Jason (@jasonEalt ), Corbin (@Chosler88), and DJ (@Rose0fThorns) take stock of their Picks of the Week from the past year. Talking about where they Boom // Busted on advice given to listeners. Make sure to get a peak at the sheet at http://bit.ly/POW1718 .
I’ve been at this a while, and not just writing about Magic. I’ve done precious little buying of cards (until recently–one of my New Year’s resolutions was to buy more of my own advice) and done really well through targeted trading.
I’ve also sold cards for assorted life expenses along the way, including in 2001 when I needed a new transmission and felt blessed to get $200 for my playsets of Tropical Island and Force of Will.
All that being said, recent events in Magic card pricing are just mindblowing, and I’ve got some advice for you to weather the storm.
There are a range of factors pushing at prices right now. Let’s look at one example, a card which recently made it over two grand, pushing towards $3,000, and is more expensive than Unlimited Power: The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
Let’s also take a minute and see who needs this card. Legacy Lands players need one copy (and that one copy makes up ~50% of the deck’s price, the playset of Mox Diamond is another ~30%), people who like to play the super-niche format 93-94 want it, and collectors of Legends cards want it.
When you need it, you need it!
Is that a big group of people? Not really. The issue is the low supply of the card, and that means there’s a battle to get the few copies available.
So this one card is worth two months’ rent, or a semi-decent used car. Use the analogy you like, but respect that people are paying that much for this card for one or more reasons.
What we also need to consider is that fear is moving a lot of these prices. People are afraid of missing out (FOMO is the acronym) on the next spike, and identifying such cards is becoming less of a skill over time, because not all prices are holding.
It went from under a buck, up to $9, and now down to $3 because no one was buying it at the $9 level. The card is AMAZING in Zedruu the Greathearted decks, and I’m forced to wonder: Given that there was enough demand to get Zedruu up to nearly $10 at one point…are there more Legacy Lands players than Zedruu players? And if not, what’s going on?
The Reserved List is not a bad thing. I said it. I mean it.
I’d like dual lands for all my Commander decks, but really, I don’t need them. I’ve got fetchable shocks and bicycle lands and other variants, plus stuff like Command Tower. Duals would be a nice upgrade but they are not a necessity. Masterpieces are in the same space, given that the MSP Sol Ring is now above $300 and pushing at $400. That’s more than a Beta Sol Ring and within $100 of an Alpha!
Magic benefits from having aspirational levels. If you master Standard, there’s Modern. Then Legacy, then Vintage. Other formats come into play, like new draft environments, build your own Cube, or get into 93-94.
None of those are necessary to enjoy the game. They are all fun, in different ways, and if you really want to get into Vintage dive in online for about $500 to buy Ravager Shops.
The Reserved List is mostly terrible cards anyway, a clear overreaction to Chronicles. Here’s a couple of example cards:
Look at that pristine arm!
My point in all of this is that for years now, there’s been a combination of factors causing cards to go up. Speculators, collectors, people who want the cards, and people who are scared of having to buy at the high price when they could have bought at the old price.
For almost all of us, it doesn’t matter. Would your tokens deck be better with a Gaea’s Cradle? Absolutely. Would it be almost as good with Growing Rites of Itlimoc, or Mana Echoes, or a range of other cards that will be plenty busted.
In terms of financial advice, I’d suggest you look at the Reserved List and cross that with the cards you might actually play. For example, Winding Canyons is in the midst of an upward spike, it was available for $10 for quite a while and the frenzy has moved to this card, pushing it past $20. It might stabilize at $30, and then trickle downwards as people realize the new price isn’t here to stay…but the price will have gone up.
Just worse than Whispersilk ot Trailblazer’s Boots?
Sub $5 for the longest time, spiking to $30, now at about $15 for a card that is objectively terrible. The card is just bad, but it’s being collected, it’s not getting played. You have to understand that distinction and you have to embrace how the spikes will be worse for the playable cards.
