Monthly Archives: June 2017

Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: Why Wait?

I’m doing a very good job of presenting EDH finance to people who are either antipathetic or even hostile to EDH as a format. I’m probably the best at it, and that could be because basically no one else is bothering. Whatever the case is, I’ve noticed that my accuracy rate on specs went way up when I started focusing on EDH finance a lot more because EDH is predictable. Sure, you still get the same event-based and printing-based spikes that you get with other formats, but you also get the “This is obviously going to be $5 in 2 years” stuff that other formats don’t necessarily promise. Buying stuff as bulk rares that are going to be $5 in a few years is the easiest way to make money at this and since those cards are usually obvious, why park your money anywhere else? And when I say “This bulk rare will be $5 in 2 years” I really mean stuff like that happens.

$2 isn’t exactly bulk, but it isn’t exactly the $6 it is, now. Should we sell out if we got these for cheap when they were $2? I would snap take that triple up, especially since we’ve seen that there are people out there who will spoil an entire tribal deck at a time. I think the $11 foils of this are much safer since there are several scenarios and the foil is better in most of them.

  • There isn’t a C17 Sliver deck and the foil grows steadily as we get farther from its print date. It’s probably just as good as the non-foil here.
  • There is a C17 sliver deck and Sliver Hive isn’t reprinted. The foil has more growth potential because it’s scarcer and people will be buying copies of both to make new sliver decks.
  • There is a C17 sliver deck and non-foil Sliver Hive is reprinted.

As good as that is to review before we get more spoilers, it’s not great advice for someone who doesn’t have any Sliver Hives. I’m not advocating running out and getting any right now (if you do, get the foils) but maybe there is something we can do if we don’t have cards going into spoiler season. We can wait. Waiting to park a portion of your money can be a great play and I’m going to talk about why.

Why Wait?

 

Mtg Finance is opportunism, guys. It just is. We see a price discrepancy and exploit it. Or we serve customers by providing cards they need, which is still opportunism. I think there is opportunity in waiting until the last second to see if something is going to pop based on not being reprinted. The cards that make the best targets for this kind of buying are older cards that really should be getting reprinted because if they’re not, the price is going to be out of control. Remember back when we talked about how they needed to print Phyrexian Altar in Commander 2015? Remember how they didn’t?

Not reprinting Phyrexian Altar when it was $15 signaled that at the very least we were in for another year of growth and people bought in. The new price is double what it was and it’s basically out of reach for a lot of people and those who need it are willing to pay the new price. If you bought these at $15, you probably feel pretty good. Now had this gotten reprinted, it would have tanked substantially. You would probably be breaking even right about now, having to wait for money sunk into a spec that was blown out. The good news is the card would have recovered in price, the bad news is you wouldn’t be able to count that as a win, and there are wins out there.

Here’s a card that was around the same price as Phyrexian Altar and got the reprint. It might recover, it might not, but it will be years before we know. So what can we learn from Phyrexian Altar, a $15 card that became $30 quickly when it wasn’t reprinted and Urza’s Incubator, a $15 card that became $5 very quickly when it was reprinted? Did the Incubator holders lose a coin flip and Altar buyers win it? I think the real lesson here is that you can wait until the spoilers are out, and you should. You’ll have time, maybe only a day, but you’ll have time to pounce on stuff that isn’t reprinted and I think I have a few excellent candidates.

Patriarch’s Bidding

Recognize this graph shape?

How about now?

How about now?

Patriarch’s Bidding looks exactly like those other two cards did right before their “do or die” moment with a reprinting one of them got and one of them didn’t. This year is Bidding’s do or die moment – will it be included in the most obvious place to reprint it or will WotC signal that they’re basically never interested in reprinting it? We get at least a year of growth and I plan to buy Bidding at $15 and sell as close to $30 as I can.

While we’re talking about bidding, how do I feel about the reprint odds? I actually don’t think they’re as good as everyone might think. I still advocate waiting, but I think they’re not likely to put Patriarch’s Bidding in C17. Why do I say that? After all, these decks are tribal. However, all of the decks are tribal, and if these decks are meant to be purchased at the same time and played against each other, Bidding is pretty terrible if everyone has tribal decks. I’m not the only one who feels this way, either. I read a Bennie Smith article awhile back and thinking about the Altar/Incubator graph shape reminded me that he has similar feelings about bidding.

Bennie thinks these “obvious” tribal cards are unlikely to be reprinted due to how symmetrical they are. Tribal cards likely to be included are ones that help your deck more than they help the other decks – think Urza’s Incubator over Patriarch’s Bidding, Belbe’s Portal over Coat of Arms, Sliver Hive over Peer Pressure.

The fact that Bidding isn’t an obvious slam dunk in C17 the way you may have thought at first means that C17 exclusion isn’t necessarily a signal that it will never be in a Commander set. However, you do get at least a year of growth and with the card likely to double in that period and grow pretty slowly or go back down a bit like Altar did, either way you’re looking to get in at $15 and get out at $30 within a year. While I think it’s unlikely that Bidding gets a reprint, I also think you can afford to wait until its inclusion or exclusion is confirmed. If you notice, there was a bit of a lag in Altar’s price spike and I think we’ll get a similar grace period this time. On the other side of the coin, I want to talk about a similar card that may be a little more likely to get reprinted than Bidding due to its asymmetry and inclusion in a lot of sliver decks, slivers being a tribe I expect to be one of the four.

Mana Echoes

This is a card that may get jammed in the Sliver deck, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? This is an article about how we’re waiting, so if it isn’t reprinted, it’s a good idea to think about jumping on a bunch of copies of this stupid, unfair card for cheaters. This really gets out of hand, and generating all that mana is very good in a deck where you can use colorless mana to make sliver tokens. This goes infinite with Sliver Queen, a card that will not be the commander of the C17 deck (Reserved List for the win), but which maybe should be once you buy it and reconfigure stuff. Mana Echoes is not good with any other sliver commander, especially – it can help you search with Legion, I guess, but with Queen you get to go infinite. Does that mean that since Queen can’t be in the deck Mana Echoes is a safe reprint or does it mean there isn’t much point in putting it in without Queen? Here’s something to ponder – it’s the Mana Echoes EDHREC page, of course!

Mana Echoes is in way more Sliver Overlord decks than Sliver Queen decks, which means that although it’s more disgusting in Queen decks, it isn’t necessarily only in Queen decks and could get a reprint.

Now, if Mana Echoes doesn’t get a reprint, you can bet that the price is going up based on 4 new tribal decks, all of which I’m assuming will be 5 color until I hear otherwise, wanting to add mana to their mana pool when they play a creature. Mana Echoes could end up not in the sliver deck but still be in C17.  We don’t know that much for sure at this point but we know that much. I say watch spoilers and when Echoes is ruled out, pizzounce.

Shared Animosity

One more before I put a bow on this article. I don’t have anything insightful to say about the likelihood of a reprinting of this card the way I did about the others, but I will say that while this is played in fewer EDH decks than Mana Echoes, this does get a non-zero amount of play in other formats, which could give it more chances to spike on top of the bump it will get from C17 exclusion.

I have to imagine that’s enough value. I wouldn’t buy specs when we can wait and throw a ton of money at some of these cards that are going to pull a Phyrexian Altar for sure as soon as they’re ruled out. Wait for confirmation, buy copies, sell in a year and make it rain. This is a very easy double up and when you’re talking about $15 a card, shipping and fees hit you way less than doubling up on 100 copies of a $2 card so you’re keeping more of your profits. Next week I’m sure I’ll be inspired to write another amazing piece, but until then, read my other stuff for more EDH insight. Until then!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 6/5/17

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

We got three Standard GPs, and while the top 8’s didn’t look too bad, the combined top 32 tell a different story. Marvel made up 43%, which is nowhere near a healthy number at that stage of the tournament. Maybe if 43% had showed up with Marvel, but people that came prepared were beating it, and it was down to 10% or 20% by the top 32 it wouldn’t be as bad. But that’s not what happened, and Standard isn’t looking too rosy.

I suspect they wont’ ban Marvel. After all the turbulence of Standard so far, Wizards really doesn’t want to have to dip in a third time. Tournament attendance is always low during the summer months, so they may just opt not to touch it for the time being. There won’t be as many people showing up to FNM to experience the unpleasantness, and a lot of players are taking a break anyways, so the “Standard still kind of sucks” narrative may be much less likely to hang around on the fringes of player’s perceptions than “Wizards had to ban things a third time.”

Either way, there’s definitely some Standard cards out there that will spike in October, and our goal is to get a bead on them. Meanwhile, Modern is vibrant and healthy, even if Death’s Shadow is probably a little too good, and EDH continues to churn out big gains week after week.

Chandra, Torch of Defiance

Price Today: $20
Possible Price: $30

This is an odd one, given how pricey Chandra already is, so bear with me.

Chandra, Torch of Defiance is Wizards continuing to turn the power level up on red planeswalkers to get them Standard playable. They’re getting a lot closer, and Chandra is consistently showing up in Standard at this point. Still, she’s only a one or two-of most of the time. You’ll see one maindeck copy, and maybe a second in the sideboard, or just two in the board. She hasn’t managed to quite make it into the top tier of Planeswalkers, where we see Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Nissa, Voice of Zendikar.

Today’s Standard is an odd one, because it wasn’t supposed to exist. The entire Battle for Zendikar block was originally planned to have rotated by now, so the interplay between BFZ and Amonkhet was not considered as much as would have been ideal. Marvel is dominating Standard, and it’s a strategy that Chandra isn’t really great in or against, so her current value is extra low. You’ve also still got Gideon, one of the best planeswalkers in Standard ever, exhausting all the the planeswalker slots in every deck that can possibly cast him.

With a current price tag of nearly $20, I’m not advocating you start scooping up copies. Rather, I’m telling you to keep an eye on it. Over the next two to three months Standard prices should start declining as the summer months peel players away from constructed Magic. I’m hoping we see Chandra drop to $15, or possibly even $11 or $12. That’s what I would consider the “as good as it’s going to get” price point. Then, once October hits and BFZ rotates, Chandra will hopefully see a resurgence as the best walker in Standard, and climb to $25+.


Collected Company

Price Today: $12
Possible Price: $25

Vizier of Remedies has shaken up Modern by adding an easy two-card infinite mana combo. (It also made anyone with a bunch of Shadowmoor bulk a lot of money.) The gruesome twosome is showing up in a few different strategies, and Abzan Company is chief among them in terms of power level. The strategy has been a consistent part of Modern for awhile now, floating between tier one and two, and Vizier has likely pushed it firmly into the tier one camp.

As the name implies, the deck is a collection of small creatures that relies heavily on synergy and a way to put a few into play at a time. Collected Company is the best tool for the job on that front, as you can end-of-turn a game winning pair of creatures into play. It’s a powerful card in the strategy, and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a list that didn’t run the full set.

Abzan Company isn’t the only place that you’ll find Collected Company either. Elves has taken to it, unsurprisingly, and it pops up elsewhere too. Hatebear, Zoo, Affinity (if you’re Japanese), and various tribal strategies, such as humans and spirits, also all play it. At this point, if you’re playing any green creatures in Modern other than Tarmogoyf, there’s a high likelihood that you’re also casting Collected Company.

As such, I’m a little surprised that it’s still as cheap as it is. $12 isn’t much for the 9th most played spell in Modern (and the most played green spell), especially as a single-printed rare from a spring set. There’s still some inventory out there, so it’s not like it’s going out of stock this week, but it’s not what I would consider particularly deep, especially when people need four copies at a time. I’d start looking for cheap copies now, because as long as it dodges Iconic Masters, I can’t imagine it doesn’t surpass $20.


Mind’s Dilation

Price Today: $1
Possible Price: $7

Pretty straightforward one here. Powerful, amusing, and exciting, all perfect for EDH. It’s a mythic from Eldritch Moon, last year’s summer set, which means there are relatively few copies floating around. At a buck a piece, this is an easy one to grab when they’re available and cheap. Stash them for two or three years, and ship them in 2020. It’s not an exciting spec, but it’s solid and easy.

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

James Chillcott, MTG Fast Finance, Travis Allen

MTG Fast Finance Podcast: Episode 70 (June 2nd/17)

2 Comments

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: June 2, 2017

Segment 1: Top Card Spikes of the Week

Cabal Pit

Cabal Pit (Odyssey, Foil Uncommon)
Start: $0.75
Finish: $12.00
Gain: +$11.25 (+1500%)

Circle of Protection: Red (9th, Foil Uncommon)
Start: $1.00
Finish: $15.00
Gain: +$14.00 (+1400%)

Ethersworn Canonist (SOM, Foil Rare)
Start: $12.00
Finish: $80.00
Gain: +68.00 (+567%)

Rishadan Cutpurse (Mercadian Masques, Foil Common)
Start: $0.75
Finish: $5.00
Gain: +4.25 (+567%)

Hickory Woodlot (Mercadian Masques, Foil Common)
Start: $1.00
Finish: $5.00
Gain: +$4.00 (+400%)

Planar Collapse (URL, Foil Rare )
Start: $4.00
Finish: $20.00
Gain: +$16.00 (+400%)

Haven of the Spirit Dragon (DTK, Foil Rare)
Start: $3.00
Finish: $14.00
Gain: +$11.00 (+367%)

Dragon Tempest (DTK, Foil Rare)
Start: $3.00
Finish: $15.00
Gain: +$12.00 (+400%)

Segment 2: Picks of the Week

James’ Picks:

Felidar Guardian

  1. Felidar Guardian (AER, Foil Uncommon)
  • The Call: Confidence Level 8: $4.00 to $10.00 (+6.00/150%) 0-12+ months)

2. Spell Queller (EMN, Foil Rare)

  • The Call: Confidence Level 7: $9.00 to $20.00 (+11.00/+122%, 6-12+ months)

Travis’ Picks:

Duskwatch Recruiter

  1. Duskwatch Recruiter (SOI, Foil Uncommon)
  • The Call: Confidence Level 9: $5.00 to $15.00 (+10.00/+200%, 0-6+ months)

2. Door of Destinies (M14, Foil Rare)

  • The Call: Confidence Level 8: $7.00 to $15.00 (+8.00/+114%, 0-12+ months)

3. Harsh Mercy (ONS, Foil Rare)

  • The Call: Confidence Level 7: $5.00 to $20.00 (+15.00/+300%, 0-12+ months)

Disclosure: Travis and James may own speculative copies of the above cards.

