BlackLotusGo

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Happy Tuesday MTG peeps,

About two years ago, we were reading a tech article (sorry can't recall which one) about a new digital currency called Bitcoin.  At the time we had not provided much thought on it other than we applauded this developing technology to decentralize the control of currency from large financial institutions and from the vagaries of government.  Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks; managing transactions and the issuing of bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is open-source; its design is public, nobody owns or controls Bitcoin 

Fast forward to the autumn of last year when the world's first Bitcoin automatic teller machine was installed at a Vancouver coffee shop (Waves at Howe & Smith) right here in our own country.  Its use has since grown and users enjoy it as a convenient alternative to traditional banking as the transactions are instantaneous without processing fees appended.  There has of course been growing pains and because of the anonymity of transactions, has attracted a few baddies who use this cryptocurrency for illegal activities.  That being said, there is little doubt that this evolution is well placed to be the currency of the future.

We had recently been having some very interesting discussions with the folks over at BlackLotusGo.com who has embraced this new technology to become the one of the first online Magic: the Gathering retailers to accept Bitcoin transactions.

BlackLotusGo.com was started in January of 2014 primarily as a way to begin accepting bitcoin payments for sales of Magic singles, though the need for an organized website was well overdue after years of selling primarily on ebay. Bitcoin is an exciting technology for MTG finance, as its negligible transaction fees and ability to transmit money worldwide instantly are conducive to small-value transactions such as MTG singles. There is also significant overlap between the bitcoin and MTG communities, as both topics tend to appeal to similar types of people.

BlackLotusGo also happens to be the only store in the world offering to pay bitcoin through the buylist. In fact, for someone who already owns Magic cards, this is probably the single easiest way for new adopters of the technology to get their feet wet.

The inventory available on BlackLotusGo.com is still in the process of growing, but it is doing so quickly. Aside from the bitcoin niche, BlackLotusGo.com offers extremely attractive prices as a way to attract repeat customers, and regularly offers deals on hot cards through social media. In the long-term, the goal is to offer all Magic singles to the bitcoin community at great prices (as well as offering these good old-fashioned low prices to the rest of the MTG community!).

Drop on by BlackLotusGo.com and have a look around today.

BlackLotusGo.com
facebook.com/blacklotusgo
twitter.com/BlackLotusGo
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CCG House Interview

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Happy Wednesday MTG peeps,

Today, we've re-connected with long-time supporter of our MTG Realm blog, Shane with CCG House and took some time to yatter with him. Not surprisingly, after a truckload of interview questions, he turns out to be a very decent fella with a passion for Magic the Gathering and making MTG fans / customers pleased . . . here we go.

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MTG-Realm (MTGR) : And now we have Shane of CCG House, one of the leading on-line retailers of Magic the Gathering cards and gaming supplies. Welcome Shane.

Shane of CCGHouse (CCGH) : Thanks for the welcome and the opportunity to connect with your blog readers.

MTGR : First off Shane, we have to get the obvious out of the way . . . Boxers or Briefs ?

CCGH : haha, Interesting way to start things off. I like your style. Looks like Boxers today.

MTGR : Most escellent. Seriously now Shane, can you tell us a bit about how you first got into this business - were you a MTG player before you went into the retail business ?

CCGH : Yeah, I started playing MTG when I was 11 yrs old. I learned how to play on the bus ride home one day. My best friend is the one that taught me. Took me about 15 minutes to be completely hooked! This was about the time Revised was in print.

MTGR : Cool - Revised was waaaay back in 1994, and Richard Garfield was king of the collectible card game world. Personally, our first build was Urza's Legacy in 1999. Now tell us a bit about CCG House - you know - vital stats such as inventory, number of customers, number of annual sales, etc.

CCGH : We here at CCGHouse.com specialize in MTG. We do our best to keep all cards in stock from all sets. It seems to get harder and harder as time goes on, and as new formats come out such as EDH/Commander, and with Legacy getting support from WotC now. We continue to grow as far as gross sales, and number of customers daily. We just recently opened a larger retail store in July, and we got set up with the WPN and we are now running tournaments on a daily basis. Its amazing how quickly we have established the player base that we have. We are already getting an average of 40-50 players for our Standard FNM, and another 12-20 for the FNM Booster Drafts.

MTGR : That's impressive - a very healthy player base for Friday Night Magic like yours makes for great gaming. Where do you see the business going and where do you hope it will be in another 5 and 10 years from now.

CCGH : I see it continuing to grow like it has been. I would assume that the growth will slow down a bit at some point, but should continue to grow as long as WotC continues doing things the way they have been. The game has evolved so well over the years, and I am just so impressed with pretty much all things WotC does to improve and promote the game. I would love to see Worlds back on ESPN like it was before, but as long as it just keeps going the way it is then I wont have any complaints.

