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 – Information Cascades and You

January 12, 2016 Jim Casale 11 Comments

So if you read my last article I “predicted” some cards to become more expensive. I felt strongly that a card that is played in almost 50% of decks in Modern (Spellskite) despite only using 1-2 copies was prime for some kind of price correction.

My article went up on Tuesday and it was business as usual. On Thursday of last week, I posted this.

Apparently this turned the time table into from “a few weeks” to “in a few hours.” It got me thinking. Maybe it’s partially my fault? Is the spread of information really what causes these types of price spikes?

What is an Information Cascade?

In the simplest terms, when someone sees someone else do something they assume it is a good idea, without rethinking any previously made assumptions. It’s the internet’s effect on card prices in a “monkey see monkey do” pattern. 11 years ago, Patrick Chapin wrote an article about information cascades during Ravnica: City of Guilds (here). I’m not going to try to explain it better than he did (he’s got a better command of the idea than I do) but I can say with some kind of certainty that this is part of the Magic price problem. If x tells y who tells z to buy a card and it goes up, who’s fault is it? Is it really anyone’s?

I don’t want to feel guilty for the reason that Spellskite got more expensive. The position I am in means that whenever I suggest buying a card it could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Misinformation Cascades

I’ve long considered Heartless Summoning to be a “trap.” It’s a card that gets hyped every year for like a few days and doesn’t win anything. Right now there are people buying $5 copies of Heartless Summoning hoping that it becomes good. Really what’s happening is that people are paying $5 for a lot of dimes in a month. This is the worst kind of price spike because people are buying “just in case it’s good.” I know a lot of people who look at Heartless Summoning and they’re thinking “Yeah man, that’s my jam!” and that’s fine if you’re that kind of person. Just don’t go “Oh man it’s spiking I better get my copies before it gets too expensive.” These thoughts just lose a lot of people a lot of money.

Toxic Information Cascades

I had a discussion on twitter with some pretty level headed people. There’s something I want to try to institute for the future of my articles and tweets. Don’t tweet that “x is low supply” for the sake of saying it’s low supply. Auriok Champion is a card that is low supply and has been for years. No I’m not exaggerating, it’s been far too expensive for years but it’s primarily only played in Soul Sisters (which is mostly a budget deck so people avoided buying them). Yeah there is some upside, it can’t die to lightning bolt and stops Deceiver Exarch / Splinter Twin combo. Josh Cho is on camera and it shows up and boom it’s gone from the internet. I lament with you on the fact that these kinds of spikes are shitty but how do we prevent it? Auriok Champion hasn’t been “on the table” for reprints. It’s not a card that people think of “you know what really needs a reprint?” It’s the sad truth but without literally reprinting the entirety of 8th, 9th, and Mirrodin block through Scars block we will continue to see these types of spikes. Cards get popular “out of no where” and there isn’t a good way to fix it. I will just say we stop speculating on cards with low supply because they have low supply. Spellskite was a case where it was reprinted recently and had low supply and was creeping up for weeks. You can’t avoid those situations but you can avoid Auriok Champion.

Rerprint Information Cascade

When was the last time you heard someone complain about the cost of Tarmogoyf or Snapcaster Mage? Snapcasters are $53 as of this writing on TCGplayer and €53 on Magic Card Market. That’s a 30% drop since his spike in July of last year. Why hasn’t he moved at all since then? People forgot. He’s not in the spotlight. Twin hasn’t won anything recently (yet) and they are expecting the promo to bring his price down. I’ve got bad news if you’re one of those people.

This is the last year of Liliana of the Veil’s pricing. It’s from the same set as Snapcaster Mage and it is twice as rare. Liliana was given out for a year as the RPTQ promo and didn’t dent her price tag. Snapcaster Mage promos will be a smaller percentage of the overall number of Snapcaster Mages so I’m predicting it to go back up if anything.

We’ve stagnated. Maybe we’re finally at an equilibrium? Tarmogoyfs are still too expensive for people who don’t own them but not expensive enough the people who own them want to sell them. Supply is plentiful but the decks that play them are not so much. I expect we might see the decline of the mighty Tarmogoyf as less and less people are in the position to purchase them. It might even get so low it’s not included in the assumed Modern Masters 2017. It’s still by far the most expensive card in Modern but nobody is complaining. I’m not sure how I feel about that level of apathy.

Oath of the Gatewatch

I’m gonna rapid fire my thoughts because I’ve already written a lot and will probably cover it more next week.

