The Watchtower 03/08/21 – A Second Pass At Kaldheim

As everyone is looking forward to Time Spiral remastered (and I’m crying over how difficult it will be to get the foils I want for EDH), I think it’s time for us to take a little look back at Kaldheim. I say “look back at” like it didn’t just come out a month ago, but the product cycle is so fast these days it feels like we’re already seeing it in the rear view mirror.

Anyway, now that Kaldheim has been out for a little while and people have had time to buy their cards and build their EDH decks, I want to take another look at the set and find some good cards we might have missed the first time around.


Toski, Bearer of Secrets (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $8
Possible price: $25

Toski creeps into the top ten Commanders for Kaldheim at number nine, but if we compare it to the other rare legends at the top of the table (that have Showcase variants), we can glean some interesting data. Toski may only be at number nine as a Commander, but is in more decks as part of the 99 than any of the others above it – i.e. Tergrid, Magda and Jorn. Those three are popular in their own right as generals, but when it comes to being part of the main deck they don’t stack up to the power of the little squirrel.

Toski is uncounterable and indestructible, a combo which can make it very difficult to deal with. It fits perfectly into more go-wide strategies like tokens or Edric style decks, and the card advantage it can get you just makes it an excellent addition to most green EDH decks.

Showcase versions of Toski can currently be had around $8 on TCGPlayer, but for a rare that’s only just come out, 37 listings is not a lot. Tergrid has double the number of listings than Toski does, and yet is double the price – starting around $15 for NM foils. That seems pretty off to me, and I think that the Toskis are way cheaper than they should be. Grab some of these under $10 and I think you’ll be very happy with your purchase in 6-12 months.

Binding the Old Gods (Foil)

Price today: $1
Possible price: $5

Binding the Old Gods is the most popular uncommon from Kaldheim for EDH in terms of percentage inclusion, and it’s another one where I want to take a look at some more numbers. At around 470 decks it’s in 11% of possible decks registered since Kaldheim came out, with the next most popular uncommon being Saw it Coming at 10%. Both foils are going for around $1 on TCGPlayer, but Binding has less than half the listings Saw it Coming does – this implies much greater demand for Binding.

It certainly feels like the kind of card that people are going to want to foil out more than a counterspell – it’ll stay in play a few turns and the foils really do look great. Apart from that it’s just a great card in its own right; the fact that it can hit any nonland permanent rather than just a creature makes it much more powerful than it otherwise might be. On top of that you get a bit of ramp plus a probably favourable combat step, so I can see why people are putting it in their decks.

I like grabbing a stack of these around $1 and would even go as high as $2 if you can pick them up in larger quantities. I think it’s a card that will most likely retail over $5 in a year or 18 months, and buylists will probably not be far off that as well. If you can buy for $1 now and buylist for $4 in 18 months then I’m totally happy with that.

Doomskar (FEA)

Price today: $9
Possible price: $20

You might see Doomskar as just another five mana wrath for EDH, but I think it’s actually a lot better than that. Yes, you have cards like Wrath of God and Day of Judgement at four mana, but to get the best out of Doomskar you’re going to be Foretelling it. I think that Foretell is actually really powerful in EDH, because although there isn’t often a lot of direct hand attack going around, there are almost always going to be people casting Wheel of Fortunes et al., along with other discard effects to boot. Foretell gets around that really nicely, and so to be able to stash away effectively a three mana wrath, safe from almost every angle, is a really powerful thing to do.

Clocking in at over 650 decks registered on EDHREC, Doomskar is up there with some of the most popular cards from the set and is the most popular white card by a very wide margin. You need to pick and choose your wraths in white decks because there are a lot of options, but I really do think that this is now one of the best ones there is – especially when you consider the fact that you can Foretell something on turn one off a Sol Ring or Mana Crypt (etc.).

You can currently grab foil extended arts at around $9 on TCGPlayer, and although there are 63 listings, only a couple of those have 4 or more copies. Supply isn’t super deep, and given 12-18 months I think that this could easily see $20-25 or more.


