Behind the scenes with the some of the greatest men/women investors around the world. PATREON : / alphainvestments SHIRTS: www.ebay.com/it... ~FAN MAIL~ Rudy's Magic Store 10950-60 San Jose Blvd. Box # 139 Jacksonville, FL 32223
Everyone. We offered this nice lady around 35k in 2015. She passed. My wife and I had breakfast with her in 2016, offered here around 25k, she passed. Now, she decided to sell. She offered to SCG, they wanted to open the cards from grading to check if they were REAL. This is a perfect example of timing and making a decision best for your life. Markets change too, another lesson to learn.
Vintage MTG yeah feels are great and all but a business is a business. Most of these kids crying don't realize that this bitching is akin to watching an NBA game and saying buh buh that wouldn't be a foul in my local street pick up game... there's rules and levels to this shit
+maras3naraz I don't think he took advantage of the situation. He's saying that the cards are no longer worth 34k they are worth 21k, due to the market. They might jump back up in price, or drop. If he had bought them 2 years ago and was unable to sell them, he'd lost 9k himself. Buying and selling collectibles is a gamble, similar to stock markets. Both are taking a risk. Next year these cards could be worth less than 15k, or go back up to 30k.
As the saying goes: timing is everything. Welcome to investing. Did she lose $14k in value? Nope, the market lost that value. If she made the deal, she must have been accepting of the price paid. Maybe in two years that collection will be worth $70k, or $5k. Investing in physical assets often and unfortunately triggers sellers remorse. Vintage didn't take advantage of anything. He made an offer every year for three years and it was this year an offer was accepted. Don't blame smart business for being smart.
Mostly they are. Otherwise, there business wouldn't exist that long. But these companies also made a lot of people rich or at least richer. There are people out there, that became multiple millionaires. And a lot of people that easily made more than 100k of just a few cards of paper. It is incredible. The thing that amazes me the most is, that some cards can go so easy for 15k+. Sport, Magic or specific Pokemon cards. And not even talking about cards sold for 50k+ or even 100k+. These grading companies for sure have there part in making this possible. But there is a bit of "scamminess" surrounding grading and especially the grading process. I mean PSA is so untransparent, it is unbelieveable, that the majority of the people never spoke up about this.
A dealer has to be able to offer cards at or lower than the market value. If he can turn over the entire set for a few thousand dollars he'll probably take the offer. Offer him $26,000 for the set all at once and he'd be thinking about it. Getting his money out of it immediately and making a few thousand or trying to hold on to it, part it out, try and sell enough of it to get his money back and not be left with a pile of "junk" cards which aren't worth the time to sell. There aren't a lot of buyers with $30,000 to throw down on card game pieces that lose their value if you use them.
@@panic5306 Not always, I bought some cards at a yard sale for 5 bucks, not even looking through the whole book, turns out I have a few worth over 30 bones, some valued at over 100 (OLD split lands). It can be lucrative (though I don't intend to sell) if you look in the right places. It was only after I started following Alpha Investments that I realized I was sitting on a decent profit.
After llooking up sold listings on ebay and taking 13% off everything its worth around $26K cash. If you take off another 20% for profit as a dealer, its righ at $21K. So good deal for both I think. Yes she could have made more on ebay, but that would put paypal sales above 20K she'd have to do a 1099 form and pay taxes. Easier to do the cash deal in my opinion, so again good deal for both.
James Tisdale Not to mention potential chargeback. I sold a mox pearl and guy Claims envelope was opened and it was empty. paypal always sides with crook buyers
21k for two lotus is a good bargain. You can sell one . Basically if he sells it now it’s buy one get one free. Black border are more expensive that white border espexiallly for 10.. they are going for hundreds of thousands.
I've been watching All of these Alpha videos for the past 20 or so hours. I must have been living under a Rock for the past 10 years because I had NO idea that these cards were were going for these prices...
It's always fun to see buyers, sellers and traders from all different environments. The basic tenets really are the same. My favorite part is watching the battle of two different value strategies at war with one another, it's a contest of human psychology, market knowledge and sales. Sometimes I'll flip an everyday car just to answer the question: "do I still got it? Or am I an old washed up boomer? Let's find out"
This is a great, informative video. The only thing holding it back is that the background noise is as loud if not louder than the subjects of the video. Very interesting either way and I hope we get more like it in the future (but with lav mics lol). Also kudos to Alpha for being fully transparent with his knowledge of graded cards and market fluctuation in front of a prospective seller and a camera. If I had a vintage magic collection I was looking to sell I would go to Alpha first.
LOL for real... he was struggling to let go of 1% of the deal for a solid 5 mins. Looks at the "crap" deck and insta locks his buy. Daniel is the true winner here.
