Fact: Magic is an expensive hobby.

If you play Standard you know that if you want to be ultra competitive, you need to have playsets of all the expensive cards. You know that the format changes every three months with new cards you need to Acquire. Then, after a year, half the cards are unusable in the format and you go have to buy new cards. Of course, if you play older formats, you need to have those cards as well, so you have to get those as well and you can see how Magic can be a money sink.

A little depressing, right?

But, before you close this tab and open up for eBay or Craigslist, there is good news. 1) If you read Kelly Reid's material, you know that there are fluxuations of the market and there are times where you can buy cheaply and sell high. 2) You don't have to have every single card in existence to be competitive. 3) Eternal formats are cheaper in the long run than Standard.

If you haven't worked out the math, it can be quite deceptive.

If you check out CoolStuffInc.com (Hooray corporate synergy!), you can see that a box of Scars of Mirrodin currently costs $90. (Aside: When I read old posts that reference price I always get a laugh. "Wow, that card only used to be that much?" or "I can't believe we ever thought card X was that much." It reminds me how much this game changes and how often we tend to live in the now. So without further ado, greetings future readers from November 2010! Hope everything is going well. If you're reading this after December 21 2012, then I guess those Mayans were wrong. If we're in apocalyptic Hellfire, I don't know why you're reading this column unless I secretly put the solution in here and therefore I hope you find what you're looking for). In a box of Mirrodin you get at least 36 rares/mythics with maybe 1 or 2 foils of those but 540 cards total. A Force of Will on the other hand is currently $65 for a Mint copy and $55 for a NM (See what I mean about those funky prices? I can't believe we use to pay that much for that card before it was printed in FtV: Counterspell. Right future people? Oh, right, Apocalypse).

So, for 72% of a box, you can buy 1 card that you need if you're playing eternal formats. If you're looking to collect cards, that's a really bad deal. But, if you really want that card, then you're going to have to suck it up. But, here's where it gets all better: Eternal formats don't rotate. Once you pay the price for the barrier to entry, you don't have to keep repaying it. The cards don't rotate and you don't have to keep buying new cards every year to replace the old ones that you can't use anymore. Sure, you have to update your decks, but the only think that can really affect prices is if the card gets banned.

Your one time purchase of $220 (If you're going for the NM cards), you can get a playset of Force of Will that won't rotate. Those 2 boxes of Scars of Mirrodin you get in the first place? You're going to have to replace those in 2 years. Yes, the upfront capital to play competitively in older formats is higher, but you don't have to replace those costs once you buy into that philosophy. So, let me chance my fact up above:

Fact: Magic can be an expensive hobby.

"Where does that leave us with EDH, Mr. Smarty Pants?" Hey, I don't interrupt you with your reading of this article; don't interrupt me while I'm writing it. "What about that idiotic aside about The Apocalypse?" Fine, I'll answer your question: EDH is an eternal format. The cards never rotate and only when something gets banned do you have to take it out. Yes, over the long run EDH is a cheaper format to play in.

"But what about all those foils and the pimping of the decks?" Alright, Mr. Asks A Lot of Questions. If you don't know, "Pimping" out one's deck is much akin to what Exhibit did on the MTV classic show "Pimp My Ride." It's the art of adding foils and foreign and the rarest copies of a card you can find and put them in your deck to show how much money you've put into Magic. Because EDH doesn't rotate, many players decide to pimp out their decks because they don't have to replace the cards in a few years. (Yo Dawg, I herd you like foils. So I foiled your Foil so you can pimp while you pimp.)

"So, acquiring those foils and those great utility cards that never rotate are going to be really expensive! Great, my EDH dreams are over before they began!" Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's slow down and take a look at this logically. First, what's the difference between these three cards:

In gameplay terms, nothing. They all cost 1 and tap for 2. No one is going to look down upon you if you have a Revised Sol Ring. This isn't like wine tasting where they pick up your card and go in a snottish voice, "Yes, that is a lovely card. See, I prefer mine, a rare Judge's Foil version, Japanese version, signed and altered to be the eye of Sauron. Bet you didn't know there was a Japanese Judge's Foil version. That's how great my taste really are (Highbrow laugh)."

People were clamoring online saying that it sucks that the From the Vault series is so high in price. They're cool and everyone wants them, so why shouldn't they be lower in price. I'll tell you why: they're cool and everyone wants them. They are a collector's item. You don't need those particular cards to play EDH.

I'm not saying that they're a bad thing; I have bought From the Vault series and other products because I think they look cool and want to put them in my EDH decks. Since I chose to focus my funds, time and energy that way, I can build my decks that way if I wish. But, and here's the important thing, it's not a requirement. With my 10 EDH decks, I'm not going to buy 10 FtV:R Sol Ring, I'm just not that into it. I may pimp out one deck, but as long as I have a copy of it in another one, it will still do the exact same thing.

As for great utility cards, there's one huge cycle that comes to mind: the Original Dual Lands. Right now, a Revised Tropical Island is $75 for a NM. Here's a card that's just as good 99% of the time: Breeding Pool. And for NM, it's $11. In EDH, where you start out at 40 life, it's ok to play these cards instead. Sure, if you throw out a scenario where you need that land to come into play untapped and you're at 1 life, fine, I see how our relationship's going to be.

While it's nice to have the better version, sometimes a lesser one will do just fine in its place most times. Wrath of God is $10, Day of Judgment is $3.50. If you're going to argue and say that the anti-Regeneration clause is important, I'm not going to disagree with you. My point is that 60% of the time, it works every time, or something like that. If you really want that anti-Regeneration clause Rout is $3 but costs 1 more than Wrath. Trade-offs, I know I know. That's something you're going to have to consider when you build/edit your decks.

If you go to your large local tournament, you might find one of the vendors having a huge box with a sign that reads "2 rares for $1." It might even be your local game store that does that. Take a look in there and see what you discover. The prices that people give cards are how in demand they're in (which is why the Original Dual Lands are high in demand because of Legacy while the Ravnica ones rotated out of Extended). Most of the cards in that box are ones have been counted out by the tournament players for costing 1 mana more, or not fitting into an already made deck archetype. I'm sure you'll find cards from past sets, some you might not have even seen before. And there are traders who have their binders full of cards just like that as well. Maybe you can get them in as throw-ins when you're trading. True Conviction won't see much tournament play, but it'll certainly change the next EDH game you play.

You can find cheap (in price) alternatives to expensive cards because Wizards knows that people want to play those types of cards. Infact, sometimes they know you love the cards so much, they reprint them in sets like Duel Decks and Archenemy/Planechase. The more printings a card has the cheaper it will be. So while your friend has a foil Onslaught Akroma's Vengeance, you can still play the Planechase version and have it do the same thing.

If you really want to pimp out or completely streamline your EDH deck, there's nothing wrong with it. If you're just starting out, I offer this advice: build up to it. If you haven't read Jonathan Medina's Pack to Power series here on Mananation, I suggest giving that a try. Get a deck together first and find out what works and what doesn't. There's nothing that beats good old fashioned experience with the deck. There may be an awesome rare or mythic you want to get a foil of, but if you find out you don't need it in your deck, you can focus on something else.

However, I know plenty of EDH players who don't like foils and don't like foreign cards. They just want the plain old cards they can read. I don't fault them at all. I'm not trying to upstage them or show I'm better. Some people pimp out cars, or computers or their clothes. Others pimp out their Magic cards.

Magic can be an expensive hobby.

But it doesn't have to be.