Category Archives: Danny Brown

Danny Brown, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Taking a Closer Look at Demand Sources

June 23, 2015 Danny Brown 1 Comment

Imagine if Wizards of the Coast told us exactly how many packs of Dragons of Tarkir had been sold so far. We know how the cards are distributed, so with an accurate pack count, we could determine precisely how many Dragonlord Atarkas there are in the wild and compare that with the numbers for Fate Reforged and the amount of Monastery Mentors in existence. Armed with that info, it would be really easy to pinpoint where cards were in short supply and buy accordingly.

Unfortunately, Wizards does not publicize that information, or at least not very often. We get hints about proportions (“X is the best-selling set of all time!”) every so often, but ultimately, we’re left to determine supply based on anecdotal data and broad assumptions.

Sure, it’s pretty easy to say there’s a lot more Innistrad out in the wild than Lorwyn, but by how much? We don’t really know, and can’t with the amount of information we have at our disposal. And things get murkier when we start comparing recent sets. How does Dragons of Tarkir compare with Journey into Nyx? Or Dragon’s Maze? We can broadly assume that Dragon’s Maze was unpopular so there’s probably far fewer Voice of Resurgences out there than there are Dragonlord Ojutais, but it’s all guesstimating—we are just not in a position to know what the actual card counts are on these cards, or any cards for that matter.

So while the pattern over the last decade or so has been one of extreme growth (and thus ever-increasing amounts of supply), we know the proportions between set printings in only the broadest terms. Again using Dragon’s Maze as an example: we know it was an unpopular set, but we don’t have the numbers as to just how badly it actually performed. If we did, we might find that Voice of Resurgence is greatly over- or underpriced when we consider the actual number of copies out there.

Way back in 2013, Anthony Capece, a former writer for BrainstormBrewery.com, did some very important work for the community in shining a light on some of these supply issues. Those articles, “Rare is the New Uncommon” and “Size Matters,” should be required reading for every single MTG financier, so if you haven’t read them before (or even if it’s just been a while), click those links. They’ll open in a new tab and everything, so you don’t even have to stop reading here.

Anthony did some great investigative work to come to rough estimates on supply of new sets compared to old ones, but we still don’t have the exact numbers. However, just like Magic is a game of imperfect information, so is MTG finance, and our job is to take action based on the information that we do have available.

Courser of Kruphix versus Gilded Lotus

Let’s compare two very different but similarly priced (at time of writing) cards: Courser of Kruphix and Gilded Lotus.

Courser derives most of its value from Standard play, though that value is tapering off fast from a high of over $20 to the current price of $6. The card has seen a little bit of Modern action, as well, but doesn’t make the MTG Goldfish list of the top 50 creatures in the format. To top it off, Courser isn’t exactly undesirable in the most popular casual formats, Commander and Cube.

Despite being good outside of Standard, most of Courser’s historic price comes from Standard demand, where it has been a complete staple and almost always a four-of. The price loss over the last several months is almost certainly attributable to the upcoming rotation, and we may still lose some more off the price by the time we lose Theros block from Standard.

Alternatively, we have Gilded Lotus, which saw no Standard play after it was last reprinted in M13. The card derives all of its sharply increasing value from casual play, as there’s a copy in most cubes and in most Commander decks, but nary a single competitive deck wants something like this (cue someone linking to a Vintage deck that just needs to Tinker out Gilded Lotus for some reason).

Delving Into Hypotheticals

I love data, but unfortunately, we just don’t have enough of it to determine exactly why these cards are virtually the same price despite such different demand profiles.

Hypothetically, let’s say the demand comes from the following:

Courser of Kruphix

35% of Standard players need four copies of this card for a Standard deck (reasoning: MTG Goldfish cites Courser of Kruphix as being a 3.8-of in 35.94 percent of Standard decks).
20% of Commander players need one copy for their decks (reasoning: this is good in any green deck, and theoretically, one-fifth of decks in Magic are of a particular color).
90% of cubes need one copy (reasoning: some cubes have special restrictions, but this is good enough to warrant an include in most lists).
5% of Modern players need or want to have available four copies for a Modern deck (reasoning: it’s hardly a staple in five-percent of decks, but some players need to have everything).
The Invisibles playing wild card.

Gilded Lotus

90% of Commander players need one copy for their decks (reasoning: some aggressive decks might not want this, but it’s a colorless fixer that ramps to giant fatties and can go in literally any deck).
90% of cubes need one copy (reasoning: some cubes have special restrictions, but this is good enough to warrant an include in most lists).
The Invisibles playing wild card.

