on. The floor traders I've encountered just bring two or three binders, which is often fewer than I've got with me (I get a lot of "Hey, you're not in the main? Here's my binder - go get me Card X!").
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I'm not sure what I think about the phenomenon. On the one hand, just because you have a store backing you, you can trade at 60% of value? On the other hand, it seems like this is pretty much the only way to trade up anymore - nobody else is willing to trade one expensive card for a boatload of lesser cards, and trading up always had a tax associated with it anyway.
So, what do you guys think? Are floor traders just an evolution of Jon Medina, sharking trades and grinding value out of people? Or do they provide a valuable service, by moving cards that are difficult to move and allowing players to trade into high-value cards?
Initially, I thought he was sculpting his MtG stock, but I heard from one of his employees he returned from the trade show with more stock value in Force of Will Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh than he did in MtG. In other words, he shifted his single card stock from MtG to the others. Other things he's been doing leads me to believe he plans on dropping MtG altogether. No more MtG games. Higher card prices or just flat out wrong. Decreasing buy prices. Still buys MtG boxes like crazy, but packs are easier to sell than singles.
Could be other small LGS's looking to quickly reduce their inventory like my local one? Last I worked at a card shop was in the mid-90's. Card shops did something similar with POGS when they realized the market saturated and no one cared about them anymore. Some shops scrambled to shift their inventory as quickly as possible before the bottom dropped out.
Maybe these shops see something (or not) in MtG that's causing them to think the bottom will drop out so their shifting inventory to more lucrative games? That LGS I mentioned, the owner won't stop talking about FoW. So maybe he sees FoW as the next MtG or Yu-Gi-Oh?
The only times i've seen stores floor trading go smoothly is when we get European traders trading with Americans and vice versa. Apparently the value system is very different in Europe and that difference just so happens to make the American traders really happy. I think at the last NJ SCG open, my friend had his entire binder of standard jank cleaned out for a couple legacy duals and high end eternal staples all without the trading up/down premiums involved. My friend was obviously extremely happy and the other guy was reppin a store so of course he was okay with that deal and i'm sure he wouldn't have agreed to it if he didn't think he would turn a profit from that deal somehow.
I brought my box of Modern staples to the GP last weekend, in addition to my regular trade binder, thinking that maybe I'd toss in one or two to trade my way towards an Invention or two. I came across a guy who was floor-trading, and in a moment of weakness, handed him the box to browse as well as my binder.
He took literally all of it.
I mean, I'm not too upset, because I ended up with four UL blue duals and a Cradle, so I didn't exactly get screwed over, and he did take a bunch of jank that I'd been unable to move for years. I'm certainly happy with what I got. And they've all been very polite (well, all but one). I guess I'm just wondering if this is how trading goes in the future. You're either casually trading for lower-value stuff, or you're trying to get something good off a floor trader at 60%. So should I start saying that I represent a store, and then making offers at 60%? What's the difference?
Yeek, gotta sell a share of stock to make that up.
I still think the smaller LGS in my area is getting out of MtG but I can easily see a number of smaller or less invested shops wanting to avoid such fees.
If there was one game I would actually do more of it would be the Pokemon TCG. The fact that you can get 6 cents for any and all Pokemon bulk and you are also get something like 50 - 70 cents for the pack code makes it so that you are virtually guaranteed a buck from every pack you crack. This makes it so that you only have to crack something like 60 bucks worth of hits to break even from your box. Some sets are better than others but still that guaranteed buck makes it super appealing.
Currently Playing:
Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me!
Legacy:
RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R
RGBelcherRG
WSoldier StompyW
BReanimatorB
EDH:
BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB
BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
This is exactly how I view it. I was able to pick up a playset of Marsh Flats for a ton of Standard/lower end EDH and Modern cards. I knew I was losing a chunk in overall value, but I knew exactly what I was getting into and more or less "paying a premium" to dump a bunch of $2-$5 cards for legit higher end staples.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
UBBreya's Toybox (Competitive, Combo)WR
RGodzilla, King of the MonstersG
-Retired Decks-
UBLazav, Dimir Mastermind (Competitive, UB Voltron/Control)UB
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—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Has anyone seen anything like that ever happen, though?
I've never seen a floor trader kicked out of a GP. But most of the ones that I've seen bring less baggage than many competitors. Usually if I see someone wheeling a suitcase of cards around, they're getting a stack of cards signed by each artist in attendance and probably starting a cube game somewhere later on. The floor traders I've encountered just bring two or three binders, which is often fewer than I've got with me (I get a lot of "Hey, you're not in the main? Here's my binder - go get me Card X!").