Monthly Archives: December 2017

Watchtower

PROTRADER: The Watchtower 12/11/17

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.

You’ve heard quite a few personalities talking about how healthy Modern has looked for several months now, myself included. That’s still true, and the two Modern GP’s mostly bore that out. I’m hearing more and more people get annoyed with Tron, though. And it had a great weekend, so it’s not just empty rhetoric. Is it bannable? Probably not, at least not yet. A good weekend doesn’t immediately require excision. It’s not about the performance with Tron though, it’s the experience of the gameplay. Some decks can be a little too good and be completely fine in the format because the nature of the games is fairly enjoyable, win or lose. Think Death’s Shadow. Other decks can be axed not because they’re overpowered, but because they’re miserable to play against. Think Eggs.

Tron is probably a touch better than it needs to be, and while it’s certainly nowhere near as heinous as Eggs, it does have some questionable features. For instance, it can generate seven mana with three lands.

Other than that, it’s a quiet time of year. Players are playing less Magic, money is going to gifts and dreidels, and there will be a dearth of events between now and January. This column is going to be tough to write for the next month.

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Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Iconic Masters Movement

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the prices I was hoping that Iconic Masters cards were going to drop to, and we have reached a point on some of these that I’m comfortable moving in.

I don’t think I’ll need to tell you much about these cards, but this is a calendar point where I’m ready to pick up some copies. Unstable drops today, and with this being the Christmas-New Year’s lull for tournaments, sales, and other Magic activities, I don’t think much more Iconic Masters will be opened.

Rivals of Ixalan has already had a couple of spoilers/previews land, and that will start in full force after New Year’s Day, so there likely won’t be a ton of product opened. Even if prices fell another 5-10%, I’m content to get in on some of these now, and perhaps even more if the price does indeed slip another step or two.

On the flip side, there’s some cards from Iconic Masters that have fallen in price, but aren’t done falling. Be wary of these.

Let’s get to the cards!

Horizon Canopy ($33): It’s not done. $20? I can only find fringe versions of decks running more than two, though there’s a Five-Color Humans build in Modern that’s playing four of the 19 lands as this cantrip. The Future Sight version has lost nearly half its value, and I don’t think that’s done falling either.

Ebay’s completed sales show just a few over $30 in the past two weeks, and a whole lot more in the $25 range. Not all that many people need this land, so I’m staying away.

Thoughtseize ($15): This is the card I’m having the hardest time not buying. It’s one of the most popular cards in constructed Magic, being a top 5 card in Modern and a top 20 card in Legacy. Let me show you the graph for Lorwyn Thoughtseize:

 

The red arrow is the release of Theros, 2013! Those halcyon days.

Every time it’s had a printing, the value has taken a hit and then climbed back up. I didn’t get in on this when Theros came around, and I don’t think there is any doubt that it’ll climb back up again. It’s not going to hit $80 again. It’s not going to crack $50 for some time. I’m staying patient until I can get them for $10 each on eBay, and that time hasn’t come yet.

If you want to pull the trigger on a playset or two in the $12 range, I can’t fault you. When it looks like it’s flattened off, or when Rivals of Ixalan comes out, I’ll be ready to dive in.

Cryptic Command ($20): I’m staying patient till $15.We’ve got several version of Very Cryptic Command to fool around with and distract casual players, and while a playset of Cryptic is a starting point in Modern control decks, control isn’t too popular an archetype. I’m watching these on eBay closely too, and I have managed to get a couple at my target of $15. I’d much prefer that some retailer sell me a few in a batch, though.

Grove of the Burnwillows ($13): Get out. Now. If you open one of these I would buylist it immediately and not look back. Sure, it’s a Punishing Fire combo in one Legacy deck, and maybe you have a deck that abuses the lifegain somehow, but these are few and far between. The demand is not there, and I think this has a lot farther to fall before I’d want copies.

Consecrated Sphinx ($12): This is a super interesting card, and therefore a place I’m hesitant to put in much money. Sure, it’s one of the best things a blue deck can do in Commander or Cube, but those are the only formats where it sees play. The original mythic had made it up to $30, even with the Invocation draining demand somewhat, but now the slide is on. I am watching eBay for $10 copies, and foils under $20.

This had started to recover nicely from the Invocation in early 2017.

Even as I watch the card get cheaper, I’m hesitant. This is an excellent candidate for a ban in Commander, and it’s in 14,000 decks! It would be a bloodbath.That risk is going to keep me from going too deep, and your taste for risk should determine the number of copies you want to get.

Archangel of Thune ($11): I don’t think this will fall too much farther. It’s been a mythic twice, never a rare, and that’s big for the number of copies out there. I strongly suspect casual players are soaking up copies as well, because it’s good in Commander but not overpowered. If it’s unanswered, sure, the game’s over, but that’s the case in that format.

What I really like about Archangel is that looking into lifelink cards clued me into foil Crested Sunmare at $8. There’s only 40 copies on TCG, and it’s a top card for lifelink decks. There’s not much demand for Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, as there’s competition for who your lifelink Commander should be, but Sunmare is way up there on the list of things to do if you’ve got a lot of gain life effects around. Only 40 copies for a recent foil mythic, that’s a top target for me going forward.

Cliff is an eager participant in unusual formats, and is hoping to cube four times a day at the next GP. Find him on Twitter @wordofcommander or here on MTGPrice every Friday.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: X Amount of Words

3 Comments

Did you read my article last week? Congratulations. If you liked that article and you end up liking this one, say something in the comments section. That helps me steer which direction to take the series. Whether you love me or hate me, write something*. OK, enough of that, let’s remind everyone what we’re doing.

Like a month and a half ago I had a simple idea – look at all of the Top 100 played cards in EDH per EDHREC data and then put their cheapest price and cheapest foil price into a spreadsheet and calculate the foil multiplier. I wanted to see if there were any trends we could use to predict future prices of similar cards or see if there were any cards that were mispriced. We found a lot more than I expected. Last week I realized I left Vindicate off the list and that sent me down a rabbit hole so deep that I didn’t even get finished with what I discovered before I had to pinch it off and pick it up this week. Go read last week’s article if you want a refresher – I just did.

We flagged 14 cards that had a foil multiplier between 1.0 (We already looked into the cards with multipliers below 1.0) and 2.0, 2.0 being an arbitrary value we decided was a minimum acceptable foil multiplier. If it’s below 2.0 something’s wrong and if it’s above 1.0 but below 2.0, maybe something very specific was wrong. We got through a bunch of them but there are still a few cards I flagged in light blue to go over this week. Did you take a look at the spreadsheet between then and now to see if you got any impressions from the rest of the flagged cards? If not, it’s OK because we can go over them together, now.

The Cards

I saw distinct “groups” of cards but since there were a few cards that fit in multiple “groups” I decided to just tackle the list from the top and talk about each card individually.

Cyclonic Rift

Foil Multiplier – 1.8

This card very much is suffering from “reprinted a lot” flu. It’s been printed twice in foil and three times in non-foil and its growth was pretty good before this. The odds of this getting printed in foil again seem pretty low, but I’m not sure the demand for foil copies of this card, despite its status as a staple, can soak all of the demand. That said, this flirted with $30 before, Modern Masters 2017 didn’t give us that many copies and I don’t know that they’ll put this in a future Masters set. I’m saying don’t buy because there are better targets, not because this is a bad one. I think it has a lot going for it but I think other cards we flagged have even more.

Path to Exile

Foil Multiplier – 1.3

With a foil in every pack, Masters sets tend to put out a ton of foils and this is 3 times as true for uncommons as it is for rares. I’m not saying don’t touch this, I’m merely pointing out this is super reprintable. It’s also basically been printed in foil as much as it has in non-foil with the duel deck, Archenemy and Commander printings being somewhat offset by the Gateway and FNM promos. This card gets a lot of printings. I have no opinion about its future price growth based on this data, I’m merely explaining that something with so many foil printings is bound to have a low multiplier. People have an embarrassment of choices when it comes to which foil version they like meaning the demand is spread out over multiple printings. This also gets played outside of EDH a ton, obviously, but that just means it’s easy to reprint.

Utter End

Foil Multiplier – 1.3

This hasn’t had time to catch its breath but I’m not sure how reprintable this is. The 1.3 multiplier is for the set foil which has tumbled and it’s likely that a lot of this is due to a card that came out at the same time and is much more desirable.

Khans was pretty recent in the grand scheme of things so there are likely hella set foil copies running around but the Gameday promo is just about at its bottom also. I don’t know if it’s squeamishness about a future foil reprinting, but this art is never getting used again (I think it looks like a cutscene from Shandalar but no one but me cares about that, I guess) and I think a generic Masters 25 or something foil doesn’t do much to this price of this. Utter End and/or Anguished Unmaking likely make their way into a Commander precon or two in the next five years but this seems unmesswithable. Both the set foil and promo seem safe but the Gameday promo seems really good to me. Two foils printed right on top of each other competing for demand explains the low multiplier (the multiplier calculated for the price of the Gameday promo is 3.8) and I think we may stumbled upon a good buy, here.

Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

Foil Multiplier – 1.3

I haven’t checked, but I feel like I remember that Venser the Sojourner and Elspeth, Sun’s Champion both also got flagged (I’ll confirm when I get to them) and the duel deck printings behave like a non-foil rather than a foil due to relative abundance. If you calculate the foil multiplier using the duel deck printing as the base, the M13 foil is 3.5 and Conflux is 3.1. Those aren’t great, but they’re healthy and they’re healthy in a situation where there is a really cheap foil floating around. I’ve seen sites where the duel deck version is cheaper than the Conflux non-foil and that tells you a lot about what duel deck printings do to Planeswalkers. Honestly, as someone who can’t keep Planeswalkers in my case, I like buying and selling them cheap. You sell one foil Russian Jace a lifetime if you’re lucky but you sell 3 Garruk Wildspeakers a week. I don’t see a real opportunity here besides the normal “look at that slow, incremental growth” that cards that aren’t great specs exhibit. Will you lose money socking your money away in this? Eh. Depends on the rate of inflation, and that’s not something you should have to consider. I’ll pass.

Venser the Sojourner

Foil Multiplier – 1.1

I wanted to be kind of lazy and say “everything I said about Nicol Bolas applies here” but it kind of doesn’t. Look at the steady growth in the set foil price. That is very promising. Again, using the duel deck printing as the base, we have a multiplier of 2.3 which is better. The price of the non-foil versus the duel deck promo are so negligible that it comes down to art preference basically, but the set foil is growing nicely. Compare the slope of this graph to the non-foil.

This looks pretty healthy, honestly. I think I like this card despite the high buy-in.  Even the duel deck printing is OK – it’s disappearing from online and while it flirted with $20 at one point, it’s gettable around $10. Still, is this getting a reprint anytime soon? Certainly not the duel deck art. It’s worth a look. I think the growth curve looks far less anemic than does Bolas and I think despite these being in the same “class” when it comes to explaining why the multiplier is below 2.0, they’re pretty different and that has a lot to do with Venser being 2 colors rather than 3 and having a very relevant EDH-based effect rather than just being vaguely powerful like Bolas.

Phyrexian Metamorph

Foil Multiplier – 1.5

Here’s another card with a very healthy looking growth curve whose data was “spoiled” by a cheap, abundant promo. Set foils tend to do even better when there’s a ubiquitous promo, especially in cases where the price of the promo behaves more like the foil than the non-foil. Adjusting our expectations with the promo as the base price, we have a multiplier of 1.78, which honestly isn’t much better. It seems like the multipliers are low because the prices aren’t really diverging – they seem to be growing at roughly the same pace for all three versions – promo, non-foil and set foil. Demand has spoken. I’m worried about this being in Masters 25 and by the time that’s fully spoiled this may have gone up another few bucks, so it’s risky but this is also one of the best blue cards in EDH and that’s saying a lot considering how good blue is.