Again, these are just numbers I pulled out of thin air—they’re here only for illustration’s sake.

If these numbers were accurate, do you think we could use them to determine the total number of active players in each format? I hope you’re saying no, because these numbers are not accounting for the mystery I discussed during the first part of this article: how many copies of each card is actually in existence.

We just can’t fill in enough of the variables to fully solve the equation. This is why no speculation target is ever 100-percent safe: we (the MTG community) do not have enough information to know for sure that there is or is not enough of one particular card to satisfy the demand from all players who might want one or more copies for whatever reason.

Using the Tools We Do Have

Still, I think the exercise of going through where a card’s demand is coming from can really help to streamline one’s thought process regarding a card one is considering buying. Several MTGPrice writers have (rightly) been harping on three major targets from Khans of Tarkir block, so let’s consider where the demand might come from for each of these moving forward.

Siege Rhino

I have not bought in to Siege Rhino, but the card is an extremely interesting case. Normally, a three-color card has very limited upside, as only a select few decks can play it, but we’ve seen Standard and Modern decks designed essentially because this card is powerful enough to warrant it.

Still, there’s pretty much a maximum of one deck in Standard and one deck in Modern that wants this card, and even if those comprise a huge part of each metagame, there’s not any cross-deck applicability to really keep Rhino’s price up.

Further adding to my concerns is that this isn’t going to be in hardly any Commander decks or cubes, given its limited upside in the 100-card battlecruiser format and the limited space for three-color cards in most custom drafting environments.

Just piling on to my concerns, it’s a rare from a large fall set, and if you read Anthony’s articles that I linked above, you’ll know why that’s bad.

In summary, when I started writing this section, I thought that Siege Rhino was a fine pickup (if not as good as others), but now that I’m finished, I don’t want to be buying into this at $4. Yes, it’s good enough to warrant decks designed around it, but the assumed supply is as high as cards get and its applicability is highly specific, despite its power level.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang

Tasigur, on the other hand, is awesome. Delve cards aren’t automatic four-ofs, but even if Tasigur only sees play as a three-of, he’s wanted in Legacy, Modern, Standard, Commander, and Cube, and has plenty of applicability in all kinds of decks from aggro to control.

Again, he suffers from being rare and not mythic, but in this case, we’re looking at a small set that didn’t sell for nearly as long as Siege Rhino’s Khans of Tarkir.

It’s easy to envision much more demand for Tasigur than for Siege Rhino, and it’s also fair to assume the supply is lower. Considering it’s already begun its ascent, the MTG finance community seems to agree.

See the Unwritten

See the Unwritten, on the other hand, has gone down since its initial surge in popularity in response to the announcement of Battle for Zendikar. It’s now just above $3, and it has a much different demand profile than Siege Rhino or Tasigur.

With See the Unwritten, we’re speculating not on current playability in Standard or eternal formats, but on future playability with the assumed Eldrazi coming in BFZ. Initially, this seems riskier than something like Siege Rhino, and maybe it is.

But I have bought in to See the Unwritten, unlike Siege Rhino. The reasons are three-fold:

I strongly believe there will be Eldrazi in BFZ.
The Standard Eldrazi deck might be good, but even if it’s not, this is a mythic and people will want to try out the deck.
The card has enough applicability in Commander that I expect it to grow slowly over time regardless, so in the worst case, it becomes a long-term spec instead of a short-term one.

If See the Unwritten was a rare, I wouldn’t give it a second glance at this price, but mythics can do crazy things, as there’s far fewer of them compared to their rare counterparts. When observing exactly who might be demanding See the Unwritten, it has the smallest group of any of the cards I’ve discussed in this article, but the lower supply due to its mythic-ness makes me much more willing to take a risk on it. Remember, a strategy doesn’t have to be good for a spec to pay out.

In a Perfect World

In a perfect world, we would know the exact number of Siege Rhinos, Tasigurs, and See the Unwrittens in existence, and we would also know exactly how many active players each format has.