Segment 3: Metagame Week in Review

The guys touched on the results from the GPs and SCG Modern events last weekend.

Segment 4: Topic of the Week

James & Travis discuss the Hour of Devestation leaks and an assortment of other news.

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.

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Things Worth Keeping (BFZ/OGW)

So here we are, getting leaked cards from the new set, and more leaked cards from another new set, just when I had thought we were in the boring part of the Magic calendar. Does Wizards really think they will get to Iconic Masters without some sort of idea what’s in there? Seems pretty unlikely, right?

I’m not here to run rampant with what could be, in terms of the upcoming Standard. I’d much rather take a look at what’s cheap right now due to impending rotation and what I want to have going forward.

Some of these will be picks based on long-term casual appeal, others will be due to their level of play in non-Standard formats.

Battle for Zendikar

Part the Waterveil ($2.16 nonfoil/$6.23 foil): This falls under a category of cards that are always going to have an appeal to the casual market, and the Turns deck keeps popping up as a Tier 2 strategy in Modern. I would prefer to be picking up the foils, but I like any version going forward.

Greenwarden of Murasa ($1.24/$2.99): It’s not seeing any play in formats outside of Commander, but it’s a mythic at a very low price. This is exactly the kind of card I want to have in long-term storage.

Foil Hedron Archive ($2.88): This card is at the sweet spot, it’s a bigger jump than Mind Stone and it’s pretty safe from reprints going forward. It’s not going to take long for this to be a $5 foil.

Foil Endless One ($3.36): I’m going to mention a couple more of the Eldrazi today, and the recurring theme is ‘seeing play in Modern and Legacy.’ I look for decks that want lots of copies, and that do degenerate things. I think it’s only a matter of time before a list using this wins a Legacy Open, and that’s going to jack this foil up over $10. Endless One and Eldrazi Mimic aren’t seeing as much play in Modern with Eye of Ugin, so this is Legacy territory.

Foil From Beyond ($2.32): I’m looking right at you, Awakening Zone. Yeah, that’s right. You’re worth more in nonfoil than this is in foil. I’ll give you that the combined printings of Zone likely don’t add up to the number of Beyond, but the long-term potential is there.

Foil Bring to Light ($3): I love this card. I love seeing toolbox decks. I love seeing casual four-and-five-color decks running this. I love the dedicated souls who’ve tried to make this happen in Modern over and over again. I also love that everything five-color is spiking, and a five-color tutor won’t be far behind.

Oath of the Gatewatch

Matter Reshaper ($2/$7), Reality Smasher ($4/$9), Thought-Knot Seer ($7/$19): I love all of these and I especially love them in foil. There is a non-zero chance that we get a special Eldrazi deck at some point, but having these in foil going forward is where I really want to be. Thought-Knot is already one of the strongest plays in Modern, being disruption and beater all in one.

Eldrazi Displacer ($3/$12): This is better than Mistmeadow Witch in flicker decks. Colorless mana is not a tricky thing in Commander, and this card is just shy of being Deadeye Navigator-level broken in that format. Luckily, it can’t protect itself, but it’s already a $12 foil based off its casual play. This is one of my favorite specs going forward, because so much of the available supply has already been soaked up by Commander players.

World Breaker ($3.50/$9): I like the foils here more, but the effect is exactly what Cubes and Commander decks want. Exiling instead of destroying is super relevant, but having to cast this instead of blink it is a drawback as compared to Acidic Slime.

Oath of Nissa ($2.50/$5): I love, love, LOVE this card as a casual pick. This is one of the best cards in the mostly-planeswalker Commander decks, and I want to have foils even more, as they are only a 2x multiplier at this point. It’s possible that this is the bottom, price-wise, now that four-color Saheeli decks are no longer in Standard, but even if it drops a little I like this in the long term.

Zendikar Resurgent ($0.85/$4): And here we are, Mana Flare and Glimpse of Nature all in one at a super-reasonable price. I really want foils more than nonfoils, as the reprint will happen in a Commander deck or other supplementary set. Foils on the long-term are going to creep upward in price slowly but surely.

Cliff is a Cube enthusiast who endlessly tinkers, tweaks, and changes lists, though only his Busted Uncommon cube gets drafted these days. His piece de resistance will be the Reject Rare Cube, though that will only get drafted once a year or so. He’s used deckbox, pucatrade, and now cardsphere to acquire and trade away picks, all with the goal of gaining value and spending as little cash as possible.