Corbin (@Chosler88) is back this week and bring the professionalism of Bill O’Rilley to the cast as Jason (@jasonEalt ) and DJ (@Rose0fThorns) welcome MtG historian & personality Brain David Marshall (@Top8Games) to the show this week to talk about all things magic, movies, and comics. Make sure to visit BDM’s Kickstarter for The Totally Unstuck Adventures of Anna Chronos: Second Hands
Here we are, the release weekend for Masters 25 and we’ve got an oddity: People have been able to draft this set online for a week now. Will that change the in-person experience? Hopefully not, but tell me how that goes.
Opening A25 packs is a real rollercoaster. There are, as of this writing, 18 rares and mythics that are at the MSRP of $10 for the pack. That leaves 50 of them that aren’t, so you’ve got a 26% chance of getting your money back from one pack.
For an equivalent set of odds, I need you to flip a coin, twice, and have it come up heads both times.
Then do that three times, for the three packs you’d open in a draft.
The format looks pretty fun, but from a financial standpoint, it’s terrible value. There’s stores offering you a free pack if you open a Tree of Redemption, and that’s nice, but there’s a lot of clunkers too. The nail in the coffin for the pair of Akromas, Prossh, yet another Armageddon, etc…
There’s really high variance on the foils as well, and take foil Prossh immediately.
What I want to look at today is the trend lines for some of the cards. All of them are downward, as befits a set that is going from pre-order hype to being opened, but some of these are really impressive and with only six weeks until Dominaria, it’s time to get the wallets ready.
He’s down about 30% so far and clearly isn’t done as the market gluts this weekend with everyone tearing open their boxes. On eBay, I see some Buy it Now in the $90 range and even that I’m not big on.
Not going to be available for $20, sorry. (probably)
This summer, we’re getting Signature Spellbook: Jace for $20 and that’s not going to contain JTMS. Let’s be clear about that. Wizards isn’t that crazy. I’m 99% sure they won’t. I’ll let you guess who it’ll be but that’s the last shot at Big Jace for some time.
JTMS is not immediately lighting up Modern. Is he good? Indisputably. Is he broken? No…..t yet. Early results are promising, though. It’s a powerful card that can take over a game, but it’s not a slam-and-win card. I expect Jace’s price to keep sliding, and as the headliner for Masters 25, that doesn’t bode well for the overall value of the set.
My prediction for his price at Dominaria’s release in six weeks: $75 on eBay will get you a copy. You’ll definitely be able to get a playset under $300.
Should you buy at that price: If you’re going to play it, yes. For spec purposes, no. Jace will tick up slowly from this new price point, but the growth will be relatively slow. Even winning a PT isn’t going to do much to his price, it’s not like Liliana of the Veil breaks $200 because it wins. I’d expect that if the price gets too high, he will get reprinted again.
A Portal: Three Kingdoms card who’s enjoyed in Legacy Aluren, this has mostly been a Cube and Commander card. Let’s not overlook that there’s a judge foil of this already made, so it’s not like Masters 25 has the only reprinting or even the only foil. Yes, this has a sweet watermark but that’s only going to matter to a few people.
But what war will you fight with him?
Recruiter plus sufficient mana means Kiki-Jiki combo. First one finds KJ, then it gets copied and finds the Pestermite or Exarch, GG. That’s been enough, plus the scarcity of P3K, to keep the price high but the really low demand has this falling and fast. Sure, there’s good stuff you can go find in your EDH deck, but there’s no shortage of tutors already for creatures.
Dominaria price: $40. Mark it down. People will buy one, if that many. The supply will be much greater than the demand. I wouldn’t be shocked to see someone sell a playset for $120 on eBay.
Should you buy at that price: Absolutely not. Get the one you need and then do nothing else with this card.
It’s not done, people. There’s BIN on eBay for $35 right now, $30 on TCG, and this is not the . Yes, it’s a four-of in a tier 2 Legacy deck, but that’s it for the demand. The land is terrible in Commander, good in some Cubes, and is a real stay-away for me.
sad_clown.jpeg.txt.computer.joke
Dominaria price: $25. I won’t be shocked if it’s $20, either. This price was all due to a tiny supply that the judge promo didn’t do much to lower. Now we’re getting a large influx of supply, and this is on top of how most people that wanted to play Death and Taxes already got their Ports. Given the distribution to Wal-Mart and such, it might well be that the circulation of this card as a rare in Masters 25 in 2018 is equal to the number that was originally printed in 1999.
Should you buy at that price: I would get in at $10 a copy, but that’s it. I’d be understanding of the decision to set aside a playset in anticipation of Death and Taxes winning a large event on camera, but that’s a marginal case. There are just so few areas of demand for this card.