I think he noticed the beta zombie master and that was what made him say yes. If its in 7 grade or higher condition I'm guessing that alone would fetch 100
I had a similar experience at 2013 GP Denver. I was leaning over a booth super jazzed up (I think channel fireball) asking to buy a foil Leyline of Sanctity for $11 and some other guy leans over my shoulder and says "I want to buy that, and do you have any other Moxes?" He was pointing at a beta mox emerald, the dealer proceeds to get a box out of a safe, put on cotton gloves, and lay out a full set of unlimited moxes. He ended up buying the full unlimited set and the beta emerald. Plus a time twister from beta. It was like $22000 in cash. He lays out a TON of $20 bills to pay it out. The whole time I am distracted from my purchase. A woman says "Ma'am I'm sorry what did you want to buy?" I snap out of it and suddenly my $11 foil Leyline of Sanctity felt alot less special.
I don't even like Magic the Gathering, but as a collector of vintage rare heavy metal records, I can totally relate to this. I fuckin love this video. cheers to both of you.
Honestly, this isn't a casino...assuming they were near an exit, a good chance they could...but for $20k, well it's immoral, there's that, and you risk literally ruining your life for money you could live on for a few months and then be right back where you were.
Daniel, you got a steal. I'm blown away by how good this deal was for you. Good for you...you took a risk, bought the right cards, and now one alpha lotus from that batch will bring...what? 40k+? She must be kicking herself. I hope she kept her 9.5 alpha lotus, because...400k?
you are way off, alpha lotus thats a graded 7 or 8, won't go for 40k, like he was saying in the video, there are many 7 and 8 graded lotuses, they will still fetch a good price and he will make his money, but he won't get that kind of cash for one lotus.
I dont understand , in 2015 is was offered 35K, 2016 35K and now 21K ? I thought Magic card price was only rising up, specially for vintage cards. Each time i look the price of a card it went up. What s happened in 2015 - 2017 ?
I'm one month late but I'll try to explain. Card value (in my opinion) is judged by three factors. -Its rarity -its usage in the game -the last time it was printed. The cards presented were printed sometime ~1995-1997 if I recall? And some of them are supposedly, "Power 9" cards, or cards that were *REALLY* good in the game. As of now, they're not legal in the current time. But the company has this format or set of rules that allow these cards to see play in official events. The woman had two copies of "Black Lotus" there, a rare card that's worth ~$4.5 grand, $9 grand in total.
i am a retired magic player quit a few years ago but once in a while i help my friends get ready for grand Prix events by building with there cards but seeing this video made me fall back in love with the game again as the player base is a lot better then yugioh is
I miss my alpha and beta black lotus. I lost them in a flood 12 years ago. I had 2 of each. With today's prices everything I lost was roughly 200,000 I had a full unlimited set as well. People please learn from my mistake and insure your cards, there is no telling when disaster will strike.
I started playing/collecting in alpha and had multiples to playsets of just about everything. My mom was afraid I was worshiping the devil and threw them all away... I cringe when I think of the money i could have...
I started in sept 93 Alpha. Noone wanted Lotus/Moxen back then. It was all creatures. I had so many power cards by 1996 it was sick. They got hot starting in 1995, but I held on to them. Sadly sold the remaining cards after 911 (2001) I had over 500 money cards from Alpha-Masques now probably worth $2 million :(
I don't understand why she would be selling the so called "bulk rares" to him. He doesn't seem to even care what they are. She should have sold the alpha cards to him for like 20 500 $ and then brought the rest of the cards back to card kingdom or something.
He let on that he didn't care, but she had like a stack of $10 rares like Jitte in there. Thing is -- let's say Jitte is going for $10 right now. Doesn't mean you get $10 for it. If I can get it for $10 free shipping from a large trusted website and pay PayPal, why the shit would you pay someone for it in person whose binder you went through? That logic goes even farther when selling to a dealer. Value drops 30-50%+ when trying to sell cards ina lot or part of an attachment. Compare to computer hardware. I have an old gaming PC from 2011. I can sell the GTX 680 for $150 if I found a buyer and didn't mind waiting a few weeks for it to sell on Craigslist, maybe get $30 for the Phenom II x6 1090T, maybe get some change for the RAM, boards, drives, etc. Maybe like $400 for everything if I parted it out and didn't mind selling one piece at a time over a few weeks. But if I wanted to sell the whole computer? Maybe like $200 tops, assuming someone even wanted an old underpowered piece of tech for like editing cat videos. I probably couldn't even sell it. If I wanted to sell it today, I'd have to list the entire thing for like $150 or lower, and someone would buy it just to get the GTX 680 as a dedicated PhysX card companion card, extra display output, or for SLI in a retro system, and just pitch or sell the rest. Now imagine trying to sell it to a used computer shop that "buys old computers." $20. Same goes for all things of value. It's supply and demand, and that applies to lead times, liquidity, etc. A dealer always has a larger supply than Joe Schmoe and doesn't NEED to pay a lot of cash. Joe Schmoe *can't* pay a lot of cash, but he might want 1 or 2 of those things -- if you can find him and he's buying right now. And someone doesn't get to him first. You really can't look at the "going price for a Black Lotus" or sell completed auctions on eBay or see listings on dealer websites and say "Wow that's what my Lotus is worth." It doesn't work that way. I can't buy a copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day for Nintendo 64 for $80 loose on eBay, then look to sell for $80 on eBay and expect to sell it right away. The original seller waited weeks or months to sell it to me, I have to wait weeks or months to sell it myself. If I wanted to sell it now, I'd sell it at $60 and take the loss. $70 and wait a few days. $75 and wait a few months, unless its value goes up and I lost at $80 anyways. If I took it to GameStop, their current listed *buy price* is $24 cash, $30 store credit. They're selling it for $89.99. tl;dr - You pay a premium for buying from dealers. The dealer market price is not the price it's worth. If you need to sell now, you lose half of its value. You will always wait for a sale or have trouble finding a buyer unless you lowball, and you will never sell for the "going price" unless you plan on listing the item for months, which a dealer can do, and you can't.
