By: Jared Yost

Pro Tour personality @TomoharuSaito has been a busy man. He  has provided the Magic community not one, not two, not three, but thirteen (at the time of this writing) decklists that players can use to get an idea of what Standard might be like until Khans is added to the card pool. He did this for Journey Into Nyx as well but I only found out recently about those Twitter posts he made in May. Some of his May ideas panned out while others did not. I think most didn’t pan out because the top tier strategies are pretty much set in stone at that point, at least in the U.S. Who wants to learn how to play a new deck near the end of the season? The decks did provide insight into several cards, however, and got people talking about cards like Prophetic Flamespeaker which was featured in some of the decks from his last batch. This time around, I’m going to dive deeply into Tomoharu’s decklists and see if we can’t glean any information about which cards might see play after rotation. I think posts like these are helpful in seeing future Standard possibilities.

He displays the decks in an elegant, simple way. He compiled the decklists together on a playmat and took a picture of each list that he thought would see play over the next couple months. Afterwards, a quick post to Twitter and all of a sudden everyone is buzzing around this news. Please check out his lists on Twitter, then come over to this Reddit post to get an idea about what the community is saying about the most recent batch of decks.

From my reading of the Reddit comments players seem to be very divided on how “good” the actual decklists are. Are these only Tier 2 strategies? Is he tricking the entire populace, listing all of these decks out and then going to decide to play something completely different? Could this be chalked up to the uniqueness that is the Japanese Magic scene? We’ll just have to wait and see when the results start rolling in.

From a financial standpoint, these decklists are a powerful tool to let us know the possible directions that Standard could go. Thirteen decks is a lot of data to go through. Let’s see which cards Tomoharu Saito thinks are going to be played the most based on the number of times they appear in each of the decklists. Lets run the numbers and see how many copies of each card are present in the decks.

* – Represents a card that we will see through rotation (commons excluded)

# of Copies	Card
56	Forest
33	Mutavault
28	Swamp
27	Plains
26	Mountain
16	Courser of Kruphix*
16	Elvish Mystic
16	Sylvan Caryatid*
16	Overgrown Tomb
16	Temple of Malady*
14	Llanowar Wastes*
12	Thoughtseize*
8	Burning-Tree Shaman
8	Chandra’s Phoenix
8	Desecration Demon
8	Experiment One
8	Lotleth Troll
8	Soldier of the Pantheon*
8	Battlefield Forge*
8	Breeding Pool
8	Mana Confluence*
8	Temple of Triumph*
8	Abrupt Decay
8	Devour Flesh
8	Lightning Strike
8	Stoke the Flames*
7	Boon Satyr*
6	Temple Garden
6	Sign in Blood
6	Ajani Steadfast*
5	Polukranos, World Eater*
5	AEtherspouts*
4	Ajani’s Pridemate*
4	Altac Bloodseeker*
4	Boros Elite
4	Dreg Mangler
4	Dryad Militant
4	Eidolon of Blossoms*
4	Erebos’s Emissary*
4	Firefist Striker
4	Fleecemane Lion*
4	Foundry Street Denizen
4	Galerider Sliver
4	Goblin Rabblemaster*
4	Gyre Sage
4	Kalonian Tusker
4	Lifebane Zombie
4	Liliana’s Reaver
4	Loxodon Smiter
4	Manaweft Sliver
4	Nemesis of Mortals*
4	Nighthowler*
4	Pack Rat
4	Precinct Captain
4	Predatory Sliver
4	Rakdos Cackler
4	Satyr Wayfinder
4	Scuttling Doom Engine*
4	Slitherhead
4	Sliver Hivelord*
4	Soul of Innistrad*
4	Spiteful Returned*
4	Sunblade Elf*
4	Voice of Resurgence
4	Wall of Mulch*
4	Yisan, the Wanderer Bard*
4	Young Pyromancer
4	Hallowed Fountain
4	Maze’s End
4	Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx*
4	Sacred Foundry
4	Sliver Hive*
4	Steam Vents
4	Temple of Enlightenment*
4	Temple of Epiphany*
4	Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth*
4	Yavimaya Coast*
4	Banishing Light*
4	Detention Sphere
4	Necromancer’s Stockpile*
4	Path of Bravery
4	Waste Not*
4	Advent of the Wurm
4	Boros Charm
4	Chord of Calling*
4	Dissolve*
4	Druid’s Deliverance
4	Fog
4	Grisly Salvage
4	Izzet Charm
4	Searing Blood*
4	Shock
4	Sphinx’s Revelation
4	Warleader’s Helix
4	Anger of the Gods*
4	Duress
4	Mind Rot
4	Supreme Verdict
4	Urban Evolution
4	Jace, Architect of Thought
4	Kiora, the Crashing Wave*
3	Brimaz, King of Oreskos*
3	Fiendslayer Paladin
3	Firedrinker Satyr*
3	Frenzied Goblin*
3	Pharika, God of Affliction*
3	Shivan Reef*
3	Hero’s Downfall*
3	Drown in Sorrow*
3	Elspeth, Sun’s Champion*
3	Garruk, Caller of Beasts
3	Liliana Vess
3	Nissa, Worldwaker*
2	Bonescythe Sliver
2	Megantic Sliver
2	Voyaging Satyr
2	Stomping Ground
2	Ulcerate*
2	Brave the Elements
2	Ephemeral Shields
2	Golgari Charm
2	Commune with the Gods
2	Restock*
2	Garruk, Apex Predator*
2	Vraska the Unseen
1	Battle Sliver
1	Blur Sliver
1	Constricting Sliver*
1	Hornet Queen*
1	Keranos, God of Storms*
1	Scavenging Ooze
1	Striking Sliver
1	Syphon Sliver
1	Venom Sliver
1	Azorius Guildgate
1	Boros Guildgate
1	Dimir Guildgate
1	Golgari Guildgate
1	Gruul Guildgate
1	Izzet Guildgate
1	Orzhov Guildgate
1	Rakdos Guildgate
1	Selesnya Guildgate
1	Simic Guildgate
1	Reclamation Sage*
1	Call of the Conclave

