Readers!

I’m on a new “Keep it simple, stupid” kick and one benefit of that is you don’t miss something obvious. To me, it seems obvious that Slivers are coming. If not in Dominaria United, then soon. Ideally not in a precon because lately people aren’t adding too many cards to the precons. If we could get Slivers in a main set, that would be pretty ideal and it seems like they are signaling pretty hard.

Are Slivers NECESSARILY coming back in Dominaria United? The good news is that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter for several reasons. The first is that, whether or not this is hinting at anything, Slivers will eventually get done again so these won’t be missed specs, they will be longer-term specs. You’ll get dinged with a reprint or two, you might start to calculate the opportunity cost of having money tied up in long-term specs, but the day will come when you cheer my name for pointing out the obvious. I guess perhaps the second reason it’s fine is that the worst case scenario is that you’re right too early. Also, consider that this is a strong signal that others are reading which means we could see all of the Slivers stuff tick up just on principle. I like when stuff becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because you get to strut around like Nostradamus with a pocket full of shrimp money from being good at guessing when I’m right.

If we are in some sort of quantum experiment where observation changes outcome, it makes sense that finance really can be that easy sometimes, where a few dozen people tweeting about getting a bunch of Slivers in their Secret Lairs that I still don’t have can make people think “Slivers.” Am I capitalizing on an effect of those Slivers being sent out or am I helping to originate a panic? Good question, but if you buy right now it won’t matter since anyone I convince to buy with this article will buy enough to drive the price up, so you actually can’t lose here.

So say Slivers do come and they come in the next year and other people want to build Slivers decks. You’d like me to tell you what I think you should buy and show my work. I’m into it, let’s knock this out before wherever you buy shrimp closes.

Did you know this was a thing on EDHREC? If you didn’t, yep, and if you click the word “tribes” it will take you to a page that ranks all of the tribes. If you’ve never navigated to this page, give yourself 10 minutes to really peruse it and try to digest it. It’s a new way to see the data represented and seeing how some tribes are played in real proportion to each other rather than what you assumed will make you better at this. Goofing around on EDHREC is just as valuable as goofing around with MTG Price’s tools. Anyway, clicking the thing I have highlighted brings up this page.

Slivers are the 9th-most-popular tribe after Vampires and before Dinosaurs, Cats and Rogues. Would you have guessed that? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t. But seeing the real rankings has helped me immensely. I knew Slivers were popular, but I didn’t expect them to do better than Cats the last 2 years. I pay attention and I was still surprised. Clicking the Sliver takes you to the page we want.

I’m not surprised Sliver Overlord is the most-built. Being able to swipe Changelings, or make their creatures Slivers to steal them is very funny, Sliver Overlord is pricey but not expensive for a Magic card, especially a deck with a 5 color manabase. It’s also old border which is hot. Then they descend in order of how fun they are to play as your commander. I bet the number of Sliver Legion decks actually sleeved up in a world where you have to spend $300 real dollars on a Sliver Queen is greater than the number of people who spent an entire week at minimum wage buying a dorky old card from Stronghold to build their weird tribal deck. I think if they don’t print a new Sliver Commander, and I hope they don’t, Overlord is the winner here, and that’s good because Overlord has an Overlord-specific card that could use a nudge.

Unnatural Selection is a very cute card in a Sliver Overlord deck. You can make your mana dorks into Slivers if you play any mana dorks and you can make their creatures into Slivers and gain control of them with Sliver Overlord’s ability. I knew this was a card and it looks like it popped speculatively and Slivers might not be involved. Still, this could be a $8 card very easily and buying under $4 seems pretty safe to me. This is just vaguely good until something makes it absolutely broken. When they make a Commander whose ability is Dismiss Into Dream maybe? Point is, I like this under $4.

This was up but under $10 in 2021, so the soonest I expect to see this in a precon is 2023. I think this is a buy under $10 because it could easily go to $15 or $20 and it’s going to go up until it’s reprinted regardless because every deck is tribal these days.

I am including this card in this article because I trust EDHREC data. I really do think people are putting Legion Loyatly in decks like Slivers because while ordinarily copying a bunch of 1/1 Soldier tokens is sort of underwhelming, making 3 extra copies of Muscle Sliver and all of your other Lords, plus ETB triggers, plus LTB triggers, this card is absurd. The more it gets ignored in the obvious builds, the more the price tanks even more. A mythic of this caliber won’t be $3 for long. I think the other art is so much better that the full art version might not be the good one.

I’m no nerd, but that art rips. It’s so much better and the price is also tanking. Give these a bit to start to recover then pounce. This is 8 mana but that’s not a problem for EDH decks. People are playing this, the data says so and that’s good enough for me.

If they will stop reprinting this card, it would be helpful for its price for sure. I think they’re done reprinting it for a bit and this could really benefit from people wanting to play Slivers. For the record, the Conspiracy art is better.

The cycle from Legions, Magma, Synapse, Toxin, Brood and Essence are all pretty spicy. Of them, only Synapse and Magma have yet to be reprinted. I am betting that this goes up quickly if Slivers are officially announced because someone already took care of quite a bit of the supply late last year. What remains will be scarce and a sharper spike could see you enriched by selling at the top. I would rather be a seller than a buyer when something as mid as Magma Sliver flirts with $30.

That does it for me. If I’m totally wrong, no I’m not, I just wrote this article between 6 and 36 months too early and that’s not my fault. I am merely the muse’s mortal vessel and she dictated this whole article. Anyway, that’s what I think, gotta go, bye. Until next time!

Readers!

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

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

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

Here is What I’d Buy

Inclusions: 96,532

Reprint Risk: Inevitable

Recent Low/High: $40/$140

Number of Printings: 10

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

Inclusions: 65,916

Reprint Risk: Inevitable

Recent Low/High: $45/$110

Number of Printings: 6

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

Inclusions: 36,543

Reprint Risk: Medium

Recent Low/High: $15/$50

Number of Printings: 3

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

Inclusions: 43,421

Reprint Risk: Medium

Recent Low/High: $10/$55

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

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

Inclusions: 39,689

Reprint Risk: Medium to Low inside 3 years

Recent Low/High: $10/$30

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

I think the graph of this card speaks volumes.

Here is What to Not Buy, Probably

Inclusions: 22,266

Reprint Risk: High

Recent Low/High: $2/$50

Number of Printings: 3

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

Inclusions: 108,155

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

Recent Low/High: $20/$65

Number of Printings: 3

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

Inclusions: 46,513

Reprint Risk: Brace yourself

Recent Low/High: $20/$100

Number of Printings: 3

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

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

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

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

Readers!

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

Let’s look at the distribution from last week.

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

Here is the full top 16 from last week.

Here is the top 16 today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

$35 on EA foils looks pretty good in hindsight!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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