Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: How is MTG Finance Like Jazz?

An old cliche about Jazz music is “it’s not about the notes they play, it’s about the notes they don’t play.” which sounds smart if you don’t think about it for too long. It’s become sort of a cudgel to lazily bash Jazz in the Zeitgeist and occasionally it’s sort of a decent thing to try and make a metaphor around. That’s what I’m doing, after all. It’s not about the joke I tried to make, it’s about the jokes I didn’t try to make. Those were bad jokes and less funny and you’re lucky I didn’t make them.

I don’t want to buy cards right before they’re reprinted and I don’t want to buy cards that are not for EDH which leaves me in sort of a jam right now. Everyone feels the same way, I think, which is why everyone is buying Reserved List cards, sending the price skyrocketing because dealers can’t restock the cards and no one wants to come off of them. It’s a weird time to think about buying anything that isn’t RL, especially with how much a lot of the cards are going up.

To avoid getting completely blown out as a result of my hubris and refusal to lazily buy cards on the Reserved List, I’ve decided to wait until Commander Legends is fully spoiled to buy anything. I think a lot of people are waiting to pull the trigger on EDH staples and prices have upside if the cards aren’t reprinted. Rather than scrambling when that happens, why not come up with a list of cards I think are good buys if they avoid a reprint now and cross them off as they’re spoiled? The list I am left with will be what I buy the second the last rare and mythic are revealed. It’s not a perfect system but it’s better than buying now and risking being blown out. Here are the Jazz notes I hope Commander Legends doesn’t play.

I think the reprint risk on this is fairly high given how ubiquitous it has become and how long it’s dodged a reprint. If they don’t manage to figure out this should be in the Masters set, I think this, despite its highish buy-in price, has upside. There is an alt art foil that’s ugly but cheap and I think any of the versions; Prerelease foil, alt art foil or set foil or set non-foil are all good buys. One factor you may want to consider is that we’re a month away from the demand for lands-matters cards going up with the release of the new Zendikar set so you may want to buy now if you’re feeling frisky. You may be able to just sell out in the next 6 weeks and not worry about a Commander product that won’t be out until the 4th quarter.

I don’t like the high buy-in price THAT much, but if this isn’t in Commander Legends, I don’t know where else they reprint it. They screwed up having 4 Commander decks with only 1 good card between them and something is going to happen with this price – it’s either going to tank because of more supply or it’s going to go basically nuts like it has been since April. I think they may not have realized this would flirt with $40 on CK before they had to finalize their list for Commander Legends, so it’s likely this got missed and that’s a good time to remind everyone about the cliche where they say the Chinese character for crisis also means opportunity. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds good, just like that Jazz thing. Not jamming this in Commander Legends will create a crisportunity, be on the opportunity side if you can.

This needs to be left alone for a year for you to be happy you bought in at $4, but with them printing it twice on top of each other, they’ll either conclude they got the number of copies they wanted out there, or they’ll print it two more times in a year. But how would they print this twice in the next year? Or even once? If this isn’t in Commander Legends, I think it’s on the safer side, but there are even safer picks, like…

Card Kingdom wants $8 for this. I think the copies under $5 will be gone overnight if this isn’t reprinted in Commander Legends. It’s a good place to do it, they won’t put it in a precon deck and it’s not Green so CL is basically the one place they could print this. I have like 200 of these I plan to sell before the set is spoiled, that’s how confident I am that it’s in, but if it’s not (who doesn’t want a foil of this?) then buy some under $5.

This was in Mystery Boosters and that makes me think this could be safe for a bit. Again, I don’t love super high buy-ins, and this may just be a card you buy to play with, but I sure hope this is in CL because it needs to be.

This has always needed a reprint and the time to do it was years ago. At this point, it’s not really appropriate for a precon so it’s basically Commander Legends or… I don’t even know. I think scooping these under $40 is fine, and buying them on MCM is even better. If you don’t have access to MCM, consider becoming a Pro Trader and making some connections in the Discord.