Of course, if we lived in that world, then presumably the market would adjust itself so that every card was perfectly priced and there were no speculation opportunities for anybody. Come to think about it, maybe that’s not such a perfect world after all…

Danny Brown, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Dregs of Tarkir

June 16, 2015 Danny Brown 1 Comment

By: Danny Brown

Most players with a modicum of interest in MTG finance know the “obvious” calls leading up to the rotation of Theros this fall: getting rid of Theros block stuff that isn’t bottomed out already or applicable to eternal formats should be first on your list (three months ago, that is). Not far behind should be the acquisition of Khans of Tarkir block cards that have dipped a bit too far in the face of all the supply that has been put out on the market in the last nine months, or that might be very powerful with the types of cards we expect to see in Battle of Zendikar.

But I’m not going to talk to you about the Tasigurs and Siege Rhinos of Tarkir today. Rather, I’m going to discuss the dregs of Khans of Tarkir—the cards you probably don’t even remember existing unless you’re still actively drafting the set.

On Tasigur

Before we get into that, let me immediately do what I just said I wasn’t going to do and discuss Tasigur. But I’m doing for contrasting purposes, so it’s totally cool.

Say you’re picking up Tasigur at around $6 right now. That’s almost certainly a good call (I’ve been trading for them at that price myself), but what’s the ceiling on that type of spec? Tasigur is from a small set (good), but is only a rare (bad). He’s powerful in eternal formats (good), but the small set he’s in got drafted twice as much as a New Phyrexia or a Dragon’s Maze (bad).

Let’s assume Tasigur triples up to $18. Vendors feel confident in being able to sell copies at that price, so the spread is at a quite-reasonable-for-an-eternal-staple 33 percent. That means that buylists will be at about $12, and assuming that’s your out, this is a double-up, which is a success by any metric. Sell all those $6 Tasigurs for $12 and glory in your wisdom and foresight.

That’s probably a reasonable expectation of what will happen in the fall, but what about your wildest dreams? What if Tasigur emerged as the de facto beater in Standard, Modern, and Legacy and jumped to an absurdly large ceiling?

How absurd is too absurd for wildest-dream-level absurd, though? Do you really believe a rare in a Standard-legal set could reach (and maintain) $50? I do not. The absolute best-case scenario that still strikes me as within the realm of possibility is probably $40 with a 25-percent spread. This is by no means a prediction of what’s going to happen (I don’t actually believe it will get that high, at least within the near to mid future), but in my estimation of the card and circumstances around it, that’s the ceiling of what I believe is possible: a quintuple up.

Of course, the (just as unlikely) downside is that Tasigur gets reprinted/banned/outclassed/hosed or any number of other things to make him more or less useless. With his eternal pedigree, Tasigur dipping down to bulk-rare status is about as unlikely as him exceeding $50 retail, but crazier things have happened. In that (again, very unlikely) case, you bought in at $6 and have a card worth as low as 10 or 15 cents per copy.

These two extremes are very unlikely, but despite the low chances, they could happen. I fully expect the more realistic scenario I began with ($18 retail/$12 buylist) to be closest to the truth, and that’s why I think Tasigur is a good buy, but the range of possibilities goes from a rather large loss per card (proportionally) to around five times the buy-in price. That’s a pretty large range that has as much downside as upside, disregarding the likelihood of these extremes.

Speculating on Dregs

On the other hand, picking up cards that are at or just barely above bulk right now mixes up the range significantly. If you buy a rare for 15 cents each, you’re not risking much if anything—you can always get 10 cents per rare when selling in bulk, and some dealers will happily pay 12 or even 15 cents each. Even buying cards at 20 or 25 cents isn’t all that risky.

The upside on this type of card, though, is substantially more than the ceiling quintuple up that we presumed with Tasigur.

Nightveil Specter is this type of card. Though the floor wasn’t quite as low as the 25 cents referenced so far, it did get as low as 75 cents TCGplayer mid, and the most successful speculators on this card managed to snag copies under 50 cents. When the card became a staple in Mono-Black Devotion, it catapulted to $12 with an $8 buylist, meaning some financiers got around sixteen times their initial investments back.

Sever the Bloodline, an Innistrad rare, bottomed out in Standard at 48 cents TCGplayer mid, and I personally bought copies as low as 15 cents from the site. When the card reached $2.50 retail, the buylist price didn’t follow, but that’s where trading comes in—I traded out all of my copies for at $2.50, in turn picking up cards that I hoped would increase even more.

Whip of Erebos bottomed out a little below $2 TCGplayer mid, but copies were around for $1 and would have gotten you $8 in trade or $3 on buylists, a nice little increase if you bought in at the floor.