So here’s a couple of RL cards that are decent candidates for a spike:
Hand of Justice at fifty cents, because I think a lot of people destroyed their Fallen Empires cards. I remember how worthless these were for the longest time.
Autumn Willow at a buck, because early hexproof is bah-roken.
Thawing Glaciers at sub-$20, because the judge promo is about $60, and colorless land find is always helpful.
Varchild’s War-Riders at or below $4, because sometimes the other players need creatures.
Tombstone Stairwell because lots of Zombies coming and going is exactly what some decks want.
These are just a few examples, not intended to be a prediction or a guide, but my ideas on cards that are at the nexus of the Reserved List and playability. I don’t know what collectors will do, or speculators (remember, Narwhal spiked to $10 once based on buyouts) but I know that playable RL cards have a low supply, due to the number already in decks.
If you need such cards for your EDH deck, better move fast. This wave of spikes isn’t done.
Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.
I mean, this is more like it. I still think Tatyova is the truth and I’m definitely brewing a Tatyova deck and I’m way more exicted about it than I am Jodah or Jhoira or even Muldrotha. If I do build another EDH deck from Dominaria, it will be Slimefoot which I think is interesting. The mythics and rares are powerful but kind of boring and the grindier uncommon generals are more appealing to me. Tatyova can get boring if you’re not careful since drawing massive amounts of cards tends to homogenize your game experience, but overall, I think the uncommons appeal to me more. That said, I’m not everyone and that’s fine. I don’t make money off of how I build, that loses me money, so I’m always way more interested in how other people are building.
Boring is Good. It’s the BEST (plus a tangent)
Boring is code for linear when I talk about EDH deckbuilding and linear means obvious usually. Muldrotha seems like it has infinite possibilities but you’ll find that there is quickly a consensus and with that comes predictability finance-wise. Once the combo with Command Beacon was discovered, people made Command Beacon cost as much as the deck it’s in, which has pushed the price of that deck to $55, which is still basically OK.
The cards over $5 are Ezuri, Eternal Witness, Arachnogenesis, Thought Vessel and Command Beacon. The cards that will be worth more soon than they are now are Bane of Progress, Verdant Confluence, Beastmaster Ascension, High Market, Chameleon Colossus and Skullwinder. I don’t think it’s worth paying $55, but if you do for that quick Beacon flip, hold onto some of the stuff that will get more expensive if you sit on it because it’s basically a free card. For reference, Wade into Battle is $115 and only has 2 cards over $5.
Where was I? Oh, right, linearity is boring and that’s why I threw a valuable tangent at you. I think I made my point and also probably made you some money. Would you rather I had kept talking about linearity for that whole paragraph? No, of course not, because deviating from a linear track is exciting. However, let’s talk about when linearity is a good thing, and that’s when it makes you as much money as a well-placed tangent.
Linearity leads to consensus and that leads to people vying for the same cards. If you have those cards, and they have to get them from you, you can charge more because there’s more demand. Simple. So while I want to build Tatyova, I sure want to know what Muldrotha players are going to buy. That’s why I was encouraged to see Jodah separate itself from Tatyova so much and the typical, get-built-every-week-regardless commanders like Atraxa and Edgar Markov enter the fray again. Last week we had “data” but this week, we have fewer surprises. We want to be able to predict the future here, so let’s take a second to see if consensus is reflected in EDHREC data and if we can develop a metric, or even a vague “financier sense” based on % inclusion in decks.
My Financier Sense Is Tingling
This is in a lot of Atraxa decks (the page from which I cribbed this image) and that is reflected in its price for a few reasons. First of all, it’s in a popular deck which means lots of people will play it which means lots of people will need to buy it which means it will be worth, say, $11. Secondly, it’s ONLY available in a popular deck which means the only loose copies came from people busting the Atraxa deck since 3 out of every 4 people who buy the Atraxa deck build it and keep Skate in it. 72% adoption is great and 16% synergy means it’s not exactly a format staple. Cyclonic Rift has 1% synergy with Atraxa decks because it’s a format staple. Birds of Paradise as a -6% synergy. How it’s calculated doesn’t matter – Atraxa doesn’t have a single card with a synergy score higher than 16%. Skate was made for this deck. Even Oath of Ajani and The Chain Veil have 10% and 7% respectively.
