If you listened to MTG Fast Finance last week (and you really ought to, it’s free money and scintillating conversation) then you heard James and I discussing the impact of the Mythic Edition of Guilds of Ravnica.

In the time since, I’ve been thinking about that set and what it means for players, and for collectors, and people who care about the financial aspects of this decision.

Come with me, and let’s talk about what they might be trying to do.

First, let’s talk about what the set is. From their page:

The product will be a Draft-sized (24 pack) box of Guilds of Ravnica, with the twist that eight packs (they’ll be clearly marked) will each come with one of these planeswalker cards inside the pack (plus the normal rare or mythic rare card). You will know which packs have these special planeswalkers, so this can make for an exciting Draft experience. Or just crack the whole box. You do you.

So you’re dropping $250 on a box, which is about double plus some for the average box. Maybe even triple, depending on the box and where it is in the price cycle.

The amazing part of this box is the eight packs which each has a different borderless Planeswalker, the first official ones of this kind, though there have been assorted borderless alterists and online artists who’ve made these ‘super-art’ styles for years and years. This is a lazy set of Masterpieces–This isn’t original. It’s not going somewhere new. I prefer Invocations  to these cards, and I don’t like Invocations much.

The art choices, aside, one thing is clear: If you can get this at the original MSRP, then you’re set. It’s a slam-dunk at that price, having 24 packs of Guilds of Ravnica, and 8 of those packs (they will be clearly marked, it seems) with the special Planeswalkers, so those packs will have an extra card. Shouldn’t be too much of a disruption, as you’ll still get a regular mythic or foil. It’s not clear if that’s replacing a common, or if the number is now one more.

If regular packs are $4, then this is $64 worth of packs. Even at $3 a pack, which is your price if you’re buying a box at $108, that’s $50 of value before we get to the main attraction.

You’re getting eight foil planeswalkers for $200. Only $25 each! Let’s look at these current foil prices before we get into anything else.

Name	Foil Price(s)
Teferi, Hero of Dominaria	Dominaria $95
Elspeth, Knight-Errant	Duel Deck $14 MM 2013 $35 Shards of Alara $43
Liliana, the Last Hope	Eldritch Moon $99 SDCC 2016 ‘Zombies!’ $125
Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker	Duel Deck $7 Magic 2013 $22 Conflux $27
Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast	Conspiracy 2 $59
Ral, Izzet Viceroy	No foil prices yet, but the regular is preselling around $15, so likely $30 or so.
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas	Mirrodin Besieged $68
Vraska, Golgari Queen (presumably)	None listed yet, but preselling for ~$25, so the foil should be $40-$50 easily.

With these prices, there’s a LOT going on. Will these be as valuable as the pack foil? Possibly. The only time we’ve seen something close to this as been the assorted SDCC promo planeswalkers, and that printing consistently represents the most expensive versions of those cards, even if the cards aren’t that pricey.

So with this in mind, at ~$200 for the set of eight, you’re looking at about $470 worth of pack foils. That’s ridiculous value, quite frankly, and it’s guaranteed. You’re not hunting for an Expedition or the like, you’re simply going to have to brave the website and the inevitable crashes. You know exactly what you’re getting, and even the worst of these (Ral) is going to be a $30 card.

There are variables at play, like the website’s terrible interface and the fact that these can’t be shipped outside the USA at this point, but the primary one is going to be the total number made. If there’s a lot, if everyone gets as many as they want, then I’d still have a hard time believing that it’s not at least a break-even. Teferi has a year left to warp Standard, and he’s popping up in other formats too. Liliana sees some play, but a lot of her price is due to small-set mythic supply. Tezzeret is from forever ago. Daretti doesn’t have much demand either.

I can see a world where the Teferi is $75, Liliana is $40, and the rest are hovering in the $20 range. That’s still $235 just from the eight planeswalkers, and that’s the worst-case, mega-overprinted scenario.

