Readers!
It will be another week or so until we have new commanders from the next set in the never-ending conveyor belt of products WotC is subjecting all of us to, so I thought I’d talk about something old. 

William Gibson’s Kamigawa is coming out soon, and the prices of really bad cards have been really doing silly things. 

 

We know the decks are called “Buckle Up!” and “Upgrades Unleashed” and nothing so far has indicated to me that Samurai are the play. They’re bad. I can’t even conceive of a card that makes creatures with Bushido playable let alone spec-on-able (Trademark pending). I think it makes sense to buy terrible Samurai for the same reason it made sense to buy Louvisa Coldeyes before Kaldheim. The odds of Louvisa impacting EDH were practically nil, even with a ton of new Barbarians. We weren’t buying Louvisa to be right, we were buying Louvisa to be first so the people who thought of buying her at the last minute had to buy from us. I commend you if you somehow make money on a card like Isao, I guess.

Personally, I am more concerned at the slow movement on the actual good tribe with actual good cards – ninja. I am pretty sure the plural of “ninja” is “ninja.” Is it ninjas? Does it matter? It does to someone! Somewhere, someone is as upset at my failure to recognize the correct plural of “ninja” as I am that Isao went up in price 1,000% and Yuriko hasn’t moved at all. It may be late to talk ninja(s) but it might also not be and since next week we will have actual data to discuss and won’t have to speculate anymore, let’s speculate for the last time in 2021, shall we? I’m going to look at Yuriko and see if we can’t figure out if any of the stupid ninja cards are going to go up. This will be fun.

We sometimes rationalize a big uptick in an old deck being scraped by EDHREC as people updating their decks on the various deck reg sites, but then I see new cards like this.

So it’s possible Yuriko is just insanely popular.

So that being the case, with us returning to a setting where it’s likely we could get at least ninja-adjacent cards, let’s take a look at some big hitters from Yuriko.

This is interesting.

We’re obviously late to the party here. I bought some of these cheap but since I didn’t tell anyone about it, I don’t get to claim credit for it. In fact, if I bought some, why didn’t I tell you to buy some, too? So you see, I invented something called the “bragmonishment” where I will point out I made some money to point out that I’m a bad writer. See? I can hold myself accountable. But yeah, I bought like a ton of these at a buck. Feels good. You know what feels almost as good? Buying these at $3.50 and watching them go to $10. This is a very, very good card. It’s as good in Zombie decks as it is in Ninja decks if you ninjitsu in on a zombie with Decayed, but no one is ready to have the conversation. If CK is charging $6, you should pay $3.50.

If CK can get $15 on these, pay $9. Finance is easy! It’s not just Yuriko giving this a boost, either – there is a Calibrated Blast deck running around doming people with Draco and cards like that. It’s a stupid joke meme deck, but so was Misthollow Griffin and that made Food Chain hit $50. Any time you have help from anywhere else, acknowledge the help, thank the help, profit from the help.

I’ve mostly focused on Dimir cards so far because they seem juicier, but mono-Blue ninjae (I know for sure this is wrong but it makes me feel better to KNOW it’s wrong) have a better chance of popping as a result of something from the Blade Runner set. That said, this is in the tail end of shrugging off a reprint. If there is no Dimir Ninjas deck soon, this dodges another reprint and then rides the demand curve to value town.

I want to show a graphic I showed earlier and discuss it again.

Notice anything? Tribal, Tribal, Tribal, not Tribal, Tribal, Tribal. People love Tribal decks. I don’t know why. They’re obvious and linear and a precon gives you 80% of the deck right out of the box and I guess that’s what people love. I won’t pretend I didn’t build Slivers back in 98 like everyone else. That being the case, isn’t Xenograft super reprintable? No, because it hasn’t been over $2 yet. But it will. There is a wall of copies but once it topples, this could go to $10. There is precedent in this set for it, and I like Xenograft a lot. Hell, I even like Unnatural Selection. The thing is, it’s not just Yuriko anymore – there is another commander making use of Zenograft and it’s very new. Really, there are 2.