The decks were quite diverse and the card list reflects this. However, we’re also trying to glean some information as to what cards Saito values the most from Standard sets that aren’t rotating in the fall.

Top 10 Rares Appearing Across Decks Through Rotation:

Courser of Kruphix (16)
Sylvan Caryatid (16)
Temple of Malady (16)
Llanowar Wastes (14)
Thoughtseize (12)
Soldier of the Pantheon (8)
Battlefield Forge (8)
Mana Confluence (8)
Temple of Triumph (8)
Boon Satyr (7)

Honorable Mention:

AEtherspouts

If you’re a Standard player you will want to pick up your copies of these cards because they are the most likely to get played across several archetypes. You’re chances of being able to use the cards once Khans comes up are pretty high if you decide to pick up cards on this list.

Courser of Kruphix, Sylvan Caryatid, and Temple of Malady round out the top three. They appeared in both spike and fringe strategies (fringe examples include Maze’s End and BG Zombies), and when they did each deck contained a playset of them. Llanowar Wastes comes in at a close fourth with Thoughtseize to round out the top five. I would advise picking up all cards at the current prices if you plan on playing them.

Soldier of the Pantheon, Battlefield Forge, Mana Confluence, and Temple of Triumph all appeared as a playset in two decks. Boon Satyr appeared as a playset in one, and three copies in another. These are probably the best cards to spec on, and personally I would put my money on Soldier of the Pantheon and Mana Confluence as the breakout cards of the four. Boon Satyr and Temple of Triumph should also be solid going into rotation but I don’t think the gains will be as good as Soldier or Mana Confluence.

AEtherspouts appeared in control lists that utilized blue. I’m not sure how well these decks were tested, but it couldn’t hurt to pick up a a few copies for EDH or if you plan on playing one of them in something like UWR Control or a similar build.

Cards not in this list but still should be looked out for – Chord of Calling, Urborg, the other Temples, Painlands, Eidolon of Blossoms, Fleecemane Lion, Anger of the Gods, and Scuttling Doom Engine. They each are good enough to merit play as well.

Top 10 Mythics Appearing Across Decks Through Rotation:

Ajani Steadfast (6)
Polukranos, World Eater (5)
Sliver Hivelord (4)
Soul of Innistrad (4)
Kiora, the Crashing Wave (4)
Brimaz, King of Oreskos (3)
Pharika, God of Affliction (3)
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion (3)
Nissa, Worldwaker (3)
Garruk, Apex Predator (2)

Mythics are an interesting bunch. Due to Wizard’s policy of trying to create format staples as rares rather than mythics, we find that a large majority of mythics in this list are played in only one of Tomoharu’s builds. Ajani Steadfast and Polukranos buck this trend, but Polukranos only appears as a Chord of Calling Target in his mono green devotion list. It appears that he will be good in the new green deck based around Nissa.

