There are a couple within your price range on eBay right now, but the prices have jumped so much that it looks like sellers are now asking in the $16-17k range for BGS 8.5 Unlimited Lotuses. That is definitely shocking to see, as that same price would have yielded graded Beta copies even as recently as 1-2 years ago. With any power, the best time to buy is always yesterday it seems.
I ended up opening a case today, which turned out to be quite enjoyable. My box toppers were not great (but I was excited about Urborg), and I had lots of duplicate rares across the case. I thought the variance in terms of mythic and foil pulls was interesting, and mine ended up mostly different in that regard.
2 mediocre mythics, one bad foil rare. This one was brutal--would have been hard to follow the first box, but at this point with 12 duplicate rares (!) from the previous one, needless to say I was just hoping to see anything different from the other two boxes (excepting the Hierarch of course).
3 mythics (one foil), two other foil rares. At this point I was just hoping to see no more Talrands and Eldrazi Conscriptions ever again, but I still liked this box quite a lot. The duplicates are a little out of hand here with one box to go.
Box 4: Topper was Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth (my favorite of those I received, but not a world beater)
4 mythics (!), one trash duplicate foil rare. It pains me to think about what might have been if those Conscriptions strewn about this case had been something actually decent This box definitely had the most poor quality rares of any of the four, but the mythic count props it up (in my mind) above my second box which was atrocious.
Fun notes from these boxes: Both packs that contained Seize the Day as the rare also had a foil rare or mythic. Also, the Flagstones of Trokair came in the same pack as the foil Karakas (go go white lands!) All Is Dust was in the very last pack of two of the boxes (I open left to right by column).
Here's hoping that nobody gets as many duplicates as I did (unless you need them for a deck or they are Noble Hierarch) :).
Eleven (or twelve if you count Thraben Militia, which I wouldn't). And most of those are just underwhelming Elephants and the like. It felt like they could have tacked on another ability for the cost since WWW isn't easy to ramp to sometimes.
I live in Minnesota around the Twin Cities, and there are a few different shops around here that sell older sealed product as part of their operations. All of those prices you listed there are at substantially lower prices than I would have to pay to get them here. I have seen people at these shops pay $18 for a Planar Chaos pack, $29 for a Future Sight pack, and the Kamigawa, Ravnica, and Dissension would all sell in the $15 range.
My opinion might be slightly skewed because I love opening packs, but I would immediately buy all of each set they had at those prices you mentioned. Very nice find, and I am rather jealous. I hope that if you do, you either have some fun drafting or open some nice stuff!
My first concern when looking at the land situation for this deck is that Gatekeeper of Malakir needing BBB to be worthwhile seems like a reach that this deck doesn't need. If I counted correctly, it looks like you have 41 non-land cards maindeck. My proposal to formulate the land base for the deck would involve cutting the three Gatekeepers to get you to 38 cards, at which point you could be at a 60-card deck with 22 lands--I feel like this would work since your curve tops out at 3 CMC.
At that point then, I would consider something along the lines of 4x Drowned Catacomb, 4x Sunken Hollow, 8x Island, and 6x Swamp. Those are my initial suggestions based on that this was posted in a budget forum, but if you think you can afford the life in playing the deck(and also a little extra cash), I would absolutely substitute 4x Watery Grave in for the Sunken Hollows. That way you will have a very low chance of being without U on your first turn, which all your one-drops require.
Also, if you'd rather not take the deck down to 60, you can feel free to ignore any or all of that feedback.
You aren't kidding, I had a deck box full of Modern but then also a few high dollar EDH foils as well. I also have to give credit to one of the vendors I went to that gave me a very fair trade offer for a Beta dual that helped seal it.
I love browsing this thread, and it just got so far down that I thought I could share my spoils from GP Minneapolis this weekend. I got to meet Jesper Myrfors and get some of my favorite classic cards signed, and then was able to trade some Modern staples into a few other gems that I had been wanting for awhile.
Some good options for taking out an opponent's hand while filling your own include Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fate, Winds of Change, Reforge the Soul, and Burning Inquiry. You'll notice that most of those are random, an attribute for which red as a color is generally known. Players that like to counter your spells typically try to hold cards in their hand because it's all they have to threaten you with, so some of those spells may help you depending on how fast your deck is.
I don't know anything about the game you describe, but I thought of a couple cards based on your suggestions. Though I couldn't think of a creature that looked like the mascot, you could use something like Jester's Cap which has a similar style to Jack Frost's look. I think the most fun cerberus to use is Underworld Cerberus because of his abilities, but I'm not sure what colors you'd be looking to play. From that compendium, I thought one or two of the divine law gods could be represented by Jareth, Leonine Titan (whose ability also feels pretty powerful). Sounds like an interesting deck idea, and I'll be interested to see the result!
You are covered for that, yeah. Your responsibility for the item as the seller is considered done when it gets to the international shipping center, so you'd still want to provide tracking to there as you normally would.
I worked in E-Commerce for a bit and we had customers do that all the time (usually routing through Doral, FL or somewhere in Texas). The only time it was a process was when customers claimed something we sent them was broken. That still worked in our favor though, as long as you state that they can send it back for a full refund then eBay will back you. Of course, they won't ever send the things back because there's no easy way to do that from where they are. Every single case we had opened by one of our eBay international buyers, we ended up winning because they were either lying to try to get extra money out of us with a partial refund or simply had no means to return items.
