All posts by Jim Casale

Jim is a software developer and an avid blue planeswalker. He spellslings in Orlando, Florida but his old stomping grounds were in New York City. The best way to contact him is through twitter.
Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – The Grand Prix Ecosystem

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By: Jim Casale
@phrost_

I was battling it out with approximately another 2,000ish people for a shot at winning GP NYC last weekend.  After the unfortunate trip to Secaucus, New Jersey for this terribly named Grand Prix, I was able to browse the vendor booths and meet up with fellow writer Doug Johnson.  I want to bring you some of the more interesting things I noticed this weekend.

Bring a list

The first thing I always suggest to people is to write down a list of cards you’re looking for.  It’s way too easy to get caught up in the huge number of cards at each booth and lose track of what you’re really trying to pick up.   I always recommend you also include a price range for the cards you’re interested in.  I went into the weekend with a short list but was quickly able to pin point the prices I wanted to pay.

Don’t buy on Saturday

Prices for cards are always the best on Friday morning (or Thursday if the GP is four days, like Vegas last year) or Sunday night.  Dealers would rather carry cash than cards and frequently have the inventory they’d most like to move early in the GP.  As the weekend progresses, the natural economy of the event will come to light.  Selling popular cards for the weekend is the best on Saturday.  This weekend many vendors were sold out of Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet on Friday.  Going into Saturday dealers were paying $25 and selling him for $45 as people scrambled to finish decks before the Grand Prix.

Don’t sell on Sunday

Much like the reason you don’t buy on Saturday, dealers are less likely to spend more money (or might not even have anymore cash to spend) on cards.  There are some exceptions (vendors that don’t resell as they buy like Coolstuff will keep purchasing on Sunday) but many of the smaller vendors don’t want to leave with product if they don’t have to.  They also don’t want to leave with product they overpaid on.

Don’t come to the event needing cards to play

This might sound like common sense but as I stood near some of the vendors I heard people vastly over paying for many cards.  I even saw Luis Scott-Vargas looking during round two for Eldrazi Skyspawners that he most likely paid far more than the $0.25 you can pay to get them from your LGS.  Some more popular commons and uncommons I heard people paying far too much for were Clip Wings, Lambholt Pacifist, Duskwatch Recruiter, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Brood Monitor.  The most common problem children are sideboard cards (Clip Wings) and newly popular commons and uncommons for new decks.  Bringing a box of extra sideboard cards can save you a bunch of money.

Side Event Value

While the number of byes you can get from a “grinder” decreased from three to two, the other benefits you can get vary a lot by tournament organizer.  I was lucky and/or good enough to win a grinder last Friday to not only get an extra bye but also a lot of other great perks.  Channel Fireball offered a free upgrade to their best Grand Prix package and a ton of prize wall tickets.  I’d have to say it’s probably the most cost effective event you can win with the lowest level of competition.  I wouldn’t have paid the extra $125 for the VIP bonus but the $20 I spent to play in the grinder more than paid for itself.  If you’re going to play side events on Friday I suggest looking into the EV of each event.

Tickets please!

Prize wall tickets are another commodity that tends to vary from event to event.  99% of the time, the best value you can get from prize wall tickets is in the form of Standard legal booster packs.  Sometimes tournaments will pay out in ten ticket increments while others will pay in one, but they’re basically the same.  The cheapest prize you can get is likely a booster pack.  As such I would recommend converting the tickets in your mind to dollars.  If a booster pack is worth 10 tickets then in my mind I would make the cash value be $2.50-$3 for those 10 tickets.  It helps to shape how much you really want to spend on some of the more eclectic purchases you can make on a prize wall.  This past weekend you were able to purchase a themed GP shirt for 50 prize wall tickets (or about $12.50 – $15) which seems like a great prize!  I actually ended up buying myself one as well as two more for friends.  Some of the worst things I saw on the prize wall was singles.  Explosive Vegetation was on the prize wall for 20 tickets or $5-6 per copy!  That’s obviously an extreme but it’s insanely expensive.