Essentially, the takeaway here is that Ajani Steadfast probably has the most to gain from rotation if white weenie or green/white aggro becomes a dominant deck over the summer. Though I’m not sure if Ajani is the right walker to put in these decks – I feel like Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is much stronger and I would rather pick her up seeing her on this list. However, I also haven’t been a Magic Pro Player of the Year and everyone could be undervaluing Ajani because they haven’t tested him. Then again, I have no idea if any of these decks have been tested so it’s kind of a hard call at this point. $15 is a little rich for my blood, so if it starts going down towards $8 I think it would definitely be a good planeswalker to pick up. At the very least, if you’re playing white weenie you should be getting Brimaz which the list confirms. 

Sliver Hivelord only earns a spot in this list because people will try to make the Slivers deck work. I have no idea how good it might be but I’m guessing it won’t gain much traction from people outside of FNM. Plus, many of the pieces are rotating in the fall so I’m staying far away from slivers mainly for that reason.

Soul of Innistrad was the only soul mentioned to make it into any lists. Pharika and Keranos were the only gods to show up, and Keranos only showed up as one copy in the UWR control build. I’m not sure if the souls and gods are worse than I initially thought but this might confirm in many peoples minds that they are. I still wouldn’t discount many of them, especially Soul of Theros or Soul of New Phyrexia once rotation hits. Pharika is appearing in lists since she is such a cheap god so I would say getting in lower than $5 is pretty good for her at this point. I think she will see marginal play in the future.

Kiora was only in the Maze’s End list, which means that she doesn’t really have a home yet come rotation. Maybe something will pop up over the next few months. At $14, I don’t really see her going lower so you won’t be making a mistake buying in. I just don’t think she has that much room to grow unless another slow control deck like Maze’s End comes along.

Nissa and Garruk are tough to analyze at this point. Something tells me that somebody knows something about Nissa due to the recent price surge she has experienced over the last week. However, it could just be that a lot of casual players want her as soon as she comes out. Afterall her second +1 ability isn’t that great outside of a mono green deck. Based on these concerns I don’t think her current $35 price tag is warranted. Even Garruk, Caller of Beasts was only around $25-$30 at his peak and he suffered from some of the same issue (second activated ability only worked for green).

Garruk, Apex Predator can only go in those really controlling shells as a finisher from the looks of things. Even with all the ramp in Standard getting out a seven mana planeswalker is tough. Maybe it will be easier with the introduction of Khans but I don’t think it is going to pan out this way. Get rid of your copies for $25 now and pick them up later when they are cheaper.

Trader’s Edge

Twitter posts like these are exactly why you should have an account. Twitter in general provides valuable information to the Magic community and these posts especially can provide the right kind of value to the financial minded. The decklist pictures quickly give us an overview of the new Standard possibilities without each one of us having to do the leg work of putting a bunch of decks together. The hardest part is playtesting which will tell you which cards perform the best in their respective archetypes.

But at least we’re not fumbling around in the dark. At the very least, Tomoharu Saito’s decklists allow the community to have a vibrant discussion on the merits of each deck and which cards are the deck’s frontrunners. Which cards do you think will make the most impact on the upcoming Standard?

I’ll leave you with the notable uncommons that were found in the decks. I’m not one to speculate on uncommons (unless they are extremely undervalued) but these are the top uncommons that appeared in Tomoharu’s decks:

Stoke the Flames  (8)
Ajani’s Pridemate (4)
Altac Bloodseeker (4)
Erebos’s Emissary (4)
Nemesis of Mortals (4)
Spiteful Returned (4)
Sunblade Elf (4)
Wall of Mulch (4)
Dissolve (4)
Searing Blood (4)
Frenzied Goblin (3)
Drown in Sorrow (3)
Ulcerate (2)
Restock (2)

Jared is on vacation this week, so please enjoy this article of his originally from 12/23/13.

