[carnifexetal]

Yeah, the only independent guy I knew to succeed in this carried about $10,000 worth of cards on him from tourney to tourney. You really have to operate at scale for it to be worth the effort, and like you said...at that point, why not something else?

[CydeWeys]

It's more "worth it" if Magic is already a huge hobby that you devote a lot of time to anyway, and if your time isn't otherwise that valuable. The delta of the speculative aspect of it thus becomes a lot less if you're already fully immersed into it, already going into tournaments, already researching strategies and new sets, and already buying/selling/trading cards for deck-building purposes.

I made a decent amount of money off the MechWarrior collectible miniatures game back when I was still in high school. Well, I didn't "make" money, but I essentially got to play for free with a collection that was worth a couple thousand dollars, financed by making smart trades and selling miniatures that I wasn't using or had extras of. I spent a lot time selling stuff on eBay, wrapping packages and going to the post office; to this day most of my seller feedback # is still traceable to these activities. Of course, I was already spending hours a week playing this game in hobby shops and hours more participating in online forums.