Another week, another Watchtower, another loosely themed article. I don’t know if doing them like this is better or worse for you as a reader, but it definitely helps me to write them and nobody has told me they don’t like it yet, so I’m gonna keep going! (Please do shout at me on Twitter if you feel strongly either way). You can probably take a good guess at the kind of cards that I’m going to be talking about today, but I do like to bury the lede just a little bit to try and keep you interested, which means I can’t be too specific with my article titles. Anyway I’ll stop rambling – let’s jump in.
Obosh, the Preypiercer (FEA)
Price today: $7 Possible price: $20
I was flicking through some of the Standard decks that are being played at the moment, and something caught my eye. Almost all of the Temur ramp/adventure decks that are being played at the moment are playing Obosh, the Preypiercer in the sideboard as their Companion – it’s effectively a free-roll as you really don’t have to exclude many cards to get it to fit in, and you’re still able to cheat a little bit with it by playing cards like Bonecrusher Giant and Brazen Borrower that have odd converted mana costs but even costed spells attached to them.
This led me to looking at where else Obosh is being played right now, and it turns out that the current version of the Prowess / Burn decks in Modern are doing exactly the same thing (and even including the Bonecrusher Giants to boot). Being able to play a Companion without needing to significantly warp your deck around it is a great boon to any strategy, and we’ve seen Lurrus and Yorion decks still performing very well even after the change to the Companion rule. I think that Obosh is going to fall into a similar pattern, perhaps not being quite as prevalent as the other two but a decent role-player nonetheless.
I and others have talked about Lurrus in articles and on the podcast before now, as we’ve seen supply dwindle and the price going up and up. Yorion has done the same, and I’m absolutely sure that Obosh is going to do the same thing. You can currently get some outrageously cheap copies around $7 on TCGPlayer at the moment – bearing in mind that Lurrus, which sees around three times the amount of play in Modern, is over seven times that price. There aren’t too many under the $10 mark though, and it ramps up pretty quickly with only 29 FEA listings on TCGPlayer. I think that this will very easily be a $20 card in a few months, and probably head towards $40 before too long (given that I doubt we’ll see it reprinted any time soon).
Akroma, Vision of Ixidor (Foil Etched)
Price today: €8 ($9.50) Possible price: $30
Come on now, you didn’t think we could get another Akroma printed without a good bit of keyword soup, right? Give it a few years and the next version will probably have so many keywords that the text is so small you need a jeweller’s loupe to read it. But until then, let’s take a look at what we’ve got to work with for now. Aside from just being a decent body with a bunch of relevant abilities, the fact that this new Akroma has Partner strapped to it as well makes it a whole lot better, and we’ve already seen it being paired with other keyword-endowed cards like Rograkh, Son of Rohgahh, which is quite neat and fairly amusing really.
So it’s a popular card from Commander Legends – great. But what I want to focus on here, as is hopefully evident by the fact that I’ve given you the current price in Euros, is that these are way cheaper in Europe than in the US at the moment. It’s the age-old adage (I think that’s a tautology, but oh well) of EDH cards being cheaper in Europe, and yes I’m going to keep hitting you over the head with it.
Now let’s be clear here: the etched foils from Commander Legends can be found in regular draft boosters, unlike the EA cards that only come in Collector Boosters. That means that there’s a decent chunk more supply of etched foils in general, but Akroma here is a mythic and there really aren’t too many copies going around (in the US at any rate). Prices start at $17 on TCGPlayer, almost double what they can be had for on MKM, and even after you’ve taken into account the arbitrage gains I think this card is heading upwards if you hold onto it for a while. EDHREC is showing us that it’s one of the most popular new Partners, and that’s mirrored on TCGPlayer with it having much lower stock levels than the other etched foil Mythics. I think we’re onto a winner here.
Giver of Runes (Foil)
Price today: €18 ($22) Possible price: $50
I’m rounding things off with another arbitrage pick, and want to give a shoutout to one of the Protraders in the MTGPrice Discord for putting this on my radar last week – it’s a good find. I’m stretching the ‘friends’ theme a little bit here, but don’t worry, it’s worth it! I reckon that Giver of Runes could definitely be your friend, given the ability and flavour text on her – after all, friends are the family that we choose.
Either way, this is a card that’s been consistently performing well in various Modern decks since the release of Modern Horizons, as well as showing up in around 5000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC. Highlights include Heliod Company decks, Devoted Devastation builds and the more classic Death & Taxes lists; it’s really great at protecting combo pieces as well as shoring yourself up against removal-heavy strategies.
