All posts by Jason Alt

Jason is the hardest working MTG Finance writer in the business. With a column appearing on Coolstufff Inc. in addition to MTG Price, he is also a member of the Brainstorm Brewery finance podcast and a writer and administrator for EDHREC's content website. Follow him on twitter @JasonEAlt

Graf vs Host

While it’s not the immediate, standout build-around card that The Gitrog Monster was, another Golgari monstrosity is piquing some interest.

ishkanahgrafwidow

An obvious EDH bomb, I identified this as a card to buy at its floor. It seemed too slow for Standard but its power was obvious in EDH. On the Brainstorm Brewery podcast, Ryan said that he was going to go pretty deep on $2 copies of the itsy bitsy Grafwidow and I opted not to join him. It’s not that speccing on golgari cards in the past hasn’t paid dividends – I’m writing this article on the computer I bought with profit that was in part to Deadbridge Chant spiking to $10 after all. But this didn’t seem like it could impact Standard all that much. Wish I’d bought in, frankly. I have stayed away from speculating on Standard cards for so long I can’t tell if a card is good or just good in EDH.

Then it spiked to $10.

Unless you listened to our set review episode and agreed with Ryan and dropped a few hundo on $2 copies of the Grafwidowmaker you aren’t in a position to make much money from her directly. However, you may remember that one of the things I do in this series is scour decklists to try and find financial opportunities. Older cards that suddenly are getting more play due to people building a new deck can suddenly become worth money, especially if they go from trash to staple the way a new deck can make cards do. I think there is money to be made on a few Ishkanah staples and there is still time to get in.

I am not going to load this article up with a ton of preamble this week because I basically am not feeling my typical, jovial self.

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This card is going to do something someday. Basically, whenever a card is unique in its effect, you need but ask whether you think casual players might one day be interested in the effect. If the answer is yes, you have a delicate balancing act to think about. Is the card good enough that lots of casual players playing lots of decks will want it but not good enough that they need to reprint, functionally or otherwise, the card for future sets? I don’t know that they’ll feel the need to give us another Assault Formation any time soon, but making everything Doran opponents in the face is a cool effect. Spiders and other big-butted creatures get a massive upgrade from this. Legacy and Modern players can even use Assault Formation to kill opponents Tarmogoyfs with their Tarmogoyfs and break up ground stalls. I mean, they won’t, but they can and that matters. You know, to me.

Modern is also giving this deck a bit of a bump in noticeability because MTG Price’s own Corbin Hosler is streaming some doofy Doran deck in Modern where you use Zur the Enchanter to snag Assault Formation so he can attack for 4. There is removal and stuff he can also grab. The deck is a pile, but if piles didn’t move prices, Travis Woo would be out of a job. You know, more. This could put some pressure on the price, also. Those two factors may not be enough to drive the price right now but all that means is that you have more time than you would if Corbin’s stupid deck got played on camera (I know he streams, but I meant a camera that has people watching.  I don’t even watch him stream and I’m friends with him. I bet even his wife doesn’t watch his stream. Still, he writes for TCG Player, now and that has to count for something. At least the card is getting put in people’s minds.

I think you have a while to move on these, but I think you’re safe going pretty deep.

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This seems like a no-brainer. I don’t know that this gets printed again easily and it’s narrow enough that there won’t be much pressure to do it even in the few avenues where they could do it. This is in a precon that theoretically has $60 worth of cards in it, but a lot of that is presuming you can get $0.50 for a lot of the uncommons. It basically has an $8 Commander Beacon, a $5 Eternal Witness and a $4 Solemn Simulacrum. These decks aren’t super worth picking up at MSRP to flip so basically the decks are going to players. This card is above its historic low but it didn’t stay there long. It’s trending up-ish thought not enough to make a pronouncement. I think there are enough $3-$5 cards in Eldritch Moon that will be $0.50 next month that you should start sheltering your value by trading for a $3 card that has upside like this. This doesn’t just go in Ishkanah decks, but 90% of the Ishkanah decks uploaded to EDHREC run it so if that deck is popular at all, this card will be, too.  If this goes down at all, I like it. If this goes up at all, I like it even more.

The rest of the deck is pretty cheap, and that’s appealing, too. When a deck can be built as cheaply as this deck can, it becomes appealing to foil the deck out. That can present challenges but people will still try. One challenge is the disparity in foil multipliers for other-format staples and also for cards that are reprinted in non-foil in Commander sets but are only foil in the original set.  $30 foil Urza’s Incubator doesn’t care that the non-foil is $4, now.

