[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.