Category Archives: Conjured Currency

Conjured Currency

The Finance Article With Almost No Finance

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The Last MTG Finance Article of 2015

Welcome back. It’s the end of 2015, so let’s get that hooplah out of the way. It seems like just yesterday I was still writing for Brainstorm Brewery and regularly attending FNM like an actual player. I would not have predicted that this position (in writing and Magic) was where I would be one year ago, and I hope that I can continue to provide and improve on my content through 2016.

I’m not the only one that’s changed in a year though; I’m sure you have too, and Magic itself is quite different. Our subculture of MTG finance has certainly come a long way in the past 365 days: we’re moving into uncharted territory with a new rotation schedule and block structure, WOTC’s reports suggest that the playerbase hasn’t increased as steadily in 2015 as in past years, and we have more tools than ever before to keep our finger on the pulse of the game that we love.

To be perfectly honest, the amount of content that is produced on a daily or weekly basis concerning MTG finance is staggering.We at MTGPrice have a staff of over a dozen writers, with at least two articles being released every weekday in addition to a running spoiler coverage of each upcoming set, as well as a number of other tools. We have MTG Stocks giving us daily and weekly interests so you can check what the most recent movers and shakers are and avoid getting ripped off while trading at FNM.  Sites like  MTGGoldfish also provide a ton of information to help you aggregate data about the metagame, frequency of specific cards appearing in decks, and showing you affordable lists that you can put together on a budget. Even /r/mtgfinance has grown to over 10,000 subscribers in the short couple of years it’s existed, and you can (usually) find a healthy discussion on whatever question or topic you want.

Too Much Information?

In reality, you can only consume so much of it all before you start to get diminishing returns. If you try to read every single MTG finance article that comes out on every single website daily, you’ll end up losing a large percentage of the information and not using the rest of it because it was irrelevant to you in particular. Don’t get the wrong idea; I do think that there’s value in a Modern player reading some of Jason’s articles about Commander, because you don’t want to miss out on Exsanguinates while picking your first collection. However, there’s a balance between ignoring the content available to you and trying to become the omniscient MTG finance guru just by spending three hours each day scouring articles and listening to podcasts.

Overload

The goal of this article is not to teach you something about bulk rares or the new Standard rotation. I’m not going to mention any specific cards to pick up or stay away from, nor pull a “review of 2015” out of thin air.

Instead, I want to start a discussion on how you can go about consuming Magic content more efficiently, and cutting out the content that you won’t use or need. This was something I wanted to write about because of something I read recently on /r/mtgfinance, where a Redditor was complaining that content concerning the finance aspect of our game was reaching a tipping point of quantity over quality. To an extent, I think there’s some truth to that. The existence of deadlines will inherently push for content to be created, even when there’s unfortunately not a lot to talk about.

That’s where you come in. There are a few articles that follow this basic structure: “Here’s this thing I’m really good at. This is how you do that thing. These are the basics of doing that thing, and the rest of my articles will go into depth on it,” kind of like what I do with bulk rares. On the other side of the coin, there are so many more that are more of a “I think that thing Y might happen this way next year. There are a few reasons why that might be the case, and there are a couple of other reasons why that might not be true at all.” I’ve written my share of those as well, and it doesn’t feel great. It’s unfortunate, because these articles can make the reader feel like they wasted their time (hopefully this article hasn’t made you feel that way yet).

“So where do I come in to this equation?” –Some reader

Oh, right. I, for one, write articles to be treated as a starting point of discussion for whatever topic or question that I’m writing about. Even if you disagree with a point or idea that a writer has made, posting that can still contribute to the topic that we’re trying to unravel. When it comes to unexplored territory like the Expeditions lands, we don’t have anymore information than you do. If you want to absorb more information from each piece of content that you dedicate some amount of time to, it’s well worth it to type out your thoughts or responses in the comments section (if there is one), or start a discussion on Reddit or some other forum where like-minded individuals can politely bring up points and counterpoints.