Still, it’s a deck where, once the artifacts like Door of Destinies, Ashnod’s Altar (ouch) and Sol Ring (I may skip this one) are foiled, you can finish it cheaply means people might try it. A lot of the spiders are affordable but there aren’t a ton of them and there could be opportunity here, if only just to trade the foils off.

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These come as a set, and 75% (heh) of the Ishkanah decks are running this combo. Cheap spiders are easy to buy a few playsets of affordably and watch the price go up over time.

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This was reprinted in a Commander precon which means as the non-foil price goes down, we’ll see greater and greater divergence of the foil price, which is already trending upward at points. We’re not getting more copies and even though dealer confidence went down with the reprint of non-foils, demand is going to eat copies eventually and when supply can’t catch up, the price will.

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This card, near its historic low, has a mere 10x multiplier. Standard used this and maybe Modern will, so the additional potential exposure from some crazy Modern dredge thing could give this some traction on top of a crazy foil spiders deck. Dealers are staying pat on this, but a second spike will be harder and they’ll be flat-footed so maybe take a look at this.

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Early Standard adoption messed this price up for life, basically. The non-foil is tanking but the foil doesn’t know what to do. Dealers aren’t in a hurry to race to the bottom so I feel like it’s in a weird spot. I’m not enthusiastic about its current price and I feel like it will be $3 before it’s $7. This is gross, but people may want to buy it now, and you never know if Standard somehow spikes this if people adopt Ishkanah in Standard. Strangers things have happened.

Also, buy basically every single spider that goes in the deck in foil, if you can. People who build this deck run a lot of crap spiders from the pre-foil era and a foil deck would have to leave them out (We hardly knew ye, Root Spider) but the deck is doable in foil. I don’t think a ton of people will build it, but it will be tempting once people see how cheap most of the cards are. Any cards, like Cryptolith Rite and Spider Spawning, that see play in other decks will have additional upside exposure and are better buys.

That’s about all for Grafwidow. Join me next week where the topic of discussion will be something else.

First Look – TCGplayer Adds Buylisting

DirectLogo-primary

Do any of you remember what it was like buying from TCGplayer before TCGplayer Direct? How about selling on TCGplayer before then?

It was a little different, a little weird and a little sub-optimal, though we didn’t know that at the time. All we knew was that when TCGplayer Direct came along, things were going to be different. Now, all of a sudden, when we ordered a whole deck worth of cards or bought a significant number of copies of a card for a spec from multiple sellers, we started getting one package. Sellers would send the cards they wanted to sell in to TCGplayer and TCGplayer would package the cards and send them to buyers, eliminating the need for four sellers to make up four packages to go to one person who would receive those four packages. This is known as “stream-lining” (I mean, I assume, I’ve never taken a Business course in my life) and, like in non-metaphorical streamlining, it reduces drag.

We can agree, then, that TCGplayer has a little bit of experience streamlining the buying and selling process. They have created a marketplace where people who aren’t gigantic stores but rather are individuals trying to get rid of some cardboard can participate. It’s the eBay model but tailored specifically for our specific game. It’s been working pretty well so far. The TCGPlayer marketplace is often a go-to for buying cards, and is often referenced as the going price of a card.

So now that we’re all caught up, do you remember how TCGplayer Direct changed things? Because it’s about to happen again.

The Future

BuylistLogo-primary

In the exact same way that TCGplayer Direct changed the way people bought and sold cards on TCGplayer, TCGplayer Direct buylist is going to change the way people, wait for it, buylist. That is, to say, it’s going to change the way some people buylist, or sell their cards to stores. I think there are a lot of advantages to this method, but I also think this is likely to be a supplement for a lot of us rather than a complete sea change to how we do business. This does have one distinct advantage over all of the methods I currently use, and that is convenience.

Current Methods

The first buylisting I ever did involved bidwicket.com. If you’ve never been to bidwicket, it’s a confusing place. Once you figure out how to navigate it, though, it ends up being worth it – at least it used to before there were alternatives. Bidwicket was useful because it had a lot of buylists from vendors accessible. You would type in the name of a card and it would take you to this page.

