There were a ton of potential good specs for like half of these decks and all of them got reprinted. Instead of being good $3 cards that could get to $5 or $8 on the basis of adoption in the decks, they’re trash, bulky, bulky trash. Forever, probably. All of this made me wonder – are there any cases of cards that were good in the EDH deck they got reprinted in that went back to their pre-reprint price after a year or two? If so, could we make a case for anything in the Commander 2020 decks that look like trash now?
Sorry about the hard cut, but I don’t want to take up too much time here. Let’s just talk about some cards.
Ghostly Prison appeared in Modern sideboards and went nuts . Despite a few extra copies floating around from the Planechase 2012 reprintings, Prison was mostly really scarce really fast. The $18 was never going to hold but the Commander 2016 printing tanked the price and shattered the brief illusion of flirting with $20 it had enjoyed. Still, it went from $2.50 in April of 2017 to $8 in October of 2018. Was the same Modern usage that spiked it in the first place still a factor as it climbed back? Not really. Over the period of January 2016 to January 2018, it barely featured in a now-defunct Modern deck’s sideboard and didn’t really appear anywhere else, so its EDH play was the most likely factor for the climb. It’s since gotten a reprint in Conspiracy, take the Crown and the price is down a bit lately, but this did experience an 18 month period of solid growth despite a reprinting that wasn’t even its first. Can we find some examples of cards that weren’t helped by Modern? I’m sure we can.
Crusade hasn’t experienced a meaningful (read not in a Commander Anthology) reprinting since 2016 and it has grown precipitously. It looked bad when it got a reprint in 2014 and in 2016 but Commander is much more of a format than it was back then and this is a $10 card waiting to happen, barring a reprint. When Commander 2016 came out, Crusade was $1.50. A year later it was $3.50. A year later it was $6. A year hasn’t happened yet but it’s on its way to $10, but who knows what Covid does? The point is, if something can impact EDH but dodge a reprint, it has upside.
Eviction is an EDH powerhouse, sweeping away entire decks sometimes. The name is a little redundant since all evictions are merciless but this one is especially Merciless. Printings in Commander 2016 and Commander 2017 kicked the card in the ribs hard as it was getting to its feet but nothing since then has allowed it to grow mostly unbidden. The 2016 printing took it to bulk status – around $0.60. In a year, it was $2.50, then it was reprinted again. Since then, it has climbed to nearly $4.50. If a card that just got smashed by a reprinting ends up as ubiquitous as does Merciless Eviction, we could see it shrug off not only this reprinting, but another one.
There’s a problem, however.
The Commander 2020 decks, like the Commander 2019 decks, are built around mechanics. The cards that are good in those decks have a high inclusion score but also a high synergy score. A high synergy score means it’s more likely to just be good in that deck. Every Black and White EDH deck build since 2017 has to look at Merciless Eviction and either say “Yes” or “No” but I’m not going to build a deck ever that’s going to need to rule on Fluctuator or New Perspectives. High-inclusion, low-synergy cards are what we should be targeting and while everything that would be a good spec based on the Temur and Jeskai decks (they overlap so much, it’s nuts) was basically reprinted or spiked already, none of it is that applicable outside the context of decks built with the rest of those cards. It’s good that every Gavi deck will want a Drake Haven but no one else will and the price will stay bulk forever.
It’s clear there are cards that can shrug off reprints, but we will have to select them fairly carefully. Here’s what I think could be in play.
The research, by the way, was pretty painless because EDHREC put all of C2020’s reprints in their own section on the page for C2020 and sorted by amount they’re played. You’ll need to click on the individual card, select a commander for it and go to that commander’s page then find that card to find the synergy score for that deck, but something tells me there aren’t a ton of high-inclusion, high-synergy cards, it’s likely one or the other.
Windfall is both used in a lot of decks in the past and it’s also likely to be in play in the future. Wheel effects, forced draw and other cards keep popping up – the number of times I have made money on Puzzle Box astound even me. Windfall likely stays good, pops again on the basis of a new commander and it’s likely going to go down from where it is now once people integrate new supply from C2020 and stores open back up, but who knows when that is? I think when this bottoms out, scoop a bunch. It’s hard to reprint outside of a Commander deck and it’s unlikely they’ll make a set of commanders that wants it in the next 2 years, leaving us free to make our money back and then some.
This has shrugged off a Masters set reprinting and kept on ticking. I would say the reprint risk is more significant than a typical Commander deck card, but I think they’ll likely reprint Blood Artist before they reprint Zulaport Cutthroat again.
