Casual Fridays

Delays and Opportunities

Wizards has decided to delay nearly everything about Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths due to the worldwide pandemic. There’s a lot to unpack, including the optimism that in May we’ll all be back to normal.

This is an unprecedented time for us as Magic players, and there’s some financial pitfalls to avoid, and opportunities to be had here. Let’s dive in!

First of all, we need to unpack what a delay in Ikoria means. We know that Wizards had previously allowed stores to plan for and to sell kits that allow players to prerelease at home. That’s pretty unusual, but so is just about all of this situation. 

As one of our members pointed out to me on the MTGPrice Discord, that’s no longer a possibility, with at least one store telling me that they aren’t going to get these kits till May, if they are lucky and other factors don’t pop up. Most of the big stores have slowed or even stopped their operations, and TCG Direct is shutting down until April 17.

That is a lot of cards and merchants being taken out of the loop, and that means a lot less cards in circulation. Granted, demand has tailed off too, given the demands on our income and the job insecurities we face.

The week after a prerelease has always been the time for cards to be at their highest, but now we’re going to have a month, or more, where the amount of Ikoria in circulation is severely curtailed. I fully expect to see a ton of prerelease kits on eBay, but I also expect that market to be scorchingly hot.  Some overseas markets are getting their stuff on time, and some sellers of English kits will pop up, but the demand is going to be pretty high compared to the relatively small supply.

Let’s look at some examples of where cards were in that first week, shall we? Please keep in mind that we chart cards at release, not when they are spoiled/preordered.

Calix, Destiny’s Hand was more than $10 before the set was released. Elspeth, Sun’s Nemesis was also that high. Nightmare Shepherd was $4+. 

It’s true that some cards are worth more now than they were at the time of prereleasing. I can’t anticipate shifts in the meta and if I’d foreseen Heliod’s Intervention as a top EDH pick I’d have bought a brick of them at under $1. I’m not going to worry about missing $10 from a mythic that gets hot if it means I get to sell five rares at $3 each that will be bulk in three weeks.

My goal had been to buy a few prerelease kits from my local store and crack them. Even the rares that will be bulk should go for a few dollars, and the foils should go for a good price too. Because the only available sources for these cards will be this prerelease for that first week, the premiums should be quite high.

With the delay, I’m still trying to get product from my store but I’m also looking online for the kits at a reasonable price. $30 for six packs and a guaranteed foil rare/mythic was solid, but if it’s at $45+ I will decline. In between…we’ll have to see what the previews bring us.

Something I especially appreciate in this time is how I can get the warm feeling of buying from a store that I really want to still be in existence when we’re past the pandemic conditions, and you should help out in that regard as you can. I won’t be surprised to see some stores doing special sales when the American stimulus hits, as those who are stable financially will have the money to spend. In a lot of ways, this is going to mimic what happens during tax return season, a time when duals and other higher-end cards sell a little bit easier when folks are flush with extra cash.

I know that phrase sounds a little absurd, ‘extra cash’ in a time when an unprecedented number of people are filing for unemployment, but that’s how some will react and stores will want to help them spend that money.

As for Mystery Boosters, I’m quite sad that we aren’t’ getting to draft with these in stores. The draft experience is a very fun one, with the right mix of ‘could be anything’ and ‘curated list of cards’ plus ‘some really expensive cards are possible!’ that leads to marathon drafting days if you’re lucky.

Retail edition of Mystery Booster had just started to happen when the shutdowns started, so not a lot is in circulation at this point. I strongly advise you not to buy in on anything Mystery Booster: not foils, not regular, not playtest cards. This current condition is a seller’s market. If you have copies, if you have leftovers, sell, sell, sell! Eventually, stores will be able to open the boxes they have and get the singles price pushed downwards. 

We know from experience that one chase card can cause a whole lot of boxes to be opened. We saw this effect with the Inventions and the Invocation series of Masterpieces during Kaladesh block and Amonkhet block: singles prices were at their lowest due to the chase for the super-premium cards. Mana Crypt isn’t quite there but it’s pretty close, especially given that these are 24 packs to a box, not 36. 

I completely expect the Mystery prices to fall for the foils and the nonfoils alike once stores regain some normalcy. Right now stuff is starting to fall but it hasn’t hit bottom yet. If you’re buying Mystery cards, it’s because you want it for a deck or you’re buying sealed product to draft with. 