Week in Review

  • Nahiri, the Harbinger has seen a nice bump in price from playability in Modern and Legacy.  Vendors had adjusted their buy prices according this weekend and I saw some even paying $16 for her.
  • Kalitas continues to impress and although he will probably not reach the $45 he was on Saturday at the event, he is probably due for some play based price corrections.
  • Gideon, Ally of Zendikar yet again found himself everywhere in the Top 8 of Grand Prixs.  Only three of the top eight decks managed to not play any copies.  Most of the decks playing Gideon also play Nissa, Voice of Zendikar.  I’m going to continue to harp on this, it’s only a matter of time.
  • Cryptolith Rite continues to be a conduit for some decks that feel like mediocre Modern decks in Standard.  I’m cautiously optimistic we will eventually find the right shell to make it the corner stone of the best deck in Standard.  When that happens it will be expensive.
Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Toronto & Milwaukee Analysis

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Last weekend had Grand Prix Toronto won by Esper Dragons (notably the only copy to day 2 according to the day 2 breakdown here).  The SCG Standard Classic (which is notably much smaller than an Open) was taken down by a very odd Naya Midrange deck.  What does this do to the future of Standard prices?  Well there weren’t a lot of colors in the top decks.  That’s for sure.

nissa voice of zendikargideon ally of z

Nissa and Gideon combine for the one-two planeswalker punch that currently support the G/W tokens deck.  In Toronto, there were 10 G/W Tokens in the Top 32 and Gideon was played outside of that deck.  The top 32 had 40 copies of Nissa and 60 copies of Gideon.  That’s a lot for planeswalkers who prices have barely budged since the Pro Tour.  This pair of walkers are from the same block so I think it would be wise to invest in them as they won’t rotate until next April.   I think we will see them to continue to creep up by $0.30 per day until they pop.  Nobody is noticing their slow ascension but once people do it will cause a price correction.

sylvanadvocate

Next on our list of enemies is Tarmo…. I mean Sylvan Advocate.  This card was the highest played card on the weekend.  It showed up in staggering numbers at Toronto (69 copies in 32 decks) and almost as equally impressive numbers in Milwaukee (29 copies in 16 decks).  It has already had a dominant rise the weekend of the Pro Tour but it keeps showing up in numbers suggesting it might be one of the best cards in Standard.  It’s rare but possible for rares to hold values as high as $10-12 and this might be one of them.  Oath of the Gatewatch was a small set so there may not be a terribly large number of them in the wild.  If you are thinking of getting these to play with, you don’t have much to gain by waiting.  Advocate is showing up in multiple different types of deck lists and is a recipe for a fast rising rare.

Dromoka's CommanddeclarationinstoneOath of Nissa

These three cards show up across multiple archtypes.  Oath of Nissa is in G/W Tokens and G/R ramp decks.  Declaration in Stone is played in White Humans, Bant Company, and G/W Tokens.  Dromoka’s Command is having a last minute revival as the main form of removal for G/W Tokens and Bant Company.  I’m not terribly interested in buying into Declaration which seems to be finally dropping in price as supply increases and Dromoka’s Command that rotates in September.  Oath of Nissa feels like the type of card that will continue to be good card filtering into the next block and worth a pick up at $2.

archangel avacyn

Turns out there is an amount of extra text you can throw onto a Serra Angel to make it good.  Archangel Avacyn rounds out the best performing cards of the weekend putting 73 copies into 48 decklists this weekend.  There is apparently no stopping this train but the true value lies in the difficult of opening flip mythics.  Without MTGO redemption kicking in yet, we are unlikely to see a reprieve in Avacyn’s price.  It’s possible it might still not move that much given how much more the redemption supply will affect regular mythics instead of flip cards.  If you’re not a Standard player you can probably find a much better time to pick this up.  I’d estimate by the holidays of 2016 she will be a $10-15 card.
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Modern

Thopter Foundryancestral vision

0 copies in the Top 8 of this open.  Some decks in the Top 32 played a few copies of Ancestral Vision but Thopter Foundry is no where to be found.  I think it’s almost safe to say that the Thopter Foundry unbanning is doing less than the Wild Nacatl unban.  If you’re holding copies of these hoping they will go up I think it’s time to sell.  I wouldn’t expect them to do anything but drop from here.

collected company card

This card is dominating Standard and Modern and has seen a big resurgence from it’s all time low during the release of the event deck including it.  If you’re a Modern player I would strongly recommending to wait for this to rotate before buying in.  I’m not sure it will continue to hold it’s current price tag.  It’s one of the few cards in the Abzan Company deck you play more than 1 of but that doesn’t mean it will maintain it’s $25 price tag.  If you want to play them in Standard and Modern I would rather buy foil copies.  There are a lot less of them out there and they’re unlikely to see as large of a collapse when Company rotates.

 

Final thoughts:

  • I’m going on a grinding binge.  I’ll be at GP NYC this weekend and hope to pick up some sweet deals at the vendors.
  • Green is really good in Standard.  We need to stop underestimating it.
  • White removal is still insane.
Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Pro Tour announcements and You

So I want to start out by once again recommending to everyone this same piece of advice:

Don’t buy cards during the Pro Tour.

No seriously, hear me out.  Let me tell you a story about what happened on Friday.  I woke up groggy and read my twitter feed with one eye open.  The other one wasn’t ready to get up.  I noticed that people were talking about the Pro Tour.  Apparently Jon Finkel had a feature match next.  I, like any fan of the game decided it was worth getting up for.  After trying to get up, I decided to settle for watching with one eye on my phone.  Twitch has done wonderful things for our community, don’t you think?  After I muted the casters, I began to piece together what Jon was doing.  Dark Petition for Seasons Past every turn seemed pretty sweet.  I remembered I had pre-ordered some Dark Petitions, you know like a year ago.  I also had drafted a large number of Seasons Past (Drafters at my LGS just really don’t like green).

A quick check showed that Dark Petition was $1.50 on Thursday.  At that moment, there were none available of either card on the major online retailers that I ordered cards from and just a tiny number of sellers left on TCG Player.  Naturally I listed my eight Dark Petitions for $8 each and Seasons Past for $12 each and they sold almost instantly.  Look at the prices today (when you’re reading this).

I’m fairly certain neither of those cards will be that expensive on aggregate retailers like eBay or TCG Player.  To put this into perspective, people were aggressively buying copies of these cards before Jon Finkel had even won his match, much less made the Top 8 of Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad.

seasonspast

Weekend price spikes are a real thing and if you’re not “getting in” at the ground you are likely to become the greater fool.  Between the large number of canceled orders and overpaying orders you are so much better waiting until the following week.  After retailers have time to restock and resupply their websites, the price of cards will fall again.  In fact, if you wait another week you will likely be able to ride the flood of people that bought speculative copies to even cheaper prices (much closer to the pre-weekend spike).  In short, don’t buy cards during a Pro Tour.  The risk isn’t worth the potential savings.
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Shadows over Platinum Pros

If you haven’t heard, here, are the changes to the 2016/2017 Pro Tour season.  A large amount of money is being cut from Platinum Pro appearance fees and Hall of Fame appearance fees.  There is no doubt that Pro Tours are exceptionally expensive events to put on.  They showcase the best that new sets have to offer and often can revitalize some cards that had been collecting dust (looking at you Dark Petition).

Without drowning you in math and without accidentally falsely presenting any data, I will just say that the cuts are significant.  For players that can spend up to a week before a Pro Tour testing decks and the draft environment it will be a crushing defeat.  The money that was provided was not a sustainable source of income but definitely made it easier to take that week off of their regular jobs to be sure they provide the best deck for the Pro Tour.

The biggest problem with these changes are it lowers one of the biggest incentives to become a Platinum Pro.  Appearance fees were guaranteed money that were not tied to any particular finish.  That’s a big deal when Magic is still a game of variance.  Ultimately I’m not sure what the financial outlook from this is going to be but it is important to keep in the back of your mind as we move forward.

Modern Pro Tour is no more

Also announced in the article was that the Modern Pro Tour is no more.  In this article, Aaron Forsythe explains their future plans for Modern.  In order to dispel any myths, Modern won’t be dead.  They will still host Modern Grands Prix and the Modern PPTQ season.  Modern PPTQs will continue to qualify you for the first Pro Tour of the following year and be in the Summer.

So if you had any misconceptions about Modern’s demise, don’t worry.  I think we will continue to see Modern Masters sets every other year until they are found to be rotting on shelves.  I think the most financially important thing moving forward is that Modern banning and unbannings won’t be predicated on a  Pro Tour.  So rather than borderline obnoxious cards being banned right before a PT, we will likely see them scattered throughout the year.

I’m not entirely sure how long they will let a deck live that they determine to be “worthy of a ban” so it will likely lead to a lot of people holding their breath with each set release.  I’m not sure this is a good thing but we will have to wait to see how their tendencies change now.

Pro Tour price wrap up

If you’ve been following James Chillcott’s coverage of PT Shadows over Innistrad (part 1, part 2, part 3) you’ve noticed some trends but I’ll provide a summary of price increases this weekend.

Big Jumps

  • Crypolith Rite
  • Dark Petition
  • Pyromancer’s Goggles
  • Hissing Quagmire
  • Languish
  • Sylvan Advocate
  • Seasons Past
  • Liliana, Heretical Healer
  • Duskwatch Recruiter (remember your bulk!)

Moderate price increases

  • Dragonlord Ojutai
  • Collected Company
  • Chandra, Flamecaller
  • Narset Transcendant
  • Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
  • Declaration in Stone
  • Nissa’s Renewal
  • Demonic Pact
  • Nahiri, the Harbinger

Cards to watch

  • Westvale Abbey – As of last Sunday, this card was more expensive on MTGO than in paper.  That is extremely unlike a rare in an drafted set.  I expect paper prices to pick up a little.
  • Nissa, Voice of Zendikar – Another card that is seeing big gains on MTGO.  This is a small set mythic so it’s always able to see big price jumps.  This also frequently gets played as a 4 of which gives it a much higher ceiling.
  • Dragonlord Atarka – If we move away from Archangel Avacyn in every popular deck it will bring back a resurgence of Dragonlord Atarka.  She’s particularly good at sweeping up a lot of tokens.
  • Vile Redeemer – If you don’t know what this card is, I don’t blame you.  If the format become more Languish based this card will be a great trick to flash down in the Crypolith sacrifice deck to combat board sweepers.  At basically bulk I don’t know why I wouldn’t own a few.
Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Best Bulk Practices for a Player

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By now if you’ve been playing the game long enough to know what a “bulk rare” is you know the rest of pack is just “bulk.”  The reality of it is if you leave those cards on the table you’re probably incrementally costing yourself a bunch of money.

bulk

There are so many names for the other 14 cards in a booster pack.  Sometimes it’s bulk, sometimes more caustically known as “draft trash,” but most of the time it’s just a bunch of quarters, dimes, and dollars people often leave behind or throw in the garbage.  Picking bulk is a hard thing to do and people pay for bulk because they assume it hasn’t been picked to it’s fullest potential.   I’m not going to teach you how to pick every card out of bulk that can be sold for some amount of money.  What I will suggest is just picking your own bulk for cards you know you will probably need at some point in a set’s lifetime in Standard.
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Saving Some Dollars 

So I took a look at the orders from my LGS (I usually buy them online and then pick them up in store) is over the course of the 15ish months that Fate Reforged was in Standard, I spent close to $5 on Arashin Clerics (mostly due to losing them).  It might not sound like a lot when  Standard had $200 mana bases but a few dollars here and there can make a big difference at the end of the year.  If you’re a serious Standard player that doesn’t play the same deck for it’s entire life in Standard sometimes you need a pile of commons and uncommons you weren’t using.  Sometimes those are cards you already owned and forgot where you left them.  Laziness is a real problem and cost me at least $5.  Picking your bulk cards can help ease the problem with finding the right cards to play with while also not costing you a ton of time or money.

Magnifying-Glass-Shadows-over-Innistrad-Art

What To Pick

The biggest question is what do you pick.  If you don’t want to sort literally every card you own there must be a threshold for a card to be worth setting aside.  I have a few rules of thumb that I follow when figuring out what to pick:

  • Is it first pickable in draft?  A lot of very powerful limited cards find there way into Standard.  The poster child for this is rares like Pack Rat and Citadel Siege.  In more recent sets even commons have become constructed all stars.  How many people expected the top 8 of Pro Tour Oath of the Gatewatch to include Eldrazi Skyspawner in Modern?
  • Does it cost 3 or less?  Cards that cost 3 or less are more likely to be constructed playable.  When they cost a low enough amount of mana, even basically vanilla creatures like Dragon Hunter and Expedition Envoy become constructed playable.
  • Does it do some situationally relevant thing very well?  Commons and uncommons that I’ve found myself unlikely to have are weird niche sideboard cards.  This is the category for cards like Clip Wings, Arashin Cleric, Negate, etc.  When they’re good, they’re very good.  But when they’re bad, they’re almost unplayable.
  • Is it a land?  Lands are always playable in some capacity. Although you may never play most of them, it’s a small price to pay to own a bunch of weird lands just so you don’t have to spend a few bucks to buy them.  This is also especially important when a land is in it’s first print cycle (like the Shadows over Innistrad enemy colored tap lands and Warped Landscape).
  • Is it an uncommon?  I’m much more liberal with pulling uncommons than commons because the more playable uncommons are typically much more expensive.  While most constructed playable commons from recent sets don’t typically get more than $0.50, very good uncommons can be $3 or more (like Monastery Swiftspear).
  • Does it kill things?  Cheap, efficient removal is almost always one of those things that finds a way into constructed formats.
  • Does it do a similar thing to a card you already know is playable?  I know this is a little hard to describe so I will give the best analogy.  Flaying Tendrils is a lot like Drown in Sorrow.  Drown in Sorrow was very playable when it was in Standard so I would assume Flaying Tendrils has a higher than average chance of being played.  Biting Rain would also be picked under the same context.

Ulvenwald-Mysteries-MtG-Art

What does this all look like?

To give you a better idea of how I pick my bulk, I’ll give you the list of cards I took out:

Commons:

  • Catalog
  • Deny Existence
  • Just the Wind
  • Nagging Thoughts
  • Pieces of the Puzzle
  • Alms of the Vein
  • Dead Weight
  • Murderous Compulsion
  • Shamble Back
  • Dual Shot
  • Fiery Temper
  • Insolent Neonate
  • Tormenting Voice
  • Clip Wings
  • Fork in the Road
  • Loam Dryad
  • Root Out
  • Vessel of Nascency
  • Angelic Purge
  • Thraben Inspector
  • Vessel of Ephemera
  • Warped Landscape

Uncommons:

  • Biting Rain
  • Call the Bloodline
  • Indulgent Aristocrat
  • Olivia’s Bloodsworn
  • Pick the Brain
  • Sinister Concoction
  • Compelling Deterrence
  • Essence Flux
  • Invasive Surgery
  • Ongoing Investigation
  • Pore over the Pages
  • Rise from the Tides
  • Topplegeist
  • Groundskeeper
  • Weirding Wood
  • Dance with Devils
  • Geistblast
  • Gibbering Fiend
  • Incorrigible Youths
  • Lightning Axe
  • Ravenous Bloodseeker
  • Forsaken Sanctuary
  • Foul Orchard
  • Highland Lake
  • Stone Quarry
  • Woodland Stream

The last thing I picked was all of the double faced cards.  I’m not sure which ones will be good or bad but there are so few that if I ever need any of them I will likely be short as it is.  As the case was, I didn’t have 4 Duskwatch Recruiters to make the Bant Company deck.  At any rate, I figure I will find myself taking these cards out of the fatpack box they now reside in and thanking my lucky stars I picked them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go through my sorted picks from Magic Origins and get my Bounding Krasi (Krasises? What’s the plural of krasis?) and feel good I won’t pay $1 for them.