MTGO, OkoAssassin

Profiting From New Set Releases on MTGO

By Oko Assassin (@OkoAssassin)

Speculating on Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) is very different than its paper counterpart, as explained in my overview of the MTGO economics system here. The boom and bust cycle of MTGO is rapid, sometimes occurring within a matter of hours. Additionally, users can short MTGO positions, an opportunity that is fairly unique outside of the stock market. This article discusses the release of new expansion sets on MTGO and how users can profit from repeatable trends that occur during a new set’s lifecycle.

Background

There are several ways MTGO users can profit from new sets being released, which are predictable and repeatable. Some provide a quick gain, while others take a longer buy-and-hold approach. This article will dive into each of these methods, which include:

·       Pre-Release: Short any reprints

·       Day 1-4: Purchase hyped, constructed playable cards

·       Day 2: Short garbage cards

·       Day 4-7: Short hyped cards

·       Day 7-30: Buy cards with proven tournament results

·       Day 30-120: Purchase cheap constructed playable cards

Pre-Release: Short Reprints

When a magic card is reprinted, the supply increases and the price falls, sometimes dramatically. This is a fairly simple economic concept that most magic players have experienced in paper over the years and the same phenomenon applies to MTGO. This is especially impactful on commons and uncommons, for example, see the dramatic drop that occurred when Mishra’s Bauble was reprinted in Double Masters.

An easy profit can be made by shorting cards that are reprinted. The first way is by shorting reprinted cards within the first 10-30 minutes after a reprint is announced. This will generate a quick gain, but you have to be very fast to take advantage of this approach. The easier way to profit is by shorting any valuable reprinted cards a day or two before the set release and then covering the short-sale 3-7 days after the new set release.

Day 1-4: Purchase Hyped, Constructed Playable Cards

Each time a new set releases, there are a small number of cards that are highly playable in constructed formats and naturally these cards tend to be the driving economic force on MTGO. As these new format staples are discovered, demand is always greater than the initial supply, creating a price spike for these new hyped cards. Tournaments occur on MTGO each weekend, so any card that is being played competitively is needed immediately, within a few short days after set release. MTGO tournaments attract only the most competitive players, many of whom have the motivation and means to procure these cards at any cost.

This trend has become even more prevalent as draft grinders have increasingly migrated to MTG Arena starting in April, 2020, when drafting against real opponents became possible for the first time. This is important because drafting is the primary way new supply enters the MTGO economy, with Treasure Chests to an important secondary source.

Cross-format play is the gold standard for any speculation that can drive amazing returns. While this seems obvious, identifying these cards early this can be more difficult than it seems. A recent example of this is Skyclave Apparition, which was initially available on MTGO for 1 tix, but quickly jumped to 10 tix, and then 20 tix, once it became clear this card was seeing 3-4x play in nearly all constructive formats. Most cards will not be quite so regal, so often a card will only see play in a specific format or two.

Modern is the most popular constructed format on MTGO, and thus it will often drive the most exceptional returns using this approach. In particular look for mythics that will be played as 4x in an existing archetype or are essential to a new combo, such as Heliod, Sun-Crowned/Walking Ballista. Players love new tech and will pay a premium to try it out. Scourge of the Skyclaves is a great example of a card seeing 4x play that slotted into an existing archetype.

Standard is also relevant for the few weeks of set release too, despite it being fairly irrelevant normally on MTGO. Wizard of the Coast’s new F.I.R.E. design philosophy has led to many new cards being absurdly broken, leading to new cards dominating the standard format, followed quickly by subsequent bans. This dominance leads to significant price increases on MTGO. A great example of this phenomenon was Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast, which increased dramatically in price as it caught on in Standard before Agent of Treachery was banned. Eventually Lukka began seeing play in Pioneer as well, but that did not fuel this initial demand.

An unusually high number of cards from Zendikar Rising fit this template – with Scourge of the Skyclaves, Omnath, Locus of Creation, modal double-faced mythic lands, all increasing greatly in price during the first week of the set release. More recently during the (non-standard legal) set release of Commander Legends Hullbreacher spiked up to 120 tix due to seeing play in both Legacy and Vintage.   

In summary, a large profit can be made during the first 1-4 days of a set release by identifying what will be the new hot thing by following hype and results on Twitter, CFB/SCG articles, podcasts, and hype. This approach comes with a significant risk too because most MTGO cards fall in price following set release, so recognizing the difference is key to success.

