Category Archives: Casual Fridays

Casual Fridays

Don’t Chase Trends This Weekend!

So I’m going to be the contarian voice with the Pro Tour in Hawaii: I don’t think there is a lot of money to be made by trying to stay ahead of the spikes and chasing the new hot tech.

Actually, let me rephrase that: I don’t think there’s a lot of extra money to be made this weekend.

The Pro Tour this weekend is going to showcase the best of the best playing for a lot of money. Teams of professional players have been huddling and practicing for some time, getting ready, debating pick orders, choosing sideboards, etc.

We will get to watch them, and we will see immediate effects on prices. The important thing to note, though, is that value is only to be gained in one of two ways:

  1. Selling at a price before the price drops lower.
  2. Buying at a price before the price increases.

So if you’ve got TCG loaded and you’re ready to buy at a moment’s notice, I want you to stop for a second. How many are you going to buy? And how many are you going to sell?

Chances are, unless you manage a storefront, you’re not going to buy too much. The question also begs, why are you buying? If you’re trying to acquire a supply of a card (let’s use Fumigate as an example) in order to sell it at a higher price, are you ready for the associated fees and shipping and the time problems?

At this point I want to refer you to Travis’s awesome piece from more than two years ago, and it still holds very true: “My Spec Quadrupled But I Only Made 75 Cents Each” because he does an excellent job detailing the problems of cashing in when you hit it big.

Travis doesn’t bring up PucaTrade, which gives you an approximation of retail value, but in real terms, you’re going to have a very hard time making big money on stuff you buy, especially if you’re buying a lot of something. PucaTrade allows you to send out things before they crash, but it’s not an exchange built for speed.

Now, I’m not all doom and gloom. Being quick to act means you can get things cheap that you’re going to play with, and that is something I’m all for. It is a really terrible feeling, being keenly aware that this $10 card was just $5 a couple of days ago. That’s real money because it’s saved. We also have the officially-named ‘fear of missing out’ which means that we are anxious about not being aware of an opportunity, of not getting in quick enough.

So for example, if a White-Blue control deck goes on camera and wipes the floor with a Smuggler’s Copter deck, and the WU player has 4x Fumigate, then lots of people are going to play follow the leader and pick up a set of Fumigate, which will climb the price. Let’s say it doubles and hits $5.

Being early to act can be worth the $10 you just saved on a playset of Fumigate. Good job!

What I do not want you to do is be the person who is buying Fumigate during the spike at $4 or so. It’s not topped out, but it’s slowing and you want to get your set before it hits a higher price. In this case, I’m going to tell you to calm down. Almost all of the cards that spike during the Pro Tour will travel back down. Cards have to see a lot of play, too.

Think Kozilek’s Return. That’s kept a price. But so many other cards don’t keep the heights they hit, and go right back to a good level, especially the brand-new cards from the set that’s still being opened. For instance, the darling of PT Eldritch Moon was Emrakul, the Promised End.
emrakul

See that graph? It sure did spike in price for a couple of days…and then went back as more were opened. This is not a trend you want to be chasing.

It’s not impossible for you to make money this weekend. You will most likely gain value this weekend if you move fast on the cards that see a lot of play, but gaining value is not the hard part. The hard part is trying to make money off the continued climb. As Travis pointed out, you’re buying at a low retail price, but you’re probably not going to sell at a retail price.

So my advice to you this weekend is to sit back and watch. Don’t feel like you’re going to miss out. You can list those few cards on eBay. Avoid the fees, trade it away. Try to relax and enjoy the top 8 in Hawaii!

I don’t think you can gain enough value from high-speed trades and resales to make it worth your time. This puts me at odds with a lot of others, but it’s how I feel and I want you to take a deep breath and just enjoy the best in the world play this awesome game.

Casual Fridays

Go! Get (out of) The Copter!

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I don’t care if you’re tired of Smuggler’s Copter jokes. It needs to be done and I have to give a terrible apology if you hear the title in an Ahnuld accent.

So we missed the boat on the Copter. It’s $18 for an in-print Standard rare at week one, and while I know that the price is going to go down, how far can it go?

The answer is, pretty far. I want to examine some rares, not mythics, to see how far we can expect the Copter to fall.

Let’s start with Shadows over Innistrad, and look for commonly played rares. We aren’t going to look at Eldritch Moon, since that’s a small set and I want to compare apples to apples.

titi

One of the first rares to burst onto the scene, and one whose preorder price kept climbing upward, was Thing in the Ice. Since this has come out, it’s seen some play but not a lot, rarely being the centerpiece of a deck.

Yes, it was above $15 at one point at the beginning! The lack of play lowered the price, and then there was a time not too long ago where Blue-Red Thermo-Thing was popular, and that is why the buylist price bumped up a little.

But yikes. Fifteen bucks down to five, that’s a big loss…though the card isn’t terribly popular.

Let’s look at something that often got played alongside Copter: Declaration in Stone.

declaration

Two mana, exile a creature, and there are drawbacks in the form of Clues. Cheap, efficient, and powerful, and played a lot, though not as much as the Copter.

Even so, it’s gone from a high of $17 down to its current plateau of $4. It’s got Kaladesh and three more sets before it’s out of Standard, so there’s room for it to fall more or perhaps to creep upward. As a rare, there are a whole ton of these out there and that’s why the price has fallen has far as this. Removal this good should hold a price, and it’s actually not the usual thing for a rare to hold a price above that of a booster pack.

Shadows over Innistrad has three: Thing in the Ice, Declaration in Stone, and Tireless Tracker.

Maybe what we should also do is look at Battle for Zendikar, because that has Expeditions to goose people to buy more packs. The data doesn’t lie, either: it’s very difficult for rares to keep value. From Battle for Zendikar, the only rares over $3 are lands: Cinder Glade, Prairie Stream, and Shambling Vent.

My point is that the price on the Copter, and a lot of other rares, are about to start dropping as Kaladesh gets opened in earnest. There’s a big Limited Grand Prix this weekend, and that’s going to be a huge injection of supply into the market.

If you’re hellbent on playing Standard this weekend or next, you can go ahead and buy your playset for $70 or so, and play it for quite a while. It’s possible–possible!–that the Pro Tour next weekend spikes it even farther, but I can’t even remember the last $20 rare we had in Standard.

It’s going to be fascinating to watch.

Think of it like Aether Hub. Sure, it’s a four-of all over the place, and it’s a good card, but people, it is an uncommon. An in-print uncommon has an eBay price of $9-$10 a playset!

This first weekend of prices is crazy. The play is heavily to sell. SELL. You can buylist the Copter, a rare, for $9. You can get $10 for Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, and that’s a four-of mythic.

I’m trying very hard to bring up all the evidence that I can to convince you that if you’re buying a Copter right now, it’s to play it for the next 18 months. Please don’t buy it now, hoping it goes up more. Don’t chase the tail end of this. Wait. Be patient. The prices will drop, and you’ll lose money if you buy now and hope to sell the Saturday of the PT.

Casual Fridays, Uncategorized

Expeditions Begetting Inventions

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So I have to say that the Invention series is gorgeous. I am entranced by all of them and I want to pick up all of them. Mostly. I don’t have a use for the mana accelerants, but they are all beautiful and shiny and really appeal to the showing-off aspect of playing Commander.

I have many direct wants for different decks when it comes to Inventions, and I know that right now is not the time for buying Inventions. Supply is too low, demand is sky-high. They are getting opened in droves, which means volatility in prices.

What I want to do today is look back at the Expeditions and see if there are price trends that I should be paying attention to. I wrote a year ago about what to do if you opened an Expedition, and while the principles still apply, I want to focus on the Expeditions and how they relate to what I think will happen in the end with Inventions.

Let’s look at one of the high-end Expeditions: Scalding Tarn.

tarn

So it started CRAZY high, at $450 when this was first introduced, but it swung down to nearly $200 and then back over three, which is about where it’s settled in now.

This graph makes a lot of sense. We didn’t know how many of these there would be, and we didn’t know what the pricing would be. As the numbers came out (more copies than expected) the price dropped, but recovered well. Most importantly, it’s been relatively stable for this year, and that’s what I want to know.

How about a mid-level Expedition? Here’s Steam Vents:

vents

This is an interesting graph as well. We have the same fluctuation at first, but there is a distinct downward trend. It’s a slow trend, but it’s there, with the drop in buylist pricing is there in July for almost all of the Expeditions, even if the price is creeping upwards.

How about the low-end ones? Cinder Glade:

glade

These are also trending slowly downwards, and that’s important to note with the Gearhulks and whatever the newer Inventions will be. When Aether Revolt lands, I will look at those Inventions alongside the Oath of the Gatewatch Expeditions.

So in general, these have trended downwards slightly. That’s super important to keep in mind going forward, indicating that patience is my keyword when it comes to the Inventions I want.

It’s not universal, though. For one, Overgrown Tomb has gone up, perhaps matching the recent rise of Abzan decks in Modern. Not every Expedition has followed the same track, and it’s worth noting that there were no first-time foils in the Expeditions, where we have our first foil Mana Vault.

Other writers have noted that the presence of Inventions will lower the price of every other card in the set, and that looks true for Battle of Zendikar. Prices for that set are extremely low, even considering that the set only has six months to rotation. In general, I expect all prices to drop over time, but what I want to know, and what only time will tell me, is how patience will pay off for the Inventions as well as the Expeditions.

Full disclosure: I’ve put a couple of Inventions on my Puca want list, with a bonus of 15%, and I am confident that I’m going to get at least one of the ones I want. I know that a lot of people are down on PucaTrade at this point, so I want to be clear that I still have points and I still have faith.

Casual Fridays

Last-minute Pickups from Origins and DTK

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Well, we are at the end of the old blocks. Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins are rotating out in two weeks, the brewing with Kaladesh has all our attention, and there’s a prerelease to go play in! I love this time of year.

I especially love the rotation time, because this is when I want to invest the most and get the most for my money.

I’m looking for cards seeing fringe play in Modern and Legacy, I want to have some cool foils, and I want to check for underpriced but powerful Commander cards. I am keenly aware that the Masterpiece series means even more reprints, on top of extra sets, theme decks, and all of the ways that Wizards has to add to the supply of a card. It’s possible the old ways are no good, but they can’t reprint it all! Diversify with me.

For the most part, I expect these to grow slowly over time, with the potential to spike hard.

Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy – $24 regular/$65 foil/$190 SDCC promo – This sees a significant amount of play in Modern and Legacy, and I know lots of people are noticing how low this price has gone. It’s true that there is a black SDCC promo version, and that puts a ceiling on how high the foils can go, but picking up these in nonfoil is perfectly fine, as it’s due to do something amazing again. It will not take much to spike in either Eternal format.

Alhammarret’s Archive – $4/$11 – One of the best casual cards around, and a leading candidate for a reprint. In Commander, this is busted right in half, and will rightfully get you targeted by the rest of the table.

Starfield of Nyx – $2.50/$7 – So I would love this card, and I would marry it, and I would build a house out of these cards, except…there’s going to be a Masterpiece series of enchantments and it seems like this is easy-peasy one of the best enchantment enablers. It’s Opalescence plus reanimation all in one card.

Sphinx’s Tutelage – $1.50/$5 – Mill cards always have life. This has seen the smallest sprinkle of Standard play, but this is a pick for the unseen masses. It’s easy to reprint, but really, it’s just an awesome card. It takes something we all love doing and turns it into a weapon. I’ve seen this card just chainsaw through Commander players, a sign that not enough of us play Gaea’s Blessing or other such cards.

Collected Company -$11/$33 – If you think this is due to get banned, stay away. I think that it will not get banned in Modern, and for a card that’s an automatic four-of in some incredibly powerful strategies, a rare from a big set that was only opened in a small set…it’s very tempting. There are Clash Pack copies that are keeping the supply greater, but this is a format-warping card that must be respected.

Narset Transcendent – $7/$21 – She’s not down to the $5 threshold that I usually look for in underpriced planeswalkers, but her price is surprisingly high for a card seeing so little organized play. She can’t protect herself, but that isn’t quite as relevant for casual formats. I like having this card, and the trajectory is due to start climbing upward.

Sarkhan Unbroken – $4/$13 – I think this is cheaper than Narset because he’s three colors. He’s more powerful on his own, but he can’t doublecast spells the way Narset can, and his ultimate requires some sweet dragons to tutor up. That Dragon emphasis is what intrigues me, though, especially at a measly $4.

Kolaghan’s Command – $6/$21 – This is a pretty amazing card in Modern and Legacy, and the nonfoil has already spiked to $20 once in its career. I’m in, and I will feel vindicated when it breaks $10. When it’s over $15 again, I’ll take myself out to dinner.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier – $2.50/$7.50 – I like having copies of this around, not because Jund decks in Modern are about to abuse it, but because it’s a really amazing Zombie. Angels, Dragons, Elves, Goblins, and Zombies are likely the top 5 tribes, and the appeal cannot be overstated.

Foil Impact Tremors – $2 – It’s only half of Purphoros, God of the Forge, but if you want this type of effect in your Commander deck, you want redundant cards. I wasn’t expecting this foil to be this high a multiplier, but that’s a sign of the casual appeal. When I notice that, I want to have some of these in stock.