I mean, REALLY really there are 3.

That said, Grolnok is sort of the perfect encapsulation of a commander that needs Xenograft – a Tribal commander that needs a ton of instances of the Tribal creature to function but Magic (and even the set it’s printed in) does not have many. There are 27 Frogs in Magic and only 3 of them are playable and one of them is The Gitrog Monster and can’t even go in a Grolnok deck. Future tribes will come to rely on the ‘graft the way they do on Maskwood Nexus and Conspiracy and myriad other “Ooops, we forgot to print more than 6 Unicorns ever” cards that are necessary when every set is a Tribal set. It’s a matter of time on Xenograft.

Mist-Syndicate Naganna be worth less than a buck in 6 months, I’ll tell you that. This self proliferates but still has the common decency to have 1 toughness so Tetsuko can make it unblockable? How sweet.

And there you have it. There aren’t a billion great specs from Yuriko, but real talk, you probably don’t buy everything I recommend, picking and choosing based on what seems right to you, and I think I’ve given you a decent array of choices. We’ll be back next week nursing an eggnog hangover to bring you some hot Kamigawa: Kami in the Shell picks but until then, have a safe and happy Holiday season. Until next time!

Readers!

Remember in school when your teacher had what you realized years later was a hangover and they wheeled the TV on a cart into the classroom so you could watch a movie while they put their head down, or am I dating myself? This time of the year feels like a blowoff time of year. I’m not hung over, dear reader, and I’m not feeling lazy despite the weather outside being frightful and de dum de dum delightful or however the song goes. No, I maintain that what I am going to do today is provide you with an article that is DENSE with picks and light on some of the.. you know, structure of an article. Remember when I wrote a 20,000 word article? This will be kind of like that one.

In order to set up an article where I mostly post pictures, I’ll need to explain what I am doing before I do it. Simply, I’m going to find cards that cost more on TCG Player than they do on Card Kingdom. That sounds simple, but why am I doing it? Well, and this is going to sound a little patronizing because 99% of you know this but I write for everyone, Card Kingdom charges more than TCG Player. They should. TCG Player is a marketplace where sellers compete with each other to have the lowest price possible and that is rarely going to settle higher than a well-known site with great customer service* (don’t scroll to the bottom, I don’t plan to put a footnote) is charging. Card Kingdom can and does charge more than TCG Player, because of course they do. When they don’t? Well, when they don’t, something is wrong.

Literally all I am going to do for this article is look on EDHREC until I see a card where the Card Kingdom number is smaller than the TCG Player number. When I find such a case, I’ll go to both sites to make sure the card is in stock (a card being out of stock on one site and moving on the other causes a lot of these discrepancies) and if both sites have the card in stock, I’ll talk about if I think it means we should be the card on either site or both. That’s it. It’s going to be real easy but it’s a lot of work for me. Just watch Stand and Deliver because this is either Math class or Spanish class and I’m going to rest my eyes for a bit.

Sorry! One last caveat – cards under like $2 or $3 are going to be confounded by shipping costs. TCG Player sometimes has the shipping cost built into the price, sometimes it doesn’t. That’s confusing and I would just as soon avoid it. Anyway, let’s do the thing already.

Wow, first set I looked at has one. This is indeed cheaper on Card Kingdom, though not by much, and shipping can explain a bit of it. That said, the cheapest NM copy on TCG Player is like $4.

What’s more, supply is low, at least for individual printings. That said, I don’t think this is that compelling or driven by any kind of demand. I think from now on, I’ll get more quality hits if we recalibrate to $5 or more and cards with fewer than a gazillion printings. Mycoloth is a great EDH card and it likely recovers from this reprinting, but there will be another. There is always another reprinting for this card.

With new parameters in mind, the search continues.