Wizards’ track record is to underprint things, and they’re right to do so here. These foils are the definition of a luxury item, as you could collect this set in nonfoil for around $150. When you are hunting special versions, you’re in luxury-goods territory, and keeping those scarce is good.

What I really don’t like is how this feels like a giant middle finger to local stores. The buy-a-box promos are an attempt to bring business to the stores that keep events and registration high, and this bypasses the stores entirely. This isn’t FTV, where stores got to have a markup that was pure profit for them. This is cutting out the middleman, and testing the waters of how much profit they can siphon away from those stores.

Using the local stores would have allowed for worldwide distribution, and it’s a shame that Wizards is neglecting the rest of the world this way.

Finally, I want to address resales. Should you buy this on eBay, if you can’t get through on the site? I’m going to lean in and say no unless you’re getting them for $300, but not as high as $350. Sure, these look fun, but aside from being borderless, they are the same cards with different art.

These are unlikely to spike, too. The planeswalker sets from SDCC show that their prices are super high early, and after the GIMMEGIMMEGIMME wave wears off, it tapers down. I bought an SDCC Liliana of the Dark Realms for $90 three years ago. She’s $87 now. There will be people making money on this set for a while if they got in at $250, but the best money is going to be in immediate flips. Don’t hang onto sealed sets of this product, if you happen to get your two.

I don’t mind Wizards doing this, selling the premium versions of this directly, except for how it takes potential profit away from local stores and hoses non-North Americans. These versions are lackluster Masterpieces to me, but I felt that way about Invocations too. For future releases of a product like this (and there’s very likely to be more of this) I’d expect them to slowly increase how many get sold, and hopefully figure out how to let international buyers get some too.

Please remember that these are promos of something that already exists for cheaper. Don’t freak out because there’s a more expensive version of a card. Get the one you need/want/can afford and move on.

 

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Guilds of Ravnica previews officially start next week, and while we have a smattering of cards, we also know that the shocklands are back.

Again.

I got this question three times over the weekend, in some form or another: “What should I do about shocklands?”

I’m here to answer that for you, along with a couple of cards that have potential to do very well in the new Standard.

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Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Hello everyone! We are likely two weeks away from previews for Guilds of Ravnica, and while I enjoy the experience of ‘will they really do a Ravnica sans shocklands?’ threads, that’s not the main thing on my mind.

Today, I’m thinking about the things that are about to rotate out of Standard, and I’m looking for the cards which have appeal in Modern, Legacy, Commander or Cube.

There’s no shortage of these cards, and that bodes quite well for opportunities. Some cards are already pretty high, due to extensive use (Fatal Push, for example) and while there might be some money made there it’ll either be too slow or too small.

Let’s talk about some cards!

Kaladesh

Spirebluff Canal ($7 regular/$15 foil)

The enemy fastlands are a terrific investment, but I’m only going to mention the top two. Spirebluff is the #33 most played land in Modern, appearing in about 8% of decks. It’s popular in explosive decks who need two colors right away, like Storm, and this price is low for both versions. I can easily see this being $10/$30, or even higher depending. I hope the price drops down a little, as people liquidate their current Standard decks, but this one and Blooming Marsh (#41 on that list, in roughly 5% of decks) are the ones I really want to stock up on. I prefer foils too, but given how common this can be, nonfoils appeal too. I find it unlikely we will get this in a booster pack again for a while–we haven’t gotten a reprint of the allied fastlands, and that was in late 2010!

Metallurgic Summonings ($1.30/$4)

This seems woefully underpriced for a mythic, but it’s seen so little play. Considering how common ‘no creature’ decks are in Commander, this card is ridiculous. One of my other favorite interactions is that this plays extremely well with the new Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, making artifact tokens that can be copied into other things, or be the source for other token copies. It’s in 5000 decks on EDHREC, so it’s not like this card is a secret. It’s going to be super solid for growth going forward.