Counterintelligence

With the MTG finance subreddit floodgates being opened back up, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping to see a lot of quality content being produced and posted there. The subreddit has gotten a lot of accusations of being “just a place for writers to dump their articles,” and I’m hoping that will change as the more experienced members of the community join together to downvote the random garbage that gets posted. Dedicated readers will gain a lot more from the forum through active participation and eventually creation of their own articles, like Jeremy did months ago.

Not Every Card/Article is Designed for You

Wizards gets a lot of hate for printing cards that “don’t do anything,” or cards that don’t appear to generate excitement for any player in the vocal market. If you’re following along on Jason’s and my spoiler coverage for Oath of the Gatewatch, you know that I’ve been very, uh, disappointed at the power level of several revealed rares so far. A card like Durdle Dragon #76 really grind my gears because I already know its financial future, there’s nothing exciting to read on the card itself, and it makes the set that much less exciting. However, that doesn’t mean that nobody cares about that card at all. There’s a reason Wizards continues to print durdle dragon after durdle angel: they continue to get new players hooked and excited when they open booster packs, similar to how those exact players complain about opening the same fetch lands and battle lands that get competitive players excited.

The same holds true for MTG finance content. I would honestly be shocked if you told me that you read every single article that comes out on MTGPrice, every day of the week. I’d be flattered, but still surprised. If you’re a Standard-only player who has no interest in grinding collections, then you might not need to read every single one of my articles (unless you’re looking for boyish charm and beautifully articulated word salad). I mostly write about how to grow your own individual collection into a store-esque situation where you turn into “that guy” at your LGS who has everything and is willing to part with everything. My articles aren’t designed for that Standard grinder in particular, unless he or she is looking to dive into the world of collection buying. Thankfully, we have Jim Casale on staff, a Standard grinder himself.

Organ Grinder

In short, there are better ways to learn about MTG finance than just reading every MTG finance article that pops up on your Twitter feed. I think questioning authors and creating your own content are steps in the right direction. Did I spend a week’s worth of writing telling you to post in the comments section, skim through some articles, and go join r/mtgfinance? Damn right I did. I relish in the irony of it all, and I’ll be back next week with a sequel to the best article ever written in the history of articles written.

End Step

Happy New Year!

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Finance 101: Region Locked

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So how about that Steam sale, huh? I’m actually just an extreme casual when it comes to games that aren’t Magic, Fire Emblem, League of Legends, or Pokémon, and this is the first time I’ve actually been bothered to download a game on Steam. I’m a fan of tactics and turn-based strategy at heart, so my friend convinced me to download XCOM: Enemy Unknown for $7.50 to relive some of my favorite single-player gaming over the past few years.

If you’ve been around the videogaming world for at least a little while (99 percent of you reading this, probably), then you’ve heard of the term “region locking” before. For those of you who keep to the card and board games, imagine you couldn’t use any of your Japanese foils in your Legacy deck. No Italian Legends cards, and no French copies of Delay.  Bear with me; I know I write an article about Magic finance and not videogaming, but I’m going somewhere with this.

xcomregionlock

(Thankfully, this is just a random screenshot I found. My XCOM was downloaded with no problems.)

While we don’t have this specific problem as Magic players, it would certainly be frustrating to be restricted from content that you bought, traded for, or were gifted due to a  company’s desire to prevent imports or force certain purchasing channels. In fact, you might feel similarly to someone who owns some Legacy staples, yet lives in an area where it’s nearly impossible to get rid of them at full value, when you were told something like, “Legacy cards will always get you a premium if you’re trying to trade into Standard or Modern.”

Cartel Finance

Recently, my fellow MTGPrice writers Jim Casale, Jeremy Aaranson, Travis Allen, and I (and soon to include our friend Sigmund Ausfresser) started up a video podcast on a whim. One of the topics that we touched on this past week was how much our experiences differ depending on where you’re located in the U.S. (or outside it entirely).

