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UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Death of a Binder Grinder

June 3, 2015 Travis Allen 3 Comments

By: Travis Allen

This weekend in Vegas was probably my favorite GP ever. I got to meet a ton of people that I had only known through computer screens prior. Not only did we meet, but because the event was so long, we had time to actually sit and talk. We spend so much time communicating and interfacing through digital mediums because it’s convenient and efficient, but there’s nothing that compares to actually pressing the flesh. It makes relationships concrete and lends them weight; no longer is it a series of characters prefixed by an @ sign, instead it’s a real person with real dimensions. We can know that academically, of course. Finally sitting down across from someone for a meal is still meaningful though. I was glad to have been a part of it.

Winning $200 at the craps table helped too.

For all the things I did at GP Vegas – the main event, two-headed giant side event, lunching with other #mtgfinance people, eating absurd tacos and drinking even more absurd beer, hitting the casino with entirely different #mtgfinance people, handing out free shirts to female Magic players, eating absurd tacos (again), railbirding as my friend played for (and lost against) LSV for what would have been his first Pro Tour invite, hanging out at the AEther Games booth, taking in a Cirque show, selling to vendors – there is one very specific thing I didn’t do. I did not trade. In fact, I didn’t even bring my trade binder. Even still, at no point during the packing process did I even ever think of bringing my trade binder.

Nine At a Time

Like many, I found myself drawn to this field right around the time Medina was writing. It was fortuitous timing. I had been playing casually for years, always micromanaging pennies and only rarely making big purchases like my $20 playset of Doubling Season (hah). With the release of Zendikar I finally started showing up to FNM, and as my engagement with the game grew, so too did my financial interests. I loved playing new decks every week, which required lots of new cards. Spending real money at a time when I was barely covering rent was out of the question, so grinding trades in store and through the MTGSalvation forums was key. It was roughly around this time that Medina had begun writing, and being that I was desperate to find out how to make my Magic buck go further, I soaked it all up.

Trading was what I did. I was that guy at our local store. (Which was a precarious position to hold, let me tell you. This particular store banned all trading. Yes, I know it’s absurd. Yes, it is somehow still in business. No, I don’t know how either. I was eventually banned.) I showed up every week, full of juicy nuggets of brain candy that nobody else in the room had. Always be trading up. Eek out value on every trade. Trade as much as possible, even if you don’t need the cards you’re receiving. Ship cards that are rotating early, snag up cards that will be pillars in the fall. How many Kargan Dragonlords did I grab at $5 on MTGS over the summer, down from $25, when they would inevitably be $15 again in October? There was so little finance-oriented content, I had barely anyone to compete with. Lessons that we all take for granted today were rare and valuable information back then. As the obvious ideas such as card advantage and mana curve are key components of competitive Magic today but were not twenty years ago, so too have strategies such as trading for format staples in the summer been.

I don’t recall exactly when things started to sour. Medina’s article about pack to power stands out in my head. Reading it was informative and interesting; a fun project he undertook. He wasn’t the first, I understand, but it was indisputably the most well-documented attempt. (It’s actually been done better outside of Magic, years ago.) Most people reading thought it was an interesting story – a seemingly impossible goal of turning a $1 card into something worth hundreds of dollars. I read it, thought it was nifty, and moved on. Others, however, had a different experience. “Hey, I can do that too!” they all thought. Seemingly overnight, every asshole at local stores and grand prixs was carrying two binders; their own personal collection and a pack-to-power binder. They were miserable to trade with, since they needed to jam trades as fast as possible, meaning the process was hurried, and you also knew they were trying to value trade you at all times, typically to an extreme degree.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve done more than my fair share of value trading. But even when I do, I often don’t push too hard, since I don’t want to alienate the other person, and a large percentage of the time when I don’t do it at all. If the card I’m picking up is something I genuinely want, such as an EDH foil, rather than just a card I’m looking to flip, maybe a Tasigur, then I’m happy to make the trade even or in their favor.

With stores and GPs awash with pack-to-power grinders, the environment was noticeably more hostile. Plenty of pleasant trades were left to be had, but the seeds had been sown.

Back Into the Backpack

I’m not exactly sure of the exact chronological order of things after that. I know more finance content was showing up online. While I had been devouring anything I could get my hands on prior to that, I was starting to find that I couldn’t keep on top of it all. Smartphones were more and more present at trade tables. I didn’t hate them, as I understood that people didn’t want to get screwed, though I did resent what their presence meant. It meant that people were now caring enough to look up prices. People were thinking about how much cards were worth.

I need to be crystal clear here – it wasn’t that smartphones stopped me from screwing people. That was never my intention. Rather, it meant that much more attention was being paid to the dollars and cents by your regular store player. This was going to mean tougher trades, especially with those who had just enough knowledge to be dangerous. (This is still the case today. Educated players recognize that a few bucks on a $30+ trade doesn’t particularly matter, especially if one party needs the cards, and that matching pennies isn’t worth anyone’s time. Guys with an internet browser and no little more will ruin your day by haggling down to dimes.)

