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I’d love to tell you about some cool new deck in Standard, I really would. Maybe a Mechanized Production list that took the MOCS by storm, or something showing up repeatedly in the MTGO constructed leagues. That would be great. But I can’t. The MOCS was as boring as can be, with almost everyone in the room playing Copycat or Mardu Vehicles. The most exotic deck there was Temur Marvelworks, which is hardly an unknown quantity. I guess we’re stuck waiting for Amonkhet to shake things up? That or the ban list announcement next Monday. Either way, Aether Revolt’s exploration period was short lived indeed.
Instead, we’ll look over at Modern again. With the Modern Masters 2017 spoiler now completely available, we know exactly what’s coming, and more specifically, what isn’t. The last few weeks I’ve featured several cards that I thought had good outlooks if they weren’t reprinted, and I don’t think any of them were. All of those perspectives still stand. We’ll get into a few more now.
Threads of Disloyalty
Price Today: $4.50 Possible Price: $15
Remember this card? Remember how it used to be $30? Well, it’s $4.50 now. When a card that used to be $30 is now $4.50, and there was no reprint or banning involved in the presence of the card in the metagame, that means we could reasonably return to the old high.
Somewhere between Born of the Gods and Journey to Nyx, Threads spiked hard, and has ridden a slow train downhill to the roughly $4.50 a copy you’ll pay today. It doesn’t show up all too often today, though it was still seeing play for months after the initial price spike. Does that rule it out as unplayable though? No, not at all. More than likely, people just sort of forgot about it after it stopped serving an immediate need in the format.
Imagine this against Death’s Shadow, for instance. Threads can steal their Tarmogoyfs, for one thing. It can also steal the eponymous card. And in the instance where your life is high enough that Death’s Shadow doesn’t stick around, hey, that’s cool. It acts as a pseudo-removal spell in that situation. People aren’t playing three mana removal spells in Modern too often, but a three mana control magic that can kill Death’s Shadow in a pinch is fine. And it’s not like people stopped playing Tarmogoyf, or Snapcaster Mage, or Arcbound Ravager, or Scavenging Ooze, or Dark Confidant, or Grim Flayer, or…
There’s not an immediate impetus to grab copies of Threads of Disloyalty. I don’t expect it to come roaring back into Modern this week. It’s worth keeping an eye on though, all the same. With no additional copies having been added to the market since the last time it was far into double digit territory, there’s no reason whatsoever to think that it couldn’t do it again. If this begins sneaking into 5-0 league lists at some point, it may be time to act.
Eldrazi Temple
Price Today: $7.50 Possible Price: $15
This may have made you money a year or so ago, and it could be time to double dip if so. If you missed the first time around, well, don’t make the same mistake twice.
Browsing Modern events, whether they’re 5-0 league lists, or GP top 32s, or SCG Opens, there always seems to be a few Eldrazi lists floating around. They’re mostly Bant builds these days, with the usual crew: Reshaper, Displacer, Smasher, Seer. In every list there’s four Eldrazi Temple; mini Mishra’s Workshops each. The alien menace hasn’t run over Modern or anything, but it’s definitely carved out a part of the metagame for itself.
There’s also the Eldrazi/Taxes hybrids floating around. Those play cards like Leonin Arbiter, both Thalias, and Chalice of the Void. They’re more about restraining your opponent’s resources while presenting a clock rather than running hasty 5/5s into people’s faces, but they still play at least eight Eldrazi, and as such, four Temples. This isn’t a fringe deck either; like the Eldrazi Aggro builds, this archetype has claimed a slice of the meta.
We’ve now got two different Modern decks each running a full playset of Eldrazi Temple, as well as your typical fringe usage in Legacy, cube, etc. It’s even in a good 1,500 EDH decks over on EDHREC.com. Supply on the Rise of the Eldrazi and Duel Deck printings is sparse, with maybe a couple of playsets between the two editions. MM2 supply is considerably deeper, but there’s still less than a page total on TCGPlayer. This means that while I’m not expecting an explosion in price in the immediate future, there’s few enough copies out there that we could certainly see this start to climb without too much public chatter necessary.
With the Cavern of Souls reprint bringing down the price barrier on the Eldrazi strategies, supply where it is, and Modern’s history of driving mana bases wild, there’s definitely reason to believe that we could be looking at $15+ Eldrazi Temples within 2017.
