Yearly Archives: 2019

Watchtower

The Watchtower 7/15/19 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

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.

A week later and Modern is settling nicely, with plenty of variety in the metagame. MTGO’s most recent Modern League gives us eight distinct decks, with a surprising victory by Goblins. It’s hard to imagine Goblins becoming a pillar of Modern, given that they’re lacking the two best Goblins cards, Wasteland and Rishadan Port, but this isn’t the first appearance of the little red menace at the top of the standings. Another two victories like this and I’m going to be writing about Goblin Matron. Two weeks from now is PT Barcelona, a Modern event, which should give us a firmer perspective on where things are headed. I’d be surprised if Izzet Phoenix isn’t the most popular deck, and also the best performing by the numbers, short of a new combo deck arising.

Thopter Foundry

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $8

Glancing at the challenge league results is amusing, as there are two decks that appear similar at first blush, Urza and UrzaTron. To an uninformed observer, the only difference between these two would be the inclusion of ‘Tron,’ whatever that is. Of course, we know just how far apart those two strategies are. UrzaTron is a big mana deck that makes use of the busted land cycle named for their creator, Urza, whereas Urza is a grindy artifact-based control deck that wins via attrition in the shape of countless 1/1 flying thopters, supported by the decks namesake, Urza. Got all that?

After Sword of the Meek’s unbanning most of us expected Thopter Sword to run rampant in Modern, and that was hardly the case. It has taken until the arrival of Urza for the strategy to become more utilized, and now that it is, it’s looking to have some real traction. Since Modern Horizons’ release several weeks ago most events have included a list making use of Urza, Sword, and Thopter. Urza is like $60 or some nonsense, Sword has one printing and is priced appropriately, which leaves Thopter Foundry, which also happens to be the one most often played as a four-of. 

While foils already have scarcity and popularity baked into the price, non-foils are considerably more accessible, thanks to two Commander precon printings. The latter of those was three years ago, in 2016, which means supply isn’t nearly as liquid as it would have been otherwise. Prices across all three printings are floating around $2 to $2.50, and while supply is reasonably healthy, there’s clearly a growing demand source that didn’t exist before. Without a reprint there should be a steady burn as players pick up sets to give Urza a whirl. Foundry will creep up towards $4 or $5, and then overnight end up at $8 or $10 as the last of the cheap supply gets polished off.

Ramunap Excavator (Release Foil)

Price Today: $4
Possible Price: $12

Last week we looked into Kykar, as she (?) was surprisingly just barely beating out Yarok in popularity. As expected it didn’t last, and Yarok has a good 20% more decks today than Kykar does. I fully anticipate Yarok will become a household name at LGS’ everywhere, similar to, but perhaps shy of, Muldrotha and Meren. People like Panharmonicon, you know?

Ramunap Excavator isn’t exactly a Yarok card per se. In fact, Excavator has negative synergy, indicating that he’s more popular in green decks that aren’t Yarok than are. That’s fine, and it doesn’t really influence our position here. Yarok led us to Excavator, and Excavator may be better elsewhere, but doesn’t mean Excavator isn’t worth considering. For instance, Excavator is in about 11,000 decks, and is the second-most popular card from Amonkhet, behind only Torment of Hailfire by about 2%. Some Yarok players will buy Excavator, fewer than those that don’t, but it will be bought, and people building other green decks, like Lord Windgrace, a permanent fixture in the top 10, will keep buying copies.

In particular the “Release party” promo is appealing. Both the pack foils and prerelease foils are floating in the $6 to $7 range, and are each well poised to move north of $10 as it is. Meanwhile the release promo, which has more colorful art, is at half to two-thirds that price, with supply that’s not exactly about to empty tomorrow, but is showing signs of wear. You’ve got a little time on this, with roughly 35 vendors on TCG, and at least two with double digits of supply. It will only take one or two enterprising speculators for that to be gone though, and then you’re looking at a short rode to $10+.