Maelstrom Nexus

This may have suffered from a small number of data points. The price for a near mint foil most places is closer to $40 than $30 which would put the multiplier around 2.0. This is, in a lot of ways, the most EDH card on the list because it’s so narrow, so powerful, so unplayable in Legacy, etc and is going so nuts price-wise. Someone is selling a busted copy on TCG Player for cheap, it’s sold out like everywhere else and that means this was flagged by accident. This has a healthy multiplier and shouldn’t be on our list. I’m glad we looked, though, because then we got to look at the graphs for the foil. Here’s the non-foil below.

We got two new 5-color Commanders in the form of The Ur-Dragon and Ramos and that could be a contributing factor. Basically both prices are way up so I expect a bit of a divergence when demand really catches up to supply like it’s about to. Maybe the seller with his foil listed on TCG Player at $60 isn’t such a lunatic.

Xenagos the Reveler

Foil Multplier – 1.7

Part of the problem here could be the prices converging as the non-foil tanks and so does the foil. No one seems to care about this card in non-EDH formats which puts less pressure on the foil price since EDH players chase the cheapest copy more than players of most formats. It makes sense – if you play legacy, you got your foil Brainstorms for $30 each in 2005 and kept them because of course you did. With EDH, they pump out cards that create new archetypes every set. Some people want to foil staples and this technically qualifies as a staple (I’ve never seen anyone use it) so maybe people should want to foil this, but the graph is gross-looking. The graph of the non-foil honestly isn’t much better.

I’m not sure why the price is falling off – it could be it was used in other formats and lost favor, flooding the EDH market with more copies than it wanted despite this appearing in 15% of eligible decks. It’s possible demand will buoy this and it’s at its floor for sure (flo’ for sho’?) so maybe the getting’s good now? I don’t know because I don’t really have strong feelings about this card other than that it seems great in some decks but not exactly a red-green staple. It can fart out a ton of mana, though, or a ton of creatures and that’s cool. I honestly can’t explain the low multiplier other than that we’re getting deluged with copies from Modern. If you have a hypothesis, hit me in the comments.

Gilded Lotus

Foil Multiplier – 1.1

Gilded Lotus is a special case – I believe it’s the only card on the list above a 1.0 that has been printed more times in foil than in non-foil (2 set printings with both and an FTV printing). This is also basically 95% likely to be in Masters 25 (I made that number up – I would have said it was a shoo-in for Iconic Masters) and that makes me nervous. However, I don’t think even the (ugly) FTV foil can keep this multiplier down. It’s interesting to see the effect of more foil than non-foil printings especially since even if you calculate the multiplier within the printings (for example, M13 non-foil goes for $12 on TCG Player and the foil goes for $15.50) you get similar results. I think this has real potential and as worried as I am about a reprinting, I probably shouldn’t be. This may just be a great opportunity. This is another EDH-specific card and EDH players tend to nab the cheapest copy (which isn’t the FTV foil, actually) so that is why we see what I assume is a non-foil price that’s high rather than a foil price that’s low. I think there’s opportunity here and barring a Masters set, this is tough to print in foil again. That said, this is a snap inclusion in a Commander’s Arsenal, something I hope they do again, though how much that affects prices, I can’t say.

I think we covered quite a bit today and identified quite a few juicy targets. I’ll have to figure something out for next week, but I’m grateful that the mere exercise of plotting some prices gave us so much to think about. If you have any ideas, hit me up in the comments. Thanks for reading, nerds. Until next time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*This was the point in the paragraph where I decided to abandon the bit I was planning where I’d reference a bunch of song titles from that Blue October album “foiled” since we’re talking about the list of foil prices again. I got, what, 2 in? 3 if I don’t change the title from “X amount of words” to something else. Are people going to get Blue October references? It got too hard – how am I going to subtly slip “I drilled a wire through my cheek” or “She’s my ride home” or “The sound of pulling heaven down” into a paragraph? It was a stupid bit and I’m glad I abandoned it.