If you’re noticing that I like a lot of the Uncommons more than a lot of the rares, it’s likely because the uncommons tend to be less specialized than the rares and able to go in more decks.
That said, here is a rare I like when its price bottoms out.
Here’s one that got a new, better-looking border.
And here is a great longer-term spec/grim reminder that Covid-19 is the least of our worries.
I think you should be able to find a few more cards that aren’t just good in one deck that are likely to rebound in price and you should be able to pick them up, especially locally in trade from people who busted the decks and don’t want most of the cards, if that’s ever a thing again.
That does it for me. Really study the set lists from this year as well as years past to see what cards have managed to recover and I’ll be back with more next week. Until next time!
Last week, I said I was going to spend this week talking about specs from Gavi. It seemed like a no-brainer.
Zaxama was Number 1 but didn’t have a ton by way of solid specs, so moving on to Gavi seemed like the play.
Seemed.
Gavi has plummeted all the way to 5th place and all of the shiny, new Commander 2020 commanders have been supplanted by a generic “best commander of the month” pick in Golos. A cursory glance at Golos’ page tells me that this is likely people updating their lists.
I don’t think a Triome is a reason to build a Golos deck you didn’t have before, but a Gold Commander who ramps mana getting access to 5 new Ultimatums, sick new lands and the Mythos cycle and we may have a reason to at least pop over to archidekt and register a new list.
I think Golos is just as popular as it was last week, but it seems like Gavi isn’t. The question is whether I stick to my guns or whether I take a look at Kalamax instead. How about I take a look to see if it’s worth taking an actual look?
You can take a look for yourself, but it seems like Kalamax is about as unexciting as Zaxara was last week. Also, can we talk about these names? They’re killing me. I got Lurrus and Lutri mixed up last week and now I’m expected to differentiate Kalamax and Zaxara? Who named these characters, George RR Martin? I guess that would explain why he still hasn’t finished The Winds of Winter 2 years after the show went off the air. You know what? I’m just going to give all of these stupid commanders nicknames to make my articles easier to read. OK, we did Hydraboi last week and we can either do Doublesaurus Rex or Mac and Me, so let’s look at old Dubby bones first and see if it’s worth exploring, shall we?
Dinosauriku is kind of a fun-looking commander and while a little linear, he may stay more popular than Dragonsnake due to a larger volume of cards that feel necessary in Dragonsnake. I think Terrible Double Lizard could be fun, but looking at the page, every card is like $0.25 or it’s already played so much in other formats that this shouldn’t make a difference. This deck can’t make Manamorphose go back to where it was or make Comet Storm erase a few of its 8-too-many printings, but perhaps it CAN make people finally realize Thousand-Year Storm is an absurd Magic card. I think Storm is about to go, personally.
Not every site was as hip to its absurdity as Card Kingdom who keeps raising their buylist price accordingly, but other sites will catch up. If you have a way to scoop these from MKM, they’re like a solitary Euro and if this hits $10 USD on Card Kingdom, maybe you figure out how to arb that. We’re already at $3 cash on Card Kingdom’s bulisyt, you can basically buy $4 in credit per Euro right now, but that buylist price won’t stay where it is for long. Get on it! The rest of that deck, though, I’m not too enthusiastic about.
With that said, let’s look at ET and Elliot over here and see if we can snag anything before everyone gets wise.
Most of the Cycling payoffs like Drake Haven, Astral Drift, New Perspective and Lightning Rift (WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE!) are reprinted in the deck, but there are some cards with cycling on them that are interesting.
Decree of Silence, which already popped when Solemnity was printed and is experiencing one of those second spikes we all know and love and profit from, is through the roof. It’s not a $20 card, but with the markets effectively shut down due to Covid, no one is racing to the bottom so copies are hard to come by. I have a ton left over from last time and I’m happy to sell these for $15 on Facebook and if you find these around their pre-spike price, scoop them because they’ll settle higher than that. With shops shut down, no one is trolling through the smaller stores with a few copies or snapping everything up on Crystal Commerce so it’s possible there are random copies on “Hobby Monkey” on the 7th page of google or something. If Decree of Silence was obvious, here’s one that wasn’t.
Decree of Annihilation is drying up a little bit but you should still be able to find some copies. Here is a way to get $60 worth of cards provided Decree never goes above $10, and more than $60 if it does. The Decree in there is foil, but nobody’s perfect.