Fair or unfair ... who knows in the long run ... it's just an investment, especially the BLs. In my opinion, there'll always be a market for MTG cards that are 30+ years old by now.
Wait till the end of the video, he doesn't even look at all the cards she has (on a $20k sale you think that would be important!), then after trying to talk her down on her price for who knows how long, he finally looks at the stack of cards he didn't look at and immediately reaches his hand across the table and pays her what she wants after they had been going back and forth, even thought it's less than she wanted initially, which he might have paid had he seen the stack he was overlooking or possibly ignoring to further his profit margin. He spends almost no time building rapport with this woman but instead whines and complains about her price and is completely disrespectful to her, until finally looking at all her cards and taking the deal without hesitation. I'm not disagreeing with the commenters on here with the price he bought it for, only that he didn't look at all the cards and then upon realizing what all was there he bought them with no hesitation. How unprofessional and rude can this guy be! He should be ashamed of himself. Unfortunately this is how all too many buyers/resellers are. Anyone who looks up to or admires this guy should find a new role model.
So the reason he's going to "Crack," The deck is because 9 and lower really isn't sought after that much correct? Like it's between almost there and too high to keep it like that so it's easier to sell "cracked," as a regular rare than trying to pass it off as "Not even air has touched this card." Am I getting the jist of it on why he's going to open the card cases?
@@justinturnsvirtual I'm not sure if you thought it through. If it has a value of about $40K to a collector, they'll buy them for that much. So I'm not sure where you get the, "if nobody will buy them," thing. The point is that's the amount people DO buy them for.
@@nexus1g do you understand buisness? Just cause something is valued at a certain price doesn't mean your going to sell it. 21k is deffs reasonable factoring in how long it will take just to sell the cards he bought off her
lol, confirmed ebay Sold Mar 28, 2019 1993 Magic The Gathering MTG Alpha Black Lotus R A BGS 7 NRMT (PWCC) for $37,479. What would the Beckett 8 sell for, hard to make profit on that $22k sale.
quick sale he resells and makes 7 k long holding on to them and calling around to the right buyer and he makes 12k sells before leaving the building makes between 3 and 5k more then likely is is smart will hold on to most getting some of the raw gradded and end up making 12 to 15k.
and here i debate on buying a card for $14. I'll never have $21,000 to spend on cards lol. but that was a deal i would have done if i had that much money.
Same. I finally bought my self a play set of Arid Mesa when the re print came out. Even then I felt like an asshole paying that much money for cardboard. Vintage stuff still baffles me.
Shatamx MTG card market is really werid, it's like after watching this I decided to look through my collection. The most valuable card I have is a foil Marrow Gnawer from the kamigawa block but my promo ink-eyes from betrayers prerealease has no value. But the none foils of the same card does....It's just werid.
when he says stuff like "there are only a few hundred of these" when talking about a black lotus, I remember why vintage is dying, really makes me sad that investors control the game now
Personally and from a strict monetary standpoint, if you're not gunna make 22-24k from re-selling then your money was probably spent elsewhere. Thats providing you have zero personal attachment to the cards. If you actually enjoy collecting and having the cards this adds a lot of "real-life" value which cannot be measured. Overall this was fun to watch! But when I establish my own trading card game, I'm gunna make sure that all gradings must be done by my company ;) thats where the real money is...
Stores want and need to open the card to see if it's real. And that's common knowledge. I know " I " would never make a deal if I could not see the product, and find out if I'm being cheated. Obviously I would make the store take every security measure to protect the card and also replace my packaging afterwards. Would even go as far as "If you damage my card, you bought it".
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