Unless a deck is popular and the card in question is only in that precon, a low synergy score combined with a high adoption rate means it’s a format staple. Something like this in a Atraxa deck, for example –
31% adoption isn’t super high but the 2% synergy shows that it’s a format staple and that’s good for its price. Teferi’s Protection has established itself and its place in the format over the last year, but what about brand new cards? Can we looks at cards in the few Jodah decks and glean anything from their adoption and synergy scores? Slimefoot we expect high adoption and high synergy – cards like Saproling Infestation will have high scores for both. Given Slimefoot has about as many decks built ever as Atraxa did this week, though, we can’t always tell ahead of time if narrow cards like that are great buys (though old ones like Saproling Infestation have already proven to be decent buys – thanks linearity!).
This isn’t necessarily a new metric to look at cards per se, but I think it may help us separate wheat from chaff a bit better than we had in the past. Cards with a small amount of data from the new set are suspect and this will help.
Finally, Jodah
With fewer than 80 decks to look at, we have a small sample size, but % adoption should scale unless these particular 80 people are lunatics. Is these 80 are representative of Jodah builders as a whole, we’ll still see in the percentages what’s going to be a Jodah staple. I’m glad we brought up percentages before diving in. Here’s what I think will matter.
Dream Halls
Conspicuously absent from Jodah decks seems to be this way in particular to cheat stuff into play. People seem happy with having to pay mana, which I don’t know I agree with. Dream Halls seems like a no-brainer to me and Muldrotha players are on-board but Jodah players don’t seem to think they need this card. The reason you play this is that you’re a 5-color deck and can pitch a lot of your multicolored spells you don’t need later in the game to play basically anything not an Eldrazi. This not helping with Eldrazi sucks, but you can do the trick where you pitch anything to cast Conflux and then fill your hand with goodies and use half of them to cast the rest or just have a full grip. That trick is better in Legacy when you have a really explosive 4th turn but that deck sucks.
Why am I bringing this card up that isn’t in enough Jodah decks to register? It’s played in Muldrotha, it’s on the Reserved List and it’s available for under $30 right now. If you think Jodah will ever play this, that’s even more demand for a low supply. I think Dream Halls is a $75 card when the dust settles. I think it’s about to pop and I think it’s good in this deck.
Crystal Quarry
This article is turning into “Things I think Jodah decks should play” but at least this one showed up. In every 5 new Jodah builders knows about this card. When Jodah was spoiled, I got multiple tweets asking if I thought Cascading Cataracts was going to go up. I mentioned this card and everyone asking me about Cataracts didn’t even know this card existed. I forget not everyone has played Magic since 1996. I used 4 copies of this in a mono-black deck to cast Last Stand – those were the days. I can’t find that deck anywhere and considering it has 4 of these, 4 Composite Golems and 4 Cabal Coffers, I hope it turns up in an old box somewhere.
Anyway, this article was supposed to be about what people were playing (Jodah) and not what I thought they should be playing (Tatyova) but this is literally a card not being played more because people building Jodah decks haven’t been playing Magic for long enough to know it exists. That’s ridiculous.
Over twice as many people are playing Cataracts. By the way? 43% is not correct, either. It should be 100% for both cards. I think it will happen eventually. For reference, only 66% of the decks are running Sol Ring so something’s up and maybe 100% isn’t the goal. Still, once people figure out Crystal Quarry is a thing, why would you not run it in Jodah? What possible reason is there? People are asking about the finance potential of a bulk rare from a recent set that’s still in Standard and there are a trillion copies of and they don’t even know about a $4 card that there are like 12 of on the whole internet and one person could snatch up for like $200. OK, there are 83 listings for Crystal Quarry on TCG Player, but still, come on. This is free money. Low supply, high potential synergy with Jodah and you have time to acquire copies before everyone figures out that the card hasn’t spiked already simply because the card is 17 years old and people literally don’t know it exists. These are like $4 some places. Just slam dunk this and when people somehow figure out what this card does, you should double up.