Day 2: Short Garbage Cards

Many cards are expensive upon set release simply because they are in short supply. Strong profits can be made by shorting garbage mythics and rares as soon as they become available – in hopes that their price will plummet after a few days of drafting leads to a glut of supply. I define a garbage card to be a card with limited constructed value.

This approach requires magic experience and strong analysis. Some cards can be easily written off, but then take off like a rocketship after getting discovered. For example, Omnath, Locus of Creation started at 10 tix, but it quickly became the new hot tech in standard, causing this card to jump to 70 tickets in a few short days. In contrast, Sea Gate Stormcaller had a lot of hype, but fell from 25 tix to 5 tix in just a few days. Speculators should short cards that lack potential or are overhyped, while avoiding cards with significant potential.

Day 4-7: Short Hyped Cards

The same cards that can be profitable to buy in the first few days after a set release can similarly be profitable to short once more supply enters the market and/or demand decreases after the first weekend tournaments. Going back to the Omnath, Locus of Creation example, this card peaked at 70 tix three days after set release. Over the next 6 days Omnath fell to 22 tickets. Similarly, Teferi Master of Time fell from 50 tix three days after set release to 28 tix only three days later. This trend is fairly cyclical and reliable. Profit from it by shorting at the peak hype pricing and covering a few days later for a gain.  

Day 7-30: Buy cards with proven tournament results

After the first week, price movements pivots to being defined by cards that have proven themselves during weekend tournaments, and to a lesser extend, the daily 5-0 lists, and preliminaries.

There are many recent examples of this including Mazemind Tome (.04 to 4 tix), Skyclave Apparition (9 to 20 tix), Fiend Artisan (13 to 25 tix), Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast (3 to 25 tix), among many others. Each of these increases occurred not because of speculation, rather because these cards were proving themselves in tournaments. Most cards fall in price during the first 30 days because of the massive amount of new supply coming into the market from drafting, so these cards are an exception to the general trend. During this time period aim to only invest in cards like those listed above that were under-estimated at first but have been proving themselves in weekend tournaments.

Day 30-120: Purchase cheap cards with potential

Cards can get really affordable on MTGO, even very good cards. This is especially true for rares, but can also be true of mythics. An example I often think of is the Throne of Eldraine (ELD) land cycle, which hit a low of .10 tix per land about one month after the set’s release. The ELD lands were clearly good – with a lot of long term potential. Yet they could be bought 10 for 1 tix. That’s crazy! At this moment, the cheapest castle is .3 tix, while the most expensive is 3 tix. This means if you would have bought 100 copies of every castle, it would have cost 50 tix and the net return would be 300 tix for Castle Locthwain alone.

While many desirable cards won’t be this cheap, over the last year you could have gotten great deals on staples that were destined to succeed. For example, at some point between 30-120 days after a new set release you could have gotten Shark Typhoon, Bonecrusher Giant, or Murderous Rider for 1 tix. Or for 2.5 tix you could have gotten Klothys, God of Destiny or Lurrus of the Dream-Den.

Identifying these opportunities requires skill and experience, but hundreds of tickets can be made if you’re able to identify undervalued cards that are likely to increase in price once supply is cut off.

Closing Thoughts

MTGO speculation is defined by identifying and exploiting patterns and data. This framework aims to provide several patterns that apply generally to each new set release. Think of them as guidelines rather than hard and fast rules and for the greatest results, research, research, research.

The Collector, Unlocked ProTrader

How To Fix Your Dry Curled Magic: The Gathering Foils

2 Comments

By: Jeremy Lee 

One of the most frustrating things for Magic: The Gathering fans in recent years has been the frequent printing of foil Magic cards that seem especially prone to curling beyond the point where they could feasibly be tabled, especially for competitive play. 

The hyper popular set Commander Legends is a fantastic Magic set, full of staples both new and returning.  It’s full of EDH staples and the new etched foils for the commanders look great in my opinion.  However, there is a common complaint about the quality of certain CMR foils, specifically the standard foiling on regular and extended art cards. The major problem is that CMR foils can become dry and curl, especially if you live in a low humidity climate, home or place of business, turning your new cards into the shape of Pringles.  Fortunately there is a technique you can use to revive your curled foils that takes only a few minutes of effort and a little patience.

To uncurl most foil Magic cards you’ll need to raise the moisture of the card which you can do in a homemade “hydration chamber”.  The technique is straightforward:  create a small space with high humidity to rehydrate the card, remove it, then flatten it overnight to reshape it.  

Do keep in mind that foils placed in a higher humidity than they were manufactured will tend to curl in the opposite direction to those which are moved to a dry environment. Cards in this condition require a different technique to dry them out (and is a topic for another article).  You can tell which technique you need by the way the card is curling:  if the sides of the card curl away from you when you’re looking at the front of the card it needs to be hydrated, not dried out.  

It’s important to note that while I’ve used this technique successfully on two dozen cards, you will have to experiment a bit to find the right timing for your environment.  Start with cheap common foils from the same set/box and work your way up to the more valuable cards from the same set/box as you perfect your process.

No one wants their fancy foils to be curled unto unplayability.



Here is a solid starting point for most rehydration operations:

  1. Grab an old to-go container or Tupperware tub (any glass or plastic box, preferably something with a see-through lid)
  2. Lightly wet a single paper towel until it’s damp and line the bottom of the box with it
  3. You’ll need to make or find a platform for your card – I use the plastic top off a pencil case.  The only requirements are that the platform is flat, waterproof, and preferably has a lip around the sides so the card can’t slide off  
  4. Set your platform down in the middle of the hydration box, put your card on it, and close the lid
  5. Wait 30 minutes and check on the card.  If it’s in a halfway curled/uncurled state (ideally it will look a little wavy) that’s the sweet spot I’ve found.  If it’s still curled give it another 30 min
  6. Be mindful that your lid isn’t dripping water on the card – it shouldn’t be so humid that water is condensing and dripping from the top.  Once you’ve used the hydration chamber a few times (or opened and closed it a lot) you might need to rewet the paper towel
  7. Depending on how dried out the card was it’s hard to give exact times, but I’ve never had to wait more than 60 min.  Your climate may differ and take more or less time.  Note that It won’t look “perfect” in it’s rehydrated state, it will look wobbly but the flattening comes later.  If you overhydrate the card and it starts to curl towards you – the opposite of what you were trying to achieve – don’t panic.  Even in that state you should be able to leave it out for a while until it loses enough moisture to proceed to the next step
  8. Once you’ve gotten it to a state that’s somewhat flat and wavy, leave it out for about 10 minutes so it can acclimate a bit to your air (definitely let it “dry” if the surface of the card looks damp) then slide it in a sleeve and press it under a heavy book overnight
  9. Note: If you notice that your cards begin to curl the other way, you’ve gone too far, and will need to dehydrate the cards instead, a process we will cover in a future article.
  10. Note 2:  If you find yourself needing to hydrate a lot of cards – or that you need to do it frequently – you should consider investing in some humidity control packets used for cigar humidors.  These last a few months each, cost less than $20, and can be found online.  Same approach applies to the steps above, but replacing the towel for the humidity control packet and waiting a day or two instead of an hour

Here’s a quick video of what my hydration chamber looks like: 

After this method and a night under a heavy book your foil should be as flat as the day it was printed!  Now get it into another sleeve and into a perfect fit sleeve, penny sleeve and a hard plastic toploader so it stays that way. 

Major thanks to fellow ProTrader Alexis who suggested this technique!

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro trader: 5 cards that cost more on TCG Player

That’s it. That’s the article. I am going to find 5 instances of a card costing more on TCG Player than it does on Card Kingdom, I’m going to verify that Card Kingdom has the card in stock and that the prices listed are correct and I am going to talk about those cards. That’s it. You’re all good at this, you don’t need me to tell you why that is a significant thing, or talk too much about what it means. I am literally just doing leg-work for you and I think that’s plenty valuable.

OK, fine, BRIEFLY, let’s talk about why Card Kingdom should never charge more than TCG Player. Card Kingdom pays a lot for buylist cards, and offers even more in store credit. If they coupled a high buylist with a low retail price, they’d squeeze their own margins too much, so they charge a little more, usually. Card Kingdom gets a lot of brand loyalty, maybe because they’re in Seattle. They are also considered by many in the EDH community to be the go-to site. Their SEO game is very good, which helps when someone who is new to the game just types in the name of a card to google and ends up on their site. TCG Player, on the other hand, is a marketplace site where competition among sellers drives the price down. I compare these two sites simply because those are the prices listed underneath every card on EDHREC and I see them all at a glance daily. Could you compare any market and non-market site provided they were both sufficiently large? Maybe, but I think you’ll agree comparing TCG Player to Card Kingdom is more useful than… I had the name of two sites here but I don’t want anyone to think I’m denigrating those sites because I think they’re both great and buy cards from them all the time, so let’s just move on. OK fine, you got me, it was Troll and Toad and Strike Zone.

Here are 10 cards where I think the prices are either too high on TCG Player or too low on Card Kingdom.

This is a precon card, and that may be one of the reasons that this seems reasonable.

Card Kingdom could have busted a bunch of the precons or may be getting a decent supply of them offering $4 credit. Meanwhile, people selling on TCG Player had to bust a precon to get them, which isn’t super easy. An individual seller is going to have a harder time than a big store like Card Kingdom getting ahold of a single card like this unless they pay $30 for the precon that doesn’t have another card worth more than $5 in it. But the fact that it’s higher on TCG Player means it’s selling there. I think someone inclined to build around Aesi is more likely to buy it from Card Kingdom.

Is it too cheap on CK or too expensive on TCG Player?

It’s secretly a top-10 card from Commander Legends. It’s not in boosters which means you have to bust precons to get one and it’s played more than Jeska’s Will and Keeper of the Accord, which is substantial to me. I think this card may be underpriced on Card Kingdom, and with them only displaying 8 copies at a time, who knows if they have as many copies in stock as TCG Player does with their 77 listings. However, there is one thing we can check that could prove us wrong, and that is the price of Wyleth, Soul of Steel.

Wyleth here helps us test our hypothesis. It’s played nowhere near as much as Aesi, which explains why the price is so much lower, but we’re seeing the same disparity. This is some data that makes me think the fact that it’s in a precon is the reason the prices are flipped. Card Kingdom has these in stock, but who knows if they have 8 copies or more? It’s tougher to get a $1 card on TCG Player if the seller isn’t direct because the shipping cost is added to the total price when the cards are ranked by price+shipping, which is the default. If you want to be the absolute cheapest and therefore at the top of the list, you have to factor in shipping and that means sometimes they are a little higher on a $1 card so the seller doesn’t lose money if the buyer buys just that card.

Is it too cheap on CK or too expensive on TCG Player?

I think they’re both likely too cheap on Card Kingdom. They’re both getting played and they’re selling on both sites, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I think Card Kingdom has an easier time getting copies than random sellers on TCG Player and they don’t realize they could be charging more.

This is a very interesting case, because it took me a bit to find the version that was $0.49 on Card Kingdom.

The set non-foil is $1.29, the promo pack foil is $1.49, the prerelease foil is sold out at $2 – the version that is $0.49 was the last one I checked – set foil. That’s right, the foil costs half as much as the non-foil. Foils are curly, they’re everywhere thanks to collector boosters and a full-art version exists.

Inidividual sellers aren’t ready to call a fire-sale on a pack foil but CK, a store that I suspect got sent a lot of pre-release product and couldn’t have an event, was able to get better foils affordably. It’s $3 for the showcase foil compared to $2 on TCG Player.

Is it too cheap on CK or too expensive on TCG Player?

It’s too expensive on TCG Player. No one is ready to call a set foil complete trash and sell it for less than the cost of a stamp except for a few intrepid TCG Player direct sellers. The full-art foil is 50% more on Card Kingdom, which feels correct. This is the 25th-most-played card in the set and I don’t hate showcase foils at $2.

This is sort of interesting, because I think EDHREC has some back-end code that is showing information that might not be public. When you click the price, it tells you the link doesn’t work.

I tried finding Valki with their search function and it turned up 0 results. Either they sold out presale or EDHREC scraped a price from a non-public page. EDHREC didn’t invent that number, it came from somewhere. Puzzling. It appears TCG Player preorders are driving up the hype on this meme commander, and with good reason – I am very excited to sleeve Loki up and do some damage.

Is it too cheap on CK or too expensive on TCG Player?

It’s too cheap on Card Kingdom, but maybe that doesn’t matter because the card is apparently not for sale.

This is a two-fer because both of these cards appeared on the Double Masters page, and investigating why on Card Kingdom showed something even more stark than we saw with Valakut Exploration.

Card Kingdom is NOT trifling with set foils. For the first time ever we’re seeing negative foil multipliers on playable cards.

For the first time tonight, we tracked down the lowest price and it was the result of a card selling out. But check out the price of the non-foil.

Did the prices go up a lot recently or was the foil always cheaper?

Non-foil.

Foil.

What’s going on here? I think this could be the subject of a whole article series when we figure it out. For now, your guess is as good as mine.

It seems like set foils are kinda trash, and I’m inclined to agree. EDH players are not only not super inclined to pay more for foils, they seem to be avoiding them to the extent that they’ll pay more for a non-foil. Does this make foils of cEDH cards worse buys? I doubt it; cEDH is 100-card Legacy for pubstompers, I’m not sure they’ll ever give up their love of Russian foils or whatever. Still, the future of pack foils is in question and we’ll be exploring the topic a bit more in the future. Until then, enjoy Kaldheim hype season and we’ll be back next week with more tomfoolery. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 01/25/21 – Closing in on Kaldheim

Kaldheim release is just around the corner, with the Arena release happening this Thursday (28th) and paper release next Friday. As with most Standard set releases, I like to do an article beforehand having a look at which cards I think are worth keeping an eye on, to pick up when they hit their lows. When paper Magic is back in business I might get a chance to talk about some potential preorders, but until then I don’t think that any preorders will really be worth it.

The World Tree

Price I want to buy at: $3
Possible future price: $10

Kicking things off with a fun one, this card should be a shoe-in for pretty much all five colour decks. Aside from the activated ability on it, enabling all your lands to tap for mana of any colour is big game when you’re trying to cast ridiculously costed spells, and being able to fetch Gods up from your deck is just gravy on top (but will be very popular with the casual crowd).

The early EDHREC stats back this up, with it being the most popular card from the set in terms of percentage inclusion, being in 40% of all decks it could fit into that have been registered since the card was added to EDHREC. I don’t think that this is just an EDH card though – I think that this could have some competitive applications as well. Standard, Pioneer and Modern have recently been more and more inclined towards having four or five colour decks at tier one or two, utilising powerful cards like Niv–Mizzet Reborn and Omnath, Locus of Creation – and The World Tree will slot right into those.

There’s also a neat little combo within another card from Kaldheim, Maskwood Nexus, that lets you put all the creatures from your deck into play. I don’t know if that’s going to actually be good anywhere, but I’m sure that people will try and set it up in EDH. Preorders on TCGPlayer are a little silly at $16 right now, but over on MKM you can preorder them for as little as €4. I think this is indicative of lower prices to come, and at peak supply I see these going as low as $3. It’s worth keeping an eye on, and a year or two out I think that this will be a $10+ card.

Realmwalker

Price I want to buy at: $1
Possible future price: $6

Realmwalker is another of the early EDH front-runners from Kaldheim, and I can see why. This card slots right into any tribal deck that can run it, and can serve both as a powerful value engine as well as a potential combo piece. Being able to cast creatures off the top of your library could enable some serious shenanigans, and is an effect that Dragons and Elves decks alike can profit from.

It’s not just EDH that might want this card though; it could be good enough for Elves decks in competitive formats to pick up. I’m certainly not an Elves expert, but Realmwalker does have an Experimental Frenzy feel to it, which has proved its mettle in Standard and Historic, and so I think there could be potential for this to see some constructed play.

It’s worth noting that this is the buy-a-box promo for the set, which does add a fair amount of supply into the market but on a longer timeline I think that this is still a great hit. I expect it to have a similar trajectory to that of something like Ramunap Excavator, with a long steady growth and a nice buylist price down the road, and the potential to spike along the way.

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider

Price I want to buy at: $10
Possible future price: $30

Vorinclex is the Nyxbloom Ancient of this set*.

*There are a couple of caveats. I don’t think that Vorinclex will be quite as prevalent as Nyxbloom has been, because it does have slightly narrower applications than the mana tripler, but the flipside to that is that I think this card could see competitive play, and so that might make up for the lost EDH decks.

In general, however, almost every set has a mythic or two like this that will get relatively low at peak supply and then just grow and grow as EDH demand outpaces supply. See: Finale of Devastation, The Great Henge, Nyxbloom Ancient, Fiery Emancipation, etc. These are all mono-colour cards with wide applications that can fit into a lot of decks, and you’ll do well to be able to identify them ahead of time for each set so that you can pick them up at their lows.

Regular versions of Vorinclex are going to do great, but there’s also the Showcase and Phyrexian versions to consider here too. Being a Showcase means that it’ll hit lower prices than an Extended Art version might (as they’re only in Collector Boosters), but I honestly don’t know where the Phyrexian versions are going to land. Preorders are going for €36/€120 on MKM for non-foils and foils respectively, so I think that you might be able to get non-foils around $25-30 and foils for uhhhh $?? I’m not sure yet. One to keep an eye on for sure, because I doubt we’ll see it reprinted in Phyrexian for a long time and foils are going to be pretty scarce.

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.

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