I’m excited about this printing, which came along at the perfect time. Thalia is a star in every format where she can be played, and that includes Commander. Put her in play and then watch the dirty looks people give you. It’s heartwarming. Even better, she’s almost always a four-of, which is what you want in a spec target.
Dominaria price: $6-$7. That’s about where she got to during her last printing and she wasn’t nearly as popular then.
Should you buy at that price: 100% yes. Even Jace will have to pay a Thalia tax, she beats Bloodbraid in a fair fight, and is possibly the two drop you want most in the ever-popular Humans deck. She’ll get back to $15 within a year and $20 not long after that. Be warned, though, that when she makes it up you need to let her go–Wizards is going to reprint her again.
Other quick hits: Vendilion Clique will migrate down to $15 and hold that price, in line with the other printings. Ensnaring Bridge will stop at $30. Blood Moon at $20. The filter lands will stay in the $10 range, except for the blue ones which will be a couple bucks more. Animar, Soul of Elements is an $8 card but the foil will be something ridiculous.
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.
Welcome to my first installment in a new series called Tipping Point, which will look to explore important cards that are teetering on the verge of major price spikes due to low supply. My focus here will be to try and flag cards in time for you to grab what you need for decks or get in early enough to profit. In comparison to picks made earlier in the reprint cycle, the cards found in this series are going to a) offer less meat on the bone but b) be more likely to succeed (due to their already low supply/reprint risk). You will also notice that many of these picks will tend to be foils rather than non-foils as for obvious reasons foils tend to dry up much faster than non-foils, except for the most important of staples, where regular copies may quickly follow during a spike in demand. In terms of timeline, I’ll be aiming to get you in and out of positions within a year, or setting you up to save good money on cards you might have been holding back on unnecessarily.
Let’s jump in.
It’s been a very busy month in #mtgfinance, with the reveals of the Magic 25 card list, the Challenger decks and the bulk of the Dominaria set being leaked.
As the dust clears on the information overload, a few things have become clear:
WoTC’s reprint policy release pace on key cards in Modern and EDH seems to be slowing a bit, rather than gain momentum. This is in part due to their decision to shift focus on Masters sets to loose themes that let them stay flexible.
Based on what we know so far about additional sets this year, there are very few risks in investing in or acquiring play sets of cards that have little to no chance of reprint before Core 2019, which releases July 13/18. The next big reprint risk would be a potential Masters set in the late fall.
The leaked release notes for Dominaria do not seem to indicate that we are getting fresh Masterpieces, which could further protect some key potential reprints, especially foils. Of course, I wouldn’t totally discount the potential for some twist on special cards to appear in the set, but even if it happens, I suspect we’d be dealing with Legendary cards specifically given the theme of the set.
Modern, operating under the halo of Bloodbraid Elf and Jace, the Mind Sculptor being successfully unbanned, continues to look healthy and related cards are selling well accordingly. Many important Modern (and EDH) cards seem to have dodged a reprint for the first half of 2018, setting them up for imminent gains. Our best bets here are likely to be cards that are seeing heavy use across multiple archetypes that are unlikely to be knocked out of the winners circle by meta shifts.
So where does that leave us? Here are my picks for cards that are currently at the tipping point:
1) Traverse the Ulvenwald (Foil)
Current Price: $15
Target Price/Timeline: $25+ (3-12 months)
We first flagged this card in the spring of 2017, with an entry point in the $8-10 range. Traverse has already proven itself in Modern as a cheap and efficient tutor that is almost always a 4-of in the Traverse Death’s Shadow decks. It’s not clear what position that build will occupy as the meta continues to evolve, but with very few foils still lying around, 4000 decks registering the card on EDHREC.com, and relatively little chance of a reprint in the next year to eighteen months, you probably don’t want to sleep on this card if you’re in need. From a speculation perspective this was clearly better at $10, but given that the card is almost always played as a four-of, you could still make $25-30 on a playset if things keep going the way they’re headed.
2) Cyclonic Rift (Foil)
Current Price: $15
Target Price/Timeline: $25+ (3-12 months)
This card has a similar profile to Traverse: first called at $10 last spring, sitting at $15 already, and facing a steep price ramp with every copy that gets purchased on the major platforms. As arguably the most important blue card in EDH/Commander, Cyclonic Rift’s reprint in Modern Masters 2017 opened the door to acquire cheap copies but now we’re not far from hitting $20+ and the next reprint may be a non-foil in Commander 2018 or ’19. Get ’em while you can.