Villainous Wealth (Foil)

Price Today: $6
Possible Price: $15

Villainous Wealth falls roughly into the Excavator camp; played in Yarok, if not especially designed for the strategy, while overall relatively popular (for a wedge-colored card). 4,000 decks isn’t exactly blowing EDH out of the water, but it’s also the 6th most popular tri-color card in the entire format, with 12% of all decks capable of running Wealth finding a slot for it. Even though the overall profile is on the lower side I still like cards like this; they’re big, splashy, and fun, and exactly the type of thing people are going to try to find room for.

I don’t need to sell you on putting Wealth in your decks, that happens without my involvement just fine. The story instead is the pricing. There’s only 15 vendors with foil copies of this card left. Zero prerelease copies. If your memory is long enough you’ll recall there was a price spike on this bad boy about a year ago, when it jumped from under $2 and landed around $4. Since the start of this year the price has slowly climbed to the current $6 to $7, which I love to see. Foils drained from the market in the spike, everyone rushed to relist, and rather than prices retracing to their former $2, they’ve been slowly climbing again for months. This means that when the price inevitably spikes again, there won’t be any supply left to backfill demand.

Of all the cards I wrote about today, this is what I expect to go the quickest. Supply is low, the price graph is appealing, and people like the card.

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.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #347 M20 Set Review

http://traffic.libsyn.com/brainstormbrewery/Brainstorm_Brewery_347_M20_Set_Review.mp3

Corbin (@CHosler88), DJ (@Rose0fThorns) and Jason (@jasonEalt) sit down with top tier patron Steve (@StevenMKestner) to talk about the new commander ban, movie rankings, M20 and more.

Make sure to check us out on Youtube because everything is better with video. https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

Uncategorized

Getting in and Getting out

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If you listen to MTG Fast Finance or read what we all put here every week, you’ll know that we tell you what cards to buy before they get expensive. 

There’s two ways to use this information: Buy what you need while it’s cheap, or buy a whole bunch so that you can make a profit. 

As suggested by discord users mtgPapa and Bacon_Shuffel (who you’d know if you were a ProTrader and kept up on our group discussions), I want to go over how I go about getting in and getting out of a card. This includes amount, places to buy, and how to extract value once you’ve gotten the hoped-for increase.

A caveat: This is my process. I’m not someone who spends thousands a month. Hundreds, if the moment is right, but generally I spend about two grand a year on singles/sealed product. If you have more to spend, you’ll need to scale up accordingly. 

Second, you must keep track of what you’re buying at, and what you’re losing to assorted fees. (More on fees in a second.) I’ve got a spreadsheet I’m happy to share, but if you want to use an app, or format it how you want in Excel, whatever appeals to you.

On my sheet, you have to enter the card name, the date bought at, average price purchased, the number of copies, and then space for the new price (when it gets to the new price). The rest of the columns fill in automatically for you, making it easy to determine what your profit will be and your rate of return. For this sheet, profit percentage is your profit in dollars divided by what you originally spent. Basically, what did each dollar you spent turn into?

When I’m looking at a card, I’m deciding how long I think I’m going to keep it for and what formats it’s relevant in. Last week, I talked about Unbound Flourishing, a card I think is going to go crazy in Commander, especially with the new Hydra commander in Core 2020. 

Plus, I like this as a go-to card for all the shenanigans that X spells can do in Commander. I do not think this will grow quickly, I’m looking at a longer-term hold as people realize how busted this can be. Because it’s a long-term hold, I’m not going to break the bank getting in. I bought eight copies at an average of $8.50 each.

For an example of a larger-volume spec, Let’s look at Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering.

Back on March 12, when I guested on Fast Finance, I picked this card as a growth target. My reasoning was that since you just needed any planeswalker or legend in play, and we’d just found out there was going to be 36 new planeswalkers, I figured that this would be one of the best things to cast. The card was nearly bulk, and I cleaned out TCGPlayer to the tune of 80 copies at about a quarter each. I anticipated being able to sell it within three months, especially because it was going to rotate in the fall.

Why did I buy so many more? For one, they were cheap. It doesn’t hurt to spend twenty dollars on a spec and miss. You spend a couple hundred dollars and miss, that stings more. The principle applies to all costs, and if you believe in your reasoning the cost shouldn’t be an issue. 