This card is out of control and with a bunch of new Legends being printed, the odds that one of them is insane with this card seems high-ish. I think if you buy in as a result of yet another missed opportunity to reprint this, you sell at around $50 because it feels like you’re on borrowed time. That said, I’ve felt like a reprint was coming any day on this for the last 2 years and I’ve been consistently proven wrong. This is a hot potato, but you can still warm your hands before you pass it on.

There are other solid picks as well, and ones with lower price tags, but this is what I am targeting. As the spoilers roll in, let’s pay particular attention to the number crunch. Some cards can be eliminated on the basis of what their number in the set would be which signals to you to buy long before the full set is spoiled and other people start thinking about what they need to buy.

That does it for me this week. I think there is a list of cards that will likely go up as a result of Zendikar Rising but which you’ll need to flip quickly as a result of risk of reprinting in Commander Legends, and we’ll talk about that next week. Until next time!

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Watchtower

The Watchtower 08/10/20 – Double Dipping

It would hardly be Double Masters if I didn’t do two articles on it, so this week I’m following up on last week’s picks with another set of Double Masters cards that you should be picking up sooner rather than later. As expected, we saw prices fall hard over the weekend as people cracked boxes and started the race to the bottom. Some prices (especially box toppers) have already started moving upwards as people pick up the cards they want, but we might see prices deflate again slightly as this week progresses and more product gets opened and listed.

Supply of Double Masters product – in the US at least – seems to be somewhat stinted compared to previous Masters sets, so today I’m going to be focusing on arbitrage opportunities from Europe. Prices on MKM are much lower than they are on TCG right now, more so than we’d normally expect, so this article is mostly one for European speculators and people with arbitrage contacts.

Toxic Deluge

Price on MKM: €9 ($11)
Price on TCG: $18
Possible price: $25

Toxic Deluge is one of the most powerful boardwipes you can play in EDH, because of its innate flexibility and the fact that you start on 40 life. Since its original printing in Commander 2013 we’ve only seen it once again in Eternal Masters up until now, so supply has always been on the low side whilst demand has remained very high. 28k EDH decks is nothing to sniff at!

Before its Double Masters reprint, Commander 2013 and Eternal Masters copies of Toxic Deluge were pushing $35. Now down to $11 on MKM makes for an insta-buy in my opinion, as I think it’ll be all too easy for this card to slide back up to $25 before long, and possibly towards $30 before it sees another reprint. The $18 copies on TCG aren’t too enticing at the moment, but if that pushes lower this week or next I can see picking $15 copies up a decent option.

I really like the box topper foils in Europe too; they start at €30 ($35) which definitely seems way too low. The $50 box topper foils in the US are probably fine too, but again I’d prefer them closer to $40. Either way I think they have a shot at $70-80 within 12 months or so, but supply of the cheaper foils isn’t too deep so not many people will get a shot at them that low.

Cyclonic Rift

Price on MKM: €12 ($14)
Price on TCG: $27
Possible price: $35

God I wish the EDH Rules Committee would ban this card. It’s so egregious. But failing that, I’m going to keep making money on this card as long as it’s legal in EDH. Cyclonic Rift is the second most popular blue card in EDH, ever, losing out on the top spot only to Counterspell. I don’t really need to explain how powerful or how popular this card is, because chances are if you’ve ever played EDH then you’ve either cast Rift or had it cast against you.

With a pedigree like that (94k EDH decks, 43% of all blue decks etc…), it’s no surprise that this was a $40 card before the Double Masters reprint. Down to $14 in Europe now, you could try for an immediate flip in the US, or hold longer and wait for US prices to move further upwards (even if they go down first). Same as Toxic Deluge, I like cheap box topper foils of this quite a lot. I love the new art for this one, and they’re as cheap as €36 on MKM which has to be a snap buy.

It’s worth mentioning that this could be a target for another printing in Commander Legends later this year (should be November/December time), but even given that I think there’s time to get in and out of this before then with good margins.