Ceremonious Rejection (50¢/$5)

This is currently one of the most popular sideboard cards in Modern, given the utility against Tron, Affinity, KCI, and Eldrazi. If you play Modern, get your playset now of nonfoils, and feel free to get some foils when you can. There’s only about 100 on TCG right now, and given the large number of decks that are playing this as at least a two-of, I won’t be shocked when they jump to at least $15, uncommon or not.

Paradoxical Outcome (50¢/$6!)

It’s been a while since I saw a foil multiplier at 12, and this is due to the popularity of this card in Vintage. As you can imagine, this card plus a Mox or two, perhaps a Grim Monolith, means you draw a lot of cards very very fast. I was surprised to find that the foils are this cheap, considering that this deck has quickly become one of the most commonly played decks in that format.

I’ll give you that Vintage isn’t a big scene in paper, at least as compared to online, but when there’s only 32 copies on TCG and a handful on other big sites, it feels like a solid choice for a future buyout.

Dubious Challenge (bulk/$1)

The last card I’m targeting from Kaladesh is this crappy, terrible, no-good card. You don’t have to tell me that it’s not great. It’s actively bad, but there’s a deck waiting to break out. We already have Flickerwisp and Glimmerpoint Stag to flicker the Griselbrand or Emrakul, so there’s a base. One more flickering creature might put this over the top, though it’s a four-mana sorcery that is easily countered. The price for getting in is so low, though, that I don’t mind picking up a few foils and just being patient. I don’t know when it’ll blow up, but it’s unique and has great potential.

Aether Revolt

Paradox Engine ($17/$34/$120 for the Masterpiece Invention)

This card of a thousand combos is the perfect mythic, in that you don’t ever want to open it in Limited events. It’s a super-popular card in Commander: in print for about 20 months, already listed in more than 11,000 decks. That’s a lot of combos and shenanigans, and it’s why the Invention is so pricey.

I can’t advocate picking up these Inventions as a value investment. They’re going to go up, but they’ve already spiked pretty hard and any further growth is going to be quite slow. Pack foils are a super-tasty target, as they ought to be about $45, considering the usual foil multiplier. The Invention presents a price ceiling, but know that the pack foil is below where it’s expected to be, and that means it’ll correct itself by $15-$20 before too long.

Mechanized Production ($3/$6)

Alternate win conditions are already something I pay attention to, but the assortment of cards that can make this amazing really put this over the top. Yes, it’s another awesome Brudiclad card, but it’s also great with other artifacts you’d be playing anyway. Churn out some mana rocks, or if you really want to get wild, Coveted Jewel. This is a small-set mythic that is niche so far but it’s got great potential to blow up in the right setting.

Planar Bridge ($3/$6/$60)

That’s not a typo. The Invention version is 20x the regular, and 10x the pack foil price. I love inventions, I do, but this is out of alignment. There’s 4500 people who’ve already put this into decks online, and the best thing about seeing this card on the other side of the table in a Commander game is the sure and certain knowledge that my suffering won’t last long. Hopefully.

Foil Scrap Trawler ($2-$4)

First of all, this was the Buy-a-Box card for Aether Revolt. There’s a lot of extra foils out there, so be aware that this might not hit the heights you’re hoping for.

That being said, this card enables all sorts of silly and grindy and annoying decks. It’s a staple of the Krark-Clan Ironworks deck, and there’s also an incredible Grinding Station deck (found here if you want) that abuses the interactions in order to win with Sword/Thopter, because dumping cards into the yard in such a deck is basically drawing them.

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

One of the best investments I ever made, I made scared. I bought the original set of 5 Commander decks in 2011, without knowing a single card that was in them. Star City had a promotion where if you bought four of the decks, you got the fifth one free.

I’d only recently gotten into Commander, and it was exactly what I wanted when I got back into Magic: a way to use my old cards, and a reason to go spelunking through the boxes I still had.

The original cards, I’ve long since traded and/or sold off. We’ve gotten to the point that now we’ve had two Commander Anthology sets released, proving that Wizards knows full well what a gold mine they have on their hands.

Today, I want to look back at the earliest Commander sets, and see if there’s lessons to be learned. The cards that spiked, did they hold a price? What about the new decks and the allure of building something new?

Commander 2013

True-Name Nemesis (max price $40 in early 2014, now $17, reprint is $11/$220 foil)

This is a card and a lesson all at once. Wizards figured that laking these cards only legal in Legacy was a safety valve, so even if they made a mistake, the most powerful format would likely be able to solve the issue.

The card had trickled downward slowly since release, stabilizing in the $30-$35 range, because while supply was small, so was demand. No one was playing four of this, and those who wanted it did finally get the few they wanted. Thankfully, no one besides Legacy players and Cubers wanted this card.

Reprinting it in Battlebond flooded the market. Between the two versions, there’s now 500 copies on TCG, roughly half and half. A lot of people must have had spare copies, and I can see that it’s a tempting spec, but that’s a rough hit. Foil prices from Battlebond are on the way down too. I knew a guy at GP Vegas willing to spend $250 on a foil, and now there’s 20 foils starting at $200. If I had one, would I be patient? Probably. I’d rather sell it for $175 now than wait two years to get $250.

Primal Vigor (was bulk, slowly grown to $20 after a few small bumps)

Fixing Doubling Season seems like a slam dunk. The card is very easy to abuse, and super fun to abuse at the same time. Commander players, we love doing something twice as much. This hasn’t been reprinted, and that makes it a terrible spec target. The price on this is mostly due to low supply, it’s only in 5k decks on EDHREC despite its age. We’ve got a lot of options for doubling counters and tokens, but this doesn’t work with planeswalkers or other permanents the way Season does.

Bane of Progress ($2 at its cheapest, now up to $4) I want, very badly, to pick up a million of these as a strong spec target. It just dodged another round of reprints, and while it was in Commander Anthology #1 it is in 10,000 decks on EDHREC. Sure, it’s going to kill your own stuff, but this card is awesome. There’s only 21 on TCG right now, and that’s really got me thinking. It would not be hard to imagine this as a $10 card.

Problem is, it’s super-reprintable. Having a bunch of these will make me nervous, and in addition, we haven’t had a foil version yet. Wizards knows we like shiny things, and will eventually give us a shiny copy. Spec if you want to–I’m staying away but I understand the appeal.

Commander 2014

Containment Priest (was $30 at the start, down to $7, back up to $25, Invocation is $70)

This is why I’m scared of the Bane of Progress reprint. Containment Priest was being bought its first weekend by vendors for $50 on the floor of GP New Jersey in November of 2014, scarcely a week after it had been released. It’s a popular sideboard choice in Legacy, too, because it’s strong against some unfair decks (Show and Tell, Reanimator, etc.) and is immune to Spell Pierce. I really like picking these up now, as it’s seeing just enough play to make it worthwhile and got its foil relatively recently. Earlier this year, it sat at $35, but I think it’s still got room to grow, given the small supply and the demand.

Song of the Dryads ($2 for the longest, then spiked to $20, now $8)

A one-of in Lands as a sideboard card, this is pretty amazing. It’s gotten one Anthology reprint, so be aware of that risk, but this is a card that you’re not playing enough in Commander. Players are going to adapt to you destroying their permanents. Instead, turn them off and keep them on the field, useless. It’s in 9,000 decks online and there’s less than 60 on TCG between the two versions. Ripe for the picking.

Ghoulcaller Gisa (started at $2, steady rise to $15)

Without a reprint, she’s just going to keep climbing. She’s a lot better than Stitcher Geralf, and their relative prices reflect that. Amazingly, she’s only in 700 decks online, which feels wrong. She’s not just a Zombie maker; anything with a sacrifice theme wants her too. If I knew she was safe from reprints for another couple years I’d be all-in, but a reprint will tank her hard and I doubt her price would recover.

 

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.