It was about two-ish years ago I started writing for MTGPrice, and it was roughly around then that I basically gave up trading at anything larger than a local store entirely. I may toss my binder in my bag if I’m driving to a GP, but it probably doesn’t leave the hotel room. I don’t remember the last time I pulled out my binder at a PTQ. I bring it to FNM all the time, but it only comes out of the bag when I need the last piece for my deck or I have a specific card someone is looking for. This is a far cry from back during Zendikar block, when I used to patrol the tables, shoving the binder in everyone’s face with the now-maligned cry of the grinder, “trades?”

I won’t not trade. I still enjoy the process of discovery, of chatting with people, of getting excited when you find something you’ve been searching for for months. I certainly dislike the juggling of phones though, as it brings an otherwise friendly and relaxed relationship into a place of either tense negotiation or watching someone scour your binder for a $.79 card. It’s not that I won’t do any of this anymore, it’s more that it just isn’t fun any longer. It’s not worth the time or the effort. With the expansion of financial content over the last three years, everyone has wisened up, and while it means less people are getting sharked by those with fewer scruples than I, it also means the entire atmosphere has become dramatically more parsimonious.

My relationship to Magic and the Magic market has changed quite dramatically over the last six years, as I’m sure yours has as well. There are considerably more people invested, both in mental capital and real capital, in the prices of cardboard. I’ve seen an evolution of actors into what I believe are three general archetypes of financier. Just as we have Johnny, Timmy, and Spike, we have Pat, Pam, and Sam. Or Sarah, Mark, and Addison. Or Keong, Li, and Deshaun. Or Jaydien, Mahalya, and Xylethia. I don’t know. Nobody is going to use these.

The Dealer

These are the guys that have actual storefronts, typically online only, though sometimes brick and mortar. The volume they churn is unreal compared to anyone else. While we’re sitting around fretting about the $200 we spent on Kuldotha Forgemasters, they’re spending tens of thousands of dollars every weekend buying Magic cards, only to resell them ten minutes later at the booth or through their web presence. (I have no actual numbers from anyone here, but by my estimation, I’d guess most dealer booths on the floor of Vegas spent between $100,000 and $250,000 buying over the last four days.) People in this camp include Kyle Lopez and Paul Feudo.

I admittedly don’t have a lot of interaction with these guys. I attend two, maybe three GPs a year. These guys are sometimes at nearly every American GP, or damn close to it. They tend not to spend a lot of time worrying about what may spike and what may plummet, because of the sheer numbers of cards they buy and sell. They’re also their own community, by virtue of the fact that they’re sharing floor space so often. I know barely two or three guys in this field, but I’m willing to bet they all know each other quite well. They don’t usually write and they tend not to be as active on social media. This is mostly because unlike the other financial demographics, this is a full time job. While my habits put me squarely in the “hobby” camp, dealers have turned this into a profession. There are benefits to that as well. If you’re successful in this field, it’s a real wage. Nobody else flipping Magic cards is making enough to support their family, but these guys are.

The Collection, Case, and Buylist Grinder

If you consider dealers to be the heavyweights of MTG finance, in terms of time invested, volume of inventory, and total profits, this group of individuals would be the middleweights. A lot of your #mtgfinance personalities fall squarely into this camp – three fourths of Brainstorm Brewery, for instance: Corbin Hosler, Jason Alt, and Ryan Bushard. Their engagement strategy is three-fold.

Collections are their primary method of card acquisition. Whether through Craigslist, Facebook postings, a local storefront, or something else, they find and buy lots of large personal collections. Most probably fall in the range of a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, though I’m sure some number pop up that reach into the $10,000 to $25,000 range. After acquiring a collection, they (and perhaps their employees) will sort through the tens of thousands of cards, pick out anything worth a damn, and move in one of two directions with it.

Keeping a case at a local store is one option for outing purchases. I didn’t know this at first, but it seems not all card stores really want to deal with singles, or if they do, only on a limited basis. This is especially true of stores that do more than just Magic. Guys like Corbin come in and will pay the shop for the right to maintain their own case in the store. Reimbursement is often some combination of monthly rent and percentage of sales. They stock the case with cards they picked up through collections, check back in every few days to keep it stocked and manage inventory, and let the counter jockeys deal with actually selling the cards to people. It’s an effective strategy for moving reasonable volumes of cards, particularly when there isn’t much competition around.

The third prong for this group is the buylist. When you’re buying the number of cards these guys are, selling them all individually, whether through a case in a physical store, or through a service such as TCGPlayer or eBay, it will quickly turn into a full-time job. I spend enough time each week managing my incredibly meager TCGPlayer sales; I can’t imagine wanting to do easily ten times that much while still trying to have a real job of some sort. Instead, a major percentage of their product goes off to buylists. I’d imagine the best cards to sell this way is the smaller product. A single $100 card doesn’t take up much room in your case and doesn’t take too long to package and ship when sold online, but $100 worth of Lightning Bolts is a lot more inconvenient to deal with in either of these fashions. So instead they out them to dealers, who are equipped in infrastructure and time to deal with that amount of individual sales.

