By: Jared Yost

Xenagos, the Reveler

By the time this article is published, I predict that it will be hard to find Xenagos, the Reveler for less than $15. I commented on this version of Xengos in my Theros review back in September last year as a passive pickup, which meant that I recognized his power level but realized that it would take a paradigm shift in Standard in order for his abilities to really shine. When I identify passive pickups in my set reviews, I recommend that you pick them up when you have extra cards to trade or when the price becomes low enough that even if they don’t pan out in Standard they will still stabilize in price to due to casual or other demand. Xenagos was close to $7-$8 for a long time in Standard – for the past six months you could have gotten your copies fairly cheap if you picked them up slowly over time.

Usually, when a Standard card is bought out at this particular time in the season there is a good reason. Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea were bought out last year during Pro Tour Theros due to the breakout of the Mono-Blue Devotion deck. Yes, you could have made money on them if you had prestocked your cart on TCGPlayer and then executed the purchase as soon as they saw decent screen time from the live coverage. However, in the long run their prices dropped considerably because more Theros was opened and people were able to pick them up much easier once more copies were in the market. Mono-Blue Devotion turned out to be one of the most dominating decks and yet the prices still went since that time last year.

The hype from Pro Tour Theros was mainly driven by a lack of supply. This is not the case for Xenagos, the Reveler because we’ve been opening Theros for an entire year. The majority of the copies that will exist for the next Standard are already out there. Based on Twitter postings from Friday, there was a rumor that the buyout was coordinated.

Then we had a first hand account of Nick Becvar stating that he decided to buy in on as many Xenagos as he could at GenCon.

Nick is a well respected member of the MTG finance community so when a card catches his eye I tend to pay close attention. By the time of his Twitter post, all of the cheap copies of Xenagos were gone on TCGPlayer and the mid price was about $16. However, I was able to snag a few foil copies that were still lingering around $19 that weren’t updated to reflect the non-foil price. Goes to show that even if you think you may have missed an opportunity, always make sure to check for other versions of the card including foil versions. The window is small but there are sometimes opportunities to get these deals.

The the reason why Xenagos spiked was the coverage he received during Pro Tour M15. He was in two Jund decks that placed in the Top 8 of the tournament, which was the most anticipated tournament of the summer. He received plenty of coverage from live streaming two weeks ago and players have been picking up their copies since then. Once vendors started running low and realized that people weren’t trading the ones they had back in, they readjusted the prices to reflect this demand.

 What Else Besides Xenagos Should You Be Watching?

In terms of Standard I would focus on lands and current non-rotating staples. The scrylands are all great options, since the block supplementing Theros standard is a Wedge set. There is plenty of opportunity for any of the lands to be featured in a breakout deck so I wouldn’t focus heavily on any particular land barring Mana Confluence. Mana Confluence is a nice role filler for multicolored aggro decks, so I can see it becoming important in Mardu (RWB) builds in addition to any other Wedge or two color aggro build that pops up and does well during the fall. It is also from Journey Into Nyx, so the 6:2:1 ratio will also have an effect on the price after rotation.

Speaking of aggro, Soldier of the Pantheon is another of my top targets. Ever since the fall set was announced to be Wedge based I started picking up this card en masse. This is a short term play – if the card goes up substantially in price during the fall I will also be looking to get out then. It will have a tougher time sustaining a high price once the control decks become more established. 

You should also be stocking up on any extra copies of Thoughtseize and Hero’s Downfall that you can find. These have the highest chance of being the premium black cards of Standard in the fall. I would focus more on Thoughtseize than Downfall, even though it has a higher buy in price. Thoughtseize is an eternal playable that might have a higher chance of the elusive double spike once the newly announced Modern Pro Tour taking place in February 2015 occurs. Downfall is riskier because a better removal spell could be reprinted in Khans.

