James Chillcott

MTGFinance Strategies for 2018

In 2018, with Magic: The Gathering  facing it’s 25th anniversary, the game we all know and love continues to evolve, and the MTGFinance scene has been forced to evolve as well. Here are some of the strategies that we’re employing in the MTGFinance community in the year of our lord Jace, the Mind Sculptor:

Standard Tactics

Standard has been a pretty tough format to speculate on for the last eighteen months or so. The combination of frequent bannings, lame duck formats, poor card quality in North America and plentiful product has lead to a relative lack of card spikes in what was once the most important format in Magic.

To mine this particular vein, your best bet is going to be to get ahead of the pack in card evaluation via early testing of cards revealed during spoiler season. If you are well in tune with the evolving meta and your deck building skills are on point, you will maximize your chances of identifying the potential of cards like Rekindling Phoenix before the masses do. If those aren’t conditions you identify with, you’re better off focusing on other areas, since Standard only staple specs that don’t hit can be a major drain on your resources.

Singles Specs = EDH + Modern + ’93-’94

Let me be clear. Your best bet for singles speculation in 2018 is almost certainly going be found in the EDH and Modern formats, and in  cards from the first few years of Magic.

The reality is that the most important formats in North America at present are almost certainly Modern and Commander. Modern is the constructed format with the healthiest meta and just got a shake up via the unbanning of Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf. While the impact of these two cards has yet to be written, their impact on singles acquisition is likely to be meaningful as the meta shifts around them. Commander on the other hand has emerged over the last few years as a format that encourages the collecting of multiple deck lists, counterbalancing the need for just a single copy per deck. Commander and Modern players are both prone to foiling their decks, which coupled with relatively modest print runs for many key rare and mythic foils in both formats, often leads to strong financial opportunities. Foils of cards such as Expropriate, Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice, Kolaghan’s Command, Gurmag Angler, Collected Company, Eidolon of the Great Revel, Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher have all been generous contributors to my bottom line over the last few years. The key here is to rank your speculation options by total popularity, focusing your efforts on staples that appear in both format or across multiple archetypes in a single format. Couple this with reprint risk, targeting cards that are draining but have been printed recently and you’ll zero in on your sweet spot. Inclusion in M25 is a risk for many cards this spring, but past that point we’re likely in a reprint lull until Modern Masters 2019 next spring or summer. Cards in low supply in a single archetype can still make you money but represent higher meta risk, so prioritize accordingly.

As for Reserved List and ’93-’94 cards, as opportunities in Standard have become more scarce and Modern cards have increased in reprint risk, many speculators have turned to targeting some of the earliest cards in the game. Heavy speculatory pressure, first on RL cards, and most recently on absolutely anything printed in 1993 and 1994 has been driving up prices for most of the last year, and modest increases in ’93/’94 as a format is contributing as well. While many of these cards are going to be tough to unload in volume, focusing on playable cards in limited volume is likely to pay off. Recently I’ve been picking up underpriced copies of Mishra’s Factory, which serves as a solid example of a decent spec along these lines.

Foreign Booster Boxes

Talk to any of my peers that are writing about or working in MTGFinance and they’ll tell you the same thing: don’t invest in booster boxes. See, during the advent of the Modern format we saw booster box prices of everything from 7th Edition to Innistrad take off as Modern unfurled into a burgeoning player base and generated demand for older cards in the format that far exceeded the available supply. However, since the release of Return to Ravnica in 2012, most Standard legal booster boxes have failed to appreciate in value as the growth of the Magic player base has stalled out and Wizards has taken to overproducing inventory. Coupled with an era of more aggressive reprints sprinkled into main sets and the Masters series, newer booster boxes from newer sets have had trouble showing any price appreciation.

So what if you still plan to play Standard or just like to pop a couple of boxes of each new set? Well, one strategy that has been working out well for me is to acquire Russian booster boxes exclusively. Why Russian?

Well, firstly Russian copies of important EDH and Modern staples tend to command a significant premium of anywhere from 50 to 300%, especially if you’re talking about foils. Secondly, Russian staples (especially foils) are the least likely to be impacted by reprint risk given that the Masters series sets are unlikely to be printed in anything other than English, Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Thirdly, Russian booster boxes so far still seem to be printed in Europe at Carta Mundi, which is producing Magic cards at a higher quality than has been seen in the recent English language sets in North America that seem to be getting printed overseas using an inferior printing process. Finally, Russian boxes tend to be available via Ebay in North America within $10 or so of their English language counterparts. If you can get your hands on English boxes these days around $75-85, you can likely find Russian boxes for $85-90, which is easily justified by the upside of the Russian staples.

