18 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

December 31, 2018 Travis Allen

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.

Don’t expect a lot of excitement over the next several days. Our western pagan holidays slow everything down considerably. While players are still enjoying Magic at home with friends, and are certainly capable of placing orders, the lack of tournaments and gaps in content creation tend to slow the market down. It’s only temporary though, as late winter tends to be a watermark for prices each year. Somewhere in February, the entire Magic index will likely hit its peak for the year. I wonder how much of this is due to people just being excited about being able to leave their homes comfortably, although I admit I may be projecting, give I’m in upstate NY.

Tempt with Discovery

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $10

If you’re anything like me, your eyes sort of glaze over this card when you browse an EDH deck list. Tempt isn’t what I’d consider a particularly sexy or fun card. It’s heavily political in nature, and at its best, is just tutoring for a few lands. Now, don’t get me wrong. That’s a powerful effect at a great rate. I’m simply not one to care much for tutors that get non-typed lands, especially multiple at once. Anyways.

There’s no denying Tempt is popular in EDH. You’ll find it in well over 11k lists on EDHREC, so we know there’s plenty of fans. Some of the top commanders for the card are Omnath, Locus of Rage and Gitrog Monster, two fan favorites. And while it doesn’t show up on Lord Windgrace’s page, I find that suspect. This effect would be great in that deck. Basically I don’t believe it’s not finding its way into a pleothora of Windgrace lists as well.

You’ll find copies of Tempt with Discovery at $5 and $6 right now. It’s commonly found with two well-regarded commanders, and will almost certainly show up with Lord Windgrace in the near future. There’s some supply out there, but we’re not talking hundreds. At a glance, there’s maybe 70 copies below $8, with not too many more above that either. If you fade another reprint this year, I suspect we’ll see a $10 floor on these in the future.

Temporal Trespass (Foil)

Price Today: $7
Possible Price: $18

TCGPlayer gave Seth Manfield a fascinating article a few days ago, in which he looked at the top ten best-selling cards on TCG in 2018. Most of them were Standard commons and uncommons, unsurprisingly. By volume, there’s no doubt that those sell exceptionally well. There’s also no doubt that you’ll go insane trying to grind a profit on $.08 Knight of Graces.

Without question, what stood out most to me was Temporal Trespass. Of all the casual and EDH-oriented cards, Trespass sold better than everything else? It’s not like it just came out this year and people are stocking up. It’s from Fate Reforged, which was a few years ago now. Why would this be so popular this year? This is also TCGPlayer we’re talking about. They’re no small organization. A few guys deciding to try to corner the market on Trespass wouldn’t be able to buy enough copies at once to put this into the top 10 sellers. Anything on that list needs to be a sustained effort.

Given this, I had to go check immediately. The non-foil stocks is still healthy, but foils are dwindling. At the time of publication, there’s 22 NM English foils. A couple at $7, a couple at $8, a couple at $9, a couple at $15, and they’re gone. Other vendors don’t look any better. If this sort of popularity persists, it’s only a matter of time before the foils go.

Sleight of Hand (Foil)

Price Today: $8.50
Possible Price: $16

While Sleight of Hand has been in Magic since 1998, there’s not that much of it out there. It started in Portal Second Age and Starter 1999. It made an actual return in 7th and 9th editions, the latter being how it ended up Modern legal. Those two sets were also previously the only foil copies. If you’re reading this article you’re probably aware of what 7th foils tend to look like, and 9th isn’t that much better. Fast forward to 2018, and Ultimate Masters brings us the first foil since YouTube was created.

I don’t feel like telling you about Sleight’s popularity is necessary. It’s been a staple of Modern for a long while, and I wouldn’t expect that to change anytime soon.

The cheapest non-UMA foil Sleight is about $60, so $8.50 certainly looks like a steal. I’d be happy to snag copies at $8 to $9 all day, especially in trade. They’re plentiful now, but I bet it’s going to be a very different story in six months.

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.

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Casual Fridays

2019, Resolved

December 28, 2018 Cliff Daigle

Hello and Happy New Year!

It’s hokey as all hell, but I find that yearly resolutions keep me focused, or at least a little organized in terms of what I want to accomplish in the coming 12 months.

I’m going to list some of my favorite picks of right now, as a present for myself (and for you, dear reader!) next holiday season.

First of all, here’s a link to my resolutions from last year. How did I do?

#1: Finish the Un-Cube

Oh yeah. And it’s a blast. I prefer the seeded packs of my Uncommons Cube, but as a change of pace, or palate-cleanser, the Un-Cube is a riot. Combining the three sets, adding sets of uncommons/commons, deciding what comes out…it was an intellectual challenge. The weird thing is that while every new set/release changes what’s at uncommon, this Cube is going to be unchanging for quite a while.

#2: Attend at least 3 GPs, including #GPVegas

Done! GP Oakland, next weekend, is going to be my fourth GP in 53 weeks, and I’m doubtful that I’ll match that again for a while. I’m based on the West Coast of the USA, so we only get about one event about every four months. I’ve already decided I’m skipping GP LA this year.

#3: Meet Travis and James and Jason in person

Sadly, both Jason and Travis skipped GP Vegas this past summer, so we didn’t have a chance to meet up. Chilcott is a delight, and his dad is a hoot, flashing sealed Revised starters with no protection in his bag at dinnertime. Vegas was a great time, and I got to Cube with a lot of new folks.

#4: Stay Organized

Mostly done. I’ve got sheets to track what I spent and when, and I’m in the midst of picking my collection yet again. So many random things have spiked! The funniest so far has been the playset of Portal Goblin Lore. When did I pick those up?

#5: Buy more of my picks

Semi-accomplished. I went in on a box of UMA for $230, I did indeed pick up playsets of Hadana’s Climb for $5, and other things like Dream Eater sort of hit. I’m still waiting on Earthcraft, Winding Canyons, Soulflayer, etc., but I feel good about this year and value-wise I’m up nicely.

So what do I want to get done this year?

#1: Start a Magic club at my school

I’m a high school science teacher by day, and I don’t think any of my students read my stuff here. There’s a surprising number of people who share my name, thankfully. What I do want to do is encourage the game at my school. I built a Battle Box for quick games, but there’s enough stores in the area that I should be able to arrange sponsorships, freebies, and discounts.

#2: Finish de-randomizing the packed cards

I’ve got some binders/fat pack boxes of random stuff still in storage. I don’t think any of it’s valuable but I won’t know till I look. I do know there’s ~3000 basics and ~2000 tokens/rule cards/other inserts that I’m just going to dump in the recycle bin.

#3: Rework the sign

If you saw the playmat-sized sign flashing the words CUBE DRAFT at a GP, that was me. I don’t like the way it works, though, and it needs some work. I think I want to have the lights be on the outside, or maybe have the lights spell the words, instead of surround the words. Like anything, it’s an iterative process. First drafts are exactly that, sadly.

#4: Get all the Box Toppers

Oh, are we at that point? Very well. That’s actually my first gift to my future self: I’m trading for all the Toppers I can get, and I don’t much care which cards. Yes, even the manlands and Balefire Dragon.

Right now, if you add up all forty cards, it comes out to about $3800. By January first, 2020, it’ll be over five grand. I think Cavern of Souls has the potential to be the most expensive eventually, because it’s much more widely played than Liliana and Goyf. A Topper version of Cavern is #1 on my shopping list for GP Oakland, and while these are more common than the Inventions/Invocations, we’re at the point where you want to get these.

Usually for a Masters set, it’s about a six-month period before the cards reach their lowest, as the supply works it ways through everyone, but we’re seeing things creep back up. I find myself hoping that a second, small wave of UMA is announced, because of the dip that will follow.

An exaggerated effect of this is what happened on MTGO when the $10 million prize pool was announced. If you bought in at the crash, you made something like 20% in a week.

My second gift to your future self: The guild lands from GRN and RNA are going to all be $2+ by then. Yes, they are commonly available in the guild kits, but there’s only 8 of each and these are already close to $1 for the Izzet versions. The time will come where they are pricey. I’m picking up a dozen of each for my Cube and I’m stopping there. Probably. Maybe both Cubes.

It’s been a while since basics have been so iconic, and while I don’t see a big rise in the much-much-rarer foil versions, the nonfoils are going to get bought up, put into collections/cubes/Commander decks, and supply isn’t going to last long.

To be clear: I’m not advocating that you’ll be able to buylist these in a year for more than you’re buying them now. I’m telling you that if you’re thinking about it…get it done before the beginning of summer.

My third gift to you: Prepare for Standard+. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, and that’s something we’re going to see this year. Remember, for all the attention, Arena is still officially in open Beta. Collections aren’t going to get reset again, though, so don’t fear that problem. Make sure you’re stocked up on shocklands and buddylands.

Fourth and final gift: Get out of most M19 and Dominaria by the start of summer. Keep a playset of things you’re still using, but to illustrate my point, let’s look at Hazoret the Fervent:

Oh look, three months before rotation, a $15 card dropped to $5. The peak was $25, the weekend Hazoret was all over the Pro Tour. If you keep some copies of Carnage Tyrant all summer, I sympathize, but that’s going to drop to sub-$10. It’s a singleton in some Modern builds, and won’t hold its price. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria looks like he’ll stay relatively strong, but he might go from $50 to $25.

Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, M19 are the sets rotating and please don’t hold onto those cards longer than you needed to.

And Happy Holidays!

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Cards of a Certain Age

December 25, 2018 Jason Alt

Readers,

I was going to do my 2018 wrap-up today but I think I’ll do that next week. Next Tuesday is the first day of 2019 and that will be a good time to look back at all the calls I made over the past year and if any of them are poised to do something big in 2019, I want to remind everyone it’s time to have the copies to move when they pop. I think there are a quite a few long-to-medium-term picks I’ve made that are going to make us all some money. Today, though, I have to figure out what to talk about and I thought I’d mention something I found while exploring other sites, something I do sometimes.

MTG Price’s tools are coming back with a vengeance next year and while peak MTG Price is my favorite go-to source for data, I do like to use other sites and encourage everyone to cast a wide net. Something that MTG Stocks does well is to flag things that have gone up a bit and could go up more and also flag big jumps you probably missed if they’re outside your wheelhouse or if a minor event pushed some amount of supply over a virtual cliff and triggered and avalanche. One such avalanche happened this week and it got me thinking about similar cards. As much as I like to deride people who only seem to talk about cards after they go up, that information isn’t always useless if you can apply it to similar cards that are waiting for a similar event to push them. Specifically, how much play does a card need to get in EDH to push its price if supply, if low (like for a foil or promo, for example) enough to trigger a precipitous increase in price? What card am I even talking about, for starters?

Looking at the interests page on MTG Stocks, I found some interesting foil price changes in the past 24 hours. I’d check their site for a minute or two a day just so you don’t miss anything major. So what the heck is going on with Battle Hymn?

I don’t know that fewer than 3,000 inclusions and no discernible new event could have done this. Is it speculation on new Gruul or Rakdos strategies? I’m not really much of an authority on competitive Magic anymore, so I lean on MTG Top8 the way I encourage people who don’t know EDH to use EDHREC. It’s not the be-all, end-all but I can usually figure out 90% of what’s going on just by searching for a card’s name on either or both of the two sites and since there are so many cards with potential, I tend to focus on other cards instead of really drilling down for that last 10%. Maybe someone on salvation or reddit or some secret Discord cabal where people who are bad at MTG Finance decide which terrible Visions card on the Reserved List they’re going to pretend was driven by EDH demand when they buy it out (This week it was Eye of Singularity) said something, but I don’t care. So, striking out on EDHREC, I checked MTG Top8.

I don’t think it was a tournament event that I could find. It could just be a supply issue. The next thing I am going to check is that this price is actually correct.

Looks like a TCG Player Buyout. Who knows why they did it? Check smaller sites to see if they have copies left for the old price since if that $16 doesn’t stick, it will likely stabilize halfway between the peak price and the old pre-spike price even if the spike was induced by some weird buying behavior. You can do that since you need to go to those sites to buy the cards anyway. I’m not about to talk about a card after it goes up then expect credit if you get copies at the old price, but I can hope to use this weird spike to help you find the next insane price bump. To do that, let’s look at cards from the same set and see if anything is getting more play in EDH and could see a similar bump if the same thing that happened to Battle Hymn happens. Back to EDHREC.

Using the “sets” tab, I am going to look at the commons and uncommons in Avacyn Restored and maybe a few older sets to see if there are any of those cards in more decks than Battle Hymn that need less of a nudge from an event outside of EDH and only have one printing to see if we can get ahead of the next weird buyout. If I’m missing an event and you know what it was that made Battle Hymn pop, leave it in the comments section. However, I’m operating under the assumption that what it was is immaterial if we can reasonably rely on it happening again to a card of similar or greater scarcity with similar or more demand. This will be fun.

At just under the number of decks Battle Hymn is played in, Seraph Sanctuary is worth looking at. It has a reprinting but in a duel deck with no foil printing meaning it has only been printed in foil once. I think reprint risk is pretty low, this card has some utility and I think this could reasonably double. If you’re hoping to buylist after the spike, stay away, but if you have a retail out, this seems safe and low-supply.

Every card in Avacyn Resored played more than Battle Hymn is rare, is Blood Artist or is Ghostly Flicker with multiple foil printings. That’s OK, I’m going to keep digging.

This was an interesting find. at 4,023 decks and no foil reprinting, Mask of Avacyn was curiously sold out on Card Kingdom. Off to TCG Player to look at price and supply over there. Here are the results. In summary, there are 26 listings, Near Mint foils start at $2.50 and $5 seems like a reasonable out. If Battle Hymn can mysteriously hit $15 as the result of a buyout, this card could climb near there and stay there on what appears to be organic demand. Some people still ship me non-foils in bulk do it’s worth discussing this card at least once this year so people know it’s a pick. Keep shipping them to me in bulk if you have been, though. I’m having another kid and college is expensive.

Speaking of Innistrad equipment, here’s a card in more decks than Battle Hymn. If it was mere EDH demand that drove Hymn, this could get above $5. I think this will be a slow, organic gainer, but I also think this is unlikely to get reprinted soon and I like it though less than mask.

If Battle Hymn can maintain above $8, so can this. With Afterlife coming and introducing a bunch of Sprouting Thrinax variants into white EDH Aristocrats decks, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this go up sooner rather than later. We’re not looking at cards that much older than Hymn, but we’re finding stuff that is already “known” though is maybe undervalued. I expect Absorb to pop this week based on Ravnica Allegiance so why not this? For reference, Phyrexia’s Core, in fewer decks, is $10 on Card Kingdom.

If Priest could go up based on Orzhov, guess what could go up based on Simic?

Another $6 card that seems like it should be worth more. I’m comparing Priest and Drake to Phyrexia’s Core, which sees play outside of EDH a little bit but not double. I think Drake and Priest are sort of high buy-ins but supply is low and if 4 copies disappear, Card Kingdom activates their famous buylist and people take notice. I think the 34 listings on TCG Player vanish and then some jackass (me?) lists on for $25 on TCG Player, MTG Stocks gets triggered and some other me comes along and can’t figure out why Drake popped and writes an article about other cards in the same set that could be next to hit $15 and did I just become the kind of lazy financier I like to deride? I’m not telling you to do a buyout on Viral Drake. I’m not even pointing out it would be really easy to do it. I’m stating I think Drake’s days are numbered as it is considering how it interacts with Simic Ascendency and other cards and I think 34 people wanting a foil in the next 3 months is reasonable and you’d rather be in at $6 ready to sell than in at $16 hoping to sell before they’re $12.

There are more cards like the ones I found and you can use EDHREC to find them easily. Click the “sets” tab then click on a set and it will organize them from most EDH play to least and you can click on the individual card from that list to be taken to its EDHREC page where you can see the decks it goes in and click links to go to the price page on Card Kingdom and TCG player. If you’re going to buy, follow those links because EDHREC gets a cut and you were going to buy the card anyway.

One last card I’ll mention because I like it and not because data supports it is this bad boy.

It’s probably too late to affordably buy the foil and I am so bad at foil finance I didn’t even check when I tried to buy all of the non-foils a few months ago. However, they’re half as much on Card Kingdom as they are on TCG Player and I expect both prices on the non-foils are incorrect if this is a $15 foil. I like non-foils at a buck each quite a bit. I think this card is going places and I got a foil in bulk because people love to not have to look up prices on bad cards. Do it for them and let $15 foil uncommons make it worth doing.

That does it for me. Check back in a week for my Best of 2018 pickstravaganza. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 12/24/18 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

December 24, 2018 Travis Allen

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.

Holiday tidings are upon us, and as the country spends the next 36 hours sharing their love with family and friends, we, the truly enlightened, are grinding Magic card value in front of our computers. Today we’ll hit a cross section, touching on Standard, Modern, and EDH. Buy some cards, then go eat a bunch of christmas cookies, drink egg nog, and fall asleep before the stomach ache sets in.

March of the Multitudes

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $15

I’m poking my head into Standard again with the release of some Ravnica Allegiance spoilers. This time around the guilds are Orzhov, Gruul, Azorius, Rakdos, and Simic. Of the mechanics we’ve seen so far, Orzhov’s ‘afterlife’ is possibly the most competitive-aligned. Back in the second Ravnica era, there was a remarkably successful and popular deck by the name of Aristocrats. Lacking anything in common with the meta-joke told by comedians to each other, Aristocrats was a strategy that used Doomed Traveler, Falkenrath Aristocrat, and their ilk to value opponents out with plenty of 1/1s, small advantages, clever play, and fun interactions between creatures.

‘Afterlife’ is a codified version of this deck, essentially turning every single creature with the mechanic into a Doomed Traveller. Even if a true Aristocrats-style deck doesn’t materialize, the value generated by your creatures leaving behind a 1/1 is significant when utilized properly. March of the Multitudes favorably interacts with afterlife on two dimensions. On the one, afterlife ensures that you’re better able to keep bodies on the board to convoke into a large March. On the other, both March and afterlife create 1/1 tokens, meaning that both are going to be rewarded for the same payoffs, e.g. Divine Visitation.

March at $5 is just about as low as we’re going to see it in Standard. If an afterlife value engine emerges from Allegiance, and March is part of that, we could see prices double or even triple as the key mythic in the deck. Keep an eye out for forthcoming articles from pros, specifically Sam Black, to see if they combine the two.

Kitchen Finks (Foils)

Price Today: $4 ($35)
Possible Price: $8 ($80)

On the Modern side of things, Ultimate Masters brought quite a few reprints that will reward opportune investment. There’s price points all over the board here to capitalize on, and on the lower end of things, we have Kitchen Finks this week.

Now, if you know anything about Magic, I don’t need to explain Kitchen Finks to you. Other than perhaps Lightning Bolt and Birds of Paradise, I can’t think of a card that has been a more permanent staple of the format. Their usage waxes and wanes with the format, of course, but you’ll never lose money betting that you’ll find a few of them floating around the room of any Modern tournament.

With UMA come new pack foils, which are available for as low as $4 today. Looking in on other foil editions, we can see that’s quite low. MMA foils are fetching $8 to $9, and they rise from there, up to $30 or so for Shadowmoor foils. With Finks’ ubiquity, I see the UMA foils catching the MMA ones eventually. If you’ve ever wanted a foil set, grab your UMA ones now, because I suspect they’ll catch up to the MMA ones before long.

As an addendum, those box toppers are great looking, and liable to climb strongly from $35. If you can catch some of these on an eBay 15% off sale or something similar, I’m a fan. I suspect box toppers across the board are going to rise, and these are eminently playable, and cheap enough that one could chase the full set.

Bonus Round (Foil)

Price Today: $8
Possible Price: $20

Over in EDH, Niv Mizzet continues to be one of the most popular “not Atraxa or Muldrotha” commanders. As a general that encourages drawing cards and pinging people, there are some cool ways to build him, such as those that use Thousand-Year Storm. And while that’s a cool card, it’s not what we’re looking at today.

Rather, I’m checking in on Battlebond. Remember that set? All the way back from June of this year? Man it has been a long 2018. Yes, Battlebond was printed just six months ago, yet we’ve all collectively forgotten it exists. EDH hasn’t though, and they continue to make use of the cards found there. While scrolling through Niv Mizzet lists, I decided to check in on Bonus Round, and I see potential.

Bonus Round is, most importantly, a cool card. EDH has lots of cards. Many are cool, and many are utilitarian. The cool ones are more likely to find their way into decks, because when deciding if your deck should be efficient or it should be cool, you’re going to pick cool in EDH. Bonus Round sets up huge turns that do awesome things, and no self-respecting EDH player is going to forgo Bonus Round in any deck where it fits. Not when it provides so much potential.

You’ll find foils at $8 right now. There’s some on the market — some. It’s only been six months though. What’s this going to look like a year from now?