Why is there no black Oath? Will Liliana get one on Innistrad? Kinda confused why black got screwed again on a cool cycle (ever notice there are no black miracles?)
Colorless requirements are a bit more harder to achieve than people think. I don’t think 3 color decks are particularly well equipped to cast them yet.
Kozilek’s Return is going to define Standard. Get ready to not be able to ride a single Monastery Mentor to victory.
World Breaker is by far the best card to use to trigger Kozilek’s Return. I think his $4 price tag is suspiciously low. If you’re interested in getting a standard deck you can keep for a while, Eldrazi Ramp will be good for the forseeable future.
There are a lot of “looks good on paper” rares in this set. Consequently not everything can work out so don’t rush out to buy playsets of everything. Sealed product is not miserable due to flatness of the prices.

Ruin in their Wake is not Rampant Growth. Rampant Growth, like 1 mana Elves, are too caustic for Standard.

Until next time folks, hopefully we don’t have a run on another set of Modern cards.

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Analyzing Buyouts

January 4, 2016 Jim Casale 18 Comments

Right? The price of the winning deck at the SCG Standard Classic in Cincinnati was $555. Two of the decks in the Top 8 cost about $200 and weren’t a red aggro deck, so we’re making some progress. But that’s not what people are really up in arms about anymore.

It feels like everyone is all of a sudden surprised that cards started going up in price again. With the announcement that SCG Cincinnati was the LARGEST Open in the history of SCG with over 1,000 competitors, I’m not surprised. Oh, it was also a Modern Open. Sorry Legacy fans, I don’t think this is your year.

Why calling price increases a buyout is bad

The reason cards go up and stay up in price is almost never due to buyouts. It’s so impossibly hard to buy enough copies of a card to control the market price due to sheer volume.

What's not happening — What’s not happening

Nobody is getting rich off of artificially inflating the price of cards by buying a large amount of the market. Eventually you have to find someone to sell them or you might end up just losing money. The reason cards are increasing in price is either due to increased demand or dwindling supply. Let’s take a look at some examples and figure out the difference.

Increased Demand

Steady as she goes then boom. If you have been keeping up with the Eldrazi in Modern, this has been a “deck” for like a month. Some people won’t buy in until they see it on camera so you had time to get in cheaply. Actually even very recently. I don’t buy cards to get a quick buck but I had identified this as a problem early.

Let’s take a look at the 10th place finisher at the SCG Open this past weekend here. Oh hey a deck that plays more than 1 Eye of Ugin and a full set of Eldrazi Temples? The deck is also fairly cheap if you don’t include the $200 spent on the two (theoretically unnecessary) Liliana of the Veil. Hell there is an even more budget version of the deck (here) that plays a mono-black shell and some more Standard legal bulk rares to beat people with the power of Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple. The reason we’re seeing spike here is due to REAL demand. If a few thousand players buy 3-4 copies of Eye of Ugin and 4 copies of Eldrazi Temple people will notice and prices will increase. It’s clear vendors feel this is a real price increase because buylist price jumps follow almost immediately.

But what happens from here? Well other cards are going to get more expensive in the deck as people start to build and play it. I’d recommend working on the harder to find cards like Inquisition of Kozilek and Relic of Progenitus and then getting the cards with Standard demand (like Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Oblivion Sower). But please don’t go on twitter and decree that MTG finance is the reason why you can’t build the deck for pennies on the dollar now. If anything it’s MTG finance that is keeping the retail stores on their toes and keeping the market fluid. We may see a drop in price in the next few days as more copies enter the market but I don’t see a return to pre-spike prices and that’s okay.

Low Supply

These are not buyouts. They’re not caused by a nefarious group of people trying to make Séance happen. It’s clear from the graphs that multiple months of increasing buy and sell prices has just hit the “bubble” where a small increase just doesn’t get the product flowing. Both of these cards are from Lorwyn Block and Glen Elendra only had a tiny reprint in Modern Masters. Eventually vendors or TCGPlayer reach a breaking point where they will violently increase both prices because the market is demanding it. This can look like a buyout because if there are 12 copies on TCG player and none in stock at retail stores it causes people to panic buy. The reality of these spikes is they will be back down a little in the next few weeks but they will never be their pre-spike price. This sort of price correction is really the wakeup call that leads a lot more supply to the market and is generally healthy after the first day of markups.

How to react to these price increases

Don’t panic. Please whatever you do, don’t panic buy cards. If anything goes up over 200-300% in one day it is so hard for it to stay that high. Just wait a few days for the cheaper copies to reach vendors and then you can pick up your copy for less than the buying frenzy prices. If you buy into hype you only become the greater fool and end up losing the most money. That’s pretty much the definition of anti-value, so don’t do it!

If you’re trying to save money for cards then watch price trends. Standard cards flat line in December and then pick up again at the beginning of the next year. If the card you’re watching is going up $0.20-$0.30 per day (which is hard to really see) then you are better off buying in sooner. Sometimes there is buyer’s remorse if a card gets reprinted but you stand to lose so much more money by waiting that it’s silly to wait too long in a lot of cases.

Cards to keep an Eye on

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger had 12 copies in the top 32 of SCG Cincinnati. That’s a lot of a Standard Mythic at a Modern event. Ali Aintrazi (affectionately known as Ali Eldrazi) even went so far as to play three Ulamog and zero Emrakul.
Spellskite is 100% going to be an “oh shit I wish I bought this card earlier” card this year. It’s only gone up since the reprint in Modern Masters 2015 and I don’t see it getting printed again soon.
Literally anything in Modern. There is another Modern Open in Charlotte next weekend and then three weeks later is the Modern Pro Tour. This hype train has a long track ahead of it to gain steam before more things explode in price like Scalding Tarn.
We may see some weird prices on the weekend with no events. There is no event (GP or SCG Open) the weekend after the Pro Tour. It will be interesting to see what happens to cards that weekend.

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – A New Frontier

December 29, 2015 Jim Casale 4 Comments

Last week we looked into the year that was. This week I want to take a look at the year that may be. This year will be uncharted territory for the Magic community and especially for MTG Finance. There have been golden rules related to the time of year. There was one rotation per year in September and the summer before ushered in a huge sell off in the oldest Standard cards. Now we have two rotations, once in September and one in April. How will that affect the normal trends of card prices? There is also another elephant in the room. There isn’t significant growth in the size of the player base. For the past year it has been pretty clear to me that Wizards is trying to sell more product to the same number of people. This may have some impacts on otherwise “safe” picks from the past year’s standard.

We learned about the new rotation over a year ago. Let’s revisit it to refresh everyone’s mind.

Source http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/mm/metamorphosis

This is the old rotation. Blocks were 3 sets and then a core set was released and then the following set caused a rotation. This meant that fall sets had 2 years in standard and that amount of time decreased until the core set (which spent the least amount of time in standard).

The new Standard has a rotation every other set. Every beginning of a block causes two sets to rotate out and one set to rotate in. This means there will be an increased significance of the spring and summer set (as they stay in Standard just as long as the fall and winter sets). The real question for us is when do people begin to sell off their cards?

Let’s take a look a card who’s price was entirely impacted by Standard. If you wanted to get rid of your Revelations before they made their final descent, you needed to sell them in March of 2014. That card did not rotate out of Standard until September, meaning people began selling off a full 6 months before rotation.

Khans of Tarkir cards rotate with the release of Shadows Over Innistrad in April. If cards followed that same trajectory then I’d have to assume we’re already almost two months too late.

I’m inclined to believe the boat is missed. While these cards are almost bulk rares at this point, I don’t advocate holding onto anything that has value left from Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged. There is almost no upside in the release of Oath of the Gatewatch.

Look at Abrupt Decay. It rotated at around $13. Right now you can find copies at retail for $11.50 (Strike Zone). While there was a period in between you could have got out at a profit, it’s clear that dealer confidence is low and buylists reflect that. There was also never a point where the best buylist was above the retail cost at rotation. Now there is the possibility this is just part of the end of year slump and we see $20 Abrupt Decays July.

This is the year of the Thoughtseize. What happens to it? Buy price is plummeting, now out of even double digits. Are there just too many Thoughtseizes? Is its rotation out of Standard actually detrimental to it’s long-term price? It’s hard to tell but it’s something to watch. We might see a lot more seasonal ebbs and flows with Modern legal cards printed in Return to Ravnica and newer sets. So much sealed product of those sets was available that it’s impossible for cards to retain their pre-rotation value even if they are eternal playable if there are just too many of them. It’s possible the card will never recover to it’s $25 height-of-Standard price tag.

Legacy

I haven’t done anything but eyeball it, but fellow MTG Finance writer Saffron Olive says Legacy staples are down (for the first time ever) 0.4% year over year (Source). I’m not expecting that to change. With the increase support of Modern and the decreased support of Legacy at a local and global level it’s hard for people to justify thousands of dollars in decks they can play maybe three times per year. Wizards has only announced one Legacy GP and Star City Games has announced one Legacy open in the first third of the year. Assuming there are two more opens in 2016, that gives North America only four major Legacy events in the year compared to six Opens and one Grand Prix last year. This doesn’t count international Grands Prix (which were not on the same date as they are this year) and the Invitational or Player’s Championship. I foresee drops to continue as long as support for the format drops nationally. While it may be thriving in your local area, it is so hard to start grass roots support for such an expensive format. I don’t really want to elaborate anymore on my feelings but I think we will see another year of Modern replacing Legacy as the non-rotating format of choice for a lot of players.

The Future of Making Money

With the print runs of recent sets, it’s hard to find a reason these days to invest in a Standard legal pack. When you look at the difference between sealed boxes of Return to Ravnicai versus sealed boxes of Innistrad it’s easy to see where things changed. Conventional wisdom of sitting on any kind of sealed product is no longer true. I would by proxy say holding most singles from those sets is also a poor idea. My interests now are in limited print run products. Modern Masters sets, From the Vaults and promotions like Zendikar Expeditions are the safest places to hold money because we don’t know what the future will hold. If you really want to trade Standard cards into other Standard cards I would suggest looking into foils. Those are similar to limited print run products in terms of scope. The buy and sell prices of Foil Thoughtseizes have been basically flat since July which is a start contrast to the rise and fall of non-foil Thoughtseizes that may just never recover.

Into the Unknown

I don’t think anyone could factually back up any claims on the future. I am suggesting we consider our options and look to the past for some theories. I don’t know how players will enjoy or dislike the new rotation but it will definitely be a defining part of the 2016 Magic landscape.

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – A Year in Review

December 23, 2015 Jim Casale 3 Comments

While Magic prices are basically on ice while everyone is on holiday, I thought it would be a good time to wrap up the year and point out some of the highs and lows of the past year of Magic.

HITS!

Definitely a hit. Dragons of Tarkir is hands down the best spring set we have had the pleasure of opening since New Phyrexia. This set was initially viewed as a casual player’s paradise and a bust for competitive players but we can see now that looks continue to be deceiving.

These 5 commands were a big hit. Although Silumgar’s Command was definitely the worst, the rest of the command cycle were a great investment if you bought in at the right time. Kolaghan’s Command and Atarka’s Command are definitely the most surprising with their huge amount of Modern play.

The cycle of Dragonlords will continue to be movers and shakers in casual formats. The popularity of Dragonlord Ojutai and Dragonlord Atarka in Standard caused them to be hugely successful pickups if you got in early. I am sure anyone that you told during spoiler season that 5, 6 and 7 mana gold legendary dragons would be top tier Standard cards you would have been laughed out of the room.

Currently a box of Dragons of Tarkir has on average more value than every spring set in the last 6 years except Rise of the Eldrazi, Avacyn Restored, and New Phyrexia. That’s pretty good company to be in. While some Standard-only cards will lose value over time, there are plenty of rares and mythics that will retain value compared to previous spring sets.

Zendikar Expeditions is a touchy subject. In fact, I’ve included it as both a hit and a miss. For now, hold your need to close the article and hear me out. Zendikar Expeditions was a great promotion. It was totally unexpected and a great way to make the land plane special. The art on most of them is quite good and despite the dissenting opinions on the border they did a good job making them very unique. These are likely blue chip stocks of the near future of Magic. I’d even wager they’re a better place to “park” money than Legacy staples and sealed product. I also feel like they did a great job making sure they are obtainable while not completely obliterating their value.

Ok this might seem like a little bit of a cop out but this is also in the misses column. But let’s be positive here, Modern Masters 2015 did some good things. First of all, supply wasn’t as big of an issue. The raise in the MSRP of the packs meant you were able to find some reasonably priced booster boxes around release. The anticipation of reprints also caused some cards to really fall off despite not being printed again. There was a great opportunity to act once the fake MM15 list was spoiled to pick up cards like Goblin Guide. Right now, Modern Masters 2015 supply still hasn’t dried up but it will by Modern season next year. Now is the perfect time to get into the reprinted cards. While this set also had a lot less “value” cards, it didn’t tank a ton of casual cards in it’s attempt to make Cranial Plating affordable. I’d call that a win since casual cards have a much harder time rebounding. Adarkar Valkyrie will never be the same.

Grand Prix Las Vegas was everything anyone could hope for and more. Remember those expensive entry fees? Some how Channel Fireball and Cascade Games were able to keep the price at $75 for $60 worth of sealed product. This event covered all of the bases of what a fantastic Grand Prix needs:

Great selection of artists
Good value side events (not too top heavy or expensive to discourage casual players)
Enough Judges to cover events
Enough seating to allow events to fire
A well thought out and organized plan to seat side events and the main event.

In fact, the only complaints I have for GP Vegas is it isn’t going on again next year and the playmat was ugly.

The story for Magic has never been more relevant that it has now. As I explained in this article, paying attention to the uncharted realms and the story of Magic will be a key to staying one step ahead. Were you surprised there was a Chandra planeswalker card spoiled for Oath of the Gatewatch? You shouldn’t be! She was in the Uncharted Realms very recently reaffirming her fight on Zendikar. The story also implies right now that Emrakul is gone. Not dead, but gone, to another plane probably eating it’s mana. While it unlikely we will see the conclusion of the Eldrazi story in this next set, it is something to be keenly aware of. The most powerful Eldrazi titan hasn’t received an updated card. It could literally do anything but knowing when it’s coming is key. My guess is we see Emrakul in the fall if Liliana goes with Jace to Innistrad. If she doesn’t, Emrakul is probably on Innistrad.

MISSES!

While this entire set wasn’t a miss… there was much to be desired. Maybe next year we will look more fondly on what is currently Battle for Zendikar but man was it a blowout for mtg finance. Gideon’s pre-order price went up and the last stayed about the same. Everything else you may have pre-ordered basically fell through the floor. It’s like everyone wanted to be a Siege Rhino but fell short. While there may have been some reasons for a mechanical and power level reset (probably to support playing slower Eldrazi cards), this fall set was definitely a shocker to a lot of people involved.

Another pretty big miss for Battle for Zendikar was the insufficient printing of the extremely popular fat pack. Hopefully supply issues will be remedied with Oath of the Gatewatch because they will contain Wastes and full art lands necessary for your dream decks.

Zendikar Expeditions, where do I begin? I guess I’ll continue with the “bad.” What the hell happened at the printers? Was some disgruntled employee with a fork running around the factory scratching the edges off 3/4 of the expeditions before they caught him? This series of cards was one of the most arduous tasks to get a complete set of because of how unsightly damaged foils are. I’m not in love with the slick texture of the card but at least they had the decency not to use full From the Vault foiling. All in all, I hope whichever company Wizards of the Coast used to print these is never used again. It ruined an otherwise fantastic chase product.

Financially there was a lot of turmoil because nobody knew exactly how many expeditions were in each case. There is some good and some bad things about Wizards of the Coast not using guaranteed rarities per box (some games like Cardfight: Vanguard have guaranteed distributions like 1 mythic per case, for example).

What back alley printers are we using these days? While the damaged cards weren’t nearly as bad as the eye sores on Expeditions, there were a lot of collation errors. I played in a Modern Masters 2015 draft that had some of the most awkward problems that had to quickly be rectified by helpless judges. One draft had 4 undraftable packs (missing rare, missing foil, two foils, two rares) because the printer just couldn’t get it right. There is no bigger kick in the face than spending $10 on a pack with no rare. Except maybe if your rare is a Comet Storm. The extremely large range for the highest and lowest EV of a box caused it to be a real money loser unless you were exceptionally lucky or bought a lot to offset bad boxes. Hopefully Wizards has learned from this mistake and makes the average value of the pack much closer to MSRP by including more expensive uncommons.

You missed it. I missed it. We all missed most of the best cards in Magic Origins. Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy and Hangarback Walker were available for $15 and $2 respectively during pre-order period but people were too busy salivating over a 1 mana planeswalker that currently sees no play and couldnt give the 0/2 merfolk looter the time of day. The lesson learned here is we really can’t discount any Jace card. Maybe we still had some Jace, Living Guildpact hangover but we have to remember than 2 and 3 mana planeswalkers are VERY good.

Overall, I think we had a great year of Magic but some pretty big blemishes on physical card quality put a damper on it. I’m hoping we were loud enough to let Wizards know that this isn’t acceptable and can’t continue.

What do you think are the biggest hits and misses of 2015 in the world of Magic? Leave your comments below!

MTGPrice Blog

All posts by Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Information Cascades and You

Grinder Finance – Analyzing Buyouts

Why calling price increases a buyout is bad

How to react to these price increases

Cards to keep an Eye on

Grinder Finance – A New Frontier

Grinder Finance – A Year in Review

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY