2018 is the year of diversified MS

Introduction

I had written 2016 was the year of reselling and 2017 was the year of GC churning.  I know DOC said 2016 was the year of GC churning, but I think that’s when it was still ‘underground’ and every deal was at least break even (most profitable.)  In 2017, more people were doing it as MS avenues dried up and you were losing at least 1 percentage on every GC flip.  Now there seems to be more sellers of GCs than there is demand for them.  It’s rare to find a break-even deal these days.  The days of going HAM on a Staples iTunes deal is over.  With the death of PPDG 5X, there went very easy pajama points.  I’m not saying GC churning is dead; I’m just saying you may need to diversify your MS methods.

Death of scalable MS

When the USPS hardcoded their system not to take GC’s anymore, that knocked out a lot of heavy hitters.  I myself have dropped my MO volume dramatically.  I know others who just quit MS.  It’s just no fun to walk into a Wal-mart.  I know some who still have friendly Wal-Marts and/or grocery stores, but the one who are doing mid five figures daily are doing MS as a full time job.  It’d be hard to run those numbers if you have a full time job; not impossible, but hard.

So what now?

• Ticket flips – it seems more and more people are moving into ticket flips.  That may be because of my own echo chamber, but I think more people are dabbling in this.  While risky, you can’t beat the pajama points element of it.  Plus, every new concert is its own unicorn, so you have countless opportunities weekly.
• Of course you can still flip GC’s. There are still break-even or profitable opportunities out there.
• The classic MO route is still available if you live in a friendly MS area.
• There is also investing in crypto (I don’t do this, but I hear lots of people are doing this.)
• I also do boutique reselling when the opportunity arises – Apple watch bands, SNES Classic, etc
• There are also pseudo currencies you can get into (these will never get blogged about.)
• If you look hard enough, maybe there’s still a unicorn out there.
• There are a lot of minor plays here and there that have inherent limits

I’m not saying you should get into any and all of them; I’m saying that if you’re only doing 1 or 2 of them, you may want to consider branching out into other avenues since you never know when one avenue will be shut down.  Or if you are into one of the methods, look into scaling up.  For example, if you’re into boutique reselling, think of how you can scale this up – maybe get a PO address.  That’s my suggestion for you in 2018 – try to branch out into other MS methods.

The line

One final observation – FM had a post a few years ago about that “line” he won’t cross.  I’ve been thinking about that more and more lately.  Since so many things have died, the game is pushing people further and further towards that line and in some instances, over that line.  I’m not saying you should cross it or go back or if you should reevaluate your life.  I’m just saying that as a whole, the game has definitely gotten closer to that line.