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MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (April 26/15)

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By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

One of the most common misconceptions about folks involved in MTGFinance is that we are constantly manipulating the market and feeding players misinformation to help fuel achievement of our personal goals.

It recently occurred to us here that though we dole out a good deal of advice, most of you ultimately have very little insight into when we actually put our money where our collective mouths are pointing. As such we’ve decided to run a weekly series simply breaking down what we’ve been buying and selling each week and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought without hope of profit, where appropriate. We’ll also try to provide some insight into our thinking behind the specs, and whether we are aiming for a short (<1 month), mid (1-12 month), or long (1 year+) term flip. Here’s what we were up to this week:

Buying Period: April 20 – April 26, 2015

Note: All cards NM unless otherwise noted. All sell prices are net of fees unless noted.

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

SOLD (Pucatrade)

Most of my purchase activity again this week was dedicated to locking down a couple of cases of Modern Masters 2 on pre-order at a very solid price that helps ensure value regardless of the final set list. I moved in a bit on Risen Executioner as a potential answer to point removal and counterspell strategies dominating the Standard metagame, chiefly in the form of Esper Dragons. Executioner, played in a shell with enough Delve or recursion to selectively remove other creatures from the graveyard, has the potential to force through a lot of damage against the relatively ponderous control decks. The card is performing for me in my Abzan Final Form deck so far, so I’m happy to pick up a few sets of a small set mythic at $2.50 that could easily find upside during it’s tenure in the format while enjoying long term casual upside. If the card doesn’t break out soon, I’ll be looking to snag more copies around $2 in early summer. Similarly, Flamewake Phoenix is something I’m working on reinvigorating in a tempo based U/R/w shell using Frost Walker, Stratus Dancer, Ashcloud Phoenix, Rabblemaster, Ojutai and Dromoka to pressure Esper Dragons. $1.25 is a nice price for a good rare with some decent chance at upside. The rest of my paper buys were just opportunistic price snags.

Over on PucaTrade I continue to dump cards I expect are either peaking or likely to decline due to imminent reprint, with an eye to trading up into a $500-1000 card within a month or two of frequent trading.

Jared Yost

Jared says:

“Based on the thoughts I had about Commander 2014 targets, I thought I would pick up Teferi based on casual popularity. Along with Freyalise, he is one of the most desired Commanders from the set. Most players agree that the blue deck is the weakest, and my thinking is that many sealed copies of the deck are probably still sitting on shelves across various stores. This makes picking up the singles from the deck a good play and I found a nice deal on Teferi.

I picked up Retract due to seeing this crazy Modern deck called Cheerios, featuring Retract as one of the combo enablers for the equipment drawing engine that Puresteel Paladin creates. I’m not sure if the deck is powerful enough to rise above the hate of the format but for near bulk rare prices I couldn’t pass it up as a speculation target.”

Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin)

Travis says:

“Retract is in that funky Puresteel deck Gerry Thompson featured. It’s a Darksteel rare, 1 mana, powerful but niche effect, complete price floor currently at $.40 each.”

Danny Brown

BOUGHT (Pucatrade)

SOLD (Pucatrade)
“I missed the boat on See the Unwritten at 300 points, and I believe it jumped as high as 600 points after Battle for Zendikar was announced. Now I’m getting them for an acceptable price of 410 points. 
 
The other three cards are for my cube. The Thirst for Knowledge was not at all near mint, but I chose not to report it because it’s 49 cents. I don’t know if that makes me nice or part of the problem.
 
