most cost effective way to build your collection

[codifies]

I'm mainly playing commander format, and only had a handful of games, a friend very kindly cobbled together enough cards for me to build a green black deck, but it wasn't legal because of some hybrid colour identity issues (thankfully I now have a better grasp on using this sites rather nice deck builder tools!)

So, I decide to buy a couple of booster packets (strixhaven 15-card draft and kaldheim 12-card) well much to my delight I got one legendary worth nearly as much as I paid for both packs (can't see that happening often!)

I ended up giving this card to my mate, as to be honest it didn't fit my deck and was a very high mana cost, and besides he'd just gifted me a very nearly complete deck!!!

This did get me thing about what is the most cost effective way of building my collection (on a budget) I did flirt with the idea of a job lot on ebay, but they are sure to NOT have any very valuable cards in them...

So my thought is to stick with booster packets (any advantage to draft boosters?) then at least I have the small chance of getting lucky and slapping a big smile on my face...!

So with all that in mind, and looking for what I'm aiming at, what's the best bet, if I want a collection with enough flexibility be able to build decks from any colour or even hybrid mana or different theme etc

[CleanBelwas]

This is a very interesting question.

The truth is, there isn't one correct answer, but a lot of potential avenues to explore. The key is to find the one that works for you.

Bulk buys and job lots can be very hit and miss. Chances are, if the person selling knows anything about the value of the cards they had, they won't be selling them as part of a bulk buy, or the price of the bulk will be reflective of the contents inside. It is possible to get lucky (for example, I inherited a friends collection a few years back that had around a dozen or so cards worth upwards of £50 each, and plenty in the £5-£10 range), but not common.

Buying booster packs is only really a good idea if you enjoy it or are using them to draft with. They are not a good way to get specific cards and you will likely end up with a lot of cards you will never touch again. One thing my playgroup does is split a box or two whenever a set we are interested in comes out. We do a night of drafting and keep all of our pulls for our collections. It's a nice way to get the best of both worlds. If this is something you are able to do, it can be a good place to start as the fun you have along the way counts for a lot against the price of a box.

If you enjoy the excitement of cracking boosters (and who doesn't, right?) then buying them is completely fine, and like you say, if you get lucky and pull that one sweet legend you were hoping for, it feels amazing and will likely result in a deck you keep for life.

In terms of bulking out your collection, I think the best advice would be to buy singles. Obviously this can be quite a daunting prospect. Knowing what to buy out of the 25+ year history of MTG can be a minefield.

If you haven't already been introduced, I highly recommend checking out EDHRec (https://edhrec.com). This is a great resource for all things EDH related. It takes aggregated data from sites like Deckstats and collates it to show what cards people are commonly running in what decks. My recommendation would be to check out the page for your commander(s) to see what cards you might be missing as a place to start. EDHRec has built in pricing which, in my experience at least, is pretty accurate, so you should be able to tell quickly if a card is within your budget.

Additionally, EDHRec has a section called "Top Cards" (https://edhrec.com/top). Looking through here would be a good idea too. Again, you can see what cards are being played a lot and how much they cost (roughly). Picking cards from this list to start forming your collection would be a good idea as these are the kinds of cards that will be good in lots of different decks. You can also look at top cards by colour, so if you wanted to focus on the black and green cards first, you can do that too.

I hope this has helped a little. Good luck in bulking out your collection!

[ejtee]

I would say that buying any of the preconstructed decks would be a good way to start. They contain pretty decent commander cards and also allow you to play them right out the box. Then you have the opportunity to upgrade those decks or break them apart to upgrade other decks.

When I started playing magic, I did buy some bulk cards off of ebay. Unless you just want a lot of cards, I would not recommend. I only used a few of the cards I recieved and the rest were multiples of the same commons or uncommons. It introduced me to a lot of cards I never saw before, but I never really played with them. I remember buying the deckbuilder box, Im not sure if they still make that product anymore. That was definitely a great way to get some great cards for my collection.

I usually buy boosters because I enjoy cracking open packs and hoping to pull something cool. Lately I have been into getting the set boosters over the draft boosters.

I think the most efficient way to increase your collection would be to buy singles. You can take a look and see what you want, a lot of useful cards in commander are under $5. I personally do not buy any singles worth more than $5 and that has worked well for me.

[codifies]

For sure I'll be checking out https://edhrec.com/ !

25 years has resulted in a bewildering array of products...

I do get the point about boosters and duplicates, but they are almost designed to be adictive me thinks!

