How To Profit

There are many different ways to make money from this game: Win YCS/Regionals, Scale, Trade.

Winning/Topping YCS is a pretty difficult thing to do even if you have all the best cards so I am not going to spend any time on talking about this as if it were a reality for the majority of people.

Winning/Topping Regionals is a bit more manageable for the common reader of a blog like this. It costs $20 and you receive 5 packs; which if you were to go buy packs at the store, entering a regional will save you some money (saving cents is still saving). Comparatively topping in a regional is much much easier than a YCS. There are fewer people (in most case unless you went to YCS Lima) and the player base is not as competitive. Although your prizes for winning is a binder that is mediocre at best and a mat that for the time being (if it is a newer one) is wanted. So lets say you top, you will profit basically whatever you sell the mat for. Mat will sell for roughly 60-80 bucks in most cases and you can sell the binder for 20 which will cover your entry.

I am not sure that this is the path I would choose because you are spending from 9 to at least 7 (10 hours) attempting to make $60-80 which boils down to about $6-8 an hour; that is hardly even minimum wage.

Scaling is a bit difficult and it takes a lot of practice, patience, and money to make a profit this way. But hey you know what they say "The rich are only to get richer." But if you want to take the scaling route, look up my youtube channel for more information about that. Usually the sets are what determine the amount of profit (Order of Chaos) was a great set to scale. You will need to have a lot of information about the set and determine the expected values of the holos; you will pull supers the majority of the time and if the set does not have good supers then that should be a deterrence from purchasing the set.

Lastly there is Trading. This is by far the best way to make the most money especially if you are confident in your prices and you control the trade. Controlling the trade is key when it comes to it. You look up the prices and you decide the prices of the cards. Majority of the time you will ask what a person values their cards and they will either say: I dont know or they will spew out some grossly over value of the card.

If they respond with 'I don't know' then you proceed to look the value up and give them a price with a few shaven dollars off, if it is a $10 card then you say $5-7. From there you make a profit from about $3-5. Although that doesn't seem a lot at first but if you make 30 trades like that you have just profited $90-150 in the little time you are at a locals or regional.

If they respond with 'A gross over-value of the card' you have two options: You can either walk away (which is easier) or you can sit there and try to explain to them the actual price of the card. In this case you will most likely have to trade for the card at value which is never good for profiting. The only cards I would suggest doing this with are cards that you believe will retain their value or raise in price or cards that are in high demand that you could bump up a few bucks. Either way I would typically stay away from these type of trading.

Most people believe that trading for the higher priced cards is how people make the most profit but in reality it is how to make the quickest profit. If you plan on getting out of the game soon then this is the type of trading you should do. If you plan on staying in the game for a while then focusing on the cards that range for $5-20 is the way to go. You will make the majority of your profit shaving down $5-10 cards and then re-trading them or selling them for their actual price.

Stay tuned for trades that I have made at events. I typically write down all the trades which is a great way to keep track of what you have and how much you have made.