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You could click the “sell to store” link down where it lists the buylist prices. You filled up a “shopping cart” for each vendor, and when you finished and checked out, you would process the order separately for each vendor. You would mail the cards to the vendor and the vendor would pay you. Usually. That’s another story, and it’s not really bidwicket’s fault. The point is, this worked fine. A lot of the times, the online price was better than the in-person price and I found myself using bidwicket a lot in between Grands Prix. It wasn’t fast or particularly convenient, but at the time, it seemed worthwhile.

Then websites began to take the next step, with MTGPrice and others developing ways to connect sellers to stores that want to buy their cards.

Snappy

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The big revelation here is allowing you to search both the retail price as well as the buylist price and the website taking you to each dealer’s webpage. These services all work with the goal of not forcing you to go to each dealer’s web site and punch in the card five times. With some offering the ability to fill your cart once and then have that list populated to vendors’ sites, it becomes very easy: you search once, then send them the cards you agreed to sell them (in the order they specify) and you get paid when they get cards. It couldn’t be simpler. Or could it?

While convenient, there are some shortcomings with all these services. Selecting condition is one of them, as are bugs or bad links when trying to tie together so many individual web sites. Some stores only accept NM cards but others grade down for condition but would like to be apprised that they’re getting less-than-NM cards. Another issue is that it’s no fun trying to balance getting less money for the cards and paying more money for shipping because you’re sending out a ton of packages. It’s hard to know how to balance that, and when you’re sending the quantity of cards I was sending, a $12 flat-rate USPS box didn’t always cut it, meaning sometimes it cost $24 to add a new vendor. How many times does that vendor paying a nickel more per card add up to cover the additional shipping? Why do I have to choose which way I’m losing a lot of money in non-free transaction costs? It felt pretty bad.

So what exactly will TCGPlayer offer in this field?

The Basics

BuylistThe premise is simple. Much like an account for selling cards on TCGPlayer, there is a level associated with your account for selling cards to TCGPlayer, and as you complete orders and send the cards in you move up. Top stores in the TCGPlayer Direct program will have the opportunity to be part of the buylist program, and it will essentially create a marketplace for buylists similar to what is currently available. Searching for a card will bring up the marketplace with the current highest offers by stores buying the card.

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There are a few key notes here.

  • Stores pay the fee associated with buying the cards from you. Money is deposited directly to you when the order clears.
  • Because the stores buying from you are part of TCGPlayer Direct, you only ship once. No matter how many stores you’re actually selling to, you only ship to TCGPlayer. One package, one tracking, one insurance – you don’t have to ship to multiple stores.
  • However, by that same token, “stores involved in TCGPlayer Direct” is not everyone. There are plenty of stores with great buylist prices that you’ll find going through MTGPrice or the dealers’ own sites – Card Kingdom and a few others come to mind – that you won’t find on TCGPlayer.

Takeaways

I have monkeyed with TCGplayer Direct for a few days and I think it has a few very distinct advantages over both in-person buylisting that doesn’t let you sell cheap cards or large quantities, and online buylist aggregates which all come with their own set of challenges.

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TCGplayer Direct is very simple. Sellers will go to the TCGplayer website. Players used to selling cards on TCGplayer will recognize the seller portal but now there is a new option – buylist. You type in the name of a card, search for it, and it will bring up a list of the vendors buying the card for each condition and for foil and non-foil. You will populate the appropriate field corresponding to the number of copies for each condition and edition you are selling and then you submit the offer. It will tell you how much money is coming to you based on the combination of dealers buying that many copies.

If three dealers are paying between $3 and $5 on Night of Souls’ Betrayal and that’s acceptable to you and those two dealers are buying 10 copies total and you want to send that many, put “10” in the field for NM non-foil and submit. You’ll be offered the total of what each dealer is paying for each copy. You’re still splitting 10 copies over multiple dealers only now you aren’t sending in multiple orders. You will drop all 10 copies in the same envelope and send them in to TCGplayer. TCGplayer will verify the order is complete, the conditions are correct and will pay you and give the cards to the dealers.

If that sounds complicated, it doesn’t need to be because all you need to know is that you will type in a card, select as many copies as you want to send in and then mail them to TCGplayer and TCGplayer will take care of the rest. Sending one package is incredibly convenient and you will have access to a much larger number of dealers than you ever did with another service. This saves money on shipping costs and packaging, which is not only valuable in itself but also saves you a lot of time on the front end.

If you aren’t happy getting $3 for your copies, the list will tell you who is paying the most and how many copies that dealer is buying. Just submit that many copies and get the best price, or submit the max number of copies being asked for and take a combination of all prices. You don’t sacrifice any degree of control over the amount of money you get versus other systems and you get additional convenience in the form of only sending one package.

Ultimately, I think this is likely to be a supplement to how I buylist. I still plan to use a combination of the different tools available along with TCGplayer Direct or at least verify that I’m getting the best prices and not losing too much to shipping fees (buyers, not sellers pay all of the fees associated with TCGplayer Direct buylisting so shipping is your only expense as a seller) and I’ll be happy to switch over entirely if TCGPlayer Direct buylisting turns out as good as it looks like it could be.

It will only get better for people as more dealers add TCGplayer Direct as an avenue to get more cards sent to them and more dealers means more competition which means higher prices for players selling to them.  Having monkeyed around with the site a bit, I found it easy-to-use and very similar to other TCGplayer services and I’m excited to see how many dealers add their buylists in the coming weeks. This has the potential to completely change the way I buylist and I don’t see a ton of downsides. All of my criticisms of it were pretty minor (you have to click the search icon instead of clicking on the card name to get the page to come up) but we’ll have to see how the first few weeks go before we can make final pronouncements. As far as a first look at the site goes, I’m hopeful and I think this could be big news for the community, finance or otherwise.

 

Article on Redundancy Article

Last week, I wrote about cards that I thought were redundant copies of cards that are already played in EDH and were liable to get jimmy-jammed in EDH decks because who doesn’t want two chances to get the effects they like? I didn’t mention anything from Eldritch Moon because you’re not my boss and I do what I want.

I think this week I am going to scour the Eldritch Moon spoiler and pull out like two or three cards and say “Why did I think this was enough of a premise for an entire article?” and have to scramble to do something at the end. My plan is just to mention all of the cards from Eldritch Moon that I think will be good in EDH regardless of whether or not they are redundant copies of cards already getting use. Sound good? I’m asking a question that you can’t answer because I can’t hear you and if you think about it for a few seconds, you’ll come to the conclusion that it’s because I don’t care what you respond. You’re getting the article you deserve, not the one you wanted so buckle in, nerds, because I have no idea how this article is going to turn out.

Eldreduntant Mooncy

There are cards in Eldritch Moon that are going to be basic reprints of cards that already exist. Probably. I literally haven’t looked at the spoiler with that in mind. I mean, there is one obvious one I can think of off the top of my head, but I haven’t really looked much at uncommons with respect to… I’m just going to go look now and report back.

eternalscourge

Wow, I found one right away. This makes infinite mana with Food Chain, so that’s cool. You can play this in decks that can’t run blue for Misthollow Griffin, such as Prossh. I don’t know why you’d go infinite with a card other than Prossh, though. Still, Food Chain pairs with this and it’s a second Misthollow in the blue decks that run the combo. This has Legacy playability, also, so keep an eye on this.

longroadhome

There are officially more cards than I had anticipated. Good.

This one is solid. Flicker effects are always welcome and spells like this that can flicker creatures and have upside are always welcome. This can even blank their creatures in combat though the +1/+1 counter isn’t really upside at that point. Still, this has a lot of parallels.

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This was nearly arbitrageable (That’s a word) before its 5th printing. I’m glad they gave us a new card because a 6th printing would have been silly. Not as silly as having an arcane spell in Innistrad, but still silly.  A new card is likely to be in draft chaff for free and is likely to buylist for a quarter. I don’t know about you, but I’ll pick up a quarter off of the ground so I’ll surely take a quarter out of draft chaff. It ain’t sexy but it’s worth identifying these cards before they go up rather than after.

mausoleumwanderer

This isn’t exactly Judge’s Familiar, considering that can go in a white deck, but this has a bit of upside in the right deck. Equipment can make this a floating Mana Leak and there is precedent for cards like this seeing play.

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The $0.50 retail is less impressive when you see it buylists for literally nothing. Being a rare and not being an FNM promo should help wanderer, and having its power affect the cost of the spell should, also.

summarydismissal

EDH players LOVE Voidslime. They can’t get enough of it. Why? Because it does two very important things. This is a Voidslime that doesn’t have to go in a green deck, but can, meaning Voidslime players now have a second Voidslime and people who couldn’t play Voidslime now can if they have access to blue. Is being compared to Voidlsime flattering? Let’s find out.

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I would say so. Do I think Summary Dismissal will be $11? Not really. That doesn’t mean buying in at bulk is a bad idea. I think Summary Dismissal has a lot of upside and I think Voidslime does a pretty good job of demonstrating that. Anyone who argues that 4 CMC is harder to hold up than 3 CMC has never held 5 CMC up for Desertion all game like I do routinely. I think the mana difference is pretty trivial and not having green in the casting cost more than makes up for an additional total mana. If you’re playing Voidslime but not Plasm Capture, I’m not sure what you’re doing with your life, anyway.

imprisonedinthemoon

This is another Song of the Dryads, but color shifted. Color shifting as a way to reprint cards is going to piss me off before this article is over, I can feel it. Is there upside here?

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You tell me. Song of the Dryads is in a precon where the total cost of the cards that aren’t this one are already well over MSRP because it’s full of elves. This doesn’t need to be $4, it wants to. I think Imprisoned in the Moon at bulk has some upside based on a $4 analog existing.

collectivedefiance

This is a wheel effect. Nekusar likes wheel effects. It only affects one player, but I don’t think that’s a reason not to play it if you have room. I think that this could have some upside.

Plus, every other red card in Eldritch Moon is trash in EDH.

harmlessoffering

“But Jason, didn’t you just say that every other red card in Eldritch Moon was trash in EDH?”

Yes, and I meant it. This is not a red card. Oh, no. Oh, no no no. This is a blue card. You can dress it up in a fancy pink border and paint a kitty cat on it like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper but I know this is Donate. It’s Donate. It does what Donate does. It’s Donate.

Am I mad that we have Donate in red? @$#% no, I’m not! It’s in Bazaar Trader colors! It allows it to be played in a ton of different decks that Donate couldn’t be played in. So why am I miffed? Because the phrase “It allows it to be played in a ton of different decks that Donate couldn’t be played in” is their justification for color-shifting a card on the Reserved List and pretending it wasn’t a functional reprint.

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I don’t want to live on a planet where Harmless Offering can cost as much as Donate, so realistically, the ceiling is like $1.75. Buy with that in mind.

mercurialgeists

This has super prowess! Anyone playing Wee Dragonauts is likely to want to jam this along with Chandra’s Spitfire. Neither of those cards is worth a ton, but, whatever.

geierreachsanitarium

This can be construed as a lot better than a card that just makes each player draw. Making them loot is essentially milling everyone and if you’re set up to be milled and they aren’t, you can benefit when they are at a disadvantage. This can give you hella Waste Not triggers, ensure even players with empty hands have to discard and generally it can squeeze people who are behind. It can also be seen as a benefit to everyone, letting players all draw and discard land or excess spells if you want to play a group hug thing. There are a ton of ways to build around this and it’s bound to impact EDH. That’s good because it reminds me of another land that’s similar.

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This is a $1 land that just came out that is situationally better than (although situationally worse than, also) a card that is $13 and climbing. Have we seen something like this before? We sure have. Every card from last week’s article, basically. This is a great example of a card that we’re fairly certain we’ll see get there in price it’s only a matter of time. I imagine the graph of the price of GRS will be Nike Swoosh-shaped. So if you’re on the fence about picking up a bunch of cheap copies when it’s bulk, just do it. 

Do you see what I did there? I referenced the Nike thing. From the thing.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you this week, join me next week where I’ll be talking abou… I just wrote like half an article. I knew this would happen.

Well, since I still have some room, there are some cards I like for EDH that are going to get cheap and then get expensive so it’s worth discussing them.

brunathefadinglight

This is a bulk rare that will be a decent commander, melds into a beast of an Angel and is a Legendary angel. This is a great card to snag hella copies of in bulk.

Since it’s a bulk rare, I thought “I bet foil copies will be reasonable” and then I remembered that the back is half of Brisela, so the foil price of Gisela is going to really screw with the foil price of Bruna. Either Gisela’s foil price will price everyone out of the market or Bruna’s price will be dragged up? It’s still a foil Angel on the front…

Personally, I think this will be like the McDonald’s Monopoly thing. You know how there are like 0 Boardwalk game pieces but they put Park Place in just about every meal? It doesn’t make the Park Place stickers worth more money just because all you need is Boardwalk after that. I feel like since there will be like 3-5 times as many foil Brunas, it shouldn’t matter and foil Gisela will be all that matters. Buy accordingly.

collectiveeffort

Would you play your Disenchant at Sorcery speed if it meant you could kill a creature? You would? Me too.

deploythegatewatch

How hard is it to throw a Scroll Rack into your Superfriends deck? Besides, we already have Oath of Jace to help us Scry. This could be a very fun card.

sigardasaid

This will hit bulk. There is absolutely nothing to enable this in Standard and it’s probably not good enough for Modern or Legacy. This card is a snap-include in a lot of EDH decks and when this is bulk, trade for these. You get players wanting to trade some bulk rare for their FNM deck. Good. Get rid of Standard bulk rares and trade them for EDH bulk rares because in two years, you’ll look like a genius. Skirsdag High Priest used to be worth two Parallel Lives in trade. I was happy to ship my priests out.

thaliaslancers

This card is simply amazing. It tutors for stuff that isn’t always easy to tutor for, especially in white and the fact that it’s a creature means it’s easier to recur in white since you have flicker effects and not Eternal Witness effects. Grabbing a Serra’s Sanctum or Jitte with this seems dirty.

coaxfromtheblindeternities

Stuff like this just goes up over time inevitably. I don’t know if it’s EDH or casual that will drive it, but this has upside and it’s liable to be bulk for over a year.

mindsdilation

This is the cheapest EDH mythic in the set and I can’t figure out why. People are so Standard-centric in their initial pricing. If this is still under $2 when the set comes out I will consider my readers sufficiently informed and drop a couple hundo on these guys. I don’t see them getting a ton cheaper because bulk mythics aren’t that much less expensive than these are now. Have you READ this card? I expect a 5x foil multiplier and I expect these to approach their closest analog.

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These cards aren’t exactly the same, but Mind’s Dilation is pretty close in terms of power level and I can see a mythic hitting $4 if a non-mythic is $6 or $7 and climbing.

oathofliliana

I am not super impressed with this, but I imagine people play it, if only to run the whole cycle.

treeofperdition

This is stupid in EDH where you can use it to deal someone 27 damage. Killing them with Tragic Slip or Triskadekaphobia after is optional.

splendidreclamation

Buy these at their floor. Lordy, lordy; this card brings the heat. It’s a personal Planar Birth in relevant colors? Be still my heart. This card is ready to go in any dredge deck, in The Gitrog Monster or Titania and basically any deck running Squandered Resources. Hot diggity.

gisaandgeralf

I have exceeded my word allotment once again. Is this the last card I wanted to discuss or were there more cards I could mention but I don’t get paid extra to talk about them? I guess you’ll never know.

Join me next week where I may start out by talking about leftover cards from this article. Or not. You have no idea.

 

Redundancy

I’m going to take a bit of a break from speculating about Commander 2016 this week

It’s occurring to me that I didn’t write about Commander 2016 last week, either. We’re off to a pretty bad start, here. It’s not that I didn’t go back and read last week’s article again, it’s just that I guess I just assumed I was going to cover Commander 2016 every week until we got some stupid spoilers and then cover it every week after that until I had a compelling reason to do something else. Last week I talked about a single card and how it could conceivably drive a ton of prices up because there was suddenly a flickerable way to tutor for them and it could be hilarious. Stoneforge Mystic, Stonehewer Giant and now Thalia’s Lancers can all get jammed in a deck with Restoration Angel and Eldrazi Displacer and that kind of power and advantage is what kids these days are calling “bae” and “in fleek”. You know what else is totally YOLO? Redundancy.

I actually really like the idea of peppering my articles with garbage clipart from now on
I actually really like the idea of peppering my articles with garbage clip art from now on

If you live in the UK, you probably don’t like the term “redundancy” because for some reason the UK refers to being laid off from your job as “being made redundant” which is a goofy euphemism. The US isn’t like that. “It’s not that we have too many people to fill a limited number of positions and we need to clear up a few redundancies, it’s that we’re shipping all of your jobs to Mexico and all of you are going to be left to fend for yourselves, now. Maybe if we hated your faces less this wouldn’t have been necessary.” I could go on and on about goofy stuff people in the UK say that makes no sense despite them being able to say “We invented this language so we get to decide what’s goofy or not” but I think we need to move on.

Make no mistake, we’re talking about multiple cards that fill the same role in a deck, usually by having identical effects. If a card is good enough for a deck, why would a carbon copy of that card that’s the same in everything but the name not be good enough? It would, especially if that effect is what your win condition or advantage engine hinges on. Are redundant cards always the same price? No, not at all and there are a number of different reasons for that, all of which are too obvious to bother listing as section headings. Honestly, they’re too obvious to bother with a bullet point list, either. They’ll probably just come up. If you can’t make a list right now of the reasons different cards are different prices, your Mommy and Daddy are going to be very upset that you’re using their computer, but I’m impressed at your reading comprehension level for a toddler.  I won’t waste your time or insult your intelligence by listing them out, we’ve got ground to cover.

Do you get it? CLASSIC
Do you get it? CLASSIC

“Why is looking at redundancy important?”

That’s a really stupid question that I’m going to pretend you asked by using quotation marks. I’ve long said in this series that buying reactively is basically dead and the only way to make out is to be ahead of price trends. Way ahead. You want to buy in at the floor by buying in when no one else knows it’s the floor. That’s how we make money in MTG Finance after all. That and arbitrage. OK, we make our money in MTG Finance by buying in at the floor when no one else knows it’s the floor and arbitrage. And collection flipping. Right, we make our money in MTG Finance by buying in at the floor when no one else knows it’s the floor and arbitrage and collection flipping. Also, fencing expensive collections that you’re almost certain are stolen And that’s all the ways we make money in MTG Finance.

How do we use analysis of redundancy to make sure we’re buying in at the floor?

You really ask a lot of dumb questions, you know that? I was literally just getting to that. If you had waited like half a second I would have just gotten to it and it would have looked like I knew what I was talking about. But, no, you had to go an pretend you’re doing some sort of Socratic method thing and guiding me toward the perfect article. Knock it off.

It isn’t about following price trends of older cards so much as it is just sort of knowing two things about the redundant cards in EDH as a format when it pertains to MTG Finance.

  1. Redundant cards will be played as much as the identical versions where reasonable financially and will be played still an unreasonable amount when unreasonable financially.
  2. It sometimes takes a really long time for the new card’s price to catch up which can make us doubt our picks and sell out early like cowardly people who want to nail a spec but not make any money on it.

Point 1

I am going to be brief on point 1 because I think sometimes the lengths that players will go to for redundancy is ridiculous. The problem is that if the supply is sufficiently-low, a very reasonable amount of demand from unreasonable people who will pay unreasonable prices puts an unreasonable amount of upward pressure on cards with an unreasonably low supply if they are a reasonable facsimile of card they’re already playing. I use MTG Finance to pay bills and I prefer to sell pimp cards rather than put them in my deck to show off so I’m going to show you an example of a card I do play and then a card I don’t play.

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I play this in my Riku deck.

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I wanted more of the effect so I opted for this.

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Not this.

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And certainly not this.

Portals 2 and 3 (Get on it, Valve) printed a lot of redundant cards that had slightly different names but the same effects, meaning that people could play two copies of a card, one that was reasonable in price and one that was not reasonable. Do you really want a second Armageddon badly enough to pay $300 for it? Someone clearly is.

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There are a few P3K cards worth a lot because the unique way they are worded (usually vis-a-vis horsemanship) makes them break Legacy like how Rolling Earthquake hits fliers or Riding the Dilu Horse makes a creature unblockable. The rest of the expensive P3K cards are Eternal staples or EDH staples, and the EDH staples are either commanders or cards like Ravages of War or Three Visits.

Point 2

I’ve covered how long we have in previous articles. I could comb through all of my past like 10 articles to find the one I mean, or I could just recreate the section as best as I can remember it. Ironically, doing it over again seems like less work, so I’m going to go that route. It can also serve as an example of a redundant card. You may start to see a lot of the cards I’ve really nailed because of how obvious they were as specs and realize, as I’m realizing now, that the easiest picks in EDH finance are basically functional reprints of older cards. They’ll be cheaper at first because of the higher supply, now, but that won’t last. Here’s a card that’s a great example of both a pick based on redundancy and a spec that we had like a million years to move in on.

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Look at how long this card was cheap. This brought the price of Grave Pact down a smidgen but it mostly just brought itself up and I’m not entirely certain where it’s going to stop. If you bought these as bulk rares, you’ll be happy getting out at $5, I’m certain. It took long enough for a few people who heard me call it basically when it was printed to tell me I was an idiot, and they were happy to send me this graph.

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“Nice spec, idiot.”

You have to remember to be patient because there were approximately one megashitton (1X10^100) more copies of Dictate of Erebos than there were of Grave Pact. And yet… It’s approaching $5. Why? Because people who are already running Grave Pact are going to just slot Dictate of Erebos into the same deck. Some people might use Dictate as a budget replacement and the demonstration of a willingness to print and potentially reprint a functional reprint (that sentence got awkward quickly, didn’t it?) of an older card eroded some of the confidence in that card as a monolithic staple in that color for that effect.

It’s worth noting that Dictate of Erebos costs more mana but has two distinct advantages over Grave Pact – it has flash so it can be used as a surprise and can just wipe a board through an Aura Shards or something and it only costs BB instead of BBB. The easier mana requirement makes it way less awkward in a three-color deck and it’s possible a number of people took their Pacts out and replaced them. As much as Dictate is a redundant Grave Pact a lot of the time, sometimes it’s a little better. That means more for the price of Grave Pact than it does for Dictate, though. A better reprint will tend to shove the price of the new one up way more than it shoves the price of the old one down. And what about when the card is mostly the same but is a little worse than the older card? That’s what we’ll see almost as often.

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Primal Vigor did even less to the price of Doubling Season than did Modern Masters and even though Primal Vigor isn’t nearly as good as Doubling Season, it’s still good enough to get played in most of the same decks so Vigor was all upside. It more than doubled from its floor and it isn’t done growing. Sure, this card helps your opponents out and doesn’t interact with Planeswalkers in quite the ridiculous way that Doubling Season does, but this does a lot of the same things in a lot of the same decks. It’s not as expensive, but if you bought in at $4, you’re OK that it’s not $40, you’re just happy it isn’t $3 so you’re probably thrilled that it’s $10. Sell out now and be happy or wait and be happier. Either way, I endured over a year of sub-$5 pricing on this card which was plenty of time to foster a little doubt and think about how I could re-invest the money if I cut my losses and sold my copies to a buylist for $2 each. Primal Vigor is a very bad Doubling Season, but apparently not bad enough not to get thrown right into the deck along with it.

“Make Me Some Money”

Right, talking about cards after they go up isn’t very useful for anything other than getting a bunch of Twitter followers, so let’s try and look at a few cards from recent years that could be nearing their floor and see if any of them are likely to get jammed into decks. I am like 100 words away from my  cap so we’re going long this week. Screw it. Let’s make some picks.

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The whole Dictate cycle is  good example frankly. They are all flashy (heh) versions of previous cards and the decks that play them can spare room for redundant copies provided the effect is good enough.

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Obviously this is nowhere near as good as Time Warp, but some decks might enjoy casting this for cheaper, although getting it back with cards like Eternal Witness is out of the question. Generally, cards that say “Take an extra turn” get there, even terrible ones.

Exhibit A
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit B
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Exhibit C
Xzibit pimped my deck
Xzibit pimped my deck

Surely someday someone will value a card that can cost as little as 2 mana and which will definitely give you an extra turn over a card that will maybe do it but you can keep recurring it for more chances to maybe get an extra turn.  Trespass is future $5.  Besides, Part the Waterveil came after and it already hit the $5 we predicted. It will happen for Trespass.

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Exzipit 4

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What is the ceiling on this card? We can compare it to Awakening Zone, a card it is better than despite costing one more mana. After all, it makes powered creatures and it has an additional mode. With multiple printings, it’s not unreasonable to compare the current price of Awakening Zone to this, is it?

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Do you think it’s unreasonable for From Beyond to hit $5? I sure don’t.

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This is currently double its all-time low but it’s also probably not at its all-time high. I know because there is another card that costs more money and probably would have grown at an even faster rate than this card if not for a reprinting.

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Maybe Zuaport won’t hit $6. But maybe it will hit $3, and if you can still buy these for $0.50, merely sextupling up seems OK to me.

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The duel deck printing hurts this card a lot, but maybe if we see which card we should be comparing it to, we might get some perspective about a ceiling we can at least look at and then try to scale down on the basis of there being more copies of the new card.

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This was still like $6 and growing before some Modern deck went like 6-0 with 3 byes with this deck and a bunch of people bought out the internet, making this basically $8 now. I think if Ghostway can be $8, Interlude can be $3 in a year or two. The duel deck copies don’t help, but if all Interlude does is replace Ghostway in a few decks, it has upside. But why not play both?

That’s enough food for thought for now, I think. Always be on the lookout for cards that are suspiciously like cards that are already played in EDH. The closer they are, the closer their prices are bound to be, especially if the new card is better, which helps mitigate the fact that newer cards have larger print runs and are more readily available than old cards that have been scattered to the four winds.

Did I miss anything? Do you have a suggestion for next week’s article? Did you stop reading at exactly 2000 words and miss all of my picks? Join me next week for more insanity.