El Yugoh Moderno

Exchanging your cards for another's, and doing so in a profitable way, is something that's difficult to master but yields limitless results. And, no, I'm not referring to ripping off little kids because anybody could do that. The direction I'd like to go with this is how to make the most out of your trades, and how to get the upper hand on cards and their values.

Classifications

When dealing with specific cards I'll give them two classifications: static and elastic. This of course, refers to how valuable they are when we're talking about price. As the name suggests, statics cards have a stationary value. In general, these are cards that from set to set, year to year, will not change price by a noticeable amount. A great example of static cards are holos from over four sets ago. By now, everyone either has those cards, or doesn't have a need for them. Once you get past the two-years-on-backwards mark for releases, you get the incredibly static cards. These will, almost certainly, stay at the exact same price they are now until the end of time.

On the other hand, we have elastic cards. Any card that could be considered elastic is one with a value that directly reflects how well it's doing in big tournaments like YCS's and, to a lesser extent, Regional Qualifiers. Cards are most elastic when they're brand new. For example, when a new pack comes out, every single card will usually be overpriced. After a few weeks or so, though, the card values will be based on how much they're used and how rare they are.

What makes trading so difficult is that being elastic and static isn't always black and white. Seemingly random static cards from many, many years ago might just skyrocket in price if they get new support in the future. Obviously I have to bring up Harpie Queen as an Ultimate Rare: it's a recent example, a lot of people know about it, and the price increase was insane. Also, I watched it all unfold, so I feel like I have some insight on the subject. The day that the Harpie support in the upcoming Tachyon Galaxy set was announced, people went ballistic. Whether it was a combination of several "pro" players posting about it or the general hype from the masses, one thing is clear: high rarity Harpie cards were the cards to have. Before I went to bed the night of the announcement, I saw Harpie Queen, in Ultimate Rare form, on offer anywhere from $11 to $17. I figured that'd I wait another day for the price to go down, and then maybe I'd pick three up. Well, little did I know that the next morning it had jumped to a whooping $60. In addition, all of the other hard-to-find Harpie support also rose in price, like Cyber Harpie Lady and Harpie's Pet Dragon. Later on in the article I'll go over how to predict which cards might jump in value, but for now I want to discuss the gray area

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