The other reason I bought so many was that I was hoping to sell them all to one buylist, and operating in large quantities makes that process more efficient. If they buylisted for a dollar each, then I could ship one big package and save a lot on shipping. 

As you can tell, they haven’t hit, so they are sitting in a box, waiting patiently. I prefer to think of my box of shame as my box of super-long-term investments, though with these buylisting at fifteen cents I’d lose something like five bucks if I really needed to move on. 

Getting out of a card you bought a ton of requires finding the buylist who wants a bunch, and sending them in. Websites aren’t always helpful for this, it’s not every store who just puts 100 in the possible quantity. It’s better to lose a little per card if you can sell them all at once. 

For example, with the Offerings, let’s say I found three stores that took them for $1.10 each but would only take ten per store, but another store that offered 90 cents but could take them all off my hands. That’s not a hard decision for me: I’m cashing out and moving on with the 90 cents. You have to evaluate the value you’re leaving behind in terms of the shipping costs and your own time. 

For lower quantities, you can sell on TCG or eBay, but there’s going to be costs associated with the sale. Buylisting allows you to move a higher volume and move on to the next card, whereas selling one or two at a time can really eat you up in fees and time. Please use the spreadsheet to calculate what you’re selling for, it’s easy to forget about the associated fees with eBay and Paypal. Generally speaking, given all the hurdles, it’s about 15%.

Ebay allows you to sell cards as playsets, so if you have 40 of a card you can say you have 10 items and each item is a set of four. That’s a more profitable way to sell a bunch, especially if you price a little more aggressively. 

Because of the fees, selling via social media is an option that allows you to price cards a bit lower and generate more interest. Our discord is lively with offers and purchases, and there’s Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist, and other apps/sites for buying and selling. If I don’t know someone that I’m buying from online, I’ll always pay the 3% fee that Paypal charges for goods and services. Sending via gift gives you no protection at all. Most commonly, when you’re looking to sell via these methods, start at the TCG low minus about 10%. The buyer is getting the card for less than they would spend anywhere else, and you’re getting more cash than you would via buylist, with no fees! Winner all around.

One method of outing cards that doesn’t work for me as much is vendors at a GP or local store. I’m on the West Coast, so there’s a real lack of big events and stores here, but at a vendor’s booth you can often go in and move a ton of cards for cash in hand. Feels phenomenal, but be aware of the security risk when someone else watches you sell a grand worth of specs.

Some other time, I’m going to go over the two types of spikes, but generally speaking, sell when everyone is agog over a card. Hopefully you got in while it was cheap, and if you sell while it’s going up you’re getting your value back and if you sell too soon, that’s okay because you already made your profit! Don’t hold on too soon, because you’re going to take that profit and move it into the other specs you’ve identified. 

Bonus pick: Echo of Eons. It’s another Modern Horizons mythic that is aching to be broken. You get to cast it twice, note that the first cast doesn’t bother exiling itself. You can get in around $11, don’t bother with the foils at $60ish unless you’re getting it for your Commander deck. The nonfoils are going to go up, but probably not soon. We’ve seen Wrenn and Six spike hard, and I think Echo of Eons will pop to over $30 when it gets hot.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, 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 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: Physical Cardboard

Readers!

The prerelease is over, people have physical copies of cards in their hands and things are shaking out a little differently than people expected. Let’s take a look at some data and see if we can glean any info. I mean, you do what you want, but that’s what I’m doing.

This is the top of last week’s top commanders section on EDHREC. Core Set 2020 was in the database but wasn’t nudging any of these older cards out of the top spots. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 now.

Quite a shakeup. I expect Windgrace and Edgar still because they got new cards in Core 2020 and people are updating their decks, but Muldrotha and the new cards that deck got are making a big impact. I think Yarok goes in basically every Muldrotha list and Muldrotha goes in basically every Yarok list. Both cards do what the deck built around the other does. Casting a dead Eternal Witness using Muldrotha? You’re going to want Yarok out. Got a dead Acidic Slime in Yarok? Cast it from the yard, son! Muldrotha is a very historically popular deck.

VERY popular.