As we see with individuals like the three mentioned above, it’s not uncommon for these types to keep public profiles and be available on social media. It’s usually in their best interest, really, since word of mouth is an excellent way to generate collection purchases. There’s plenty more individuals out there I haven’t listed either, and many are active on Twitter.

The Speculator

This is the camp that I most firmly fall into. I don’t want a full-time job buying and selling cards, so the life of the dealer does not appeal to me. I also don’t live in an area where I have access to the volume that the collection grinders have. Those positions tend to open up in towns where there’s not enough local store action to fully serve the community’s needs. Here in Buffalo there’s an oversaturation of stores, which means that it’s easy for any individual to wander into a building and sell their cards, and even if they do take to social media to sell it, there’s no shortage of potential buyers.

Instead, we speculators are relegated to armchair finance. Whereas I would consider dealers, collection flippers, and true binder grinders as a part of the larger Magic market, I’m inclined to say that speculators are more observers of the market. I’m not engaging with any real volume of individual buyers and sellers, nor am I churning through much inventory. Instead I watch to see what all the players out there are doing. What’s popular with Standard players? What’s trending up/down? What reprints are on the horizon? These are the questions this group is asking, and we’re making purchases and selling accordingly.

Speculating involves the least time and the least money. Our engagement is exactly however much we want it to be. Want to spend twenty hours a week scouring decklists, doing research, and making buys? Go for it. Want to watch with just a passing interest, only picking up a few extra playsets of something when everyone on the planet is telling you it’s underpriced? You can do that too. Whether you’re buying a card unbanned sixty seconds ago for the quick flip or sitting on Chromatic Lanterns for the two-year growth, your goal is to hoard piles of specific cards with the hope that they grow significantly in price. And because so many fewer cards pass through the hands of the average speculator, less money is made, and less consistently as well. Nobody is (reliably) paying their rent doing this. Rather they’re making enough to cover the cost of some other cards they’d like to buy for themselves, and maybe stashing some extra cash for whatever else.

Speculators, of the three groups, are typically the most active on Twitter. First of all, we’ve got more time available to us, because we don’t have to spend hours every day sorting through cards and sending things to buylists. Second, we are more in need of information than any other group. Dealers can dismiss single cards spiking because their inventory is so large that it’s mostly irrelevant. The guys working collections tend to be too busy with what they have in front of them to worry about whether they should be buying or selling Snapcasters right now, so the talking heads on social media don’t have a lot to offer. Speculators, on the other hand, need all the knowledge they can get. We live and die on knowing when to buy cards and when to sell them. Comparatively few cards pass through our hands, so it’s important to make sure the ones that do stand to make us the most money possible. Sharing insight openly and frequently is necessary to make informed decisions.

The rest of you

These three groups outlined above are specifically three subsets of Magic players at large. The millions of regular players who show up to FNMs and PTQs with the sole plan of playing are not meant to be captured in these three archetypes. People trading for the last two Collected Companys or Flooded Strands they need aren’t finance people in the way the above three demographics are.

One way to conceptualize these three groups is along an axis, on which one end is volume, and the other end is accuracy. Shotguns and sniper rifles. Dealers grind through hundreds of thousands of cards, with little attention paid to any one in particular. Speculators live on the other end, uninterested in handling bulk, preferring to zoom in on a small handful of cards and profit on those and those alone. Collection grinders live somewhere in the middle.

There’s plenty of overlap between these three groups to be sure. I’ve no doubt that some of the dealers and collection grinders speculate on cards when they see a rich opportunity, and I’ve bought more than a handful of collections myself. Rather they define general trends of actors, in the same way that a Spike can still have strong leanings towards good Timmy decks.

Ok, enough rambling for this week. I’ll be curious to see what the impression is of these three general archetypes, and if I’m the only one that’s gotten sick of trying to work the trade circuit.

ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Trade Modern, Don’t Own It!

June 1, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 11 Comments

The word “eternal” is defined as “lasting or existing forever; without end or beginning.” In Magic, the word is used to describe non-rotating formats, as they essentially last forever. And we all know what non-rotating formats mean in the financial world: stability in prices.

Or does it?

While Vintage and Legacy prices remain largely predictable—especially the gradual increase of staples on the reserved list—the fledgling Modern format seems to go through constant flux. Prices skyrocket on some cards while other cards tank in value due to an array of variables (though none involve rotation). Bannings and unbannings act as forceful shake-ups to the metagame, newly printed cards can strengthen one deck or hinder another dramatically, and one could even argue that the format isn’t yet solved.

But all of these variables pale in comparison to the highest form of price manipulation: reprints! Often times, a card’s reprinting is almost like a death sentence, killing years of potential price appreciation.

One look at the chart for Thoughtseize is all it takes to convey the dire consequence of a reprint. The black sorcery from Lorwyn peaked near $80 in value, but now sells for under $40. The more than 50-percent drop is also reflected in the buylist price (the blue line on the chart above), which dropped from $50 to under $20 for a brief moment before recovering to around $25.