MTG Fast Finance is our weekly podcast covering the flurry of weekly financial activity in the world of Magic: The Gathering. MFF provides a fast, fun and useful sixty minute format. Follow along with our seasoned hosts as they walk you through this week’s big price movements, their picks of the week, metagame analysis and a rotating weekly topic.
Show Notes: Mar 3, 2017
Segment 1: Top Card Spikes of the Week
A pretty quiet week in card spikes…that is up until the MM17 reveals wrapped up Thursday and people started moving on cards that weren’t included. (Expect to see those here next week.)
The Call: Confidence Level 6: $20.00 to $40.00 (+20.00/+100%, 0-12+ months)
Disclosure: Travis and James may own speculative copies of the above cards.
Segment 3: Topic of the Week
James & Travis got deep on the exciting new Modern Masters 2017 release.
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.
Today, the complete list of Modern Masters 2017 goes up, and I’m busy refreshing pages and going crazy just like you.
I’m keenly aware of some truly amazing cards and the higher distribution, and I can’t wait to find out how overpriced my shop is going to hold drafts at, but I want to focus on the fetches in MM17 and what the future holds for them.
We have a baseline for what’s going to happen to the enemy fetches from Zendikar, with their inclusion in MM17: The allied fetches in Khans of Tarkir.
This was at more than $100, just from Legacy and casual demand. Going from Onslaught to Khans is an enormous jump in availability, but there was a new demand as Modern players could now add these to decks. A loss of half was immediate, and it’s halved again.
Notably, the demand hasn’t spiked since the KTK printing, though this is the Onslaught version we are looking at, the original. It’s lost a lot of value and hasn’t recovered, which is a bit of a surprise to me.
Let’s look at what the Khans version has done.
First of all, it’s at half the price of the Onslaught version. It’s much more common, yes, but this is a big gap for a card between its two printings. I think that with such a big difference in art and frame, I’m not surprised that there is a gap, which is consistent across all five of the fetches. People are willing to pay more for the old version.
I am surprised that the gap has held. We’ve got six versions of allied fetches for you to choose from, allowing you to balance your budget with your desire for the shiny or unique.
What this means for the enemy fetches is this: I’m expecting them to lose value immediately, down to the $15-$20 range. I expect them to recover somewhat at the start of Amonkhet, and start an upward creep…but not very far.
Reusing the art is a big deal for the fetchlands. These are going to be the same as the originals, except for the expansion symbol and other small frame tweaks, and that means the originals are going to be dragged down in price significantly.
If I had them, I might try to move extras but buylists might not be honored now, and I can’t imagine eBay sales are going to happen much. It couldn’t hurt trying to sell them now, but I don’t think you’ll get very far.
If you’re holding nonfoils, I think you’re going to simply have to hold onto them and accept that you’re going to have to wait some time to get much of your value back.
Foils, though, that’s a different matter. I doubt that the foils are going to recover effectively, given that there’s a super-chase-mega-rare one to go get, but my guess is that the foils take a hit of about 40% and then stabilize. Having the new foils look almost the same as the old ones is going to mean that the older ones come down toward the newer ones.
Modern Masters 2017 has a truly ridiculous number of chase cards, and I want to address what Wizards is trying to do: make the format cheaper and sell a bunch of packs. I don’t think this is a move of the desperate, but they are trying to goose player interest in the format.
Modern as a format has looked flat, but my goodness, we have a lot of toys to play with in this set, some of which harken back to other amazing formats, e.g. Mystical Teachings.
While I think that the fetches are going to stay stable, I suspect that this is going to lead to growth if the player base grows. Fetches are going to be the canary in the coal mine for Modern: If the players come to the format, the prices of the lands will be the first to show it. This set is gas and it’s going to get a lot of people playing the format because the cards will be cheap.
Make no mistake, this is going to torpedo some prices significantly. Stores have more product. Some stores are selling boxes for less than the MSRP of $240, and that’s a sign for how much product they want to move. There’s going to be a lot of Liliana of the Veil running around, a lot more Damnation and Blood Moon, and people want to play with their awesome new and expensive cards.
I think that Wizards is sending another signal here: Anything not on the Reserved List is fair game. The EV on a MM17 pack is ridiculously high, at least for right now. That won’t last, though, as packs get opened and prices crash. Remember that stores get boxes from distributors for less than retail, and they will open boxes if the price is right on singles. That pressure will keep the price of the non-chase cards super duper low.
In previous sets, they decided to cap the values of boxes, by only reprinting so many valuable cards. This is not the case in 2017, instead they chose both low-print-run cards (Liliana) to cards they have goosed a bunch (Tarmogoyf) and so on. Going forward, nothing’s safe. Please keep that in mind as we go forward into this brave new world.
With the latest spoilers revealed this morning, Modern Masters 2017 is officially the most exciting edition of the series, and one of the most exciting Magic sets of all time. Wizards of the Coast is clearly looking for a home run here and there is a lot to digest in terms of how the set will impact investments in the Modern format for players and speculators.
Let’s get up to speed on the mythics revealed thus far:
We now know 14 of the 15 mythic rares in Modern Masters 2017 [Update: Olivia Voldaren is the final mythic], and despite the inclusion of both Liliana of the Veil AND Tarmogoyf, with Snapcaster Mage and Cavern of Souls as a side dish, this offering is actually not that different than Modern Masters 2015.
Here are some figures on the MM15 Mythics, courtesy of number crunching that Saffron Olive did over on MTGGoldFish at the time.
As you can see mythics were on track to contribute just under $90 in EV (Estimated Value) to MM15 at launch. Now take a look at the MM17 mythic offerings by comparison.
As you can see, the mythics may actually represent less value in this set than in MM15, largely because they are dazzling us with LoTV and Tarmogoyf, while offering up significantly less $25+ cards. That being said, the demand profile as persistent, multi-deck four-ofs for Tarmogoyf, Snapcaster Mage, and Cavern of Souls may help those cards hold value better and recover faster down the road.
Now let’s take a look at the rares that are on offer:
Prices as of noon Mar 2/17.
Clearly the biggest story here is the inclusion of the Zendikar fetch lands. Adding five high demand rares currently priced between $30-$60 (after immediate deflation upon the reveal) was the clearest flag that this set is intended to push the envelope on Estimated Value. But the rare value goes significantly deeper overall than it did with MM15. Have a look at the different in EV just based on the rares we know so far:
Numbers are rough here, but rares are clearly a much bigger contributor to EV this time.
If you squint, that’s a potentially whopping 50%+ increase in the EV being added by rares in this set, assuming a roughly equivalent value for the remaining rares, including likely bulk rares.
I haven’t run the numbers on uncommons yet, but with key cards like Path to Exile, Inquisition of Kozilek, Serum Visions, Terminate and Might of Old Krosa, my guess is these numbers will come in equal to or above even Modern Masters (2013), and significantly above the uncommon poor MM15.
If the set allocations were the same, these figures alone would make boxes a slam dunk, but beware, because there is more to this story.
A Word on Product Allocations
Early word from vendors was that Modern Masters 2017 featured an entirely different distribution pattern than the last two installments of the series. Previously, most vendors got some of their limited edition product from WoTC directly, and some of it via their distributors. This time around, distributors are controlling all of the inventory, making it much harder to get a handle on how much the print run has been increased (since you can’t simply measure WoTC case allocations). Many vendors reported that they had been offered “as much as they wanted” for MM17, which suggests that WoTC is fully aware of how juiced this set is and is looking to take advantage of the hype the kichen sink approach to set design will drive in order to achieve significantly greater sales. Solid information is still unfolding at this point but based on what I’ve heard so far I would estimate that the print run is at least 50-100% larger than previously, and possibly even beyond that. Massdrop.com sold over 1700 boxes in one drop the other day, and even more on a second one.
Interestingly, after the fiasco of Eternal Masters “limited” product being made available to vendors a full six months after it was first released (in Dec 2016), many players and speculators were looking gun shy at the prospect of pre-ordering this set and I managed to pick up my boxes at $175 without issue before most of the reveals went down. As of this morning, boxes are hovering around $210-$220 a box and they hype train could easily drive them back into the MSRP range of $240 or even beyond depending on what the forthcoming final EV calculation articles confirm about the expected value of a pack or box.
So should you be piling on to buy boxes with everyone else? I don’t think so. The Estimated Value on offer just so far, without the full set revealed, looks roughly equivalent for the mythics and significantly increased in the rare and uncommon slots. Paired with higher supply that suggests to me that nearly all of the cards included are going to take a large hit in the 20-50% range as we approach peak supply. Sure, a lot of cards recovered well from the last two Modern Masters sets, but they had less supply, and MM15 boxes appreciated much less than MM13 before them (partially due to lessened set value).
If you got in on boxes under $190 when those were available in the last few weeks, you may get a chance to flip them for +$40/box at peak hype, and cracking them will be unlikely to cost you much if you need the cards. Boxes over $240 however are not somewhere I want to be with this set, as the EV today is very unlikely to resemble the EV in a few months. Couple that with the specter of another holiday season surprise re-release and even Japanese boxes around $300 look scary.
Play it Smart
Speculation with Modern Masters 2017 cards is not going to be easy. Once we know more about total supply, and we’ve seen inventory levels of key cards and mapped their likely peak supply pricing, we can start to probe for potential targets.
Generally speaking you are going to want to look for desperation sales from folks who snapped up boxes looking to crack and flip, only to find that everyone else is doing the same thing and driving prices into the ground.
Rares especially are going to be tough to keep afloat, and sales on Twitter and Facebook are likely to abound by early April. With a foil in every pack you should get a chance at some good deals on sparkly things for your cube or EDH deck.
When picking targets you will want to pair your patience with data on which cards are actually being played in multiple archetypes, usually as a 4-of, and in multiple formats. Fetchlands, Snapcaster Mage, Goyf, Cavern of Souls, etc fit this profile.
The other group of cards you will want to take a hard look (prioritizing on the same basis) at are the ones that definitely won’t be in MM17, including:
Blinkmoth Nexus
Cryptic Command
Engineered Explosives
Glimmervoid
Grove of the Burnwillows
Horizon Canopy
Inkmoth Nexus
Karn Liberated
Mishra’s Bauble
Saffi, Eriksdotter
Valakut
Priority Exits (If You Can)
Given how much of this set is going to be bought and cracked in the next two months, you have already missed out on some key opportunities to sell off staples like Cavern of Souls and Liliana of the Veil.
Given current pricing, which is collapsing by the minute, there are still a few overpriced cards that should be exited in a hurry, if you have the chance:
Zendikar Fetchlands: These are going to lose another 20-30% of their value as rares. There is too much going on in this set, supply is higher and dealers aren’t going to be motivated to prop up prices via aggressive buylisting. Same art too, so you can safely ditch and get back in with holograms a bit down the road if you have extras lying around.
Tarmogoyf: I think Goyf could get as low as $60-70 this time if supply is high enough. Remember this is his third printing in 5 years, and supply wasn’t draining after the last time.
Damnation: This card’s price was propped up largely by the number of years it dodged a mainstream reprint. At $40-45, it might have held most of that value as a mythic, but as a rare, this thing will be far, far more common in six weeks. It’s really only run in Jund and Abzan in Modern, and usually then as a 1-of in the sideboard. Stony Silence is played more, and it’s $5. I think the price will get cut in half or worse, so if you can exit over $30, that should be a solid move.
Cratehoof Behemoth: This will drop from $20 to $10. Get out.
Linvala, Keeper of Silence: $10-15 card by the time this is over.
Looking Forward
It is worth noting that in removing Modern as a Pro Tour format, a reduction in Modern tournament support throughout the competitive ecosystem, and the continued LGS-only distribution of Modern Masters products, WoTC is signally strongly that Modern (and other Eternal formats) are Tier 2 priorities for them and are not the core drivers of revenue and user growth.
That being said, there is no reason to believe that Modern won’t carry on much as it has been over the last twelve months or so, as a largish niche for competitive players that have been around for a while and have the collections to support it. Modern Masters 2017 represents a strong shift towards accessibility and away from prioritizing collection value, in Modern in specific, and Magic as a game, as represented by the evolving set design strategy of Wizards of the Coast. With so many key staples being reprinted here, and with expansive print runs on deck, there is every reason to believe that some new players will pick up a Modern deck, and that Modern players will diversify their options by expanding their staples collection. (Hilariously, cognitive dissonance will likely enable many players to ignore the drop in their collection value as they happily run out to scoop up cheaper staples.)
From the speculators perspective, this paradigm shift towards accessibility suggests that holding Modern staples for more than a few years after release is going to be a very risky game. I didn’t get caught out on much with this set list, but cards like Abupt Decay and Scavenging Ooze now likely represent failed specs that I would be happy to sell at or near cost, given how long they might take to recover past potential. Moving forward, opportunities related to Modern are much more likely to involve three specific categories of targets:
High demand recovering reprints, eg: LoTV, Tarmogoyf, Snapcaster Mage, Cavern of Souls
Recent reprint dodgers, eg: Ancestral Visions, Inkmoth Nexus, Engineered Explosives, Grove of the Burnwillows, Mishra’s Bauble
Newly unlocked/underestimated cards, eg: Rite of Passage, Death’s Shadow, Amulet of Vigor, etc.
Good luck out there…it’s getting tougher!
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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