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is the strongest white card right now in sheer power. Her nemesis is Scuttling Doom Engine, which Wizards created to help stave off any potential Elspeth domination of Standard. I’m still not sure which card will see more play. I tend to think Scuttling Doom Engine (SCD) since it is both colorless and a rare, which means that it can fit into multiple archetypes that can support it and it will be cheaper for players to acquire initially so more are apt to brew with SCD.

On the other hand, Elspeth is just so strong especially in control builds. Of course, my line of thinking could be completely changed once Khans comes out but for now I tend to favor SCD as the card that will see the biggest gains percentage wise.I feel like Elspeth has peaked somewhat. She costs six mana, which means that players have fewer copies of her in decks, and she is already at around $20. I can’t see her going up much more from there based on an average two copies per deck. I doubt that SCD will reach Thragtusk level of dominance but there always seems to be a rare from a core set that reaches a really high price…

Lastly, I want to mention slivers. Here my advice is to wait until rotation and pick up any foil copies of M14/M15 slivers that seem to be popular. I think this is the best call for the short and long term. Even if there is a breakout sliver deck it will only be around for about another month. I’m going to bide my time, wait for rotation, and then a few months afterwards try to scoop up any popular M14/M15 slivers for value in the long run.

Jared is on vacation this week, so enjoy this article that originally aired December 23, 2013.

By: Jared Yost

Sometimes it feels like we are in the wild west of Magic: the Gathering when it comes to sudden price spikes and card buyouts that seem to affect the market on a weekly basis. It feels like every week I am hearing that this card or that card was bought out and the price has gone up 200%-400%. Just like a shootout, it seems as if the first person to draw their gun (or in this case, their wallet) and fire (click “add to cart”) is the winner. And it only seems to get worse as time goes on. 

Let’s ponder for a quick minute – who the heck is actually pulling the trigger on these calls like Disrupting Shoal and Phyrexian Obliterator (which even seemed to spike twice?) Is it individuals that have amassed enough ammunition (money) and have good enough aim (experience) to hit every single target faster than the rest of us? Are they the Billie the Kids and Jesse James of the Magic market? Is there a domino effect of casual speculators with more money than sense?

The answer is probably yes to both. As the popularity of Magic increases, it looks like the sky’s the limit for the prices on some of these cards when someone discovers that they are undercosted and acts quickly to drain the market. If you are one of these individuals, my hat is off to you. Congratulations. You have done your homework, discovered an undervalued asset, and have capitalized on that asset. I’m not sure if there is any advice I can give you except to avoid the trap of getting in on a card too late, which you’ve probably avoided in 95% of the cases (there is always the potential for the double spike, though it doesn’t happen often – Jace, the Mind Sculptor did it in Standard). Just remember to strike while the iron is hot: those Disrupting Shoals aren’t going to sell themselves.

But It’s not even Modern cards that are experiencing these price hikes. What about cards like Wheel and Deal and Forced Fruition? Nekusar hasn’t been out for long and isn’t even the flagship commander of the Mind Seize deck, so why did these random cards that only fit into a narrow strategy in a specific causal format go up in value? I might have an idea.

Those holding the bag of cards that spike and then quickly plummet are similar to the penny stock investor, who decided “investing” in penny stock assets would result in a great return. However, the asset in this case is not a random number on a roulette wheel or any single name in a list of penny stocks – the asset is actually something that all of us are emotionally invested in. The first reason that these spikes happen is because players and speculators are both emotionally invested in the game of Magic. 

Everyone that plays Magic is emotionally invested in the game to some degree. Otherwise, why play the game? There are literally thousands of other games that could be played instead, so what makes it so special? The answer is that playing the game is fun, the wonderful community is welcoming and friendly, the feeling of opening packs and sorting a collection can’t be beat, the feeling of chasing a collection and acquiring all of the particular cards you desire is amazing, the great feeling of putting a deck together and calling it your own is the best, and the support by the company that produces the game is fantastic. Without all of these factors, Magic would falter and slowly go away. It is stronger than ever now because all Magic players are able to get emotionally invested through all of these other aspects besides playing the game. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to Magic out there, whether they sell art related to the game (card alters), offer game accessories (dice, tokens, deckboxes, playmats, etc.), or are just reflecting on the community (Cardboard Crack). All of these factors help to cement good feelings in players’ minds about how sweet Magic is.

Right, so what does emotional investment have to do with price spikes? Well, when you get pretty emotional about something, it’s much harder for logic to factor into the equation. Do you want to buy those Disrupting Shoals at $10 because you think they’re cool and there is no way they could go down due to their awesomeness? If this is your train of thought, speculating might not be for you. Speculating requires a certain amount of cold logic and forethought that a lot players don’t want to apply to their favorite past time, which is supposed to be about fun.

Besides emotional investing, I believe another reason that these price spikes are happening is due to the rarity of the older cards compared to the newer ones (Wheel of Fortune anyone?). Back when Magic first came out, they had no idea how popular the game would be. They created the reserve list out of a fear of killing the game via reprints, and it seemed to work for a time. Because these cards can’t be reprinted, when a new card is released that synergizes or combos well with an old Reserve List card, that card can wind up spiking in value very fast. Even a rules change or unbanning could do this – Gaea’s Cradle and Time Spiral are examples of these cases respectively. With the Modern format Wizards can better control prices of newer cards, but older cards that are in Legacy and EDH are anyone’s guess. 

In addition to Reserved List cards that are never getting reprinted, cards that could also receive a reprint but have not gotten one yet are also targets for spikes. Specifically, cards in sets that are post-reserved but pre-Modern, like Masque’s (Rishadan Port), Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught – these blocks were printed in a time where the Magic community was only a fraction of what it is today. If a card from one of these sets is discovered to be very synergistic with a new card it, it will spike out of nowhere because the amount of copies that exist are marginal compared to the demand it will see from interacting well with a newer card. It is very hard to keep on top of all the potential combinations that exist without a good grasp on the community resources available to discover these interactions. So I will state that card rarity is always a factor in a spike, because even uncommons (Remand) can become grossly expensive without a reprint.

Just because because a card is rare or hard to find does not mean that its spike is warranted. Aluren would be a good example of this – it’s a card that has a legacy deck to its name and is a casual favorite that a lot of players remember having tons of fun with. It never sustained its price, though, because the deck failed to put up enough results compared to other currently existing legacy decks. Due to the lack of demand, it then dropped down close to the original price from which it spiked. In order to avoid buying high into potential scenarios like Aluren, you want to make sure you pick up the card before it has seen a massive increase in price, you want to make sure that it can fit into a deck that has proven results backing it up, you want to make sure that even if it isn’t tournament playable that it can be popular with casual and EDH players, and you finally want to make sure that it is from a set that had a relatively small print run compared to current sets (like the post-reserve list sets I mentioned above).

So in summary, the combination of emotional investing and card rarity are a recipe for a card spike. Whether the spike is real or whether it will ultimately become a bust can be hard to spot without extensive knowledge of the current tournament scene and correctly identifying the casual appeal of a card. With time comes experience, and I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes in the past in regard to cards and spikes – I certainly have. All we can do is to keep working at it and make sure that the characteristics of a card match up well with the reasons a card could spike. It can sure feel like the wild west at times with all of these card spikes, but realize that many of them can’t sustain those prices for very long and are mainly driven emotional investing and card rarity.

By: Jared Yost

Reprints are a fickle beast. If there is enough demand for a card when it is reprinted, like Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant when Modern was being pushed upon the Magic community, the market can respond in a frenzied way by spiking the price because of increased demand. Mutavault is a more recent example of this, where it was reprinted for Standard and was the most expensive rare for quite a while because it fit into so many deck strategies. Casual demand is the other reason that cards are reprinted which almost always will result in a price decline.

Today I’m going to focus on the casual demand of reprints by highlighting the new Duel Deck Anthology. Based on the duel deck announcements, I wondered what the most expensive cards from the upcoming duel deck anthology currently command as singles. Gathering some data from MTGPrice we can see that the following cards are the most expensive from the decks.