Mana Crypt

Price on MKM: €57 ($67)
Price on TCG: $100
Possible price: $150

Mana Crypt is always too cheap in Europe, and despite Wizards giving us two different printings of the card this year alone, the price remains high in the US. After close to four years without a printing, the Mystery Booster version earlier this year (plus Convention Edition copies from last year, I guess), brought the price down below $150, and now with a Double Masters print we’re seeing sub $100 prices for the first time in forever. This smells like a great opportunity to me, as I think it’s quite likely to dodge a reprint in Commander Legends, due to EV reasons as well as the double print already this year. There is a small risk there, but I’m hedging my bets that it won’t be in.

43k EDH decks, 10% of all decks, blah blah blah you know what I’m going to say at this point. This is a slam dunk to flip from Europe to the US, so get in on the action whilst you still can. If we don’t see this again in Commander Legends, I expect it can probably hit $150 before it’s printed again. Of the upcoming sets we know about, I can’t see it making its way into anything else any time soon, so we should be fine for a little while.

On the box topper versions of this, I’m less of a fan than I perhaps could be of these ones. I think that the art isn’t as good as the regular art, and the price difference between Europe and the US isn’t quite as large as it could be, so I’m sticking to the regular copies for now. Another thing to note is that regular Double Masters versions will most likely be more popular than Mystery Booster copies, because people don’t seem to be a fan of the MB symbol on those cards. This will mean a higher price point for the Double Masters copies down the road, so keep that in mind.

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 and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

Double the Buying

No, no, I mean Box Toppers.

We’ve had a LOT of price movement on these, and it’s made a lot of my predictions look pretty terrible. I’m not one to hide when I’m wrong, but this seems to be an instance of there being a lot more product and a lot of people who are trying to take profits quickly.

This is good for anyone who wants to get these for themselves, and also good for those who want long term value. Let’s get into it.

The first thing that you might notice is that the foil BTs and the nonfoil BTs often have a real discrepancy in price, but with the nonfoil being more expensive. This is because every VIP pack gives you two foil box toppers (one definitely rare, the second has a 66% chance of being mythic) and every box of Double Masters comes with two nonfoil toppers at what I think is the same ratio. 

A lot of the rare BTs have a higher price for nonfoils than foils, because there’s less Double Masters boxes being opened right now than VIP packs. Vendors are chasing the profit from VIP packs, opening them in quantity and trying to extract maximum value. 

If you’ve ordered VIP packs ahead of time (as I have) then you might be wondering what to do. I am not going to be cracking them and trying to cash in right away. Too many vendors are too ahead of us, and if you don’t hit the big ones, then you’re going to miss out on some value. If you open a foil Force of Will, then you’re going to get paid anyway, but there’s going to be a lot of people trying to cash in ASAP.

I don’t think you should be one of those people. I’m holding my packs, and I anticipate holding them for a while. I am doubtful that there will be much of a second wave of VIP, because that would step on Zendikar Rising sales (presumably of Collector Boosters, but who knows) but I do anticipate an announcement of more VIP, even if it’s not accompanied by a lot of product.

I don’t think you should be selling this weekend–I think you should be buying instead. Some of these box toppers, in foil and nonfoil, are are ridiculous prices, and there’s some regular versions to consider too. Prices have been hit hard, and in the rush to make what profit one can, there’s a lot of things on the board that represent a chance to increase in value.

First, the Box Toppers I really like, and keep in mind that prices may drop by a few percent this weekend as people rush to find the floor. It may go even lower next weekend, as regular folks get their preorders in hand and try to cash out. I’m comfortable with the prices I’m listing.

Fatal Push ($20 nonfoil/$15 foil) – The inverted prices are notable, and I wish I could say that you ought to lock in on one or the other. This is a pick that says ‘I have confidence that paper events will return, and Modern will be big again!’ and if you aren’t confident in that statement then skip to the next one. I do feel good about Modern events eventually returning, and Push is one of the premier spells in that format. 

