By: Cliff Daigle

I know we are all abuzz about the Born of the Gods spoilers, but today I want to address two topics that came up last week: counterfeits and reprints.

Reddit and Twitter and all plenty of other folks were up in arms about the Chinese company making very high quality fakes for not much money. These were Power 9 cards, fetchlands, duals, and all sorts of old and new cards that would fool anyone while inside a sleeve. There are indications that these have been trickling onto the market already, especially via eBay.

For a casual player, I recognize that the impact is minor. We tend to get cards and then keep them indefinitely. Our powered cubes, our foiled decks: these are the reason cards get scarce. It doesn’t matter much to me when cards go up in value, because it’s in a deck and is likely going to stay there.

The danger comes when we want to sell out or extract some increased value. More than once in my life, I’ve sold cards to pay for needed things, like a new transmission or student loan payments. Counterfeits threaten that value, and while Wizards is taking a step with the foil stamp soon to be added in Magic 2015, this is not the last we’ve heard of this problem.

To those of you who want to buy a set of power and all ten duals for pennies just so that you can have official-looking cards without the official price: shut up. You don’t understand the impact of what you are saying. A flood of indistinguishable counterfeits would be deadly, since no one would buy boosters to get cards for Standard when the counterfeits can be had for next to nothing.

In happier news, we are getting Modern Event Decks soon. No word yet on what’s in them, but we know the MSRP is going to be $75. We are all still guessing at what will be included, which colors and type of strategy, but Zendikar fetchlands have been a very popular guess, even if we don’t know how many of each will be in the deck.

It’s notable that Wizards is doing a single event deck. The Standard ones have all come in pairs, and frequently had a problem where one deck was more valuable than the other. This led to a glut of the lesser decks on shelves, and stores didn’t want to reorder both in order to get the in-demand one. They’ve announced that they will reprint this deck to meet demand, so there’s a chance that everyone who wants one can get one. (Just a chance!)

This first event deck will be a bit tentative as Wizards figures out what they are doing. However, you should expect more of these to come down the pipeline, as they seek to reprint cards and increase the availability of certain Modern staples.

Reprints have changed in a lot of ways since the early days of Magic. No longer do we have black border (original printing) vs. white border (core set reprint). Foil-only printings are a thing, as well as being able to buy a product and know for sure what cards it contains.

Most interestingly, reprinting a card these days doesn’t automatically cause the value of the older card to tank. This was not always the case.

In the past, there was a set called Chronicles. This set was designed to increase the number of certain cards in circulation. This was 1996, and Wizards had a lot of growing pains left to do. The secondary market was ill-formed and not well-connected. We all got our prices from Scrye or InQuest.

Chronicles destroyed the prices of many cards, but it’s worth mentioning that at this time, price and supply wasn’t centralized and shared online as it is now. It also needs to be noted that the summer of Fourth Edition/Chronicles/Ice Age is when Wizards finally got their logistics in line. Stores would get all they asked for, without needing to inflate their order.

We have had more than a few reprints lately. Some have caused prices of originals to tank. Many more have seen the new ones be cheap, while the original stays near its pre-reprinting price.

Example #1: Tarmogoyf

This and Dark Confidant were the banner reprints from Modern Masters, and their price hasn’t really budged. I know MMA was a limited run, but I really wish we could compare the quantities sold of MMA to Future Sight to Ravnica.

Example #2: Darksteel Forge

Now it gets interesting. The Planechase reprint didn’t hurt the value much. Being in Magic 2014 took half its value away…but note the gap between the two older versions and the M14 version. Is it worth a few bucks to have a different set symbol and different flavor text?

Example #3: Akroma’s Memorial

As one of the most unfair casual cards out there, the original was pushing $10 before it was reprinted in M12. The new one bottomed out right afterwards, around $3. But lo and behold, both the Future Sight and the M13 copies are around $8 now.

Example #4: Thoughtseize (Lorwyn)

Look at the graph for this card for 108 weeks. Last January it saw a big rise, reaching $80 before the reprint news. It’s back to $40, while the Theros version is just $15. The big question is how that price will change over time. We are about to embark on Born of the Gods, but Theros packs will be opened until summertime. Magic Online redemption is going to be a factor, but how much with the price changes and event entry/prize tweaks?

 

With these examples in mind, let’s look at some likely reprints and if we should be afraid of the impact on value.

Filterlands – These will get printed again. I’m not sure when, but they are from an underbought pair of sets, especially the enemy ones of Eventide. They see a little Modern play, but they are probably the best lands in casual decks for their ability to give double of a color – we dearly love big splashy spells. I’d see these taking a dip at reprinting but not by much. Grab them when you can.

