Puca Pals: Week 6 – Cashing Out

Puca Pals is a weekly/bi-weekly article I write to chronicle my adventures on Puca Trade, the online trading system where Magic Players around the world trade with each other. In the articles, I will be discussing what cards I’ve traded away, the total amount of shipping I’ve paid, the total profit I’ve made after shipping costs, and what cards I’ve received in return. If you have any questions regarding the website feel free to ask. If you want to make your own account there, click on this unique invite link of mine and get started!

 

Week 6: March 19th – 25th

 

Things on Puca Trade are starting to slow down a little bit. Before it was the Pro Tour, and now it’s Modern Masters 2015. People are hording their points, and clearing their want lists in order to pick up tons of Modern staples for cheap when the singles flood the market. More and more people seem to be using Puca Trade these days as well, but when cards are removed from want lists, the whole system can come to a screeching halt. Therefore, my entries after this article might be a little more sparse as I wait for more trading action to happen. I will also anxiously be awaiting the changes to the Puca Trade website when foreign card support and paper to MTGO tix happens. Until then, I’ll post whenever I can.

 

Cards Sent

 

• Chromatic Lantern
• Vigor
• Temur Sabertooth (foil)
• Elvish Mystic (FNM)
• Prophet of Kruphix (foil)
• Eladamri, Lord of Leaves
• Cathedral of War (Promo)
• Humble Defector (foil) x2
• Miscutter Hydra (foil)
• Hellspark Elemental (FNM) x2
• Platinum Angel
• Angelic Overseer
• Angelic Arbiter (foil)
• Creakwood Liege x2
• Phyrexian Altar
• Omnath, Locus of Mana
• Dragonmaster Outcast (foil)
• Darksteel Plate
• Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• Jace, Architect of Thought
• Boros Charm (foil)
• Black Market
• No Mercy
• Akroma’s Memorial
• Vesuvan Doppleganger
• Swarmyard x3

 

Without even doing the math, I can tell just from looking at this list of cards that this was one of my best weeks ever for Puca Trade. There are tons of cards that I sent out during this time, and they aren’t nickel and dime (or low value) cards. I moved quite a lot of my foils in week 6, and also traded away a lot of the cards I had bought the week before in Shizuoka prefecture for cheap. I sent 31 cards, and a few of them were multi-card shipments, but I don’t expect shipping to be as cheap as it was the week before.

 

My Initial Costs and Total Shipping

 

I did a lot of bargain hunting on many of these cards and made quite the profit in week 6. Here are some of the most notable buys: Vigor for 400, Eladamri for 200, Humble Defector foils for 200 each, Platinum Angel for 150, Chromatic Lantern for 50, Creakwood Lieges for 150 and 250 yen respectively, Phyrexian Altar for 771, Akroma’s Memorial for 200, Mikaeus the Unhallowed for 400, Black Market for 360, No Mercy for 308, Swarmyards for 308 each, Darksteel Plate for 50, and a foil Prophet of Kruphix for 300 yen. However, the best deals I found during this time was a Boros Charm foil for 500 yen, and a Dragonmaster Outcast foil for 1100. Keep in mind all of these foils were in Japanese, so I was able to get a nice bonus on the English foil price when trading them away.

Regular envelopes made up 17 out of the 19 total I sent out, and only cost 110 yen each. I sent out one package with tracking that cost 520 yen, and there was one overweight envelope that cost me 190 yen. Overall, it cost me 2580 yen in shipping, or 83 yen per card. This was up from my previous week, but I think I should more than make up for the loss with the profit I made on most if not all of these cards.

 

Profit Made and How Long it Took to Ship Cards

 

You have to spend money to make money, and after dropping 20,000 yen the week before while on a trip to Shizuoka, I managed to recoup that all in less than 2 weeks. I managed to make a record breaking 16,458 points in profit, and this was after shipping and the original cost of each card was factored in. Like I said before, I didn’t even have to do the math to know that this week was special.

My biggest profits came from just a few cards. I had spent 1100 on the Dragonmaster Outcast JP foil, but managed to trade it away at 3000 points on Puca Trade. The Creakwood Lieges were only 150 and 250 each, yet I got 1098 points for each of them. The Humble Defector foils also gave me almost 900 points in profit, and cards like Chromatic Lantern and Darksteel Plate were pure value at more than 500 points of profit each.

Before shipping is included, I made a profit of 531 points per card. This is yet another record breaking week for me on Puca Trade, and even with shipping included a profit of 448 points is still 50 points above what I made in last weeks record breaking trades. I attribute all of this to spending more money on cards in order to sell them off at a higher profit. I thought I was happy buying stuff at 100 yen and selling them for a 400-500 point profit, but where the real money to be made is definitely with the higher end foils and rarer cards.

I know I said that it would be hard to beat 15% of losses like I managed to pull off last time, but week 6 only lost 16% of the profits to shipping costs, while increasing the overall number of sales and profit made on each card. I believe this should be my goal going forward in the future as it provides me with a large amount of incoming points while reducing the overall amount of overhead I have to deal with.

As for shipping, the majority of cards seemed to arrive within 9-10 days this time which is a little bit slower than I’m used to. Only one card, Eladamri, Lord of Leaves (which was shipped to the west cost of the USA) took longer than usual at 17 days. Perhaps the person forgot to okay the card? Always make sure you do that in a timely manner people!

 

What I Received/Learned

As I stated above, the most important thing I learned during week 6 was that if you want to make the really big money on Puca Trade, you need to trade away those high value cards. If you’re out shopping and come across a number of deals but have limited cash, buy the card that has the highest margin of profit on it. If you have to choose between getting a card for $5 that you can trade for $10, or getting a $10 card that you can trade for $20, spend more money and get the $10 one. The best way to improve your profits on Puca Trade are to be dealing in high value cards so you can still make money but save on shipping and packaging.