While I’ve always advocated “buy cards from other players at buylist values when they need to sell,” that logic is not always feasible for people like Jim, who is “region locked” in his MTG finance efforts (see? I made the segue work) by living within driving distance of Cool Stuff, Inc. When the players near Jim need to sell cards, they’re flanked by multiple LGSs that are ready to compete with each other and pay competitive buylist prices. If I had to relocate down to the land of terrible one-liners and Florida Man, there’s no question that my number of collections bought and singles sold would drastically decrease.

Since I live in upstate New York and five hours away from NYC, the area is devoid of any human interaction  large-scale LGS like ChannelFireball or SCG. The closest huge competitive buylist I have to compete with is either down in NYC, or Face to Face Games in Canada (the downside of this is that we get maybe one SCG Open every three years, but hey, give and take). Players could also drive 45 minutes to Syracuse and sell cards to one of the several card stores in the city, but the number of cards they’re willing to buy and amount of cash offered are both on the short side.

I mentioned earlier that you might be in a situation where you have Legacy staples, but are unable to trade them. Jim picked up two dual lands a couple of years ago, supposedly the “impossible to lose” investment in Magic. Unfortunately, crocodiles don’t play Legacy, so Jim ended up selling the duals to a store instead of being able to trade or sell them to a  player for a premium toward Standard or Modern staples. That’s a story that initially confused someone like me, who has almost never left the northeastern part of the United States: “Inability to trade Legacy staples? That’s just unheard of! We have one of the more vibrant Legacy player bases in the U.S!”

Before you trade those shock lands for that Lion’s Eye Diamond just because it’s on the Reserved List, know the routes for moving the LED if the Legacy scene around you is nonexistent.

Story Time

This doesn’t hold true for just Legacy, though. Let’s say this new MTG financier Jason is trying to make a bit of extra cash while having fun speculating and trading. He doesn’t have a store on TCGplayer or eBay, he just buys and sells locally, trying to trade up and sustain his hobby. Almost everyone at his LGS is a Standard or Commander player, because there’s a very limited number of people who can afford a Modern deck in his area. FNM is always Standard or Draft, and there are a couple of Commander pods that meet up twice a week.

Jason is trying to get into MTG finance a bit more heavily. He follows people on Twitter, listens to podcasts, and reads articles. He sees a lot of people agreeing that Modern Masters 2015 staples are a pretty smart pickup right now (hint-hint: they are). Jason starts targeting the scattered Modern pieces out of his friends’ binders, trading away the dirt cheap Battle for Zendikar rares and mythics. He picks up a couple of Cryptic Commands at $25 in trade, Spellskite at $23, and Remand at $5.

If we jump inside our time machine and skip a few months into the future, Jason’s trades have theoretically paid off. His Cryptics are $35, Spellskites are $30, and Remands are $8. But (you probably see where I’m going with this) who is he going to trade or sell them to? If his entire playgroup focuses on Standard and Limited, Jason has to either start using eBay, TCGplayer, or PucaTrade, or convince everyone to play Modern after all of the cards they need are more expensive. Granted, a lot of you reading this probably think, “Well, Puca/TCG/eBay is simple and effective,” and I would agree with you. However, not everyone is looking to constantly send cards through the mail, and there are still players who don’t trust PucaTrade due to bad personal experiences from trades in the past.

I sort of went in a different direction than I was planning when I laid out this whole “region locking” theme for the article, but I’m hoping that I still managed to explain my point. The tips that are given out every week in the constant stream of MTG finance news are not universal, and should be adapted depending on what your playgroup and LGS focus on. Legacy still has a bastion of players in the Northeast of the United States, but it’s a waste trying to trade a Wasteland where Jim lives. If you drive a few hours to buy a solid collection of EDH staples when your LGS is firmly steadfast in 60-card territory, it might be time to adapt and learn how to use internet outlets like Puca, TCGplayer, or eBay instead of letting the stuff rot in your binder. Even if you personally are “region locked” from collection buying because you have to compete with several other stores or local names, there are multiple different strategies to either compete or coexist with them.

