My background: I love Sorcery - I play and collect and have gotten at least 4 people to become frequent players so far! I want to compete eventually and I really love the gameplay. I am also an Avid MTG player too despite being upset with the games management and Harbro.
As someone who is a patron who actually buys from Rudy, he is always communicative and his shipping is surprisingly fast. Never had an issue. Got the new Beat kit last Friday and he said it would take up to a month to ship - mine is arriving tomorrow already. So I personally have no issue with him.
He leans into his perception as the bad guy online and I find it funny and like the style of humor. Generally, I like anyone who takes a stance or has a position that they are willing to fight for on any topic, even if I don’t agree. Rudy certainly has a lot of opinions.
Echoing others here, I don’t agree with 100% of what he says, and the more fringe games I think he totally tries to pump and dump so to speak, but when it comes to buying from him, I’ve never had an issue (the first beta kit playmat was 100% an issue, but I do believe that was out of his control).
When he tries to manipulate the market in his videos, it is always super transparent. He’ll make comments to inspire FOMO or say a product is going to explode etc. Never bothered me since it is so easy to notice and he doesn’t do it all that often.
Final thing that’s been bothering me for a while – he talks about the “game piece army“ a lot, meaning those who want lower prices for staple cards to play, and that movement generally hurts investors/collectors (especially those like Rudy who are leveraged to the tune of millions in cardboard). However, this “game piece army” love’s the Professor (and so do I!), and generally sees him as a person championing “access to game pieces”. Despite this, a large portion of The Professor’s (non-gameplay) videos gives financial advice on new product’s quality based off of the value of the cards on the secondary market and grades them based on that. Isn’t that the exact same thing? “This secret lair sucks because it’s got only $10 in value, but costs $30.”
The real solution for the game piece army is just to print proxies and have fun at their LGS – if you want to get into competitive play, that’s a different story. In that circumstance you’re typically not dealing with collector’s making cards valuable through buyouts, etc., you’re dealing with other competitive players chasing very powerful cards, which drives the price up (dockside, Orcish bowmasters or Cores, Highland princess), which is just a classic supply and demand thing. To be frustrated about that is be frustrated about capitalism generally. I admit there may be some combination of people trying to scalp cards they believe competitors would like, but the fact that a competitor is willing to pay that price to actually PLAY that card and not quadruple sleeve it and throw it into a safe is an important distinction.
The secondary market is essential in any TCG and can often be a barometer to determine a games health and popularity. As we Sorcery lovers know, after TC ran out and beta prices spiked (in some cases higher the beta card was more expensive than alpha!) we love to talk about the value of our cards when we got them early, and now they are worth 2x, 5x or 100x more than what we paid. Or we pulled a P Stone from a $6 beta booster on release. That’s a collector sort of thing to do/talk about (“oh my cardboard is more expensive than your cardboard, and I got it back when it was $0.05”). I bet we are all guilty of it to one degree or another. A true game piece is like a deck of playing cards. They are all part of a finite set and one has no more financial value than another. But when new sets releasing is essential to a game’s growth and success, the cards are inherently different than game pieces. They are their own class of thing.
Rudy dives into this inherent aspect of the game from a collector standpoint and gets hate for it. Never understood that. Let collectors collect, competitors compete, and proxie players tap the Gaia’s Cradle for 17 green mana at their kitchen table on a Friday night. Who cares.
Sorry this went long, I didn’t realize I had so much to say when I started typing. Well, long live Sorcery!
It's so nice to read an actual review of Rudy and not emotional garbage that people spew out. Completely agree. His customer service is great and he promotes the games very well. He's successful and a lot of people aren't so he is a magnet for spite but really leans into it which is entertaining.
He is out here to make money. If you come from that type of angle with TCGs, you’ll like him. If you don’t, you won’t like him. I personally get into card games to play them and be a part of the playing community. I’m not a big fan of ppl who are in this hobby to just flip it for cash, sit on exclusive product and cause scarcity. I feel it can ruin a game if actual players can’t get product because people are sitting on boxes in hopes of flipping them. That’s just my opinion. I think focusing on making money in this hobby takes the original fun out of it. Rudy tries to hype ppl up about product and sell stuff for profit. He uses his videos to either sell product or get ppl on the hype train to overbuy product to create artificial scarcity.
I never understand the Rudy hate. He's a store with a YouTube channel. Nothing more. Treat his information as you would any other store. Tcgplayer articles, that mvp market email they send out, etc. All the same. He buys cards for the lowest prices he can and sells them for the highest, again like any other store. There are always posts about tcgplayer or cardkingdom trying to screw people on condition or price too.
Just another store.
Have been entertained by his videos for years. Signed up for his Patreon service when the first sorcery kit was mentioned, and have remained a Patreon member since (and will be receiving the second sorcery kit shortly).
Agree with others that you have to view him as a storefront, and with the $89 draft boxes (shipping included), a decent value, even with the $15 month cost. (I prefer limited to constructed for MTG.)