By: Jared Yost

Sometimes it feels like we are in the wild west of Magic: the Gathering when it comes to sudden price spikes and card buyouts that seem to affect the market on a weekly basis. It feels like every week I am hearing that this card or that card was bought out and the price has gone up 200%-400%. Just like a shootout, it seems as if the first person to draw their gun (or in this case, their wallet) and fire (click “add to cart”) is the winner. And it only seems to get worse as time goes on. 

Let’s ponder for a quick minute – who the heck is actually pulling the trigger on these calls like Disrupting Shoal and Phyrexian Obliterator (which even seemed to spike twice?) Is it individuals that have amassed enough ammunition (money) and have good enough aim (experience) to hit every single target faster than the rest of us? Are they the Billie the Kids and Jesse James of the Magic market? Is there a domino effect of casual speculators with more money than sense?

The answer is probably yes to both. As the popularity of Magic increases, it looks like the sky’s the limit for the prices on some of these cards when someone discovers that they are undercosted and acts quickly to drain the market. If you are one of these individuals, my hat is off to you. Congratulations. You have done your homework, discovered an undervalued asset, and have capitalized on that asset. I’m not sure if there is any advice I can give you except to avoid the trap of getting in on a card too late, which you’ve probably avoided in 95% of the cases (there is always the potential for the double spike, though it doesn’t happen often – Jace, the Mind Sculptor did it in Standard). Just remember to strike while the iron is hot: those Disrupting Shoals aren’t going to sell themselves.

But It’s not even Modern cards that are experiencing these price hikes. What about cards like Wheel and Deal and Forced Fruition? Nekusar hasn’t been out for long and isn’t even the flagship commander of the Mind Seize deck, so why did these random cards that only fit into a narrow strategy in a specific causal format go up in value? I might have an idea.

Those holding the bag of cards that spike and then quickly plummet are similar to the penny stock investor, who decided “investing” in penny stock assets would result in a great return. However, the asset in this case is not a random number on a roulette wheel or any single name in a list of penny stocks – the asset is actually something that all of us are emotionally invested in. The first reason that these spikes happen is because players and speculators are both emotionally invested in the game of Magic. 

Everyone that plays Magic is emotionally invested in the game to some degree. Otherwise, why play the game? There are literally thousands of other games that could be played instead, so what makes it so special? The answer is that playing the game is fun, the wonderful community is welcoming and friendly, the feeling of opening packs and sorting a collection can’t be beat, the feeling of chasing a collection and acquiring all of the particular cards you desire is amazing, the great feeling of putting a deck together and calling it your own is the best, and the support by the company that produces the game is fantastic. Without all of these factors, Magic would falter and slowly go away. It is stronger than ever now because all Magic players are able to get emotionally invested through all of these other aspects besides playing the game. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to Magic out there, whether they sell art related to the game (card alters), offer game accessories (dice, tokens, deckboxes, playmats, etc.), or are just reflecting on the community (Cardboard Crack). All of these factors help to cement good feelings in players’ minds about how sweet Magic is.

Right, so what does emotional investment have to do with price spikes? Well, when you get pretty emotional about something, it’s much harder for logic to factor into the equation. Do you want to buy those Disrupting Shoals at $10 because you think they’re cool and there is no way they could go down due to their awesomeness? If this is your train of thought, speculating might not be for you. Speculating requires a certain amount of cold logic and forethought that a lot players don’t want to apply to their favorite past time, which is supposed to be about fun.

Besides emotional investing, I believe another reason that these price spikes are happening is due to the rarity of the older cards compared to the newer ones (Wheel of Fortune anyone?). Back when Magic first came out, they had no idea how popular the game would be. They created the reserve list out of a fear of killing the game via reprints, and it seemed to work for a time. Because these cards can’t be reprinted, when a new card is released that synergizes or combos well with an old Reserve List card, that card can wind up spiking in value very fast. Even a rules change or unbanning could do this – Gaea’s Cradle and Time Spiral are examples of these cases respectively. With the Modern format Wizards can better control prices of newer cards, but older cards that are in Legacy and EDH are anyone’s guess. 

In addition to Reserved List cards that are never getting reprinted, cards that could also receive a reprint but have not gotten one yet are also targets for spikes. Specifically, cards in sets that are post-reserved but pre-Modern, like Masque’s (Rishadan Port), Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught – these blocks were printed in a time where the Magic community was only a fraction of what it is today. If a card from one of these sets is discovered to be very synergistic with a new card it, it will spike out of nowhere because the amount of copies that exist are marginal compared to the demand it will see from interacting well with a newer card. It is very hard to keep on top of all the potential combinations that exist without a good grasp on the community resources available to discover these interactions. So I will state that card rarity is always a factor in a spike, because even uncommons (Remand) can become grossly expensive without a reprint.

Just because because a card is rare or hard to find does not mean that its spike is warranted. Aluren would be a good example of this – it’s a card that has a legacy deck to its name and is a casual favorite that a lot of players remember having tons of fun with. It never sustained its price, though, because the deck failed to put up enough results compared to other currently existing legacy decks. Due to the lack of demand, it then dropped down close to the original price from which it spiked. In order to avoid buying high into potential scenarios like Aluren, you want to make sure you pick up the card before it has seen a massive increase in price, you want to make sure that it can fit into a deck that has proven results backing it up, you want to make sure that even if it isn’t tournament playable that it can be popular with casual and EDH players, and you finally want to make sure that it is from a set that had a relatively small print run compared to current sets (like the post-reserve list sets I mentioned above).

So in summary, the combination of emotional investing and card rarity are a recipe for a card spike. Whether the spike is real or whether it will ultimately become a bust can be hard to spot without extensive knowledge of the current tournament scene and correctly identifying the casual appeal of a card. With time comes experience, and I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes in the past in regard to cards and spikes – I certainly have. All we can do is to keep working at it and make sure that the characteristics of a card match up well with the reasons a card could spike. It can sure feel like the wild west at times with all of these card spikes, but realize that many of them can’t sustain those prices for very long and are mainly driven emotional investing and card rarity.

By: Jared Yost

Core Set History

As the years go on, we seem to expect more and more out of our core sets. The bar started with Baneslayer Angel when M10 was released. Its debut year in Standard was awe inspiring. I remember being at my local game store drafting M10 and cracking a Baneslayer Angel in a pack. Unfortunately, white was not to be my deck color and my draft went in a totally different direction. I only wound up going 2-2, which didn’t put me into the contention for any prize packs. Regardless, I wanted to get some value out of my mythic so I went up to the counter and wanted to know what I could get for it. “Yeah, we’ll give you $30 for that one” the guy says. I couldn’t believe it! Baneslayer went on to be a $50 card at its peak in Standard and was a significant force in the format.

Sadly, Wizards did not learn its lesson with Baneslayer Angel and instead decided to up the ante by releasing the infamous Titan cycle into Standard with the introduction of M11. Instead of just Baneslayer Angel, we now had to worry about Primeval Titan, Grave Titan, and/or Frost Titan, with occasionally Sun Titan and Inferno Titan making an appearance (how couldn’t they, the Titans are so much value!). The first three titans all saw prices upwards of $30 or more at their peaks (Prime Time being the most expensive at around $45 for most of its Standard life) while the other two hovered in the teens for their peaks. Standard was this time basically warped around these gigantic creatures – and it was even worse because Wizards reprinted them again in M12! We had to deal with these things two friggin years in a row. In my opinion it made Standard pretty stale.

Which is probably why they discontinued the Titan reprints in M13 and instead opted for Thundermaw Hellkite. Yes, finally red got some love! This was the next $45 Standard mythic and it was actually quite balanced considering. Sure, Thundermaw wrecked plenty of face but also remember that in this same format we had Thragtusk and Restoration Angel – the two-faced terror which I’m sure still haunts a few players nightmares. While this time around the mistake was a rare in Thragtusk, it still warped the format pretty badly albeit in a slightly different way than the titans.

Next came M14. Chandra, Pyromaster probably came the closest to being a $40 card but I don’t think it ever quite got there at least not on TCGPlayer. Similar to M13, another rare altered the course of the format. Mutavault is the first time a core set reprint (from the M{XX} sets) has made such an impact on Standard. I believe the intent here was to help Modern players out however I don’t think anyone got the memo that only Merfolk plays Mutavault in Modern. Theros and Return to Ravnica were not exactly tribal themed sets, so Mutavault couldn’t be that insane right? Well with the onset of Devotion it became quite clear that Mutavault was the card of choice to give the monocolored decks the advantage they needed to start becoming dominant.

M15 on the Horizon

Finally we arrive at the upcoming M15. Why did I just spend 500 words outlining past core sets? Because the most expensive rare or mythic in Standard has a good chance of coming from a core set. Wizards has been overpowering these core sets with at least one or two insanely good cards that will almost definitely affect the upcoming Standard. Since the introduction of new cards into a core set, it has become apparent that we need to pay extra close attention to these sets in order to stay ahead of the curve. Even reprints could significantly alter the format for another year.

Wizards brought back the big creature cycle of mythics to the core set but has nerfed it in a significant way. They’ve now replaced the Titan cycle with the Soul cycle which are a set of six avatars that represent the various planes in the most recent Magic mythos. They are all 6/6’s for six mana with an evergreen ability, which makes them similar to the Titans, however this time around you need to tap a bunch of mana to use their best abilities rather just have them come into play or attack. Even though a lot of people probably think this is rather weak, and lets face it we’ve been pretty spoiled with the Titans to not think so, I have a feeling that at least one or two of them will see Standard play. Whether it is significant or not has yet to be seen however the evidence in the past has shown that splashy mythics that see some play will be priced accordingly. Remember, the set release is a terrible time to pick up potential Standard staples so you should wait about a month or two after its release before picking up potential playables.

Perilous Vault is quite spicy. A new take on Nev’s Disk that exiles everything is pretty sweet. Could this be our new crazy Standard mythic? Or how about the new Nissa, Ajani, Jace, or Garruk? We’re getting a reprint of Chandra, Pyromaster and Liliana Vess so nothing new there since we already know the power level.

We’re also getting enemy Painlands and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth! An Urborg reprint is awesome for Commander players but why is Wizards only reprinting the enemy color painlands? Didn’t they just say not that long ago that they were intending to only print full cycles of lands in sets from now on after Innistrad? Wow, that has to be the quickest take back I’ve ever seen from them. It doesn’t bode well for fetchlands – those hoping to get Polluted Deltas on the cheap may be sadly disappointed when they only reprint the Zendikar ones. Keep an eye out for the painlands because even though they are only marginally good historically once they become Standard legal all bets are off. Players will utilize any land they can to get the best mana fixing, even if they have to play a bunch of Mana Confluences in addition to these painlands. Don’t think just because they were $1 before coming into Standard they will stay that low for long. At least one of them is going to spike at some point.

Phyrexian Revoker is making a comeback, which is cool and goes with the mythic Soul of New Phyrexia. This is also a new development since I had previously believed that cards which are very set specific would be fairly hard to reprint. Not that I think Spellskite is going to be thrown into a core set anytime soon but it still makes me more wary of going deep on something based on the notion that its flavor is too specific to see a reprint in a core set.

As usual, the core set is primed to shake things up. Wizards seems hellbent on proving that they are willing to make more and more drastic changes to the core sets as the years go on. First, it was upping the power level of creatures through the creation of powerful, yet cleanly designed, cards. Now it appears they have instead focused on adding unique new abilities and refining the core set to more align with the current mythos of Magic – instead of generic cards, they are now adding specific flavor to the core sets that pulls from recent and future sets. I’m excited to see how this core set pans out and I will be thinking hard about which cards are going to be the most influencing.

By: Jared Yost

The Financially Savvy Planeswalker

Based on the popular website mtgstocks.com one might be lead to believe that our dabbling in the singles market for Magic cards makes use Magic day traders, so to speak. Yes there are similarities but it is in the finer points of the activities surrounding the stock market where the key differences lie.

First, let me draw to your attention the work that mtgstocks and other websites like it (MTGPrice and Quietspeculation included) have done for us since their inception. They are amazing resources that players can utilize to get up to date information on card prices from the vast majority of Magic cards that are out there. Some even offer additional features, like buy list aggregators that let us know where we can quickly buy list any singles we may have been accruing in order to efficiently sell them off to the various vendors. I regularly use both resources in order to see current market trends and to base whether or not my position in the market is suited to what is currently happening. I also use them to put together buy list orders that enable me to sell off cards in bulk for some orders.

What these websites aren’t are E*TRADE, Charles Schwab, or Scottrade. There are  many fine differences between buying and selling stocks versus buying and selling Magic cards. I’m going to assume you don’t know anything about the stock market and start from the ground up. Let’s use this getting started with the stock market article by Lifehacker as the starting point. You will need to know about the following in order to invest wisely in the stock market:

Learn the Terminology – In other words, know what words like dividends are and what they offer you when you decide to purchase a stock.