EDH didn’t do this, but also, how do you reprint these cards outside of an event deck? These prices are legit and I suspect both are on their way to $10 as paper Modern picks back up. Modern Horizons 2 gave us some more Cascade stuff and the DFC lands haven’t been legal in paper modern yet. If I could classify anything as a “Slam Dunk” I’d start here. Not EDH picks, but I discovered them using an EDH method so I’ll take credit.

There are multiple versions so I had to check all of them out, but it’s legit. Both Coolstuff and Card Kingdom are selling all versions of this card cheaper than the cheapest NM copy of the same version on TCG Player.

Another thing to check for is a discrepancy so large that while it’s still cheaper on TCG Player, it may be arbable on CK’s buylist. They’re paying $8.50 in credit here, which is not an arbitrage opportunity, but it’s close. Why is CK buying this for close to retail? Well, because they always sell it for $14. It makes the $9 copies look pretty good.

One thing to check is how many listings are on TCG Player. In this case, there are 4 printings so there are far too many copies, but each individual copy has fewer than 80 listings. There won’t be a run on these, but why is TCG Player’s supply so low if the EDH site can’t move these for $6? I think TCG Player is suffering from people not seeing enough demand to bother racing to the bottom on these, but that will change if they do another mono-colored EDH set.

Commander 2016 is $10 on CK, not $9, but the cheapest of any printing on TCG Player is $13. Is that because it’s moving well on TCG Player?

Nope!

Not sure what’s going on here, but I’m staying away based on the TCG graph.

The cheap version on CK is the “The List” version, so what is TCG Player selling that version for? There’s no way to know, because TCG Player doesn’t have a separate entry for The List versions. All I know is the cheapest NM copy is $9.50 for the Invasion version. The price is flat here on TCG Player so it’s unlikely the discrepancy is TCG Player charging more over time – it’s likely that CK hates cards from The List and so do buyers.

I know it’s the opposite of what we’re doing here, but I love this card under $15 right now.

One more thing you can train your eye to do is to notice when Coolstuff Inc is the cheapest. If they’re suspiciously cheap, that means they sold out but their API is still sending out the pre-sellout price. That means the cheap copies are getting bought out. This card is on its way to $10. Coolstuff Inc can be a canary in the coalmine sometimes, so watch for empty inventory on that site.

That does it for me this week! Join me next week where I’ll be trying desperately to find a new topic so I don’t have to write the lazy “Which Samurai could go up because we saw a Kamigawa Cyberpunk image of a Samurai on a motorcycle?” article I really don’t want to write. Until next time!

Readers!

Today I would like to tell the tale of two cards. These two cards are different prices, most two cards are different prices. The thing is, the supply on the cards is identical. We know it is because both cards are in a preconstructed deck and both were printed exactly once. Can we use these two cards to predict future cards that could go up? That’s what we’re here to find out!

This is about precon cards specifically and while precons are in huge supply, even cards printed this year are doing quite well.

EDHREC data is best when you’re comparing two cards to each other. I bristle when people try to establish arbitrary thresholds like “more or fewer than 10,000 decks” etc. I don’t think it is that instructive to set those levels, instead, I think comparing how much cards are used (provided we can control for them being used in other formats, which would skew things a lot) is much more instructive. If two cards have the same number of copies and one costs more but is used less, something will have to give, usually the price. There are lots of reasons why prices would not be exactly the same initially, but after the initial price makes way for the demand-based-price, you would expect cards that are played more to be worth more. There literally isn’t a simpler financial proposition than that – more demand and same supply equals higher price.

What’s that? Which two cards inspired this article? I’m so glad to pretend you asked. Here are two cards with the same supply but their prices, and their use in EDH are very different.

It looks like the cards are played the exact same amount, at least in Lathril . Why do I mention Lathril, by the way?

This is kind of surprising to me. Is it because of a bunch of new cards that made people update their list?

I mean, I’ll let you decide if Deathcap Glade and Unnatural Growth are enough of an impetus for people to update their Lathril lists this much. The precon has a bit of a deathtouch subtheme, so maybe Saryth makes sense. OK, Saryth makes a LOT of sense because it can untap a Gaea’s Cradle or a Priest of Titania. But Dig Up isn’t making people log onto archidekt. So what gives?