MTGR : We were tentative at first with the changes Wizards of the Coast were implementing but have to admit they've done a great job and almost every player we've talked to love the improvements. Anywhoos - Where are most of your customers coming from currently ? What's the breakdown ?

CCGH : We do quite a bit with International business, but I would say that the majority of our business is still done inside the US. Its getting closer and closer to 50/50 though.
We are quickly growing in the Portland/Vancouver area as our store has just blown up as I mentioned earlier. Growing much faster then I ever thought it would or could.

MTGR : We're thinking the players in your area must appreciate having a great store to buy and play at. Now a jump back into your past. What was the best thing that a customer ever said or emailed you ?

CCGH : We frequently get compliments from our customers and this is what we thrive on. Our number one priority is customer service as we know that you can shop anywhere online, but we want to give people a reason to choose us and then come back to us.
As far as a specific instance though, we had a customer call us up just screaming at us about some issue he had with the order we sent him, and he was cursing at us, and demanding all sorts of things. He was transferred to me, and after talking to him for a couple minutes he finally told us his order number.. It turns out the order was made from another store, and the order that was made from us was sitting on his table unopened. His whole attitude changed, and I assume he felt a bit embarrassed about the whole freak out that he had just done. He opened his order from us, and couldn't stop saying how great the order was packaged and the cards were in better condition then he ordered. I have never heard someone's attitude change so drastically in a matter of seconds. He then asked me what he should do about this other order and I walked him through the steps he should take with the other company. I suggested not yelling and screaming at them or it would be possible that they wouldn't do anything for him. He now calls us and makes orders just about every month. From what he tells me we are the only store he will shop at after that one phone call. I don't know if this is the best thing I have ever been told, but it was a pretty interesting store, and it is a pretty big compliment for someone to order from us once a month after all that happened with that first phone call.

MTGR : Dang. Very nice - We're thinking that you went above and beyond a typical level of customer service and won a loyal patron. Right - And how about one of the worst things that may have happened with a customer ?

CCGH : We were training a new shipper, and we normally upgrade packages over a certain value to UPS as its a safer and more secure service. Well we had a situation come up with the order should be upgraded, but it was to a PO Box. Well our shipper had forgot that UPS doesn't deliver to a PO Box so he shipped it out UPS to the PO Box. The order was then returned to us, and the customer called up very upset. After talking to him for a few minutes I calmed him down and explained the situation. The biggest problem was that he needed them for a tournament that was that weekend (2 days away). I told him we would reship the cards back out with express mail so that they would get there the next day. We did, and he got the cards as we promised. He called us back, and told us that we had dealt with the situation better then any other store he had ever had an issue with.

MTGR : Nice - Are you folks building a CCG House time machine next to get your orders out quicker ? Erm - never mind - your competitors may be reading as well.
Anywhoo Shane, thank-you very much for taking time out of your business schedule to talk with us and the very best wishes in continued business success.

CCGH : Thanks for having me.
You can connect with CCG House on Twitter and Facebook. Check out their on-line store HERE or their eBay store, or drop by either of their bricks 'n' mortar stores in the Vancouver / Portland, Washington area. They are open Tuesday to Saturday from noon to around (or often after 8:00 pm PST) and run tournaments almost every evening of the week. Use the handy Wizards of the Coast Store Locator to get directions.

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Anxiously Waiting

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Good Day MTG peoples,

You may have noticed the title of today's post, 'Anxiously Waiting'. We are, like many of you, in the middle of that imaginary and much fretful place of limbo in between the official release of a set (Scars of Mirrodin in this case), and the time where your internet orders come in. Please do not have any misconception - we love and support our local bricks 'n' mortar store and do purchase our Fat Packs there (~$45) as well as a booster pack ($5) every two weeks when we go to FNM (as well as a bunch of ad-hoc singles) but we have needs too and cannot be pinned down in just one relationship - yep - it's the dark world of commercial retail polygamy.

Anywhoos - back on track. We are waiting for our cards to come in from Orlando as well as Hong Kong. Both of these surprisingly will arrive at the local post office within a day of each other as well approximately 2 weeks after the official release. That is why we are anxiously awaiting its arrival - perhaps not the best word - we know they without fail will be delivered - it's just that delivery could take only 48 hours and we would still be climbing the walls.

Anywhoos - we had a bit of extra cash and got ourselves (for the first time) an actual sorted set - specifically, a Scars of Mirrodin 4 x Uncommon and 4 x Common Set which means no more calling buddies at an unsavoury time of 1 in the morning inquiring whether we could pop by and pick up an extra card or two from them. Right, you get the idea. Our casual magic buddy Norm had been a proponent of set purchases for some time and we finally took his advice.