David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

The Math on TSR and Timeshifts

Time Spiral Remastered arrives in two weeks, officially. We’ve got most of the set revealed, including the Timeshifted sheet, which is new cards put into old borders. Because TSR is a limited-run set, especially with Strixhaven coming out on April 23rd, TSR and especially the Timeshifted sheet, offers a very unique opportunity for gaining value. Let’s talk about what to get , how many there will be, and when to get it!

Let’s start with the regular set. There are no Collector Boosters or special frames (aside from the Timeshifted sheet) so there’s just regular and foil for the set itself. According to Ben Bleiweiss over at SCG, foil rares in Standard now drop about one in 18 packs, and foil mythics in one in 144 packs, roughly. This tracks with the ratio we’ve been given of foils appearing in Standard sets and the regular packs.

A Wizards source on the WPN Facebook groups has confirmed the foil rate for the foil timeshifted sheet: once every 27 packs, roughly. That is a real ‘holy meatballs’ level of scarcity, especially because the timeshifted sheet is just 121 cards appearing at the same frequency relative to each other. With 36 packs per box, you’re looking at four boxes to collect a set of nonfoil timeshifted cards, though in execution that probably won’t happen. Statistics is like that, sadly. 

There aren’t a lot of cards in the regular set that you should be too worried about, though. This is all reprints, nothing new. Granted, most of these cards haven’t been printed since the original Time Spiral block in 2007-2008, but the price is generally due to the low supply, not a super-high demand. 

Time Spiral Remastered is a limited-run product. They aren’t planning on doing a huge print run, this is just to goose the market with some reprints. I’m confident this will be a fun set to draft, but holy smokes, the foils on the Timeshifted sheet are going to carry some very high premiums.

Let’s have a table, summarizing what we know, before we talk about our plans for these cards.

Rarity/typeOverall Frequency (estimated)Number in the setHow many packs to get one specific card (estimated)
TSR mythic1 in 7.4 packs15111
TSR foil rare1 in 18 packs53954
TSR foil mythic1 in 144 packs152,160
TSR timeshifted1 in every pack121121
TSR foil timeshifted1 in 27 packs1213,267

For comparison: Foil Phyrexian Vorinclex is about every 296 packs, and FEA Jeweled Lotus was every 400 packs. Foil Timeshifted Thoughtseize will be roughly 8 times rarer than FEA Jeweled Lotus. I grant you that Vorinclex and Lotus were in Collector Boosters, but stores were willing to presell those cards based on allocations.

We have a very narrow window with the Timeshifted cards, in foil and not. It’s more than the four weeks between TSR’s release and Strixhaven’s release. Previews for the Standard set will begin just a couple of weeks after Time Spiral Remastered, draining attention and preorder money.

Luckily, we have a very recent example of shorter-run sets with special cards and the timeframe involved: Commander Legends.

I broke down the timeframe for Jeweled Lotus and I also looked at Phyrexian Vorinclex, because the last six months of YOLO and FOMO have lead to a pretty clear pattern: Don’t buy in the first two weeks, but the time to buy is when regular folks have gotten their boxes, and begin cracking and dumping.  You have to give the preorder people a chance to sate their ravenous, drooling, immediate needs but you have to be cognizant of the small supply involved with these cards.

In this case, with the Timeshifted sheet, we’re looking at some ridiculously rare foils. Preorders are notably rare with the big vendors, because they aren’t sure how many of each they will end up with. They are playing it conservative, which I respect as a business decision (refunding the most rabid customers instead of giving them what they paid so early for) and an indicator of their product allocation (holy crap they really aren’t getting much!).

We’ve got most of the cards on the list of 121 (four more to come out today) and I just can’t advocate for price predictions on the foils. Quantities this small are not something we’ve dealt with before, and the collectors have come out in force for Magic lately. I suspect that even the less-popular ones, like Temur Battle Rage, will have surprisingly high foil prices. 

While it’s true that the old border is not everyone’s favorite, the players who get hit with nostalgia are also going to be the older, more enfranchised players, who are also the ones that tend to have more disposable income. I’m not expecting these cards to go down over time, not one bit. 