Watchtower

PROTRADER: The Watchtower 12/4/17

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.

World Magic Championships is a cool component of the greater Magic world, and we’re all better off having it. Players have been leaning into nationally-inspired costumes more each year, and as a result we got to see dinosaur (?) onesies and facepaint that most would recognize as “that thing Mel Gibson did in Braveheart before he started yelling about Jews.” All in all, a nifty event.

Not useful for our Monday crowd though. Because it’s team unified, players can’t share cards between decks. E.g. if I have four Torrential Gearhulk in my deck, nobody else on my team can have any. As a result it’s a tiny and weird meta, which while produces cool lists, success is often not reproducable in a, uh, standard Standard metagame.

We got the SCG Invitational too, which is a little better. Standard was mostly a bore, with a ton of energy. I suspect this format is going to be what it is until energy rotates, but we’ll see. Modern was a little cooler, with a diversity that we’ve become accustomed to. The biggest surprise was probably seeing humans in the list of top performing Modern decks. At this point, I’m comfortable calling that a legitimate Modern deck.

Reflector Mage (Foil)

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $12

We’ve talked about Humans a few times in a few different places. Our takeaway was “looks cool, but I want to be sure it’s real before I start throwing money at it.” Turns out the deck is quite likely real. As a top performing archetype at the SCG Invi, it’s hard to make a case otherwise.

Reviewing the list, I found myself noticing the full playset of Reflector Mage. Anyone who has played enough Modern knows that getting Mage’d a single time can be a massive tempo loss depending on your hand. It’s also amusingly obnoxious in EDH (especially Brago), and slots into cubes of all sorts.

You can snag foils right around $5 right now, and given that a legitimately actually new Modern archetype is running a full set, it’s good in other formats, and supply is already low (about 16 copies under $7, about 30 total) we could see this north of $10 within a few months.

Mentor of the Meek (Foil)

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $15

Do you remember this card? Many don’t. If you don’t play EDH you almost certainly have no reason to care, and even if you do, if you’re a Timmy type, this is irrelevant. Why would you want small creatures??

Turns out the card is pretty dang popular. I stumbled upon it when looking at popular commanders this month, and saw that Alesha was in the top 10. I was a tad surprised to see that, and took a gander. It’s no surprise that Mentor of the Meek would be a top card in the list and, as it turns out, is in 11,500 EDH decks. I’ve considered the card myself a few times for EDH decks, but never really thought about it. Turns out plenty of others have as well.

What’s more interesting is the grand total of 20 foil copies on TCG Player right now, and 6 others on SCG and ABU. None of the prices are high either, which sets this up to be swept up by anyone with a few bucks and a glint in their eye.

Without a reprint, this massively popular EDH card is destined for greater price tags.

Cathartic Reunion (Foil)

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $8

While it’s not a slam dunk the way some of the other cards we look at are, Cathartic Reunion may be a solid sleeper.

I noticed this in the Alesha deck as well, and it jumped out at me since I’ve tossed it into several Modern combo decks myself. There’s not really a better rate in that format for the effect, and it’s solid in EDH as well apparently, with 3,500 decks listing it. That’s not a major impetus, especially for a newer common, but it does mean there’s going to be consistent demand there.

Moreso than EDH I like the Modern appeal. It’s an efficient combo piece, and there’s always going to be decks in the format trying to do degenerate things with this card. When there are, they’ll probably want several of them. And there’s always the chance that another graveyard based combo deck will show up in the format, adding even more demand to the card.

Supply is solid on this guy, with probably 100 foils floating around out there. That’s fine though. At $1.50 or $2, you can stash these away in a pile and wait for a rainy day. Copies will get gobbled up one or four at a time, and within six months or a year we could be looking at fifteen left on the market, not one hundred. Once that happens? Well, original printing foil Manamorphose is out of stock, but the market price is $18.

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.