Readers!

My last few articles have dealt with things I miss and while it’s good to gut-check yourself every once in awhile, it’s also good not to dwell on limitations of a method that, in my view, is limited because I deliberately narrowed my scope. But in discussing the limitations of the method, it’s also important to demonstrate its efficacy. This is the money shot, folks. Weeks like this are the reason I ignore what’s happening at the PT, ignore the interests scroll on Echo, don’t watch people stream new decks and apparently don’t even know what’s going on in competitive EDH circles. We have a premise that, if true, should lead us to be able to make a ton of good, solid pickups. If the premise is wrong, I maintain the pickups will still rise just because they are rooted in real demand and their rise is predicated on sudden, additional demand. No one likes their specs to end up in their “long-term growth box” for sure, but if speculation were entirely without risk, everyone would be doing it.

This article is going to highlight pickups that are a little more risky than the typical “safe” stuff I have highlighted over the past few weeks on the basis of Teysa and Nikya, but I am also thinking a month ahead as opposed to a week or two and we’re going on the basis of cards that aren’t revealed, yet. So what can we plan on knowing what we know about the next set? Let’s dig in and find out.

The Next Set

The next set is called “War of the Spark” and it’s all about Planeswalker sparks, presumably. Did you watch that video they made?

The video opens with stained glass windows depicting dozens of Magic’s planeswalkers. It zooms in on Gideon’s window exploding.

You zoom through Gideon into a room with a giant candelabra with dozens of lit candles on it. Then, one by one, the candles gutter and go out until there’s only one left.

One candle left. Is it one walker left after some big bad kills all of them? Does every walker lose their spark? Does Bolas kill all of them? Is Bolas even involved in this set?

I mean, there aren’t too many ways to interpret the twin tendrils of smoke that swirl toward the top of the screen as the video fades to black. Those are Bolas’ horns.

So how do we interpret this? I don’t know. I’m inclined to say this seems to indicate there won’t be a ton of Planeswalkers given the one candle. Does everyone lose their spark? I’m not enough of a Vorthos carer-abouter to know the implications but I think if we predicate some picks on there being a lot of walkers in the set, we are making assumptions others are going to make as well and if we buy the same cards now they’ll buy later, we should have some greater fool action in our favor making it harder to lose with hedged bets.

Here’s how I think we figure out the cards that will thrive in an EDH with new Walkers and, potentially, a new mechanic that is walker-centric. My first step is to do what I always do and head to EDHREC.

My target? A card most likely to be associated with Planeswalkers very specifically. The Chain Veil.

Atraxa is the most popular commander for superfriends, it seems, but that’s OK because there is another trick up our sleeve to ferret out the superfriends-specific cards even more.

Clicking there will bring up a new list of recs, tailored specifically to superfriends builds. Cards that are in 60% of all Atraxa lists but for +1/+1 counters builds or infect or something are filtered out, leaving you with a much different list of top cards.

Listing just the superfriends cards can help us identify potential specs, either planeswalkers or the planeswalker infrastructure that will be crucial when people build new superfriends decks like we hope they will.

Our first card that sticks out is the most-played Walker in EDH and it’s not close. While I expect War of the Spark to be Dark and Bolasy and potentially have more planeswalker support in Grixis colors, I still think Elspeth is the money walker here. The cheap, ugly-foiling version in the duel deck is dragging the price of OG Theros down but I bet they both go up. I don’t want to talk about too many planeswalkers, but,

This is at a historic low and with renewed interest in Bolas possible, I think people who build decks with flavor in mind and people who want a playable deck a like will flock to this walker. I didn’t find this on Atraxa’s page, so it’s important to remember that Atraxa has no red and you will want to look at a few more commanders’ pages – I recommend Progenitus and Child of Alara.

Comparing those three pages, you’ll see cards in common on all of them. Some are obvious, but that’s fine because obvious works.

You down with TCV? This has demonstrated the ability to flirt with $20 and a second spike will be harder because being this expensive this long means copies have been ferreted out of binders and boxes and concentrated in the hands of dealers meaning no one can just trade for someone local’s TCV that’s been sitting dormant before that person thinks about the fact that Planeswalkers announced as commanders would affect prices. They’re forced to pay the new retail and the new retail will go up. I personally think you can’t miss picking these up because something like the announcement of planeswalkers as commanders will happen again and I don’t think you’ll lose too much value buying in around $12 unless this is reprinted, which I doubt. It’s a specific story element which makes it a little tougher to jam in just anywhere. This could end up in War of the Spark but I’m betting it doesn’t. Foils are even harder to reprint.

This is a lot of white cards for a set where Bolas might be the only Planeswalker, but this is too good not to play. It’s a little tougher to sac it in Commander than in Legacy with its Therapies Cabal and its Pods of Birthing but I still think this is a slam dunk inclusion and its high inclusions and synergy scores make me think it’s a dandy pickup.

This is peaking and has been rising since the announcement of a set with “spark” in the name but if the price can creep this much on unsubstantiated hype, some real spoilers are going to send this way back up to $15 again. Currently you can find a few foil copies for $15 online if you know where to look and if the non-foil can be $15 again, $15 for the foil is for sure a buy.

In general, any foil oath is a pretty good target right now. None of them are mythic and there isn’t a ton of demand outside this very specific deck configuration but if you target foils, your buy-in is still quite low, the prices are beginning to show signs of life and there should be enough demand to soak a more modest supply, even at non-mythic. In addition to Ajani, Oath of Jace, Liliana, Teferi and Chandra are getting played, but I don’t think Chandra does enough. Oath of Teferi is pretty damn good, though it probably has more room to fall and we’re not going to see that happen if this event happens.

I think these are all solid cards to think about and if you find more, good on you. Remember to search EDHREC for cards specific to walker decks and remember to filter for superfriends cards to really eliminate a lot of noise and find a strong signal in a few mouse clicks. This is a little more speculative than I like – in years past I have waited for cards to be announced and used the lag time to build around them, but I think we need to be well ahead of the curve to make any money if a broad swath of cards are about to go up on principle. That does it for me this week. Until next time!

Readers,

I typically don’t like to advocate cards with very high buy-in price, low supply and other cards like that. There are a lot of reasons for this. Perhaps the biggest one is that basically everyone who writes about mtg finance does picks like this. It’s sexy and it you call a card that’s teetering as it teeters and 3 or 4 of your readers get the last few copies (and help push it over the edge) you look like a genius to those people. I think this creates a lot of bad feels for most people, though. I have developed a method that lets me find cards long before they pop, giving people a good long time to get their act together, potentially sell other specs to free up money to get in and buy cards that aren’t teetering which could result in the orders getting cancelled once the seller gets wise of the incoming (or incipient) spike.

This has the unfortunate side effect of me “missing” obvious cards, meaning that I don’t talk about them. I also tend to use my limited column space to talk about cards I do like rather than discussing picks I overlook for various reasons. If I am ignoring a card because the buy-in is too high or the supply is too low, I do just that – I ignore the card. That has the unintended side effect of not hipping the readers to the cards that are about to topple. While I think other authors do a good job of identifying those cards, it’s possible I’m not doing anyone any favors by ignoring cards like that. If someone else didn’t tell you to drop $20 on Athreos, you’re probably wishing you had the opportunity to do that, now. I have a bit of a bias against cards like that, possibly, so I think from now on, I’ll include some notes about cards I am not advocating because identifying them is something I know how to do and a non-zero number of you might find it useful. Speaking of Athreos…

Athreos doubled. A lot of cards are going up ten-fold and a “mere” doubling seems quaint in comparison but I want to make the case for there being a lot of value for players in the identification of cards that are already $15+ dollars but are about to get a nod from a new deck like Athreos. There are a few groups of people who would prefer to see these kinds of cards rather than me calling $0.99 cards like Hallowed Spiritkeeper even if that Spiritkeeper hits $10 like I’m hoping it will.

1. People who don’t have a TCG Player store or similar retail out.

Players who aren’t trying to buy their specs at retail and sell at retail may have some issues with buying cheaper cards that may top out at $5 or $6 even if they got them very cheap. If they are buying with the hope of outing to a buylist, they need to make a significant return because they are both buying and selling suboptimally. This is usually fine, especially if retail is $0.99 at the start and buylist is $6.50 at the end. If you can get dozens of copies from one person and only pay shipping once, that’s great. If you can only pay shipping to send to a buylist once, also great. But if the card goes from $1 to $5 and buylist goes to $2.50, the fees eat all of your profit. A card quintupling is nice, but Travis Allen basically abandoned the cheap spec life and wrote this article about how hard it is to get out of specs.

2. People who DO have a TCG Player store or similar retail out.

You need to be very sure that the demand is real because if you buy 100 copies of a bulk rare, you need to sell 100 copies of a bulk rare. Buylists are attractive because you can make one “sale” and be done with everything, but if you are trying to sell on TCG Player, you need to deal with those cards as “inventory” which means shipping them 1-4 copies at a time. Fees pinch you here, too, especially if you offer free shipping like most “I’ll be the cheapest listing on TCG Player to make sure it moves” sellers. A $1 card going to 3 and a $100 card going to $200 card is theoretically the same amount of growth if you bought 50 copies of the $1 card, but you’re looking at between 15 and 50 stamps, envelopes, TCG Player fees, etc. Your worst case scenario if you’re wrong on the $100 card is you sell it for like $90 and lick your wounds. If you miss on 50 copies of a $1 card, you put them in a fail box forever.

3. People who want to play Magic with the cards.

If you want to play Magic with Athreos, me having gained you $100 in value by convincing you to buy Black Market at $4 doesn’t help you because you still have to pay $35 for Athreos when you get around to building the deck. If you are buying 1 copy of a card because you’re building the deck, saving you $2 on a Skullclamp pales next to costing you $16 on an Athreos.

I don’t want to exclude those groups of people and while other writers on MTG Price do a good job of identifying when to buy Masterpiece Sol Ring and when to sell it and my niche is other cards, I would be remiss if I didn’t occasionally mention some cards I notice for the groups listed above. What’s the point of developing a solid, data-based methodology for EDH finance if you don’t show all your work and people think you’re a savant at finding dimes and missing Hamiltons? I don’t know how I want to structure the high buy-in cards I do notice from now on, but I’ll talk exclusively about a few there’s still time to buy today and we’ll worry about that next time. Or I’ll keep doing what I always do, Travis, Cliff and James will find your Intruder Alarms and you’ll try to buy them before they sell out and I’ll advocate Saproling Infestation and you may or may not make money.

Room To Grow

Since I can actually find these cards, let’s talk about buy-ins around $10 or $15 that have room to go up.

I called this card at bulk and have basically never stopped making money off of it. I sold enough copies at that $4 plateau to pay for my whole order so I am just profiting at this point. (Or, since it’s Theros block, Propheting. Because I foresaw the price increase. And I made money. Look, they can’t all be gems). There is one lunatic with like 40 copies of this for $8 on TCG Player and the next person with more than one copy is charging close to $10. We are at a tipping point and Dictate’s $8 is still cheaper than the $12 for Grave Pact. Grave Pact, by the way, has a ton of printings. It’s also harder to cast than Dictate. I have never once cast this with Flash but that’s still a factor. Add that up, and Dictate shouldn’t ever be cheaper than Grave Pact which is admittedly down a bit from its peak but I think that’s only because Dictate was a credible budget alternative for a while. No longer! Dictate is going up up up and I never mentioned it before because I have “called” this card like 4 times and even though it always went up after, I wanted to find more Flesh Carvers. Don’t congratulate me for calling this again, just make some money and thank me by buying a year of Pro Trader so I don’t feel bad about calling cards I find copies of on Tuesday that I don’t think will make it to Thursday.

What’s Black and White and selling out all over?

Ravos is not that easy to reprint and I think Tymna, Thrasios, Vial-Smasher and a few other of the “ubiquitous” pairs are about to get very dear. Ravos is especially good in Teysa because he does 2 things you need a card to do and that’s very useful. It was going to go up anyway, but Teysa is making this disappear. I hope it’s not too late to grab a copy. Again, this is a card I reasoned would top out at around $18ish where Thrasios, Triton Hero or Tymna, the Weaver is, but they could all go to $30 and then all of us look stupid. At the very least, this was $12ish with a different demand profile and if this “merely” jumps 50%, I saved you $6 and you’re welcome. This is math I did in my head and didn’t include in all of the articles where I didn’t suggest you buy Ravos and now you know why.

It’s not just Teysa cards, either.

Both Vannifar and Nikya are putting in work here and Craterboi is flirting with its historic high. The graph already pegs the fair trade value at above what it was when it didn’t get reprinted in Modern Masters 2017. Do I love a $25 buy-in? Sure don’t. I liked this a lot more at $15. I also like a card that can dectuple and this isn’t hitting $150 bucks, ever, but this is a lot easier to sell, trade or buylist and you don’t ever want to pay $40 for a card that was once $5 so buy these now if you think you’ll use them before they’re reprinted again. Again, I think this card can grow by $7-$10 under likely conditions and there would have to be a serious run on it for it to get to $40 on TCG Player anytime soon, but this is also a card that is basically guaranteed to go up. Some people like the uncertainty in their specs to be “how much” and not “if” and this is a spec for you if that’s you.

This is a high buy-in for a card that was reprinted in a commander deck that had other valuable cards in it, but here we are. This has already doubled. Do I like its current price? No, but other people seem to and of all of the post-popped stuff this seems, to me, the most likely to retain value given its usage in decks outside of Vannifar a deck that, again, I don’t see people building.

In the future, I think I can do a wrap-up paragraph and mention a few of these cards briefly so it doesn’t look like I missed them and so you have the opportunity to save yourself money picking up a copy to play with. I’m not telling you how to use our website. I mean, I guess I used to be, but I won’t anymore. People want finance advice for different reasons and I have acknowledged that on the podcast for 300 episodes so it’s time to do that here, too. Thanks for reading.