Dave Heilker wrote a great piece on Quiet Speculation last week, discussing how a player can trade like a dealer by acquiring cards of tiny value at a fraction of "retail" price. Dave's thesis was that by allowing players to toss in rares valued at 10c each, mostly to make up the difference in value when a trade is off by a few bucks, they can grow a collection quickly and take advantage of cards that may eventually shoot up in price. By having a large quantity of inventory, you no longer have to concern yourself with speculating on things; you just gain by having a little bit of everything at an extremely low cost.

Spurred by a recent acquisition of approximately 100,000 "bulk" cards by my store, I wanted to discuss the role of bulk in a non-dealer's life. Bulk is just a way of talking about Magic cards in large quantities. The implication is that the cards are of little or no value, and thus should be sold by quantity, not quality. For example, many dealers will sell you a 1000 card lot with X rares and Y foils for $z.zz. Since they can usually turn these over fairly quickly to new players trying to start a collection, they can set a fixed rate at which to buy the cards to seed in the lots.

For example, if I offered you a lot of "1000 cards from all sets, 25 rares guaranteed!", we can do a bit of math and figure out my margins and costs. Let's say that I want to sell that lot for $10, which seems like a reasonably low price for 1000 cards. Remember, you're selling these to casual or newer players, who are more attracted to quantity than quality anyway. To them, they just want tons of cool new cards to try out. They don't want to build the sickest new net brew and stomp an FNM. Anyway, lets assume I'd like to make around $5 on this lot, so I'd like to keep my costs below $5 as well (since the total revenue is $10). Looking at the math, we need:

975 cards of any quality

25 rares

Looking at assorted dealer buy prices, we see offerings from $3 per thousand to $6 per thousand. Clearly, we can't pay $6/k, and $5/k is cutting it close. I offer $3/k in my store, only because bulk is rarely worth my time to handle if it's true bulk. So, $4.00 * 0.975 = $3.90. A standard rate on bulk rares is $0.10 per rare, so that puts us at $2.50. We're still over budget! Most players hear "ten cents a rare" and think it's highway robbery. Most players fail to consider that they have many hundreds of true crap rares in their possession, and that it starts to add up quickly. You'd gladly trade a stack of junk rares for a Baneslayer Angel, right?

Anyway, it seems like in our above example, we're not really making enough money. We'd have to raise the price of the thousand card lot by a few bucks or lower our acquisition price on bulk commons and uncommons. What I would actually do would depend on many things, but for this example, it shows how bulk rates can easily correlate into direct profits. Many dealers use this to their advantage, and so should you.

Remember when I said "true bulk" a few minutes ago? You probably had no idea what that meant. Is it like True Blood? (answer: no, vampire TV shows are awful). There are two kinds of bulk if you're a dealer; there's true, filtered bulk and there's the stack of cards a customer brings in that says "its all crap". Filtered bulk is a bunch of cards that have been picked over by someone like me; someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of cards and with both eyes open for mistakes. True bulk is worth precisely the per-thousand dollar amount that a dealer will pay for it, but unfiltered bulk is worth however much you think you can skim out of it.

I want to make a point about morality here. It is wrong to look through someone's collection and, seeing some good non-bulk cards, tell them that it's all bulk and you'll give them a fixed rate. If you're seeing Wastelands and Standstills, you should at least let them know "these cards are not bulk". It's the right thing to do. However, there will be situations where someone else approaches you with an asking price, or says "it's all crap. What'll you gimme for the lot?" In those situations, you are perfectly allowed to throw out a number or accept theirs. I am going to assume that when I buy a collection sight-unseen, that it's all crap, and offer a rate that reflects this assumption. I am not in the business of appraisal, and I am not going to filter through 50,000 cards to make sure I don't miss a copy of Karakas. If you tell me it's bulk, it's bulk, and I believe you.

That is where the true value of bulk lies; the mistakes. I see these mistakes in any large collection of cards, whether they are my own, a customer's or another store's. Always always always (always? ALWAYS!) double-filter your bulk. I've pulled some very expensive cards out of my own bulk boxes the second time through, and I'm largely considered a card-filtering machine by my clientele. I can burn through about 100,000 cards in a working day and filter out the good stuff with ease, but I make mistakes. If you don't have the level of experience that I do, it's even more important to double-filter your acquisitions.

There are other ways beyond true mistakes to profit from bulk. There are often commons and uncommons that are more valuable than the X/1000 rate. I acquired an immense quantity of Zendikar commons and uncommons recently, and after filtering out all the Landfall creatures, the Burst Lightnings, the Halimar Depths, and the other constructed-playable cards, I was left with what amounted to a stack of Beast Hunts. Those cards can all be bulked off at the fixed rate, while you might be able to get some added value out of a few of the non-bulk non-rares. I must have pulled 50 Vampire Nighthawks from that collection, and those retail for about $2!

The real killer, and I always feel bad when I get these collections, is when someone comes to me with their cards and tells me they sold all the rares and this is "what's left". That sounds like an awful deal for me, but in truth, I always end up pulling many more high-dollar cards out. I've pulled out Guardian Beasts, Natural Order, Karakas, Standstill, Sensei's Divining Top, Shock Lands, and the list just goes on. Most of the time, I feel awful but there's nothing I can do. If someone sells me cards sight-unseen, I have to price the risk into the purchase price. My skillset and time is what allows me to convert a stack of cards into filtered, sorted and appropriately priced Magic cards ready to be sold at retail or put in a binder.

Bulk is a great tool for cards all across the spectrum. Cards with no inherent value can be sold at a X/thousand rate, cards with old set symbols with no indicated rarity can sometimes creep in and give you your entire investment back, and old power uncommons that got passed over in sorting can dramatically lower your cost basis. You can usually assume that when you get bulk from a player, it will be unfiltered, and when you get it from a dealer or a player-dealer, it will be filtered. To be safe, always assume the bulk is true filtered bulk and worth almost nothing. That way, when you catch an error, you are squarely in downtown ValueVille. Until next week, may your next trade be measured by weight, not money!