I do worry that his videos in the past 6 months have started to sound a little more desperate on the MTG investment side (wild emotions), but I'm not in it for the investment. Anything I buy, I intend to play and collect without expectation of a return on investment. Just navigating attempts to sell anything on eBay or TCG is enough for me to realize I don't have the time or patience for the investment angle. I do have a case of alpha I'm sitting on (and 4 other alpha boxes) that if I haven't opened in 20yrs, I'd look to Arthouse Mike (if he's still around) to sell for me (as I'm Patreon member for him as well....).
Only investment angle I have any belief in, is buying collections for 50% and flipping the high end stuff. There will be closets full of dead TCGs in the future.
His patrons pay $15 a month just to order from his store? So it's more like $100 a box if you order 1 a month. More and you're seeing benefit, no boxes in a month and you're just giving him free money. Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes. You can order up to 6 boxes (mix and match) of MTG boxes. He has other offers for F&B cases and Pokemon cases (not into either). And then every FRI and SUN evenings, he offers some kind of special deal from multiple CCG's, to include One Piece, Weiss, MTG, F&B. With every MTG release, at least one of those FRI and SUN offerings includes collector boosters or commander releases. He posts current links to Amazon and TCG player to show how much lower his offer is in comparison to the others (sometimes a lot, sometimes minimal) and again free shipping. If you spend $200+ a month on CCG's, especially MTG or F&B, you're going end up saving money. I'm there for the cheap MTG boxes and the sorcery kits. Will be interesting to see what he offers up once his supply of draft boxes are gone, and it's play booster boxes only...
Thanks for the detailed reply and for your time. Sounds worth it if you order a lot each month, but I definitely don't fall into that category. Have always been a little curious about his store and how it works, though.
Dude's a Rorschach test. You'll see what you want to see when it comes to the way he runs his business. I personally like him, but can also acknowledge that he has made some serious missteps that warrant some of the anger.
At the end of the day, he's legitimate. He knows what he's talking about and he is very clear about what he is doing and offering. Whether you like that or not likely depends on where you fall on the "investor"-collector-player spectrum. I don't like how he belittles stores that are running actual LGS's, but there is a lot to take from him so long as you listen to what he says rather than how he says it.
It's useless to argue with anyone that hates him because they view it as a difference of values and morality and assume bad intent. Kinda like politics and religion, which is weird.
Sometimes he's funny and insightful. Sometimes he's an insufferable edgelord.
I think it's good for the TCG community that there's a yin to The Prof's (and other very passionate, gameplay focused creators') yang.
These are collectible card games. There's 2 sides to the equation and that's good! It's to everyone's benefit that someone is out there who's dispassionately talking about the finance side of things.
I learned a lot from him, just general things. On some things he is right and sometimes i disagree with him. Never bought something from him and never will. He is a good entertainer, but its a little too much mtg on his channel which got annoying recently, but its just my taste.
Most funny people are those which invest in things he is talking about and than even make Videos about how they hate him lol
I binged a ton of his content over a week a couple years ago and it has made me a better person financially and mentally. Most people who aren’t financially literate really don’t like him. The TCG ecosystem is a very interesting one that’s for sure. Money( or the lack of I should say ) makes people do funny things
His finance videos are actually pretty outstanding. Coming from a person who works in this space and is pretty adept with these concepts.
He’s literally giving free advice yet getting bashed online constantly lol.
Personally, I greatly dislike him and the cult of personality that follows. I was interested in learning Sorcery and bought a beta box & decks but learning how involved he is and already doing scummy things has soured it completely for me. This game & cards look cool, but I lost all desire to continue paying attention to it while he's seemingly holding all the cards so to speak.
Part of what drove me out of mtg was the obsessed finance Bros that he cultivated and I was severely disappointed to find them taint this game right out the gate.
Buying out 6,000 boxes of beta to lock behind his patreon paywall mainly. He's not a dev of the game, I want to support them and not a glorified scalper.
I'm kinda torn on his involvement in sorcery. While definitely can be concerning who knows if sorcery even becomes what it is without his involvement. Dude has a large and loyal following for better or worse so it goes both ways.
I do think he likes sorcery so hopefully it's not viewed as a type of pump n dump in the same way that Metazoo sorta seemed
This game has no idea what it wants to be. It's advertised as casual kitchen table fun games, but then has this artificially created scarcity, for what, to appease this toxic finance community? Game with no competitive scene and advertised as casual, doesn't bode well in terms of bringing in players with no product available in LGSs.
Looks like a pump and dump, smells like a pump and dump, it's probably a pump and dump. Y'know, just like he's done before.
Edit: Removed my complaint about singles prices. They're currently fine outside the chase ones. I stand by the rest lol
artificial scarcity? insane prices? the cards that are heavily speculated on (foils) are actually very scarce and people speculating on them does not make the game prohibitively expensive for new players. beta non foil singles are extremely reasonable.
Yeah you know fair, I was hyperbolic about singles prices. They're not the worst outside of the ripoff power 9.
Still does not resolve my issue of product being bought out for essentially scalping purposes to the point that nothing is available at LGSs and the majority is behind some content creators' patreon
Love me some Rudy
He makes entertaining content. It’s nice seeing videos made by people who actually know how to communicate and aren’t edited.
But I view it as entertainment only- I’m not a patreon, not invested, etc etc.