I really will have to look at singles, I guess the trick is to keep and eye on the cost total of the deck as i'm buildibg it...

[Slyvester12]

If you're looking to build a valuable collection, I would focus on reserved list cards. Most are expensive nowadays, but there are a few decent ones that are still underpriced. Eventually, they're basically guaranteed to go up. I grabbed several cards midway through the pandemic at very low prices that almost immediately spiked to 5-10x what I paid.

Also, staples for each color will occasionally get reprinted. Things like Sylvan Library and Vampiric Tutor are always in demand. If you can pick them up cheap right after a reprint, they'll usually shoot back up in value after a year or two.

[Morganator 2.0]

Most of what I'm about to say has been said previously in this thread, but it bears repeating.

Beginner Collection Building

You need to start by going in with a plan. Pick a commander you would like to build, build the deck on a site like Deckstats, and then plan out what you want to buy. Assassin's Trophy is very good removal but you might not want to shell out that much money. You have to be careful with spending a lot of money early on, because you don't want to buy cards that you'll likely never use or never trade away. Buying a commander pre-constructed deck is a good way to get your foot in the door without breaking the bank.

During this stage you'll also want to keep an eye out for good cards that can go in multiple decks. That way, when you get tired of a deck and take it apart, the cards will be transferable to another deck. These cards are often called "staples". Here are some staples that aren't too expensive and will go in many decks throughout your commander career:

• Arcane Denial
• Arcane Signet
• Chaos Warp
• Elvish Mystic
• Exotic Orchard
• Sol Ring
• Swords to Plowshares

Using EDHREC is a good way of knowing what the most played cards are, but just because they're popular doesn't mean you'll always use them. Some cards are overrated. Figuring out what cards are staples will just take time as you play the game more.

If you're looking for the most cost efficient way to build up a collection do not buy booster packs. It is very rare that you'll consitently get your money's worth by buying packs (some sets like Modern Horizons 2, are the exception). Buying singles ensures that you're getting exactly what you want instead of gambling and it supports the game store more than buying sealed product.

Advanced Collection Building

Once you have a number of cards you're going to want to make a trade binder. Never let this thing out of your sight; theft from trade binders is very common. I'm extra paranoid about this stuff so I just send people the link to my collection on Deckstats and let them pick out the cards from there.

When making trades, people will often try to match the prices of the two trades so no one is getting ripped off. The MTG Familiar phone app is good for this. If the cards you want are $15 and the cards your giving are worth $15, it's a fair trade... usually.

There comes a problem when there is a gap between the two trades. Let's say that you're offering $49 worth if cards and the person you're trading with only has $40 worth if cards that you want. Then you can do a "value trade" when you browse through their trades looking for another $9 worth if cards. Be careful here. Just because Thada Adel, Acquisitor is $9 doesn't mean that you'll ever use her in a deck, or that you'll be able to trade her off.

When I need to value trade, I go for cards that I know I'll be able to trade at a later date. There will practically always be a demand for cards like Birds of Paradise and Arcane Signet. In the before-times I would often trade for Smothering Tithe, and now look how much it's gone up in price. Knowing which cards are good to trade for will take experience, which is why I didn't include trading in the beginner section.

Generally though, trading exclusively for cards that you want for a deck is better than value trading.

[Judaspriester]

I really will have to look at singles, I guess the trick is to keep and eye on the cost total of the deck as i'm buildibg it...

That's most likely the way to go. As for expensive cards, ask yourself if they are really worth it. Some players (especially new ones) tend to value win more cards way to high, combined to enablers.
In order to make an example, take a look at Colossification. On the first look "woah, +20/+20! that means next to evey commander gets the ability to kill other players with a single attack". But if you take a closer look then, the tap clause really ruins this plan because a) you need addtional tools that allows you to untap your commander or b) you need to make sure that both cards survive until your next turn. Or to be a little more general: The more conditions needs to be fulfilled in order to make (full) use of a card, the less likely it's worth to spend big amounts of money for it.
On the other hand, something like Birds of Paradise may be an expensive buy, but its very cheap to play and really helps you with color fixing (besides the fact that it ramps).

Besides that, if you want to avoid expensive cards, it's always good to take a look for replacements. Those alternatives usally have some disadvantages (e.g. higher mana cost) but are often cheaper. In order to provide a quick example again, in stead of Counterspell you could also buy Cancel in order to lower the budget. Unless you really want to play on tournament niveau, there is no need to only only best in slot.