I think people just might like building Elves.

If that’s the case, and it probably is, it stands to reason that cards that are in the Lathril precon will get built alongside Lathril. It stands to reason that a card played more in Lathril will be worth more money. So why the price discrepancy?

Elderfang Venom is played more than Pact in Lathril but is and always has been worth less. Pact basically went from “overlooked” to “bought out” and Coolstuff’s price when it went out of stock confirms that Pact was worth 3 times as much before it was bought out than Elderfang Venom was, despite us getting a few Deathtouch matters commanders this year.

The next thing to check is how much the cards are played across the format. Also, did you notice my EDHREC screenshots are in Dark Mode, now? Nice, right? Just one of the many improvements EDRHEC is rolling out.

OK, so Pact is played in fewer than twice as many decks but it was 3 times as much before it sold out and will likely be worth 40 times as much.

If I had to guess, I’d say there are a few things going on here. First of all, the buyout really obscures things a bit. As soon as it was targeted and bought, the price ratio became worthless. We really have a case of “popped” versus “hasn’t popped”(yet?) and we can try to surmise why.

One issue for Elderfang Venom is that it’s two colors. What could be more Deathtouch then Golgari? Well, there’s a problem. Remember all of the Deathtouch commanders I mentioned? The ones that came out this year, at the same time or after this precon?

Here’s one.

Here’s the other. Now, plenty of good “Deathtouch” tribal decks are possible – look at the themes page on EDHREC.

But the total number of decks here, 2,127 decks, pales in comparison to the other number – 12,619 – the number of Elf tribal decks. Yes, not all of them can use Black, the same way not all Deathtouch decks can use Black.

But we are talking about a 6-fold difference in potential. Pact being bought out isn’t based on how much it’s played, it’s based on how much it could be played. Also, have you noticed? Pact of the Serpent isn’t an Elf card.

Not only are not all of the decks it’s played in Elf decks, there is new demand.

Looking at 2 cards and seeing they’re both in the same precon, played almost an identical amount in that deck and are both playable outside of that deck is only doing half of the work you need to do. Someone sniffed out Pact of the Serpent showing up in more Tribal decks than just Elves and the market responded.

I mentioned seeing if we can learn anything – are there are any cards I think are underpriced based on the same kind of analysis? Let’s see.

I think how likely people are to overlook this card because it has foretell is going to soon be overshadowed by the realization that this card is very difficult to reprint because it has foretell. While this isn’t as playable in as many decks as Pact, this is a solid gainer that has a great effect, especially for 1W and which is sneakily getting included more than anyone might think. If you think a card that can go in any Black tribal deck has broad appeal, imagine a card that can go in any White deck that has creatures it wants to not die.

Not the 25% Pact got, but we don’t need C.I. to hit $10 to make money buying in at a buck.

There is no other way to say it – this card is underpriced.

If CK has this at $8.50, then they’re selling this for $8.50. Why is TCG Player half that? IS it half that?

It IS.

What’s more, TCGPlayer finally has a graph feature so we can check the trend.

So this is a slam dunk, right? Thought so.

Tl;dr – buy Monologue Tax, something I should have to pay for farting out 2,000 words just to come to this conclusion. Well, good bye! Until next time!

Don’t you know that you’re Toxril?

That’s right, readers, Britney Spears has been busted loose from her oppressive conservatorship, proving to the 1.3 million Americans in such arrangements that escape is possible if you have worldwide fame, millions of dollars and tons of public support, you can be free of your conservatorship after a 13 year legal battle. You know what else has busted loose? All of these specs! What, you needed a better segue than that? The good stuff is below the fold.

Still above the fold, though, is the slug of the hour. Toxril is the second-most-built new Crimson Vow commander and I think that’s pretty significant. I’d love to do #1 but considering that’s Runo and we did that last week, let’s move on, shall we?