For example, I recently opened a case I had been holding of Russian Fate Reforged and between the presence of Russian versions of Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and averaging 10-20 copies of $2-5 Temur Battle Rage, Monk tokens and Gurmag Angler it was much easier to make money than it would have been with an English case. Of course this strategy does require that you memorize the cards you choose to play in decks, but that’s a good idea anyway.

I have had similar luck with Russian M15, Khans of Tarkir, Oath of the Gatewatch and Eldritch Moon. Battle for Zendikar and Kaladesh block sets is also a potential bonus.

Japanese and Korean boxes are also worth a look, but seeing as how they all tend to be about the same price, you might as well focus on Russian unless you have a preference. And remember, you can still strike out on a Russian box, so keep in mind that even next level booster box openings can still end up looking silly compared to some of your better options if your purposes are purely speculatory.

European & Japanese Arbitrage

One of my top strategies of 2017 was targeting Masterpiece Series Inventions and EDH foils on MagicCardMarket.com and having partners in Europe collect my packages locally before passing them back for resale every month or two. Heading into 2018 this strategy is still live, but the weakening of the USD against the Euro now requires greater disparities between pricing on both sides of the Atlantic to make it worth your time.

In Japan, cards on both Hareruya and TokyoMTG can still represent strong opportunities, especially if tech emerges first in North America and the Japanese aren’t yet on it. EDH foils from new sets are almost always a good deal on these sites early on, and so long as you keep your purchases to lower quantities you should have little problem unloading your specs 6-12 months down the road when the supply dries up.

Playing Janitor

Perhaps the most underappreciated concept in MTGFinance is that of attrition. In this context, the term refers to the fact that despite the millions of Magic cards printed every year, less than 1% of those cards recirculate into the secondary markest on sites like TCG, Ebay and MagicCardMarket. As the years drag on, any staple card that fails to see a reprint is very likely to spike in price, and despite the upswing in reprints in recent years there are still dozens to hundreds of relevant cards in need of a reprint at any given time. All of this leads to an economy that is strongly lead by supply side economics, a scenario that asks little of you other than to keep track of the inventory levels of various cards and to make your move in scenarios where the inventory has drained but the price has not yet spiked. Masterpiece Series Inventions and various Modern staples have provided plenty of opportunity along these lines in the last year, and you’re likely to get a shot at similar opportunities moving forward. Finally, with even bad Reserved List cards and cards from the first few years of Magic being increasingly targeted by speculators, there is little reason at this point to hold off on acquiring any Alpha, Beta, Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends or The Dark cards you might have reason to purchase.

Ignore the Bulk Scene

If you pay attention to the MTGFinance content stream, you are more than likely familiar with the folks that are focused on mining bulk Magic cards for profit. Now, if you’re a long time player with a lot of unsorted cards lying around from years past you certainly owe it to yourself to get organized, give your collection a few passes for value, compile a buylist order to fuel a new deck or major purchase, and then turn back to other strategies.

See the thing is, with all of the extra inventory over the last decade and the flat lining growth in the game, bulk rates have been declining and the process of acquiring, sorting and reselling your finds is more of a job than a hobby. If your end game is to become a vendor or work for a vendor, than this is a skill set that makes perfect sense to add to your repertoire. If however you are more of an armchair speculator you are much better off focusing on consolidating your collection and holdings, so that you can maximize profits while minimizing your time spent on task. If you had invested in Euro sourced MPS Sol Rings last year in the mid $80s USD, there is little doubt that $2k spent on that project type would far exceed the same amount spent on bulk. The more you value your time, the more true this becomes.

Early Bird Gets the Worm

Price trends often take a few days or even weeks to percolate down through the entirety of the global Magic economy.  To take advantage of this process, your best bet is to perfect your techniques for staying ahead of the curve.

If you’re a night owl, get in the habit of checking the price tracking sites, including MTGPrice.com, MTGStocks.com and EchoMTG.com in the early hours of the morning, as these sites tend to run their price update scans during low traffic times. By being the first to spot an emerging price you’ll give yourself the best shot at mopping up the last few copies of a draining supply while everyone else is still asleep.

Depending on the timing and location of major event coverage, your opportunity may be to target vendors in Europe or Asia. If you happen to live near a solid density of vendors that lag in their pricing updates, showing up early at a local shop can lead to big windfalls as well.

Ultimately, you should play to your strengths in 2018, leveraging your format knowledge, available capital and existing collection to maximize your profit or savings. Good luck!

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Core Sets and Reprint Risk

The unbannings were Monday and lots of people have churned through lots of cards as a result. Liliana of the Veil has shot up, but Dreadbore/Hero’s Downfall haven’t yet. I like Dreadbore a lot, and it’s in the process of climbing pretty hard.

You’re welcome.

There’s something else that I’ve been noticing, though, and that some people have been mentioning briefly. We keep getting distracted by new spoilers or art or unbannings, but here’s the reality:

Core Sets are back, releasing Magic 2019 in July of this year. It’s been quite a while, all the way back to Magic Origins in 2015. Three years doesn’t seem like that long a time, but think about all the changes and especially all the reprints we’ve been through with the growth of assorted Masters sets.

It’s entirely possible that the Core Set is one of the main relief valves in Standard, but what we can’t overlook is the possibility that lots of our favorite casual cards or Modern staples might get reprinted.

Let me show you some examples.

Goblin Piledriver, with one printing in Onslaught, was $15 when he got reprinted in Magic Origins. It’s got the same art, but a new frame, so you’re free to have a preference. Briefly, he hit $30 on pure speculation that people would build Goblins in Standard but that never materialized and the price never recovered. Now you can get the original for $4 and the Origins version for $2.

How about Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth?

Way up and then way down…

This card went from $40 to $10, and while it bounced back to $30 during Eldrazi Winter (allowing Eye of Ugin to tap for mana) it’s back to $20. That’s a lot of value eliminated and from a card that wasn’t seeing a lot of Modern play.

From the same Core Set, let’s look at Chord of Calling:

Ah, Ravnica…

Even with Chord being a card used in an infinite combo strategy in Modern, even with the number of Commander decks running it, the card can’t even get to half of where it was.

I could go on. Preeminent Captain, from $6 to $1. Darksteel Forge, from $8 to $2 (but back up to $10, as it hasn’t been printed since 2013). Sanguine Bond from $10 to $3, and hammered again and again, frankly.

This is going to happen a lot more, and there’s little we can do about it. Wizards is unlikely to print something in Standard as strong as Thoughtseize again, but there’s an awful lot of cards percolating in the $10-30 range that would give punch to a Core Set, an excitement, and then lead to some very low prices.

Foils aren’t safe either, so don’t go kidding yourself about that. It’s some protection if you’ve got old-border (or Future Sight) foils, as those tend to bounce back easily, but every reprinting hits hard.

So what are we to do?

As they have said, they aren’t going to do the most powerful Modern cards. Thoughtseize warped Standard for two years. Fetches did much the same, and I highly doubt we’d get those in the Core Set. I also don’t think we’re going to get the filter lands, as those do’t carry enough drawback. Wizards is trying to play it safe on fixing.

What we will get are fringe-like cards, casual gold, cards that are high in value because they haven’t been printed in a long time. Here’s a few examples.

Patriarch’s Bidding ($17/$40 foil): A whole lot of people have written a whole lot of words about how badly this needs a reprint, and here we are, with no extra copies, ever, in the last 16 years. The only thing from keeping this being a lot more expensive is that only tribes with black can take advantage. Yes, it’s crying out for a reprint, and when it comes the damage will be severe. If you’ve got extras, move them out for just about anything else.

Rest in Peace ($7/$24): This has all sorts of pressure on the price, but the key thing here is that the card is five years old with no reprints at all yet, for perhaps the best graveyard hoser ever. If you want to make the case about Leyline of the Void, I’ll listen, but I think this is better. It’s something you ought to be playing more in Commander, and it’s gaining popularity over time as sideboard card in Modern and Legacy:

It’s been a pick several times over the years, but now…

Graphs do no just go up up up and never stop. This is the perfect sort of card to put in at rare in a Core Set and while it’ll bum Limited players out, the formats need cards like this to keep all the other silliness in check.

