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.

Though we dole out a good deal of advice, most of you ultimately have very little insight into when and why our writing team actually puts our money where our collective mouths are pointing. To further illuminate our collective process, we’re running this occassional series breaking down what we’ve been buying and selling and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought for personal use and/or without hope of profit. 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 we’ve been up to this week:

Buying Period: Nov 15th – November 23rd/2016

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

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

• 1x Relentless Dead (JPN) @ $1.50/per: Long
• 8x Eldrazi Displacer (Foil) @ $11/per: Mid to Long
• 4x Arcum Dagsson @ $7: Short to Mid

BOUGHT (Pucatrade)

• 1x Spell Queller (Foil) @ 1500 points: Mid to Long

SOLD

• 4x Phyrexian Devourer @ $4.00/per (Cost: $1/per, Winter ’15)

Relentless Dead is a powerful zombie that hasn’t found a home yet, but as a mythic I’m picking them up here and there as good deals present themselves. Zombies are a deep tribe, and sooner or later the demand for the best ones always appears. No rush on this card, but keep an eye out for dropping inventory levels and make a move down the road.

[Editor: Same note as last week, same story.] Eldrazi Displacer is a card that has found multiple homes in Standard and Modern, and has a bright future as a unique role player in casual, cube and EDH. There are still foils available around $10 but the inventory is VERY low for a recent rare and I think this easily tops $20 a bit down the road.  Spell Queller is a card with a similar profile that is powerful in both Standard and Modern, and it shouldn’t be too long until the sub-$15 foils dry up and the card sets up a new plateau over $25.

Arcum Dagsson was a Jason Alt pick this week over in his EDH article on this site, and lo and behold, they’ve now dried up. The card is good with Breya from Commander 2016, and folks are brewing and speculating here, likely in equal measure.

I was happy to get a Spell Queller foil on PucaTrade, though I’ll need to argue down the point value with the mods.

On the sales side, I got rid of a few straggler cards from the Super Collection I bought 18 months ago.

The rest of the guys were quiet on the buying front this week, though I suspect Travis snagged a few foil Gitrog Monsters on SCG today.

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.