Academy Ruins ($24/$22) – A price difference that is barely there, but is present nonetheless. This is one of one of the most puzzling prices out there, and one that deserves attention. The original in Time Spiral is about this price, as is the Modern Masters 2013 reprint. There’s no reason that this gorgeous borderless version, done by a true master in John Avon, should have a price near to the other ones. This is the immediate upgrade for your Cube, and in 13,000 Commander decks. Breya is about to be built a whole bunch, too. Grab your personal copies now, and your spec copies as well.

Phyrexian Metamorph ($12 for either) – It’s in 15,000 decks, and has a promo from when it came out. It’s also one of the best cards you can ask for in blue decks, copying mana rocks, busted enters-play abilities, or game-ending legends. I’m inclined to pick up foils, because Commander players love foils, but being at the same price means that there’s that many less of the nonfoils. 

Wurmcoil Engine ($27 for either) – One of the best creatures ever, this price seems out of line with the basic versions that are available. I’ll grant you that the art is not my favorite, but there’s no reason for this to be $5-$7 more than the Commander Anthology version. The Invention is at about $100, and this Box Topper won’t be threatening that price. This is the mythic that I think has the most room to grow, because there’s significantly less of each Box Topper mythic than each rare. 

Now for a couple of non-Box-Toppers worth paying attention to.

Doubling Season ($40 for the regular nonfoil, $65 for Box Topper foil and nonfoil) – Let’s go to the graph, shall we?

Note the drop when this was a mythic in Battlebond, and the recovery not long after. Reprint season is when you want to get your copies cheap, and I don’t think $40 is the floor here. Any version is going to be a winner, but I’m really hoping that this one can drop to $30 or less once people get their boxes and try to cash in. Doubling Season always recovers. It’s too good, too much a staple.

Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon ($18 nonfoil/$35 foil) – Considering that the original from New Phyrexia has never been reprinted, the price on the OG is a respectable $40. Being a mythic will slow the fall, but there hasn’t been an injection of new copies for a long, long time. There is farther to go before it hits the floor, and I’m hoping that it’s below $10, so I can lock in some long-term gains.

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.

Jason Alt, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro trader: Free Money

I love reprint sets.

I don’t have to do things I don’t like doing when the cards are all reprints. You know what I hate doing? Going through 300 new cards and finding the one card that isn’t preselling for enough money and pointing it out to people. I hate that. People argue with me because they have their own pet card they’d rather see hit and if I’m right, they don’t remember and if I’m wrong, they bring it up in an unrelated argument 5 years later. I’m not complaining about the job, per se, rather I’m relishing that I get to do something I like a lot more – telling you where the free money is.

When Iconic Masters came out, there were plenty of cards that dropped to around $1 that rallied hard and made people a lot of money. A few of them are in Double Masters, and while that’s not great, it does mean we have about 2 years to make money on cards with which we’re assured to make some money. That seems like plenty and instead of keeping you from my spicy picks any longer, let’s get into the thick of it.

Reprint sets mean we already have adoption data, and years of it to boot. We already know what the most-used cards in the set will be, and EDHREC ranks them by the percentage of eligible decks using them for us. All we need to do is go down the list and figure out what’s going to rebound. Sounds easy, right? Well, actually… yes, it is. I’m going to do it for you because you paid to read this article or waited patiently to read it later and either way you deserve something for that. Besides, I care about EDH so you don’t have to and that’s taught me a thing or two.

They say failure is the greatest teacher but, I dunno, I feel like it was pretty instructive to make a bunch of money on this card when it was in Iconic Masters and got real cheap.

IM copies STARTED OUT at $4 on CK and were even cheaper on TCG Player. The price shot up precipitously over the years, because of course it did. This card is played a ton and there really isn’t better mass removal in White and it’s hard to imagine there ever will be. Lorwyn block was fairly slow and the decks that beat the Merfolk and Kithkin beatdowns didn’t run removal as expensive as Austere Command because Firespout existed. I don’t know if Standard will ever be slow enough again to make a 6 drop sweeper like Austere Command, and a better one to boot, so either it’s a Commander exclusive or Austere Command continues to be the king. I’m betting this is reprinted in 2 years and no card better comes along by then. I’m betting you can buy in at its current $3ish and make money on it. I’m buying in, personally.

