So I'm going to try to do some speculating this year. I've spent a good bit of time reading and thinking about my hobby. I thought I might as well see if I can make some money because of it. While I'm happy to play in tournaments and win prizes that isn't what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about trading. In my head I know there is no inherent value in the cards I play with. It is just ink on cardboard. But the use other people (and myself!) have for them is undeniable. There is only one real source that prints them so there is a stable second market for the cards.
I've toyed with trading in the past. I would try to make good trades but my mind was always focused on getting the cards I needed to build decks. Now I'm going to try something different. Trading for value. I just want to see how much I can grow my collection. Ideally without putting tons of cash into it.
I have set aside a small amount of my yearly budget for my hobbies and I'm going to see what I can do with it. The goal is to get enough value from this that I don't need to keep putting money into the game, but when I want to build a new deck I can trade away some of the stock I've built up into cards.
So why am I doing this? Part of the reasoning is just to cut down on the portion of my budget that gets spent on cards. The less I spend on cards the more I can spend on other things. But really when it comes to a hobby I expect to spend some money to participate in it. I play cards to relax, not to start up another job.
I like the idea of turning something small into something large. Hard work and intelligent planning are the keys. However it will ultimately end up taking up time. I could use that same time to make more money. In fact if I wanted to just be efficient I could do freelance programming and make more money (and therefore spend it on more hobbies!) than I could by grinding trades. So it comes back down to can I make money while doing something I enjoy. I don't particularly enjoy thinking about my full time job. It isn't something that has captured my imagination or my day dreams. But this game has.
I think this will be fun experiment. Hopefully I don't bust out early, but we'll see. I have a spreadsheet ready to track all my purchases and plot the changing values of my investments. I've watched a couple of other people do something similar (though with varying levels of dedication) and even seen a few challenges to see who could get the greatest value over time.
If anyone else is interested in comparing notes or trying a challenge I'd definitely be up for it. Hopefully I'll be able to learn enough from them to extrapolate about other trends or vice versa. It's interesting to be involved in something that isn't purely mechanical but depends on the decisions of other people as the driving force behind the changing values.
*Edit* 02/01/2013 I was able to attend my first event where I was really prepared for trading. I was able to increase my collection value from $450 to $550. I did shift a good bit of that value (a little over $100) into longer term investments. I expect them to double in price but it will take a little over 10 months for that to happen. Since that was roughly the 'profit' from last night I don't feel bad. I still have plenty of stuff in the binder that is worth trading. I did end up building a deck that carries about $200 of the collection in it so I want to put more thought into whether or not it is worth it. Luckily $100 of that $200 are the long term investments so it's not as big a portion of my trade stock as it looks like at first.
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