To torture me (I strongly suspect this), the folks at MTG Mint card put together this video of just such a set order . . .

The next video here, again from MTG Mint Card is just pure cardboard p0rn - we don't want to become the next great mtg designer - we want a job (just for the day) when these guys get to handle the new cardboard when it comes into the office.

yeah - some of those Mythic Rares are just jank but dang! most of them certainly are not and we would (almost) be willing to give a left walnut to own 'em.

While we continue waiting for the pre-orders to come in, we will hatch plans and develop all sort of nutty and crazy builds with sixty cards.
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Random Bulk Lots

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Good Day folks,
We want to yatter to you today about the deals to be made from some online retailers.

We first started thinking about ordering sets or lots of cards - both random and organised sets after corresponding to our good buddy over at Casual Magic. We were a bit tentative about this but thought that this route may have some benefits over purchasing packs or boxes of booster packs. We had also read some good and poor reviews of this . . . well, this is ours.

There are 249 cards in Rise of the Eldrazi. More speficially, there are Mythic Rare, 53 rare, 60 uncommon, 101 common, and 20 basic lands. As we wanted to cherry-pick our rares after the release of RoE, we thought about pre-ordering a bulk random lot of RoE uncommons to obtain a near-instant collection of the latest 'n' greatest set. To this end we went to Troll and Toad and purchased 3 (three) X 50 Random Rise of the Eldrazi Uncommons - that's a total of 150 cards for $1.99 each (now $2.49 at time of post).

Here's the video dissection . . .

PROS
We rounded out our collection of the new set very nicely. We also actually received 157 cards - instead of the 150 - yeah(!) T'n'T get bonus points for the seven extra cards they had slipped into our order. We're not sure where you live but up here in the great white north, one can expect two things - polar bears knocking over garbage cans and expensive magic cards. Single uncommons usually run around $1 each and more if they are rather good cards. Having puchased a bulk random lot essentially saved us close to $120 for 150 cards after factoring in shipping up here - a very decent deal.

CONS
These are a random bulk purchase so expect random - multiples of one card and none of others - even with three lots purchased. Absent cards of note - Soulbound Guardians, Time of Heroes, Wall of Omens (!), Inquisition of Kozilek , Jaddi Lifestrider, Joraga Treespeaker, Pelakka Wurm, Enatu Golem, and Skittering Invasion. If you really want to get a hold of a specific card in a random lot, just simply purchase the single and don't hope you will get what you want.

Here are the details of what we received in three 50-card uncommon lots.

TOTALS
Count Name
3 Affa Guard Hound White
1 Emerge Unscathed White
2 Kabira Vindicator White
4 Luminous Wake White
4 Mammoth Umbra White
4 Oust White
0 Soulbound Guardians White
3 Survival Cache White
0 Time of Heroes White
0 Wall of Omens White
4 Crab Umbra Blue
2 Domestication Blue
2 Drake Umbra Blue
1 Enclave Cryptologist Blue
2 Guard Gomazoa Blue
2 Hada Spy Patrol Blue
3 Merfolk Skyscout Blue
3 Phantasmal Abomination Blue
1 Reality Spasm Blue
5 Unified Will Blue
3 Arrogant Bloodlord Black
2 Corpsehatch Black
2 Curse of Wizardry Black
7 Escaped Null Black
0 Inquisition of Kozilek Black
5 Nirkana Cutthroat Black
4 Pawn of Ulamog Black
2 Skeletal Wurm Black
2 Suffer the Past Black
4 Virulent Swipe Black
1 Akoum Boulderfoot Red
7 Brimstone Mage Red
5 Explosive Revelation Red
4 Forked Bolt Red
4 Lust for War Red
5 Rapacious One Red
3 Soulsurge Elemental Red
4 Surreal Memoir Red
2 Traitorous Instinct Red
3 Valakut Fireboar Red
2 Beastbreaker of Bala Ged Green
5 Boar Umbra Green
2 Bramblesnap Green
4 Broodwarden Green
2 Gravity Well Green
4 Irresistible Prey Green
0 Jaddi Lifestrider Green
0 Joraga Treespeaker Green
0 Pelakka Wurm Green
3 Prey's Vengeance Green
2 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Dreamstone Hedron
0 Enatu Golem
4 Not of This World
2 Ogre's Cleaver
1 Pathrazer of Ulamog
3 Pennon Blade
3 Runed Servitor
0 Skittering Invasion
4 Warmonger's Chariot
157

Summary - this is a decent deal - make tracks now. These guys had fast shipping and were the first to get to my door. There was a small issue with a customs brokerage fee as it had come across the border but it was put to bed by the great folks at Troll and Toad in a efficient and effective manner.
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