Where do you get your cards?

[SimpleHiker]

In light of the crazy The Hive sale on eBay thread; I was wondering where and what resources people used to obtain cards. Hopefully we can get some respectable online dealers listed and or some good resources.

Local sports cards show at Gibraltar Trade Center in Michigan (www.gibraltartrade.com) - Best place for boxes hands down, 70-75 bucks a pop, no tax. This is the first place I go to pick up any interesting cards for new sets. All the dealers live on shoestring so they will deal with you like crazy to sell cards. Also a good place to pick up old random junk for sets.
 
ebay.com - Good for picking up random junk for collections (other then alpha The Hive) the problem I have most is people set there junk cards with too high of a reserve and won't sell. I also tend to pick up common and uncommon sets here for my collections.

Magic Online Traders League (http://magictraders.com/) - I don't really trade here much because people can really be spaz about there cards and what the think they are worth. The sales forum is a different story. Any new uncommon or rare that isn't seeing 3133t play in type 2 goes for a very low price here. Good way to pick up random cheap type 1 staples.

trollandtoad.com - This is the cheapest resource I have found for sleeves. I just order a truckload at a time to save on shipping.

Trade isn't too bad at my local shops. Most of the better players are protour wannabees so they only hunt down Type 2 and Extended junk. Problem is there is a huge shortage of Vintage cards in the area.

[Kowal]

SamiteDealer has a fairly ridiculous collection.  He shows up to most northeastern events and some of the big Cons too.   He tends to spend more time trading than playing, and even has his own booth at Waterburies.

[Jacob Orlove]

SamiteDealer has a fairly ridiculous collection.  He shows up to most northeastern events and some of the big Cons too.   He tends to spend more time trading than playing, and even has his own booth at Waterburies.

He'll have a booth at Endicott, too, silly (that's the TMD Champs tournament next weekend, for those not "in the know").

[rocknrossi]

Samite Healer and Josh O our local friendly dealer in Binghamton will both have booths from what I hear. So you wanna get good stuff you people can come to Endicott pick up any card you need esentially for the tournament that day before they even play.

[savekeeper]

I get most of my stuff from:

Friends : this is where I get most of my multiplayer junk rares and also a ton of other stuff.

Nedermagic.nl :  a Dutch version of Starcitygames.com. It doesn't have the article amount or quality of Starcitygames but it does have the highprices and a trading forum. This is where I used to get most of my tournament cards and still do once in a while.

Cardexchange.com : another dutch websites, this one only sells cards. This is where I get a ton of commons and uncommons because most of them are verry cheap.

Ebay.com : here I get most of my T1 cards such as duals, FoWs, wasteland etc.

Local store : I got my signed nm Unl. Time Walk here, but I mostly play there instead of trading a lot.

[Royal Ass.]

if you are patient you can pick up power from people at tournaments who wanna sell their stuff quick and dont deal with e bay.  i picked up a nm mox emerald and an english mana drain last sunday at the pre release for 280 and then sold the mox for 300 on monday the next day on e bay, essentialy netting a free mana drain.

the guy was selling so many damn cards that he ended up paying 50  dollars to the event to "open shop" so he could make his transactions legally.

 this is how i have picked up all of my power cards.  the only one i bought at a store was my first lotus which i got for a good price comparable to what it would have gone for on e bay.  

Just remembered that i bought a library on e bay.

[sa17dk]

Don at Frank and Son's.

NEVER buy at Shuffle and Steal.

[xthexpunisherx]

I personally like Cardshark.com its not good for getting power etc but its good for picking up random rares, sideboard favorites (REBs, BEBs, Tormod's etc.)  And for picking up 2nd/3rd tier rares/uncommons (welders, piledrivers etc).  It doesn't always have the best prices but the best part is finding something you want from a seller and then looking through the rest of his collection for good deals (mmm $1.50 balance).   The only thing is you MUST have PayPal to register!

[MisterShark]

Check BlackBorder.com: a search engine which compares the prices of many online merchants.

[proGaming]

If you buy anywhere but MOTL/eBay/and random people at GPs/PTQs then you're silly.

[jpmeyer]

Star City

[rozetta]

Trading here is crap. There are not many players, most play type 2 and everyone hoards their good cards. People even overvalue their crap rares because of the local card prices. Local card shop prices are high. I've never been to a tournament large enough to where there were trader booths here. The local "auction" site is high-priced. Hence, I pretty much only use eBay. Actually, buying packs and boxes of cards is pointless due to the crap trading, so I only buy the singles I think I'll need when a set comes out.

And now for the topical-joke-of-the-week:
I just spent $85 on CoK

[SimpleHiker]

Star City

Is that a contracted celebrity endorsement? Will JP soon be playing magic  only wearing Nike shoes while eating Wheaties?

SH

[Jacob Orlove]

They pay writers in store credit, so obviously that's where he gets his cards.

[MisterShark]

Star City

Yes, yes; and if you're looking for an economical, fuel-efficient car, please allow JP to suggest a Hummer...

[Kowal]

For non big-name stuff, SCG is quite reasonable.  Not to mention, they give a good number of people on TMD money to send them articles, so we get to trade like an hour of typing and revising for fitty buck of cardboard.  Go go gadget Starcity.

[jpmeyer]

Star City

Yes, yes; and if you're looking for an economical, fuel-efficient car, please allow JP to suggest a Hummer...

If you needed a car, and someone handed you a Hummer, would you drive it?

[Whatever Works]

www.coolstuffinc.com

This sight is usually pretty fair with most cards, and especially the cards that arent played in type 2. They sell power for way to much, but if your trying to get something like Sundering titan, or Crucible of worlds the prices are much cheaper then starcitygames.com by a mile, and anycraze.com is just an awful rip off waiting to happen.

[jshields]

I really like to support the local store where I go to, but most of the prices are about twice what I would trade or pay for online.  When I checked out Star City, I realized that the prices were even higher than the local store and really felt ripped when I traded a bunch of reasonably good rares that were easily worth twice the value when I requested for a playset of Smokestacks, playset of Howling Mines, a soldevi digger and a playset of Orim's Chants.  

Since then, most of the time I either deal with players or when they try to rip me using that obscenely overpriced Scrye magazine, I go to www.magictraders.com whose prices reflect what people have actually paid using Ebay and CArdshark averaging over the past month for cards versus what stores want people to pay.  Now that I do most of my trades online, I typically can get double my value in cards for what I offer in a trade.  I am a very satisfied magictraders customer and will continue to use them

[Upinthe]

Prereleases are without a doubt the best place to get new cards, except in the actual flights themselves.