Craterhoof Behemoth ($13/$22/$40 for AVR foil)

First of all, this just got a reprint in Modern Masters 2017 last year, and observe what happened to the price!

Obligatory ‘Hoof, there it is!’ joke

That’s a big hit but it’s also a mythic from a $10/pack set. Now that this is a $13 card, it’s prime bait to be a mythic that becomes a sub-$5 card when put into a Core Set, and sadly, Wizards needs cheap mythics as well as pricey ones. I understand that the card is busted, but it’s also 8 mana, and if you wanted to tell me it’s fairer than Bonfire of the Damned in Limited…no.

Craterhoof is the type of card that I don’t ever want to be deep on. It’s got too much appeal and it’s been reprinted once, indicating that Wizards will get to it again eventually. It’s great trade bait, you’ll never keep a single copy in your binder for long, but do not get caught with a stack of these when the reprint hits.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this game. 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.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #277 I Heard This Before

 

Corbin (@Chosler88) is gone. So Jason (@jasonEalt ) and DJ (@Rose0fThorns) get to play podcast with host emeritus Ryan (@crypplecommand) and guest Jim (@Phrost_). The Crew talk about the meta shaking changes to modern and how best to buy, arbitrage, and profit from them.

Also make sure to check us out on Youtube  https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

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Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: The EDH Implications of the Jace and Bloodbraid Unbannings

There aren’t any.

We good? Any more questions?

Look, if you’re going to insist I write an article this week, we’re going to have to pick a different topic. That’s handy, because I noticed another deck that isn’t new nor are most of the cards in it and I think that’s a good thing. New cards printed in Ixalan block, specifically Rivals of Ixalan have renewed interest in an older Commander because those cards are perfect for an older archetype, though not much else. What happens when cards are printed that are super narrow but seem laser-guided to one established deck? Well, those cards themselves are likely to be pretty worthless financially unless they make an impact somewhere else, but they get people interested in an older deck and that’s worth talking about.

So what’s my thesis today? I’ve been doing this long enough and tracking my older predictions long enough to know what actually happens in cases like this and what happens less often and what happens even less often so I’m going to season my predictions with my experience. I’m going to say “this could go up” less often than I used to because by now I have a little bit better of an idea of what it will take and what has the goods. 50% of the cards we’re going to talk about  are going to likely go up, maybe a little maybe a lot, based on more people building the deck based on it being popular on EDHREC and the cards coming out being so good in it. The other half are cards that were going to go up anyway but I hadn’t really thought about them until I saw people played them in this deck and that reminded me to talk about how the card is at its floor. Both of those are equally valid. You’re partly paying me to think through some stuff for you because you don’t want to understand EDH finance and you’re partly paying me to remind you of cards you might have thought were good pick-ups but forgot about because there’s a lot going on.

 

Let’s get into the money part.

So this has been a commander for a while and it’s being built an OK amount. Per EDHREC’s current sampling data, Sidisi is the 11th-most popular deck so the current number of decks in the database is a little misleading. For reference, there are currently only twice as many deck for Atraxa in our database. This isn’t a problem; remember, we have always used those numbers to establish ratios rather than look at the numbers as absolutes. The numbers help but the more you use them qualitatively and the less you use them quantitatively, the happier you will be because you will get confused by the data less. Yes, I realize I am implying I use “numbers” which have absolute values, qualitatively. Sidisi having 1,880 decks registered on the site is an exact but fairly meaningless amount without context. Quantitatively, that’s about half as many as Atraxa, which has the largest number of decks registered in the database. Qualitatively, we have enough Sidisi decks to bother looking at the cards in it. How’s that grab you? See why we’re not sweating absolute numbers a ton? It doesn’t do us any good. There are only 10 Commanders more popular on the site so let’s assume there are enough Sidisi decks for us to care about it. So what’s new?

Having lots of different data displayed can tell you a lot of information. When you list the most popular decks of all time, Sidisi is 11th. When you look at most popular this month, Sidisi jumps to 9th. When you look at this week, Sidisi jumps to 6th. That means that while Sidisi was always pretty popular, something has changed in the last few weeks. Of the 10 decks more popular than Sidisi of all time, 4 of them haven’t had a new deck registered in the last month and 7 of them were less popular than Sidisi this month or week despite being more popular all-time. Something happened. I submit that the printing of these four cards in Rivals of Ixalan gave the deck quite a boost.

