By: Cliff Daigle

This being the end of the year, I wanted to share with you all the pieces I am most pleased with, in chronological order.

Next week, it’s time to review how some New Year’s resolutions went!

2/6 – The Vendors’ Views

Normally at a GP between rounds, I’m searching for trades or looking for an EDH game. This time, I was chasing down vendors and trying to find out everything I could. What I found out was a lot more than what’s hot or not, and this was one of the first indicators of how 93/94 is really affecting the market for older cards. I’d hardly heard of the format at this point!

4/10 – We All Lose At Pack Wars

Every once in a while, I like to go back and review a basic concept of Magic finance. In this case, it’s the terrible value of a single pack. It is something I don’t always succeed at, especially when there’s foreign packs dripping with potential value.

For example, there was a card shop in New York I went to once, they had Japanese Shadowmoor packs. Only five of them left, and I bought them all to find the foil rare of…Stenchskipper. Yeah. Be envious.

5/15 – Watching the Sideboards

The philosophy here is valid, and comes with its own built-in proof: When I wrote this, the card Kolaghan’s Command was at $2/$6 for a foil, and if you’d bought in then (I picked up a few foils) then you’re up to $14/$30.

Not everything on that list has the same growth potential, but foil Rending Volley is still a great pickup right now, especially as anti-Twin tech in Modern. Kills Deceiver Exarch, Pestermite, even Restoration Angel if that variation is around. Can’t be countered and Spellskite is useless against it.

6/19 – Being an MTG Dad

By far, my favorite piece ever. I’m going to struggle with a lot of these questions over my daughters’ entire lives.

How much of my enjoyment of the game comes from being the accepted gender and race? Will I want to play less when I notice how many men spend less time casting spells and more time ogling them?

It is also the least financially relevant piece I’ve written for this site, as there’s no buy or sell advice within.

8/7 – Are you a Terrible Trader?

This piece spawned an interesting set of thoughts and comments on Reddit, and it has a lively set of examples in the comments.

One thing I want to make clear about my use of Hero’s Downfall as an example: if someone wants a card that will be rotating, trade it away at its current value. But when someone tries to push that card onto you, especially if it is not what you’re asking for, that’s when you should be leery.

10/2 – Awesome! Expedition! Now What?

The premise is simple: what to do if you open an Expeditions in Battle for Zendikar? How do you treat it? Keep it? Sell it? There’s a lot of potential options and all of them have advantages.

The new set of Expeditions, if the spoilers are to be believed, will have the most fascinating mix of very expensive and very cheap promo editions. It’ll be interesting to watch.

10/9 – The Lessons Origins Taught Us

Finally, this is a piece that I thought a lot about. How were so many of us so wrong? What lessons are here that we can learn from, in order to be ready for the next time a standard card approaches $80?

A lot of predictions were very right about the set. But the one we missed most on, Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, offered the greatest financial windfall and that’s what I looked at.

I hope you enjoyed my year of writing, as well as this selection of highlights!

---

 

By: Cliff Daigle

I’ve mentioned my all-foil deck before, but it only recently occurred to me that a decklist isn’t a bad idea, particularly in regard to the investment that this turned out to be.

Garza Zol, Plague Queen

Creatures:
Nirkana Revenant
Falkenrath Marauders
Soul Collector (Scourge Promo)
Blood Tyrant
Rakish Heir
Anowon, the Ruin Sage
Hero’s Downfall
Bloodlord of Vaasgoth (Promo)
Mirri the Cursed
Olivia Voldaren
Falkenrath Noble
Vampire Nocturnus (Promo)
Necropolis Regent
Kalastria Highborn (Full Art Promo)
Sangromancer
Butcher of Malakir
Unscythe, Killer of Kings
Szadek, Lord of Secrets
Dark Impostor
Ascendant Evincar
Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet
Falkenrath Aristocrat
Captivating Vampire
Kheru Bloodsucker
Sengir Vampire (foil Italian 9th)
Vampire Hexmage
Guul Draz Assassin (Buy-a-Box)
Stromkirk Captain
Vein Drinker
Sengir Nosferatu
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief
Bloodline Keeper
Markov Blademaster
Moroii
Vampire Nighthawk (Promo)
Vampiric Dragon
Bloodghast
Malakir Bloodwitch
Duskmantle Seer

Planeswalkers
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker

Enchantments
Oversold Cemetery
Rhystic Study (Commander’s Arsenal)
Phyrexian Arena (9th)
Bloodchief Ascension