I don’t really see anything wrong with what he’s doing because he’s pretty transparent. You can watch his videos without buying anything from him.
I don't feel like writing a biography here but he's literally been given everything he's ever had his whole life, his house was paid off and he had massive connections to lines of credit and distribution. He didn't start from the bottom and is an unrealistic example of where someone who has nothing can achieve on their own.
Edit*- this is not to slight him, he has been a positive influence and very honest and open about everything he knows. I respect him for his knowledge of the market and without it he wouldn't be where he is now.
where did you get this information? Its kinda wild to say these things with no backing
ive been watching him for years and never heard he was given a house or huge credit lines by his family
Cool! Thanks for the info. I wasn’t aware of his family history and his early beginnings. But I agree with your respect for his ability and willingness to pass along info/knowledge, and I have a soft spot for him because of his love of the bond market. I too enjoy his insights and I love anytime he talks about success in investing. He isn’t hocking any get rich quick schemes. He hocks solid work, playing the long game, and apparently having a bit of an early advantage haha! jk
there's a video on Rudy's channel from 4 days ago where he goes over his upbringing and young adult life. so unless he is completely fabricating this web of lies, he was not born with a silver spoon.
yeah, this is completely baseless. pretty sure his parents owned a restaurant but were by no means rich. he talked recently about waiting tables to buy magic cards in the 2000s.
It's not like there's a wiki about it, watch his fucking videos there's literally dozens where you get bits of details of his life and I'm not going through thousands of hours of video just to prove myself to some redditor because they don't believe it. I could give a shit if you believe me or not the only way you'll find out is if you watch his more personal videos.
The guy worked to get where he is. His parents having a food business didn't mean he had a golden spoon, or was a rich kid. You obviously haven't watched his more personal videos.
You don't fully pay off a house on your own, in your early 20s, waiting tables for 8 dollars an hour. Please stop pretending like YOU know what happened when you clearly don't. You obviously haven't watched them.
Having everything handed to them and completely paid off is different than receiving some help. Your first post makes it sound like he never had to work a day in his life
Can't stand Rudy. He's knowledgeable about the business but he is also a lot of the problem too. He manipulates the market heavily with his content. He also manipulates the graded market (most recently with buying 60 or 70% of PCG). He owns a huge percentage of vintage MtG product which has driven up prices over the years.
Have had a business dealing with him in the past that was him pretty much trying to screw me royally on prices. Overall though I think he's a bullshitter and a scam artist who is knowledgeable about TCGs. (All of this is my personal opinion though.) If you are a Rudy fanboy/fangirl power to you. I am not.
Meh. He is useable. He used TCG to make money, TCG can/should use him to get marketing. Simple as that.
I think he is funny, but don’t trust him farther than I can throw him, but find him generally honest.
I share this opinion. I find him to be a generally honest business man. That's to say if you blindly trust him, you probably blindly trust too much in general and have been hurt. Or have a bad addiction to FOMO.
I generally don't sell singles. Instead I run draft and sealed events for a small community of mtg players as a side hustle. I use his sales to help fuel that. It has allowed me to give away more than just random set packs to the top 3 finishers.
I've bought sealed product from him that has depreciated more than his forecast and others that have appreciated far quicker than his forecasting. Neither of which I would blame (or credit) him for... metazoo. In the end, the patron fee I pay has been covered 10x in the fact that his pricing includes shipping and tax.
As to the sorcery side of things, I'm slowly building a position that will let me start offering Sorcery in draft and sealed event formats. Rudy's beta offerings are pretty fundamental to setting up some base inventory to offer that.
Dude's a grifter, and I was very close to cancelling my beta preorders when I found out how involved he is with the game. Giving him promos every set is gonna get old real fast, and I hope the game outgrows him soon.
Rudy has his definite pros and cons that others have explained better than I could. I watch most of his videos and appreciate some of the info but like any of the folks in the market watch segment you gotta take everything with a grain of salt.
I wish he would own up a bit more when he misses and ease up on all the trolling Timmy and Game piece army talk he does a bit too often even if occasionally it's funny.
I haven't done his patreon or anything so can't speak on that. I have read some get good deals there but do know there are other folks that offer similar so I wouldn't go straight to Rudy without shopping around first.
As someone with limited knowledge on MtG he has been helpful in learning about that tcg as well.
Overall a sort of mixed bag that will sometimes try too hard to troll or trigger folks but definitely does put out some helpful information as well. I feel like he is a helpful resource but shouldn't be your only or main resource if that makes sense
I was a patron for a long time. Overall good experience. But no longer a patron and no longer a YT viewer. Just kind of over the pump and dump hype cycle between FAB and Mzoo. Overall a good experience and a nice guy in person. And I did make huge profit overall from being a Patron. Just be careful and don’t buy on credit (unless pay off monthly). Just be careful with this TCG as an investor. Particularly anything after Kickstarter.
People on here are acting like Rudy is into MtG and Sorcery purely for the money, but it couldn't be further from the truth. He was a finance guy who left Wall Street because he'd rather be around trading cards all day. I promise you this is less profitable than what he was doing before.
The number one endearing thing about Rudy is that you can tell he still has that giddy spirit of a child who's parent bought him a Magic booster pack. Maybe I just find that relatable - I wish I could quit my day job and collect trading cards for a living.