 

 

I decided to pick up 4 Voice of Resurgence as an investment at 1800 points each. I feel like they are a good price and could see more play if Hatebears, Zoo, and the Junk Collected Company deck takes off in modern this year. It’s the same reason I picked up a playset of Knight of the Reliquary for 500 points each. I think it could see play again.

 

 

While the Shaman of the Great Hunt were from week 7’s haul, the rest of the cards were sent to me during week 6. The Thalias complete my playset and could possibly go in a future Legacy deck once I get some more parts, and the Containment Priest was for my Legacy UWR Delver deck. I pretty much have it all together now, but I need 2 more Tundra. The Darkblast were only 150 points in the USA, but are still selling for about $6 here to so I got them on the cheap to Buylist for a little profit. As for the Counterbalance, I got that as trade bait for GP Kyoto.

 

 

Cashing Out

 

Playing the Puca Trade game is expensive. I’ve talked about looking for good deals, for buying cheap and selling high, how to save money, and about having plans for the cards you want list, but when it comes down to it you need cash. If you’re going to keep buying MTG cards to sell on Puca Trade for a profit, or if you’re going to get a good deal from a friend that is selling their collection, you need to have money to do so. There are some things that a large amount of points on Puca Trade simply can not get you. I have had Dual Lands on my WANT list since I started trading, and I’ve yet to receive one. I also had trouble getting Wastelands and other high value Legacy staples.

How to get around this is to sell some of your cards for cash. Now, if you had done so with all the casual rares and other low priced cards that filled your binder you would have had an extremely hard time coming up with enough value to get something like a Dual Land. Lets say you traded into a higher value card and it went up in price a few months later thanks to a good finish in a big tournament. Now you can buy list the card at a higher price than what you got it at, and that profit is working for you. I have to admit that I have it easier than most of you because there are still tons of good deals floating around Japan if you look hard enough, especially on casual and EDH cards. But that’s not to say you can’t also get a return on your investments and trade up to bigger cards.

So here’s the deal. During week 7 I took an inventory of all the cards I had been buying up for cheap around town and noticed that while I had built up tons of inherent value, unless I could get rid of them I was sitting on a lot risk. What I did at that point was separate my Japanese and English cards into two different piles. I had heard of friends that had been sending cards back to the USA to big MTG vendors and getting a huge profit on what what they had sent back. After doing some research on who offered the best buy list prices, bonuses, and had the best customer service, I decided to go with Channel Fireball (it was the addition 1.3 times trade in bonus that convinced me).

Down below you can see what I what I sold – what I bought the card at (tax included)/and the value I received in trade with the 1.3 times bonus.

 

MY SELL LIST:

•  Apocalypse Hydra x 2 – 300 / 650
• Helix Pinnacle – 200 / 455
• Scarecrone x 2 – 300 / 1040
• Ward of Bones – pack opened / 195
• Martial Coup FTV – prize / 97
• Rolling Earthquake FTV x 3 – prize / 390
• Balefire Dragon x 4- 150 / 650
• Parallel Lives x 3 – 50 / 390
• Forced Fruition x 2 – 100 / 520
• Protean Hydra – gift / 65
• Jace, Memory Adept (M12, M13) – pack opened / 390
• Primordial Hydra x 4 – 20 / 650
• Mindcrank – pack opened / 130
• Unwinding Clock x 2 – pack opened / 260
• Boon Reflection x 6 – 100 / 390
• Wound Reflection x 5 – 100 / 390
• Swarmyard – 300 / 650
• Zombie Master (UNL) – in bought collection / 520
• Dragonmaster Outcast x 2 – 700 / 1560

 

The initial cost to buy all of these cards in Japan was 5230 yen. The trade in value (in dollars) on Channel Fireball’s website was roughly $230 in store credit. That means I got roughly $180 in profit by buylisting with CFB, and after shipping was included (-1200 yen) I would say I got about $160 in profit. Strictly speaking this isn’t cashing out, but I was able to turn what I had into something more valuable

 

 

I basically spent $50 on cards and turned it into a $200 Tundra for my Legacy Jeskai Delver deck (I also got the lands I needed to finish my Tempest Cube and Legacy Affinity Deck). This is what Puca Trade is about people. It allows normal people to trade into value that was never thought possible in the past. In a little over 1.5 months I’ve made an incredible amount of value, and as I start to sell off cards here and there I should be right back to where I started cash-wise but with A LOT better cards. I can not even begin to thank the creators of the website for what they have done for you and I.

This isn’t the end of the road however. Once you cash out what you have to get either money or more value, you can do it all over again. I want to wish all of my readers the best of luck in their Puca Trading and hope that these articles have made you both a more effective trader and made you some money. I’m not sure if there are any other topics that I can cover on Puca Trade in the future, but if you can think of any please let me know and I would be happy to cover them! From here on out, I’ll be posting updates for two weeks instead of one week of Puca Trading so that those interested can keep up with what I’ve been buying and trading away. I do plan on writing more help articles once the Puca Trade website is relaunched, but until then lets all take it easy and enjoy playing Magic!

If you have any other questions or commments about today’s article please feel free to leave them down below! If you enjoyed this article and are convinced to start a Puca trade account, feel free to thank me by using this link to give me a referral bonus! If you are already a member (and have a silver or gold account) and want to show your appreciation, I’m always willing to accept gifts of points ^_^. Just check out my profile and click the “SEND POINTS” button. Thanks again for reading and see you back here in a few weeks for my next update!