All posts by Travis Allen

Travis Allen has been playing Magic on and off since 1994, and got sucked into the financial side of the game after he started playing competitively during Zendikar. You can find his daily Magic chat on Twitter at @wizardbumpin. He currently resides in upstate NY, where he is a graduate student in applied ontology.
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MTG Fast Finance: Episode 7

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by Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin) & James Chillcott (@mtgcritic)

MTG Fast Finance is a weekly podcast that tries to break down the flurry of financial activity in the world of Magic: The Gathering into a fast, fun and useful thirty minute format. Follow along with our seasoned hosts as they walk you through this week’s big price movements, their picks of the week, metagame analysis and a rotating weekly topic.

Show Notes: Feb 26th

Segment 1: Top Movers of the Week

Chandra, Flamecaller (Oath of the Gatewatch)
Start: $9.00
Finish: $19.00
Gain: +$10.00 (+111%)

Petrified Field (Odyssey)
Start: $4.5.00
Finish: $12.25
Gain: +$7.75 (+172%)

Hall of the Bandit Lord (Foil) (Champions of Kamigawa)
Start: $33.00
Finish: $100.00
Gain: +$67.00 (+200%)

Thorn of Amethyst (Both) (Lorwyn)
Start: $4.00
Finish: $15.00
Gain: +$11.00 (+275%)

Peacekeeper (Weatherlight)
Start: $3.00
Finish: $13.00
Gain: +$10.00 (+333%)

Shatterstorm (10th Edition)
Start: $32.00
Finish: $200.00
Gain: +$168.00 (+525%)

Oubliette (Arabian Nights)
Start: $15.00
Finish: $100.00
Gain: +$85.00 (+566%)

Brindle Shoat (Planechase)
Start: $0.50
Finish: $4.00
Gain: +$3.50 (+700%)

Segment 2: Cards to Watch

James Picks:

  1. Shambling Vents Foil, Battle for Zendikar, Confidence Level 7: $10 to $20+ (+100%, 6-12+ months)
  2. Assorted Battle for Zendikar Mythics, Confidence Level 6: $2 to $8 (+60%, 6-12+ months)
  3. Sanctum of Ugin, Battle for Zendikar, Confidence Level 7: $1 to $5 (400%, 12+ months)

Travis Picks:

  1. Kozilek, the Great Distortion, Oath of the Gatewatch, Confidence Level 9: $7 to $15 (+115%, 0-12+ months)
  2. Oath of the Gatewatch product, Confidence Level 6: $80 to $120 (+50%, 6-12 months)

Disclosure: Travis and James may own speculative copies of the above cards.

Segment 3: Metagame Week in Review

Even Legacy isn’t immune to the Eldrazi menace. Two copies made it into the top eight of SCG Philadelphia, alongside three Delver decks. What’s this event tell us about Legacy, Eldrazi, and the Reserve List?

Segment 4: Topic of the Week – MTGO 101

James manages a portfolio of roughly 10,000 tickets on MTGO. Travis takes some time to ask him basic questions about basic MTGO investing principles, the difference between online and paper, and where to look for profits.

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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PROTRADER: Presidential Conspiracy Theory

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Are you familiar with this piece of American folklore? The lives of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln shared many facets, which depending on your understanding of probability, ranges from “unremarkable” to “concrete evidence in reincarnation.” Among those amazing coincidences are “last and whole names include the same number of letters” and “assassinated.” Here’s the Wiki page on the topic; I’d advise you refrain from viewing if you’re the gullible sort.

Capture

(Seemingly) switching topics entirely, do the words “God Book” mean anything to you? If you started playing Magic in the last few years, probably not. Perhaps you heard tenured players use the term in reference to New Phyrexia, but if you weren’t playing back then, you wouldn’t have much reason to know what it is.

Those of us that were around for New Phyrexia are quite familiar with God Books though.

A whole sordid tale played out over several weeks, which you can read about here. It was the first major leak in modern-bordered Magic. The short version is that a French guy who was good friends with Guillaume Matignon and Guillaume Wafo-Tapa was goaded to releasing a pdf of the entirety of New Phyrexia on IRC. (Yes, IRC. Don’t know what IRC is? Don’t feel bad; it was just as irrelevant in 2011 as it is today.) Shortly after the God Book found its way into the hands of the public, and a month before official spoilers started, the entire internet-using Magic community had access to the entire card list.

It was thrilling and shocking at the time. (What was especially shocking was that not only was a Stoneforge Mystic answer not in the set, but they had doubled down with this new nonsensical equipment “Batterskull.” We all know how that one turned out.) After the initial excitement of pouring over the entire list, the fervor died down, and like the man who knows his girlfriend already found the ring in the jacket pocket, Wizards was forced to go through the motions with full knowledge that the audience lacked the emotional intensity so desired. Months later, once the dust had settled, several players were banned for years and the set was likely undersold as a result of diminished hype.

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MTG Fast Finance: Episode 6

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by Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin) & James Chillcott (@mtgcritic)

MTG Fast Finance is a weekly podcast that tries to break down the flurry of financial activity in the world of Magic: The Gathering into a fast, fun and useful thirty minute format. Follow along with our seasoned hosts as they walk you through this week’s big price movements, their picks of the week, metagame analysis and a rotating weekly topic.

Show Notes: Feb 26th

Segment 1: Top Movers of the Week

One With Nothing (Saviors of Kamigawa)
Start: $2.00
Finish: $4.00
Gain: +$2.00 (+100%)

Null Rod (Weatherlight)
Start: $15.00
Finish: $40.00
Gain: +$25.00 (+166%)

Adarkar Wastes (All)
Start: $3.50
Finish: $14.00
Gain: +$10.50 (+300%)

Firestorm (Weatherlight)
Start: $6.00
Finish: $18.00
Gain: +$12.00 (+200%)

Arboria (Legends)
Start: $4.00
Finish: $20.00
Gain: +$16.00 (+400%)

Thorn of Amethyst (Lorwyn)
Start: $3.00
Finish: $15.00
Gain: +$12.00 (+400%)

Scorched Ruins (Weatherlight)
Start: $3.00
Finish: $20.00
Gain: +$18.00 (+566%)

Magmatic Force (Commander)
Start: $1.50
Finish: $10.00
Gain: +$8.50 (+566%)

Meditate (Tempest)
Start: $3.00
Finish: $40.00
Gain: +$37.00 (+1233%)

Segment 2: Cards to Watch

James Picks:

  1. Phyrexian Dreadnought, Mirage, Confidence Level 6: $15 to $30+ (+100%, 0-6 months)
  2. Phyrexian Tower, Urza’s Saga, Confidence Level 7: $25 to $40+ (+60%, 0-6 months)
  3. Avaricious Dragon, Magic Origins, Confidence Level 4: $2 to $5+ (150%, 0-3 months)
  4. Endbringer (foil), Oath of the Gatewatch, Confidence Level 7: $3 to $8+ (166%, 0-6 months)

Travis Picks:

  1. Kozilek, the Great Distortion, Oath of the Gatewatch, Confidence Level 9: $7 to $15 (+115%, 0-12+ months)
  2. Chandra, Flamecaller, Oath of the Gatewatch, Confidence Level 5: $10 to $20 (+100%, 0-3+ months)
  3. Goblin Dark-Dwellers, Oath of the Gatewatch, Confidence Level 6: $2 to $5 (+233%, 0-6+ months)

Disclosure: Travis and James may own speculative copies of the above cards.

Segment 3: Metagame Week in Review

The SCG Modern Open in St. Louis this past weekend was dominated with Eldrazi decks once again, constituting not just half the top 8, but half the top 32 as well. As the menaces of the blind eternities continue to ravage constructed Magic, can we as players see a light at the end of the tunnel?

Segment 4: Topic of the Week – Should Wizards of the Coast test Modern?

Given the state of Modern, should Wizards make an effort to test new sets for the format in order to prevent these warped metagames? The guys also touch briefly on Conspiracy 2 and what it means for Magic’s financial health.

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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PROTRADER: Hope Springs Eternal

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By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

The latest episode of MTG Fast Finance with myself and James Chillcott discusses the week’s biggest moves, our cards to watch, and Eternal Masters. Check it out here!

It’s been a wild two weeks, hasn’t it? I said in at least two mediums that Eternal Masters was a baseless rumor that sounded more like a Reddit pipe dream rather than an actual coherent business strategy, and then Wizards went ahead and announced it. The community was especially flush with drama regarding a few deepthroat-esque accounts regarding EMA, the full set list, and supposedly clandestine vendor operations. And to top it all off, a Maro Tumblr post sent pockets of the community into a tizzy with the perceived promise of a new constructed format.

Compared to June, when I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for article ideas, this is great. So many topics worth discussing!

I’ll start with an amusing image I posted on Twitter this weekend:

What are we looking at here? Within the 24 hours leading up to that tweet, r/mtgEternal was the subreddit which had grown the most across all of Reddit. Someone made a subreddit not for Eternal Masters, mind you, but rather this imaginary constructed format called Eternal, and so many people joined it was the fastest growing subreddit. Why? Where is all of this coming from? Can we profit on it?

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