Solemnity is a card that’s currently on a huge upward track as well given the combination with Decree of Silence and, I’m assuming, cards with Cumulative Upkeep? I’ll be honest, I’m not sure why it’s showing up in the Gavi deck so much, but it is, and it’s getting expensive so yank these out of bulk if you have bulk to yank from.
This deck is so narrow that they basically reprinted anything that could go with it and still needed to cough up 15 new cards to fill out a deck. Cycling is really fair, slow without Gavi and Fluctuator, a terrible way to make tokens with Gavi and The Locust God and if you don’t draw a payoff spell, you’re literally spinning your wheels. I think other decks are more exciting and I’ll find a more exciting one to get into next week, with cards that haven’t all started to go up, if we’re lucky. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy and remember we have so much time to buy these cards that Commander 2021 may be out before anyone even gets to play these cards. Until next time!
Commander 2020 is fully spoiled and the search is on for this year’s “one card to bother speculating on” because the last two years of commander precons have been so bad, people just assume that’s how this works, now. People seem to have entirely lost confidence in WotC’s ability to make precons we care about, and based on the last two years, it’s sort of easy to see why.
Here is everything worth more than $2 from Commander 2019.
Here is the list from Commander 2018.
These are both pretty short lists. Both times, the second-most-expensive card is a generic Green staple with multiple other printings. Both times the list is roughly half reprints despite each deck containing 15 new cards. Obviously, the sets have been opened to death and they’re very available so it would be difficult to have another situation like in the past. Commander 2017 has 7 cards worth more than $10 and the Commander 2016 Atraxa precon sells for $150, even if it’s just the shrinkwrapped deck from the Commander Anthology set. Is it just a matter of time for Commander 2018 and 2019 or do those decks just suck so bad that no amount of waiting will improve things? I have a feeling that it’s more the latter than the former.
Let’s figure out if that hypothesis is correct before we move on to Commander 2020, though. We need to figure out if there is an appreciable supply difference between Commander 2017 and Commander 2018 that could explain the price discrepancies. One limitation to EDHREC in its current form is that we only go back 2 years in our data. The reason for this is to make it more useful as a deck recommendation website – if you don’t want every card in an Oloro or Meren deck (or Atraxa at this point) deck to throw off every metric and bury some useful signal in all the noise, it’s nice to chop off some of the older decks at a certain point. That reduces its usefulness in cases where I want to compare 2017 to 2018, but it does help me prove certain points very conclusively. If we’re getting more use of Commander 2017 cards, that means more people built with cards from Commander 2017 IN THE YEAR 2018 than they did with cards from Commander 2018. That’s pretty significant. Also, EDHREC goes back to April 2018 when Commander 2017 had only been out for 7 months, which means people were still building decks with the cards, especially since new, relevant cards were printed in sets that came out in early 2018 and that was the newest Commander set at that point (Commander 2018 didn’t come out until August of 2018). I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t compare apples to oranges, but if we go in expecting apples to be smaller because they’re a year older and they end up being the same size as the oranges, that means the apples are overperforming, and that’s all we really needed to know. We don’t have quantitative data but we do have qualitative data, in other words. That will do fine.
Just taking a rough look at usage metrics, we’re seeing the story of Dockside Extortionist pan out. Extortionist is played more than twice as much as the next-most-played card from Commander 2019 whereas the most expensive card from Commander 2018, Arixmethes, is the 14thj-most-played card. The most-played card is played twice as much as the second-most played deck, but it’s in 8% of decks rather than 17%. The distribution is much flatter – there are 5 cards in more than 2,000 decks in the Top 16 of Commander 2019 whereas there are 8 in Commander 2018 and 13 for Commander 2017. Commander 2017 had tribal staples that got played in following years, Commander 2018 had good removal, Planeswalkers and good cards like Estrid’s Invocation and Commander 2019 had creatures that were good in very specific archetypes built around bad abilities like Morph, generic Naya beaters and only 4 non-creatures in the Top 16, none of which were removal spells.
Commander 2017 cards are played more because they go in decks built in 2017, 2018, 2019 and probably 2020 (Teferi’s Protection, Herald’s Horn, Path of Ancestry, Kindred Dominance, Disrupt Decorum, Fractured Identity and even Mathas seem good with cards from Commander 2020) but also, they’re better cards.
The second thing we need to try and ferret out is whether the price is dilluted by a higher supply in Commander 2019. If a card in Commander 2018 has a relatively flat price graph over the last 2 years, is in as many decks as a card from Commander 2017 and costs a tenth as much, you can reasonably conclude there are just more copies of that card out there. Commander 2019 sold incredibly well despite being really bad, and so did Commander 2018 despite being better than 2019 but so much worse than 2017 that everyone complained and WotC vowed to make the decks better (then didn’t). I suspect the prices in Commander 2019 will be lower than 2018 for cards played a similar amount despite equal play and less time for the price to go up. Let’s compare some apples to some slightly older apples.
For the cards in the 3,000 or so deck range, we aren’t seeing a huge difference between Commander 2018 and Commander 2019. Compare that to a card in the same number of decks that’s more restricted due to color identity.
The only question is whether Fractured Identity was $2 in 2017, $3 in 2018 and $5 in 2019.
Basically, it was. It seems like cards just sort of trend up over time from these decks. How about cards in more decks?
It’s tough to find cards to compare because nothing from Commander 2018 was in 10,000 decks, nothing from Commander 2019 was in 10,000 decks and nothing from either was in 20,000 decks.
Here is one year from Commander 2017 to Commander 2018. Wrath of Goad was in most popular deck, which should bring its price down but didn’t. Estrid’s Invocation was in the deck with 2 of the most expensive cards but there is no clear “buy this” deck yet so it’s hard to tell which was the most popular. Could Estrid’s Invocation be $8 in a year? Are we seeing peculiarites associated with TCG Player taking their stores offline for the ‘Rona since these cards are basically the same price on Card Kingdom, the site where EDH player buy their cards? Hard to say. It sure makes me think Estrid’s Invocation could be a buy if you sell on TCG Player, though.
From what I have seen, it doesn’t appear that prices from 2019 are depressed due to a ton of supply but are likely subject to the same growth curve as older cards.
I even found some odd cases where the Commander 2019 cards was worth more than a Commander 2018 card played roughly as much.
Is it possible Commander 2020 will sell a ton more than Commander 2019 did because it’s much better? Maybe, but Commander 2019 mostly sucked and only had one card anyone cares about and it sold the most ever, so I think it’s more likely we’ll see depressed sales from the virus situation, people’s unstable financial situation and the coming recession about to slam into us than we’ll see lower prices from too much supply. This set is dropping at a terrible time for it to sell more than Commander 2019 did.
So, what’s this set’s Dockside Extortionist?
Well, if you ask me, there isn’t one.
This set is quite good and there are bound to be multiple cards that spread the love out. Furthermore, despite there being fairly strong themes like an entire deck devoted to cycling, we’re seeing a lot of cards that will be EDH staples for years to come rather than deck-specific cards. Compare an artifact from Commander 2019 to one from Commander 2020.
One of them is a durdle card for a durdle deck, the other is insanely powerful and is bound to get played forever. So what’s stopping Manascape Refractor, in all of its insane glory, from being the Dockside Extortionist of the set? Simple – the rest of the set.
This is too much money for all of these and none of them will be above $10 in a year.
This was barely $15 before the reprinting and as good as it is, and not just in Commander, it’s in a precon and it’s going to be one that is bought a lot, if you ask me. Xyris is nutty, the deck has a 0 mana Deflect, Etali, Lightning Greaves, Chaos Warp and Dualcaster Mage. It’s not the best deck in terms of reprint value but we won’t expect Locust God to soak up almost a third of the deck’s value on its own.
Xyris is nutty, but commanders don’t tend to stay above $10. Since 2017, only Edgar Markov has gone above $15 and that took a decent amount of time.
Signet seems good here. It’s going to be a Sol Ring or better card since it has fewer printings. Refractor at $8 is high but not overly high – I don’t expect it to end up in the $3, especially since it’s a card that goes in decks going forward but also retroactively goes in decks already built, meaning people need more than one copy. You only need your one Scroll of Fate to put in your own Kadena deck you’ll play 3 times and tear apart but every tribal deck you built before Commander 2017 needed a Path of Ancestry all of a sudden, and future ones would need one, too. Refractor and Signet aren’t tribal but they are that ubiquitous. Nothing in Commander 2019 compares to the utility of either one of these cards.
The only card that seems underpriced for the near- and medium-term is Fierce Guardianship. It’s getting a lot more hype than Deflecting Swat and it’s in the Jeskai deck with The Locust God and Trilobite which already has reasons to buy it. The cycling theme means that the cards in the deck are likely to be played with each other so people buying the deck to put the cards in other decks seems less likely which means the market will have fewer loose copies of Guardianship and it could be a situation where this is the most-bought precon at first. I don’t expect Atraxa-esque levels, though and the value seems spread better than last year.