I agree with Aazadan; if you've got access to whatever lands you need, I'd drop the 4x Opulent Palace for 3x Misty Rainforest (unless we're talking Standard only, in which case 3x Polluted Delta would work) and 1x Sunken Hollow. That should help with avoiding any tempo loss.
Mythics: Tarmogoyf, Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, Cavern of Souls (foil)
Rares: Eldrazi Conscription, Containment Priest, Daybreak Coronet, Sublime Archangel, Back to Basics, Disrupting Shoal, Glen Elendra Archmage, Magus of the Bazaar (foil), Talrand, Sky Summoner, Visions of Beyond, Spoils of the Vault, Through the Breach, Vexing Devil, Fauna Shaman, Golgari Grave-Troll, Noble Hierarch, Pattern of Rebirth, Woodfall Primus, Maelstrom Pulse, Lavaclaw Reaches, Phyrexian Tower, Raging Ravine, Thespian's Stage (foil), Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
3 mythics (one foil), 2 additional foil rares. This one was fantastic, maybe my best box of the bunch.
Mythics: Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, Platinum Emperion
Rares: All Is Dust, 2x Eldrazi Conscription (1 foil), Daybreak Coronet, Reveillark, Reya Dawnbringer, Sublime Archangel, Dig Through Time, Glen Elendra Archmage, Talrand, Sky Summoner, Demonic Tutor, Spoils of the Vault, Fauna Shaman, Noble Hierarch, Gamble, Squee, Goblin Nabob, Maelstrom Pulse, Sovereigns of Lost Alara, Celestial Colonnade, Lavaclaw Reaches, Raging Ravine, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 mediocre mythics, one bad foil rare. This one was brutal--would have been hard to follow the first box, but at this point with 12 duplicate rares (!) from the previous one, needless to say I was just hoping to see anything different from the other two boxes (excepting the Hierarch of course).
Mythics: Snapcaster Mage, Liliana of the Veil, Karakas (foil)--extremely happy with all of those!
Rares: All Is Dust, Eldrazi Conscription, Containment Priest, Wall of Reverence, Back to Basics, 2x Dig Through Time (1 foil), Magus of the Bazaar, Talrand, Sky Summoner, Demonic Tutor, Entomb (foil), Goryo's Vengeance, Reanimate, Spoils of the Vault, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Seize the Day, Vexing Devil, Life from the Loam, Pattern of Rebirth, Engineered Explosives, Ancient Tomb, Flagstones of Trokair, Phyrexian Tower, Stirring Wildwood
3 mythics (one foil), two other foil rares. At this point I was just hoping to see no more Talrands and Eldrazi Conscriptions ever again, but I still liked this box quite a lot. The duplicates are a little out of hand here with one box to go.
Mythics: Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, Temporal Manipulation, Platinum Emperion, Dark Depths(was not expecting that many!)
Rares: All Is Dust, Eldrazi Conscription (foil)(table flip), Containment Priest, Reveillark, Disrupting Shoal, Visions of Beyond, Bridge from Below, Reanimate, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Noble Hierarch, Nourishing Shoal, Gamble, Seismic Assault, Seize the Day, Squee, Goblin Nabob, Sovereigns of Lost Alara, Fulminator Mage, Engineered Explosives, Celestial Colonnade, Desolate Lighthouse, Thespian's Stage
4 mythics (!), one trash duplicate foil rare. It pains me to think about what might have been if those Conscriptions strewn about this case had been something actually decent This box definitely had the most poor quality rares of any of the four, but the mythic count props it up (in my mind) above my second box which was atrocious.
Fun notes from these boxes: Both packs that contained Seize the Day as the rare also had a foil rare or mythic. Also, the Flagstones of Trokair came in the same pack as the foil Karakas (go go white lands!) All Is Dust was in the very last pack of two of the boxes (I open left to right by column).
Here's hoping that nobody gets as many duplicates as I did (unless you need them for a deck or they are Noble Hierarch) :).
My opinion might be slightly skewed because I love opening packs, but I would immediately buy all of each set they had at those prices you mentioned. Very nice find, and I am rather jealous. I hope that if you do, you either have some fun drafting or open some nice stuff!
At that point then, I would consider something along the lines of 4x Drowned Catacomb, 4x Sunken Hollow, 8x Island, and 6x Swamp. Those are my initial suggestions based on that this was posted in a budget forum, but if you think you can afford the life in playing the deck(and also a little extra cash), I would absolutely substitute 4x Watery Grave in for the Sunken Hollows. That way you will have a very low chance of being without U on your first turn, which all your one-drops require.
Also, if you'd rather not take the deck down to 60, you can feel free to ignore any or all of that feedback.
I worked in E-Commerce for a bit and we had customers do that all the time (usually routing through Doral, FL or somewhere in Texas). The only time it was a process was when customers claimed something we sent them was broken. That still worked in our favor though, as long as you state that they can send it back for a full refund then eBay will back you. Of course, they won't ever send the things back because there's no easy way to do that from where they are. Every single case we had opened by one of our eBay international buyers, we ended up winning because they were either lying to try to get extra money out of us with a partial refund or simply had no means to return items.