3) Gideon of the Trials (Foil)
Current Price: $18
Target Price/Timeline: $30+ (6-12 months)
Given that this card is less than a year old, the relative scarcity of foils under $20 is telling. Not only are players experimenting with this card in various control builds for Modern, but the ability to play it alongside Gideon Jura and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar due to the new planeswalker rules has really opened up the utility of popular planeswalker characters in general. I was picking these up under $15 last September, but as a foil mythic I could easily see these ending up in the $30-40 range given enough time. There is also a SDCC 2017 promo foil of this card available in the $35 range, so feel free to check that out instead.
4) Cavern of Souls
Current Price: $80+
Target Price/Timeline: $100+ (6-12 months)
Generally speaking, buying in on $80 mythics that have already appreciated in recent months isn’t where you want to be. If you see this late and it’s already at $90, even less so. But as a player, if you need this card, what are you waiting for? They just printed this last year, so it’s likely safe at least until November, and probably beyond that. As a speculator, I went ahead and bought copies near $70 recently. Why? Well, for one, though it was originally printed as a rare, that was almost a decade ago now and the reprinting at mythic was almost certainly a mistake given how many tribal decks are running this thing in Modern, EDH and casual circles. The Eldrazi, Humans and Merfolk demand alone would be enough to keep this rolling, but Elves, Goblins, Slivers and Spirits may also prop it up. At this point $100 seems very likely this year, and $120 may be possible. If that’s the case, you’ll want to acquire sooner than later to play with, and then consider selling into the peak when it comes.
5) Expedition Strip Mine
Current Price: $65
Target Price/Timeline: $100+ (6-12 months)
Every once and a while I check in on the Expeditions to see if any of them look ready to finally make a move. Recenty Hallowed Fountain caught my eye, but Strip Mine makes more sense. As the most efficient land destruction of all time, Strip Mine is clearly a staple playable in whatever format allows it. At present that means it only sees play in competitive MTG through the occasional vintage gathering. On the other hand, there are over 28,000 (!) decks using the card on EDHREC.com, which qualifies this as one of the most important lands in the format. This was also an Oath of the Gatewatch expedition rather than a BFZ release, so there are significantly less around. Cavern is already rather low on most major platforms, and I think these will clear $100 easily within the year. As a Commander player you certainly have use for this bad boy, and if you choose to exit and downgrade later to reap some profit, all the better.
That’s it for this edition of Tipping Point. Expect me to check in with new editions once a month to keep you guys on the cutting edge. Take care and have fun!
You don’t have to care about EDH to find this column edifying and I get that. You might be less excited about the stupid card that was accidentally spoiled but not yet revealed than I am, but maybe cram your lack of excitement and focus on how much money you’re about to make.
If you don’t know anything about EDH, you might think Boros is great. Boros has been good a few times in Standard after all. A combination of weenies and burn is always poised to overrun opponents before they even get set up and big, flashy angels with swords made out of fire seem to tear it up constantly. You probably think Boros is exciting and fun in EDH.
Boros in EDH consists of 25 commanders that deal with attacking with creatures and Brion Stoutarm. You like putting equipment on creatures and attacking? Goody. You’ll love it when your opponent combos off on turn 6 and kills you because you have no way to interact with anything. Boros can be fun and it can get powerful and I’m not going to sit here and pretend that Assemble the Legion isn’t one of my favorite cards ever printed. But for the most part, if you don’t want to put a bunch of goblins in the red zone, Boros is a bore. That’s about to change and I think that’s more significant than Golgari or Simic getting yet another busted general. This new card is good enough that people are going to build it on principle but also, anyone who is sick of their Boros decks being boring will be on board. Anyone who has a deck of every color combination will want to build this and abandon their stupid Jor Kadeen nonsense. So there is not only future demand, but pent-up demand for a general like this and I think that’s significant. The other thing that’s significant is that since there has never really been a Boros general like this, while Boros staples have some upside because, of course they do, a bunch of brand new cards are about to get a bump and that means they go from bulk to not bulk and that’s the best way to be.
What’s The Card?
I wish I could show you. The best we have is a mock-up from Mythic Spoiler, which is better than nothing, but only barely.
If this doesn’t excite you, you must not play EDH. This card is stupid and it’s about to make a bunch of stupid cards stupider. It has a big enough butt to survive an Hour of Devastation, for starters. The amount of life you’re going to gain from spells like Blasphemous Act (should your spellcows survive) is going to make it pretty easy to dome people with Aetherflux Reservoir or just win the game with Felidar Sovereigns.
People are starting to brew with spellcows already and those people have large readerships who are going to get as hype as I am about spellcows and go buy their own decks. But they’ll wait until Dominaria is actually released to buy the rest of the deck because they are not doing it correctly. Let’s do it correctly and get ahead of the ensuing buying frenzies so we can be sellers when everyone else is a buyer.
What Are We Buying?
