Casual Fridays

There’s Other Cards?

While a lot of the attention is rightfully on the old border cards, and the foil versions thereof, we’ve got other cards in the packs of Time Spiral Remastered, a lot of which are relevant cards and needed a fresh injection of copies. Given the focus on the old border cards, and the money being thrown at them, we need to be disciplined and remember that every reprint set offers an opportunity to pick up cards that needed a reprint at their lowest possible prices.

A caveat here about when to buy these cards: By all indications, this is a short-run set. Vendors are selling as of today, and individuals who like to open boxes are getting their product this coming week, exactly when Strixhaven previews begin. I do expect that most of these prices fall further, which makes buying in that much more attractive.

Interestingly, a lot of these cards are reprints of reprints, meaning that the supply has already been increased once or more since original Time Spiral. If it’s been reprinted before, and the price recovered, that makes these solid buys for the most part. We know for sure that demand is high enough to make the price higher eventually, and a low cost plus patience will often lead to value. Buying in at the low point is a core mechanic for what we do.

Venser, Shaper Savant ($6) – This is one of the top non-OB cards in the set, going by EDH inclusion rates. Ten thousand players have registered this online, and countless cubes carry this mega-bouncer as well. This is a pet card for a lot of players, because while some spells can’t be countered, this is just returning to hand, buying you some needed tempo. His price has been as high as $20, and weirdly had a spike to nearly $30 for the original Future Sight version just a few weeks ago. The Modern Masters 2017 reprint never made it above $11, and that is our ceiling. Venser is a rare in this set, and I’m looking for this to drop another couple of dollars before moving in. 

Prismatic Lens (Foil) (75 cents) – You might be wondering why I’m talking about an uncommon here, but the foil from original Time Spiral is $6, the better-art foil from Ultimate Masters is $3, and the reprint in Eternal Masters is $2. I don’t want to buy in before it hits 50 cents, or preferably a quarter, but the value will be there if you like growth. At the least, grab copies for your Commander decks while the card is at its low point. More than 20k decks have done the same online, and that’s why this foil tends to recover its value over time.

Magus of the Moon ($8) – The Iconic Masters version had crept up to nearly $20 when this reprint arrived. Picking this up is a testament to how much paper play you think will happen in the next year or two, as this is a popular Modern sideboard card, with a smattering of Legacy play included. Given that paper play is nonexistent at the moment, I’m really hoping this falls even farther, ideally to under $5. 

Pact of Negation ($18) – Worthwhile to note that there’s already a couple of people on TCG putting this as low as $15, so let’s watch this angle downwards a bit more before diving in. On EDHREC, 10% of all decks that can run this do, more than 25,000 people want a free counterspell in Commander to go with the Modern players who can win this turn and don’t care about five mana next turn. Bonuses to the ones playing Hive Mind! This was available as low at $10 when the first Modern Masters came out, and if this got as low as $10 it would be an excellent pickup going forward. We know it’s got the chops to be a $30 card, and all it’s going to take is a little patience to recover in value.

Akroma’s Memorial ($14 vs $36) – The reprints have been as you’d expect with this card. 

The M13 version was available very cheaply, and while I don’t think it’ll get down to $5 again, it’s easy to see this as being $10 in a couple of weeks. Given that it’s only registered in about 6,000 decks, I’m not expecting to see this grow quickly. Picking up cheap cards and being patient feels good, but I’m not waiting seven years to cash this in. This has a while to fall on TCG, as Card Kingdom has it for much much less right now. Be patient, and pick your spots.

I also want to take a moment and talk about some other cards that are not good pickups, even though the reprint is quite attractively priced compared to the original.

Reiterate (TSR is $6, TSP is $15) – Only in 3,000 Commander decks online, the original price is simply a relic of the tiny supply. This will be nearly bulk relatively quickly.

Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir ($4 vs. $7) – the Iconic Masters and FTV reprints have kept the price low on this, and while it is a mythic, I’d need it to hit bulk status before I moved in. There’s a whole lot of copies out there and the Commander demand isn’t what you might expect.

Wheel of Fate ($1 vs $4) – Mystery Booster had this, there’s Commander copies out there too. Bulk and never to recover.

Coalition Relic ($2 vs $3) – Once the gold standard for mana rocks, the Relic has just been middling these last few years. There are 10,000 decks online that have it registered and likely a lot more that just play it because it’s good, but this is another card where the reprints have been a touch too frequent to let the price recover. If I knew they weren’t going to reprint this for another five years, this would be a solid buy.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: What’s On The Horizon?

Readers!

With the announcement of Modern Horizons 2 and my decision to abandon my tried-and-true method of not having to guess ever and delving into the uncharted waters of guessing like a COMPLETE IDIOT WHAT AM I DOING I decided to look at Modern Horizons 1 to tell us if we’re going to want to care about Modern Horizons 2. Will there be any relevant reprints? Will prices be impacted if there are? Will the splashy mythics matter in EDH or are those there to sell packs to Modern players? Will there be Modern played when this set comes out (no)? Let’s look at an old set and make pronouncements about a set that probably isn’t even done being printed, so I can get a bunch of stuff wrong and you can all go back to seeing me as human.

Let’s look at Modern Horizons and how much it actually mattered in EDH!

I am not so much astounded that there were only 8 commanders in the set as I am astounded that they would waste a slot in the set on a complete meme card like Ayula, and I’m more astounded that people are building it more than Hogaak. Hogaak is kind of a non-EDH commander but people still seem to be into it. I’m also astounded that people would rather do completely stupid, fun stuff with Siasy and especially Morophon than do dumb cEDH stuff with Urza. Urza was obvious, powerful, and led the way very early but it’s been overtaken by Sisay and Morophon. Why? Versatility. Urza was obvious and that spikes stuff in the near term, but the top commanders are the least obvious and those can be a double-edged sword. What’s going to spike more copies of a given card, 62 out of a possible 3,495 Sisay decks being built as Gods tribal or 2,614 Urza decks all being built as “Lol I win on turn 2” decks? If a deck has a lot of different builds that don’t have a ton of cards in common, it could end up that they’re less impactful than a streamlined commander. Yawgmoth is pushing way more copies of Nest of Scarabs than Sisay is pushing copies of Honden of Night’s Reach despite being built half as much. Very versatile commanders are always the ones that top the lists, but the less versatile, more focused commanders really push “staples” and that’s better in the long-run. I’d focus more on commanders like The First Sliver in the future than open-ended ones like Morophon. I mean, I will. I mean “I’d” as in “I would” as in “I would if I were you” as in “you should” but also know that I will, in case you don’t want to think about cards made for a format you don’t play released in a set for a format no one can play right now.

Despite boasting EDH cred, the cards that most impacted the format are largely what we’re seeing in most sets – lands and mana rocks. EDH doesn’t need the wheel reinvented with respect to our manabases every single set, but lately that seems to be mostly what people latch onto. I don’t see Good-Fortune Unicorn, Unsettled Mariner, Unbound Flourishing or the card they expected to really sell boosters, Serra the Benevolent, anywhere near the Top 25. The Talismans were long overdue, and Hall of Heliod’s Generosity had a ton of decks ready to slide right into, but the 15th-most-played card is a tryhard Legacy and Modern free counterspell that only hit EDH incidentally. They can design cards for the format, but they can’t make people care past a certain point, especially if they’re very narrow. Why does it matter if the cards are narrow or not, though? If they get played in 90% of the decks that can run them, aren’t they basically a staple, and isn’t that great? Well, yes and no.

Hall of Heliod’s Generosity is played in a staggering 10% of all decks that contain and can run White. If you look at Enchantment-heavy decks specifically, the number is much higher.

19,000 decks, and in nearly half of the registered Enchantment-heavy decks, even the ones that were printed before Hall was.

