Category Archives: ProTrader

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Modern History Set Review, Champions of Kamigawa

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BRIEF INTROSPECTIVE INTRODUCTION: I was reading a strategy article this morning, and the author mentioned off-hand how exhausted he was of having to write about Abzan. It made me realize that even though Magic finance has its share of redundancies (do you know what “spread” means? Because it’s very important!), at least our primary focus doesn’t get bogged down by “that deck won again!” I dunno, it made sense to me when I thought it, but I also hadn’t had my first coffee. Anyways, have a great day and enjoy the article you’re about to read!

CHAMPIONS OF KAMIGAWA

I want to say one thing that is positive (kind of) about this set before we dive into it, and while this would probably fit best under the analysis portion, I think it needs to be front-loaded so that the prices all make sense. Champions of Kamigawa has done something that I’ve never really seen happen before, in that the overall value of the set surged with the popularity of Commander. This set’s EV was largely in line with Betrayers and Saviors, and now… well… it’s better. There were a handful of years where this set was nothing more than the Sensei’s Divining Top lottery, so it’s pretty interesting to see that there is still some hope for sets even after they are several years out of print.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Jason Alt, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Naval Academy

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I recently got to thinking about tutors. Academies are all about tuition. There are a lot of useful tutors in EDH, and they’re absolutely worth talking about at some point, so I decided to make that point today. There are broad tutors, narrow tutors, and very, very narrow tutors, and I want to talk about all of them.

Does this seem out-of-flavor with this series? This series was predicated on identifying emerging cards from newly spoiled sets and seeing how their inclusions in the metagame would shake things up. As their stocks increased due to increased adoption, the surging tide would lift all boats, and buying into those other boats (cards) at their lowest price by anticipating their increased use based on spoiled cards was the name of the game. I’m talking about a broad category of cards as opposed to talking about how one particular printed card would affect prices of other cards.

They’re simple rules. I made the rules. And now I want to break them? What the hell?

What if I told you that this article was predicated not on a card that was going to get printed but rather on a card that was not going to get printed? How do we know? Well, I look at what little we know about Commander 2015 so far.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Danny Brown, ProTrader

PROTRADER: The Mythics of Fate Reforged

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Last week, we went over the mythics of Khans of Tarkir. With depressed prices due to peak supply and fetches driving everything else in the set down, mythics are great, low-risk investments that have the potential to see exponential growth due their relatively short supply.

Although Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir lack the downward pressure of fetch lands (apart from the rare FRF pack), they are both also at peak supply. Also keep in mind the huge effect that Draft has on card supply. Assuming equal number of drafts fired from last fall to now (which is almost certainly not accurate, but let’s roll with it), we have roughly this proportion of each of the sets in this block:

  • Khans of Tarkir: 55% (3x drafted in the fall, 2x drafted in the winter)
  • Fate Reforged: 22% (1x drafted in the winter, 1x drafted in the spring)
  • Dragons of Tarkir: 22% (2x drafted in the spring)

For context, that means that if one million Siege Rhinos were opened in drafts, there would only be 400,000 Tasigurs. And since Tasigur is a rare and mythics appear at a rate of one-in-eight, there would only be 50,000 mythics from FRK or DTK, compared to 125,000 of each mythics from KTK. Keep in mind that these numbers are all purely hypothetical—Wizards does not provide sales data to us plebs—but using these rough proportions can show you just how stark the difference in supply is from a fall-set rare compared to a spring-set mythic: in this case, a ration of 20 to one.

With all this in mind, let’s take a look at the mythics from Fate Reforged today. We’ll hit Dragons of Tarkir next week for you completionists out there.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Fantasy

Okay, I’m going to be real with you right now. Yes, you. I have been staring at a blank document screen for way too long. I kept trying to think of the best way to start this article off, because I’m really excited about getting to the actual meaty content of it—the part with actual substance—but I could not get more than one sentence in without deleting it all and starting from scratch. I considered doing some sort of flowery prose about how Fall brings the changing of leaves, weather, all that fartsy Robert Frost crap, but the idea made me sick. I didn’t want to get too jokesy with it either, because even though I’m going to be relating a very relevant topic to something some of you may know nothing about, I don’t want you to get the impression that it isn’t worth reading. So instead I’m busting down the fourth-wall and telling you what’s up, “High Fidelity” style, and damn the consequences. Today we are going to be talking about fundamentals of card evaluation (teaching someone how to fish1), and it’s going to be framed with the other big talent evaluation that is happening right now, fantasy football. Even if you don’t like football, it’s worth reading since I won’t get too off-topic. And I promise right now that this won’t be anything like my Fate Reforged set review. I promise to never do that again. Finally- moving on!

So, very quickly, for those of you who don’t know what fantasy football is (I think they call the fútbol version “League Manager” or something?): it is a means of predicting individual player performance over the course of a season. You select players, and everyone in your “league” of eight or more participants drafts players that they expect to have quality seasons relative to when they were taken in the draft. It takes American Football, the most kick-ass, high-octane, freedom-lovingest sport in the world, and makes it even better. I love it.

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.