Of all the shock lands, I’m deepest in Steam Vents (thankfully). Every once in a while, I ship a few out to restock my Pucapoint stores. I’m a little surprised the Tectonic Edge promo isn’t higher, but with a potential reprint in Modern Masters 2015, I figured it couldn’t hurt too much to send it now. I’m pretty much out of Modern now, so I kept the one Deceiver Exarch in my cube and shipped the other three, because again, a reprint at common or uncommon would just kill the nearly $1 price. Finally, I lost value with the Blackcleave Cliffs by putting the stamp and the PucaTrade number on the envelope before noticing that it was a local who wanted the card. I probably could have salvaged the situation, but laziness won out when I could have saved myself the stamp and just met the dude at the LGS. Oh, well. In any case, I got this card for a dollar at Scars rotation, and I’m sick of waiting for it to go higher, so I shipped one out. I can’t imagine it will get a slot in MM15, but anything’s possible, I guess.”
Douglas Johnson (@roseofthorns)

 BOUGHT

  • 13x copies of Daretti, Scrap Savant @ $2.89/per
Douglas says:
“How many Planeswalkers in this game have an average cost of less than $5 and aren’t named Tibalt? Go ahead. Check. Daretti is an extremely powerful Commander in his own right, and fills a unique niche in the mono red Planeswalkers by having an artifact theme. I bought these from Troll and Toad, who also ships singles orders for free that total over $25. Even though this will likely be a long term hold if I’m aiming to sell for anything near $10, I have no doubt that these will be extremely easy to liquidate in my display case or trade out to local casual players for at least $5-6. “

So there you have it. Now what were you guys buying and selling this week and why?

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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9 thoughts on “MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (April 26/15)”

  3. Gents, don’t blow your brains out trying to find MM2 boxes online at the prices I arranged. Let me put it this way: the people most likely to have lower pricing are the least likely to be advertising it. I’d share my sources, but then my own orders would be at risk. I am however working on a relevant article for publication a bit down the road.

  4. Not saying you are lying but just because you said you bought it at $199 doesn’t mean you did. I can say I boghht mine at $190 and no one knows. Alot of your bought prices are signiciantly lower than what the current market is and that is why you will ALWAYS make profit. And maybe making yourself look good and as if you make good decisions. But for us we cant caus modt of the time we cant buy at the prices that you guys are. THAT i say is the advantage you guys have and not these spec tips or advices you guys say.

    1. Titania, if you knew me personally then you would know that if I say I did something, than I most certainly did. I will be happy to share the source of my MM2 boxes next month when they are safely in my hands but for now, I shared the information solely to a) comply with my weekly reporting commitments and b) to make others aware that such things are possible and encourage them to put in the networking effort needed to achieve similar goals. As for your comment about our advantages vs. non-writers let me just state the following to assist your perspective. None of the writers here are industry insiders per se, though a few of us do have access to sources that share information from time to time. We worked for those contacts, and they are available to others as well, if they put in the time and research to find them. Success with MTG Finance takes a combination of diligent research, networking, experience, funding and yes, a little luck. I wish you the best in your hunts, and offer my assistance should you have further queries.

  5. And to add further. You got dromokas command FOIL at $11??? What the heck. Thats like similar price to a NON foil. By “buying” it at $11 you already made $8 profit….

    1. Note that it was a single copy and not some easily repeatable action. I work late into the night and often have access to auctions that close with less than the average number of bidders as a result. The Ebay auction # was 291441145863 for proof. Deals abound. You just need to look for them.

  6. I don’t have special sources but I was able to pick up four boxes (one case) of MM2015 for $215 a piece on ebay last week. Unfortunately, the time for those prices may have passed: as more cards get spoiled the harder this set is going to be hyped. Boxes now seem to be selling for retail or higher. If they print enough of this set, there’s always the possibility that boxes could dip again after release. Just hawk ebay if you have time. Sometimes a seller will put up a great deal with multiple boxes available. Understandably, they go very fast.

    On a different note:

    4x Tasigur, the Golden Fang (non-prelease foil) @ 27.33/per

  7. I agree. Deals are out there if you look. I know several people who received several high and mid level cards who were willing to let them go at sometimes half of their value. Both by hand to hand transactions and online. Just gotta look. At the DoT prerelease, I pulled two Dromoka’s Command (1 foil promo, 1 standard) and two Deathmist Raptors ( 1 foil, 1 standard) and a Narset Transcendent and considered selling them for $5-10 a piece just to fill out a deck I had intended to construct. So you can get high value cards for less.

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