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copied!<p>I myself have pondered this. Consider the following:</p> <blockquote> <p>If it takes you a week to figure out, code, and debug and algorithm that only provides a 1% discount, would you do it?</p> </blockquote> <p>The answer is probably "No" (unless you're spending your entire life savings on cards, in which case you may be crazy). =)... or Amazon.com</p> <p>Consequently, there is already an easy approximating algorithm:</p> <pre><code>Wait until you're buying lots of cards (reduce the shipping overhead). Buy the cards from 3 vendors: - the two with the cheapest-but-most-diverse inventories - a third which isn't really cheap but definitely has every card you'd want. Optimize accordingly (for each card, buy from the cheaper one). Also consider local vendors you could just walk to, pre-constructed decks, and trading. </code></pre> <p>Based on firsthand and second experience, I can say you will find that you can get the median price with perhaps a few dollars more shipping you could otherwise, while still getting around median on each. You will find that you may have to pay a tiny bit more for understocked cards, but this will be few and far between, and the shipping savings will make up for it.</p> <p>I recall the old programming adage: <strong>"Never optimize, until it's absolutely necessary; chances are you won't need to, or would have optimized the wrong thing."</strong> (e.g. your time is a resource too, and also has monetary value)</p> <p>edit: Given that, this is an amazingly cool problem and one should solve it if one has time.</p>

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