Readers!

Good news as a set is coming out that I don’t have to do a bunch of analysis for because it’s all reprints. We don’t know what cards in new sets will look like in a year, but we can better predict cards in Double Double Toil and Trouble Masters’ trajectory by looking at past trends and talking about all of the factors I think contribute to a card either recovering or not. To me, a recovery is getting to the pre-reprint price before it’s reprinted again. You can hold on longer than that, but I don’t think I want to, so cards that fell a lot because they’re expensive are better opportunities, which means they need to be expensive to start with.

You’ll remember from the last decade that I don’t love expensive cards. I like lower risk stuff like my analysis of EDH cards provides. However, if we know a card is bound to recover, it’s low enough risk that I don’t mind betting big money no whammies on a proven staple. Reprints are a risk, the card becoming obsolete is a risk, bear attacks are a risk. To quote Al Pacino in Heat, “you could get killed walking your doggy” which makes sense if you saw the movie but less if you didn’t, but that’s your fault for not watching the movie Heat this whole time. What are you waiting for? It’s a good movie, it’s only like 3 hours long and the whole walking the dog quote will make slightly more sense. Or take my word for it that it means risk is inherent in all things. Why make safe, low-value specs when you could get killed walking your doggy? If you don’t have a dog, a non-zero number of people have had frozen blue blocks of ice from an airplane toilet fall off of a plane, reach terminal velocity and slam into them with like a million joules of force and turn them into a human pancake covered in thawing pee. It’s not likely, but the chance isn’t 0, so let’s stop worrying about risk and start worrying about profit, shall we?

The profit will come from buying cards when they bottom out and then holding them as the price goes back up. I have done this type or article a few times and I usually over-explain my picks, so rather than do that, I’ll pick 10 cards – 5 to pick up and 5 I think you should probably avoid. Let’s do it up!

Here is What I’d Buy

Inclusions: 96,532

Reprint Risk: Inevitable

Recent Low/High: $40/$140

Number of Printings: 10

Vault is a slam dunk. It might not get above $100 again, but if you can buy a Mana Vault for under $50 like I think you will soon be able to, you’d be a fool not to. This hasn’t been printed since 2018, which is a 4 year gap I don’t expect a repeat of, but it only took 2 years for the price to triple, which is how long we probably have.

Inclusions: 65,916

Reprint Risk: Inevitable

Recent Low/High: $45/$110

Number of Printings: 6

This is another slam dunk. It took a while for it to bottom out last time, so watch to make sure it goes down. I might not wait forever, if people start to really play Modern again soon, this is going to be $100 before you know it.

Inclusions: 36,543

Reprint Risk: Medium

Recent Low/High: $15/$50

Number of Printings: 3

This is not a $50 card again, probably, but even with Jumpstart and DDTATM back-to-back punching this price, I don’t think it can possibly stay under $20. I think its inclusion data is also skewed by the fact that it was $50 at the peak of EDH’s popularity – a $10 Oracle goes in a ton more decks and doesn’t stay $10 long.

Inclusions: 43,421

Reprint Risk: Medium

Recent Low/High: $10/$55

Number of Printings: 6, kinda (Judge promo and Invention)

This has historically gone from $10 to $55 in a short period of t ime and despite its 43k inclusions in the past 2 years, I think it can go up even more given the relatively small period of time people had to get these cheap. Will Double Masters sell more than Core Set 2019? Probably, but it’s not rarity down-shifted in this set and I think the demand can triple you up easy.

Inclusions: 39,689

Reprint Risk: Medium to Low inside 3 years

Recent Low/High: $10/$30

Number of Printings: 5, kinda (expedition and FTV)

I think the graph of this card speaks volumes.

Here is What to Not Buy, Probably

Inclusions: 22,266

Reprint Risk: High

Recent Low/High: $2/$50

Number of Printings: 3

This was a bulk rare that Joh Lee Kwai made expensive by playing cards on other people’s turns on The Command Zone. That’s cool, but it hasn’t been printed since that happened, but now it’s a rare in a Master’s Set and it’s currently like $15. I think the poor inclusion data, its rating as a meme card and higher supply than ever before bode poorly for this card.