Good question. Looking at what people are brewing with and which cards I think are inclined to be good in the deck, I have a few picks I think are good buys.
Sunforger (foil)
From the dizzying highs of Tiny Leaders hype (remember that adorable time in Magic’s History?) to the crushing depths of two reprints within 2 months, Sunforger has been through a lot. Probably a bulk rare forever or at least for a long time due to how many copies are recent, available and unclaimed, I think there is still money to be made on the Modern Masters foils. They’re only a couple of bucks but there were fewer foil printings than non-foil printings and I think the lower supply is more susceptible to increased demand. Sunforger fetches a ton of good cards in this deck and being able to suit up something with lifelink to swing at them and then Lightning Helix them right after or other crap like that is what is going to make this deck fun to play. Sunforger packages are common in Boros and I don’t forsee another reprint for a good long while. Foils are flat and when the demand profile changes, that will change.
Aetherflux Reservoir
A feature of foil cards that isn’t discussed all that often is that a high foil multiplier usually only works in one direction. A low one doesn’t but a high one tends to. A high foil multiplier gets higher as the non-foil price dips at rotation and the foil doesn’t. This is usually because a high foil multiplier while a card is still legal in standard indicates that the card is played primarily in a format that isn’t standard which means that people aren’t dumping their valuable foils at rotation because they’re in decks. You don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen at rotation and you can pretty comfortably buy foil copies this close to rotation. If it does dip at rotation by a lot, just buy the same amount again and mitigate how much you lost. All of the copies will go back up and your average price paid will be lower which makes your gains even better. This is an EDH staple and as boring as it is sometimes, don’t expect EDH decks that are capable of gaining a lot of life to go away anytime soon. I like foils of this. At rotation, non-foils will probably be bulk rares and I think it might be fun to pick up one or two hundred at bulk and sit on them to see if they hit $3 before they get reprinted.
Brightflame
What’s the ceiling on a Ravnica rare with no reprints? $100? This won’t be $100, but I think it can go up quite a bit based on the difference between its current demand profile (362 decks on EDHREC) and its future demand profile (more than that, I bet) due to how quickly the very few copies listed online will sell out. Can one commander supply enough demand to make a bulk rare go nuts unless it’s Atraxa-tier good? Maybe, maybe not. But we saw what The Gitrog Monster did to Squandered Resources and I think hitting $10 and settling at $5 is the dream but isn’t THAT unreasonable even given the difference between the amount of Mirage block and Ravnica block out there. This should stop being bulk given how good it is in this deck.
Balefire Liege
Balefire Liege won’t trigger your commander but it will trigger separately and get you some more reach, making it worth it to play with Lightning Helix in EDH, finally. This also triggers when you play creatures and enchantments so you’re going to be dangerous when any of your spells resolve. Wizards has shown a willingness to print these Lieges into the ground to get them into the hands of EDH players but for some reason, this one stopped being popular enough for them to bother and it hasn’t been reprinted since literally Planechase. That was a long time ago, so I think these are poised to go up based on any new demand, quite a bit should be coming from this deck which, I’m banking on getting built a lot.
Serra Ascendant
I think this is just about at its floor. It’s a good card, some players want four copies of this rather than 1 and it’s cheating in EDH. I think, like some of the other cards I mentioned being at their floor in Iconic Masters, now is the time to buy these regardless. Are these good in the spellcow deck? Certainly. But on top of that, they’re good, not likely to be reprinted soon and they have cross-format appeal. All of those factors added up and you have a card that’s going to go up no matter what happens. I even like the new art better, which is rare.
Reiterate
Mizzix hype spiked this card hard a few years back and the result of that is a price that’s stable for now but which can be easily upset by renewed demand. A second spike is going to spike harder and faster and stabilize higher. I don’t see a reprint coming soon so this is a pretty safe pick. I was going to do 5 this article instead of 6, but you figure out something I could have cut. This is all solid.
I like these picks a lot and I plan to keep googling “Firesong and Sunspeaker EDH” to see what other people are brewing. A lot of it’s garbage but the thing about garbage is you can still make a really tall stack of it. If enough people buy a bad, or obvious card, congratulations, the price went up and you made money. Probably the best aspect of Firesong and Sunspeaker and one I haven’t mentioned yet isn’t how exciting it is that Boros is finally getting a general that doesn’t suck, it’s that this deck, for as exciting as it looks, is probably going to be pretty linear. It’s really obvious how to build it and when that happens, you have a lot of people who want to build the deck vying for the same obvious cards, which is great for us. Get the obvious cards early, watch what people are brewing and note innovation and get ahead of that and remember that people being excited about something that doesn’t interest you can still be a money-making opportunity for you. That does it for me. Until next time!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
