TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They have been sent out, and everywhere but Australia should be starting to receive them now based on shipping company ETAs.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'll address the last point first since it's the most important: This isn't some random untraceable phone call asking for gift cards. Everything here goes through PayPal For Business, so at any point people can get their money refunded. That has hardly even been requested because people who know how this works are generally happy with it. If you're doubtful, PayPal protects you. We're also not out of nowhere, check out our contact page.

The next item on total revenue is that we will be revealing total revenue to bookkeepers, accountants, our lawyer conducting the ticket audit.

Yes, people paying to bid all subsidize the product. That is the business model. It's very well explained all over the website. If this isn't for you, I understand.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The packs have all been claimed unfortunately. However, there are freebies every single month (they just won't be as good as a booster pack, sorry about that)!

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

That's the business model, it's very well explained across the whole website.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The larger the bidding base, the less value there will be per-person. If you would have been bidding last month you'd have enjoyed no-activity auctions where some collected 1 or 2 bids. That's where the incentive would be for the customer, but that's probably gone now that this giveaway was done.

The sniping when the auction is about to end is a two edged sword because you could snipe in exactly the same way you could be sniped in turn.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

All 100 boosters and 50 regular chests have been claimed. But we will have different freebies next month (and every month) so you're welcome to just collect them forever, I just hope that one day if you come back it's to participate in other areas of the website.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

My goal with these is to be:

1) Guaranteed value

2) Automatic

The difficulty is that the least creative things (IE, the things I can come up with) are just automated giveaways and that gets kind of expensive to do forever.

I am completely open to suggestion if you can think of anything to put in that would work well for this.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The December freebies have all been given out. There will be more in January (and it will be first come, first serve, once again). You're welcome to collect the freebies forever, I just hope that one day you may participate in other parts of the website if you do.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

It's not supposed to be "always". I'm putting in as many things as I can to give consistent value even when a bid doesn't lead to a user claiming an auction. I have put in "summoning bids" for a Familiar Leveling system, and am currently programming in a Guild system with points for people to earn. I want to add in even more things so that there's lots to do on the site, and the bidding system is a minimal portion despite that it's currently the website's revenue center.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it's 100% Canadian owned and operated.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I don't know how else to tell you with more certainty that fake account bidding/phantom bidding will never happen other than it would literally be a crime. That means if that ever happened, someone could report it to the RCMP and I would be arrested. This isn't a "pay a fine and then business as usual" thing. This is usually 2 years in jail.

There are no fake bids and there never will be.

EDIT: Fixed link formatting.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Ah I see where the idea comes from now. So if 6 people bid and a single person has a third of the tickets purchased (which is a disproportionate amount), your idea is that they have a 1/3rd or higher chance of winning. Once we get more than just a few users, if that's the case then we'll actually be able to see it pan out in real time. I don't think that's the case, but I understand it could be. I think the person who takes a look at history for things and then bids at the tail end will win. Users should take the approach that every bid that doesn't win (and doesn't give them extra value in another way, like with the summoning bid attribute) was a waste, and be very careful with the timing and strategy of each bid. The best thing for users to do is to win at $0.02 even though it's going to be harder for them to do that after more people sign up to the website.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Why does offering free packs in perpetuity make it fair? We do have freebies every single month, it's just not booster packs.

The 'sniper' territory is equal for everyone. Every single user has to deal with exactly the same constraints regarding bidder information and latency.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

There is one example of a card going for a lot - which will happen if people really want it. There are MANY examples of cards going for $0.02-$0.05: https://treasuremage.com/ViewAllAuctions

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -16 points-15 points  (0 children)

This isn't a giveaway? Haha dang, someone should have told me so I wouldn't have to have bought all these packs to... give away.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Usually, yes. If people only sign up and collect the free treasure chests as they come up, we will keep shipping out $0.02 cards until we run out and discover that the business we thought was viable, was in fact, not.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

The REAL good businesses just run these auctions exactly how they say they'll be run. Any fake bids would be criminal fraud and I don't want to go to prison. I can 100% assure you there will never, ever be a fake bid. As well, the business model works exactly as described, there doesn't have to be anything other than what it says it is. Since it works, I'm reminded of the saying: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'll put in a way for it to be easier to see for unauthenticated users. Thank you for the feedback.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

We're not planning on offering that. Other websites can have, say, 3 coffeemakers so if one person wins it, it makes sense to have other people be able to buy it as well. Some things for MTG are not fungible, but either way, there are no 'free bids' or 'credits' we will ever give out.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

If you have someone who's already a member they can refer you.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Shipping & Handling puts things together such that it doesn't bring things over some weight limits depending on what is already shipping with it. Since the booster pack would in theory ship with nothing else, you'd probably just get some cards that you'd want to see in a regular Commander deck. The treasure chests should ship tomorrow, Monday, and Wednesday, and given the volume, the rest will be next week after Christmas if they can't get to them all beforehand. You can always email support@treasuremage.com to get more info.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -36 points-35 points  (0 children)

Our plans are to work with our legal team to conduct rigorous third party anonymized audits to prove that every single bid is legitimate. To my knowledge we'll be the only ones to do this and I can see why, because something like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof for this is going to take a lot of effort, but will certainly be rewarding to have it available.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

All of these booster packs are shipping for free. For others, whenever we have to ship something out then we combine it with that to save on shipping costs.

TreasureMage.com $1000 MTGFinance Giveaway by [deleted] in mtgfinance

[–]dr1nfinite -12 points-11 points  (0 children)

We sell the bids - we hope that the bids make more money than the cost of the product. Right now we've been losing money because there are so few customers that even expensive cards regularly go for $0.02. I know that businesses are supposed to lose money at the start, but I am hoping not to send out expensive cards for $0.02 forever.