Modern’s Reprint Epidemic

Of course, reprints don’t only happen to Modern cards. During the release of Conspiracy, we saw a handful of Legacy staples get absolutely destroyed value-wise due to reprinting. Examples include Exploration and Misdirection, though Stifle still sticks out the most to me: I remember buylisting my copies a few years ago for around $15, then regretting that I sold out early, as Stifle peaked at around $50. But then it got absolutely obliterated by its reprint: it’s now valued under $10!

But while the Legacy format can also receive the reprint treatment now and again, it seems like Modern is taking the largest beating. After all, Wizards of the Coast has released two entire sets dedicated to Modern reprints. Not only that, but I suspect these sets are likely to become a recurring thing based on the year being listed in Modern Masters 2015, meaning we haven’t seen the last of Modern reprints. Far from it.

This means that despite the hundreds of reprints we’ve received since Modern’s inception, we can expect to see many more. As the format ages, Wizards of the Coast will have a larger and larger pool to choose from for reprinting. For example, in a hypothetical Modern Masters 2017, we can expect to see cards from Innistrad block like Snapcaster Mage and Cavern of Souls. Then in Modern Masters 2019, we’ll get reprints of Abrupt Decay and shock lands. The cycle could continue indefinitely—after all, Modern is an “eternal” format, right?

Huge Implications

While technically Modern fits the eternal format definition, I’d argue that prices are more inclined to behave like those of Standard than Legacy going forward. In a way, a recurring cycle of Modern Masters is equivalent to Standard rotation. Both phenomena have a profound impact on card prices by applying downward pressure. Then over the long term, the true powerhouse staples may slowly recover with enough demand and player base growth.

While Legacy cards may also see reprint to an extent, it’s clear that Wizards of the Coast is prioritizing the reduction of cost of entry to Modern. After all, with the company’s self-inflicted reserve list policy, it can never reprint dual lands. As a result, we are likely to see duals rise over a long enough horizon (despite recent pullback trends…which are the reason I’ve been building my dual land position).

This type of steady, predictable price inflation can not be a characteristic of Modern staples. Constant threat of reprints severely hinders the potential for appreciation over time. The looming fear that a card’s value will be cut in half is too severe.

Because of this ongoing threat, I anticipate there will be a number of long-term effects providing everlasting (eternal?) headwinds to Modern card prices. Below I present three results stemming from the reprint epidemic in Modern beyond the acute price drops.

1) Trading vs. Investing

You don’t have to be a fan of CNBC personality Jim Cramer to appreciate his sentiment on Apple stock over the past few years: “Own it. Don’t trade it.” His point is that while Apple’s stock is prone to sizable fluctuations, the long term prospects of the world’s largest company is overall positive. Therefore, he advocates that you don’t try to buy and sell the stock constantly, but rather sit tight and enjoy the upward ride.

The same statement could apply to dual lands. People often ask, “When’s the best time to sell out of my duals?” Take it from someone who sold out of Legacy a couple years ago, only to regret 90 percent of those sales: the answer is, “Never, unless you need the cash.”

None of this is accurate for any Modern staples. In the world of Modern, you need to be a frequent trader and not an investor. You can’t become complacent with a single Modern card because you just never know when a reprint may occur. You also never know when a card will be banned, for that matter. The banning of Birthing Pod may have been the right call, and it certainly shook up the format in time for the Pro Tour. But the move cost me over $100 when all the dust settled. Pod dropped, and so did the likes of Reveillark, Ranger of Eos (less severely), Orzhov Pontiff, and worst of all, Chord of Calling.

Even though we knew Snapcaster Mage and Inkmoth Nexus were strong buys once it was confirmed they were out of MM2015, staples like these really aren’t good “investments”—they’re good trades. They are good to acquire over the course of a few months. But there’s not a single Modern card I can advocate investing in for years.

2) Deck Building

Once again, I turn to Twitter for an inspiring dialogue that best illustrates this point.

The debate at hand was whether or not Modern Masters 2015 will provide the same increase in Modern interest that the original MMA sparked. The jury is still out on this one, but I want to highlight the viewpoint I communicated: now that Modern has been around for years, most players already have their decks. And while many players are in Jamie’s boat, acting opportunistically on MM2015-incited price drops, the reality is most players already interested in Modern have most of the cards they need. Only the newest of new Modern players will be looking to acquire three more Tarmogoyf s after opening one in a pack.

Ben shared his desire to build many Modern decks. While he has my utmost respect for pursuing this quest, I am left questioning the financial sense it makes to do so. If you’re jamming Modern on a regular basis, I could see the value of owning multiple decks to adjust to metagames. But having a number of Modern decks built is also a major liability because you are subjecting yourself to so much potential downside due to reprints.

When I was playing Legacy on a weekly basis, I was fortunate enough to trade towards cards required to build multiple archetypes. Like Ben, I enjoyed the versatility of having multiple decks at my disposal. But while I sat on a sizable Legacy collection, I never feared a sudden collapse in my cards’ values. The Legacy format was stable enough to give me confidence my assets would hold their current prices or even appreciate. So if I wasn’t enjoying one particular deck enough, I at least knew I could make profit over time regardless.

