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MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (March 14th/15)

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By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

One of the most common misconceptions about folks involved in MTGFinance is that we are constantly manipulating the market and feeding players misinformation to help fuel achievement of our personal goals.

It recently occurred to us here that though we dole out a good deal of advice, most of you ultimately have very little insight into when we actually put our money where our collective mouths are pointing. As such we’ve decided to run a weekly series simply breaking down what we’ve been buying this week and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought without hope of profit, where appropriate. We’ll also try to provide some insight into our thinking behind the specs, and whether we are aiming for a short (<1 month), mid (1-12 month), or long (1 year+) term flip. Here’s what we were up to this week:

Buying Period: March 8th -14th, 2015

Note: All cards NM unless otherwise noted.

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

  • 8x Descent of the Dragons @ $2.10 per
  • 14x Descent of the Dragons @ $3.15 per
  • 4x Descent of the Dragons @ $3.25 per
  • 28x Dragon Tempest @ $1.55 per
  • 8x Dragon Tempest @ $1.05 per
  • 8x Sidisi, Undead Vizier @ $4.15 per
  • 16x Master of the Unseen @ $2.00 per
  • 2x Tasigur, The Golden Fang (Foil) @ $24.15 per
  • 1x Command Tower (Judge Foil) @  $22
  • 3x Duress (IDW) @ $3
  • 1x Faithless Looting (IDW) @ $3

SOLD

  • 3x Duress (IDW Promo) @ $13 per ($3 cost)

I’m going relatively deep on Descent of the Dragons and Dragon Tempest on the basis that a lot of people are underestimating their combo potential in Standard alongside the long overlooked Battlefield Thaumaturge and mana dorks. The deck shell is basically based around a fairly normal Temur early game that suddenly transforms into an instant kill. Basically if you have 3 creatures in play, with Thaumaturge being one of them, and a Dragon Tempest in play, you put 12/12 worth of Dragons into play and instantly do 9 points and then attack for 12. This can happen as early as Turn 5. The deck can lean on Sarkhan Unbroken, Hour of Need and Stormbreath as backup plans and just play a more midrange game if the pieces aren’t drawn fast enough. I predict that the deck in some form hits at least Tier 2 in Standard, and an on camera appearance should be enough to double the price of both cards. If it fails to perform however, these are pretty bad long term specs as their future in other formats may be dubious at best.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier is my pick for one of the top 3 cards in Dragons of Tarkir, as his power level seems extremely high. With DoT facing a longer rotation schedule than the last two sets, there is a good chance this card tops $8-10 at some point in it’s play life.

As for Tasigur, my early call that he was underrated has come true, and I now expect this guy to be a multi-format player for many years. As such, I’m still buying foils while selling my non-foils.

There was a run on the judge foil Command Towers this week, and I managed to snag a copy before the price spikes.  I also managed to snag a few additional copies of the IDW promos via back issues at my local comic shop.

On the sales side, a pretty quiet week, but I did sell into the buyout on IDW promos by unloading a handful of the  Duress at a triple up, with several more held back to test the new price plateau.

Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin)

BOUGHT

Short/Mid:

44x See the Unwritten @ $1.25

Mid

  • 10x Order of Whiteclay @ $1.93

Long

  • 8x Aggressive Mining @ $.20
Travis says:
“With Battle for Zendikar on the horizon for fall 2015, players are going to be excited about See the Unwritten in conjunction with Eldrazi. It doesn’t even need to end up being good for there to be a great selling window; we just need people to be excited about it for long enough to get out.
I wrote Order of Whiteclay down as a Tiny Leaders spec a few weeks ago. The other day I noticed there were very few copies left on the retail circuit, so I picked up some on eBay to follow through.

Aggressive Mining is a cool potential combo piece that was cheap from a vendor I was already buying from.”

Guo Heng Chin (@theguoheng)

Nothing to report this week.

Jared Yost

Nothing to report.

So there you have it. Now what were you guys buying and selling this week and why?

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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19 thoughts on “MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (March 14th/15)”

  1. Can I get the decklist for the Descent of the dragons+Dragon Tempest combo? It looks interesting

    1. 4 Elvish Mystic
      4 Rattleclaw Mystic
      4 Sylvan Caryatid
      4 Battlefield Thaumaturge
      4 Hordling Outburst
      3 Dragon Tempest
      2 Hour of Need
      4 Descent of the Dragons
      2 Temur Ascendancy
      3 Wild Slash
      2 Stubborn Denial

      1. Oh boy, this looks promising! I loved Tempest from the beginning, but did not think of Thaumaturge until now!

      2. Thanks. I was thinking to build based on G/B Constellation, then change the Black with Red instead. but this also looks neat

  2. I’m not sure about the Descent of Dragons combo, because we already had Hour of Need and the token gens to do the same thing before, granted Hour of Need’s strive cost was more mana…

    1. Hour of Need + Descent of the Dragons adds redundancy which is a key issue for a deck like this. Even more important is the interaction with Dragon Tempest which allows you to score 20 points of damage all at once, something Hour of Need could never do.

    2. Hour of Need costs U each time also. I’d rather spend RR for 4+ flying 4/4’s.

      1. I’d rather just get Jeskai Ascendancy and Retraction Helix out. This combo comes out faster, cheaper and has a transformation sideboard.

  4. 9 Dragonspeaker Shaman Foil ($8-10 ea)
    4 Foil Shadow of Doubt ($15 ea)

    Scourge has the only foil Dragonspeaker Shaman, despite 3 printings. Foil at purchase price was under double the non-foil price. Now, zero vendors have Dragonspeaker Shaman foils in stock. TCG has a few listed on it at $15+ unless you want a heavily played foil.

    1. Oh, also I took you (or someone) up on their advice and picked up some Battlefield Thaumaturge’s. 7 foils at about $1.25 each, and 49 non-foils at $0.25 each.

      I sold roughly 25 (half) of my Mastery of the Unseen I picked up for $0.18. Sold them for $3.35 or so on TCG in playsets (besides the few folks who picked 1 or 2 from me).

  5. 12 See the Unwritten (Foil) $4 each
    12 See the unwritten $1.10 each
    50 Battlefield Thuromage $.25

    Gotta hold out. It’s already tempting to sell the Unwritten since they have gone way up in price. Waiting for October.

    1. Yeah… I bought my see the unwritten stupidly when they were like $3.25 when first released, thinking “this is way too good to not go up”… I didn’t realize they would drop in price like almost every other card, then go up

  8. Keep in mind that eldrazi spawn will probably be back this fall, providing more fodder for descent of the dragons decks.

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