Readers,

There are a lot of places you could invest your Covid bucks and I appreciate you choosing to invest with us. If you’re not familiar with our Pro Trader program, we offer access to a private Discord server and early access to all of our articles which could give you a jump on the competition. Discord too impersonal? Message a writer directly on Twitter or Facebook and ask them a question, day or night. Call the house, you know they’re home, or they should be. Leave them a voicemail asking why they’re not home. You don’t want to make a financial decision like whether or not you should buy Collector’s Boosters from Ikoria without talking it over. Got a non-Magic problem? We’re here to help. Lots of people are annoyed at having to call the unemployment office, let one of our writers sit on hold for you. The point is, the sooner you get that sweet unemployment money rolling in, the sooner you can blow it investing in a card game that may or may not recover.

If any paper format DOES come back, it will be EDH, so let’s look at some EDH picks. We were going to do that anyway, but now we’re going to do it even more.

Captivity hasn’t stopped people from theorycrafting and despite uncertainty regarding when they’ll be able to get these cards, people have their decklists ready to go. Since they’ll likely put off buying the rest of the decks until they get their new cards, we have more time than normal to stock up and stock up we shall. Zaxara is number one here and despite me being more excited about Xyris and its linearity, the most popular deck usually stays the most popular deck. Commander players like X spells and so do I because when it’s time to make money, X gonna give it to ya.

You know, like the DMX song.

You can say whatever you want to about DMX, he has no idea how to use google so it’s not like he can search his own name and see who is talking smack. We have a comment section on these articles and they barely get used, so feel free to say something about DMX in the comments like about how it’s pretty cartoonish to bark all the time or about how the only Cradle to Grave worse than that card from Planar Chaos was that goofy-ass movie he made with Jet Li. He’ll never find out.

Let’s look at some Zaxara picks, shall we?

It’s hard to believe this card flirted with $3, but since Modern Horizons was a Modern-focused set and so many ridiculous cards were in it, people busted box after box trying to get $100 Planeswalkers so the stuff that wasn’t immediately impacftful in Modern sort of fell by the wayside. The wayside is where I hang out, scooping EDH staples people forgot about. If you didn’t get in at $3 because I never said anything about it at the time, you can still get in around $9 on TCG Player. It’s sold out everywhere else unless you’re clever and find smaller sites people forgot about. A smaller store is more likely to be run by one or two people and therefore less likely to be closed and therefore more likely to ship. Without anyone at bigger stores making arbitrage buys of those smaller sites, you can go looking yourself. Try page 5 of google, etc.

Torment tanked when it was reprinted in Mystery Boosters, but don’t expect it to stay cheap. This was a $10+ card before Zaxara and it doesn’t need any of Zaxara’s help approaching $10 again. That said, it’s going to get Zaxara’s help, making this a solid pickup. I don’t know if it can get cheaper.

Speaking of temporarily embarrassed cards, check out this gem that flirted with an actual Jacksonback at one point. This is a $12 card selling for $4, figger it oot.

Strike Zone is currently selling this for like a dollar more than the cheapest this card ever got when it was reprinted. Genesis Wave is an absurd Magic card, it occasionally shows up in Modern and it’s tailor-made for Zaxara yet shows up in many, many decks. This is a very solid price for a very solid card. Reprint risk is moderate, especially with this year being touted as the year of EDH and everyone replying with a list of Green cards when Gavin asked on Twitter what needed a reprint.

Brief aside here, if you aren’t following members of the CAG, Rules Committee and set design teams within Wizards on Twitter, you’re missing out. I predicted a Flash ban in EDH because of how little it mattered to most people but how every time Sheldon tweeted about ANYTHING someone would say “Oh, your delivery driver forgot to include your ranch and that’s bad but Flash Hulk is ok?’ and if that had been me, I would have snapped and banned the card to be left alone. Every time Gavin Verhey does an informal poll, I get to scroll through the replies. Companies pay a lot of money for the kind of research you can get for free on Twitter, and I recommend taking advantage. Follow me @jasonealt while you’re at it, it don’t cost nothin.

As I was writing, I procrastinated for a few minutes on Twitter and found this tweet. That said, some of the presale prices on the singles that seemed high may stay high and that means it could take longer for them to get reasonable. I don’t know if there is any money to be made with those cards under the circumstances, so I’m staying well away. If you are busting decks for singles, this is very good news for you, though, provided you aren’t the one getting hit with the allocation shortage.

I find these in bulk all the time. This might not be $10 ever again, but it’s probably not getting reprinted ever again, either. Remember this is money when you dig through bulk. The whole set is money, but this is, too.

That does it for me this week. Zaxara is making a whole lot of $0.33 cards playable and they won’t go up enough to bother imo so this was a bit of a bust. Next week when I look at Gavi, Nest Warden, we’ll be much happier, I bet. Until next time!