With Modern prices going crazy lately, now seems like a reasonable time to review some cards one might want to acquire before they too increase in price. As Jason Alt often tells us, a rising bite lifts all toads (or something), so there’s reason to expect that a lot of Modern stuff that is also played casually is going to increase soon, too.
If you’ve been waiting on picking up something from the last three years, now may be the time. Let’s go through in detail and see what seems primed for an increase, compared to what should be avoided at all costs.
Disclosure: While I have a couple Commander decks, Cube is my main interest when it comes to casual MTG. So I’ll try to touch on some Commander staples, but my knowledge base and interest is much more Cube-centric. Additionally, a lot of these cards are also good in eternal formats, so we’ll be looking at quite a few competitive cards today, too.
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Locally we’re finding Gideon reaaaaaal good in Modern Junk. Just a heads up.
Looking at the history of PW’s I can’t find a single reason to put my money on a PW with double white casting cost, from a set that has the largest print run to this date.
Elspeth, Knight-Errant was $30+ even after its Duel Deck printing (even after rotating from Standard!), and stayed at $20+ for quite a while even after a Modern Masters printing. That doesn’t make Gideon a good buy at $25 necessarily, but there is historical precedent for planeswalkers at 2WW.
Thanks for this comment. A 4-CMC planeswalker is definitely worth a look in Modern.
I still like the outlook on a lot of casual foils that you didn’t mention. Cards that are on the fringes of competitive magic but are very popular with kitchen table or commander. Ajani, Mentor of Heroes foils, Urborg foils, hell, even cards like hardened scales and abzan falconer foils I like long term. All of the cards I mentioned have shown casual demand and I expect the foils will sell for years to come. Oh ya, casuals love counters, tokens, saccing, milling and all sorts of other themes to look out for. Always keep an eye out for those types of casual foils. I’m starting to wonder if I should start looking at ally foils as well as some other archetypes as well.