The first question that pops to mind when I see this list is if they are going to create new art for some of the cards, like Liliana or Jace, or if they are doing strict reprints keeping everything the same except for the new card border. I expect that they are keeping the art the same but let’s pose a hypothetical scenario where they decided to give some of the cards new art.

If they create new art for some of the cards, then I could see many of the current duel decks singles prices dropping 20% or or more. I’ve been fascinated with watching over the years which art of a particular card version the community decides it likes more than another especially when new cards are released. Players love the original Demonic Tutor art but I also hear much praise for the DvD art as well as the judge foil art commissioned. Many times it will come down to personal preference, whether someone prefers a card art due to nostalgia, artistic style, or the subject portrayed in the art. Even still, though there are many different artistic tastes out there, most of the time players can still reach an unofficial consensus of which art piece comes out on top out when discussing a Magic card and its reprint(s).

Card art is definitely a factor that boosts the desirability of a card – if you don’t believe me, try and purchase one of the newly released judge foil basic lands.

I’m pretty sure even Terese Nielsen is baffled at what people are offering for these basic lands. Not that I blame them – it’s a smart business decision that will lead to further profits down the road based on the rarity of the lands. Word on the street is that there are only 5,000 of each of these land packets being distributed to judges. That’s on par with the SDCC Planeswalkers, which means you know they are already going to be hard to find. An Arthur Halavais comment on reddit provided an even more pressing case for the expected rarity of these lands:

The uber collector is going to want these for a cube and that means they are going to want as many as they can afford. Based on the price and rarity, whoever that may be is going to have a hard time getting 50 copies of each of these judge lands – but you know that someone is going to try. This is why shops and vendors seem to be scrambling over each other in a mad dash to acquire these lands as fast as possible before people realize what they have.

Circling back to the hypothetical new art scenario, new art could spur interest for cards that receive it. If it comes to light that new art has been commissioned for the flagship cards of this set then I would hold off liquidating any copies of cards you may have from the old duel decks. Wait for community input on the new art, and if the response seems negative than the old versions may keep much of their old value or continue to rise over time. If the response seems positive, or if the art is exactly the same, then it will depend on the card whether the old version will go up in the long run or be suppressed by the reprint.

If the art is the same for the reprints, in other words a strict reprint, my thoughts will differ depending on the card. This is what I think will happen to prices if the art stays the same.

Demonic Tutor – Price decrease. The only reason this card is the most expensive from the first four duel decks is because it is the cheapest black bordered version of the card. Now that even more black bordered versions are going to be flooding the market get out while you still can.

Akroma, Angel of Wrath – Stable price. Still hold onto Akroma for the fact that she is an angel even though she has arguably been outclassed in recent memory by other creatures. Angel collectors are gonna collect and this card is no exception.

Liliana Vess – Price decrease. Along with M15, Liliana Vess is getting yet another reprint in the anthology. I realize that this is a foil version but the market is about to get mass flooded with M15 and then again in December once people start busting open these anthology packs and selling the individual decks. Regardless of art, there are just too many copies out there to justify holding this one.

Jace Beleren – Stable price. Outside of the book promo, this is the next most popular foil version of Jace Beleren. I attribute this popularity to the unique card art of this version because it shows Jace with his hood down versus the other two Beleren art pieces where he is shown hood up. I don’t expect this version’s price to drop much, if at all.

Garruk Wildspeaker – Price decrease. Garruk isn’t nearly as popular as our boy Jace, and this Garruk was printed more than Jace so there are even more of them out there. He’s only around $8 right now and I definitely think that could lower once more are introduced into the market.

Ancestral Vision – Price decrease. Barring a Modern unbanning, more copies entering the market means a price suppression.

Counterspell – Stable price. Counterspell is one of those weird commons that never gets cheaper and seems to maintain its price over the years regardless of reprints. Counterspell has a billion printings and still manages to hover around $1 NM for a common. The only reason that JvC Counterspell is $8.50 is…that’s right, because Jace is in the art. With even more copies of Jace art being printed it will only go down from here.

Chandra Nalaar – Stable price. The only reason I think it will stay stable is because Chandra Nalaar from the duel deck is the only Chandra with different art from the original Lorwyn version. In addition to being foil, the art is fantastic for the JvC version and I think this will buoy the price.

Daze – Price decrease. Common with the same art as Nemesis that isn’t a foil. Expect a significant price drop.

Imperious Perfect – Price decrease. Non-foil version with the same art will drop the price, at least for a little while. Casuals love elves and this card will sustain a $5 price tag in the long run regardless of the three printings it already has. I think you sell now, pick up Perfects once the EvG duel deck is reprinted and then buy back in at the new lower price. Then just wait for it to climb back up again.

Goblin Warchief – Price decrease. Goblins are less popular than elves, so I don’t see Warchiefs price rebounding like Perfects. Sell now before the reprint.

Reya Dawnbringer – Price decrease. I don’t think older copies will dip below $4, especially the Game Day Promo, yet the new version isn’t going to be worth that much based on the Conspiracy reprint price. She just got reprinted in Conspiracy and can barely sell for $1 on TCGPlayer. I don’t think the DvD reprint will be worth $4 like the older versions.

Wirewood Symbiote – Stable price. This is a great card in the Legacy Elves deck, which players might get interested in building if they decide to pick up the EvG duel deck anthology reprint. I have a hard time believing it will fall below $3 retail though if it does I am going to scoop up as many copies as I can.

Luminous Angel – Stable price. Players clearly prefer the DvD art to the Mirrodin art based on TCGPlayer averages so if the reprint art is the same I don’t see her moving from $3 retail.

Heedless One – Price decrease. The only reason the EvG copy sells for $3 TCGPlayer average is because it is much rarer than the Onslaught version, which sells for $1.50. I don’t see this card ever dropping below a $1 due to casual demand but the original EvG copy will drop in price due to this reprint.

Elvish Promenade – Price decrease. Elvish Promenade might be worth more than Heedless One however the price will still drop to around $2 or so with the new reprint. It is an uncommon that has three printings so price is partially propped up by rarity. Like Imperious Perfect, pick up after the reprint and wait for it to go up slowly over time. 

Goblin Ringleader – Price decrease. The EvG copy is around $3 right now, so like Promenade and Heedless One I can see this one going down to $2 as well.

Wirewood Lodge – Stable price. This is a favorite addition to Elf decks and being a land is pretty powerful. I don’t expect the price to move much if at all.

Magma Jet – Price decrease. Already has a ton of printings and just got a reprint in Theros. I don’t expect this to be more expensive than the Theros copy which is around $0.60 TCGPlayer average.

Siege-Gang Commander – Price decrease. The EvG foil is only $3 TCGPlayer average so the reprint is only going to suppress the price. Siege-Gang is a great card but it also had three printings besides the duel deck.

Rancor – Stable price. One of the top casual card aura’s, yet unfortunately its price has been hugely suppressed already by the recent M13 reprint. I don’t see the price up going up though at the same time I think that casual demand will prevent the card from dropping in price.

Twilight Shepherd – Stable price. Again, angel creature type so the casual demand is there. I don’t think this is going to move in price.

Fact or Fiction – Stable price. Just like Reya, the price can’t drop lower than $0.50 to $0.60 for this uncommon but only because it was just reprinted in Conspiracy. Not a reason to move your copies or acquire more.

Ambush Commander – Stable price. It’s only around $1.50 to $1.75 so I don’t think it is going to go lower yet you don’t want to buy in because I don’t think players like their lands being blown up once they become creatures.

My two cents on the upcoming Duel Decks Anthology. Leave a comment letting me know what you’re watching from the set or if you’re planning to get rid of anything before the release.