All posts by Cliff Daigle

I am a father, teacher, cuber and EDH fanatic. My joy is in Casual and Limited formats, though I dip a toe into Constructed when I find something fun to play. I play less than I want to and more than my schedule should really allow. I can easily be reached on Twitter @WordOfCommander. Try out my Busted Uncommons cube at http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/76330
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PROTRADER: PucaPicks for 10/13/16

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Now that the Pro Tour is upon us, we are officially done drafting Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon. That means the supply of those sets is at maximum, and those who needed or wanted cards have likely gotten them.

Kaladesh prices are trickling downward, so I don’t want to deal with any of that yet. Send out your Smuggler’s Copter right now, don’t try to sell into a possible PT spike. It’s possible the pros come prepared for that card in a way that week 1 of a Star City Games Open isn’t. I stand by what I wrote on Friday: It’s impossible for an in-print rare to hold a price like this and I don’t want to try and chase profits to previously-unknown levels. I’ll take the points now.

As for today’s picks, these are a mix of long-term casual value and Standard specs that I’ll want to unload in 3-6 months. Some of these I mentioned seven weeks ago when I focused just on Eldritch Moon, but it bears repeating. I freely admit that I’ve picked up a few of these cards already, but I tend to limit my wants to a playset at a time. Diversification is my watchword, a lesson that 54 copies of Prophet of Kruphix taught me well.

Now for the picks!

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Casual Fridays

Go! Get (out of) The Copter!

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I don’t care if you’re tired of Smuggler’s Copter jokes. It needs to be done and I have to give a terrible apology if you hear the title in an Ahnuld accent.

So we missed the boat on the Copter. It’s $18 for an in-print Standard rare at week one, and while I know that the price is going to go down, how far can it go?

The answer is, pretty far. I want to examine some rares, not mythics, to see how far we can expect the Copter to fall.

Let’s start with Shadows over Innistrad, and look for commonly played rares. We aren’t going to look at Eldritch Moon, since that’s a small set and I want to compare apples to apples.

titi

One of the first rares to burst onto the scene, and one whose preorder price kept climbing upward, was Thing in the Ice. Since this has come out, it’s seen some play but not a lot, rarely being the centerpiece of a deck.

Yes, it was above $15 at one point at the beginning! The lack of play lowered the price, and then there was a time not too long ago where Blue-Red Thermo-Thing was popular, and that is why the buylist price bumped up a little.

But yikes. Fifteen bucks down to five, that’s a big loss…though the card isn’t terribly popular.

Let’s look at something that often got played alongside Copter: Declaration in Stone.

declaration

Two mana, exile a creature, and there are drawbacks in the form of Clues. Cheap, efficient, and powerful, and played a lot, though not as much as the Copter.

Even so, it’s gone from a high of $17 down to its current plateau of $4. It’s got Kaladesh and three more sets before it’s out of Standard, so there’s room for it to fall more or perhaps to creep upward. As a rare, there are a whole ton of these out there and that’s why the price has fallen has far as this. Removal this good should hold a price, and it’s actually not the usual thing for a rare to hold a price above that of a booster pack.

Shadows over Innistrad has three: Thing in the Ice, Declaration in Stone, and Tireless Tracker.

Maybe what we should also do is look at Battle for Zendikar, because that has Expeditions to goose people to buy more packs. The data doesn’t lie, either: it’s very difficult for rares to keep value. From Battle for Zendikar, the only rares over $3 are lands: Cinder Glade, Prairie Stream, and Shambling Vent.

My point is that the price on the Copter, and a lot of other rares, are about to start dropping as Kaladesh gets opened in earnest. There’s a big Limited Grand Prix this weekend, and that’s going to be a huge injection of supply into the market.

If you’re hellbent on playing Standard this weekend or next, you can go ahead and buy your playset for $70 or so, and play it for quite a while. It’s possible–possible!–that the Pro Tour next weekend spikes it even farther, but I can’t even remember the last $20 rare we had in Standard.

It’s going to be fascinating to watch.

Think of it like Aether Hub. Sure, it’s a four-of all over the place, and it’s a good card, but people, it is an uncommon. An in-print uncommon has an eBay price of $9-$10 a playset!

This first weekend of prices is crazy. The play is heavily to sell. SELL. You can buylist the Copter, a rare, for $9. You can get $10 for Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and that’s a four-of mythic.

I’m trying very hard to bring up all the evidence that I can to convince you that if you’re buying a Copter right now, it’s to play it for the next 18 months. Please don’t buy it now, hoping it goes up more. Don’t chase the tail end of this. Wait. Be patient. The prices will drop, and you’ll lose money if you buy now and hope to sell the Saturday of the PT.

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PROTRADER: PucaPicks for 10/6/16

Kaladesh is being opened all over, and I hope you have a good time opening Inventions and either playing the pretty cards or sending them out! I popped a Crucible of Worlds on Saturday and I couldn’t send that out fast enough.

Since I don’t play constructed, I want to focus this week on a set of cards that have gotten some interest but not too much: the Commander series.

If you were playing in 2011 when the first set came out, you were amazed at how much value these cards retained, but there’s factors that have come into play since. The first set happened right as Commander was tipping over, and it was under-printed in relation to eventual demand. The sets since have not had that problem, and that’s why there’s very few singles worth a lot in these boxed sets.

What these sets do offer is a truckload of $1-$4 cards and some unique, custom cards that are tricky, yet eligible, to reprint. Today I want to look at some of the cards that have been in these decks and are mostly good bets to raise in value over time, with the caveat that reprinting is quite possible and will torpedo the value if it happens.

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Casual Fridays, Uncategorized

Expeditions Begetting Inventions

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So I have to say that the Invention series is gorgeous. I am entranced by all of them and I want to pick up all of them. Mostly. I don’t have a use for the mana accelerants, but they are all beautiful and shiny and really appeal to the showing-off aspect of playing Commander.

I have many direct wants for different decks when it comes to Inventions, and I know that right now is not the time for buying Inventions. Supply is too low, demand is sky-high. They are getting opened in droves, which means volatility in prices.

What I want to do today is look back at the Expeditions and see if there are price trends that I should be paying attention to. I wrote a year ago about what to do if you opened an Expedition, and while the principles still apply, I want to focus on the Expeditions and how they relate to what I think will happen in the end with Inventions.

Let’s look at one of the high-end Expeditions: Scalding Tarn.

tarn

So it started CRAZY high, at $450 when this was first introduced, but it swung down to nearly $200 and then back over three, which is about where it’s settled in now.

This graph makes a lot of sense. We didn’t know how many of these there would be, and we didn’t know what the pricing would be. As the numbers came out (more copies than expected) the price dropped, but recovered well. Most importantly, it’s been relatively stable for this year, and that’s what I want to know.

How about a mid-level Expedition? Here’s Steam Vents:

vents

This is an interesting graph as well. We have the same fluctuation at first, but there is a distinct downward trend. It’s a slow trend, but it’s there, with the drop in buylist pricing is there in July for almost all of the Expeditions, even if the price is creeping upwards.

How about the low-end ones? Cinder Glade:

glade

These are also trending slowly downwards, and that’s important to note with the Gearhulks and whatever the newer Inventions will be. When Aether Revolt lands, I will look at those Inventions alongside the Oath of the Gatewatch Expeditions.

So in general, these have trended downwards slightly. That’s super important to keep in mind going forward, indicating that patience is my keyword when it comes to the Inventions I want.

It’s not universal, though. For one, Overgrown Tomb has gone up, perhaps matching the recent rise of Abzan decks in Modern. Not every Expedition has followed the same track, and it’s worth noting that there were no first-time foils in the Expeditions, where we have our first foil Mana Vault.

Other writers have noted that the presence of Inventions will lower the price of every other card in the set, and that looks true for Battle of Zendikar. Prices for that set are extremely low, even considering that the set only has six months to rotation. In general, I expect all prices to drop over time, but what I want to know, and what only time will tell me, is how patience will pay off for the Inventions as well as the Expeditions.

Full disclosure: I’ve put a couple of Inventions on my Puca want list, with a bonus of 15%, and I am confident that I’m going to get at least one of the ones I want. I know that a lot of people are down on PucaTrade at this point, so I want to be clear that I still have points and I still have faith.