To varying degrees, almost every set has a low-cost and forgotten rare that becomes relevant in the following year’s new Standard format, even if only briefly. These cards often spike hard, and as you can see in the three examples above, often fall off in a big way as the format evolves and these cards get closer to rotating themselves.

So the pros of speculating on this type of low-cost but high-reward rare are that the buy-in is low, the risk of loss is minimized (due to the floor of bulk rares), and the potential multiplier on one’s investment is much higher if the card hits. The cons are that the ceiling price doesn’t often last long, and the buylist price doesn’t always follow, meaning you have to trade in order to get value from your specs. You also need to buy a lot more copies to make the same amount of total profit.

I’m on record as not wanting MTG finance to consume too much time and not liking to feel rushed to get rid of specs, but even I must admit that the pros outweigh the cons here, so every year around this time—early summer—I like to take a close look at the types of rares that are at the bottom of the list of a price-sorted set.

Durdles and Draft Bombs

As you might expect, among the cards in Khans of Tarkir that are less than 30 cents TCGplayer mid, we have a whole lot of cards that only the most casual of casual players could love. Cards like Thousand Winds, Ivorytusk Fortress, Kheru Lich Lord, and Rakshasa Vizier are not at all exciting for more “hardcore” casual formats like Commander and Cube, and even were only mildly exciting in Draft.

There’s a whole lot of junk in this category, but one creature stands out from the rest of the field: Necropolis Fiend. Just from virtue of being included in an Intro Pack, the card has limited upside. But let’s not forget that it saw some early Standard play after Khans of Tarkir was released. Yes, Tasigur, is much more efficient, but Fiend acts as removal and can fly over ground troops, giving it utility that Tasigur just can’t provide. Just glancing at TCGplayer, there are lots of copies available in the 10 to 20 cent range. I don’t look at this card and strongly believe that it’s going to spike in the fall, but given its past play and a financial risk of virtually zero, the question is whether you’re willing to spend the time it would take to purchase, store, and out this card on the small chance that it does something.

Besides the durdly creatures, the dregs of Khans rares offer up plenty of spells that were bombs in Draft but not really exciting outside of it (for example, Flying Crane Technique and Icy Blast). There’s also cards that just aren’t exciting even in Draft, like Howl of the Horde or Trap Essence. There’s just not a lot here that seems to have breakout potential in a new Standard format.

Looking a little higher than the below-30-cent rares, a few more things do stick out. Ghostfire Blade is at a TCGplayer mid of 35 cents, and while it’s no Cranial Plating, it has shown up in the occasional Affinity list to further bolster the deck’s tiny robotic troops. Duneblast (30 cents TCGplayer mid) was considered one of the most powerful cards in Khans of Tarkir Draft, and though a seven-mana wrath has as much chance as being a staple in Standard as Brainstorm being in Battle for Zendikar, the power level of this card could make it appealing to Abzan Commander players. Again, there are copies on TCGplayer for under 15 cents right now. If this breaks a dollar, sweet, but if not, the only thing lost is the time it takes to bulk these out eventually.

Finally, let’s talk about Savage Knuckleblade, which has dipped all the way down to 58 cents at TCGplayer mid. Brian Kibler had some success with a Temur Aggro archetype shortly after Khans was released, but Big Knucks hasn’t done anything since that time and has plummeted in value.

The card is clearly powerful, but it just hasn’t quite fit in to this Standard format. My inclination is to stay away from this at 40 cents (where many copies are available), as Zendikar seems unlikely to offer support for three-color decks. That won’t keep me from grabbing copies as throw-ins when possible, though, because this really is a powerful card and could easily hit $5 if people are playing it.

Uncommon Love

My first real success with speculating on an uncommon came with Flinthoof Boar, which I picked up a bunch of at 18 cents each and eBayed out for just under $2. Ever since that time, I’ve been keeping an eye on potential breakout uncommons that are being left on draft tables across the world.

When I look at the uncommons of Khans, there are five specific ones that stick out to me most:

Copies of the trilands abound on TCGplayer for around 20 cents each. Pretending that there’s not tons more copies of Khans of Tarkir trilands than Shards of Alara ones would be wrong, but it is worth pointing out that the Shards trilands buylist for over a dollar and retail for nearly two—and they have all had reprints since Shards, so there’s not that many more copies of the Khans ones.

Although the long-term prospects on Khans trilands look good, if they see a lot of Standard play this fall, the short-term prospects will be even better for those who have copies at their disposal.