Inclusions: 108,155

Reprint Risk: The only reason I don’t like it as a pick-up

Recent Low/High: $20/$65

Number of Printings: 3

I think they want this to be under $20 and I think they’ll keep reprinting it. Its 108k inclusions make me really nervous. I think you can make some money on this but I will be so nervous about a reprint I’ll sell too early and regret it. This is a card that will regain some value but it’s so volatile to me I don’t want to touch it. I feel a similar way about…

Inclusions: 46,513

Reprint Risk: Brace yourself

Recent Low/High: $20/$100

Number of Printings: 3

I think they’re just going to print this into dust. People were so mad when it hit $100 again, and they saw how insufficient a masters set printing was at curbing prices. I’m prepared to be wrong on this, and if you want these to play with, certainly don’t balk at $30 or so, but I think these aren’t done going down and I think we’re going to see another printing of this in the next 12 months or I’ll be shocked. This could be a really big miss, but I think misses are only bad if you don’t spend that money on a different hit of mine, which seems like a thing you could do instead of this, which seems riskier to me.

This is a bad card that was expensive because P3K was only sold at Toys R Us and the stoner who stole all of the P3K from my local Toys R Us wouldn’t sell to me back in high school because I made fun of his white boy dreadlocks. I have owned Imperial Seals and always been glad to be rid of them as fast as I got them. Actual supply is doom here, this card’s price is in freefall. I’m not even including inclusions.

Same deal here. I think if this reprint had hit in the midst of Obeka fever, we could be having a conversation, but

That does it for me this week. There were a few cards I wasn’t sure about so I ignored them. Got a specific question about a specific card? Let me know in the comments or the Pro Trader Discord, otherwise assume you’re on your own because I didn’t have enough of an idea to stick my neck out. That does it for me, readers. Until next time!

Readers!

I want to do a bit of a continuation of the energy of last week’s article without making it a strict continuation. The truth is, Baldur’s Gate is a set that everyone is dogging on twitter because everyone whose opinion you respect doesn’t respect EDH. That’s OK with me, I honestly like people underestimating a great set. AFR was full of weird cards and it sold well just because people who like D&D bought them, and maybe they’ll keep it up? Either way, Baldur’s Gate is doing a lot financially, and maybe ignoring the “face” commanders that are mostly cards from the precon and drilling down deeper will find more hidden gems. It worked last week, it can work now.

Let’s look at the distribution from last week.

We looked at a few, and we’ll look at the rest, now. Out of curiosity, has anything changed overall?

Here is the full top 16 from last week.

Here is the top 16 today.

It is safe to say the dust has settled quite a bit. Let’s look at the last few stragglers in the Top 16 before we call it a set, shall we?

Would it surprise you to learn that Neera’s High Synergy cards are not precon cards? It’s an actual interesting list!

Stealing their cards is the best way to play Magic the Gathering and there’s one card that hasn’t gotten a reprint for some reason.

This is in multiple decks based on Baldur’s Gate usage and it currently costs $10 on TCG Player and $15 on CK. I think reprint risk is non-trivial, but I also think this is powerful enough to hit $25 if it carries on its current trajectory for another year and I’m into it. I wish I’d had the foresight to scoop a ton when these were under $5 but I assumed it was a fringe kind of card only I liked. Helm of Possession wasn’t a $30 card so how could this even hit $10? Turns out people are more aware of cards that aren’t old enough to drink – who knew?

The precon gave us a very sexy reprint which cut the value of Jeska’s Will, a really ridiculous spell, from $28 to $14 overnight. It’s rebounding a bit on CK so if you think it’s done dropping or you can live with buying in at $12 on TCG Player knowing it probably makes out at $21 this time around, there is a lot of money to be made here. You know what didn’t get a reprint?

The version that’s $21 on TCG Player and $32 on CK.

$35 on EA foils looks pretty good in hindsight!

I have talked about some of these cards before, but sometimes it bears repeating.

Adeline is a good card with a very, very ugly EA version. Lacking a credible alternative, the regular version has to do all of the work.

The regular version maxed out a full dollar higher. Bad EA versions bode well for the regular versions, but eliminate some of that “even if this gets reprinted (something almost sure to happen to Adeline) the EA version can hold some value” safety you feel, so spec at your own risk. Still, this is a future $15 card that you can get on TCG for $4.86 and this isn’t the first or last time I’ll discuss this as a spec.

Someone has kept this at $5 on their buylist as it fell from $17 to $7 and I want to know who.

It isn’t who I thought it was – they are only paying $6.60 on the foil and not buying the non-foil at all. Curious.

Circle of Dreams Druid’s EA version is plummeting to the value of the non-EA and will almost certainly get a reprint as it’s an Elf and it’s a $5 Gaea’s Cradle for new players, so maybe those EA and EA foil copies are better – just make sure not to grab a falling knife.

This deck seems very narrow. It builds itself, basically, but no one is building it enough for these cards to matter, or using them anywhere else. I don’t love this as a source for specs.

I believe this graph, however, speaks for itself. This seems like a very good card that sometimes impacts other formats. I this $6 is a bargain for a card that was 3 times that at one point.

With so many decks, it’s hard to get to them all, but it’s also a lot of opportunities for old, weird cards to get a second look, or for one card that’s not really a staple but which interacts favorably with a lot of decks built around the same few core concepts. I think if we want to dig deep, we’ll continue to find gems, and we’ll find cards like Adeline whose names keep coming up. Both of those are good things. That does it for me this week, readers. Until next time!

Readers!

Last week I wrote about how the landscape has shifted a bit and as people actually got Baldur’s Gate cards in their hands, and I feel like I should admit that the landscape continues to shift and every article is merely a snapshot into a fluid situation, further compacted by the fact that Dominaria United previews will start any day, now. Fortunately, we still have some time to figure out some cards that have some velocity because they’re in decks that aren’t tearing up the charts but are still getting built quite a bit. Let’s look at the lesser known decks in Baldur’s Gate (I don’t remember the name of the set, go with it).

The obvious ones are still doing really well, but what about the ones that are not obvious are are not doing as well? Not exactly the dregs, but certainly not the decks ending up in the top-built decks from the last week. Compare Raggadragga’s 716 decks to some of the others.

The 347 Kadira decks aren’t exactly pulling the same weight, are they? That said, they are still pulling weight and we have ignored them for a few weeks. Let’s not do that anymore, shall we?

All precon cards. We talked about this last week – A ton of the high synergy cards are directly from the precon and I don’t know what to do about that. We could filter them out but then you’re getting some fairly low synergy scores and you might as well just look at top cards, which are likely Orzhov staples.

There aren’t enough Party-based decks in the world not to make Coveted Prize a perennial stinker, and going down below the “Top Cards” cutoff seems… fraught I guess is the word. Still, we should soldier on and see if we can find anything here.

This could take a minute, but every time I swing with this and activate it, someone asks “wait, does it really tutor when it swings?” Yes, this card is slept-on because Kaldheim is slept-on. This card, however, has solid fundamentals imo.

I don’t love looking at the raw number of inclusions as a substitute for analysis, but if this card is in this many decks and no one told the price, it’s a matter of time until this butts up against reality and becomes the price it’s supposed to be. Yeah, they’re printing everything into Bolivian right now but that doesn’t mean even the supply we got can keep up with this demand. A new card making this obsolete seems more likely than a reprint. Unfortunately, it seems more likely than a lot of things.

You can basically copy everything I said about Varragoth and apply it here. In fact,

This could take a minute, but every time I swing with [another creature] and activate it, someone asks “wait, does it really tutor when it swings?” and I say “no, you’re thinking of Varragoth.” Yes, this card is slept-on because Kaldheim is slept-on. This card, however, has solid fundamentals imo.

I don’t love looking at the raw number of inclusions as a substitute for analysis, but if this card is in this many decks and no one told the price, it’s a matter of time until this butts up against reality and becomes the price it’s supposed to be. Yeah, they’re printing everything into Bolivian right now but that doesn’t mean even the supply we got can keep up with this demand. A new card making this obsolete seems more likely than a reprint. Unfortunately, it seems more likely than a lot of things

Despite the enormous handicap of coming from Wisconsin and working in de lumberyard dere, this guy manages to craft some chaos wherever he goes. I can dig it. How much chaos?

Cards that aren’t included in the precon! What the WHAT?

I think this is likely to be a much more expensive foil soon. The set has been out a year and boxes are pretty expensive on this already. I’m confident we will see a lot of growth on this barring a reprint in foil.

We are currently at this point in the graph, if that makes this any clearer. I like foil Nightblade a LOT.

This is quite possibly the ugliest premium version I’ve ever seen.

And the foils are about to be dirt cheap.

That said,

Barring a reprint, this goes to $10. That said, a reprint seems kind of likely and there is no foil or premium version that can insulate this card from the shock of said reprint. This has the juice to hit $10, I just don’t know how much time we have. If you’re squeamish, put your dollahs elswur.

Well hot damn.

$10 on CK was the floor on these and CK is already asking $15. It’s not unreasonable to assume this can hit $20. A lot of Jumpstart was opened because the first print run was small, the prices were nuts and excitement was high. Then boxes came out and people bought then at $80 feverishly because they were so laden with value. Then the market realized a ton of singles were in it and supply was basically infinite and prices bottomed out. We’re for sure in an upswing, though, and this is on its way to, and I’m speculating, $20ish. Plan accordingly.

That does it for me this week. Next week we’ll dive even deeper unless another set has come out by then. Until next time!

Readers!

I titled this article “The Shifting Landscape” because the landscape is shifting. I will not be taking further questions at this time.

Baldur’s Gate still hasn’t settled and some of the top commanders in the set are shaking out a bit differently. Let’s take a look at the leaderboard this week.

Captain value has absolutely rocketed up the charts and it’s worth taking a look at, but you’re going to be disappointed. A growing trend has started to emerge lately, and I attribute it in part to how little time we have to brew and tune decks before we’re encouraged to ditch them and move on to the next thing. I’m convinced every Captain N’ghathrod deck is just the precon sprinkled with 25% of an Umbris deck that didn’t get finished since a set came out every few weeks since then and there never seemed to be time to finish. What makes me think people are using largely unmodified precons?

Every single High Synergy card,

and every top card are in the precon. 28/28 on the key cards in the deck being shipped with it. The precons are getting more and more tuned and less and less broad, and the more tuned they get, the more they’re forced to reprint very specific cards that will never leave the deck and the less people are adding singles from other sets. It’s not every deck that’s like that, certainly, but the small window between sets is clearly having an impact on builders and it’s being reflected in the data no matter whether it’s a measure of cards appearing a lot in this one deck and nowhere else or a measure of cards just showing up in this deck a ton. Yeah, I’m not surprised people are playing Thought Vessel and Lightning Greaves, but every single card here is in the precon.

Accordingly, we have to scroll down pretty far to find anything, bad news when we’ve proved in this column that the deck’s ranking in the set and top commanders of the week list can predict whether the deck has the velocity to launch all but the lowest-stock of specs. I think there is a non-trivial amount here, and I’ll find it, but I’m not thrilled about it.

You can say that Card Kingdom prices aren’t real, but this card is sold out on Card Kingdom at $5 a copy and CSI still has some for $2.50.

Is this card bad? Is the price real? Is CK a reliable metric? I will answer any and all questions by silently pointing to the part of your computer screen where I showed with data that you could arbitrage this card to CK’s buylist by paying retail at Coolstuff if you were so inclined. If you do, please use EDHREC’s clipboard feature to upload your want list to one of the affiliated sites so I don’t have to get a day job.

It’s my job to know what’s going on here but I will be real honest, I do not. There are copies on other sites, but TCG Player seems to be experiencing a run on this and that’s really interesting. Don’t expect this to be $10, but don’t expect it to stay under $5 if it’s not reprinted pronto.

So what about a deck where we’re bound to have a bunch of old cards? Will we see a ton of precon cards or what?

Looks like there’s something here after all. Let’s dig in.

You have got to love the shapes of both of these graphs. These are cards that are ready to move. The set is a year old but 90 products have come out since then and people have moved on hard from Commander Legends one. It’s time to pay more than $3 for a better Boundless Realms. This card rules.

No idea what’s taking this card so long when it already spiked to $5 but I continue to not understand this graph shape. What I do know is that this card is quite good and it’s very cheap but has also demonstrated the ability to hit $5 for a bit. I’m into these under a buck.

This card keeps threatening to mean business – I wish anyone took it seriously. Personally, if these are scoopable for half of their peak price right now, I don’t know what any of us is waiting for.

This wasn’t as deep a dive into the set as maybe you would have liked, but I covered two new commanders with radically different spec outlooks and I think they contrast each other in a way that’s instructive. I hope you agree and I hope you’ll tell me about it in the comments or on Discord. Until next time!