Readers!

I know you think I pretty much nailed it last week, but I still decided to come back this week with some more hot examples, fresh from… wherever they originate? Which is somewhere hot? Rather than contemplate the consequences of my idioms, we should back to what really matters – specs of any temperature served to you in article form.

Today I did some poking around as I often do, and I found something I guess I didn’t quite expect, and it goes to show once again why it pays to look at data again in a new context to help figure out what it means. Let’s see if you catch the outlier here.

You can make a few pronouncements if you really study the data carefully, but when you look elsewhere for what is going on in EDH, you might see some of these cards in a new light.

The first picture was the set page for the PAWBO Commander precon decks, the second pic is the most built decks of the last week. Sure, it’s obvious that Urtet is a big deal, but you can’t look at the set page and pick out at a glance that the card is “5th most built deck of the week” good. All Will Be One is old news, they have begun spoiling two new sets since it dropped.

This naturally made me check Urtet’s page and I found something right away. I clicked.

The High Synergy cards came up. Do you see what I saw?

Wake The Past is more on TCG than on CK? I clicked.

It is certainly played in enough decks before and a big one recently. Still doesn’t explain the price discrepancy. One more click.

Here we have our answer. If a small number of copies go missing from TCG Player, there are enough sellers with enough copies to list them without too much disruption. Card Kingdom is at the mercy of their own online buylist and convention buyers in a post-convention era to keep stocked. TCG Player is in control of this card’s price and while the incentive to be the cheapest and have your copy sell first is there, it won’t be enough to keep this below $6, probably more until they reprint it before my copies sell.

These few investigatory mouseclicks led to a big discovery – a card that was secretly selling out and which is great synergy with all 900 Red White Artifacts commanders they have farted out recently on top of Urtet, which made me think we were getting a Memnarch effect and made me sad.

While we’re at it, this is another High Synergy Urtet card, same deal with the lower price on CK because it sold out there first.

This week, CK is a canary in the coal mine, weakly trying to choke out a warning. Every time I saw a price where CK was cheaper on Urtet’s page, it was sold out.

Every “x matters” (I try not to say tribal anymore and this is the cleanest way to swap in a new word, imo) strategy is going to be this obvious, but it needs to be backed up by building for the cards to sell. They’re selling, pay attention to cards that sell out on one of the most expensive websites for people who don’t buylist to buy cards. Card Kingdom can tell you as much or more about the EDH market as any other site, including EDHREC, provided you know where to look.

Is this method great for figuring out specs way ahead of time like I prefer to? No, certainly not, but if you spend enough time looking at prices on EDHREC, your eyes catches when CK is cheaper. This week, it appears to be because Myr stuff is finally popping and current TCG Player retail is probably fine considering CK will almost certainly restock higher than that if they ever get stock back in.

That does it for me this week, readers. Thanks for reading and talking appraisingly about my art in the MTG Price Pro Trader Discord which is worth the cost of a subscription in and of itself. Until next time!