Assuming the Battle for Zendikar lands are the enemy fetches (a fair assumption, I think), that means we’ll have ten fetches, five trilands, ten gainlands, and…whatever is in Magic Origins. How deep I go on the trilands will be highly predicated on what fixing is available in this set: if it looks like three-color decks will be supported, I’m much more willing to pick up trilands en masse. If not, they’ll be slow gainers that aren’t worth acquiring with as much haste.

Small Buys, Big Gains

Keeping an eye on Magic Origins spoilers is very important at this point, because they can hint to us what might be good in the next Standard format, which will in turn lead us to buying the correct cards from Khans block.

It’s always worth going through the bottom cards of a set to see if anything is blatantly underpriced. There’s nothing that screams BUY ME NOW in Khans of Tarkir, but there is potential in some of the cards I called out above. Magic Origins spoilers will help dictate how to handle these penny-stock-style picks, so keep a close eye.

I’m 500 words over my limit and I didn’t even touch on Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir, but there’s a lot of opportunity in these sets as well. Do you see anything that sticks out? You know what to do.

Danny Brown, ProTrader

UNLOCKED: On Hobbies and Their Monetization

June 9, 2015 Danny Brown 6 Comments

Editor’s Note: Danny’s ProTrader article this week is a great piece for anyone looking to turn their Magic hobby into a money-making enterprise, or at least using it to offset costs. We wanted to share this excellent piece with everyone, so it has been unlocked early for your enjoyment! If you enjoy this piece, we hope you’ll consider signing up for a ProTrader account, where you’ll have access to more high-quality pieces like this every day of the week.

By: Danny Brown

Hobbies are important. They’re good for the psyche and for the soul. I have several myself, and without them, I would be bored more often than not.

Hobbies also cost money, and that’s okay. Yes, frugality is a virtue many of us could probably use a bit more of to varying levels, but it’s also possible to overdo it. I have some friends that absolutely refuse to spend any money at all, and it’s very frustrating. Yes, game nights, Netflix, and home-cooked dinners are great, but not when they’re the only things you ever do for fun. Setting aside some monthly entertainment dollars for eating out, events, concerts, and other purely-for-fun activities shouldn’t be guilt-inducing, at least in moderation.

Then again, I do understand where these friends are coming from. I hate spending more money than I have to for a given experience. For example, I’ve spent $60 on a videogame exactly twice in my entire life (Dark Souls and Bloodborne, in case you’re wondering), and this is no coincidence. I’ve previously discussed patience in making purchases, and that doesn’t just apply to Magic cards. Waiting a few months to buy a videogame will save someone $20 to $40 every single time, and I have taken that path in all but two cases in the last ten years (and by the way, I have no regrets on those two cases. It’s important to realize when you’re willing to pay more for a better/sooner experience).

The importance of patience, though, is something I’ve covered before, and besides, it’s more related to minimizing one’s costs in a hobby than it is to today’s actual topic.

Monetizing Your Hobbies

In case you didn’t get it from the not-so-subtle title you presumably clicked on to end up on this page, there is today’s topic in all of its Heading 2 glory.

There are things you have been doing presumably for fun, for free even, and I’m here to tell you: there is little more satisfying than turning the time and effort sunk into those pursuits into actual, real-life currency.

Being that we’re here on MTGPrice, a Magic: The Gathering-focused website, I’ll be focusing most of today’s discussion on monetizing that particular hobby, but for illustration purposes, here’s a few ways one could monetize several common non-Magic hobbies:

Reading: write critical reviews for a publication; buy, sell, and trade used books for profit.
Gardening: sell your produce at a local farmer’s market; teach classes to fledgling gardeners.
Weight lifting and other exercise: try dabbling in personal training; start a YouTube fitness channel.
Individual sports (biking, bowling, golf, tennis, etc.): enter tournaments of the appropriate level and crush the competition; coach novices to do the same.
Crafts: sell what you make; teach others to make cool stuff.

Are you seeing a pattern? Maybe I’m just unimaginative, but with few exceptions, there are two basic categories of actions to monetize a hobby:

Creating items or services to sell (or buying and selling for profit).
Teaching or entertaining through content creation or classes.

(If you can think of ways to monetize hobbies that don’t fall into these two basic categories, I’d love to hear them.)

In both cases, one requires a certain level of expertise in the hobby in question. That means that you probably won’t be able to monetize new hobbies right away, and if you have a lot of leisurely pursuits, you may not be able to monetize all of them. So focus on the ones that you know best and that cost the most amount of money to maintain.

The Danger

The main danger of monetizing one’s hobbies is that all of a sudden that thing you used to do for fun has become a job. Jobs are not fun—that’s why employers have to pay us money to do them.

So how do you make money from your hobbies without them devolving into drudgery that is no longer fun? My biggest tip in this regard is to not allow yourself to be dependent on the income you’re producing. Yes, it’s nice to make money from Magic, but the moment I am depending on Magic to pay my bills is the moment that I add a serious amount of stress to the hobby. Therefore, I balance my finances by assuming I will make no money from Magic. Anything I do make I see as a bonus.

Another great part about not depending on income from a monetized hobby is that if it does become tedious at any point, there’s nothing keeping you from taking a step back for some time. Once you extend your financial balance to include income from your monetized hobby, you give up a lot of the ability to take a break on occasion. It’s much better to keep one’s options open.

Monetizing Magic

Chances are that as an MTGPrice ProTrader, you have already monetized the game to some extent. Maybe this means you’re making profit, or maybe it just means you’re playing with cards that are worth much more money than you’ve actually spent on the game.

Let’s do some more brainstorming. Here’s a non-comprehensive list of ways to monetize your MTG habit:

Win one or more tournaments with large prizes (e.g., the Pro Tour or a Grand Prix).
Win lots of tournaments with small prizes (e.g., FNM).
Backpack grind: trade every chance you get, making extra value in more trades than not. Maybe you’ll sell your cards every once in a while, or maybe you’ll just end up with a sweet Legacy deck for the price of a Standard deck.
Buy cards at their low points and sell at their high points to buylists, or through eBay or TCGplayer.
Take #4 a step further and open your own webstore for buying and selling cards.
Take #4 and #5 a step further and open your own brick-and-mortar store for buying and selling cards and running tournaments (once you get to this point, you’re probably past the point of monetizing your hobby to the point of opening a business, but this is the end-game for many value-minded players).
Buy collections and large bulk lots and pick out the value cards, á la Ryan Bushard.
Become a judge and get compensated for attending and officiating events.
Write Magic articles! There’s a ton of niches: finance, competitive strategy across a number of formats, community issues, theory, flavor critiques, casual format highlights, and so much more. If you can put words together in a reasonably aesthetically pleasing manner, it’s just a matter of finding your slot—or creating your own.
Record Magic videos: Magic Online provides a great way to record Limited and Constructed events, but content producers like Tolarian Community College and Evan Erwin prove that it’s possible to make engaging and fun Magic content without gameplay being involved at all.
Start a Magic podcast. You probably already listen to a few. That doesn’t mean you can’t start your own (assuming you have interesting things to say).
Players like NumotTheNummy have proven that streaming on Twitch.tv can be a full-time option if you have the skills and personality for it. That’s more of a job than a monetized hobby, but streaming a couple nights a week and gaining a few subscribers is in the spirit of this exercise.

These are a dozen fine options that cover a wide range of skills and commitment levels, and I’m sure there are many other solid ways to make a little extra cash from your favorite card game. You know what you’re good at, so take those skills and turn them into something of value.

Take a Sure Thing When It’s Available

“Sure thing” is just a shorthand of course, as 100-percent surety is a bit of a mythical beast, but some actions are more likely to pay off than others.

Take Tasigur, the Golden Fang, for example. The card is down to around $6 now, which is pretty low for a card that has proven to be a high-power inclusion in both Modern and Legacy. I wouldn’t deign to say that a certain price is a “sure thing,” but I’m more or less comfortable with the idea that this is virtually certain to be profitable if bought at this price point (and I have been requesting as many as I can get on PucaTrade as a result).

Or maybe you want to create some content, and you’re faced with how to get it out to the world. You could start your own site, which requires a high level of commitment, promotion, and time, or you could let an established site pay you to post on its domain. While starting your own site can be correct with the proper resources, goals, and perspective, many of us would be better served to just take the sure thing of an established site providing a platform and paycheck.

Or maybe—and this is purely hypothetical, mind you—you’re in the top eight of a major Grand Prix and are faced with the choice of a Burst Lightning for your red-white aggro deck or a foil Tarmogoyf for your sideboard (and wallet). Do you take the common that adds some (likely small) number of percentage points to your chances of winning the event, or do you take the sure thing of several hundred dollars (while still having the chance to win the event)?

I know what I would do (it’s the one that involves taking the sure thing). I also know that I can respect the other viewpoint without agreeing with it. What I cannot respect is personal attacks on someone who sees things the opposite way, or takes an action with which you don’t agree. Once personal attacks enter the equation, that causes the attacker to lose any sense of respectability and probably a bunch of Twitter followers. Hypothetically.

And If There’s No Sure Thing?

When it comes to speculation, I don’t do it as much as I used to. I used to feel like I needed to find that next hot spec as frequently as possible.

Nowadays, I virtually never go looking for specs. If something is worth speculating on, it will be obvious. Yes, it’s possible to dig into cards nobody’s heard of and make a nice call for profit, but that’s not the way I like to do things. I’ll stick with obvious calls like Tasigur and the like, thank you very much. And if there’s no Tasigur-type card out there? I don’t buy. Why bother? If I don’t feel extremely confident in a card, there’s no point in buying in. And since we’ve already established the idea of not being dependent on this extra income, that means there’s no reason to speculate until I do feel extremely confident.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this topic. Have you monetized Magic in ways not mentioned above? Share your success story! Have you monetized another, non-Magic hobby? I’d love to hear about it. And how many of you have turned a monetized hobby into a career? Did it ruin it for you? Let us know!

Danny Brown

Bursting Modern Master Bubbles

May 30, 2015 Danny Brown 5 Comments

I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m not a fan of Modern Masters 2015.

The funny thing is that I should be the target market for this product: a Limited enthusiast who is willing and able to pay a bit more to enjoy drafting a more-complex-than-normal (meaning better-than-normal) set with the opportunity to pick up sweet cards for my cube or open insanely expensive eternal staples.

So what’s the problem?

Lottery Tickets

Think of your worst-case scenario in a draft. Most versions of this scenario would be something along the line of opening no cards of value and losing in the first round. Consider that in an eight-man pod, four players will lose their first match. Even (probably generously) saying that two of those players opened cards worth more than the price of the packs for drafting, that means that 25 percent of drafters got to play one round (and are probably frustrated due to a loss) and opened no cards of value.

Obviously, being a good Limited player means that you probably won’t see this scenario a full 25 percent of the time, but still, even the best drafters are going to have nights where the whole thing just goes to hell and they end up with less money, bulk commons, and the annoyance of losing early.

Normal drafting usually costs between $10 and $15. That’s not an insignificant amount of money, but it’s also not enough to really lose sleep over (and if it is, you probably shouldn’t be drafting. Find someone with a cube for your Limited fix). When it comes to drafting a normal set, I have made the conscious decision that I am willing to risk $12 (my LGS’s price) for the chance to gamble on some packs for a money rare, draft some cards, play at least one round of Magic, and hopefully win some prizes. Everyone’s line on this is different, of course, but to me, the upside of a perfect draft is worth the downside of losing $12 and experiencing the frustration of a worst-case draft.

The First Modern Masters

I drafted the first Modern Masters four times (in paper MTG), paying $40 cash each time for the privilege. That’s $160 I spent on 12 packs of the set.

I pretty much had my worst-case scenario happen in all four of these drafts: I didn’t open the top cards and I lost in the first round of all but one draft (and did not win that fourth one). To this day, two years later, I regret spending so much on those drafts, but due to the nature of the first Modern Masters, the worst-case scenario wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Here’s an incomplete list of cards that I did end up with after these four drafts. I wish I had written everything down, but I did not, so this is just based on my memory:

4x Spell Snare
2x Kitchen Finks
2x Path to Exile
1x Pact of Negation
1x Summoner’s Pact
1x Maelstrom Pulse (foil)
1x Knight of the Reliquary
1x Angel’s Grace
1x Woodfall Primus
1x Kodama’s Reach (foil)
Some number of Electrolyze
Some number of Trygon Predator
Some number of Lava Spike
Some number of Rift Bolt

None of these cards are the type of thing you open and pump your fist about (at least when you consider some of the mythics in this set), but added up over four drafts, these did a lot of work to help me not feel completely morose about “wasting” $160 on what turned out for me to be highly unsatisfying drafts.

The New Modern Masters

Despite my bad experience with the first Modern Masters, I was looking forward to Modern Masters 2015 and eager to actually win some drafts this time.

Then the set was fully spoiled.

Travis Allen did a great job covering what is also my biggest problem with the design of Modern Masters 2015 as a premium product designed to be a higher-cost alternative to normal drafting. This is the part that stuck out most to me:

The result here is that while half the rares you opened last time just about covered the cost at MSRP, this time only a quarter of them are going to. That puts us a lot closer to the Dragons of Tarkir ratio than the Modern Masters ratio.

