About twice a year, someone at my shop asks me if I’m *that* Cliff and I get to talk about either hot tips or the newest spikes in price. I like to take that opportunity to ask what I should be writing about, since my perspective is, well, just one among millions.

That happened this week, shoutout to Matt, who nominated this topic: What happens during these random-ass price spikes that have been happening at an incredible pace for the last three years?

Let’s take a trip through what happens in a buyout, and examine a test case.

We’ve seen a ton of these. My favorite is Narwhal.

Yup, this super-bulk rare, once overpriced at 25 cents, is now actually being bought on Ebay for about $1.50-$2. There was a brief shining moment where the listed price hit ten dollars.

These spikes are nuts, and mostly artificial. The psychology of it relies on greed, and the fear of missing out. The idea is that you don’t want to miss out on the easy money. (Another time, we’re going to get into details of how it’s not really that easy in most cases, but Travis’s seminal article My Spec Quadrupled and I Made 75 Cents Each tells a lot of that story.) If you buy it RIGHT NOW then you’ll be able to sell into the ongoing hype!

You also need to understand the methodology that we use (and other sites use as well) as price aggregators. We trawl TCG and other major retailers for what price they are buying and selling at, looking for changes from yesterday’s data.

A single store/organization, even the big ones like a Star City or a ChannelFireball, has a finite number of copies, and when those are gone, they are listed as sold out. There’s literally no price information, so that’s a piece of data which gets lost.

The data that remains is the current price listed. Not what the card has sold for, but what people want for it, and that’s a very important distinction.

Speculators have to decide how hard they are going to go after a card. You’ve likely heard us on MTG Fast Finance talking about the available copies on TCG as an indicator of supply, demand, and the third factor, individuals who bother to sell on TCG. Most players don’t sell there, but those who do are helping set the market. If the investment is made to buy out most/all copies of a card, only the most optimistic of prices is allowed to remain.

Price aggregators look at the range of prices available, but algorithms aren’t able to monitor completed sales yet, only look at what’s listed for sale at that moment. So a speculator buys up all ~150 copies of Narwal at let’s say $1 each. Then it spikes to ten because only the speculator’s $10 copies are still for sale, and the circle is complete.

Don’t overlook the non-near-mint cards when evaluating a market. If the NM is listed as being $20, but the LP version is still $5, then you know something’s up.

With the concepts clear, let’s do a test. We’re looking for a card that has low supply on TCG, low stock in other places, and has an attractive price. Matt suggested this card, and he’s on point: Life and Limb.

It’s a rare from Planar Chaos, those many years ago. It’s foil.for those who like that, it’s not on the Reserved List, but it can be abused in lots of ways, plus it’s big for a recent trending Commander: Slimefoot, the Stowaway.

Let’s see. TCG copies?

Wow. 17 copies, ranging from a $7 LP foil to a $34 Near Mint.

Let’s look at Ebay’s completed sales, because we want to see what it’s selling for, not what people are asking for it.

Two sold listings in two months. One LP at $5, one NM at $30+.

Let’s check in with a couple of other retailers.

I want to add that Card Kingdom has two ‘VG’ available at $17, eight ‘EX’ at $23, and two NM at $28, I just don’t like how they display the versions available. Too much clicking for my tastes.

With this data in hand, we can say this card is poised to tip over, because there’s very little stock under $20. A few hundred bucks and there’d be no copies left under $30. There’s not likely to be a lot of these in binders, but given the small supply of Planar Chaos foils and just enough casual appeal…Most players aren’t going to dive for their Commander decks and dump a spiking card onto the market.

Our speculator buys up all the sub-$30 copies on the internet. So the only prices left are the expensive ones, the most optimistic of the TCG player listings. And Star City, for that matter.

If you’re investing in a random card like this one (not too random, given that there’s not many left and most people want top dollar for it) your hope is that the buylist price makes it high enough for this work to be worthwhile.

The aggregators can’t see any prices under $30, and now the average list price is going to go up, because it’s averaging the prices of the most optimistic TCG sellers.Eventually, the low-priced ones are all gone, leaving only the people who were hoping for a spike that have theirs listed at $60 or whatever.

So now there’s price alerts all over, that these foils have doubled in price. Those who still have theirs listed (the most optimistic) will then raise their prices, mostly, because they don’t want to sell too soon.

The speculator would really like to have the buylist price at stores go high enough that the extra copies can be sold to them in large amounts. Individual cards sold on eBay take forever and the cost of shipping and insurance is all on you.

Whether or not the speculator sells out into the hype, the price will trail downwards. We saw this with Narwhal, but here’s the important thing: the card is now $1.20 as opposed to the original price, and we’re something like 75 cents in pure profit each.

Also note the rapid decline, you either sell out fast, or you’re holding for the super long term. Our speculator might take either route, and there’s no telling which you’ll do at which time.

If you have enough copies, the best play is to sell enough to cover your initial outlay of cash and then sit on the leftovers for a long time as pure profit. Your future might depend on it!

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

I have to admit, I love where Standard is at right now. Nothing is overwhelming, there’s something like five decks I’d play if I was going to a FNM event or a PTQ, and I like tuning into coverage of Standard, whereas five weeks ago I would have rather swallowed a sea urchin.

One thing I know: We’re not done innovating Standard, and there’s a key set of things coming: Ravnica Allegiance and the other five guilds. I’ve got some ideas on what that means for our wallets and trade binders.

What I’m talking about are the lands, especially. We’re about to have all ten shocks and all ten checklands together. It’s going to be an era of deliciously greedy decks, splashing all over the place.

It’s going to be that way for nine months, too, until Ixalan block and Dominaria rotate in Sept/Oct of 2019.

So here’s my hot take: I would advocate picking up Glacial Fortress, Rootbound Crag, Hinterland Harbor, Isolated Chapel, and Dragonskull Summit now, before the rush.

Some of these are already on the uptake, and it’s the distinction between buying now at $5-$7 and buying in two months for $10.

I know you don’t believe me fully, so let’s look at some of the reasons why I’m potentially wrong.

#1: Supply on allied checklands is extensive.

You’re right: The checklands are some of the most-frequently-printed cards in the modern era. They were debuted in Magic 2010, and then reprinted in 2011. And in M12. Plus Magic 2013, and then nothing till they were in Ixalan last year.

You know what happened to those four years of printings? They got absorbed, in large part by the casual market and the Commander crowd. That’s a lot of copies which aren’t going to be broken free. Yes, there’s a lot out there, but there’s also a lot of decks soaking up that supply.

Here’s the graph on the Ixalan version:

It’s gone up by about $1 since being printed. It didn’t even dip at first, as you might expect. It’s just been a steady riser. It’s not going to rise indefinitely–I suspect that rotation will hit this like a ton of bricks–but the Standard demand is really pushing this card.

It’s a pushed price before its favorite guild and best land are printed! I’m going to blame Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for that.

An aside: I think Teferi will hit $70 around Valentine’s Day, and I’d be speculating on him with glee, except that the timeframe for profit is pretty narrow if I’m buying right now at $50. At +$20, the fees put my profit at about $10 per copy if I’m selling on my own. Buylisting won’t be much profit either, he’d have to hit $80 for even the credit bonuses to be worth it. If you think you might be playing Teferi once we’ve got Azorius out, I strongly urge you to buy now.

#2: Shocklands are just better.

Well yeah. No one is arguing that. Shocks are going to bump upwards too. Let’s look at the Return to Ravnica version of Steam Vents, while people are playing Expansion/Explosion and trying real hard to get Niv-Mizzet, Parun into their decks.

That’s what I like to see: steady upwards progress. Yes, it’s a third printing of the shocklands, but the original was forever ago, and the RTR block shocks got soaked up by Modern and Commander demand. The thing about those formats is that people aren’t terribly willing to break up a deck’s manabase if the lands rise modestly.

I’m not predicting a big jump in the shocks that are about to be printed, but again, I’d get mine now. Jeskai control, for instance, can run the perfect 24 lands for its three colors if desired, and splash into other colors without trying very hard.

#3: Dominaria lands are still available cheaply.

For now they are. Sulfur Falls has already seen a recent increase, restoring most of what it lost in being reprinted:

And now let’s bring up Woodland Cemetery.

Oh yeah. One printing in Innistrad, way back in 2011, and copies got soaked up over time. We’re not left with pretty much the leftover Dominaria copies, and there’s not enough given the demand. Woodland is already back at the price it had when Dominaria came out. We’ve got a fair bit of time till it rotates out, and I wouldn’t be shocked if it hit $9 or $10.

Traditionally, the year after a land is printed is the time where it’s rising, and I fully expect that to continue with these lands and this Standard.  Shocks will get played more than the checklands, but both are going to be used extensively.

The two remaining enemy lands are likely the best targets of all: Hinterland Harbor at $3 and Isolated Chapel at $4. I don’t know what mechanics and goodness we’re going to get with Simic and Orzhov, but I know people will want to play them and the cards are going to go up.

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

I feel like this preorder-into-new Standard season has yielded some results that I need to re-examine. I was spot-on with Dream Eater being underpriced, but I was way way off on some others, and in my quest to improve and make money, I have to figure out what I did wrong.

So come with me on a journey of self-reflection, and what could have been.

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Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

There’s nothing like the first week of Standard results and a big event on camera to make me look both quite good and quite bad.

We’ve had more than a few cards jump, and jump impressively, from Guilds of Ravnica and from the other Standard-legal sets.

Today I want to look at a few of those cards and see if there’s still room for growth, or if it’s time to get out.

Banefire (from $1.50 to $4)

This is a popular sideboard option in a range of decks, including the still-popular Mono-Red and the more midrange Boros Angels. It’s been printed a bunch of times, though, and this is not going to hold. If you can buylist older copies, I’d do that. It’s not huge in Commander, either, so we don’t have that going for us.

It is fantastic against slow control decks. Mostly they can’t rip apart your hand, and the uncounterability is very very relevant in a metagame which has Teferi.

Lyra Dawnbringer ($14 to $23)

Quote: “Lyra Dawnbringer ($13/$30): For a card that started out ridiculously strong and who tops an impressive tribal curve (Resplendent-Shalai-Lyra), she’s fallen quite a distance. There’s some risks here: She might never be good in Standard again, and the other Constructed formats are not homes for her. She might be in a Challenger deck in the spring. She’s only got a year till she rotates.”

That’s from a few weeks ago when she was $13. I go on to say not to buy her, as going from $15 to $20 is hard to cash out of. Lyra is so good in so many ways, maindeck and sideboard. Her value against mono-red is extreme, as you can’t race her for long (she kills you!) and she’s pretty amazing at boosting your team of Angels.

She’s in a weird spot. I think she’s going to hit $30 again, but that rise is not enough to get me to buy at $23. If I had any, I’d hold a bit longer.

Risk Factor ($5 to $9)

As I said in the preorder article, I tried like hell to make Browbeat good. The problem was that they would always take the damage, and I’d have to hope to draw another piece of burn.

Jump-start makes this card so much better. It’s not five damage once, but eight damage on the second casting. I should have figured this one out, frankly. My comparison was accurate–Browbeat has never been a star–but I overlooked the power of getting two castings of the same spell from one card.

You cast this. Opponent: “I’ll take four.”

You Jump-Start it and ask, “I’ll give you a chance to answer the question correctly.”

I’m not buying at $9, not for a rare in a set with shocklands and is likely to sell ridiculously well, but in three months when this is a $2ish card and we’re moving to the next set, I’ll remember this.

Star of Extinction ($2 to $8)

I’m looking high and low and I can only find a couple of decks running this as a sideboard sweeper.

Yes, it’s a cute combo with Truefire Captain, but that seems like a questionable combo, the four-mana creature and the seven-drop sorcery.

It’s a mythic from the big set, and it’s spiked hard with a year to go till rotation. It’s seven mana. It’s not seeing any Modern play. It’s not popular in Commander. It’s seven mana. Dump this card right now.

Experimental Frenzy ($2.50 to $5)

Now this makes a lot more sense. It’s a two-or-three of in all sorts of red decks. It’s quite popular with the decks that would run The Flame of Keld, but instead of a one-time boost of two extra cards, it’ll just play as many as possible in a row. It’s very straightforward and quite powerful.

I don’t see it going a lot higher, but it’s going to get some camera time soon and that’s REALLY going to get people flocking to the card. I fully expect a streamer to give it some serious play and that might bump it a little higher…but not enough to make it worthwhile to buy at $5.

The proliferation of low-to-the-ground red decks is encouraging me to pick up a couple sets of Vance’s Blasting Cannons at bulk prices. The Buy-a-Box promo is tempting at $6, too. Unique versions of cards always get me thinking, even if they aren’t immediately good.

Journey to Eternity ($2.50 to $7)

It turns out that the enemy-colored enchantments from Rivals of Ixalan fit VERY well with the the guilds that share a color. Plus there’s this deck, which is a testament to the question, ‘What does a Meren deck look like in Standard?’ and the answer is, the grindiest of grindy decks.

Is that deck good against the many flavors of aggro AND the controlling decks? We’ll see.

The jump for this card got me thinking about the other Rivals transform cards.

Path of Mettle is a lot of hoops to jump through, but the land’s ability to deal two damage is good. Field of Ruin is still a thing though, and people are packing the hate to deal with Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin. Buying in at around a dollar each is a pretty low point of entry, but it’s a big jump from mono-red aggro to Boros aggro.

Storm the Vaults doesn’t play with Izzet’s plan at all. A shame.

Profane Procession is in the next block, as is Hadana’s Climb, making those two very strong targets. Procession will cost you $1-$2 each, and you’re placing a bet on how viable Esper control will be once we get the Orzhov cards.

Hadana’s Climb seems like an even better target because of the ‘play it and flip it’ factor we’ve seen glimpses of. Ironshell Beetle seems like an odd reprint right now, but what if it’s hinting at what the Simic will be up to? The previous sets had a lot of counter synergies, and I’d be surprised if that wasn’t true this time around too.

The Climb is at about $1.50 each right now, but it’s only present in 866 decks over on EDHREC. For a card with that little play, that price is a little high, and I suspect the invisible hand of the casual players is at work. I like this as a buy right now, and if it doesn’t hit in three months with the new Simic cards, you’ve got a long-term spec to pack away until it gets big again. 

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.