Enter the Infinite
I write about this card like every week. Buy it.
Rise of the Dark Realms
This goes up a couple of bucks every year. It needs to be reprinted, but a lot of things need to be reprinted. In the mean time, this is a sicko Jodah spell and if you can cast this for WUBRG on turn 5… congrats, you didn’t get any value. Seriously, I don’t know if it’s worth cheating this spell out, but… this spell is dumb and 16% of Jodah decks are running it. Not enough Jodah decks are running Insurrection but I said I would write about what people were playing not what they should be playing and this is turning into a maddening exercise for me. You know what has more than the 16% synergy ROTDR has?
This might be an even better target and it’s less likely to get reprinted. It’s also expensive but it has a 20% synergy rating with Jodah so its fate could correlate directly with Jodah’s – it’s $18 on Card Kingdom with its current demand profile and any increase in that could increase the price.
Thicc Bois
Bringers were left out of a lot of “cheat this into play” decks because of their mana symbols and I think Bringers have a lot of upside. All of these creatures are worth cheating out and will get you a ton of advantage and I think basically anything with above a 25% adoption rate is what we now deem acceptable.
I don’t want to write anymore. I found you some good picks, we talked about a new way to look at EDHREC data and we had some laughs. That’s enough value for you, I hope. If you’re a Pro Trader, consider acting early on some of these tips even though the data hasn’t really fully materialized. Get the most out of that subscription. Anyway, that’s all for now. Until next time!
Don’t miss this week’s installment of theMTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy.
Dominaria was officially legal as of Friday, and it certainly made its presence known across all formats. Standard saw considerable card additions, with Tereferi, Karn, Lyra, Seal Away, and Blink of an Eye, among others, finding their way into main decks. Of course there were still five red aggro decks in the top eight of the SCG team constructed open, but it’s opening weekend, so that’s to be expected.
Modern and Legacy saw pips of Dominaria as well, with Karn especially making waves in Legacy. Pair all of this with Dominaria having the largest prerelease of all time and the set looks like it’s a smashing success by most metrics.
Jadelight Ranger
Price Today: $9 Possible Price: $20
Two deck archetypes stole the show in Standard this weekend; UW control and red-based aggro strategies. UW control was roughly what you would expect; a few copies of a planeswalker, a top end creature to close out games, and a pile of removal and permission. Red strategies were either vehicle-heavy or not, but all had the same general goal of using Mountains to get ‘em dead quick.
Outside those two, there was a fair bit of green midrange at SCG. We also had a Standard MODO PTQ fire Sunday, which contained a lot of green decks, with varying levels of aggressiveness (although all were certainly trying to punch you hard.) An important factor here, and one of those tweaks that can spell a world of difference between our universe and alternate-universe Standard, is the presence of Llanowar Elves. We haven’t seen these guys since their doppleganger Elvish Mystic in Magic 2015. The presence of a unconditional one mana dork has many ripple effects.
One of those is how easy it is to play three drops, especially YGG cards. Elvish Mystic was powering out Courser of Kruphix constantly in Theros Standard, and I suspect we’ll see him slamming Jadelight Rangers constantly as well. On turn two you’re putting down a 4/3 that scrys one, or a 3/2 that draws a card and probably scrys one, or a 2/1 that draws two cards. A turn two 2/1 that draws two lands when it comes into play? I’m getting sweaty over here.
Clocking in at $9 or so, Jadelight Ranger is hardly an unknown quantity. Still, there’s room to grow there. Remember that Ixalan is missing the Masterpieces series, which means singles prices will be inflating in a way we didn’t see with Kaladesh or Amonkhet. If Jadelight Ranger becomes a pillar of the format as a backbone for all Gx decks, we could see a legitimate $15 to $20 rare in Standard again.
Karn, Scion of Urza
Price Today: $35 Possible Price: $50
Not one, but two Standard cards? What world are we living in? It’s amazing but Karn had one hell of a weekend, both at the SCG Open and on MTGO. Most of the spectrum found a use for Karn, from midrange to Standard, colors be damned. We shouldn’t be too surprised; he’s a colorless four mana planeswalker. Even if he were weak to average on the power level scale every deck could decide if they could make use of his abilities. Karn isn’t weak though, which means not only does every strategy get to consider him, many will find use.
Perhaps even more remarkable is that Karn wasn’t just showing up in Standard. Both Mono-Red Prison (third) and Colorless Eldrazi (sixth) were casting copies in Legacy. Seeing Karn hit the tables in Legacy the very first weekend he’s available is definitely worth paying attention to. You know who else did that? Liliana of the Veil. Is Karn as good as LotV? Almost definitely not. But there’s a lot of room for him to be worse than LotV and still an absurd card. And while I haven’t seen him in Modern yet (not that he hasn’t shown up at all), I suspect he’ll make the journey. After all, if Legacy Eldrazi is making good use of him, I’d expect the Modern version to do the same.
Considering all of this, does that make Karn a buy at $35? That’s a tough sell. I don’t think you can spec on him here. Maybe at $25. $35 is too rich, too fraught with risk, to spec on. At least, too rich to buy twenty copies of. What about your personal playset? What about trading away your other brand new Dominaria cards for a copy? Those are much better ways to approach this. It appears there’s room for Karn to flex up to $50 in a set without anything approaching Masterpieces, though fair warning, it’s far from guaranteed.
Mystic Remora
Price Today: $2 Possible Price: $8
I would be irresponsible if I didn’t find room for at least one new card for all the commanders Dominaria has bequeathed unto us. A set packed with legendary creatures is going to put a lot of new builds on the table, and build EDH players will. Keep in mind too that we’ve seen EDH players lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to purchasing cards. When Vampire Hexmage was spoiled in Zendikar, competitive players jumped on Dark Depths before the set was legal. EDH players are snap buying Spore Frog when they see Muldrotha spoiled though. They’re waiting until they end up with a Muldrotha in hand, then going through their binders to see what they’ve got for the deck, and then deciding if the want to add anything to the list. It takes time, and as such, there’s a slower ramp up for new commander staples. (Except for the ones speculators pounce on, like foil Secrets of the Dead.)
We’re truly through the looking glass now, with my first two cards this week being Standard driven, and my third hailing from Ice Age. Yes, ICE AGE. That Ice Age. The one that, pound for pound, is cheaper than firewood. The scourge of vendors and bulk managers everywhere, who buy 50,000 card collections and find 48,000 cards from Ice Age, Homelands, and Fallen Empires. One of the most feared set symbols out there for a subset of individuals.
And yet…Mystic Remora. Currently in 11,000 EDH decks on edhrec.com, putting it in the top 40 most popular blue cards in the format. (And that’s a competitive color, let me tell you.) It’s also a signature card in the most exciting, brand new commander of Dominaria. And finally, supply is…dwindling? There’s forty-ish vendors on TCG. SCG is out of NM copies, though they’ve got a pile of SP ones.
Floating at $1.50 to $2, these are cheap, but not free. If Muldrotha catches on as the next big thing, two things will happen. Every person that wants to play Muldrotha will add Mystic Remora (apparently). And everyone in the EDH scene who previously was mostly unaware of Mystic Remora will learn about it as they encounter it in the wild, and some of those players will be inspired to go pick up a copy for themselves, for whichever deck needs it. This is a double dip of demand that only particularly old cards get to enjoy. (Come on, Marton Stromgald.) Will Remoras hit $10? That definitely sounds like a stretch, but in a world with $2,000 Tabernacles, $8 Mystic Remoras don’t seem as absurd.
Travis Allen has been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective toMTGPricein 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcastMTG Fast Finance.
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MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
