MTGO, Watchtower

The Watchtower 03/30/20 – Changing Tack

With a lot of the world now in lockdown, game shops are closed and nobody’s playing paper Magic (other than over webcam etc). Tournaments have moved online – Channel Fireball are running Arena tournaments 24/7 and Team Lotus Box have started their own tournament series across Arena and Magic Online, amongst others doing similar things. Very few people are buying paper Magic cards right now, and have instead turned to playing on MTGO to get their (albeit virtual) cardboard fix, which in turn is having an effect on the MTGO economy. I’m sure that a large number of people reading this won’t be involved in the online side of Magic finance yet, but I think this is a great opportunity to take a look into it.

Ice-Fang Coatl

Price today: $23
Possible price: $50

Variants of the Bant Snowblade deck are taking up a large proportion of the Modern metagame at the moment – some playing more Uro and taking the midrange route, and others going for a more controlling Stoneforge and Cryptic Command build. No matter how it’s built, however, all the decks are playing four Ice-Fang Coatl. Turns out that an Ambush Viper that flies AND cantrips is pretty good – who knew?

Besides the fact that Ice-Fang is a staple in these decks, I’m singling it out because of the price movement on it recently. Having been on the rise since December, the card spiked up to a touch above 50 tix (MTGO tickets, roughly equal to dollars) online a couple of weeks ago, and has since retraced down to around 23 tix. I would say that this is a reasonable floor, but this Wednesday (04/01) the Vintage Cube is being replaced with Modern Horizons draft. This will be run as both a phantom and non-phantom event, so not as much ‘real’ product will be opened – but it will still provide downwards pressure on a lot of Modern Horizons cards.

My advice would be to keep an eye on the price of Ice-Fang and other Modern Horizons cards come Wednesday (Urza, Astrolabe etc.), and look out for downwards movement. Towards next Wednesday, when MH draft rotates off MTGO, I suspect we’ll see prices recover and Ice-Fang could be headed back towards 50 tix in no short order.

Jace, Wielder of Mysteries

Price today: $11
Possible price: $18

Over in Pioneer, Dimir Inverter is still topping the virtual tables again and again. Having dodged a ban earlier this month (yes, believe it or not that was in March), the deck has been proving its power since and putting up top finishes in multiple online tournaments.

Jace, Wielder of Mysteries is a keystone of the deck, and saw a nice run up to 18 tix after the deck survived another round of bans. Since then we’ve seen it retrace back to 11, but with more and more online play occurring I expect to see it turn around again for a steady gain over the next few weeks. WAR isn’t being drafted any more so the only fresh supply is coming from Treasure Chests, and I think now is a reasonable time to be picking these up.

Another thing to note is that this is a popular card in EDH, and because of the current lockdown EDH is seeing an uptick in play on MTGO. I wouldn’t be surprised to see EDH play have some impact on card prices online, so it’s worth keeping an eye on cheap staples.

Theros Beyond Death Scrylands

Price today: $0.08
Possible price: $0.50

Finally, let’s look at Standard to round off today’s picks. Although Magic Arena is where most Standard play happens, it’s not absent from MTGO, and it still moves prices. The Scrylands from Theros and M20 are staples in pretty much all the Standard decks that play more than one colour, and all of the Theros ones are under 0.1 tix at the moment. The most expensive is Temple of Enlightenment at 0.08 tix, and the cheapest are at 0.03 tix.

If we take a look at the Temples from Core Set 2020, they were all similarly low for a couple of months after the set release, but since then climbed and generally stayed over 0.5 tix. Some have briefly flirted with 1.5 tix or so, but I expect to see the same pattern from the THB Scrylands over the coming months too. Supply will drop off, and prices will climb to around 0.5 tix or more – so if you pick a bunch of these up now you should be in for a tidy profit down the road.

Picks like this normally aren’t worth it in paper unless you can buy a large quantity at once and can then sell them to a buylist when the card has made enough gains, but with buying and selling online it’s a bit different. There are no shipping costs, no waiting times and no fees to pay, which makes it a lot easier to make money on cheaper cards and smaller gains like this.

That’s all for this week; next week I might do more MTGO picks or find something else to write about instead…we’ll see. Til next time, stay indoors and stay safe!

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

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.

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