So what do I think you should do? Wait one to two weeks, and then put down the money needed to get the foil Timeshifted cards you want for personal use, for your collections, and for later growth. Those are clearly going to be the chase cards, and with there being 1.3 Timeshifted foils per box, with 121 cards all having an equal chance to be that foil, it’s going to take a whole lot to get the copies people want.

The real growth opportunity may well be in the nonfoil Timeshifted cards. With so much product getting opened in search of the high-dollar foils, there will be opportunities to pick up the other cards in nonfoil. Tournament staples like Dismember should be good picks, because not every tournament player has an all-foil deck and like nonfoil Extended Art cards, this may be the way to add uniqueness to the competitive decks. Those in-person tournaments will eventually be held again. 

The number of Commander staples on this sheet also represent opportunity. Sure, those players generally want the foils, but as we’ve seen with foil EA Jeweled Lotus and other such chase cards, the nonfoils won’t maintain too much of a gap. Solemn Simulacrum is my favorite pick here, but Panharmonicon is also really pulling at my interest. Sorting this sheet by EDHREC ranking will help you concentrate on the higher-demand cards, and help you decide where to put your money.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, 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 and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Unlocked Pro Trader: Yer A Borin’ Spec, ‘arry

Readers!

Ready for another one of those easy, dumbdumb free money obvious, you-could-figure-this-out-yourself but even though that’s the case you don’t know all of the cards in EDH and therefore it’s still valuable for me to do it for you articles? I promised I’d do it, and with a bit of Strixhaven announced, I’m ready to scour EDHREC for a very specific kind of spec that will go up because Wizard and for no other reason.

A Bitter Legacy

On about July 18th, 2019, Wizards sent out invitations to content creators announcing Throne of Eldraine. It would be a fairy tale set, set in a fantasy kingdom containing gingerbread men and pumpkin carriages and an impish, mischevious planeswalker who used his capricious fairy magic to ruin every format. They didn’t get the T in “Fairy Tale” out of their mouths before the entire internet said “FAIRIES” and this happened.

First the hype spike, then the crash. The best time to buy Bitterblossom was January of 2019, so basically only people who already had copies made any money and everyone else bought, oh man, I can’t believe I just thought of this stupid joke during a paragraph about Throne of Eldraine – everyone else bought magic beans! Get it? GET IT? You don’t want to be the person buying Bitterblossom at $55 and feeling good that is goes to $65 in a week only to have to buylist it in shame for $33 a few weeks later or hold onto it for 2 years while it climbed back up. There are worse investments than Bitterblossom, but if you bought based on Throne of Eldraine you both bought and sold at the wrong times and that’s bad.

I don’t think Wizards will be much different. In fact, there’s already precedent.

What happened at the end of 2017?

1-x-MTG-Commander-2017-Arcane-Wizardry-Preconstructed-Decks-Brand-New

Inalla was a tash deck, Kess was basically only played by Legacy players and Alex Kessler and I made a ton of money buying Dominating Licids for the Mairsil deck that never materialized forcing me to hang onto them. Stonks, baby!

I think the thing about dumb, Wizards-based speculative spikes on the basis of Harry Potter generic Wizard school is that any spike will be a second spike because anyone who had money left over after they bought Card Kingdom out of Waiting in the Weeds bought Patron Wizard back in 2017 so all of the $0.50 hobby shop rare binder copies already got snapped up and buylisted to Channel Fireball at a GP. Prices won’t have to overcome as much inertia on the second pop, and it will take fewer copies getting picked up to make things go off.

I like the following cards that aren’t already in the stratosphere.

First stop, Azami, Lady of Scrolls’ page.

Not a ton surprising here, and although $10 on Patron Wizard looks rough, it’s trending DOWN, remember? If it was flirting with $15 recently, Strixhaven hype will intensify the closer we get to actual spoilers. Should a lot of the stuff popped when Strixhaven was announced? Supply started to move, but people were buying carefully and stealthily, trying to amass copies before prices shifted. The next wave of people who can’t think about Strixhaven because it’s Time Spiral Remastered spoiler season this week won’t be as canny and they’ll bowl right through the last few copies. Be sneaky if you’re going to try and buy now and sell to those people, imo. Patron Wizard at $10 doesn’t suck, especially since it hasn’t been below $10 since 2017.