Artifacts
Gilded Lotus (M13)
Urza’s Incubator
Mind’s Eye (CA)
Obelisk of Urd
Sol Ring (FTV)
Armillary Sphere
Gem of Becoming
Blade of the Bloodchief

Instants
Chaos Warp (Commander’s Arsenal)
Countersquall
Magmaquake (Game day)
Cryptic Command (MPR)

Sorceries
Increasing Ambition
Blood Tribute
Black Sun’s Zenith (Game Day)
In Garruk’s Wake (Promo)
Rise of the Dark Realms
Rite of Replication
Patriarch’s Bidding
Damnation (MPR)

Lands
Steam Vents (RTR)
Watery Grave (GTC)
Blood Crypt (RTR)
Drowned Catacomb (M12)
Dragonskull Summit (M12)
Graven Cairns (Shadowmoor)
Rakdos Carnarium (GPT)
Dimir Aqueduct (RAV)
Izzet Boilerworks (DIS)
Temple of Deceit
Temple of Epiphany
Temple of Malice
Bloodstained Mire (KTK)
Thespian’s Stage
Transguild Promenade
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Temple of the False God
Crumbling Necropolis
Reliquary Tower (FNM)
Cavern of Souls
Mana Confluence
Command Tower (judge promo)
Rupture Spire
Bojuka Bog
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgnoth
5 Swamp (all signed by the EDH Rules Committee)
3 Mountain
2 Island

I finished foiling this deck out in 2013, not long before I started writing for MTGPrice. The deck has changed slightly, and for today’s purposes, it’s worth mentioning that I had the other filter lands and Sulfur Falls, but the prices on those cards went so bananas that I felt I had to sell.

Today I want to make the case to you that foiling out a deck, a cube, or a collection is more than a way to satisfy the inner magpie, it’s an investment in a lot of ways.

Philosophy #1: Foil versions are printed less often, including reprints.

This is the basic tenet for picking up foil versions of cards. Foils are currently printed when the card is in Standard, when there’s a special set that has foil versions (such as Conspiracy or Modern Masters) and short-run special printings, like Judge promos, alternate-art versions in Clash Packs, and From the Vault sets.

That’s it. The card is in Standard or it’s a special reprint to get a foil version. This includes Magic Online redemptions, as that’s only an option for a limited time.

Because there are not only less foil versions as compared to the nonfoils, and the options for reprinting foils are significantly fewer, there just won’t be many foils. This leads to the foil multiplier, an unofficial metric that I use when figuring out how hard to chase a card.

Usually, a card in foil is about two to two and a half times as valuable. This general rule works for almost any card that isn’t subject to greater Legacy/Modern/casual demand, and variations in that rule indicate one of two things: The card is in great demand because it’s ubiquitous, especially in Standard; or the demand for a special version is much higher.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Anafenza, the Foremost is 5.99 regular and $13 in foil, including the Prerelease promos. She isn’t in heavy foil demand, keeping the multiplier at a little above two.

Rending Volley is 55 cents nonfoils, and as far as foils go there’s only Amazon at 4.49 and Card Kingdom at $6. Bouncing over to TCGPlayer, we see that the lowest is about $6 before shipping. That’s a multiplier of about 12, and a sign that the card is being picked up in older formats. Sure enough, it’s a popular sideboard option in Modern and occasionally Legacy.

The Chain Veil is $1.36 in normal and about $7 in foil, entirely due to casual demand. The only decklists I can find for it are Commander decks with lots of planeswalkers and that want to repeat using their effects over and over.

Checking the foil multiplier is how I like to gauge its appeal outside of Standard, and is a good measure of its likely future value.

Philosophy #2: Foils are more resistant to losing value when reprinted.

Note that I am not saying immune, I’m saying resistant. The price will likely drop at first but it won’t drop as far and it will eventually recover. Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is an example.

She took a hit, being a foil in Modern Masters 2015 but it was for about 30% of her value, as compared to losing more than half with the nonfoil. The judge promo also puts a limit on her upper value, as it represents a very chase target, especially being written in Phyrexian script.

Notice, though, that large period of time when the foil was in the sub-$40 range. That’s the goal and the dream. If you foil out your deck when foils are new, then the price is perfect.

When a foil is reprinted, it’s very rarely in the same art and the same frame. Even when it is, the price will often rebound over time.

Case in point: Phyrexian Arena. Even with three foil versions (Apocalypse, 8th, and 9th) the card is old enough and awesome enough that all the versions are about $60.

Philosophy #3: Foil lands are often the hardest to acquire, the most expensive, and therefore the safest long-term value.