[Korlich]

Precons is a good way to start in commander and then supplement it with singles. Magic doesnt have to be extremely expensive unless you want to play Competive Commander (CEDH), or Modern. I play casual commander and Pauper (commons only).  Unfortunately some of the new commander cards are very pushed and expensive but that is WoTC trying to sell more I guess.

[paulusdeboself]

Like most people before me, I would give the advice to start with preconstructed decks. Until recently WOTC delivered four or five commander decks a year, but nowadays each standard legal set comes with two commander decks with it. Those decks don't have as much new cards in them as the mentioned 'bigger commander sets' but they are cheaper and have enough of important staples like command tower, sol ring, or arcane signet in them. And these decks play nice against each other.

If you are planning on building decks yourselfs, investing in mana producers as lands and manarocks is the best start. As said there are quite useful ones in the precons, but you could buy a quite a few other useful lands as well. I like lands like reliquary tower, rogue's passage because they have an useful ability and are cheap as well. And for other information on lands you can check this topic on deckstats as well: https://deckstats.net/forum/index.php/topic,55692.msg163560.html#msg163560.

If you're in to it, there are podcast and youtube channels focused on (budget) commander, like Commander's Quarters. The aforementioned site EDHREC.com has ways to select the cheapest builds of each commander and have article series on budget building.

Me and a couple of friends have started to build decks with only commons and uncommons now there are so many legendary creatures printed at uncommon. So there are quite a lot of ways to get started with building, collecting and playing, depending on how much time and money you are willing to spend.

[Bizmark]

I've been collecting MTG cards for about 5 years now. I started when I didn't have any money so couldn't afford any cards. I bought a standard pre-con deck and upgraded it with more copies of the cards I liked, these where cheap. The deck wasn't good but I learned how to play magic using it.

My first real deck was a mono-red aggro deck that was fairly janky, but it was a Modern deck, so it was FAST if it got the right draw. It also cost $20 for the full 60. A friend gave me a set of mismatched lightning bolts to upgrade it, which I still have to this day. I've been through the phases of: Being Poor, then getting a better job, then having a large standard collection, then moving into modern, buying commander pre-con decks, making budget legacy lists and all the while buying TONS of singles from online stores. There's a few thing I've learned along the way.

• The MTG secondary market is entirely fixed and controlled by a relatively small number of very large collection holders.
• If you're looking to buy in to expensive reserved list cards, you can't win at this point, the game is already over.
• There have been multiple occurrences of "insider trading" where cards spiked days before something new was spoiled that made those cards extremely desired

Essentially the game's economy is rigged - if you are worried about saving/making cash then there really isn't any way to game the system. I've been lucky to make a profit on cards that I have seen the potential of in new standard sets, then bought them cheaply to sell on later. However these individual profits don't make up for all the cost of other cards that I gambled on which never spiked. I'm looking at you, 13 copies of Disrupting Shoal.

Playing Drafts at your local game store will grow your collection, teach you more about magic and also let you see cards being played so you can really feel how powerful they are. It's also a very social thing which I feel adds to the community. I personally leave 40+ of the cards I draft on the table for anyone to take at the end and only keep the cards I know I'll play in constructed or will sell immediately. You can get a lot of cards this way and it's generally the attitude of most experienced players that own bundles of commons, uncommons and bulk rares is more trouble than it's worth - but will really help newer players.

Ultimately, the best way to grow your collection is to play magic - if it's with friends, use proxies of cards to test them out, then buy the card once you know you want it. Buying singles is the most efficient way to grow your collection with meaningful cards.

The cheapest cards generally don't get used, or get used in 1 deck. If you're willing to start buying Fetch Lands, they will work in all your decks, keep their value long term and also let you build future decks much more cheaply.

[robort]

This is an interesting question. You talking to build? To collect? To resell? To trade? To build one would just buy cards. To collect is again to buy cards especially if you are just collecting specifics. If you are going to buy to resell that is a different monster in itself. This is where you will have to do significant research to understand the entire market of it all. The buying packs to get the golden nugget is a no go. You just really won't get enough value just opening packs hoping to get cards to resell and get your money back, Buying bulk/lots from other people is also a gamble. However there is hidden gems in those bulk/lots to be gained. Buying the bulk/lots blindly is where you don't get any info and more then likely won't get any gems.

How I started my collection was I played loads of drafts/prereleases at my local LGS. If you get really good at these you win packs which help alleviate the initial price and you can gain some good valued cards and resell or trade them. I would also say don't buy cards when a set first initially comes out because price drops on a lot of those cards.