The Top 10 most played cards in Commander 2019 not named Dockside Extortionist are Marisi, Chainer, Ohran Frostfang, Pramkikon, Eisha, Bone Miser, Atla Palani, K’rrik and Apex Altisaur. Verge Rangers is better than all 10 of those cards except maybe Frostfang. White desperately needs what Rangers does and it’s going to go in a lot of decks. Altar is pretty narrow but it lets people with dumb decks like Phage try to build that dumb deck again, which is fun. If this were Commander 2019, where the second-most-expensive card was a $6 reprinted Seedborn Muse, you might not think that any of these cards were worth preordering at $5, but I think we’ve established that this isn’t the case. I think even with as popular as each deck will be since they’re basically all better than all of the decks last year, we’ll still potentially see between 2 and 5 cards above $7 next year. Ruthless Regiment is basically DLC for the Mardu Knights Brawl deck but even it has Verge Rangers, Flawless Maneuver (underpriced at $0.50 presale, imo), Shared Animosity, Magus of the Wheel (not in the wheel deck why?) and a ton of cards that will go bulkish but bounce back like Knight of the White Orchid, Thalia’s Lieutenant, Zulaport Cutthroat and Crackling Doom. Oh, AND it has a Skullclamp? I’d say all of these decks have a lot of value spread out. Will it make every card $1 instead of $2 in a year? Hard to say.
I mentioned I thought as many as 5 cards could be above $5 in a year, which is ballsy when you look at even Commander 2018’s numbers – 2 years later, Commander 2018 has 4 and 1 year later Commander 2019 has 2. The cards that have a shot, though, are, in my view the following.
Verge Rangers. The deck has a lot of cards that are going to drop a lot due to their multiple printings and a lot of the cards are pretty cheap already. I think Verge Rangers could be the most expensive card in its deck. This is the least likely of my 5 picks but it’s a stupid good card.
Arcane Signet. I realize it’s in every deck and the Brawl decks, but people need these for every deck they’ve ever built, so unless they’re buying a Commander precon just for the Signet and not building a new deck with the cards in the precon, they didn’t actually help any of their old decks and will need to snag copies from elsewhere for their other decks.
The Locust God. I think this could halve in price, which is fine, and will likely recover some of its value.
Manascape Refractor. This card, if it’s as powerful as I think it is, will be pretty expensive. If it’s as durdly and situational as I fear it may be, we’re looking at the $2.50ish territory Treasure Nabber is at. Which red Goblin that gives you artifacts is this, Nabber or Extortionist? Or somewhere in between? We’ll see when people start to play with it. I’m not buying a ton at $8 since I think it’s a maybe whether it will be $8 in a year, but I like it.
Fierce Guardianship. This is basically a Force of Will for the important spells in Commander. Even not having your commander and paying 2U for Negate is fine, really. I think this could end up being pretty expensive and we could all be saying “Well duh” in hindsight.
Here are a few cards I really like but don’t know about whether they could hit $7.
Dismantling Wave. If you just play this as a 3 mana Sorcery, you basically Windgrace’s Judgment. You can’t get creatures, but you can’t get creatures with Return to Dust and that’s $2 after 5 printings.
Xyris. Arixmethes is like $8 right now, but Xyris is far from the only good Commander in this set. Commander 2018 was a mess and it’s really tough to try to figure out what any of its prices mean.
Slippery Bogbonder. People are really excited about this card. Granting Hexproof at instant speed and moving counters can make for some really dirty moves, and cards like Hardened Scales and Doubling Season love when you move counters because it grows the number again.
Cartographer’s Hawk. People are really polarized by this card. Some call it trash some are calling it a workhorse. I’m not sure which it is but anytime people argue this much, I take notice.
I think Commander 2020 is the best Commander set since Commander 2017 and the value will be spread out much more. I also think there will be more of it. I’ll be back with Xyris specs next week because I cannot WAIT to brew with this deck, but here’s a free one just for Pro Traders – Forced Fruition.
“Embrace the tank” is a phrase I see a lot on social media because I am from Michigan and the Detroit Red Wings are terrible this year. Had the season not ended, they may have ended up one of the worst teams of all time. Just truly, truly abominable. I’m of course happy because the same friends who want to “tank” the season (not even try so they get last place and have the best odds of drafting 1st overall) were bragging about a 25 year streak of making the playoffs a few years ago and I’m petty. If fans of a team that made the playoffs 25 years in a row can embrace the tank, why can’t we?
You’ve Got Red On You
Card prices are tanking fairly hard. If we’re going to be greedy when others are fearful, we still need to be smart about it. It’s for this reason that I think EDH cards are the way to go. Since EDH is a casual format, people are able to play it on webcam with their friends whereas people can’t really play competitive formats in paper, which insulates EDH card prices. These months of extended social distancing will help a lot of people transition out of paper into digital but with EDH on Arena still impossible, paper EDH is further insulated. Finally, non-rotating formats will benefit as cards lose months of their limited Standard-playable window to a lack of tournament play. All of this bodes well for EDH and we’re seeing that borne out – EDH buylist prices recovered from the initial hit all buylist prices took better than any other format because of course they did.
I’m not going to waste either of our time belaboring this point as you’d much rather talk about cards I think will be good pickups longer term and which have tanked recently. Let’s highlight 5 cards I think are good “Be greedy when others are fearful” buys.
Call is down pretty significantly in the wake of the reprinting in both Masters 25 and Modern Horizons, but more importantly, it’s down about 33% in the last two weeks, which is above average for cards in EDH. This is is the 48th-most-played card in the last 2 years per EDHREC and reprintings have made it more accessible and therefore more popular, which only grows its demand. No one wanted to pay $15 for this, but at $3 or below, you scoop these. It’s likely done getting printed for a while and I think the Corona divot will even out as soon as everything starts to get bought again.
This price tanked so much I opened up a new tab just to double check it wasn’t in Mystery Boosters. Nope. Just one printing, and this week Strike Zone is selling it for literally half of what Card Kingdom was charging two weeks ago. If you can get these for anywhere near $10, I think you do it. I would wait until we get the full decklists from the Ikoira commander products spoiled and THEN do it. The leaked Symbiotic Swarm list didn’t have this, it had Heliod’s Intervention, but I’m not 100% convinced that list is real and there could be another Green deck. Buy smart, we have lots of time.
This went from $40 to $30 solely on the basis of… well the entirely world being on fire and everything being terrible, but my point is that this will be $40 flirting with $50 unless people realize they have to pay back the $1,200 checks they’re getting. a 25% hit to a very popular card in multiple formats can’t be sustained unless the entire Magic economy doesn’t recover and if it doesn’t, what are we even doing here?
Without support from other sets, this is a card whose fate is solely tied to EDH, which I think is a good thing. The EDH economy will continue to be strong for the reasons I enumerated above. Also, I’m running out of things to say about cards all experiencing the same circumstances. Here’s a card that was on its way to $20 and now it’s $10 some places. Can you find these for $8? Buy them off people locally for $5? This is a Top 100 card on EDHREC and it says Tutor in its name.
For comparison’s sake, I included one card that I think has a strong chance at a rebound and was included in Mystery Boosters and I’ll talk about a few things regarding the difference.
Verdict does get play in multiple formats, which is good, but the EDH demand is very robust and enough to move the price if it needs to. This was flirting with $20 before the Mystery Boosters hit shelves and I think the supply from those is a bit overstated. The introduction of copies is going to be much flatter than most sets because big stores are closed, people aren’t super keen to head to the LGS if it’s even open and money is tight right now. Copies will hit the market slowly and I think that will buoy recovery because supply will seem less than it is.
Verdict lost 50% of its value between Mystery Boosters and COVID and that’s about twice what we’ve seen for non-Mystery-Booster EDH staples. Troll and Toad has these under $5, which is closer to a 75% price reduction. If that happens across the board for Mystery Boosters cards, there might be more buying opportunities in that set than we think. In fact, I think I’ll address that more in depth next week. If prices rebound the way they typically do, it will end up halfway between the pre- and post-spike price, which will be a reduction of about 38%, which is the worst we’ve seen for just COVID reductions. If that’s the case, you stand to recover even more value if we’re seeing two different factors reducing the price, one of which works itself out naturally and the other of which is temporary. I think there is more demand for this card at $5 than at $20 and if I wasn’t going to include any Mystery Booster cards to avoid having to type this paragraph and risk being wrong about all of this later but included this card anyway, that should tell you how I feel about scooping these at $5, which is absurdly cheap.
That does it for me. Who knows what will happen in a week? If I am able and allowed, I’ll be back next week with more ideas and I hope you’ll join me. Thanks for reading. Until next time!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