The cards that took me the longest to acquire were the Ravnica block bounce lands. No store had them in stock, and it seemed like no one had them for trade. Ever. It was easier to find filter lands, shocks, and everything else, but those bounce lands took me six months past the rest of them to get. Only when I saw on a message board that someone was breaking up a foil Cube did I get these lands.

Interestingly, those bounce lands had started to really increase in price from a stable $4 when Modern Masters 2015 came along. The originals have kept most of their value, while the new ones are about half that price. I think scarcity is at work there, in that the original foils are in decks and not in circulation.

I’m going to be watching the foil prices of the filter lands closely now that the Expeditions lands have been spoiled. Is it going to depress prices? Hold down the upper ones? Will the originals be on the market if lots of people upgrade to the newest versions?

Philosophy #4: Foils can be in worse condition, and there will still be a market.

Trust me on this: People who want foils want the foils badly. Being in less-than-perfect condition isn’t much of a barrier to acquisition. I wouldn’t give full value, don’t get me wrong, but a SP foil of a card I need in foil is going to have me drooling hard.

Selling the SP/MP/HP foil is not easy, but when you find the person who wants to have it, they will happily take it off of your hands.

Philosophy #5: Nonfoil reprints can increase the price of your foil.

Let’s look at Black Market, the foil from Mercadian Masques.

Being a $4 card in the newest Commander set hasn’t budged this price yet. But what it has done is increase the number of people who know about this card. From there, it’s only a matter of time before the larger number of decks it’s in translates to a greater demand for the foil.

Another example from two years ago: Forced Fruition. This was one of many cards to see a spike because lots of Nekusar, the Mindrazer decks. The nonfoil spiked, as did the foil. If this had been Standard, then the foils wouldn’t be much more than the regular version. Instead, we have a foil multiplier of a little more than two.

If you want to share other tips, tricks, or reasons to go foil, please feel free to comment. I try not to have this be a humblebrag about how I got in before things got expensive, but that’s what happened. It can also happen to you, if you start foiling now.

---

 

By: Cliff Daigle

This is my Bloodstained Mire.

Looks pretty good, right? It’s Onslaught, pretty good edges, no real…wait.

Look closer.

Yup. That’s a bend. It’s not even an inch long but it’s enough for Star City Games to have marked it as ‘Damaged’ and sell it to me for about 50% of retail value. At the time, about three years ago, the Mire was $40 or so and I bought this for $20 for a Commander deck.

I remain quite pleased with this decision, and I’m going to encourage you to do the same.

Cards that have seen a lot of play occupy a weird place in our minds. They are functionally the same card, but they might have been washed, or played a lot without sleeves, or someone picked it up off a table and put fingernail marks on the edges. (I’ve done all of these things!)

The more that a card is marked, the less it is worth, since it’s no longer perfect, or close to that. Mint is a rarely found card condition, so Near Mint is what we mostly aspire to. Cards don’t always exit the pack as Mint condition, due to being off-center or slightly discolored.

While it’s true that those cards which are Moderately Played or Heavily Played are worth less in a retail setting, they remain the actual card and you cannot lose sight of that. Dual lands are still dual lands, on the reserved list, and there will not be any more of them printed. Even if they are messed up, they remain a rare card and something that you should want to acquire for the right price.

That price can be difficult to ascertain. Star City used to have displays with their damaged cards, cards which they didn’t list on their website because scans of each and every card is just not worth the time, aside from the most expensive ones like pieces of Power. I haven’t been to an SCG Open in years, mainly because I live on the West Coast and they don’t bother, unfortunately.

Other dealers will sometimes have the box or binder of damaged goods, and I’m telling you to always check such things when they show up, for two very good reasons:

1. Value or Budget – Look, we aren’t all big spenders. MTGPrice is not here to only for those who wish to spend several thousand dollars on speculative buys. We are also here for those who wish to stretch their budget on cards, and damaged cards may be the best way for you to do that.

For instance, if you have a large selection of Commander decks, you may get tired of paying full price on things over and over again because they are just so awesome in so many decks. How many Mikaeus, the Unhallowed do I need to trade for, after all? The lands needing to get moved around is especially egregious, and that’s why I got the Mire, to be in a second deck.

2. Trade Bait – This is about honesty. You’re going to buy a card that grades as damaged and yet is still very useable…just not for you. So when you keep this flawed card in your trade binder, you can have something that people want to trade for, but be honest with them about the condition. There are a lot of people that are going to want this card and will trade you at a surprising amount of value.

People build a lot of cubes and decks and don’t necessarily want to break the bank in order to get the cards they want. Using played/damaged cards is perfectly acceptable in a lot of groups, especially for rarer cards that are now twenty years old and exceedingly difficult to find in near mint condition.

When you acquire a damaged card, I implore you to not try to get every cent you can out of someone when you’re trading it away. Be realistic and be friendly, because that person will likely take more than one of your damaged cards. Having an out for such things will be very useful.

Finally, don’t be afraid of picking up a half-price old card because those older cards are surprisingly in demand, no matter condition. The “old-school” format of 93/94 and the collectors of Alpha and Beta are seriously warping the environment. Beta Chaoslace is $40!

Condition really matters when you want to max out on a card’s value, just think of Moxes and Library of Alexandria and such. There are a lot of times, though, where acquiring a beat up version of something is preferable. Keep an open mind!

---

 

By: Cliff Daigle

I am pausing in the quest for another Gaea’s Cradle.

Like many people on PucaTrade, I’m a big fan of trading my current Standard cards at full value in order to work towards a larger-value card.

I’ve sent off random stuff that no one in their right mind would ever take in full value towards the Cradle. A playset of Kabira Evangel? New Drana, Liberator of Malakir back when it was at $17? Solid all the way around.

I was about to start sending off my leftover fetch lands when I saw on Twitter that people are buying PucaPoints at the rate of $0.67 per 100 points, or $67 for 10,000 points.

Now I’m quite concerned and I don’t think I am going to be a part of this economy for a little while.

PucaTrade has always allowed people to buy points from them, at the cost of $1 for 100 points, a very easy and direct conversion rate. Their card prices are usually within a few percentage points of MTGPrice’s Fair Trade Price, though they have their own system for establishing that value.

For example, Flooded Strand has a price here of $22.54, while it’s 2156 points on Puca. Seems legit enough, right?

If you have an Uncommon or Rare-level account, you can transfer PucaPoints to other users. This is useful if you want to advertise a bonus for Expeditions lands, or something along those lines. It also allows you to post on assorted social media that your points can be bought, and that is where I start getting concerned.

Let’s go back to Gaea’s Cradle, as it’s been a target of mine for a while.

It’s currently got a FTP of $182, and is worth 17336 PucaPoints. This is the magic and the promise of PucaTrade, because I could trade about 8 Flooded Strands from Khans of Tarkir for one Cradle and I would do that in a heartbeat. Puca has an issue of needing to wait for someone to decide to mail out that Cradle, but that’s not the focus today.

The possible trade of eight Strands for the Cradle presumes that everything is of equal value, but when cash is introduced, the values start to skew.

Let’s look deeper at the Cradle. It’s buylisting for $118 at best, and eBay auctions are closing at about $120, with some variation on condition or bidding wars. That’s very close to 66% of the card’s value when it comes to cash, and that’s in line with expectations. We accept that retail value in a trade is not the same as cash value, and it’s why you should generally run away from people who want to price your cards at buylist.

To a casual player, Puca’s philosophy is that you are getting full value, but if you can buy points at this rate (and it may have farther to fall!) then you won’t be getting the full return. This level of availability for points makes me very nervous. It’s inflationary, and I’m going to leave it to people more versed in economics to explain the cycle and the problems.

The short version is this: If I’m paying full price in trade, I am worried that someone is swooping in and paying two-thirds of its value. I don’t want to be part of this economy, especially if the points start to lower further in cash value.

I’m not calling for the end of PucaTrade. I’m saying that this trend of cash affecting the Puca economy as something that makes me very worried.

It’s true that this is more about my perception, my feelings, my concerns. Cash has always had a warping effect on the Magic economy, and points being sold for two-thirds of their value makes the Puca economy the same as eBay or TCGPlayer or buylists.

From the other end, though, I can’t argue with the value. If you want to acquire cards for less than retail, you’re going to have to pay cash. Buying points is a very easy way to get the points you want without a lot of the legwork.

It seems like such a hassle to me, though. Going back to the Cradle example, I’d need to spend about $120 to get the points I need, and then I have to wait. There’s only three people who want the nonfoil as of this writing, and only one person has the points and the desire for the judge foil version.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just hit up eBay at that point? If I want to spend the cash, then I should be able to get what I want that much faster.

I’ve never pretended to be a big-dollar spender. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. I try hard not to buy singles. It’s not hard for me to think that I spend less on Magic that any of the writers here. I have to say that PucaTrade’s model has been a great one for me, and I would hate to see it be warped and changed.

It’s entirely possible that I’m overthinking this. The sky isn’t falling, but I don’t like the look of the clouds. Please, add a comment below and tell me why I’m right or why I’m wrong.

---