There are a grand total of nine NM foil listings for Giver on TCGPlayer at the moment, which start at $45 and don’t exactly go down from there. That makes the $22 copies on MKM an absolute slam dunk, great for immediate arbitrage and even better to hold onto for a little while. I can’t really think of anywhere that this could be reprinted soon other than Modern Horizons 2, which isn’t hitting until Q3 next year anyway (and even then I’m kinda doubtful that we’ll see it again there). On that kind of timeline this could be a $75+ foil by that point, especially if paper play has started to pick up again, even just at an LGS level.
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.
I know that there are realities to the coronavirus that far, far outstrip Magic and drafting. I’ve eschewed family this holiday season and my kids haven’t seen their grandparents in more than a year.
That being said, the virus took away quite the run of sweet draftable products. We lost out on months of Mystery drafts, there haven’t been Jumpstarts cracked all over the place, Double Masters was a delight…but the pinnacle of things for me have been the Commander Legends drafts I’ve done on MTGO.
This set is awesome to draft. It’s pointed right at players like me, with the combination of politics, drafting synergies, and good reprints. Unfortunately, we’re not able to draft this set in person in the US, and so our supply of cards has been through the Collector Boosters.
We are approaching the maximum of supply for Commander Legends, though there is some more product undoubtedly coming. I don’t think there will be enough to depress prices more than ten percent or so.
I’m still going to be patient until after Christmas for buying quantities, but I’ve moved in on personal copies for my Cube and my Commander decks. Let’s talk about the best deals and what they might get to.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
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.
The economy of Magic: The Gathering has become increasingly vital to understand for the average Magic player. A global pandemic has caused numerous disruptions in the supply chain, causing product shortages and unpredictable prices. The Magic product mix is likewise increasing in complexity, with more (and more varied) product formulations that are increasingly targeted at different levels of disposable income. Further, the Magic market is, and always has been, an unregulated one, so it’s easy to see how some people end up lost in all of the commotion and choose to stay on the sidelines. This is where MTGFinance can (and should) help.
MTGFinance can be defined as the process by which players make or save money by engaging in the Magic market. Despite the controversy that may surround MTGFinance at times, the average player stands a lot to gain by learning more about this aspect of the hobby and how it can work for them.
While there are real and perceived issues with MTGFinance and related content, that does not change the fact that it is a persistent aspect of the game and something that other players and businesses are constantly participating in. This means that MTGFinance has a tangible impact on players whether they actively engage in it or not.
MTGFinance doesn’t have to be about generating a side hustle, attempts to “buy out” cards, or trying to take advantage of international arbitrage on a daily basis. If your goals are anything like mine, (to play as cheaply as possible), then you can still engage in MTGFinance content to your benefit.
Setting individual goals and having a realistic view of your available resources (both in terms of time and money) in mind is vital to determining which aspects of MTGFinance are most likely to be useful to you.
A common mistake that many players make is not properly assessing their own resources and financial knowledge before acting on advice from MTGFinance content creators. Take me for example. Personally, it doesn’t make sense for me to try and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars speculating on Magic cards when I have thousands in student loan debt that can’t afford to be ignored if I misstep. Instead, I try and focus on content that helps me get cards at their cheapest, and only if I intend to play with those cards, leveraging only the parts of the content stream that make the most sense for my personal scenario.
Regardless of your end goal, if you decide to engage deeper with the magic economy, I advise a heavy dose of caution and critique.
How MTGFinance Fails To Expand Its Audience
I believe that what prevents many from engaging with MTGFinance content is a vague sense of distrust and a perceived lack of transparency. This is compounded by the fact that more and more information from this side of the hobby is hidden behind paywalls, both by major retailers and MTGFinance services. A lot of players know they are at an information disadvantage and would rather not risk being made a fool of, instead opting to simply not engage. For this reason, players should demand that MTGFinance creators “go back to basics.”
When I first got into MTGFinance, I felt like I was constantly missing how content creators reached their conclusions. I didn’t understand what indicators I should be looking at or how to properly use the resources available to me. Instead of being taught how to fish, I felt like I was sitting on the shoreline waiting to be handed the catch of the day.
I ultimately decided to stop engaging with MTGFinance because I was tired of listening to advice and not fully understanding it. Even though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, what I really wanted were deeper explanations of selection logic and a more critical evaluation of those choices via data analytics. Why, I wondered, are certain content creators better at this stuff than others and how might better tools be applied to evaluating the circulating content in order to play and collect our game for less?
To be fair, some creators already do this. MTGPrice provides all new members with a lengthy Guide to MTGFinance and an ever increasing archive of evergreen articles as well as their MTGFastFinance podcast archive. There is a lot of great content in that archive, but without a strong directory structure on their public facing site and access to some basic definitions and related tools, there is certainly room for improvement. The Brainstorm Brewery podcast has made a point of covering more fundamental concepts on their cast for players who are newer to this side of the hobby. I doubt they are the only ones who have picked up on how much people want to understand the basics before jumping into the deep end.
Still, I believe it would be extremely beneficial for MTGPrice and other similar content streams to provide a free, public facing directory or archive where players who lack basic financial literacy and/or understanding of Magic’s particular secondary market can go to review information that covers some basic concepts.
Players should also feel free to ask creators in the space how they got to their conclusions and recommendations. Anyone who is giving any sort of financial advice should be prepared for and understanding of being questioned. At the same time, players should be ready to support content creators that they feel are providing value.
Players should also be demanding about transparency and integrity. There is no doubt that just the mention of MTGFinance often leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths, though we sometimes have trouble articulating exactly why. There is a genuine concern about being intentionally manipulated and misled that should be consistently addressed and for many players the very notion of engaging with their hobby on an economic level may simply seem utterly unappealing. There have also been issues with scams, early access to product information/leaks and questions of self-interest that have popped up here and there.
When I guested on the MTGFastFinance podcast, the concept of “talking up your own book” was brought up. For those who are unfamiliar with this term, it refers to a scenario where a trader, portfolio holder, hedge fund manager etc identifies a particular investment as a good buy without explicitly stating that they own the stock and stand to profit should more people invest and drive up the value.
The MTG equivalent of this is someone identifying a particular card as a good buy, when they themselves already own (or intend to own) copies. In the most cynical terms, it allows them to sell to the speculators now driving up the price rather than waiting for natural market demand to drive the price of the card(s) in question. This tactic may work especially well if the individual(s) have a larger audience that will exert influence on limited inventory in a short time span.
Does this actually happen in MTGFinance? Of course it does. There’s nothing and no one to tell those bad actors that they can’t try to work an angle, except us. Except players who engage and demand that content creators disclose how much they stand to gain. Some already do, and go so far as to state their conflicts routinely. Regardless, it should be an industry standard, as a means to building trust and reliability.
If a content creator recommends a card as a pick up that they already have copies of, does that mean they are trying to swindle you? Not necessarily. There could easily be valid reasoning to support their conclusion of the card being a good buy regardless of whether they own some copies. After all, if it is a good pick up, why wouldn’t they have some themselves? However, disclosing existing holdings allows the community the opportunity to make a more complete assessment and hold creators accountable should a negative pattern arise.
As long as people are uninformed, they are more likely to be misled by other uninformed people or taken advantage of by the better informed. If more people are educated as to how MTGFinance actually works, holding people accountable and weeding out miscreants would be much easier and better for the hobby overall.
The Right Knowledge Can Be Powerful
The argument for players engaging deeper with finance related content is simple: knowledge is power. By understanding how the secondary markets work on a more profound level, players can make better decisions about what cards they buy and when, and better evaluate information they receive from others. As MTGFinance gets more complex, strong MTGFinance content that cuts through the noise and provides clarity is important.
Consider spoiler season. There is a lot of hype generated during this time, and a deluge of opinions on what will be standard or eternal format playable. Many players spend money on pre-ordering singles or sealed product. Depending on the accuracy of information on which they are basing their decision, determines if they have saved or wasted money.
Many content creators do not suggest buying during this period, because hype tends to inflate everything. Instead, it is a good opportunity to evaluate how these new cards may affect existing cards and strategies.
Another reason to conscientiously learn about MTGFinance, and more specifically, the tools and metrics used to evaluate cards, is to know when something is a trap. There are a litany of examples of people discussing cards who are misinformed on how to read particular data, or are relying on you to be misinformed and react emotionally. I can personally attest to falling for this multiple times to the detriment of my wallet.
Speaking of the cacophony of opinions on social media and accuracy of information, a run on Gaea’s Cradle was exacerbated in August due to such a misunderstanding.
This tweet was an emotional reaction to a poor evaluation of what was happening to Gaea’s Cradle. Many people admitted to panicking and buying copies because they thought a buyout was happening. Unlike with regular cards, Gaea’s Cradle does have Commander and Legacy demand backing it and is on the Reserve List, therefore it is more likely to stick at a much higher price than before and not retrace.
Cradle’s price had been increasing over the summer, hopping from the mid $300s to a little over $500 but sort of settling before this tweet was posted and climbing to over $800. However, this was just one data point from one website. At the time, there were much cheaper copies available on TCG and Ebay. The point is not to rag on @PleasantKenobi here. It is to highlight that if more players actually understood the tools and information available to them, and took the time to get the facts straight, they would’ve been informed enough to tell this person “look again.” Not to mention how many people would’ve saved money by not buying it while it was climbing.
MTGFinance content that has a strong focus on informing players about the tools available to make better decisions is worth engaging with. Even if one chooses to not engage from a speculation perspective, they are informed in a way that allows them to sidestep mistakes. That being said, there is work to be done when it comes to what information is being presented.
Developing Your Game Plan
Should you decide to engage with MTGFinance content, I would encourage you to develop a game plan for exploring this side of the hobby. If you enter the complex environment of MTGFinance without reflecting on what it is you want, you are more susceptible to take advice not relevant to you, waste time, and capital resources.
The first and most important step in your game plan should be to determine your goal. People engage with MTGFinance content for a multitude of reasons: they want to buy cards for themselves cheaply, they are completionists or collectors, they want to speculate on card prices in order to increase their own income, they want to buy and sell cards as a small business operators, and the list goes on. Not all MTGFinance content serves all goals, so keep that in mind.
When you are deciding what your goal is, you then need to take an honest and serious account of your own resources. This includes but is not limited to, your time, money, debt, existing MTG inventory, and knowledge. If you assess these areas honestly, you may find that you have to change your original goal to something more reasonable until you have developed your resources further.
Once your goal is in place and resources assessed, start exploring content until you find the kind of content that helps you the most. Figure out what works. Ask questions. Observe. Then when you feel comfortable, go for it. I would highly recommend joining Discords if you can so that you have access to a community ready and able to answer any questions or point you in the right direction.
I was surprised to see how active several different MTGFinance Discord channels were. I am currently observing the MTGPrice Discord, Brainstorm Brewery, and Magic Financial aid. Each Discord is diverse in its channels and includes at least one channel where its either non-mtg focused finance related. Participants in all of the Discords are welcome to ask questions, and are usually greeted with positive and informative responses.
Having spent some time on both sides of the fence, there definitely seems to be a broadly held misunderstanding of what it is and is not about for most of the content creators and communities that focus on the Magic economy. Those misconceptions alone can be enough to make people think MTGFinance isn’t important or beneficial to engage with.
There is no harm in stepping into the space in order to familiarize yourself and learn something new. Nothing and no one can make you act on the advice being given. Besides, depending on your goals and available resources, some content is not going to be beneficial to you anyway.
There is no shortage of MTGFinance content. Several podcasts, websites, and discords exist that include content for nearly every type of participant. Just make sure you understand which one you are and what goals serve you best.
Elizabeth Rice, aka @elioftheveil, is a content creator, writer and Twitch streamer with a focus on Magic: The Gathering.
We have gotten our system mostly down to a science by now. New commanders come out and as the data trickles in, we start to see trends in what people are playing and anticipate their needs accordingly. EDHREC data is easy enough to parse for the most part. Hopefully we have enough of a grip on what to do that when we’re thrown a curveball, we can adapt. Why do I bring that up? Were we thrown a curveball? INDEED WE WERE.
*I don’t know if I mentioned it here yet, but ignore Negan. When EDHREC set up the scraper for the Secret Lair stuff, it associated all of the Secret Lair cards with their existing versions. The problem was, the Walking Dead stuff didn’t have existing versions and the cards got shunted into a subfolder. All of the data was collected and catalogued but there was no pathway for that data to make it to the front page. There were 77 Negan decks made so far on all 5 websites EDHREC scrapes total between today and when they were previewed. With demand that low, we didn’t notice that the data wasn’t showing up because we assumed it was under our minimum threshold. The decks aren’t that popular, so it’s safe to ignore them for finance purposes.*
What you’re meant to notice is Sakashima jumping up from “not in the running” to 2nd place and Obeka falling to third. This is news, and it presented some interesting challenges to us from a data parsing perspective. That is to say, what will we see when we click on that Sakashima card image and go to a webpage?
Something is wrong here. Do you see what it is yet?
How about now?
It took me a second for it to register, also. That’s namely because nothing looks wrong because nothing IS wrong, exactly. Something IS missing, though. The other half of the deck, basically. Sure, there are some people running Sakashima as a solo commander, but not too many. There’s also no real way to figure out which is which without tracking down individual decks. I am not going to do that and that’s because I don’t think that matters. Here’s why.
Remember the exercise we did last week where we used the list comparison tool to try and glean cards that were played in multiple decks? The cards that were only in one of the two or three decks seemed like they’d be less impactful than the ones played across all of the decks so we focused on the common ones because they seemed to have more demand and more chances for a deck they were in to really pop off. It was sound logic and I stand by it. Might I suggest we apply the same logic here? If Sakashima as a partner is that popular, it doesn’t matter if it’s played as a solo deck or partnered with Kydele or Krark (Sakashima is paired with Krark a lot – more on that in a minute) or whomever. Is there a difference between Sakashima as a solo commander and Sakashima paired with Vial Smasher for the purposes of figuring out Sakashima staples? No, not really. If the data were organized differently, we would do the work of putting all of it in our comparison tool to see which cards were common across Sakashima solo, Sakashima/Tymna, Sakashima/Krark ad nauseam anyway, right? The way this data is presented, that work is done for us. We’re seeing that list.
Looking at the cards that are common whenever Sakashima is in the command zone of a deck, we’ll see the cards that are common across all decks built with the most popular partner commander. What looked like it might be a problematic, incomplete data-set is actually a pre-sorted set ready for our consumption.
That being the case, what’s good across all types of Sakashima deck?
The first thing I noticed was “Wow, this card went up like 2 weeks after I bought like 20 of them to play with but didn’t say anything to anyone about it.” The second thing I noticed was that it cost more on TCG than on Card Kingdom. That’s a red flag. Let’s investigate.
Ok, that checks out…
This is partially something both Zareth San and Anowon got started. Thada being a Rogue and a Merfolk was relevant and then it turned out that it’s a very good card everyone slept on despite me mentioning it twice a month on Coolstuff (I know you don’t read those articles, it’s cool). Thada is $9 NM on TCG Player. Those played copies getting mopped up moves the average and then it’s a $10+ card on its way up. $9 is high, certainly, but it’s not done.
Channel Fireball sold out of these so quickly, our scraper hasn’t had time to adjust. They have one $8 copy left. This was $6 a year ago, expecting it to be any less than $10 right now is folly. I recommend mopping up anything NM under $9 on smaller sites before anyone messes with TCG Player stock since that’s the one site people notice when something sells out. This is a $15 card that’s going to be tough to reprint, it’s about time we acted like it.
These are legit a buck in Europe*.
Arbitrage opportunities are rarely as pronounced as this. Europe has a real disdain for EDH that results in ridiculous price discrepancies like this, so when people complain about Americans “invading” their market, remind them they could just… you know, start caring about EDH and then all of their cards would be worth money, not just the 30 that are good in Modern. If you live in Europe, buy these and send them to me, I have 4 Omnath decks and at least 2 of them want to run a copy of this.
*As many of you have mentioned, it is $1 for Italian copies but English copies have already climbed to nearly $6. In order to properly arbitrage, you’ll need to exchange these for an English copy currently in use and sell the English one. That’s fine for someone like me who will play with any language in EDH because I have way too many decks to care, but doesn’t scale well enough to be considered advice. MKM is getting more and more efficient at matching the US market on cards used in EDH so you’ll need to be more nimble at buying than I was at advising this time.
“The Year Of Commander” spit out about 900 new cards that are competing with this for a very finite number of reprint spots. This keeps flirting with $12 on Card Kingdom, something giving it a shot of hard, sustained usage would keep the price from cycling and make Card Kingdom raise their buylist price. If this hits $15 on Card Kingdom, paying $8 on TCG Player looks pretty attractive. This is 4 years old and hard to reprint and I think it can, bare minimum, hit $12 on CK again.
One more thing – you can click on the list of partners to get an expanded view and see what Sakashima is most often paired with. Clicking on any of these cards will take you to the combined partner page where you can see the cards in decks with both commanders.
Damn, I kind of want to build a Krarkashima deck now. Check out the page, it looks sweet. Storm shenanigans all day. Make as many copies of Krark as you can and then flip like 4 coins to dome someone for 12 with a Lightning Bolt. Brilliant! If you already have a Zndrsplt/Okaun deck, it’s now way better.
I didn’t see anything specific to any of the partner decks that wasn’t just generic goodstuff, but you’re free to peruse each list at your leisure. You’re smart people, you have excellent tastes in columns after all. There is one card I want to discuss before I forget, though.
Your homework for this week is to think about how many copies of a Saviors of Kamigawa rare there are in existence. Applying the amount of demand for this effect to that number of cards gave us a peak price of $45. Think about how many copies, reaslistically, Mystery Booster introduced to the market. Think about the number “$45” and think about how the demand is actually higher now. Do you like these at $12? Write why or why not in the comments section.
That does it for me this week! I’ll be back next week with more surprises, more thrills and chills and more Eurobitrageortunities as I call them. If your delicate frame can sustain that much value, meet me here in a week. Until then, happy brewing! Until next time.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