This is not the case with Modern. Holding many decks—or holding a large Modern portfolio for that matter—for an extended period of time is like asking for punishment. It may not be as bad as buying multiple cars from a value standpoint, but it’s probably close.

If enough people have this sentiment as me, it could mean less demand for Modern cards from players going forward. Modern players could potentially build the decks they want and be content to stop acquiring. The opportunity cost of sitting on unused Modern merchandise is simply too great.

3) Higher Volatility and Liquidity

This last consequence is probably a corollary of the first two, but I want to call it out separately in order to emphasize it. If speculators are focused on trading (not investing) Modern staples, and players are less inclined to build many decks, then you’ll have an environment where Modern cards are much more liquid and volatile.

If I pick up an extra dual land or Lion’s Eye Diamond, I may be inclined to sit on it for a while as an investment. The same goes for reserve list EDH staples, like strategic Legends rares. By sitting on copies and not unloading them, players reduce liquidity in the market by removing copies from the economy.

But with Modern, it’s different. Modern cards are far more liquid because players will frequently be looking to get rid of certain cards. Open a Vendilion Clique in an MM2015 pack, but playing Jund in Modern? Throw that Clique on TCGplayer for a quick sale! Have all the fetches you need already? Throw extras in your trade binder—they are highly liquid and should be easy to trade toward the cards you do need.

Along with the higher trade volumes comes higher price volatility. Reprints and banned-list changes are obvious drivers of volatility, but shifts in the Modern metagame will also have a major impact. Amulet Bloom’s appearance and disappearance from top tables reminds me of Brett Favre’s retirement and un-retirement from the NFL. Like the Minnesota Vikings’ playoff prospects during Favre’s final years playing football, the value of Amulet of Vigor follows a roller coaster trajectory as the deck falls in favor and out again (though now the price seems to have finally stuck). (And sorry, couldn’t resist the awful analogy.)

One weekend of Jund dominance could send Liliana of the Veil to new all-time highs. Sudden proliferation of Affinity decks could mean sizable gains for holders of Creeping Corrosion or Stony Silence.

As mentioned before, all of these rapid price moves lend themselves toward trading and not investing, which is why we’re likely to see massive volatility in the Modern market continue.

Wrapping It Up

In short, Modern speculation won’t be for the faint-of-heart nor for those short on time. Significant profits can be had dealing in Modern, but constant attention to the metagame and likely reprints is required. Whereas you could purchase a Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale and sit on it for years to make money, the same strategy simply doesn’t work with Modern staples. For one, you subject yourself to severe reprint risk. Additionally, you may miss a prime opportunity to sell at a peak when a given Modern staple may be in higher demand due to a metagame shift.

Lastly, be careful building many Modern decks for personal use. While it is certainly fun to switch up strategies from week to week, you need to consider the possible ramifications of sitting on so much Modern stock for long periods of time. In other eternal formats like Legacy, sitting on extra staples is often a boon for your wallet. But with Modern, it could mean riding many downward trajectories in card prices, such as the one below.

If you’re not using the cards often, think before you sit on many cards for too long. Weigh the opportunity cost of holding through potential reprints alongside how much you’re enjoying these cards. Personally, I maintain just one Modern deck—I concede the fact that some of my cards may drop in price due to reprinting because I like having a deck to play with. But because I don’t play frequently, I can’t justify suffering this financial pain across multiple decks. The losses are just too great. And with the likelihood of many reprints to come in the future, my recommendation to trade Modern cards and not own them is more important than ever.

Sig’s Quick Hits

If you’re up for some good Modern pick-ups to flip in a few months, here are some worthwhile considerations. Just don’t hold these for too long—you never know when they’ll get reprinted or fall out of favor in Modern.

Arcbound Ravager dodged MM2015 reprint. After getting the reprint treatment in MMA, the artifact creature has recovered in price completely. Now Star City Games has just two total copies in stock, and both are SP and from Darksteel. NM copies are just over $20 and are completely sold out, and prices should go higher if Affinity remains a popular strategy in Modern.
I like Hive Mind as a pickup in trade. The card was printed only once, in Magic 2010. SCG has just two SP and three MP copies in stock, and they’re sold out of NM copies at $5.05. While Amulet Bloom’s popularity may wax and wane, the raw power of this enchantment should help buoy its price for the foreseeable future.
Mutagenic Growth’s reprint in MM2015 will absolutely destroy this common’s value. SCG has 77 NM copies of the MM2015 version in stock for $0.49 and 97 New Phyrexia copies at the same price. Vines of Vastwood has a similar story. Might of Old Krosa, on the other hand, dodged reprint yet again. Star City Games has plenty in stock, but we’re nearing $10 uncommon territory. Foils are sold out, however, with a price tag of $14.99. Expect this price to rise very soon.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Arrested Development

May 29, 2015 Ross Lennon 4 Comments

Magic players, like any community of fans for a thing, has a wide knowledge spectrum in terms of understanding the game. There are people like Patrick Chapin who are able to analyze the game at such a crucial, fundamental level that they are able to write literal books on playing the game. There are also people who can’t tell a state-based effect from a hole in the ground. For most hobbies, this doesn’t preclude people from enjoying it—you can have fun watching a football game even if you can’t spot a blitz.