There is a lot of overlap between Yarok and Muldrotha and a dedicated Muldrotha player may or may not build a Yarok deck. Yarok (or Risen Reef, good grief that card is spicy) may make people who never had Muldrotha build that. Either way, staples in both decks, which overlap, should have some upside and are worth watching.

The good thing about Yarok is how OBVIOUS it is. I clicked on the EDHREC page and the deck looked… solved. Does that make sense? I didn’t look at anything and say “Wow, that’s sweet tech, never would have thought of that!” like I did looking at Feather lists. Yarok feels like it already knows what cards go in it. That’s good. You have a card pool of like 100 non-lands versus like 200 or 300 to choose from which means that that the cards in the deck theoretically will end up in twice as many decks since there are half as many options. Those numbers are not meant to be a quantitative measure but merely to illustrate that the more obvious a deck is, the higher its staples go.

Etb creatures were already good but having access to a second Panharmonicon in the value deck colors is new and I think cards in the deck have some upside. Speaking of which…

You’re running out of time to snag these under $10. Kaladesh cards are just going nuts because they are so good in so many formats and there was never a good time to get them because they were good in Standard, too. Artifacts are better than non-artifacts since color identity matters in EDH. It seems obvious but it bears repeating – pay special attention to artifacts and mono-color cards – they’re way easier to slot in than 2-color cards or more.

Never count a good card out. This was showing signs of life following the Commander 2014 reprinting and then the 2015 reprinting brought it to its knees. And yet, if we’d been greedy in 2015 when these were $2, we’d be in great shape now. Card Kingdom has them at $7 but they’re as cheap as $4.50 on TCG Player and I like that price a lot on a future $7-$9 card if current trends hold. This card with Yarok and Gray Merchant wins the game on the spot just about and you have Eternal Witness to get it back, and ways to flicker creatures, ensuring Witness can snag this over and over. If Yarok gets play, and it will, this is stupid good.

As exciting as Yarok is, it’s not the most played deck in 2020.

Kykar is obvious, too. Obvious is good for our purposes as much as it bums me out as a deckbuilder and EDH writer. Still, no one is forcing me to reinvent the wheel when it comes to my finance picks so boring is good in a volatile field like finance and my pain can be your gain. Good thing I like both.

2 reprintings since that spike in 2016 have brought this quite low, below $5, but I think Kykar decks can absolutely make use of this, especially with mana spells like Mana Geyser in the format. You can generate a ton of mana, play a Bonus Round and dump your whole yard and generate enough birds to kill them with Purphoros, or sac those birby bois to get even more mana. Don’t forget, Kykar is a built in Phyrexian Altar for one of the most common types of 1/1 token. Sac any spirit – not just the 1/1 tokens Kykar makes. If you’re going a combo route or the beatdown route, those birbs are basically treasure tokens with razor sharp beaks and they work for both.

If you’re not going combo, here’s a card that exists.

This was in the Jumanjis of Ixalan board game and while the spell cast by its intersection of weird scarcity and speculation about the tribal themes in Commander 2017 has been largely broken, this also hit its bottom and began to trend up. This has good trajectory and it’s actually just kind of stupid in Kykar decks. They’ll continue to make tribal decks and this just KOs people. I think this is a $10 card soon.

Whenever a card is cheaper on Card Kingdom than it is on TCG Player, I take notice. I like EDHREC putting the prices side by side like this and I think it’s unlikely cards on TCG Player, with more competition and faster sales, will decrease in price to match CK, especially since it’s so easy to buy CK out. This is a $1 card and you can get them for 60% off, on a site that gives you like 70% of retail in store credit when you trade in hotlist stuff. Do the math. This rules. Want to know another card I saw was $0.75 on Card Kingdom and $1.50 on Tcg Player earlier, causing me to buy 20 copies on Card Kingdom at a time until they stopped restocking? This card.

CK has them for $2, now and they’re $3.50 on CFB. Not bad.

I don’t think it’s perfect, but I think you should take notice of CK lagging behind market sites where the prices update more often. Mana Geyser is a $1 card, for now.

That does it for me this week. I’ll be at GP Detroit if you want to say hi or play some EDH or buy me a beer or have me autograph your baby or whatever. Until next time!