Track a Magic card's price and get notified of a drop

A card that is too expensive today can drop next week, and it can also vanish from the shelves. Checking every day the price of a card you have wanted for months is tedious, and you still miss the right window: the one where a store clears its last copy on a Tuesday night. The Tapt price tracking fixes that. You pick the card, you set the price you are willing to pay, and Tapt watches local stores for you, then alerts you on the site and by email when an offer drops below your threshold.

This guide explains how to add a card to your tracked cards, how to choose a reasonable threshold, what Tapt does when you set none, how often prices are re-read, how to read the history and the per-store detail, and how to keep your tracking tidy when the list grows.

What price tracking is for

Price tracking answers a simple question: from what price is this card worth it for you? You know your budget and your patience better than any algorithm. Tapt, for its part, knows the stores' prices and does not get tired.

Three situations show the usefulness of tracking well:

• The card costs more than your budget. You want it for a deck, but not at that price. You set a threshold, you keep playing, and you are told if the gap closes.
• The card is out of stock or rare. You do not know when a store will put it back on sale, or at what price. Tracking re-reads the stores and tells you when an offer appears.
• The card just went up. You want to avoid buying at the peak. By tracking its price, you see whether the rise is calming down, and you buy when the market relaxes.

In all three cases the common point is the same: you no longer depend on your memory or on your urge to refresh a page.

What Tapt watches for you

Tapt watches the prices of local stores, the ones you would compare by hand. Two things trigger an alert:

• Your threshold. As soon as an offer goes below the price you set, you are alerted in Tapt and by email.
• A sharp drop, with no threshold. If you set no threshold, Tapt still warns you when the price falls 15% below the lowest ever seen for that card.

The account is free and lets you track up to fifty cards. An account is needed because tracking is personal: Tapt has to know whom to write to. To create an account, no password is needed: you receive a link by email, or you go through Google.

Adding a card to your tracking

From the Price tracking page, the "Track a new card" button opens a "Which card to track?" field. Type the name, pick the card from the list, then set your alert threshold in dollars. If no card carries the name you typed, Tapt tells you, and if the search is momentarily unavailable, a message invites you to try again.

For a card printed in several editions, think about what you really want to track. By default, tracking looks at all the versions of the card. Once the card is added, a selector lets you display one specific version (an edition, a finish) instead of the general behaviour. That is useful when one particular printing interests you: the price of a sought-after version has nothing to do with that of a common reprint.

Search for the card in the comparator first: that is where you see the best price of the moment, and therefore where you decide whether to buy right away or to set a lower threshold.

Choosing a reasonable threshold

The most common trap is setting a threshold that is too low: you are never alerted, and you think tracking does nothing. The opposite exists too: a threshold that is too high wakes you for offers that do not interest you. To find the right number, lean on three reference points.

The current lowest price. Look at the best price of the moment in the comparator. Setting your threshold 5 to 10% lower is a good starting point for a stable card.

The LOW and MID reference prices. Under each card, Tapt shows a LOW price (the bottom of the local market) and a MID price (the middle). If the day's best offer is at the LOW level, you are already at the bottom of the market. The detail of the calculation is on the page How to read LOW and MID prices.

Your own limit. Write down the number from which you would buy without hesitation. If you have to force yourself to buy at that price, your threshold is too high.

Also think about shipping. An $18 offer with $3 of shipping is worth less than a $19 offer shipped for free: keep the page Shipping fees by store at hand when you decide whether an alert is worth acting on.

A worked example: the Cyclonic Rift case

Let us take the example of the screenshot. Cyclonic Rift sells for $40.40 at Boutique MagiCarte, in NM condition. Imagine you want it for your Commander deck but refuse to go above $45. You set your threshold at $45. Since the day's best offer is already at $40.40, the alert fires right away: that is what the "Price reached" banner on the screenshot shows. In this case, tracking mostly served to confirm that the moment is good, and all that remains is to buy.

Now take the opposite case, a card at $85 like Rhystic Study in the same screenshot, which you do not want to pay more than $70 for. You set the threshold at $70. As long as no store goes below that amount, nothing happens, and that is intended: you have no reason to look at the price. The day a store shows $69, you receive the alert, whether or not you are at your computer.

Without a threshold, the 15% rule applies. If the lowest price ever seen for a card is $40, an alert goes out when an offer reaches $34 or less. It is a safety net for real drops, not a replacement for your own number: it will not trigger for a modest drop that would nevertheless interest you.

When the alert arrives: what to do

An alert is a signal, not a purchase. Here is a simple routine that avoids regrets:

1. Open the tracked card and look at the per-store detail from the last scan: which store, which condition, which finish. 2. Rerun a scan if the alert is a few hours old. Rare offers go fast, and it is better to confirm that it still exists. 3. Compare with the comparator to check that the offer really is the best one, and look at the stock. 4. Count the shipping with the fees page, or group the purchase with other cards to reach a free-shipping threshold. 5. Buy on the store's website. Tapt sells nothing: the store takes your order.

Common mistakes

• The same threshold for every card. A $5 threshold does not mean the same thing for a $6 card and for a $60 card. Set it card by card.
• Ignoring the condition. An offer under your threshold can be an HP copy. Look at the condition before celebrating.
• Tracking too many cards at once. A very long list reads less well. Keep it for the cards you would really buy.
• Forgetting to remove a purchased card. It would keep taking up one of your fifty places.

How often prices are re-read

Tapt re-reads the prices of all tracked cards about every six hours, that is four times a day. That rhythm is a compromise: frequent enough to catch an offer that does not last, reasonable enough not to overload the stores' websites.

If you want to know right away where prices stand, a "Rerun a scan" button exists on each tracked card. A progress bar moves forward one notch per store consulted, and a summary message tells you what happened. You therefore do not have to wait for the next automatic pass when an alert is imminent. After a card is added, the first scan takes a few minutes: the card then carries the mention "First scan in progress", and you just need to come back a little later.

Reading a tracked card

Each tracked card is a small sheet that gathers everything needed to decide:

• The best price of the moment, with a "Best price" badge on the store that offers it.
• A price history chart, which shows whether the card is rising, falling or stagnating. The chart lets you see whether today's drop is truly rare or whether the card has been oscillating between the same prices for weeks.
• The per-store detail, taken from the last scan only. An offer displayed as current really is current: Tapt does not show leftovers from an older pass.
• Quick-fact chips: the date of the last scan, the price gap, the number of stores that have an offer.
• Your own tags, to find your way around, with a filter to show only the cards that carry a given tag.

A selector also lets you choose which store to display first: useful if you almost always buy in the same place. A compact mode shrinks the sheets when the list gets long.

Organizing your tracking when the list grows

Fifty tracked cards is a lot to watch visually. A few habits help:

1. Use tags. "Atraxa deck", "buy before Christmas", "gift": one tag per project lets you filter in one click. The tags of your tracked cards belong to them alone: they do not mix with those of your collection cards. 2. Remove what no longer interests you. A card that was bought, or abandoned, no longer needs to be tracked. That frees up room and keeps the list readable. 3. Come back to your thresholds. A market changes. A threshold set three months ago may have become unrealistic, in one direction or the other.

Tracking, comparator or deck: which tool for what

Tapt's tools complement each other, and the common mistake is to use the wrong one:

• To buy now the best offer for a card, use the comparator.
• To buy a whole deck paying as little as possible, use the deck comparator.
• To wait for the right price of a card, use price tracking.

Most players chain the three: they compare, notice that the key card is too expensive today, put it on tracking and buy the rest of the deck in the meantime.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account to track a card?

Yes, a free account, because tracking is personal: Tapt has to know whom to write to. The account lets you track up to fifty cards, and there is no password to remember, since you receive a link by email or go through Google.

How am I notified?

In Tapt, and by email. As soon as an offer goes below your threshold, the alert appears on the tracked card and an email goes out.

What happens if I set no threshold?

Tapt still warns you when the price falls 15% below the lowest it has ever seen for that card. You can therefore add a card without thinking about the number and let Tapt spot the real drops.

How often are prices updated?

About every six hours, that is four times a day. You can also launch a scan yourself, card by card, with the "Rerun a scan" button.

Does tracking take shipping into account?

Shipping varies from one store to another: the page Shipping fees by store gives each one's free-shipping threshold and fees. Count it in your decision before buying, and confirm the final amount on the store's website.

Getting started

Search for the card with the comparator first, then open the Price tracking page to add it to your tracked cards. If you are discovering Tapt, the article welcome to the Tapt blog tells what the site does and why.