With Magic, however, it’s a little bit different. Newer players, and very casual ones¹, don’t want to play against a Pro Tour champion or the local ringer. Even outside of the game, players of different skill levels can have vastly different views of what is going on in the Magic world—if Abzan Aggro wins every FNM at your store, the more casual players are going to assume that it is winning everywhere else, too. There is a demonstrable gulf between the more and less enfranchised players in terms of play skill and understanding what the wider Magic world really looks like. Those in the Magic finance community, whether they play frequently or not, are incentivized to be as ahead of the game as possible. Not only should you know which decks are good, but you should try to have an understanding of why and how they are good. While Magic finance is far from a science, your anticipations and speculations will be grounded by rational reasons, which is a great way to feel about something you’re spending money on.

The most important thing to know about Magic, fittingly, is also the hardest to know: the future. I seem to say it weekly, but Wizards of the Coast is very private about internal information. You’ve read my ramblings about the Zendikar Boom for weeks now, but perhaps the most public acknowledgment of it was Mark Rosewater’s podcast episode on 2009. I’m not going to go back to that well today, but I want to talk about one aspect of WOTC’s behind-the-scenes operation that has gotten much more public recently: development.

BRIEF ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS ASIDE

It’s worth briefly mentioning how Magic design works for those of you who don’t know (this is going to be the very abridged version). All new Magic sets begin in what is called pre-design, where the focus is on the very basics in terms of style and flavor. Then it moves into design for a year or so, where the mechanics are fleshed out and designers start to come up with rough drafts of cards. Once the set is through all of the rough drafts (and a middle process called “devign”), it makes its way to development. This is where cards get things like more accurate converted mana costs, and where cards are tweaked to better fit the Standard environment that they are entering. To sum up the impacts of both processes: design knew it wanted to make Siege Rhino a splashy Abzan card, and development did the pricing and tweaks to get it there in light of the format it was entering (or rather, the format they expect it to be entering).

Of the two major processes, design and development, the one Magic finance enthusiasts should be most interested in is development. Mark Rosewater does a lot in telling us how design works, and quite frankly, anything we don’t already know would just be spoilers of future sets (like finding your Christmas presents in May, but knowing they are still months away).

With development, you can see what the pushes are towards (or away from!) in terms of shaping games and formats. Last week’s article by Sam Stoddard did an excellent job of spelling out some of the trends that we can expect to see in the future. I’d encourage you to go and read it (and the rest of his stuff), but I’ll give you a bit of a brief rundown, interspersed with my own examples and wry wisdom.

I Think They Call That a Reuben?

Development does not “test” Modern the way it does with Standard or Limited (the team realistically couldn’t, even if they wanted to). While Standard as a format has existed for many years, the formats themselves are radically different from year to year, and cards leave. With non-rotating formats like Modern and Legacy, however, you are only ever adding more cards to the heap, bannings aside. Design and development philosophies have changed radically from the days of Mirrodin (the first one), but (most of) the cards from that era are still in Modern. There are some types of cards that development just doesn’t want to print anymore, and trying to shift away from these cards is the team’s best tool to driving a change in Modern. Here are the three that Sam talked about, followed by one or two that I want to talk about:

Cheap and efficient card filtering: These are your Ponders and Preordains. Even though these types of cards are popular with control players and tempo decks, the elephant in the room is combo.

Modern’s earliest days were plagued by extremely aggressive combo decks that don’t reflect the style of play that Wizards wants to promote. If you remember Worlds in Rome from 1998, then you’ll know that WOTC isn’t eager to create another professional level environment where the coin toss is considered a key part of the match. Banning combo pieces offers diminishing returns in terms of effectiveness at managing the format, and so it is in WOTC’s best interest to get rid of the egregious enablers rather than all of the engines. Serum Visions and Sleight of Hand are allowed to exist for now, but you will see more cards like Anticipate printed in the future. There is a reason why Telling Time was the selection spell included in Modern Masters 2015. Hitting the best cards of this type is also one of the better sneaky ways to nerf Storm.

Fast mana (a.k.a. rituals): This is the much more blunt way of killing Storm. It also kills off the (extremely annoying) fringe archetype of All-In Red, which is basically presenting an early threat (in the form of Deus of Calamity or a bunch of Empty the Warrens tokens) and seeing if your opponent can answer it in time. It is miserable to play against, miserable to watch, and not the kind of interaction Wizards wants to promote.

Super powerful hate cards: This category best exemplifies the sophistication that Magic design has cultivated. While a card like Deathmark cleanly and elegantly demonstrates black’s core conflict with white (and green), Gloom just straight-up locks most white decks out of the game. Cards like these are less of “tactical adjustments” and more like punching your opponent in the throat between games. Most of these are in Eighth and Ninth Editions, because the worst offenders are reprints from early Magic. I’m not sure how good any of them really are, since the ability to splash a second and third color in Modern is very easy.

Birds of Paradise: This is one that I have observed personally. While ramp in the form of Elvish Mystic is acceptable on turn one these days, it seems like development really wants to push “of any color” to the two-drop slot, as we’ve seen with Rattleclaw Mystic and Sylvan Caryatid. While these cards are both better than Birds, they are also in the two-drop slot—compare this with Stoddard’s rationale on the card-drawing spells.

Wrath of God effects: These are starting to get pushed to five mana instead of four, which gives aggressive decks more potential to compete. Supreme Verdict cost 4, sure, but multicolor spells are typically “undercosted” because of the built-in downside of needing multiple colors.

Moving interaction to the battlefield from the stack: The two smaller points are really just examples of this larger one. Worlds ’98 (the Rome tournament I mentioned earlier) was really what marked the beginning of Magic‘s change in focus (it would take a few years to fully change, but this tournament was in many ways a black eye that WOTC was looking to not have repeated).

While there have been some bumps along the way, Standard now is a perfect example of what Wizards wants Magic to look like. Rather than having counterspell wars over resolving an effect that is going to either win or sway the game, the interaction between players occurs more in attacking and blocking, or knowing when not to. All Magic tutorials start with teaching players how to attack and the value of having creatures in play, but the professional scene in the late ’90s was totally devoid of that style of play.

What This Means For Us

The only problem with moving complexity and interaction to the battlefield is that it becomes more difficult to evaluate cards devoid of context. Boros Reckoner was not the most hyped card at the release of Gatecrash, because it was difficult to analyze in a vacuum. Courser of Kruphix suffered similarly, as did Goblin Rabblemaster and Siege Rhino. All of these cards went on to be major role players in Standard, with opportunities to buy in cheap before their prices shot up based on demand. It’s easy to evaluate cards with clear historical precedents (Satyr Firedrinker is a Jackal Pup!) or that are clearly pushed (who didn’t think that Abrupt Decay would be a star?), but moving forward, I expect there to be more Standard formats like the one we are seeing now.

Specifically, the type of Magic that is being played in Standard right now is the kind that Wizards wants to be able to promote, and I imagine it’s partially why the company tried to axe Modern Pro Tours. It is very difficult to overhaul Modern to be shaped in the image that WOTC wants, and the backlash of banning all the cards it would take to do so would likely be insurmountable. It could happen eventually, but it would be over the course of years, probably by pushing people to play decks similar to the ones they played in Standard.

I say all of that to say this: knowing the direction that the development team wants to take Magic is an important way of knowing where Magic finance is headed. The things that get pushed the hardest now are the ones with the most safety valves: creatures. It’s important to know what to look for, and when Magic Origins starts to roll around, I’ll go through the spoiler with you. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find the next big thing.

Hope all of you who are playing in the GPs this weekend have a great time.

Best,

Ross

1 Shout-out to the Invisibles.

Corbin Hosler, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Modern Masters (The Other One)

May 28, 2015 Corbin Hosler 2 Comments

Everyone is opening Modern Masters 2015. They love it, they hate it, they open packs with all rares, they open packs with no rares, et cetera, et cetera…

The new set certainly seems to be a bit of a mess. I have four boxes, and I’m not sure if I should bust them and hope for the all-mythics box or keep them sealed and sell down the road for fear of the no-rares packs that I’ve seen opened. It’s certainly a tough dilemma, and one that Magic players across the world are dealing with right now.

The original news was that there would be no second run, but now we are hearing that perhaps that’s not the case. Whether or not this reordering is a result of the myriad printing and quality assurance problems with the first run or not, it means more product could be hitting the market.

I wrote last week about my initial thoughts on the future of the set financially, and I’m sure I’ll be updating that in the weeks ahead. And while I do want to spend today talking about Modern Masters, the future is not what I’m here today to address.

Greed is Good

For us, that is. Look, I know Sigmund and I may bore you with all our talk of the “real world” stock market and our experiences and heroes within it, but Warren Buffett makes for one hell of a quote.

In this case, it’s my favorite, and most-heard, quote from the Oracle of Omaha:

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

This one phrase is so simple and yet so effective when it comes to MTG finance. While the masses are worried about Standard, I’m worried about Block. When the general public is afraid of tanking prices, I’m looking to buy in low.

I’m not Warren Buffett (or even close), but I do have a few phrases to live by when it comes to the financials of this game. One of these is, “Leave the last 10 percent to the next guy,” a phrase I introduced three or four years ago and has never led me astray. Simply put, there’s nothing wrong with failing to maximize profit on a spec, so long as you make profit. The risks of holding too long are very real in this game, and doing so leaves you in a position to lose all the gains you’ve accrued, especially when you consider that for many of us those outs are buylists, which tend to be a leading indicator both when things are rising as well as when they are falling.

There’s another mantra I’ve always adhered to, even if it’s one I haven’t coined anything specific for:

Make your move off the ball.

There are, of course, a million ways to explain this metaphor. “Don’t chase.” “Move in the shadows.” “Act on the fringe.” “Pay attention to what others are ignoring.” “Don’t buy after Jim Kramer has talked about it.” All serve to illustrate a simple concept: you don’t want to be worried about what everyone else is worried about. You want to worry about what they will worry about. Be ahead of the game, and there’s money to be made.