Those are really strong metrics. Sure, Hall is going to grow until it does something or gets another reprint, but the amount of supply out there loose butting up against with how much of the paper market is dominated by the format where Hall is king has made the graph look pretty disappointing. If Hall can’t do much in a year, we either have to wait much longer, which will really increase the reprint risk since it’s a longer hold, or it will never get there. The other rares above Hall on the list, Nurturing Peatland and Waterlogged Grove, are a similar sad story.

Maybe you see opportunity with a graph this shape, but all I see is a falling knife that I don’t want to grab. Grove and Peatland have the potential to get some help from other formats, a statement much less likely to apply to Hall of Heliod’s Generosity. Something tells me that Modern Horizons two is going to be a pretty bad set for EDH investing if these numbers are true.

Do I think anything from Modern Horizons One can get there given enough time, and if I do, which cards other than Hall can do it? If Hall can’t, nothing can, but if Hall can, what else could? … Just word salad with my prose today, get it together Jason.

This is a bulk rare that plays a lot better than people seem to want to give it credit for. I use this to rebuy Thieving Skydiver and Sower of Temptation, but this is just a really hard hitter that plays well outside of ninjitsu decks as well as it plays inside of them. This is a nice bulk to bucks pick and I know those are tough, and this has moderate reprint risk, but overall I think there’s money to be made here and so do dealers given the (slight) increase in buylist price.

This has flirted with $2 on CK and I think it can get there again. This is played almost exclusively in EDH to great effect and I think it’s a hidden gem. I think reprint risk is lowish and I think it’s another good bulk pick.

This is a very, very, very, very narrow card. People compared it to Doubling Season when it first came out but I think it’s not a card you compare to Doubling Season, I think it’s a card you compare unfavorably to Second Harvest. That said, the right deck coming along could pluck this from its relative obscurity. I think it’s basically at its floor, is nowhere close to begging for a reprint and is good in the right deck. Does that deck exist? Nah, but when it does, people who have copies of this will be in a position to make some quick cash and if you’re the person who likes to be holding things when they pop, this is the card for you. I don’t like this kind of spec, but I know some of you do.

The foil BARELY costs more than the non-foil, so if you’re betting on the non-foil to go up a little, you could be betting on the foil to go up 2 or 3 times a little if you’re really that confident. This went down to $12 and up to $35, and that’s worth noting, especially with Card Kingdom selling out of it.

All in all, I’m a little more bearish on Modern Horizons 2, a set that has had 0 cards printed so far and which we know nothing about. Is that wise? There are other places to invest, and we also know that anything EDH-relevant will spend a year declining in price before it shows any signs of life, so either bet on cards with cross-format applicability or wait for the cat to bounce. Next week I hope I have spoilers to look at, something. Save me from having to speculate on tribal decks based on that William Gibson’s Neuromancer Kamigawa set you know they’re making. Until next time!

Watchtower

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

Due to the current global pandemic I’ve generally stayed away from talking about cards for competitive formats, other than cards that I like for longer holds and big potential gains. With vaccinations being rolled out worldwide though, we may start to get in-store play and maybe even some smaller tournaments by the end of the year.

With this in mind, I think that it’s a good time to start taking a look at some of the cards that are going to be in high demand, short supply or both when players are wanting to buy new decks or change and upgrade old ones. Modern is going to be the main format affecting card prices here, but Pioneer is a consideration to bear in mind as well.

Monastery Swiftspear (Foil)

Price in Europe: €6/8 ($7/$9.50)
Price in US: $11/$16
Possible price: $20

Monastery Swiftspear has pretty much been a Modern staple since its first printing in Khans of Tarkir, all the way back in 2014. Since then we’ve seen it utilised in all sorts of different aggressive decks, from Burn to Death’s Shadow to Prowess Blitz, and as such it’s been the number one most popular creature in Modern for a while now. A hasty one drop that stays relevant even late in the game and is pretty much always a good top-deck is very strong indeed, and I find it hard to imagine a Modern metagame where this isn’t at the forefront of the format.

Since the first printing we’ve only had one other foil in IMA until very recently, where we’ve got the new Secret Lair printing (with new art) and the old-border foil that’s coming in Time Spiral Remastered. However, despite there now being four different foils, there are caveats that need discussing. The TSR old border foils are going to be incredibly hard to come by and very expensive because of that, and so acquiring the playset that you need for Modern is going to set you back a fair bit, and isn’t going to be a viable option for a lot of people. The Secret Lair copies are the only ones with a different art, and will definitely be attractive to some people but others won’t like the style so much.

That leaves a lot of people choosing between the KTK and IMA foils, both of which are in rather low supply. If we look at TCG there are only ten listings total across both versions, with IMA lowest at $10 and KTK lowest at $16. Over in Europe supply is a little bit deeper and prices a bit lower, so I think that this is a great arbitrage opportunity for a short-term flip. Bear in mind that if someone wants foils of these for Modern (or Pioneer) then they’re going to be buying four at a time, so supply will disappear in chunks when it does. Pick up a playset or two in Europe for under $40 and you should easily be able to get $70-80 for them in the US.

Collected Company (Foil)

Price today: $20
Possible price: $40

It took a few months after its release for people to realise how good Collected Company was and start playing it in both Standard and eternal formats, but since then it’s been another staple in Modern that hasn’t left the format. It’s also been a large part of Pioneer since the format was created, but due to the lack of paper play over the last year we’ve seen Collected Company drift downwards in price a fair bit.

Once a $50 foil, you can now get original KTK foils for as little as $20 on TCGPlayer. There aren’t many around that price though, and with only 25 listings there’s a steep ramp towards $40. The only competition for these is the Secret Lair versions, but I don’t think that those are really going to hinder the price of the original foils too much. Original set foils always have a premium attached to them, and will command higher prices than subsequent copies.

These aren’t any cheaper in Europe, but if you can pick some $20 copies up in the US then I think you’ll be doing just fine in 6-12months. Collected Company decks should remain a good part of both Modern and Pioneer for the foreseeable future, and if Historic ever emerges as a paper format then that’s yet another swathe of decks that will be using the card.

Supreme Verdict (Foil)

Price today: $9/$13
Possible price: $25+

UW control decks have been doing quite well for a little while in Modern now, consistently posting strong finishes in Modern challenges and leagues and generally sitting in the top 5 decks of a very diverse metagame. Supreme Verdict has pretty much always been a staple in this deck, with the uncounterable aspect of it being much more important than the anti-regeneration of Wrath of God.

The Buy-a-Box foils have a worse art and foiling than either the original RTR or the reprint IMA foils, and so I think that the latter two will be the most desirable versions by far.. There are 29 IMA foil listings on TCGPlayer and half that for the RTR version, with both printings forming nice ramps up to and over $20. They’re around the same price in Europe so no big bonus there, but I think both markets are going to be moving upwards before long.

Don’t forget – this is also a card in nearly 23,000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC, quite a sizeable number for the few foils left on the market here. With Modern most likely picking back up a bit later this year combined with the strong EDH backing, I think that this is easily a $20+ card in 6-12 months.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

The Old Country

Time Spiral Remastered is a set aimed at reprinting cards that have had a low supply and maximizing player nostalgia. As part of this, Wizards gave us a whole sheet of cards that were timeshifted backwards, a move foreshadowed by the old border Sword of Fire and Ice that was a judge promo a while ago.

This old border sheet of 121 cards is going to drive a lot of the value of the set. Foils are silly rare, you’re getting 1.3 of those per box. The nonfoils offer some intriguing opportunities if the prices drop low enough. Let’s talk about where those prices will go, and when I want to buy in.

I want to reiterate something I said before: about 1-2 weeks after release is your target timing. Regular folks will have gotten their boxes and cracked them, looking for value. Given the premium on the foils, I am expecting everything else to take a dive. Today, though, I want to look at the preorder prices for the old border cards (from now on, abbreviated as OB and OBF) and decide when I want to be buying.

Generally speaking, since these are preorder prices, you can expect prices to go lower as more of the product gets opened. Right now, the people buying are the ones who literally don’t care about price and have to have this card ASAP. Lots of these OB cards are between $5 and $10, and will drop to $1-$2. 

One more item to consider: OB cards that are tournament staples may represent a real shift in how tournament players make their deck unique. Until the introduction of Extended Art and Showcase cards, players had to decide if they wanted to foil out their deck to make it more their own, to have that level of showing off. This involved risk, though, because an incompletely-foiled out deck can have some glaring differences between the foils and nonfoils due to warping/curling issues. If tournament players start moving in on non-foil but special versions of cards, you may see jumps across the board for those once in-person play begins again.

Thoughtseize (OB is currently $65) – Thoughtseize is a staple in Legacy and Modern, and the behavior of this card will be the clearest signal about tournament players’ behavior. There are a lot of options for this, including borderless versions and an Invocation. Should the nonfoil special versions move significantly, other staples won’t be far behind. The 2XM nonfoil borderless is at $30, but that doesn’t have the iconic original art. I think this drops some, but probably not as far as $45. Tournament players who need a full playset are going to keep this card higher than that.

Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker ($40) – This is going to come down a lot. Mystery Booster copies are $15, OG Kamigawa copies can be had under $30. Iconic Masters and Modern Masters versions are also under $20. There will be some demand to go old-border for Cubes and such, but not enough to keep the price high. I’m expecting this to fall to $25 or less.

Panharmonicon ($23) – This is about double the price of the original nonfoils, which have been trending upwards nicely, even as it was put into The List:

With foils still in the $20 range, we’re at an interesting question: Will players seek out OB versions before foils in the new frame? I can’t answer that, but I’m exceedingly curious about the answer. I’m confident that the OB versions will fall down to the $10-$15 range, but will they stay below the pack foils? I love the look of these timeshifted cards, so I’m biased, but my guess is that we’re a little too conditioned to chase foils. These will probably stay under $20 for a while. In the same vein of ‘will pack foils or OB foils be more expensive is Vanquisher’s Banner, a card I’ve long loved as a tribal spec. I’m expecting the Banner to fall much farther, though, down into the $5 range when supply is at its peak. That’s when I’d like to acquire more than a few copies.

Arcades, the Strategist ($20) – I have to admit, I thought this was WAY overpriced, and then I looked at the graph:

Seems this ‘backbone’ sort of thing has legs, and this injection of new copies has come along at the perfect time. Arcades’ growth has been slow but steady, and while the price will take a dive in the short term, it’ll bounce back over time. I don’t expect any movement on the foils, though. This should travel down to being $10 before starting the climb back up. Every new Defender creature or memes like a Giant Ox should see a blip in this price, too.

Wastes ($8) – Speaking of memes, players who need colorless lands are a class all their own. Full-art foils from Oath of the Gatewatch were nicely positioned to be the growth target, and now this. Nonfoils are definitely going to drop a bunch, and I’m not sure I’d want to have a lot of these around. The full-art foil versions were about $15 at release in 2016, and never really got expensive. In fact, after a spike around the time of War of the Spark, the full-art foils are now cheaper than they were after release.

For Wastes to become expensive (any version aside from the most basic) there’s going to need to be a new colorless commander, or other colorless cards that inspire Wastes-based decks. Keep in mind that the decks which play Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher don’t run many basic lands: the Modern versions play the full set of Tron lands and the Legacy builds use Cloudpost & friends. If Wizards made a new colorless commander deck, there would be some number of basic Wastes in there too. If this version got down under $1, I might spec on a few but generally, I’m staying away.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

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