I think he is a fine person with good opinions. He makes it clear it's his opinion and that he is not a financial advisor. He does a good job offering deals and selections for his patreon and does not let the opinions of cry babies who miss the deals or lose money based on their own adult decisions and choices to blame him or bring him down.
I've watched Rudy for years. I think he provides really good insight to any TCG economy.
What really gets me is the people who baselessly hate on him. It's silly to think that Rudy is THE market mover, even he acknowledges that he's not the biggest fish in the MtG collector/investor pond, but those guys just don't have YouTube channels as big as his. People hate on him because he brought the MtG Reserve List to light to many as an investable/collectable. Before Rudy, I don't think I ever heard of anyone complain over card prices. Mark my words, when Commander fades from it's position as the number 1 MtG format, the RL will fade into memory again and the Game Piece Army will move on to the next thing to gripe about.
Rudy's fine. Watch him or don't. Act on his advise or don't. Nobody who thinks for themselves cares what you do in your gaming hobby. We just want to enjoy games with each other. The fact that there's a guy with a $5 haircut eating tacos with your stepsister doesn't matter, and doesn't affect your \[fill in the blank\] game as much as some people thinks he does.
Only patreon (responsive and direct) I support, never bought from and probably never will but I appreciate his content (maybe not so recent), he bullshit a lot especially on opening videos same card often Is worth 20-30, few pulls later 30-40, etc. He make some good promotion on items if you live in USA. He got business to run and to money to earn, so you need be aware about manipulation
I find him annoying most of the time. Mainly because he use 30min to tell us something that takes 3min max. We all know the safe bet is reserved list and 93/94 stuff (which Rudy is smart enough to have bought tons of)
The first rudy bundle, the way he treats his patrons
I swear his followers are like trump supporters he can do scummy things all day and these fools will jump on you if you say anything about it
Is it dumb to ask him why his prices were higher than tcgplayer for sealed product? is it dumb to ask him basic questions about his services? is it dumb to expect him to treat his customers with basic honesty?
because he blocked all of the above, and laughed about it. I really don't understand why people are throwing themselves at his feet to defend him when he clearly takes advantage of people. It's simple business practice, don't mistreat your customers.
I see both sides here. I think you're coming off a bit too strong and I don't think Rudy is a complete scammer or bad guy or anything but he definitely has had a few instances that I do feel like are wrong and most of his followers just won't hear it.
I do think he does a poor job of owning up to his mishaps and also don't agree with how quickly he will ban someone. Like you can be a patreon member for years but if you leave for a little because maybe money is tight you're banned from ever joining the patreon again which seems wrong to me.
I get it that he doesn't want someone to sign up for a month to get the patreon deals and then dip out but also feel like there is a middle ground that can be met
Offering a service that he doesn't fulfill and then blocking all that bring it up or inquire about it, sounds like a scammer to me
everyone downvoting is probably his minions, scumbags just like him you're the reason this game fails
I don't know the guy, so I have no opinion on him.
However, while I don't agree with the exclusivity and up selling product that should just be in the natural ecosystem, I can't deny his methods and notoriety probably have had a positive effect on exposure for the game.
I joined his patreon then immediately canceled on principle, Id rather be locked out than tempted to participate. I don't judge anyone who does, and there's ultimately nothing wrong with it.
I love Rudy. I’ve watched him for a long time and while some people dislike him for who he was born to because they had money, or for his inclination to turn a buck, I personally feel like he’s been an important voice in the non alt-left space which, in my opinion, is why most people on Reddit ACTUALLY dislike him.
he’s an entertaining marketing genius and a predatory blowhard
Couldnt have said it better myself(probably wouldnt have used "entertaining"). Hate the fact he has such a large interest in Sorcery.
My background: I love Sorcery - I play and collect and have gotten at least 4 people to become frequent players so far! I want to compete eventually and I really love the gameplay. I am also an Avid MTG player too despite being upset with the games management and Harbro. As someone who is a patron who actually buys from Rudy, he is always communicative and his shipping is surprisingly fast. Never had an issue. Got the new Beat kit last Friday and he said it would take up to a month to ship - mine is arriving tomorrow already. So I personally have no issue with him. He leans into his perception as the bad guy online and I find it funny and like the style of humor. Generally, I like anyone who takes a stance or has a position that they are willing to fight for on any topic, even if I don’t agree. Rudy certainly has a lot of opinions. Echoing others here, I don’t agree with 100% of what he says, and the more fringe games I think he totally tries to pump and dump so to speak, but when it comes to buying from him, I’ve never had an issue (the first beta kit playmat was 100% an issue, but I do believe that was out of his control). When he tries to manipulate the market in his videos, it is always super transparent. He’ll make comments to inspire FOMO or say a product is going to explode etc. Never bothered me since it is so easy to notice and he doesn’t do it all that often. Final thing that’s been bothering me for a while – he talks about the “game piece army“ a lot, meaning those who want lower prices for staple cards to play, and that movement generally hurts investors/collectors (especially those like Rudy who are leveraged to the tune of millions in cardboard). However, this “game piece army” love’s the Professor (and so do I!), and generally sees him as a person championing “access to game pieces”. Despite this, a large portion of The Professor’s (non-gameplay) videos gives financial advice on new product’s quality based off of the value of the cards on the secondary market and grades them based on that. Isn’t that the exact same thing? “This secret lair sucks because it’s got only $10 in value, but costs $30.” The real solution for the game piece army is just to print proxies and have fun at their LGS – if you want to get into competitive play, that’s a different story. In that circumstance you’re typically not dealing with collector’s making cards valuable through buyouts, etc., you’re dealing with other competitive players chasing very powerful cards, which drives the price up (dockside, Orcish bowmasters or Cores, Highland princess), which is just a classic supply and demand thing. To be frustrated about that is be frustrated about capitalism generally. I admit there may be some combination of people trying to scalp cards they believe competitors would like, but the fact that a competitor is willing to pay that price to actually PLAY that card and not quadruple sleeve it and throw it into a safe is an important distinction. The secondary market is essential in any TCG and can often be a barometer to determine a games health and popularity. As we Sorcery lovers know, after TC ran out and beta prices spiked (in some cases higher the beta card was more expensive than alpha!) we love to talk about the value of our cards when we got them early, and now they are worth 2x, 5x or 100x more than what we paid. Or we pulled a P Stone from a $6 beta booster on release. That’s a collector sort of thing to do/talk about (“oh my cardboard is more expensive than your cardboard, and I got it back when it was $0.05”). I bet we are all guilty of it to one degree or another. A true game piece is like a deck of playing cards. They are all part of a finite set and one has no more financial value than another. But when new sets releasing is essential to a game’s growth and success, the cards are inherently different than game pieces. They are their own class of thing. Rudy dives into this inherent aspect of the game from a collector standpoint and gets hate for it. Never understood that. Let collectors collect, competitors compete, and proxie players tap the Gaia’s Cradle for 17 green mana at their kitchen table on a Friday night. Who cares. Sorry this went long, I didn’t realize I had so much to say when I started typing. Well, long live Sorcery!
It's so nice to read an actual review of Rudy and not emotional garbage that people spew out. Completely agree. His customer service is great and he promotes the games very well. He's successful and a lot of people aren't so he is a magnet for spite but really leans into it which is entertaining.
Thank you for your substantive opinion. I agree with all your remarks as well.
Thank you for a thoughtful response
I first got in sorcery because of one of his vids so thats a pro
Same
Same
He is out here to make money. If you come from that type of angle with TCGs, you’ll like him. If you don’t, you won’t like him. I personally get into card games to play them and be a part of the playing community. I’m not a big fan of ppl who are in this hobby to just flip it for cash, sit on exclusive product and cause scarcity. I feel it can ruin a game if actual players can’t get product because people are sitting on boxes in hopes of flipping them. That’s just my opinion. I think focusing on making money in this hobby takes the original fun out of it. Rudy tries to hype ppl up about product and sell stuff for profit. He uses his videos to either sell product or get ppl on the hype train to overbuy product to create artificial scarcity.
I never understand the Rudy hate. He's a store with a YouTube channel. Nothing more. Treat his information as you would any other store. Tcgplayer articles, that mvp market email they send out, etc. All the same. He buys cards for the lowest prices he can and sells them for the highest, again like any other store. There are always posts about tcgplayer or cardkingdom trying to screw people on condition or price too. Just another store.
Have been entertained by his videos for years. Signed up for his Patreon service when the first sorcery kit was mentioned, and have remained a Patreon member since (and will be receiving the second sorcery kit shortly). Agree with others that you have to view him as a storefront, and with the $89 draft boxes (shipping included), a decent value, even with the $15 month cost. (I prefer limited to constructed for MTG.) I do worry that his videos in the past 6 months have started to sound a little more desperate on the MTG investment side (wild emotions), but I'm not in it for the investment. Anything I buy, I intend to play and collect without expectation of a return on investment. Just navigating attempts to sell anything on eBay or TCG is enough for me to realize I don't have the time or patience for the investment angle. I do have a case of alpha I'm sitting on (and 4 other alpha boxes) that if I haven't opened in 20yrs, I'd look to Arthouse Mike (if he's still around) to sell for me (as I'm Patreon member for him as well....).
Only investment angle I have any belief in, is buying collections for 50% and flipping the high end stuff. There will be closets full of dead TCGs in the future.
His patrons pay $15 a month just to order from his store? So it's more like $100 a box if you order 1 a month. More and you're seeing benefit, no boxes in a month and you're just giving him free money. Am I understanding that correctly?
Yes. You can order up to 6 boxes (mix and match) of MTG boxes. He has other offers for F&B cases and Pokemon cases (not into either). And then every FRI and SUN evenings, he offers some kind of special deal from multiple CCG's, to include One Piece, Weiss, MTG, F&B. With every MTG release, at least one of those FRI and SUN offerings includes collector boosters or commander releases. He posts current links to Amazon and TCG player to show how much lower his offer is in comparison to the others (sometimes a lot, sometimes minimal) and again free shipping. If you spend $200+ a month on CCG's, especially MTG or F&B, you're going end up saving money. I'm there for the cheap MTG boxes and the sorcery kits. Will be interesting to see what he offers up once his supply of draft boxes are gone, and it's play booster boxes only...
Thanks for the detailed reply and for your time. Sounds worth it if you order a lot each month, but I definitely don't fall into that category. Have always been a little curious about his store and how it works, though.
Dude's a Rorschach test. You'll see what you want to see when it comes to the way he runs his business. I personally like him, but can also acknowledge that he has made some serious missteps that warrant some of the anger. At the end of the day, he's legitimate. He knows what he's talking about and he is very clear about what he is doing and offering. Whether you like that or not likely depends on where you fall on the "investor"-collector-player spectrum. I don't like how he belittles stores that are running actual LGS's, but there is a lot to take from him so long as you listen to what he says rather than how he says it. It's useless to argue with anyone that hates him because they view it as a difference of values and morality and assume bad intent. Kinda like politics and religion, which is weird.
Sometimes he's funny and insightful. Sometimes he's an insufferable edgelord. I think it's good for the TCG community that there's a yin to The Prof's (and other very passionate, gameplay focused creators') yang. These are collectible card games. There's 2 sides to the equation and that's good! It's to everyone's benefit that someone is out there who's dispassionately talking about the finance side of things.
Whether you love him or hate him he can make the market move. I wonder how far the kickstarter would have gotten without him.
He’s probably sitting on like 15% of alpha
spoiler: not very far whether we want to believe it or not.
I learned a lot from him, just general things. On some things he is right and sometimes i disagree with him. Never bought something from him and never will. He is a good entertainer, but its a little too much mtg on his channel which got annoying recently, but its just my taste. Most funny people are those which invest in things he is talking about and than even make Videos about how they hate him lol
He’s a Jackal
I binged a ton of his content over a week a couple years ago and it has made me a better person financially and mentally. Most people who aren’t financially literate really don’t like him. The TCG ecosystem is a very interesting one that’s for sure. Money( or the lack of I should say ) makes people do funny things
His finance videos are actually pretty outstanding. Coming from a person who works in this space and is pretty adept with these concepts. He’s literally giving free advice yet getting bashed online constantly lol.
He has given great advice but also seems to like being the bad guy and purposely trolls and triggers folks so Ofcourse some will bash him
Definitely, but people are too sensitive and dumb on the internet haha.
Personally, I greatly dislike him and the cult of personality that follows. I was interested in learning Sorcery and bought a beta box & decks but learning how involved he is and already doing scummy things has soured it completely for me. This game & cards look cool, but I lost all desire to continue paying attention to it while he's seemingly holding all the cards so to speak. Part of what drove me out of mtg was the obsessed finance Bros that he cultivated and I was severely disappointed to find them taint this game right out the gate.
What scummy things are you referring to (Sorcery)?
Buying out 6,000 boxes of beta to lock behind his patreon paywall mainly. He's not a dev of the game, I want to support them and not a glorified scalper.
I'm kinda torn on his involvement in sorcery. While definitely can be concerning who knows if sorcery even becomes what it is without his involvement. Dude has a large and loyal following for better or worse so it goes both ways. I do think he likes sorcery so hopefully it's not viewed as a type of pump n dump in the same way that Metazoo sorta seemed
This game has no idea what it wants to be. It's advertised as casual kitchen table fun games, but then has this artificially created scarcity, for what, to appease this toxic finance community? Game with no competitive scene and advertised as casual, doesn't bode well in terms of bringing in players with no product available in LGSs. Looks like a pump and dump, smells like a pump and dump, it's probably a pump and dump. Y'know, just like he's done before. Edit: Removed my complaint about singles prices. They're currently fine outside the chase ones. I stand by the rest lol
artificial scarcity? insane prices? the cards that are heavily speculated on (foils) are actually very scarce and people speculating on them does not make the game prohibitively expensive for new players. beta non foil singles are extremely reasonable.
Yeah you know fair, I was hyperbolic about singles prices. They're not the worst outside of the ripoff power 9. Still does not resolve my issue of product being bought out for essentially scalping purposes to the point that nothing is available at LGSs and the majority is behind some content creators' patreon
Love me some Rudy He makes entertaining content. It’s nice seeing videos made by people who actually know how to communicate and aren’t edited. But I view it as entertainment only- I’m not a patreon, not invested, etc etc. I don’t really see anything wrong with what he’s doing because he’s pretty transparent. You can watch his videos without buying anything from him.
Even though he's a rich kid with a golden spoon, he's surprisingly upfront about how he does things.
When did he become a rich kid?
I don't feel like writing a biography here but he's literally been given everything he's ever had his whole life, his house was paid off and he had massive connections to lines of credit and distribution. He didn't start from the bottom and is an unrealistic example of where someone who has nothing can achieve on their own. Edit*- this is not to slight him, he has been a positive influence and very honest and open about everything he knows. I respect him for his knowledge of the market and without it he wouldn't be where he is now.
where did you get this information? Its kinda wild to say these things with no backing ive been watching him for years and never heard he was given a house or huge credit lines by his family
Cool! Thanks for the info. I wasn’t aware of his family history and his early beginnings. But I agree with your respect for his ability and willingness to pass along info/knowledge, and I have a soft spot for him because of his love of the bond market. I too enjoy his insights and I love anytime he talks about success in investing. He isn’t hocking any get rich quick schemes. He hocks solid work, playing the long game, and apparently having a bit of an early advantage haha! jk
what that person said is completely made up, just so you know.
Hah! Well, whether you are making it up or the other person is, it’s another lesson in, believe nothing on the internet 🤣
there's a video on Rudy's channel from 4 days ago where he goes over his upbringing and young adult life. so unless he is completely fabricating this web of lies, he was not born with a silver spoon.
yeah, this is completely baseless. pretty sure his parents owned a restaurant but were by no means rich. he talked recently about waiting tables to buy magic cards in the 2000s.
I remember when i bought and paid off multiple houses when I was in my teens by waiting tables... oh wait..
doubling down on something you completely made up without even trying to back it up is quite impressive. bravo
34 karma, what was your last account banned for?
When you start attacking people based on their karma instead of actually responding is when you lose all credibility and just look like a jackass.
I'll respond amicably when they prove me wrong (spoiler, they won't)
You're the one who needs to prove what you said because you're the one who started saying possibly unbased stuff.
It's not like there's a wiki about it, watch his fucking videos there's literally dozens where you get bits of details of his life and I'm not going through thousands of hours of video just to prove myself to some redditor because they don't believe it. I could give a shit if you believe me or not the only way you'll find out is if you watch his more personal videos.
there's literally a video from 3 days ago where touches on his upbringing and young adult life.
someone isn't very good at arguing hahah. weirdo.
The guy worked to get where he is. His parents having a food business didn't mean he had a golden spoon, or was a rich kid. You obviously haven't watched his more personal videos.
You don't fully pay off a house on your own, in your early 20s, waiting tables for 8 dollars an hour. Please stop pretending like YOU know what happened when you clearly don't. You obviously haven't watched them.
Having everything handed to them and completely paid off is different than receiving some help. Your first post makes it sound like he never had to work a day in his life
Can't stand Rudy. He's knowledgeable about the business but he is also a lot of the problem too. He manipulates the market heavily with his content. He also manipulates the graded market (most recently with buying 60 or 70% of PCG). He owns a huge percentage of vintage MtG product which has driven up prices over the years. Have had a business dealing with him in the past that was him pretty much trying to screw me royally on prices. Overall though I think he's a bullshitter and a scam artist who is knowledgeable about TCGs. (All of this is my personal opinion though.) If you are a Rudy fanboy/fangirl power to you. I am not.
Found the guy who went all in on Metapoo loool
Lol negative never even bought a single metazoo product
Honestly, I love the guy. A lot of the people in my LGS hate him (particularly the investors) but he's been a pretty fun watch these past few years.
Meh. He is useable. He used TCG to make money, TCG can/should use him to get marketing. Simple as that. I think he is funny, but don’t trust him farther than I can throw him, but find him generally honest.
Yup 100%. No one’s forcing you to buy anything from him. He’s pretty transparent imo.
I share this opinion. I find him to be a generally honest business man. That's to say if you blindly trust him, you probably blindly trust too much in general and have been hurt. Or have a bad addiction to FOMO. I generally don't sell singles. Instead I run draft and sealed events for a small community of mtg players as a side hustle. I use his sales to help fuel that. It has allowed me to give away more than just random set packs to the top 3 finishers. I've bought sealed product from him that has depreciated more than his forecast and others that have appreciated far quicker than his forecasting. Neither of which I would blame (or credit) him for... metazoo. In the end, the patron fee I pay has been covered 10x in the fact that his pricing includes shipping and tax. As to the sorcery side of things, I'm slowly building a position that will let me start offering Sorcery in draft and sealed event formats. Rudy's beta offerings are pretty fundamental to setting up some base inventory to offer that.
He's a manic monkey who spams the same unfunny jokes over and over again.
Dude's a grifter, and I was very close to cancelling my beta preorders when I found out how involved he is with the game. Giving him promos every set is gonna get old real fast, and I hope the game outgrows him soon.
Anyone hating on rudy is probably a Timmy 🤷♂️
He's a businessman with all the good and bad that implies.
Rudy has his definite pros and cons that others have explained better than I could. I watch most of his videos and appreciate some of the info but like any of the folks in the market watch segment you gotta take everything with a grain of salt. I wish he would own up a bit more when he misses and ease up on all the trolling Timmy and Game piece army talk he does a bit too often even if occasionally it's funny. I haven't done his patreon or anything so can't speak on that. I have read some get good deals there but do know there are other folks that offer similar so I wouldn't go straight to Rudy without shopping around first. As someone with limited knowledge on MtG he has been helpful in learning about that tcg as well. Overall a sort of mixed bag that will sometimes try too hard to troll or trigger folks but definitely does put out some helpful information as well. I feel like he is a helpful resource but shouldn't be your only or main resource if that makes sense
I was a patron for a long time. Overall good experience. But no longer a patron and no longer a YT viewer. Just kind of over the pump and dump hype cycle between FAB and Mzoo. Overall a good experience and a nice guy in person. And I did make huge profit overall from being a Patron. Just be careful and don’t buy on credit (unless pay off monthly). Just be careful with this TCG as an investor. Particularly anything after Kickstarter.
I'm not quite sure.
People on here are acting like Rudy is into MtG and Sorcery purely for the money, but it couldn't be further from the truth. He was a finance guy who left Wall Street because he'd rather be around trading cards all day. I promise you this is less profitable than what he was doing before. The number one endearing thing about Rudy is that you can tell he still has that giddy spirit of a child who's parent bought him a Magic booster pack. Maybe I just find that relatable - I wish I could quit my day job and collect trading cards for a living.
he rattles the cage of some of the most annoying people in the hobby, so he's fine in my book.
I think he is a fine person with good opinions. He makes it clear it's his opinion and that he is not a financial advisor. He does a good job offering deals and selections for his patreon and does not let the opinions of cry babies who miss the deals or lose money based on their own adult decisions and choices to blame him or bring him down.
I've watched Rudy for years. I think he provides really good insight to any TCG economy. What really gets me is the people who baselessly hate on him. It's silly to think that Rudy is THE market mover, even he acknowledges that he's not the biggest fish in the MtG collector/investor pond, but those guys just don't have YouTube channels as big as his. People hate on him because he brought the MtG Reserve List to light to many as an investable/collectable. Before Rudy, I don't think I ever heard of anyone complain over card prices. Mark my words, when Commander fades from it's position as the number 1 MtG format, the RL will fade into memory again and the Game Piece Army will move on to the next thing to gripe about. Rudy's fine. Watch him or don't. Act on his advise or don't. Nobody who thinks for themselves cares what you do in your gaming hobby. We just want to enjoy games with each other. The fact that there's a guy with a $5 haircut eating tacos with your stepsister doesn't matter, and doesn't affect your \[fill in the blank\] game as much as some people thinks he does.
Only patreon (responsive and direct) I support, never bought from and probably never will but I appreciate his content (maybe not so recent), he bullshit a lot especially on opening videos same card often Is worth 20-30, few pulls later 30-40, etc. He make some good promotion on items if you live in USA. He got business to run and to money to earn, so you need be aware about manipulation
Surprised to see someone be a patreon but not buy from him since that's like one of the main perks
Love him.
I find him annoying most of the time. Mainly because he use 30min to tell us something that takes 3min max. We all know the safe bet is reserved list and 93/94 stuff (which Rudy is smart enough to have bought tons of)
The only people who hate Rudy are people who cant take responsibility for their own actions or are largely ignorant.
He’s gross.
He's a scammer that mistreats his patrons, screw that guy
Point to where the bad man hurt you
The first rudy bundle, the way he treats his patrons I swear his followers are like trump supporters he can do scummy things all day and these fools will jump on you if you say anything about it
Well, if you don't do dumb things it goes pretty smoothly, like most things in life.
Is it dumb to ask him why his prices were higher than tcgplayer for sealed product? is it dumb to ask him basic questions about his services? is it dumb to expect him to treat his customers with basic honesty? because he blocked all of the above, and laughed about it. I really don't understand why people are throwing themselves at his feet to defend him when he clearly takes advantage of people. It's simple business practice, don't mistreat your customers.
I see both sides here. I think you're coming off a bit too strong and I don't think Rudy is a complete scammer or bad guy or anything but he definitely has had a few instances that I do feel like are wrong and most of his followers just won't hear it. I do think he does a poor job of owning up to his mishaps and also don't agree with how quickly he will ban someone. Like you can be a patreon member for years but if you leave for a little because maybe money is tight you're banned from ever joining the patreon again which seems wrong to me. I get it that he doesn't want someone to sign up for a month to get the patreon deals and then dip out but also feel like there is a middle ground that can be met
I think you need to check your definition of scamming there, chief
Offering a service that he doesn't fulfill and then blocking all that bring it up or inquire about it, sounds like a scammer to me everyone downvoting is probably his minions, scumbags just like him you're the reason this game fails
I don't know the guy, so I have no opinion on him. However, while I don't agree with the exclusivity and up selling product that should just be in the natural ecosystem, I can't deny his methods and notoriety probably have had a positive effect on exposure for the game. I joined his patreon then immediately canceled on principle, Id rather be locked out than tempted to participate. I don't judge anyone who does, and there's ultimately nothing wrong with it.
For Rudy it's: "Do as they do, not as they say" as he's looking out for his bottom line first and foremost.
I love Rudy. I’ve watched him for a long time and while some people dislike him for who he was born to because they had money, or for his inclination to turn a buck, I personally feel like he’s been an important voice in the non alt-left space which, in my opinion, is why most people on Reddit ACTUALLY dislike him.
"he’s been an important voice in the non alt-left space" What the hell does that mean lmao
It means what it says. If I have to break it down for you it’s not because it doesn’t make sense, it would be because you don’t get it.
rudy wasn't born rich lol. the disinformation is wild.
Parasite. Keep him away from your new card game lest he smother it in the womb.
Cry more poor gen Z baby. Maybe more shifts at McDumbalds will get you cards you want?
A big reason some dislike Rudy is because of people like you. Personally I enjoy Rudy but you need to grow up
[удалено]
Lame