After that enjoy your collection.

[WWolfe]

Since you mention primarily for Commander, I would say buying singles is the most productive way to build your collection. I play primarily commander (some Pauper and "casual Modern") and I focus on singles because a lot of the cards you get in booster packs you won't use. I just sold five 5-row boxes of bulk commons, uncommons, and rares for $300 and bought a PS4 for my daughter. Those are just ones collected over the past 6 years or so since the last time I trimmed down my collection and sold off the bulk cards.

If there's nothing specific you want each month or however often you plan on buying cards, then just buy staples that will go in any deck such as the ones Morganator mentioned.

Beyond that, I would NOT buy cards when they first come out because they usually drop in price after hitting the market. The new card Damn for instance was pre-selling for around $25 when it was first spoiled. Now it's around $6.

[pizzacat]

Buying cards is a scam. Buy a bunch of bulk commons and print proxies to sleeve over them. Any other answer is going to cost hundreds and it's just a children's game.

[Loaded Shaman]

When I got started, I had an order of operations that helped me create a massive base of cards that I still build from today:

1. Starter packs/decks - these have the advantage of having a base-deck that has THE single most important element of MTG: SYNERGY between cards! Nothing says you can't swap cards out. Get an idea for how the deck you want to create works, and see if there's something close to it you can start to alter via adding...

2.Singles - my preferred route, TBH! I love looking up cards via effect or creating combos, then finding cards in like, the 0.20-0.25 range on CardKingdom. I've built some unstoppable casual decks for less than $20 total that have seen more use than more expensive cards I've had on my sideboard.

3. I'm not opposed to proxies at all; I have and use an Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and a Black Lotus, as well as an entire Power Nine for a sideboard - for casual kitchen table with friends. I also let them have access to those cards for their decks!


My goal is to just create and keep a massive back stock of cards from various sets, and let friends draft and create decks so we can all play and enjoy the game. Playing and enjoying the cards is priority over obsessive collecting to me, but that's just personal preference!


Play, enjoy, be happy! 

[The Golgari Guy]

Lots of valuable replies here, but I figured I'd say something about my personal experience.

I've been playing Magic since Onslaught block, but had hiatuses of several years in between. Two years ago, I got back into it after a ~7 years break and slowly started rebuilding my collection. I also mainly play commander, although I also occasionally play some Legacy and Pauper.

Anyways, here is what I can suggest based on what I've personally been doing:

• Avoid booster boxes: Cracking packs is fun, but it's rarely good value for money. Sure, you can get lucky and get more than box's worth in cards, but usually the opposite happens. Take a look at the series "booster box game" on the YouTube channel Tolarian Community College to see what I mean. That's why the Professor (the host of said YouTube channel) always recommends to buy singles. An this brings me to my next point...
• Buy singles: The best value-for-money way to build your collection is to buy the cards you want. Sure, it's less exciting (who doesn't like to crack some packs after all?), but it's the only way that insures you that you'll get your money worth of cards. Instead of buying a 200$ booster box hoping to get that sweet 50$ chase mythic, just buy the card directly. This way you'll avoid feel bads and get exactly what you want. We could also talk some "MTG finance" stuff here like the expected value of booster boxes, but this is more advanced stuff that you don't need to worry about right now. Also, as suggested by WWolfe, when buying singles avoid preordering, unless you strongly feel that a card is being severely undervalued. Usually, a cards' prices will bottom out in the 2-3 weeks after the set's release: that's when you want to buy in. Moreover, when buying singles, it is very important that you do the following, which is...
• Be patient and wait for reprints: Sometimes cards are crazy expensive because they haven't been reprinted in a long time. For example, Patriarch's Bidding was 50$ before its reprinting in Modern Horizons 2, but it plummeted all the way down to 1$ after the set's release. There are tons of examples like that, like recently Three Visits, Staff of Domination, Scroll Rack etc. If you see that a card is very expensive and only has one printing, or it has several but the last one was long ago, wait to buy it. Wizards has been reprinting valuable cards at an unprecedent rate in the past years, so chances are that if you wait a couple of months you'll be able to get the card you want for a fraction of the price.
• Consider precons: It used to be that commander precons were terribly built and not a very good value for money. However, Wizards has been improving them a lot lately and they became both more powerful and a better value for money. They are both a great starting point from a gameplay perspective and a good investment, since they usually end up being more valuable than the price you pay for them if you buy them at release.

So here are my suggestions, they are working pretty well for me! Hope they help you meet your goal.