This is why I watch Block every year. One of my most successful recent calls came on Jace, Architect of Thought, which tore up Return to Ravnica Block Constructed but didn’t move much in price. Until rotation, that is, when it suddenly shot up to $20 and made everyone who got in at $5 a lot of money. It’s also why I like to speculate on casual cards, because they’re predictable and allow you to stay ahead of the game.

It’s a different mindset to consider that the moves you make today are the things that make you money a year or two from now, but it’s extremely valuable. While there certainly is some benefit to chasing those quick spikes, it’s also a fleeting and dangerous game. Loading up on Abrupt Decays at rotation is only now starting to show real profits for me, but if things continue as they’re going, this spec is going to pay off huge in another six or 12 months.

At the same time, I’m still looking toward the future. And, in today’s case, that means also looking toward the past.

Specifically, at the original Modern Masters.

Back to the Past

There will almost certainly be opportunities presented to us with Modern Masters 2015. Cards are likely going to move too low and give us a great chance to buy in. And I’m confident you’ll find the best coverage of that here on MTGPrice when it happens.

But while we wait for that time to arrive (and we celebrate at Grand Prix Vegas), it’s worth checking on the set no one is at all worried about right now but is equally important to the future of Modern: the original Modern Masters.

The Numbers

We’ve seen a few cards in Modern Masters begin to move up recently. Blood Moon, in particular, has been on a tear. I noted last week how Stonehewer Giant seems to finally be recovering from this reprint, and Academy Ruins has been noticeably up as well this year. This is more of a trend than it is isolated. Even things like Manamorphose are up almost 50 percent from where they were at the beginning of 2015.

Of course, not everything is enjoying such a good run.

We’ve talked about it for awhile, but I think the moment has finally come. Dark Confidant’s days of being one of the most expensive cards in Modern are over. It’s fallen out of favor in Jund over the past year, and it doesn’t seem to be coming back. In a world of Lightning Bolt, Bob’s days may be over. Delve (bringing more high-casting-cost cards into the format) has had an impact, but that’s not all there is to it. Either way, it would appear that Dark Confidant is entering a complete freefall, and I expect it to go pretty far before we see a stabilization.

In a similar fashion, there’s plenty of still-playable staples in Modern Masters that have been reprinted since in one way or another, and the upside on these is limited. Cryptic Command, Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique, Blinkmoth Nexus, and company will all see a good time for a buy-in, but they’re going to come down first.

But almost everything else in Modern Masters is showing at least some momentum. I’m not going to list every single card that’s moving up, because you’re all capable of looking at this setlist yourself. What I do want to do is highlight a few of the cards in the set I feel have particular upside.

Casual Favorites

It wouldn’t be my column if I didn’t target a few casual cards. In this case, I’m looking at Sarkhan Vol and Progenitus. Both have seen some growth this year, particularly the former. But neither can compare to Doubling Season, which has climbed from $20 to $30. Is there more growth in store here? Though it will slow for the next months, I do expect it to push toward $40. Likewise, Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow will continue their upward climbs.

Now, I know talking about cards that have already spiked isn’t the most helpful thing in the world, so instead of trying to squeeze a few dollars out of already-expensive cards, I’d be more interested in targeting things like Stonehewer Giant, which can be had around $2 but will surely climb toward $5 a year from now. And Kokusho, the Evening Star can be found under $10, but that won’t last much longer. This thing is always a terror in Commander and will continue to see upside with a much lower buy-in. Yosei also has solid upside at $5.

Arcbound Ravager

This little (annoying) beast is at an all-time high today at $20. I initially put this on the watchlist a few weeks back, and it’s grown as expected in that time. Affinity is a deck with a lot of pieces reprinted, and more people are sure to pick it up this summer. A climb to $30 seems likely.

Glimmervoid

This may be an even better target. We’re right at the beginning of a spike on this one, and sitting under $10, I’d much rather get in on this in preparation of a short-term run to $15 and a medium-term run to $20. While some other cards in Modern Masters have already spiked, this one is just beginning.

Lightning Helix/Spell Snare

The premier uncommons of the first Modern Masters, growth on these has been slow and steady this year (Kitchen Finks has followed a slightly slower pace), and I expect it to continue or even accelerate now that Modern Masters 2015 is actually being opened. This initial rush of cards hitting the market is going to translate to more people actually playing the format six months from now when we hit Modern PPTQ season, and that’s when these are going to hit truly high demand. Getting in on these now will pay divends then.

Lava Spike

Again, one that has already seen its spike but is still growing. Even though it’s a common, don’t be surprised to see this hit the $4 to $5 range soon. If you can still find these, they’re great targets.

Conclusions

I touched on many of these two years ago, while we were still opening Modern Masters. It made no sense to me that Lava Spike was being considered essentially bulk after years of being a money common. Those moves are paying off now, and you can be sure a similar article for Modern Masters 2015 will be in the works in the coming weeks.

Until then, enjoy Modern Masters 2015. Just don’t forget about its predecessor.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

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