The first Modern Masters had cards like Kitchen Finks, Spell Snare, Lava Spike, and a number of other powerful and fairly valuable uncommons and commons that you could be fairly certain would be available several picks into each pack. You didn’t have to open a rare to make at least some value back from your draft.

In Modern Masters 2015, there are a few powerful uncommons and commons, but most of the value is packed in the rare slot of one in every eight packs, since the mythics are where most of the money in Modern Masters 2015 lies.

With the first Modern Masters, someone with a good understanding of cards values could easily take $10 or more from a draft, even if she didn’t open anything in her three boosters. This is largely unprecedented in the world of drafting, where your financial success is often hit or miss—you tend to open one or two cards of value, or you get a bunch of worthless junk with maybe a Standard-playable uncommon.

Modern Masters 2015 leans more toward this second model: you either win big or you lose badly, and the entry fee here is 250 percent the normal price. The fact that a fraction of a fraction of a percent will open a foil Tarmogoyf is cool, but the downside is the same as for a normal set—completely whiffing on cards of value and ending up with only bulk.

Breaking It Down

As the above quote from Travis said, you have a 25 percent of opening a rare that will cover your cost of entry. Note that the cost of entry is $10, and that many of these rares are going to be heading south of that very quickly. Primeval Titan (a mythic) is barely above the pack price as is, given it’s three previous printings. Daybreak Coronet‘s previous value stems from one deck that wants it and there being virtually no supply—an influx of supply should crash it very quickly. How many copies of Splinter Twin, Fulminator Mage, and Spellskite does the market really need? All of these cards are on their way down to varying degrees. In fact, with very few exceptions, Modern Masters 2015 packs include mostly cards that are going down in value for the foreseeable future. That just doesn’t seem that attractive to me at $10 a pack.

Consider now the top eight non-rares in the set based on TCGplayer mid:

First of all, the cards at the bottom of this list aren’t even worth a dollar. Second, half of the above cards (Smash, Plating, Vines, and Thoughtcast) are for highly specialized decks, meaning their financial upside is inherently capped. Lightning Bolt at uncommon makes a lot of sense for Limited, but it means players are less likely to get one in their drafts, and it’s not like a card with this many printings is going to have a huge upside despite being at uncommon here.

Only Remand is truly exciting among the non-rares in this set. If you whiff on your rare and foil in each pack, then you have a very limited chance of making back much if any value from the cards passed to you. Compare this to my Modern Masters 2013 pickings listed above, which were almost exclusively passed to me. Modern Masters 2015 just doesn’t compare, and to me, it’s not worth the high cost of entry.

There Is an Alternative

I’m reminded of George Orwell’s take on lotteries from 1984, where the lottery was used as a means to control the masses through providing distraction and false hope.

Look, I understand the thrill of opening a booster pack and hoping to find something highly valuable. That very thrill is the reason that I mainly play Limited, and my love of valuable cards naturally led me to MTG finance. I have drafted sets multiple times with virtually no good cards because I love cracking boosters. The difference is that those boosters were $4 or less.

The ceiling for Modern Masters 2015 is well worth $40 a draft (I’m assuming you’re paying for a prize pack, as well), but the floor is not. Again, each of us will have our own lines, but I find the idea of dropping $40 on a draft and having the worst case happen to be completely untenable.

So what’s my solution? I’m just not going to draft the set. I think Wizards overshot with the MSRP while simultaneously making the set worse value than its predecessor. Sure, I would love to crack some packs, but I’m expressing my dissatisfaction with this product with my wallet. (I may reconsider on Magic Online, where the MSRP is the $6.99 of the original Modern Masters.)

Do I think you should skip the set? Only if you agree with what I’ve written here. I’m not trying to be an anti-Modern Masters 2015 activist here. If you feel like it’s worth gambling with your $40ish dollars on some packs of the set, by all means, do so!

But if you have any way convinced yourself that this set is good value and that you as a financier or player must be cracking packs to get in on the action, I suggest you reconsider your position. There’s a lot of places you can put your money, and randomized packs at $10 a piece just doesn’t seem like your best bet. You can do better. This is no different from any other set: if you’re looking for specific cards, just buy them. Booster packs are bad value, and Modern Masters 2015 are in the same boat as all the others.

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