Naru Meha had some natural gas going on. You may have some of these in bulk. This is mythic but there are still quite a few copies out there and despite it quadrupling already, I think the ceiling is closer to $10 than $5.

The foil looks even better. The slope of the growth curve is shallower, it’s down from an all-time high of $8 and it’s barely double the price of the non-foil. Foils as commanders sell better than Pringles that have to get shuffled into the deck and Naru is usually in the 99, although it’s possible, though not likely, she’ll get jammed in a Strixhaven deck or two. I really don’t think Wizards tribal will be great in Strixhaven any more than humans tribal was good in Dominaria since humans live in Dominaria, but I’ve been wrong before. The entire point of not writing articles like this is because I get to be wrong less the less I guess. Who cares what I think, we can what people who waited to long to start thinking about this think when they don’t have as much time to think as we have. Let them buy these from you and if they manage to make money, even if they make more money than you did, they incurred way more risk. Save 311% of the next guy, that’s what I always say. That said, the ceiling for foils is considerably higher than $10 if that’s the ceiling for non-foils, so a $6-$8 buy-in seems safe to me.

Sigil Tracer isn’t ONLY an Azami card so it’s been on an upward trajectory for other reasons, but since CFB has it for half of what CK has it for, I’d say there is opportunity still and CK is usually the first site to show fluctuations in EDH demand. That said, does CFB ACTUALLY have $4 copies or is their API garbage?

That answers that question…

These aren’t entirely gone under $8, so happy hunting! The card is just good irrespective of Strixhavenanigans, so you’re pretty safe buying in here even at its current price. This started climbing last summer, way before we knew about “Fantastic Cards and Where to Find Them” the set so this isn’t my fault, OK? I didn’t like this in May of 2020 and now I do. It’s fine. I’m not being defensive, YOU are being defensive! Look, buying in at $7 isn’t as good as buying in at $3 or $4, but also, you’re going to sell for more or just watch this card’s natural trajectory take it to $12 even if no one buys based on Strixhaven, so this is a win/also win but more scenario. I can’t notice everything that grows by 2% a month, damn.

Alchemist doesn’t synergize with Wizards, really, he just happens to be a Wizard. Is he good in Azami? I guess? But Strixhaven is giving us 2-color decks, probably with Dragons at the helm, no one is building an Azami deck with the 3 new mono-Blue Wizards cards from Strixhaven. Yes, I’m begging to have that paragraph clipped out and tweeted to me in a month. Whatever, Aphetto Alchemist is literally not stupider than Patron Wizard and I keep forgetting that. You probably have some of these you couldn’t buylist for a quarter a year ago, sell them in a few weeks.

More like PRICEspanner. No, wait, I can do better than that. More like PRICEsurger! No, no, no, let me think let me think let me think. More like SurgePRICER you know what, I don’t have to impress you, this card’s price fluctuates a lot and that’s worth knowing about. The current TCG Player price is its usual Card Kingdom floor price, so read into that anything you want.

Is There Anything On Kaza’s Page?

Besides a nasty computer virus labeled xXxLincolnParkCrawling.virusxXx? Remember Kazaa? Is that a reference you kids get?

Kazam!

TCG Market is more than Card Kingdom right now, and that’s suspicious. I think that means the price is about to move, that’s usually what that means.

I saved the best for last. $1 buy-in, low supply, demonstrated the ability to hit $4 on baseless Wizards speculation in the past, second spike which means it will be higher than the first spike, actually Wizard-synergistic, obvious as a pick-up to anyone who types “wizards” into scryfall. This is not going to be good, most likely, but this is the exact kind of card that we’re looking for in this article. Behold, your Bitterblossom. Go forth and let your collection blossom with these or it will be you who is bitter. There, there’s your Wizards article. Hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Until next time!

The Watchtower 03/01/21 – Core Values

Core sets have always been Wizard’s way of introducing Magic to new players and trying to reel them into the game. They’re generally unthemed and use more basic cards and abilities compared to regular sets, and contain a bunch of reprints. Wizards tried to do away with them back in 2015 with Magic Origins supposed to be the last core set (if I’m remembering that correctly), but they then brought them back with M19 in 2018 (yes, the numbers don’t line up with the years and I hate it).

Anyway, there’s no Care Set 2022 scheduled, but instead there’s the Dungeons & Dragons crossover set lined up where M22 would be. On top of that, we’ve just had the announcement that we’re also getting Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40k crossovers as well, and so it may well be the case that these IP crossover sets are replacing Core Sets as a new way of getting some fresh meat into Magic.

This over-long introduction is my lead into saying that Core Sets (or certainly the last few, at least) have had some great spec opportunities in them, and there’s still money to be made. They’re underprinted compared to the Fall sets that follow them, and have some hidden (or at least undervalued) gems that I’m going to take a look at today.


Mangara, the Diplomat (FEA)

Price today: $17
Possible price: $40

White is a colour that’s struggled with power level and card advantage over the past few years, despite Wizards’ insistence that they’re doing their best to remedy this (and yet even with Kaldheim we have another busted UG mythic where the best white card in the set is…Doomskar? Maybe? It’s silly). That means that white cards are still at a premium in EDH, and white probably still remains as the worst colour in the format.

So when we get good card advantage engines in white, we should pay attention. Mangara, the Diplomat is the most popular white card from M21 and the third most popular card from the set, at over 6000 decks recorded on EDHREC, plus another 170 playing it as the general. It provides card advantage strapped to a reasonably sized body that blocks fairly well, and helps to dissuade your opponents from attacking you or casting too many spells in a turn.

Foil extended arts are the version I like the look of here, with supply starting to dwindle and prices starting to go up. This was a $15 card and there are now only a couple of copies below $20 on TCGPlayer, with a total of 36 listings and no major walls of stock around. We’ve already seen mythics from this set like Fiery Emancipation and Terror of the Peaks pop off, and I don’t think that this one is too far away from doing a similar thing. Given 6 months or so, I think we’ll see this around $40.

Yarok, the Desecrated (Foil)

Price today: $25
Possible price: $50

Speaking of foil mythics, jumping back a core set to 2020 brings us Yarok, the Desecrated. It’s the second most built commander from the set, losing out on the top spot to Golos (nothing to be ashamed of), as well as being pretty popular in its own right – although I think that the main draw is to play the card as your general. Yarok is great at doing the EDH thing of “more more more”, and so any time we get more cards printed that play around with ETB triggers then this card is likely to see another bump.

These foils have been climbing from $15 since the end of 2019, but I don’t think they’re close to being done just yet. If we compare this to Golos – which is a rare not a mythic – Golos foils are already pretty much $30, and there are around half the number of Yarok foils on TCG than  Golos. That makes me think that barring a reprint (which I find fairly unlikely), this is due for a correction once the sub-$35 copies get bought, and the card will be heading up towards $50 before long.

Tale’s End (Foil)

Prices today: $10
Possible price: $25

Tale’s End has been a moderately popular EDH card, listed in around 6200 decks listed on EDHREC, and has seen a little play in competitive formats too (mostly in the hands of MTGO grinder Aspiring Spike). It’s not the most prolific card in the world, but it’s pretty powerful in EDH – being able to counter anyone’s commander for just two mana is great, as well as having the flexibility to stop any pesky triggered or activated abilities like a Planeswalker ultimate or even a ‘win the game’ trigger!

TCG is down to only twelve listings for NM foils, starting at $10 and ramping up to $20. Core Set 2020 is going to be two years old soon, and it’s not as if we’re getting any more supply soon. There are the prerelease and promo pack foils as well, but those are both already more expensive and also in short supply. I don’t think it’s even the kind of card that we’d see reprinted in Commander decks, but even if we do it’ll most likely be non-foil, so non worries there. I think that this will tip over the $20 mark in a few months or less, and ride on upwards from there.


David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

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