How to Pick the Company (Stock) – Now that you understand the terminology you will need to know how to go about picking exactly which stock you want to buy into and how much of it you are willing to purchase. There are generally two avenues for doing this – growth stocks and dividend stocks. I’ll get into this discussion later on because this is the closest comparison you can make between MTG speculation and the stock market.

Research – Find out about any issues at the companies you want to buy the stock from before deciding if you ultimately want to purchase them. Know when to diversify your portfolio so that you don’t get banged up too badly when a stock you do purchase goes south. Research also heavily relates to MTG and and ties into the second point closely. The distinct difference here is that you are not just picking stocks but picking stocks based on their role in the market and the financials of the company behind the stock.

Utilize Tools – Know which tools are right for you in order to get the most out of your experience buying and selling stocks. These represent everything from Yahoo Finance to systems like E*TRADE where you actually purchase and sell the stocks.

Reading that explanation may make you think that MTG speculation is related in basically every facet to the stock market, especially concerning research and picks. While this may appear to be true on the surface, in reality the little details of the stock market and Magic speculation go in totally different directions.

Let’s dive further into stock market terminology. These are just some of the many facets of a stock you can use to determine if you want to buy or sell it:

Stock Price
Earnings per share (EPS)
Beta
Market Capitalization
IPO
Price to Earnings Ratio (P/E)
Hedge
Margin
Moving Average
Exchange
Volatility

I could go on for quite a while, listing all of the possible information you could use to invest in a stock, but the issue I wanted to highlight is that there are plenty of data points that you could use to make a decision whether or not to invest in a stock. With Magic cards, there are also data points we could use to base our speculation on yet I have a feeling that most speculation is based on a gut reaction to a card – hardly something with concrete evidence to back it up without further defining data points. However, by standardizing certain data points about a card we could go down the path of statistically indicating the probability of a Magic card being good and thus being a good candidate to increase in price. Unfortunately, this almost never works because Magic cards are controlled by a single company rather than a market of potentially thousands of companies. This lack of diversity, along with other issues, leads to many differentiating factors that make Magic speculating much different and even sometimes harder than the stock market.

One vs A Thousand

There is only one company that controls production of Magic: the Gathering cards. Unless the market becomes flooded with counterfeit producers, which would not indicate the end of the game necessarily but would still destroy the secondary market, this fact will continue to influence the prices of Magic cards in a significant way. They make the rules for the growth cards by influencing Standard card pools and Modern reprints, and occasionally shaking up the Legacy banlist.

Since Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro, and Hasbro only shares select pieces of information about Magic card production facts and figures, we can really only base our financial understanding of a growth card on past actions of similar cards or from a deck tech article where the author may or may not even play the deck at the Pro Tour. If someone suggested that I should try to buy a growth stock based on this type of information, I would laugh them out of the room. The odds of buying of a single growth stock and making it work this way are no better than going to a casino and hoping to win a million dollars. It is assuredly a losing game when trying to buy several growth stocks like this.

Dividend cards, on the other hand, offer us another look at the Magic market. Dividend cards are your Legacy Duals lands – pretty much guaranteed to go up until the death of the game. Think Black Lotus, Mishra’s Workshop, and Bazaar of Baghdad – reserve list cards that are played in favorite Vintage archetypes that also have collectible value from being so old and rare. The reserve list is the halcyon of dividend cards. If you want to have a comfortable increase in the value of your collection, targeting reserve list cards is the way to go. Unlike stocks, they aren’t as volatile – there are plenty of companies that pay dividends whose stock has dived considerably. Reserve list cards tend not to do this, at least no overnight like a stock might. In this example Magic seems like a better investment than stocks most of the time if you have the capital and storage (bank lock box) to keep your value. Your market is much smaller than a stock, however, so if you want to liquidate your card it could take a while to find a buyer.

This market restriction presents itself in more than just a lack of information. There is also a lack of resources you can use to sell your cards unlike selling a stock. When I’m on a digital broker, I can sell a stock instantly at the asking price it is listed at – and receive my money as soon as that execution is acted upon. With Magic cards, they can sometimes linger for months if no one wants them. Yes, the buy list is always an option – but there you are leaving more money on the table rather than getting the “market price” of the card where in the case of a stock you sell, you get market price pretty much every time. That also doesn’t indicate the hidden fees and time it takes for the cards to get to you. Of course, some brokers charge a fee every time you execute a sell or buy – others don’t though, so if you are interested in stocks it is usually a good idea to look around first to find a broker that best fits your volume of stock purchases and sells. You don’t have this luxury for Magic buy lists. You always eat the cost of shipping to the buy list, which includes the actual act of shipping the cards and the materials you need to ship them and even insurance.

It also manifests itself in the fact that this is a game rather than a financial vessel. Rather than looking at the cards as dollar bills, they are actually things we can use to play with which means they hold sentimental value to us. Vendors have gotten around these pesky sentimental feelings by going through thousands of these cards a month, however for 99% of the player base we got into this game to play it rather than try to make money off of it.

OK, but Card Prices Do Go Up… And Down (Buy Low)… So Profit?

Yes, that is evident and why I’m so interested in knowing why Magic card prices fluctuate so much and sometimes with only a day’s notice. I didn’t say you can’t make money here however you can’t be in the same mindset of a day trader.

Now I mentioned that there are ways of standardizing data points for cards in order to determine their value. Some of the ways could include:

Age (physical age – as in, Alpha cards tend to be worth the most statistically speaking)
Converted Mana Cost
Set Rarity (common to mythic rare)
Number of Copies per Deck
Color
Crowd Favorite (love from the casuals, tournament crowd, and both crowds)
Format It’s Legal In
Card Type (lands and Planeswalkers are generally worth more)
Number of Articles It’s Mentioned In
Preorder Price
Trade Value
Market Value

These are just the first batch of properties I brainstormed. I’m sure there are more we can use, just like stocks, and some of these properties even contradict each other just like stock properties tend to do. For example, a card might have a low converted mana cost and be a mythic but it might be just a vanilla green creature with two power and toughness. Vanilla guys without synergy in the format are garbage. Generally multiple traits are desirable together yet combine them in the wrong way and all of sudden you have a bulk mythic. 

Instead, we need to take into account the synergy of the card within the format it is being played in order to understand its price. Lion’s Eye Diamond, while a rare and having a low converted mana cost, is a terrible card outside of the respective Dredge and Storm Decks it is featured in Legacy. Stocks don’t act like this – yes, you do need to know the other market players (and the similarity here would be similar Magic cards that could potentially fulfill LED’s role like Lotus Bloom) but otherwise the stock basically rises and falls based on its own merits. A company can stand alone, and make changes within itself in order to better compete in the market. Magic cards are immutable and will always stay the same, meaning their value is solely determined by how good their support cards are. Power creep is real in Magic and happens way more than in the real world when suddenly a brand new company, which does all the other same companies could do plus gives you 5% more, just pops up one day. We can’t just expect a card to rise because it fulfills all of our preconceived data points about making sure a card is good – it has to do this and be synergistic or helpful to a format’s metagame.

A Tale of Two Markets

Due to the massive changes that the game has seen over the past three years, more and more people are starting to become interested in the financial side of Magic. This article is a sign post of sorts – warning, danger ahead. Speculation seems sexy and you might think there are ways to game the market like you can with stocks. Unlike stocks, options don’t exist for Magic cards. We can’t short a crappy common when a set is released at the prerelease prices and we certainly can’t short mythics or rares which are almost guaranteed to crash in price in the months following a set’s release. We can’t create packages of cards and price them at a particular value, and then hope that as a group they go up in value based on factors influencing the market. We have all the information that a stock could provide yet with a swing of their Magic(™) wand Wizards can turn the data on its head. We are only left with buying low, selling high and this is something that is generally hard to do even in the stock market.

There are ways to make money off of Magic however they aren’t in the stockholder’s arsenal – they are in the Magic financier’s arsenal. While these two arsenals are similar and share many of the same traits, the finer points are different and need to be considered accordingly in order to make sure you don’t burn yourself out trying to capture the Magic market with the same strategy as a day trader. As long as you take into consideration things like format rotation and synergy of a card you will become a more savvy Magic speculator. Realize that growth stocks are unlike growth cards, and that dividend stocks are different than dividend cards.