I’d like to see if this gets any cheaper before I buy in, but as much of a slam dunk as Austere Command was when Iconic Masters was out, this is in more decks. It has cross-format appeal, so the real X-factor here is whether Legacy returns in full force. I DO NOT ADVOCATE buying cards that are not EDH-only right now in paper. I think there are better sweepers that don’t need another format to help them grow and justify a high buy-in price. Instead of Deluge, buy Eviction.

The smallest amount this ever grew by over a 2 year period was 100%. The most it ever grew over a 2 year period, and the most recent period of growth, saw it grow 200%. This is going to get near bulk and, if left alone, could flirt with $5 in like 3 years. I don’t give this the same odds I give Austere Command, but this is in a full quarter of the decks that contain Black and White and it’s one of the scariest cards in EDH. Bet money this bounces back.

This went from $5 to $10 in 2 years. A reprinting knocked it back down to $5 and then it climbed to $20 in 2 years. Could this go 2 years without a reprinting again? Maybe. But this card is one of the best Green creatures in all of Magic and we’re getting lands matters stuff in the next set so I bet every Green EDH deck brewed with a commander from return to return to Zendikar will want one of these. I also think this is not likely to be in the Commander decks that come out around return to return to Zendikar. If it is, we get blown out pretty hard. If it’s not, this card has shown you what it can do.

This flirted with $20 and when it gets under $10, which it should, it could suddenly become an option for players who didn’t want to shell out $20. This peaked at the time when decks like Kalamax were printed which meant players didn’t necessarily want to shell out $20 for an uncommon, but as this approaches $5, a price we’ve seen it historically recover from easily, this flirts with $15 soon and likely goes at least 2 years without a reprint. Wait for peak supply, which should take a couple of weeks, and snap them up. This is currently cheaper on CK than it is on TCG Player and I can’t imagine that holds. My money is obviously on TCG Player’s price going down.

The money I have made on just Exploration and Burgeoning alone is astounding. It’s really too easy. They’re not seemingly willing to print this into powder and if they do print this again in the next 24 months, I’m betting my own money that it will be a premium version that won’t really affect the price of the non-premium versions. Wait for peak supply and grab twice as many of these as you think you need.

Cards that are probably dead

There are a few cards that I think have been reprinted so aggressively that even if the price recovers, it will do it so slowly that it will get reprinted again before you can really make any money. These are good cards that I like but won’t buy.

Two reprints in a year? Ouch.

Unless you get this as a bulk rare, you’re not likely to get back out clear of what you’d lose to fees. This is a price predicated on scarcity rather than EDH play and it got downshifted from Mythic to Rare. RIP in Peace.

Penny Stocks

There are some cards that will likely be good buys under a buck.

The rarity downshift hurts this to the extent that it basically counts as 2 reprints in a year, but I think this is less likely to get reprinted subsequently which is what I think separates this from Champion of Lambholt, a card I hope I’m wrong about. I like this near bulk – this card does work and it gets better as creatures do.

Conjyclos’ wants its money back, too, and I bet it gets it. It’s been a long time since this got a reprinting and it might be a long time before it gets another one. I’m betting this goes near bulk and people come off of these for a dime or quarter locally.

I have made a lot of money on this card over the years and I do not intend to stop now. It’s not reprinted as often as people might think and it does a ton of work, especially since WotC is accused of making Boros boring and almost every attempt to make it not boring loves this card (except Winota which broke every format in Magic, nice work).

That’s what I think is fit to print. You’re welcome to look at the whole set yourself on the EDHREC page sorted by inclusion percentage to get a sense of what’s played more – it may help you a lot if you only look at sets sorted by highest price. If you have any specific questions, hit me up. Thanks for reading – until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY