Monthly Archives: June 2021

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: f-icien-c

Readers!

When I first started out writing mtg finance articles, I was checking weekend results on Monday or Tuesday and making predictions based on those results during the week so people could pick those cards up the following weekend before FNM. Gradually, specs started selling out before Monday, then before Sunday, then within an hour of showing up on camera. In a lot of ways, I was lucky I pivoted to non-tournament formats to do my financing because Covid could have put a real wrinkle in my plans. I pivoted not because I saw Covid and WotC’s abandonment of tournament play as an inevitability (I still don’t believe it) but rather because I had to. Mtg Finance, once a very inefficient system had become a very efficient submarket and telling people how to be more efficient at it for money made it get more efficient faster. I say GOOD.

Efficiency is a good thing because inefficiency is just wasted potential. If the market is going to get faster at making cheap copies disappear, we should get more efficient at identifying what’s going to go up before anyone else. Luckily, with EDHREC, I’ve been able to identify the cards that take the longest to start to sell but which sell the most sustainably and give you the longest possible time to get out of them before they tail off – EDH cards.

We don’t have months for the EDH cards to go up like we used to and we’ve had to get a bit more efficient. Luckily, EDHREC, a site which used to wait until the whole set was previewed to build the pages for new sets has decided to scrape the sets every night starting when deck sites start getting decks registered, which means we have days, maybe weeks we didn’t have before. As of Tuesday, basically the second day of previews starting in earnest, we have a lot going on.

It’s not a ton, but it’s more than we used to have 2 days into preview week. 66 Tiamat decks is a lot, but I’m even more impressed that we have 14 Drizzt decks already. Will any of this matter? Maybe, maybe not. I’m going to take a look at these lists (even Nadaar) earlier than I used to and we can see if anything here will matter or not. I feel like Tiamat is as basic Dragon deck that could have any 5 color Dragon at the helm, which isn’t worthless, exactly, but isn’t revolutionary. So let’s start out by confirming that.

Tiamat

Just Dargons here, Dargons as far as the eye can see. That tracks. I didn’t really expect much innovation here – Tiamat doesn’t really have a “new” ability as far as 5 color dragon lords are concerned, so we’re basically an Ur-Dragon deck with a new Commander. That sucks. That said, it’s possible some of the Dragon tribal stuff could bump, but not like it did when a tribal EDH precon set was announced. I’ll keep looking, but Drizzt may be a better use of our time. Let’s enter the next part of the dungeon or whatever the hell that is.

What’s happening right now isn’t Tiamat’s fault. It’s not even 66 builders’ fault. It’s just that Tiamat, for all of its power and prestige, isn’t templated to do anything new. I mean, if we’re going to complain about that, we could complain about every Legendary creature in Modern Horizons 2 beside Chatterfang which barely roped in Saprolings in its Squirrely web (I’m mixing metaphors, I don’t think Squirrels weave webs, calm down). This isn’t a complaining about how exciting Legendary creatures are article, and neither is my article on Coolstuff because I want another preview card someday, so let’s poke around a bit more and call it a day.

Look, I’m calling it. This is basically the list of cards for Ur-Dragon. You think that stuff could go back up? Buy it all, I guess. I’m not telling you it won’t, I’m telling you I’m not excited. I think Drizzt might be more exciting.

Drizzt

OK! This I can deal with.

Barring another reprint, which I don’t think will be soon, Selvala will flirt with $30 again. Jumpstart and Conspiracy 2: Conspiratorial Boogaloo are both fairly low-supply sets and I think Selvala is a pretty good card. How good?

QUITE good. Is Drizzt going to be what pushes this up? No, but it won’t hurt, and digging into commanders makes me find unrelated gems all the time. It’s why all of us should monkey around on EDHREC every day for like 15 minutes.

Cards like Force of Savagery are exactly what we’re hoping to find when we go plumbing the depths of these new decks. It’s very good with Drizzt specifically, not great anywhere else and a card no one cares about. It will take time for the copies to get ferreted out of bulk bins and binders and with no easy way for stores to restock, the copies in the market now are the copies that set the price. This has the potential to get sold out fast and by the time the new copies come in to calm the price down, hopefully you sold into the spike. If there is a spike, in order to sell into it, you need to buy now. I think this is primed for it. This basically puts 5 +1/+1 counters on Drizzt for 3 mana and since it’s a creature, it’s fairly easy to bring back. It’s possible Anthems can also make this like a 12/4 which is cool in EDH if you have equipment to throw on it. In general, I wouldn’t be a ton more excited about a 3 mana 12/4 than I would, say, Woolly Thoctar, a card I’d never play in EDH, but Force has some possible additional utility. This seems like a slam dunk. I don’t mess with foils, but foil people should know this is $10 entirely on the basis of scarcity and that price won’t go down once the hubbub around this card’s utility in a deck people may or may not build dies down.

They say not to grab a falling knife, but this is a falling knife I’d keep my eyes on and grab as soon as it… bounces? And I’m not saying I wouldn’t keep my eye on basically any falling knife… look, I’m done with this bit already but this card is good and when the price stops going down, I’m into grabbing some.

Bonders’ Enclave is a good card and I wish I’d bought way more copies way sooner, but I blew all of that money on full art triomes.

No regrets; I’ll take a double up, but Enclave is up 5x over the same period. I’m starting to think I should be investing in cheaper real estate in the future.

Bruenor

Bruenor is to RW Equipment decks what Tiamat is to dragons.

1 deck isn’t enough data for Nadaar, and I’m not really excited about a creature that hinges on a set-specific ability that likely won’t get any support in the future, though I think the dungeon subgame is pretty sweet. We had a few other Legendary creatures spoiled today and I’ll hit you with some picks next week. For now, really look closely at the stuff in Drizzt because I think it has the most potential. I’ll be back next week with more picks, but in the mean time, don’t grab any falling knives. Until next time!

Watchtower

All Modern All The Time

Last week I talked about Modern, this week I’m talking about Modern, next week…I may well be talking about Modern again. It’s a great format and there’s so much diversity in the meta right now with all of the new cards from Modern Horizons 2 – nothing seems completely overpowered or dominant (but the Urza decks are certainly close to being top dog right now), and so there are a lot of opportunities for us to explore.

Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger (Secret Lair)

Price today: $40/$45
Possible price: $70/80

Kroxa has been a relatively important part of multiple formats for a while now, and has made its way into a few different Modern decks along the way. Most recently, a new evolution of the BR aggro deck has made its way to the forefront of the meta with Dragon’s Rage Channeler and Ragavan at the helm – both of which have been separately heralded as the best red one-drop of all time (although we know that Magic players are a little prone to hyperbole).

Either way, Kroxa is doing well in this deck alongside some others as well and on top of all that it’s quite a popular EDH card to boot. 1100 decks as the commander and a further 3000 in the 99, and we only have two premium versions of the card at the moment – the original EAs from Theros Beyond Death, and the Secret Lair versions. The FEAs are over $120 with very low supply now, but both foil and non-foil Secret Lairs are around $40-45, which I think is a decent entry point considering the card’s popularity now.

Especially since Uro got banned from multiple formats, Kroxa is the Titan of choice now and if you want a premium copy – either foil or non-foil – then your options are starting to run thin. I think that these non-foils should be good to run up over $60 before long at all, and the foils driving higher still. Prices are fairly similar in Europe, as expected, but supply isn’t much higher there either and will continue to drain.

On Thin Ice (Foil)

Price in Europe: €5 ($6)
Price in US: $13
Possible price: $20

Now that Sterling Grove has been printed into Modern in MH2 along with the new cards Sanctum Weaver and Sythis, Harvest’s Hand, it seems that Enchantress might actually be a real deck in the format. It’s been a Legacy deck for quite a long time – never dominating but always there at tier two-ish, and now it looks to be doing similar things in Modern.

Taking a look at the different iterations people have been playing, there are a reasonable number of flex slots in the deck and a few cards that remain consistent. One of those is On Thin Ice, a card that we only ever had printed in MH1 and so supply is really on the low side. It’s a four-of in the deck and is very efficient removal that keeps your enchantment count high over something like Path to Exile, and so is perfect for the deck.

Foils have already started to pop off in the US where paper play is a little ahead of Europe, where foils are dragging behind a little at €5-6. I think that this is a good arbitrage opportunity that might not be readily apparent, as it’s not a particularly flashy or exciting card – but it’s good all the same. There are only 29 NM foil listings left on TCGPlayer, and if the Enchantress deck remains relevant in Modern I think this is a sure thing to hit $20 in the next few weeks or so.

Æther Vial (The List)

Price in Europe: €25 ($30)
Price in US: $45
Possible price: $50

I don’t want to harp on about arbitrage opportunities too much, but stuff like this is just too good to pass up, especially when you’re likely to be selling them in playsets. There are multiple Æther Vial decks doing well in Modern at the moment, including Humans, Merfolk and D&T/Stoneblade, and they’re all running four Vials. We’ve had a few different printings of Æther Vial now and they’ve all been trending upwards, but copies from The List in particular have been dragging their heels in Europe.

There are only 17 NM copies left on TCGPlayer, and this is the cheapest version out of Europe at the moment so I think this should just be some good clean arbitrage. Holding for a little longer could well net you even more profit as well, but either option looks pretty solid right now. If you’re thinking about getting into an Æther Vial deck in Modern any time soon then you’ll want to pick your Vials up sharpish, because they’re only going up until we see another printing.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

Early Movers in Modern Horizons 2

Modern Horizons 2 has been live for a week, and we’ve got some price data to look at. Some things are rising, most of them are falling, and right now, it’s quite possible for a $350 Collector Booster box to yield $600 or more of retail value. There’s always been chances for things like that, but there’s a lot of pricey cards still to go in the set.

Let’s take a look at some of these price movements and see what’s real and what’s illusion, as well as decide what to do about it.

Fetchlands (Down about 20%-30%) – Let’s call up the graph for the least-sought-after version of the least-used fetchland: Arid Mesa from Modern Masters 2017:

Pretty clear stuff. In April, this was $45. Now it’s $30. Perhaps, though, that’s because it’s a reprint, or a non-blue fetchland. So here’s Scalding Tarn, from OG Zendikar.

Also down, but to $60 from $80. I like comparing these because they reflect a trend, one that’s happening to all the ones that look the same except for the expansion symbol: They are on the decline. This is the first large-scale printing of fetches since the allied ones in Khans of Tarkir, and while MH2 is not to that scale, it’s going to cause a big dent in prices. 

I’m not sure what the bottom is for the fetchlands, but I feel VERY confident in telling you to get ready to buy. Forgotten Realms has a release date of July 23, and that’s probably about maximum supply on this set. I suspect most fetches will have fallen a little farther, especially as people try to recoup their $350 by getting what they can as quick as they can. Tarn from this set is available under $50 right now, which looks tempting, but if they can fall to that price, then $40 is an option too. Keep an eye on the new TCG feature showing you the most recent sales, that’s a very useful tool for something like this.

Note that Mesa is currently flirting with $25, and I’m pretty comfortable letting a few of those into my wallet at that price. If nothing else, fetchlands are gold when trading with other people, if that’s something you’re comfortable doing. I respect patience as a plan, but price memory alone is going to keep any fetchland from going under $20. It took being in Khans, and then in a widely sold Clash Pack, as well as being the least-played fetchland, for Windswept Heath to go under $15.

Garth One-Eye (Down to $4 and still falling) – It’s rough to be a mythic in some of these sets, and while what Garth does is pretty cool and potentially powerful, he’s a nostalgic meme. As a five-color legend, he’s quite generic in his skillset and he can never ever get better. Kenrith is a much better choice as your generic 5c Commander because if you had a ton of mana, you could play him, and then use abilities. Garth will have to wait. Poor Garth will be bulk in a month. Stay away until then (and then feel free to pick up a brick of bulk-price mythics).

Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer (up to $70 after being down to $55 after being a preorder for $80) – This monkey is leading us all on a merry chase up and down the rankings and the price tables. There’s a whole lot of cool things to be done with Ragavan, and while my impulse is to offer the path of patience, we’ve seen the drop and then the recovery so far. Because of what he offers, Ragavan shows up as a four-of and no one messes around with shaving their one-drops. There’s a variety of decks wanting to use this card, from Delver-style ‘play a one-drop and ride it all the way’ to multicolor aggro builds seeking to abuse Mox Amber. The price dropped early, as expected, but there’s a whole lot of people buying this up for its uses, and probably not Commander players either.

History tells us that this price has to go back down in the next few weeks, but the great unknown is how many packs are getting cracked outside of the big distributors and Collector Boosters. If stores were all open and regular copies were flowing, I’d say this would drop to $40, even as the most popular mythic. There’s too much retail value in this set for it to stay where it is, frankly. If you’ve got an $80 mythic, and a whole bunch of $30 rares, that just will not stay the case. 

There is an event this weekend in Florida, the TCG Con, and that’s the first big in-person event I know about. It’s got a $1000 Modern tournament, but that’s not enough to keep these prices high. I expect Ragavan to come back down to $50, I just can’t say for sure how long that will take.

Dragon’s Rage Channeler (up to $5, foils at $9) – This is an uncommon, and has no special frame, so there’s just two versions to discuss. It’s both better and worse than Delver of Secrets, but the big game for this card is in the first line of text, giving you control over the top of your library every time you cast a noncreature spell. It’s already adopted by assorted UR lists, and I expect this to be in the discussion for Burn decks eventually. Is this Delirium ability better than Prowess, and if not, does the Surveil 1 make up for the loss? As an uncommon, there’s a lot out there, and for the moment, you should sell these as fast as you can. Long-term, I’m likely to move in on foils, since you get two foil uncommons per Collector Booster, but for the moment you should be selling.

Urza’s Saga (Down to $30 from a high of $60) – A really wide variety of decks are trying this out, and it’s going to be popular in Commander for a while too. That’s a formula for success, long-term. The question is, will you be able to get this for $25 or less before the price climbs back up? Banning the card is also in the discussion, considering the impressively broken things it can do. Seeing a list of decks, from Jund to Whir Control to Hammer Time and even Lantern Control…there’s a lot going on with this card. 

I’m going to step out on a limb and say that this won’t get banned before the end of this year, and that $25 will be the floor. Being useful in a lot of different decks is good but not necessarily broken. I think it will get banned in Modern when some other incredible combo piece gets printed, but that hasn’t happened yet and people haven’t abused the card too terribly as yet.

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: A Peek at the Peak

Readers!

You no more need me to tell you that we should be buying cards at peak supply than you need be told to buy low and sell high. I won’t insult your intelligence by wasting ink explaining what peak supply is, when it is, or why it matters. As much as I am tempted to use the limited space above the fold I have to fill, I think I’ll use that space more productively. You all get it, prices are best when there is the most competition to be the cheapest seller. I have some opinions about what the best targets are when that happens and if you don’t think about Magic exactly like I do, I might have some ideas you hadn’t considered. I’m using data to back my conclusions as always, and I think Modern Horizons 2 has some parallels from Modern Horizons 1 we can reference. In short, let’s go into peak supply week with a plan and make some money, shall we?

Right off the bat, I’m struck by a few things I did not expect. I made it a point to say early and often in this series that I don’t plan to argue with data, and while I’m not going to argue with data, maybe I will make that one high pitched noise that sounds like the beginning of a word drawn out that sort of indicates “yeahh…..not so sure about that one…” at a few of these. Here’s why I’m going to make that noise at all.

  1. It doesn’t actually matter that much if I’m wrong. If you think you’ll play the card, buy it regardless of what I think about it as a spec and if you were going to spec on it and don’t because I talked you out of it, you spent that money elsewhere so you made money with that money anyway.
  2. I think it’s worthwhile to express my personal opinion on the record about certain cards so if I am wrong about cards like it a lot, either I’ll figure out bias may be impacting my decisions.
  3. This is my column.

So, looking at the initial (albeit sorted by percentage of inclusions, which matters but not necessarily in a bad way) data, I am making the “dunno about that” noise at a card very high on the list.

I think one of the reasons he may be a bit over-represented as a function of percentage inclusions is that not a lot of the decks being built since this set became legal are artifact-based, but all of the white ones are. That said, I don’t really care if this is over-represented or not, I guess. This has actually ticked up a buck or two since Friday while most things are tanking and I am not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad one. I don’t know if it’s a good buy at its current price and I don’t know if the amount it’s played in EDH is going to fall of long-term and I don’t know if Modern can pick up the slack. There are too many unknowns for me. Gun to my head, I’m staying away but there is no gun to any of our heads, so maybe we should just call an audible here and move on to more obvious money.

This is a $4 foil and I predict this will be an $8 or so non-foil in the future and that’s all I really have to say about that. With Collector booster boxes detroying the price of a lot of the rares, the fact that you get more rares than uncommons in your average collector booster might make these foils retain some value. There are no etched foils, no prerelease stamp foils, no sketch card version, just this and the foil. I like those odds. This isn’t a bad Tireless Tracker, it’s a good Lotus Cobra and I think people are catching on. I DO like this at its current price and predict it will go down more, at which point I feel OK pulling the trigger on 4 times as many copies as I need for my decks, which is a lot of copies to begin with.

This is getting a lot less attention than I had anticipated. Having a lot of decks where my Eternal Witness getting milled stymied its usefulness as an out, I am excited by this card but the format isn’t there yet. I think at its current price, the odds that it tanks more are far less than the odds it gets picked up either when people come around or when something gets printed that uses this. $2 for a foil sketch version or set foil seems OK but I bet it drops more in the near term and I’m watching to see if it does.

This card is the real deal. Urborg is good with Cabal Coffers. Yavimaya is good with Knight of the Reliquary, Quirion Ranger, Llanowar Druid, Patron of the Orochi, etc. If this gets played at all in Modern, its price is headed for the moon. Let’s compare to Urborg, again, a worse card.

Does this make you like Yavimaya under $20? It does me. Extended Art looks better, etched looks worse. In fact, I am avoiding all etched foils until it makes no sense not to ignore them for my decks. People really hate them and I don’t blame them, and prices are tanking accordingly. On Thursday, an etched foil Misty was 130 and a retro foil was 150. Today the etched foil is 65. Gross. Buy Yavimaya, and focus on the Extended Art imo.

I am torn, here. Damn is the real deal but it also goes in way fewer decks than people might think. The decks that will play this already have access to a billion wraths and they’re annoying to play and to play against. While Damn is very good, it’s also a bit of a solution with no problem. Does that limit is adoption more than it is already limited? I don’t think so, but I also think the demand is a bit overstated. That said, I wouldn’t mind a control player just killing a problem creature rather than killing every creature when they draw a wrath and need to kill something to stay alive, so maybe I should be encouraging more decks to run this.

It won’t be today, but at some point, people will realize that this gets played in more than just Squirrel decks and it’s quite good. It’s a $1 foil and the sketch foil (which sucks) is even cheaper, but for good reason. I might get a little aggressive on these when they get a little cheaper.

You get about 5 bridges per collector booster box which means you get 0.5 Rustvale or Silverbluff Bridges per box. That’s a highish supply, but is it high enough to keep the foils under a buck? I am not so sure. The RW and UR ones are the only targets, imo, but I like them around $0.50 in the long term.

I think this is a bad Draugr Necromancer but I have been mostly keeping that opinion to myself. I am not going to argue with data today, so let me say that this is in a lot of decks, a lot of those decks are Chatterfang which is the most popular commander and people didn’t read the text on Draugr Necromancer while they did read the text on this card and would rather sac their leyline of the void to not have to pay the mana cost of a card than keep their leyline and pay the mana cost on those cards. Are they wrong? Am I? I don’t know, but I do know this is played a ton. So how many rares from Modern Horizons 1 would have been a good week 1 buy at $15? Just Prismatic Vista and Fiery Islet, I think.

I am not saying don’t get Voidwalker at $15 or even at $10, I’m saying there isn’t much data to support doing one thing or the other and I’m parking money elsewhere.

What card do we compare this to? Is this better or worse than Faeburrow Elder? It seems really situational, doesn’t it? Faeburrow can’t go in non-white decks and maxes out at 5 mana while this can’t get bigger, and needs you to run a lot of enchantments.

I thought Faeburrow was a slam dunk at $1 and while it’s doubled since then, it wasn’t quite a slam dunk, either. I think Weaver is much more narrow but also has a higher ceiling. I also watched Faaeburrow go from $5 to $1 then take a year to get back to $2, so either way I think we wait out Sanctum Weaver for as long as we can.

I think EDH is going to impact the prices in this set a lot and I also think with a few exceptions, Modern and EDH are focusing on very different cards with little overlap. EDH players don’t seem to care about Grief or Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar as much as Modern players do, although Ragavan and Urza’s Saga are great in both. Pick 10 cards to pay attention to, watch their prices and when they stop being in freefall and bounce a bit, leverage your format knowledge and make some money. It took Hexdrinker and Pyromancer over a year to get to where we thought they should be, so be patient. Until next time!