Do not attempt to keep sealed product with hopes of reselling for profit. You’re going to be competing with distributor price for quite some time, and there’s better places to park your money. Sealed product hasn’t been a good investment for a while, and Mystery isn’t in short supply. Everything Magic is in short supply right now, and that’s a situation that will eventually change.

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, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Rebounding

Readers!

I usually have a lot of preamble just because I like to type a bit to get into the mood before I bang out an article. It’s my process. You remember that movie Finding Forrester where Sean Connery has the main character type his work and then once he’s had a running start, write his own thing? This has nothing to do with that, I just usually write a paragraph where I tell you what the article’s about but I spent so much time talking about how it’s going to be a shorter paragraph than normal that it isn’t anymore so I guess never mind. Anyway, the point of the article is that there are cards in Mystery Boosters that will probably tank and go back up and some that will tank and not go back up. A lot of obvious factors like a rarity shift don’t need to be explained, but some cards recover better than others and we need to try and figure out all of the factors that matter and which apply. Sound boring? Well, it’s not. I did one of these articles when Iconic Masters came out and Austere Command hit a buck. Did you buy any when that happened?

I’m not going to catch a dectuple up on all of these, but I’ll sure try not to miss something obvious. So what kind of card always recovers?

Eternal Witness is not rare and never has been. However, Eternal Witness gets a non-zero amount of play outside of EDH (though less than it used to) and is staple-tier in EDH.

It’s the 14th-most-played card in EDH as far back as they’re displaying data. Still. Despite not having been printed in the last 2 years. Staple-tier cards shrug off reprints. Which cards don’t?

Cards where the price was predicated more on scarcity than demand. This is the same set and same rarity as Rhystic Study, a card with more printings. It cost less at its peak and costs a LOT less now. Is Rhystic Study liable to tumble to $0.25 like Fog Frog did when it was printed in Modern Horizons before I could sell my dozens of copies? Let’s figure out what the difference between Rhystic Study and Fog Frog is in terms of demand.

One of these cards is play SIGNIFICANTLY more than the other. Sure, Rhystic Study is nominally a common in the Mystery Boosters, and while it can’t maintain $20, it will likely rebound from its floor in a way that Fog Frog never will. Is there a number that will help us figure out which cards will rebound? I don’t know if it’s worth trying to find one. I think that perception of a card’s worth is going to contribute to it maintaining or regaining value as much as anything else so if you don’t mind me using my gut a bit as long as I report the numbers for you to make up your own mind with, I’m going to talk about some cards in Mystery Boosters that are going to take a hit and come back. I feel good about how much money I made people on cards like Rune-Scarred Demon and Austere Commander in Iconic Masters, so let’s find the next Austere Command, shall we? OK, that’s the last time I’ll say “austere” during a global pandemic.

Mystery Boosters basically chopped this price in half already. Aura Shards is about halfway between “Fog Frog” and “Rhystic Study” on the “will it rebound” scale and while it’s a different rarity and a different set, it did manage to climb quite a bit, especially recently with all of the crazy enchantment stuff running around. Who knows what a whole Theros block rather than just a set would have done?

I personally think Shards isn’t done going down, but it’s bound to recover quite a bit. In terms of the raw number of decks it’s in, it’s closer to Fog Frog than Rhystic Study which puts this on the low end of “likely to recover” but I think if this is the low end, we’re in good shape with anything played more than this. This was printed as uncommon twice and was printed at “uncommon” in a commander deck so it was one per deck. This has more printings than most cards in the Mystery Booster set and if we could graph the trend in adoption on EDHREC as a function of time, I’d imagine it’s declining a bit, but until something comes out to replace this, it will reign supreme.

One more thing to consider is the topic of “discovered demand” as I call it, which basically states that the demand is what it is partially on the basis of the barrier to owning the card. Would this be in more than 9,538 decks in the last two years if it didn’t cost $20? Seems likely, and now that it’s $10 rather than $20, we’re about to see if it goes up. It’s an older card, only people who could afford to pay for it could show it to players who hadn’t seen it and the Enchantment block didn’t give us nearly as many Enchantments worth caring about as the Estrid Commander deck did, but this is still top-tier removal and I think it ends up between $10 and $20 when the dust settles. If this is the low end, again, I have a lot more confidence in these other picks.

While a lot of this card’s price is predicated on scarcity and it sees less play than Aura Shards, I think this has cross-format applicability with casual and more of a future. It’s a newer card, more people know it, and being printed at mythic twice means far fewer copies, which is the biggest knock against Aura Shards that was in Invasion, Commander, Commander Anthologies and now Mystery Boosters. With the large number of cards in the set, an uncommon isn’t the same as an uncommon in a set like Modern Horizons – with roughly 1 uncommon per sheet, they’re basically mythics, but I still think Archive is more scarce and buying in at $5 feels OK. Waiting to see where it ends up feels better. People aren’t aggressively updating prices during this crisis (I’m rhyming, a week cooped up does things to my brain) so we may want to give things a while to stabilize, but I think this is a good buy when it hits bottom and starts to recover.

This card’s price is NOT predicated on scarcity and is all about playability. I don’t think this recovers quite like Eternal Witness but it might not be far off. Witness is played in 5 times as many decks but it also has 5 times as many printings, so we’ll see.

Vessel seems like it’s going to sell for what it was selling for within a year. That’s predicated on paper Magic not going away entirely. Depending how many LGSs shut down in the wake of social distancing and how inclined people are to play cards in person in the future, the strength of the game overall remaining basically what it was means this price will be basically what it was. We’re not getting nearly as many new copies of this card as people think.

I think there are a few cards unlikely to recover because their price is predicated on scarcity more than play or because this one last reprinting was the last nail in the coffin. As a rule, anything played in more than 10,000 decks on EDHREC is probably a slam dunk price rebound if it doesn’t have a ton of printings, but there are other factors to consider, obviously. If you want more picks, I’ll cover this same topic next week. Covid has slowed things down enough that we can take an extended look at the set. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 03/24/20 – A Definitive Guide to Arbitrage

It’s a surreal world we’re living in at the moment, and it’s affecting every aspect of peoples’ lives. Although it might not be at the forefront of a lot of peoples’ minds right now, that does include Magic – Wizards has just announced the suspension of all in-store play until at least 10th May, which means that LGSs are going to suffer hard and paper card sales are going to plummet. Not many people are buying cards right now, and so with that in mind, instead of my usual picks today this is going to be an article on cross-border arbitrage (I mentioned a few weeks ago that I would be doing this at some point in the near future).

I’m based in the UK, and with that comes pricing on cards that is generally a bit different (and often lower) to that in the US, so with the right setup there can be a lot of money to be made between the two markets.

Pricing Differences

In general, card prices in the EU tend to be lower than in the US. This is painting with a fairly broad stroke, and doesn’t apply to all categories of card, but the best arbitrage opportunities tend to arise amongst EDH cards. EDH (or Commander, if you’re that way inclined) is hugely popular in the States, but much less so this side of the pond. That means that card prices over here run lower and stock levels run higher, especially at the release of a new set. I highly recommend reading Jason Alt’s articles, especially around set releases and paying attention to the potential EDH all-stars from each new set; they can often be had on Cardmarket in bricks of 50+ cards on preorder or at release, and can be a great opportunity for 100%+ gains, outing either to buylist or selling on TCGPlayer.

Setting Up With A Partner

As well as talking about differences in card pricing and availability, I’m going to devote a large portion of this article to discussing the actual mechanics of setting up an arbitrage partnership between the EU and the US.

The first step to take when thinking about delving into arbitrage is setting up a relationship with someone on the other side of the pond. The main reason to do this is because the primary TCG platform in the EU is Magic Cardmarket (MKM), which doesn’t allow shipping to addresses outside of Europe. That means that you’re going to need an address within Europe to ship to, which can then forward your cards to you overseas.

The simplest way to do this is if you have friends or relatives based in Europe that are happy to collect your mail and forward it on to you in bulk – however, this option isn’t available to most people, and it can be very useful for the forwarder to have a reasonable knowledge of Magic – I’ll come onto this in a bit.

If you’re an MTGPrice Protrader member, then another way to set this up is by connecting with one of our EU members via the Discord. This can go both ways too; if you’re in the EU then selling your cards in the US can be very profitable, so you could set up a symbiotic relationship where the EU partner receives orders for the US partner, and then can send over their own cards with the package for the US partner to sell in the States.

The Mechanics

Once you’ve got a partnership set up, you need to figure out the practicalities of actually moving the cardboard halfway round the world. I think the best thing here is for me to run you through my setup and how I handle everything, so here goes.

  1. Agree on a compensation system. Before you start anything, it’s a good idea to make sure that both parties are going to be benefiting from this relationship. This could be in the form of the US party selling cards overseas for the EU party, or a fixed/percentage fee per package sent across, or something else – it’s up to you.
  2. Set up an MKM account. It’s best for the US partner to set up an account on Cardmarket, using the EU partner’s address – for my partners I’ll normally have them put “John Smith, c/o  David Sharman” followed by my address, so I know what the mail is and who it’s for before I open it.
  3. Set up a shared spreadsheet. I have a separate spreadsheet for each of my arbitrage partners to keep track of what they’re ordered, from whom and any additional info needed. My partner lists what they’ve ordered, I mark it as arrived and note any issues with it. If need be I can upload pictures to deal with any card condition issues or other order problems (this is where it’s useful for your partner to be familiar with Magic cards). This is the kind of template I use:
  1. Buy some cards! Now you’re set up and ready for the US party to start ordering cards to the EU address.
  2. Catalogue the cards. The EU party will ideally keep on top of incoming mail, mark cards off the spreadsheet as they arrive, and store them safely until it’s time to forward them on.
  3. Forward the cards onto the US party. The frequency of the mail forwarding is up to the individuals, but my recommendation is not to do this too often, as postage costs will stack up quickly and eat into the arbitrage profits. I normally send using a tracked & signed for service, which costs between £8 and £20 depending on parcel size – prices will vary depending on the country you’re sending from.

Buylisting

Speaking of buylists, another way to take advantage of arbitrage gaps without needing an overseas partner is via buylists – this is for the EU and rest-of-world readers. Something that I do from time to time is send in buylists from the UK to Card Kingdom in the US. Card Kingdom generally has the best buylist prices around, and so every so often I’ll pull together a fairly large buylist to send to them (although other buylists can also be good). To make it worth the postage this will usually be a $300-400+ package, usually including specs that I have a large quantity of and don’t want to spend the time selling individually. It can also be a useful outlet for stalled specs that I can break even or take a small loss on, so that I can funnel that money into cards that are going to move faster.

When it comes to choosing between cash and store credit, I will mostly opt for the cash payment. This is because I do the bulk of my spending in the EU where prices are lower – however I have in the past taken store credit to spend on specific cards that are well priced on Card Kingdom compared to other sources.

Switcheroo

Finally, I want to briefly talk about arbitrage opportunities going in the other direction – from US to EU. These generally take the form of specialty sealed product, because Wizards don’t seem to like countries outside the US having easy access to special and supplemental sets. This has most recently been relevant with all the Secret Lair Drops that Wizards have been releasing, which have come with exorbitant shipping and customs charges to ship overseas. This has deterred many overseas players from picking the sets up when they only want a couple of cards from them, which in turn has created great opportunity for me to pick up sealed sets and sell on the singles. Example: I paid around £150 for a set of the five Constellation SLDs, and turned the singles around for close to £350.

Another example of a good product to ship the other way is the San Diego Comic Con sets, which are only available in the US. I’ve had partners ship me various different SDCC sets and flipped them in the UK for a good margin, due to the lack of supply outside the US.

I think that covers most bases here, and I hope it has all made sense, but if anyone has any questions then feel free to hit me up on Twitter or in the Protrader Discord. See you next week, stay safe, and stay home.

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

Underworld Value

I know it’s a crazy time in the world, and one of the things that gives me comfort is knowing that there will always be Magic in some form. People are playing Commander games with Discord’s help, trading via mail remains a lot of fun, and it’s always enjoyable to pick up undervalued cards.

We are about two weeks away from the previews for Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, and this is when we want to examine the set that’s closing down for the good buys at max supply. Traditionally, this means cards are at their cheapest, and any bit of play they see from here, especially in Standard, means an uptick. I like knowing that I have about a year to unload Theros: Beyond Death cards before they are in danger of losing value due to rotation.

To the cards!

First things first: I’m going to be talking about the regular nonfoils mostly, except for one or two specific cards. Foil prices at this point are remarkably in line with the nonfoil prices, because the players who want unique versions are going for the special version (extended art, frameless, constellation) or the foil version thereof. 

These are picks with an eye towards Standard, but if a card has uses in other formats, all the better!

Thassa’s Intervention ($1) – There’s two decks in Standard that are giving this some love: Temur Reclamation and Azorius Control, and it fills a similar role in each. The modes here are either to prevent your opponent from doing something good, or if they decline to play things into your open blue mana, you get to dig for two good cards. That’s wonderfully flexible and this is going to go up. Three bucks is quite doable, but I’m hoping for $5+, so I could buy at $1 or less and buylist them for $3 plus store credit bonus.

Phoenix of Ash (75 cents) – Another card at near-bulk prices, it’s a good, recursive threat for whatever flavor of aggressive red deck you want to use. The core of such decks is pretty intact for the next 15 months, with just about all the best cards being from Throne of Eldraine, aside from Runaway Steam-Kin and Light up the Stage. The good news here is that decks want to play lots of copies, as extras are fine in play together or fuel escape for one another. You can get playsets for $3 or less, a price that turns around quite nicely when this sees more play.

Shatter the Sky

Calix, Destiny’s Hand (Showcase Foil) ($5) – Calix is a long-term pickup, because he’s absurd in Commander decks that are enchantment-based. That’s a relatively popular subtheme, and as time passes, better and better enchantments will be printed. His price can’t really get any lower, and while you can get the original for near-bulk prices, go for the Showcase foil and really drive some wonderful returns. There’s currently 158 vendors on TCG, and yes, that’s a lot of copies. This is for the long-term and doesn’t cost much. If you like this theme of deck, definitely get your Commander copies now. 

Ashiok, Nightmare Muse (Showcase) ($7) – I think Ashiok’s newest version is really underplayed, given the synergies involved. Currently they are only seeing play as a fun-of, but I like the inevitability and the speed of milling you can get with the Nightmare tokens. This is a less sure spec, but given the power of the card and how perfectly this fits into the average UB control deck, it’s hard not to love. I like getting the Showcase nonfoils in hopes of Standard players wanting to rebuy these for $15+ sometime in the next 12 months.

Shadowspear ($5.50/$7/$11/$36) – Whatever version you want to buy, there’s a case to be made. For a card that’s only been out three months, this is already in nearly 3000 decks on EDHREC, and it deals quite effectively with the two qualities that are most annoying in Commander. I could see this being played in any deck that wants to get around these protective qualities, and even though it’s seeing zero Standard play, the price has stayed constant for nearly two months. It hasn’t had a chance to go down in price. Copies aren’t being sold to vendors, players are keeping the ones they get and trading/using them. Since we are at max supply, it’s time to get your copies and a couple extra besides.

The Temples (between fifty cents and $2) – I strongly advocate that you get your playset of each Temple right now if you’re a Standard player. These are good lands with a notable bonus to make up for the lack of speed, as scrying away something you don’t want is quite a lovely feeling. The UW one is the most expensive, as that color combination lends itself naturally to slow control builds, but UB is not far behind. The other three are noticeably cheaper, but the supply that already existed from each of these isn’t really a consideration. Once the shocklands rotate, these will be a strong contender for the must-have lands. If you play Standard, get them while they’re cheap and you won’t have to pay $3 or $4 each in a couple months. As specs, you’re hoping they get to the $6 range.

Storm Herald (a quarter) – This is pure speculation but when it’s so cheap, it can really give you some amazing returns. Mark Rosewater told us this week that Ikoria has the biggest power/toughness boosting aura ever. Eldrazi Conscription gave +10/+10 and while it’s possible that as a troll they give us an Aura which grants +0/+21, that seems pretty far out there. What’s going to happen is that people will immediately try to build around something obscenely powerful, and Storm Herald is a natural fit, there to clean up and get one more hit in after something happens to the original plan. You goal here is very simple: Buy these cheap now, and when this new aura is spoiled, sell into the hype, hopefully getting $2 or $3 each. You’re more likely to make sales on eBay or TCG, so price aggressively and get your profits locked in.

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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