Zendikar fetches – At reprinting, they will lose 20% or so of their value. There’s too many Modern players who would be snapping these up to keep the Zendikar lands down for long. The casual appeal of these is also very high–we all have shocklands to fetch now! An easy call to say the price will stay stable/rise. I do not think that there will be enough Modern Event decks to meet everyone’s demand, so if these lands are in that box, the originals will at least hold their value.

Onslaught fetches – I’d call these the safest of all the cards on this list. A reprint won’t hurt the prices of the originals very much, because the old frame will keep them as a more unique version. If these were printed in a Standard-legal set, I’d expect the demand to be very high at first, as Modern players added them to decks left and right.

Lurking Predators – If this gets reprinted, the price will tank. It’s a fun card, but the supply will be far greater than the demand. Get only what your EDH decks need.

Gauntlet of Power – Wouldn’t this be a fun addition in Theros block? Gauntlet of Power would make devotion better and easier! If reprinted, I think a lot of the price would depend on the art used. I really like the Time Spiral art. Expect this to hit $5 if reprinted, so be cautious.

Darksteel plate – I was really surprised that this wasn’t in any of the Commander 2013 decks. It is a great EDH card and that’s the only place it sees play. If it gets a reprint I’d expect the value to plummet and then very slowly rise again over time. Not a safe investment.

Vedalken Orrery – If you don’t want to mess with lands, this is up your alley. Do everything at instant speed! This is another card which won’t get affected by a reprint, because people are going to play the heck out of these. Another fairly stable card.

Tribal lands – I mean the Onslaught ones, à la Riptide Laboratory (Look at the spread between the foil and the nonfoil!) or Unholy Grotto. If reprinted these would tank and not climb for a while. The tribal decks have theirs already, and so a new round of these lands would be lots of extra supply. Be wary.

Wurmcoil Engine – even as the prerelease promo, this has an impressive price. Only Emrakul does better price-wise as a promo. This card is probably one of the best colorless creatures ever, making it an awesome fit into most casual decks. It shows up in some modern Tron lists too. I doubt this would get printed again in standard, but in a duel deck, it’ll fetch $10 pretty easily. These are a good bet to keep most of their value.

The Eldrazi (Ulamog, Kozilek, Emrakul) – Amongst the most mana-intensive creatures ever, these are in demand for multiple reasons. Rise was a VERY popular set, fun to draft and packed with value. Inquisition of Kozilek is a $7.50 uncommon, simply as a budget alternative to Thoughtseize. The three giants are nearly immune to having a reprint hurt their value, as seen by the have extra copies of Emrakul (prerelease promo) and Ulamog (FTV:Legends) floating around. EDH players love the immunity to mill strategies, as well as huge monsters, so I would call these a fairly safe bet to keep most of their value if reprinted.

One last tidbit today: for you Nekusar, the Mindrazer players. If you like Wheel of Fortune, don’t forget to add discard effects too, including the classic combo of Megrim and Memory Jar. In fact, the new Waste Not is going to positively sing in those decks. Enjoy!

By: Cliff Daigle

With Born of the Gods spoilers on the horizon, I’d like to take a look back at some of the cards that have slowly gone down in price, and point out that I am a big advocate of patience.

For those of you who don’t want to re-read something, the short version is that if you can wait on acquiring a card, the price will almost always go down, especially for cards that have very high initial prices. As a primarily casual player, I’m more than happy to be patient on picking up cards for decks or cubes at 50% (or less) of the price than the card debuts for.

As always, if you require a card immediately, it’ll usually cost you more. There’s a different art required for determining when a card will go up, and that’s something we will discuss soon.

Let’s start with the poster children for initially high prices that almost always go down over time: Planeswalkers.

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: Look at this graph. She was over $40 at the beginning! I personally opened two early on and sold them each for $25 to buylists. She shows up occasionally as a one-or-two-of in some control lists, and while she’s fantastic at that, she doesn’t see enough play to keep her over $20 in the long term.

Where she does see play is all over the place in casual formats, and this being her third incarnation, I imagine there are some all-Elspeth decks running around. (Chandra and Jace have her beat at four each.) She’s consistently good in token decks, board-wipe decks, etc. I like her long-term chances. I doubt she’s hit bottom yet though, and I’m going to wait till she does before picking up what I need. 

Xenagos, the Reveler: Once $30, now pushing $10, he looked like he’d slide right into G/R Domri decks with an endless stream of tokens and mana acceleration. Again, though, he’s seeing just a smidgeon of play and has fallen faster than Elspeth, since he’s best in a creature-heavy deck. Where he’s really going to shine is in casual decks that love creatures. His ability is an upgrade over Gaea’s Cradle! You can abuse/re-use Cradle easier, but this level of mana ability is a rare and wonderful thing.

Xenagos is pretty affordable at this point, and I think we’ve found his floor. It’s difficult to have a planeswalker stay cheap. Tibalt is the exception–even Chandra Ablaze has found her price climbing upwards.

Master of Waves: An interesting case. He was not very expensive, and then the blue devotion deck blew up, and now he’s creeping back downward. I really like it as a pickup in the $10 range, since I believe that the devotion deck will get some fun tools with Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx.

As an aside, I don’t believe that devotion decks will be big in a year. I think there will be another mutlicolor block, since that seems to be the pattern set. Return to Alara? Nonetheless, I’m looking to pick up devotion cards now at a low point, waiting for it to blow up again.

Thoughtseize: Wow. This was a $70 card! The new printing was around $30 at release, and now is $15 or less. There is HEAVY speculation that this price will go up in Modern PTQ season, but I’m not convinced. The printing of this at rare means that there are swarms of copies out there, not to mention the Modern players who already have their playset.

I’m always going to preach the long game. There’s money to be made in short-term transactions, but an approach to most cards, especially at the beginning, should be “Sell now, buy later.”

By: Cliff Daigle

Happy New Year!

It’s that time of year when we look forward to the 12 months ahead and resolve to do something better than we have been. I can’t help you quit a vice or do more or less of the habit in question, but I can help you with a new perspective on trading.

If you’re visiting this site and reading this, you probably enjoy trading Magic cards. At worst, you might view it as a necessary evil, a way to exchange what you don’t want for things you do want. Perhaps you even make a living off your trading skills.

If you enjoy the process of trading as much as I do, you might be astounded to learn that there are a lot of players who view the process with anxiety and trepidation. I’m here to help you understand some of the concerns and share some tips on how to minimize those fears.

Special thanks to my wife, who reached into her past to recall when trading was unpleasant, and shared some ideas on how to make it easier for all.

Fear #1: Social intimidation/pressure

Even the innocuous question of “Did you bring things to trade?” is loaded with presumptions. You’re assuming that someone knows to bring such cards, that they are at least a little organized, and that there are other cards they desire to trade for. Not everyone is ready for that level of interaction outside of the structure of a game of Magic.

There’s a significant number of Magic players who lack social skills. They see Magic as a competition, a way to show that they are better than someone else. Trying to trade with that viewpoint is difficult and dangerous. You’re not going to have much success when you go into every trade scheming how to ‘win’ the trade, especially if you are the type to brag about it afterwards.

A glaring example of poor social skills is when you’re being impatient with someone. Don’t be the person who is trying to hurry up a new player. It’s good that you know what the price is on a card–allow them the courtesy of checking for themselves and thinking about the trade. Don’t subject them to you repeating what the price is over and over in an attempt to hurry up to the next trade.

Similarly, sometimes people just don’t want to trade away a certain card. It will have sentimental value, or they just want to keep it. If you keep nagging at someone to give it up in trade, you’re being awful.

How to change this: Remember that trading is a quest for both people to come away happy. Making both sides feel like they won is a skill, and one that will lead to more trading opportunities. Don’t pressure people into starting, continuing, or finishing trades.

Fear #2: Fear of getting ripped off

You don’t have to be new to trading to know that evil people are out there, trying to overvalue their own cards and undervaluing yours. This is one of the prime reasons new players don’t do much trading: they don’t know what things are worth and they are afraid of having someone exploit the knowledge gap. “What do you value this at?” sounds an awful lot like “Are you aware of the recent change in the worth of this card?”

MTGPrice and other financial websites, and I include Twitter in this viewpoint, actually encourage a knowledge gap. Spikes in cards over a weekend can be exploited, via buying cards from stores that didn’t update their prices or trading from people who didn’t get the news that Jace, Architect of Thought went up $15 in the past twelve hours.

Barely any anxiety at all is needed for someone to perceive even reputable traders as a sack of barely-contained evil. If you’re asking every person at FNM to see their trade binder, someone who is anxious will see that as searching for the weakest link. You’re simply trying to take a peek at everything people have to offer, but to someone who has been burned before, it appears greedy.

How to change this:  First of all, know that you can’t always calm someone’s fears. You won’t know for sure what’s going on in your head, so all you can do is set an example. Demonstrate what you use for pricing. Let people observe you as you trade with others. If you’re polite and personable, checking prices and making offers, then it soothes the fears of many. But if someone doesn’t want to trade, let it go. Don’t get persistent, and don’t be belligerent.

Fear #3: Organization

I wish there was a centralized way to poll Magic players. I would really like to ask about their card storage. It seems like 10% or more of players I meet do their trades out of an 800-count card box, with no sleeves, and not organized by color or set or anything. I enjoy riffling through the cards, I do, but I can’t help myself sometimes when I see unsleeved foils or older cards, and I will say something like “You’re doing these cards a disservice!” or “I will give you some spare sleeves.” [I’ve had to purchase sleeves for someone it upset me so. -ed]

What I’m really saying to them is that their method isn’t good enough, and by extension, I am a better person/player/trader for keeping my cards sorted in pages. That’s not what I want to say, but that’s how it can come across when I’m dismissive of their system. Even when I’m trying to help by pointing out how damaging it can be to keep unsleeved cards in a box, I’m telling them what to do.

How to change this: Let people keep their cards how they wish. Be respectful if you feel compelled to point out when they are damaging cards. Understand that they may not wish your advice, especially if they’ve been doing it this way for a while. Newer players may be more receptive, or they may not want to hear your lectures.

Fear #4: Establishing prices to trade at

Now, I know some of you are thinking, “Why would anyone use a site besides MTGPrice for establishing fair trade values? You can see versions and history and foils!”

Well, the truth is that not everyone knows how awesome we are. Take the time to share with them. TCGplayer has the unfortunate characteristic of a “race to the bottom” and that can skew the TCG mid. I like the aggregation of MTGPrice and I use it regularly. But if a more apprehensive trader prefers TCG or Starcity, consider using what they prefer–and remember that you can always walk away if things get imbalanced.

How to fix this: Keep in mind that for new players, there’s often a sentimental attachment to certain cards. Be respectful of their habits, and talk about why you like using MTGPrice more than some other site. For brand-new and very fearful traders, consider throwing in some extra cards or give them a touch more value. A little extra now is worth it to create another member of the community.

I hope your new year is full of value and correct speculation!

By: Cliff Daigle

I should check prices a lot more than I do.

I suffer from a problem of price memory: I know what a card was worth at a certain point, and I am not always diligent in checking prices in the moment. In this, I am not alone. It’s about more than being on top of whatever the latest price is. It’s about recognizing that because a card had a particular price for a while, I remember it as being that price…even when it’s not.

As someone who’s been playing Magic for years upon years, sometimes I’m really taken aback by what some prices have gotten to. 

I sold 100 copies of Hymn to Tourach to assorted buylists last year, and I can only laugh when I see Fallen Empires packs selling for more than a dollar. I understand that Hymn is a card that is relatively rare and quite powerful, but I have vivid memories of Fallen Empires being a set that was vastly overprinted and incredibly worthless. Why else would I have had so many of them from so long ago? Thank goodness I never throw out old cards, and thank goodness my wife keeps everything organized.

Such price memories are from more than 15 years ago, but they still shape my interactions. I have a similar mental block on dual lands: I have trouble seeing that any are more than $40, because for a long time, they were that much or less.

I’ve traded for cards at a certain price because I felt sure that’s what they were worth. After all, that’s how much they had been for the longest time! But when I get home and review my trades, I get annoyed to find out how wrong I was.

I’m a cautionary tale. When you don’t check prices during a trad, it can come across as very egotistical, even belligerent. More than once I’ve assigned a value to a card, only to have that card be MUCH higher than I remembered. At best, that makes me look like a fool who can’t remember basic financial info. At worst, I appear to be some sort of slimy shark, undervaluing the contents of someone else’s binder.

We’re creatures of habit, and those habits can cause us problems. I try hard to make sure that I check prices in a trade, for my benefit and theirs. I’ve learned to qualify statements about price: “I looked a while ago and it was $5. I’m not sure if it is still that price.” 

This sort of memory applies to prices, and it applies to card evaluation as well. In many cases new cards do not compare favorably to old ones, and that may lead us to make mistakes regarding value. I did this with Primeval Bounty, and I still evaluate every counterspell in light of, well, Counterspell. (or Dismiss! Man, I am glad I never have to play against Dismiss, but sad that I won’t ever get to play that in Standard again.)

I have learned through experience that most of the time, my memory of prices is on the low side. I forget that Magic has grown at an incredible rate, to the point that for years, each big fall set was the best-selling set in Magic’s history. That’s amazing for a game twenty years old. I don’t account for the sheer number who get introduced to this game and dive right in, building Standard and Modern and EDH and Cubes and snapping up all sorts of older cards.

My point is that when you’re trading without checking prices, you feel in control until you turn around and find out that your Urza’s Legacy copies of Rancor are significantly more pricey than any of the newer printings. If you’ve recently reviewed and memorized price points, work from memory. If you’re like me and have a difficult time keeping it all straight, bookmark mtgprice.com on your phone and let us keep you informed.