Your store on Magic Online

We host the first of a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a top blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.
You can read the original article here: 
http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/tu-tienda-en-magic-online-parte-5/



In the previous chapter I showed the three main profiles for the Magic Online users: the drafters, constructed players and collectors. Besides, I finished saying that all profiles had a common goal: trading cards for a profit without effort. This process can be achieved by creating a Magic Online store, which can be managed personally or by a bot, a tireless worker which makes trades at any time of the day.

What is a Magic Online store?

A Magic Online store can be as simple as a user which offers buying and selling cards. Unlike the official store, you may open a store at Magic Online to trade your own cards and get your profit. Any user can create a store but it should have at least the following elements:

• A Magic Online account
• A card stock and/or sealed product
• An ad on the classifieds section
• Time and a dedicated computer

The first requirement has no discussion. The second one is essential if you want to attract customers interested in your cards. The third one is needed if you want visibility and let people know that you offer cards for buy/sell. Finally, the computer seems obvious but in following chapters of this seres you’ll notice that this element requires an special attention.

The main advantage of having a store at Magic Online is that you can make a profit from every transaction. Each time you buy a card to the purchase price and then sell it to its selling you get a profit percentage. If you repeat this process you can go on infinite profit. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

You may ask yourself why people would sell you a card at a cheaper price that you could sell it. The main reason is because you are offering a service: to be continuously present at Magic Online and accumulate a stock that you offer to the public.

However, there is another even more important reason. Drafters open boosters with cards that they usually don’t want because they prefer to play another draft, so they try to sell them as soon as possible. You, as a store at Magic Online, buy them those cards at a lower price because you know they have the urge to sell. On the other hand, constructed players search cards for their decks, so you can sell them at a slightly higher rate than you bought because you are saving them time to search those cards.

This way, the loop of buy/sell a card is closed and now you know where the profit comes from. However, there are still some problems we have to solve. Let’s see how.

The problem of payments

The first problem that appears when you open a store at Magic Online is how to charge your customers. As I said in a previous article, the currency of the game is the Event Ticket. However, this coin is indivisible, so you could not buy a card with a value, for example, of 0.4 tickets. Therefore it is necessary to track the credit of each client. Thus, if you sell a card of 0.4 tickets to a customer, he would give you 1 ticket and you should record him 0.6 credits for future trades.

The second big problem relies on the necessity to be in front of your computer at all times if you want to get customers. As you can imagine, this would be a huge amount of work for only one person who owns a store at Magic Online. This way, it is not strange that your store is not directly managed by you, but by a bot.

What is a bot?

A bot is a sophisticated special software that manages all purchases and sales of your store at Magic Online. You may think of it as a tireless shopkeeper which replaces you when doing all the tasks required by your store, works 2
4 hours a day and asks you nothing in return. To give you an idea, I introduce you a list of tasks managed by a bot:

• Continuous update of your inventory status, after each buy/sell or whenever you personally change your inventory.
• Track credit of each customer.
• Check the status of the Magic Online client.
• Automatic update of your ad with latest prices, state of the bot (open/busy)
• Notify customers the prices of the cards selected by them for purchase.
• Refresh the price list of all cards on your store inventory.

Although you can add more tasks, the previous list summarizes the most relevant ones. For many of them, the robot needs to move the mouse, send clicks and keyboard commands. For this reason, an operating system that uses a robot should not be used for any other task and must be only running your store at Magic Online. Fortunately, this problem has a solution that will be discuss in a future article of this series.

Which bot should I use?

Although there are some bots for Magic Online over the net, undoubtedly the most famous is MTGO Library. This software has the advantage of allowing you to customize almost any behavior you want for your store at Magic Online. Therefore, I would suggest you this software as the best choice to start with your first store. In the next chapter I will explain how this application works and what chances you have to create your store on Magic Online.

Magic Online Economy: Fundamentals

We host the first of a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a top blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.
You can read the original article here: 
http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/economia-de-magic-online-parte-3/

In this article I will talk you about the fundamentals of the Magic Online economy. With this information you will have an idea of ​​how to perform your purchases/sales of cards and the reasons that justify the price of a card. This comparison will not only be related to digital cards, but also between the value of an online and a physical card.

The main currency on Magic Online economy

Certainly there is no official currency on Magic Online. Since the beginning of the game the material was bought from the Magic Online official store, which can be accessed within the game itself. The only options available for sale are: boosters, pre-constructed decks and Event Tickets. These tickets allow you to enter at Magic Online tournaments where you can win prizes, and each of these items costs $1 plus taxes.

Due to the price of the tickets and their intrinsic value, soon people started to use them as the main currency. Their market price depends on factors such as the amount available on Magic Online, the number of drafts/limited queues to be launched, and recently also the high value of the mythic cards. Today their market price is slightly higher than $1 each, and it is unlikely to rise much more because if their value is very close to the official price ($1 + VAT) people would directly buy them from the store.

The evolution of prices

A particular feature of the Magic Online economy is that the price of each card evolves very fast. The reason is that the trades of cards can be done immediately without shipment delays, something that cannot be avoided on the physical market.

For this reason, the digital market behaves much more likely the real stock markets, and price changes are motivated by reasons like fear or speculation. However, in the Magic Online economy itself predictions can be made without being a financial guru. The important thing is that you must have a lot of experience in the game and know the cards, so you can correctly analyze the new sets and their possible interactions with the old cards in different game formats. In this way, you can overtake the market and buy a card that will be probably played (and, therefore, will rise in price) cheaper.

Giving a value to a Magic Online card

You might think that digital cards should have almost no value at all. After all, it is something that you can not own physically. In fact, your collection is not even stored on your own computer, but on a remote server managed by Wizards. However, if you look at the price of the cards at Magic Online, you can see that their value is not so different from the printed version. Normally, the digital market value is lower but sometimes happens exactly the opposite.

Why does this happen? Like I stated for the physical market, the value of the cards depends on many factors. Some of them are the same in both the virtual and real world, but others are specific to the Magic Online economy. Moreover, the effect of each factor is usually much larger in
the digital version because the changes happens instantly. Below I summarize some of them:

• Tournaments and prices: like the physical format, when a major tournament is announced for a certain format, the cards increase their price and then they stabilize again after that tournament finishes. Besides, when there are announces of drafts for a certain set the prices also get lower in anticipation of higher stock and less demand. And so on… 
• Reprints: Due to high speculation and the fast changes at Magic Online economy, the announcement of a reprint for a card makes its price collapse, especially if the card has a high economic value.
• Banning/Restriction: When a card is forbidden for using on certain constructed formats, its price usually gets lower because noone is able to play with it.
• Rarity: Although this is not a general rule, the rarest cards usually are more expensive and their foil version also have a higher value than normal ones.

These factors are may apply to both, the physical and digital market of Magic. However, there is another factor that, togeteher with the tournaments one, may have the highest impact on Magic Online economy: the redemption option.

What is redemption and why is it so important?

The redemption is an option offered on Magic Online to link the virtual world with the physical one, from both the ownership of the cards and their economic value point of view. Redemption consists of ordering a full set of physical cards to your home, only if you own all the cards of that set on your Magic Online account. You must have one copy of every card and they cannot be replaced by a foil nor another set version.

This option was introduced since the beginning of Magic Online to give extra value to the digital cards. Although nowadays the impact of this option on the Magic Online economy is smaller, it yet has a considerable weight.

The main advantage of this option is that you can buy digital cards in Magic Online at lower prices than the same printed cards. Likewise, you only apply the shipping costs once for receiving the cards in your house. Thus, it may be a very profitable option for collectors or even if you just want some very expensive cards of a specific set.

The main problem of redemption is that the big sellers flood the market with a huge amount of collections, lowering the price of both redeemed sets and those collected by opening boosters. For this reason, Wizards has recently increased the price of each collection requested the $5 to $25 (shipping not included). Although it is still an affordable price to individuals who wish from 1-4 sets, this new value limits the benefits obtained by directly selling the redeemed collections.

In my opinion, the redemption is one of the best options offered on Magic Online, and is also an excellent regulator of the economy. I could write a whole article dedicated to this topic, but I think I have offered you the basic information to know the fundamentals of Magic Online economy and how redemption works. In the next chapter I will discuss the profiles of players you can find on Magic Online. This analysis will aid you to better understand the market movements of digital cards.

Welcome to botrunners.net

www.botrunners.net is a friend forum mainly focused on business and on ML Bot. The forum launched one week ago, it's still pretty new but promizing: let's make it grow! Bot users in fact do not have a dedicated place to discuss, to know each other and possibly have business together.

I strongly think it will be wonderful to have a place where you can post suggestions, ask for advices, post your "hey, I sell tixs" advertisement and this kind of things. The official WotC forums are so moderated that you cannot even talk about bot, business and tixs - we bot owners deserve more.

Visit it daily, write there something - at first it will be boring because you will be "alone" but in 1-2 months the ML Bot user and business men will have a new powerful tool strapped on their
belt.

Collection valuation

Hello folks!

Long time no see.
For the new readers that don't know who I am. Long story short, I run 8 bots on MTGO and I started my botting business about 4 years ago.

Anyway!
I recently introduced a friend of mine to start up his own bots using ML bot. And he asked me how to get started, so I told him that the best way would be to possibly buy some collections from ebay or the classifieds board inside the client.
He answered me that it seemed as a good idea. Some seconds later he told me that he doesn't know what a collection would be worth and that he don't have the time to manually price every card. So I told him that I could make a program that would calculate the values for him.

We started discussing features that the program could have and started writing it down. So I've got a small list of features that this MTGO/ML Bot tool will have.
The first thing will ofcourse be some collection valuation thing. Based on the ML bot pricelist and the .CSV files exported from MTGO. At first there will be a quick overview of the collection, card count and values.
Later on I will implement some more details and also maybe some way to easily manipulate the personalprices.txt and personalpercentages.txt files.

So, the first rough draft looks like this: (So far only including a valuation tool, also no design has been done at all.)
All prices are currently counted from 0% CardsMTGO3.txt. I will add in a feature where you can set your own -+ corrections corresponding to your ML bot settings.

So, what do I want with this post?
I wonder if this kind of program is something that YOU want. If so, what kind of features would you like to have? I will hopefully in a short time have a beta version ready to release with the most basic features.

Don't hesitate to post a comment to this post or send me an email at mtgoswebot@gmail.com

Regards,
Sebastian

Ebay Auctions (Part 3 of 3)

Last time I began a story where a college student from Thailand was studying over in the United States.  He discovered that the textbooks he needed were cheaper in Thailand than in the US, so he had relatives obtain his textbooks.  Being of the entrepreneur mind, he quickly realized that he could purchase a lot of these textbooks in Thailand, ship them to the US, and then make a hearty profit reselling them on Ebay, to the tune of over $1,000,000.

Here is where the story gets interesting.   The publisher, John Wiley and Sons, found out about this little venture and sued the student, Supap Kirtsarng.  As is to be expected, this court case dragged on and on.  A US Appellate Court has ruled in favor of publisher.

Look man, we are bot owners.  What does any of this legal garbage have to do with us?

I’m getting to that.  See, the Appellate Court’s ruling has several implications when it concerns things like copyright and reselling stuff you previously purchased.

Back in 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that once the initial sale was made, the buyer was free to resell without getting permission from the copyright holder.  That book you purchased a year ago, you could sell on Ebay, Amazon, a garage sale, or simply give it to charity.  This is being challenged now for products that are being made outside the United States and if this Appellate Court’s ruling stands, copyright holders in China, Japan, Spain, Africa, etc would have to give you permission to sell it.

Think about that for a minute.  To sell that book, you’d need the publisher’s permission, in writing.  This is not limited to physical objects like that antique table your grandmother has either.  It would apply to anything made outside the United States.  Quick, can you name anything of substance that is exclusively made inside the United States?

Ebay appears to have taken the cautious approach of implementing this when it concerns things like the Magic Online cards which we all profit from.

So what is the future?  The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear this case on Oct 29th, and probably will make its ruling in June 2013.  This is a case which goes under the radar until the ruling comes and all of a sudden, well, you get the point.  I for one will be watching and will keep you abreast.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/your-right-to-resell-your-own-stuff-is-in-peril-2012-10-04

Ebay Auctions (Part 2 of 3)

Back in the dark ages of 1997, Supap Kirtsarng, a native of Thailand, went to Cornell University to study.  Nothing unusual there.

What is unusual is what happened after this. 

He soon discovered that the college textbooks he needed to buy, were substantially cheaper to buy in Thailand than they were in the United States.  So, being the economically conscious person he is, he got his relatives to buy the books he needed , and then to ship said books to him over in the United States.  This in of itself is not unusual.

Like most college students, he sold his textbooks when he had completed the semester.  Nothing unusual there.

Then his entrepreneurial spirit took over.  Why not buy a bunch of these textbooks for very little, ship them over to the United States, and then sell them on Ebay for a nice profit?  And that is what he did.  Very successfully as well.  To at least $1,000,000 according to some estimates.

So what does this have to do with us bot owners?  You’ll have to tune in next time for part 2 of this little story.

Ebay Auctions (Part 1 of 3)

A few months ago I was approached to buy an MTGO collection.  Nothing unusual there.

I used this as an opportunity to expand my budding bot empire. Nothing unusual there.

I then set up my bots to pull from this collection to fill up the holes in each bot’s inventory. Nothing unusual there.

When all of this was done, I looked at what remained. I saw a lot of potential play sets, which I can fill the holes if need be and then turn around and sell some on Ebay.  Nothing unusual there.

I ordered the bots to create some play sets.  I then posted them on Ebay.  Nothing unusual there.

The next morning, I received a pretty nasty letter stating that my postings were taken down, that these postings were in violation of the copyright holder, and that my account could be suspended or terminated if I attempted to repost these items.  I also was informed that in order to sell anything again, I would have to complete a tutorial as what I can sell and what I can not sell.

This is not the first time that this has happened.  I thought that might have been a little misunderstanding, some programmer went a little overboard removing digital items up for sale, or there was a snafu.  Last time, it went away in a few days.  After all, WotC encourages the secondary market.  However, this time, it feels different.

This has not gone away.  At the time of writing this, I checked Ebay for Magic Online items… Only 6 of them are posted and no doubt they’ll be taken down shortly.  This is a far cry when one would easily see hundreds of auctions for Magic Online material.

So what happened?  I think I may have found it.  You’ll have to tune in next time to find out what I discovered.