This card is redefining “Group Slug” by taking down all of their creatures. However, Toxril offers 0 synergy with -1/-1 counters strategies from the past, making it the perfect mix of familiar gameplay and new cards. If we can’t use Blowfly Infestation or Nest of Scarabs as effectively, which cards take their place on the top of the high synergy list? The answer may surprise you. Also, it may not. I have no idea what surprises people these days.

There is some good stuff here. It’s a nice mix of cards that have been used before in decks that care about proliferation and some novel tech. Let’s look at the novel stuff because it likely has the most room to grow.

Having already flirted with a $4 price tag, Hunted Phantasm is nicely posed to do some work as a result of Toxril. It’s a shoo-in inclusion in the deck, copies are concentrated in the hands of dealers a bit since it spiked last year (though the market is nowhere near as efficient at that as it used to be) and the same market forces that kept copies out of the hands of dealers are keeping them off of TCG Player meaning it could pop overnight. There are 145 listings on TCG Player for around $2, which sucks, but we could see some real gains if that wall is surmounted. There are fewer listings on other sites, but no one notices if other sites, even Card Kingdom, sell out of TCG Player still has a grip of them, even if it’s just damaged and foreign language copies. I like this at $1.50 if it can get to $4 again, but it doesn’t seem like people are as aware of this as they are “obvious” cards.

If there might be too many copies on TCG Player, there are certainly too many copies of Clackbridge Troll. I like the extended art more, but there is just so much volume and no demand from anywhere else. Not all of these specs are equal – look at Tombstone Stairwell and how much it went up because it’s a 20th century Reserved List card. A Throne non-mythic just can’t be expected to behave the same way.

If you like lower supply, foils of Polymorphist’s Jest are selling out everywhere. It’s a goofy card with no demand anywhere else and the price has done some very goofy things in the past, but it seems to be moving, based on Toxril or not.

Toxril was merely the first time anyone paid attention to Phantasm, but Horror has been out here doing work quietly for years. We are seeing a sharp price uptick – lower supply, higher ceiling and more demand elsewhere could push Horror up and make it an even better spec than Phantasm. With only 53 listings, this seems juicier. So why did I get to it later that Phantasm? Well, this isn’t a High Synergy card because it’s played elsewhere. High Synergy cards take effort and demand to get going, but pop hard because they go from no demand to no supply and that really upends everyone’s price expectations. Cards played elsewhere are less dependent on a huge increase predicated on a new deck but are less likely to be a “bust” because they have support in other areas. I like both of these as specs, but the risk profile is very different for each.

Where does a card like this end up? Well, let’s try and extrapolate. Here is what happened to a card from the same set that has 3 times as many copies out there.

This was based on expected demand from Yurlok. Did Yurlok get played?

Kinda? Here is its rank in its set.

If Toxril continues as it is, it could be in about 1.5 times as many decks relative to Yurlok in Crimson Vow. Will we see more total decks from Vow than from Commander Legends? Doubtful, but we are comparing a rare to an Uncommon that maintained its value despite not seeing play outside of this one deck, basically. Can Infernal Genesis break a dollar? It’s not as good as Citadel, not as obvious, not as played. All that said, it’s old and I just told people about it. I think a price correction is likely, but I assume everyone builds with the same information as I do.

Toxril doesn’t really synergize great with cards like Blowfly Infestation, but cards like Contagion Engine are still solid, and will always be solid.

With some help from The List and from everyone in the world having a Atraxa list and moving on, the price of Contagion Engine is now currently between its historic low and its historic high. The additional copies aren’t ideal, but they haven’t slowed down other promising cards. Demand is demand and Contagion Engine is almost surely a buy under $10, even for The List copies. If Toxril doesn’t do it, something else will, and the The List reprinting reduces its reprint risk, though it doesn’t eliminate it.

There are a lot of other great Toxril cards I may have missed – don’t feel intimidated by me not mentioning a card. Hit me up in the comments or, if you’re a Pro Trader, in Discord. Let’s talk through your thought process. That does it for me, readers. Until next time!