by pwnguin
Well, for starters, anyone looking to do singles market arbitrage will be seeking to lower their cost of acquisition. At the moment CSI is retailing a core set for 25, and even that clearly leaves room for profits. 25/250 == roughly 10 cents a card for the opening bid. But it's more complicated than that. Supply and demand n all that.A large number of players will have a spare set of 3x, but nobody should be in terrible need for such a set; everyone who buys a core set has the maximum number allowed already! Maybe some people will grab them for second decks, but I suspect that guy the other day was a dramatic minority. So we'll have to write off that segment of the market as the transaction costs are too high versus expected profits. So now we've written off half the cards, so we're looking at 20 cents per card.
The 1x market, on the other hand, will have large demand and no natural supply. At an upper bound, we'll say 1xs retail for an average of 2 dollars. But even that could be subject to variation among demand for 1x's.
The 2x market will be interesting, as you have a natural market of buyers and sellers. People who buy multiple core sets will have perhaps 1 extra, and people who don't will have a need for 1. This is where being a market maker will produce value (aka "profits") without much risk.
But in all seriousness, since A:NR expansions won't lend themselves to a singles market, I doubt you'll see anyone jump on this. It'll be a huge investment with returns that fade over time instead of growing with the player market.