End Step

  • Sell Painful Truths for $8 to $10 a playset on Facebook. This is a perfect example of a bulk rare that I’m happy to take the 1000-percent increase on, then ride away into the sunset with my Subway meal paid for by each playset that I sell.
  • Stoneforge Mystic continues to rise in anticipation of an unbanning. Do what I did and sell your copies into the hype on TCGplayer. Don’t do what I did, and don’t accidentally list two of your SP copies for $14 instead of $24, because then they’ll sell instantly and you’ll realize your mistake too late.
Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Foil Modern Commons

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Because I was sitting in my bedroom at a loss for something to write about this week, I reached out to the Twitterverse as an attempt to stir an idea. Thankfully, @PhillyB322 had a great suggestion for a starting point to kick things off.

Screenshot 2015-12-15 at 8.35.30 PM

Literally

At this point, you’re probably thinking; “Really? Literally no store has foil Blighted Agents? Pshhhh.. Hyperbole at its’ fin-”

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Wow. Huh. I literally cannot find a single foil Blighted Agent on the U.S. market. No beat up copies, nothing on eBay, ABU, CK… Wow. After some further research, I managed to find the European market stocked with a few copies, if you A) really need them for your own Infect deck or B) are convinced that these can jump to $25 or $30.

Screenshot 2015-12-15 at 10.59.58 PM

So what’s the reasoning behind the vanishing act? It doesn’t look like someone bought out the entire internet recently with the intent to make a profit. If they did, I think we would have seen players and store owners coming out of the woodwork: digging their copies out of bulk, swapping them from decks, and listing them online to start a race to the bottom. If we check the MTG Stocks foil graph, the only recent movement that the foil has shown is a slight bump from $14 to $18 in the past month or so.

Screenshot 2015-12-15 at 11.08.45 PM

So What’s the Takeaway?

So what’s our battle plan with this information? Do we go narrow within the deck Blighted Agent sees play in, and pick up other foil Infect stuff? I can’t really think of anything else in the deck that has a similar multiplier that’s ready to jump. We missed the boat on Groundswell foils (well, I did; I sold mine on TCGplayer for around $4 if I remember correctly. You might have made a bunch of money buying my copies, and would be laughing at me right now), while the non-foil continued to be pressured into the ground by the reprint that it received in Duel Decks: Zendikar vs. Eldrazi.

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Some of you know that I’ve been on the Glistener Elf train for a while; I still firmly believe that holding non-foils of Elf and Agent are the correct play (buylisting them at $.10 and $.25 seems criminal while Deceiver Exarch is chillin’ like a villain at $3.50, even with the aid of a reprint in the Commander 2013 set. If you have the privilege of picking NPH bulk, I’d hesitate on shipping those Modern common/uncommon pieces, at least until the end of winter.

Foils of Glistener Elf might also be a play at $4 to $5. I’ve been holding onto these for almost a year now (I think), but I keep holding off on selling them because I think it’s absurd that such a hard-to-reprint card that sees play as a four-of in a Modern combo deck could hang out at $4 to $5. I know that it got an FNM promo a few years back, but still…

Going Wide

Alternatively, we could jump over to other Modern decks with commons and uncommons with foil multipliers that appear to be criminally low. You’d be surprised at how little Modern play a card needs to see to be worth money: my friend Izzet Staticaster from back in my Kiki-Pod days is now a $10 to $12 foil, even though it basically only sees play as a one-of in the Grixis Control and Grixis Twin lists. Is this also a common Cube card that I’m not aware of? It’s from a more recent set than the Infect twins, sees less play, and yet the foil has still been holding its own at the post-spike price for about a month now.

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Hmm…. So what’s an example of a highly played, foil, Modern common that hasn’t already spiked? Well, maybe this little guy here:

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While he does have a Gateway promo from back in the yonder days, I’m definitely surprised to see this little flier so cheap. Is this the next Izzet Staticaster? It certainly sees enough play as a consistent four-of in Affinity, ruining the lives of mono-red players everywhere. It’s hard to reprint again with that good, ol’ Phyrexian mana, and you can pick up a playset of either version for around $10. While I’m not one to normally speculate on cards at full retail, I definitely like Vault Skirge foils going forward into Modern season.

Is there anything else from Affinity that we can look to in the relatively under-appreciated commons and uncommons? While most of them have been reprinted into dust, the pack foil of Signal Pest has been lagging behind its promo version. Whether that’s simply due to an art preference is open to debate, but if you’re looking to foil out an Affinity deck, I would start with these two aggressive and cheap (in both senses of the word) one-drops.

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End Step

  • SCG gets a bad reputation sometimes for having overpriced cards. That’s literally the only complaint you can honestly make about the store, and it’s not even their fault for charging prices that people are willing to pay. However, their holiday sales are definitely worth checking out. Here’s what I just recently picked up from the $1 sale:
  • Screenshot 2015-12-16 at 12.01.59 AM
  • Unfortunately, a lot of the cards that I was originally going to buy didn’t make it to the end of the checkout process. I was going to get away with 43 SP copies of Boundless Realms at $1 each, but someone else sniped them before I could finish my purchase. The same goes for those other 10 copies of Heartless Summoning, and about 15 more Mimic Vats.
  • The Seize the Day are for an arbitrage attempt, so we’ll see how that goes. My experience with SCG’s grading has been extremely positive, and most of the SP cards that I’ve ordered from them have been NM by my and my customers’ standards. I’m hoping that MP will basically be my SP, so that I can still make a few dollars by just shipping out most of those Seizes to another store, even after the dust is settled with grading.
  • As a closing statement, I’d like to remind you to check out as soon as possible when you find a great deal like those Boundless Realms that I missed out on. I got greedy by putting them in my cart, and scanning through the rest of the $1 sale to see if I wanted to add anything else to my cart beforehand. If I had locked in that order of 43 Boundless Realms first, it would have been well worth paying the shipping costs for separate orders by making sure nobody else could snipe them out from under me. Misplays were made, and lessons learned!

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Flashback to Nekusar

8 Comments

Welcome back, financiers and non-financiers alike. In last week’s article, we discussed what the definition of a “fake bulk rare” is, why it’s different than true bulk, and what you should do with cards in the category. I’m relatively proud of it as I think it’s an under-explored area in our little MTG finance alcove, so be sure to check it out.

Go ahead, I can wait.

I’ll continue to hold this awkwardly conversational writing style with myself until you get back.

In other news, Reddit continues to spark inspiration for me to write content for you all. I took a stroll through the weekly “Ask r/mtgfinance Anything” thread this morning, and stumbled upon a question that hit relatively close to home. Instead of doing a scattershot of responses to Reddit’s finance questions, this one is deep enough that I feel I can accurately break it down over the course of a whole article, instead of forcing you to jump from topic to topic with me. Reddit user emeoelmo11 writes:

Untitled

Have been holding on a set of Commander 2013 for about two years now and realized that the price isn’t moving up at all, with only a handful of staples in the decks that are worthwhile to keep. Also, have not found any luck finding buyers for these at discounted prices, even.

1) Should I crack these open and sell them individually to at least recuperate some cost? Seeing more Commander products being printed every year, I am not confident any of these will go up any time soon.

2) If I were to crack one open, it would probably be for play. Which of these are best for a beginning player of EDH to delve into?

If you’ve been following my content for a billion years or so, you might remember that I used to write for Brainstorm Brewery. In particular, about a year and a half ago, I wrote an article about my own personal errors that I made when it came to investing in sealed product. Since the information in that article is pretty outdated (and poorly formatted), I’ll save you the trouble of reading it. The short version is that I made a mistake investing into sealed versions of  From the Vault: Twenty and Commander 2013, when I could have capitalized on the huge spike of Legacy staples like Rishadan Port or Tundra.

In that article from August 2014, I said that I would be in for the long haul when it came to my sealed product. I had no need for emergency funds and owned plenty of extra copies of the cards that came in each of those sets. I would just continue to leave them in their plastic totes to collect dust, and remember that I owned them if someones asked for an easy way to get into the Commander format. If I happened to run out of Jace, the Mind Sculptors that I had in stock, I could crack the FTVs and just fill my binders with some of the higher-end stuff, throwing the chaff foils into my dollar boxes.

Only a couple months ago, I decided to crack open a decent portion of my sealed product (five FTV20s, and fifteen C13 decks) to help replenish some of the cheaper cards in my display case, in addition to filling a local order for a playset of Jaces. There was still no movement on either sealed product, and I was obviously never going to realistically move them while still packaged unless I wanted to lose out on a huge chunk in shipping.

Replenish.full

Our Redditor produced a couple of solutions (well, pretty much the only two possibilities) themselves, so let’s go over those in detail.

  1. Crack it all. I kind of spoiled the ending a little bit, as this is obviously the move I chose to make. The cards had been sitting in storage for two years, doing nothing but taking up space and money. I finally got a request for a few individual cards that I didn’t otherwise have, so I filled those by shredding my sealed product for parts. This player is actually, well, a player, so I think they’ll get even more value out of learning the format with their preconstructed decks. Nobody ever accused the Nekusar deck of being underpowered, and you can certainly still trade the True-Name Nemesis toward upgrading whatever deck you decide to stick with.
  2. Let it sit in the oven for a while longer, and accept the fact that these are basically never going to appreciate in price. Let’s get this statement out of the way right now: It will be several years before Sol Ring is ever worth more than $1.50, especially if they continue to print the card in the every yearly Commander set, encouraging its ubiquity in the format. A lot of us (including myself) incorrectly assumed that the Commander sets would be a continuous gold mine of value, following the trends of the first set in 2011. We were wrong. Wizards has learned from its mistakes.

RTR box

Remember these? Back in 2012, these were the go-to slam dunk for sealed product. Shock lands, Abrupt Decay, Deathrite Shaman, all at rare. If you wanted to make a 30-percent increase over a three-to-four-year period, this was what people like me would tell people like you to buy as a safe and solid investment. Now you can find them for almost 20-percent cheaper than they were back when Obama won the election for his second term.

Sealed product is was attractive to us because it required a very minimal amount of effort. You threw money at it, moved your girlfriend’s shoes around in the closet, and deleted the memory of buying it from your mental hard drive. Four years later, you’re supposed to dig it up like a lost treasure, making a significant return on your investment by popping it up on eBay or Facebook, selling to all of the nostalgic players who want to reminisce about their favorite draft format.

I’m here to remind you that the era of making money off of any random sealed product is long gone. Even today, I see posts on both local and non-local Facebook groups, asking the masses, ” What would the best sealed booster box be to invest in?” I see a ton of replies suggesting that you can’t possibly go wrong with Khans; you get fetches, you get….. uhhh….. uhhh…… foil Monastery Swiftspear?

khans

Will these be $80 in three years?

So what could you get instead of a box of KTK, that has a higher likelihood of giving you a return on investment in a shorter period of time? Well, you know, speculating isn’t my personal preference for putting money into Magic, but let’s put on our spec caps for a minute. If you really want to burn through that $90, I’ve got a couple of suggestions.

cryptic

remand

You can buy Remands on TCGplayer for $4.50, NM with free shipping. Seriously, that’s a thing. Remember when these were $15 not too long ago? To make it even more appealing, the buylist prices that vendors like ABUgames pay are close to $3, making the spread relatively low for a cheap modern staple. Cryptic Command has followed a similar trend, hitting its all-time low yesterday (and today, and probably tomorrow…).

You know that my strategy is “never buy Magic cards at full retail,” but I just have a bad taste in my mouth when I personally sell Remands at $4. I’m holding onto the rest of my copies until Modern season hits, because I think these creep back up to at least $7, maybe $8. Cryptic could hit $30 to $35, which is certainly a better ROI than a box of either RTR or KTK.

End Step

In other news, Stoneforge Mystic is the next Grand Prix promo. Someone on this website who cares a lot more than I do will probably write about that.

Awakening Zone has moved up almost 25 percent since I wrote about it last, before the Battle for Zendikar set release. It’s certainly had a stronger track record than From Beyond. I still wouldn’t touch From Beyond at $1—I think A-Zone continues to be a better train to hop onto if you really need copies for EDH.