Milling yourself is pretty handy in a Sidisi deck, and giving yourself a chance at a Sidisi trigger every time you attack and bringing your milled lands back from the dead is so useful it feels like World Shaper was tailor-made for this deck. Other decks could use that ability, sure (I personally can’t wait to pants people with Admonition Angel) but World Shaper has been making Sidisi players salivate since it was spoiled.

Journey to Eternity is a great way to keep an important creature alive or just use as a sort of Pattern of Rebirth that gets you a utility land to bring back important creatures over and over. Your graveyard becomes a bigger hand with cards like Journey.

Path of Discovery is another card that seemed tailor-made for Sidisi. In fact, I started tracking how many more people were registering (I don’t have a good way to differentiate between people re-registering an old list or making a brand new one but new interest is new interest) Sidisi decks based on the spoiling of this card. It’s not great elsewhere but it’s dumb here.

Nezahal I could take or leave. What, 3 ridiculous bomb inclusions isn’t enough? It’s enough. Now let’s look at what I think could go up.

Traverse the Ulvenwald

A historical low for a powerful, 1-mana tutor played in Modern and EDH? Okey dokey. Sign me up for all of the copies. I don’t know if this can get any cheaper but I don’t think you worry. Spend what you can and if it does get cheaper, borrow money and buy even more. There are a lot of copies to soak up but this card is just too good and with it doing such a good impression of Worldly Tutor for a few bucks, I expect people will be getting up on this. It has pretty healthy EDHREC metrics, too.

Worried about the glut of copies?

Maybe you shouldn’t be. The foils are almost gone and the price is beginning to flirt with $15. That’s going to be a 10x multiplier soon. This is as good as I can feel about a card. If you have $100 extra bucks, buy those last few foils from eBay or stock up on the non-foil copies. Either way, this card will pop and it will be really obvious in hindsight. Instead of saying “I knew this would happen” in a reddit post like an unhelpful person, I’m telling you what will happen before it does so there is still time to buy copies for yourself. You’re welcome.

Cryptbreaker

Speaking of cards about to bottom out, this is a card that deserves a look. Not as reprintable as typical Zombie staples like Undead Warchief or Cemetery Reaper, this is a shoo-in for Sidisi decks. It’s a discard outlet, Zombie-maker and card-drawing outlet all in one card that happens to be a Zombie itself, so you can tap it to itself.

Foils got a bit crazy last summer but that just means another spike will be harder because dealers are sitting on a lot of copies so there won’t be cheap ones to back-fill demand.  I think this could hit that same value again, albeit getting there slowly but more organically and maintain it. I don’t think this card is a reprint risk and the moderate-to-low risk (if we’re being very conservative) is further mitigated in the case of foils. I realize we’re going back to doing core sets. I also think this is safe even in that case.

Other Sidisi

I stopped paying attention when this hit $4ish then started to crater. I sort of got distracted a little when it hit $2 and that sucks because it has basically doubled up. this demand is organic and the blue line representing dealer buy prices is going up right along with it which means no one thinks this is done growing. No one is out buying Dragon’s Maze of Tarkir packs so what was busted was busted and copies are drying up. This is a good card in its own right both as a Commander for people who love mono-Black decks that can tutor for stuff and creatures that have good abilities and it slots into a ton of black decks. I wish I had noticed this was creeping up last summer but I’m making up for it now. It’s basically removed a lot of the speculation I would have done about whether the demand would be organic. With all doubt removed, get on board. You can’t realize a double up since it already did that, but there will be growth and in the mean time, you have great binder candy.

The foils are a little trickier, having basically grown at a rate that outpaced dealer confidence. I don’t think the price will come down a ton but dealers don’t like it at its current price, which is too bad. Still, with this being a bad set that wasn’t bought a ton, non-foils are probably pretty good given how few copies there seem to be out there. I’m a seller in foil and a buyer in not. If the foils go up some more, whoopie. You would have made more money buying Traverse.

That does it for me. As you can see, the implications of the unbanning of Jace and BBE reach far and wide, even being felt in an EDH deck where card prices are going up for an unrelated reason. As always, check out the page for Sidisi on your own and try and use my method to scope out cards on your own. Got a spec idea I didn’t mention? Run it by me in the comments. Thanks for being a reader. Until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY