Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Still Don’t Look Right

Readers!

I know you think I pretty much nailed it last week, but I still decided to come back this week with some more hot examples, fresh from… wherever they originate? Which is somewhere hot? Rather than contemplate the consequences of my idioms, we should back to what really matters – specs of any temperature served to you in article form.

Today I did some poking around as I often do, and I found something I guess I didn’t quite expect, and it goes to show once again why it pays to look at data again in a new context to help figure out what it means. Let’s see if you catch the outlier here.

You can make a few pronouncements if you really study the data carefully, but when you look elsewhere for what is going on in EDH, you might see some of these cards in a new light.

The first picture was the set page for the PAWBO Commander precon decks, the second pic is the most built decks of the last week. Sure, it’s obvious that Urtet is a big deal, but you can’t look at the set page and pick out at a glance that the card is “5th most built deck of the week” good. All Will Be One is old news, they have begun spoiling two new sets since it dropped.

This naturally made me check Urtet’s page and I found something right away. I clicked.

The High Synergy cards came up. Do you see what I saw?

Wake The Past is more on TCG than on CK? I clicked.

It is certainly played in enough decks before and a big one recently. Still doesn’t explain the price discrepancy. One more click.

Here we have our answer. If a small number of copies go missing from TCG Player, there are enough sellers with enough copies to list them without too much disruption. Card Kingdom is at the mercy of their own online buylist and convention buyers in a post-convention era to keep stocked. TCG Player is in control of this card’s price and while the incentive to be the cheapest and have your copy sell first is there, it won’t be enough to keep this below $6, probably more until they reprint it before my copies sell.

These few investigatory mouseclicks led to a big discovery – a card that was secretly selling out and which is great synergy with all 900 Red White Artifacts commanders they have farted out recently on top of Urtet, which made me think we were getting a Memnarch effect and made me sad.

While we’re at it, this is another High Synergy Urtet card, same deal with the lower price on CK because it sold out there first.

This week, CK is a canary in the coal mine, weakly trying to choke out a warning. Every time I saw a price where CK was cheaper on Urtet’s page, it was sold out.

Every “x matters” (I try not to say tribal anymore and this is the cleanest way to swap in a new word, imo) strategy is going to be this obvious, but it needs to be backed up by building for the cards to sell. They’re selling, pay attention to cards that sell out on one of the most expensive websites for people who don’t buylist to buy cards. Card Kingdom can tell you as much or more about the EDH market as any other site, including EDHREC, provided you know where to look.

Is this method great for figuring out specs way ahead of time like I prefer to? No, certainly not, but if you spend enough time looking at prices on EDHREC, your eyes catches when CK is cheaper. This week, it appears to be because Myr stuff is finally popping and current TCG Player retail is probably fine considering CK will almost certainly restock higher than that if they ever get stock back in.

That does it for me this week, readers. Thanks for reading and talking appraisingly about my art in the MTG Price Pro Trader Discord which is worth the cost of a subscription in and of itself. Until next time!

Casual Fridays

What Makes A Bad Spec Bad?

 I’ve written hundred of articles about cards worth buying, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a handy summary of the main reasons why I avoid buying cards. James and I talk about this on the MTG Fast Finance podcast, where we go over our picks and reader picks, but I felt it was high time for a compilation of things that steer me away.

Plus, we’re in a perfect storm of buying opportunities. We know a lot about what’s coming (Tom Bombadil, Slivers, a sheet of Legendary reprints, etc.) and we know there’s a lot of reprints coming up as well. Time to examine the categories and qualities that make for a bad spec!

One joke we make is that there’s no bad specs, only long-term ones. I can attest to this, having made multiple purchases of cards that just didn’t get there. Perhaps I’ll examine the longest-term holds I currently have in the future, but when you’re speculating on cards, one of the risks is that you buy a hundred copies of Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering and they go nowhere.

Red Flag #1: Preconstructed deck reprints

Wizards puts a certain amount of value into the Commander-focused precon decks. Needs to be enough that people feel they are getting their money’s worth, but not so much that big operations can just take all the decks and crack them for singles. It’s a fine line to walk, made worse by the timing. They have to decide months, sometimes years in advance what to put in these decks. 

One of the things that we talk about a lot is getting premium versions of a card, because those are less likely to be reprinted. The worst feeling for me as the owner of 104 copies of regular frame, nonfoil Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering is seeing that card in a precon deck. The only difference between what I have and what’s in the deck is a symbol. Sometimes that symbol is worth a lot due to scarcity factors, but generally it’s a dollar or two at most. 

So one of the things I watch out for, especially when there’s many things on the horizon, is what version of a card I’m going for. There’s often profit to be made in the basic versions of cards, but safety is found in the premium versions.

Red Flag #2: Too many premium versions 

A card can be a good spec but if there’s several options to choose from, it can be very tricky indeed. An example of this can be found in Modern Horizons 2: the enemy fetchlands.

That’s a card (and a cycle of cards honestly) that are crying out to be purchased. Modern Horizons 2 was opened for a long time, longer than anyone expected, and while some of the chase mythics are hot as can be (Ragavan and the pitch Elementals) a lot of the other cards and reprints have become quite reasonably priced.

Question is, do you buy the old border foil? The textured retro frame? The FEA versions? This is to go with the OG Zendikar ones, or the Expedition frame from Battle for Zendikar? Maybe the Zendikar Rising Expedition? Perhaps the unique art and lower supply present on the Secret Lair nonfoil?

Whenever possible, we want to focus on one special frame. Cards that have gotten a retro foil, a Secret Lair, and a FEA version mean that while all of them might well rise, they’ll all move together and move more slowly. For example, Sram, Senior Edificer:

The Retro foil from Time Spiral Remastered is the only special version, everything else is a foil regular frame. Focus on cards like that.

Red Flag #3: Regular foil versions

In the Collector Booster age, it’s become obvious that players don’t want just a shiny card, they want a rare shiny card. For cards that have a regular, a foil, an Extended Art and a FEA, the first three versions of the card tend to be close together in price. Foil cards in the regular frame might as well be regular nonfoils, in terms of their price. 

Foils are just not prioritized the same way other versions are. Nonfoils are better for sanctioned play, as there’s no curling issues. Special-frame nonfoils are often more valuable than original-frame foils, making the choice that much simpler. The only time I’ve ever gone after regular foils has been when they are the last to spike, the leftovers. Otherwise, I’m staying away.

Red Flag #4: Cards that have been outclassed/obsolete 

Magic has had something like 25,000 unique cards printed in its lifetime. Power creep renders some cards worse than others, or just not good enough for the modern times. That’s perfectly okay, that’s the sign of a healthy game, it’s evolving past its origins. 

Some cards from early sets are ridiculously strong, undercosted, or did broken things. Others were too synergistic, and will never be reprinted. Consider a card like Ancient Ziggurat vs. Unclaimed Territory. Why would I ever spec on a strictly worse card?

Exceptions here can include things like a tiny supply or being on the Reserve List. there are some breathtakingly bad cards on that list, and some of them have gone through notable spikes for that reason and that reason alone. Would you believe me if I told you that in 2016, Narwhal spiked to ten bucks on RL hype?

I hope this list of what not to do helps guide your future efforts, and explains what we’re up to when we’re making picks. It’s important to avoid the bad, as well as buy the good stuff!

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: It Don’t Look Right

Readers!

This week I was going to write about the specs that I think are likely to go up in price as a result of the Lord of the Rings 20 years too late to strike while the Mount Doom is hot edition giving us a true Saga Commander in Bomb Tombadil. Cliff scooped me by writing that exact article a day earlier and that means that we at least have a consensus as a writing team. We didn’t discuss this beforehand, if we had, I wouldn’t have to pivot to another idea at the 11th hour.

I’m not complaining, I was looking for inspiration and found some quickly- some of the prices don’t look right. Whenever I come across a price that looks wrong, I investigate and about a third of the time it makes me think about something I hadn’t been keeping my eye on. Other times it’s nothing. I’ll talk about what to look for and also pretend this is more art than science so you keep taking my advice. Job security an all that. Speaking of job security, did I tell you I never learned how to segue?

This card is literally the first card I looked at when I opened EDHREC today. That’s phenomenal luck for a guy who had to audible to a new topic – can you see what looks wrong to me? Apart from the 3rd price being MTGO, that is. Left is Card Kingdom, right is TCG Player. That’s right, the price is higher on TCG Player than on CK. That’s unusual, and we should verify that the cards got scraped correctly. Sometimes the price is lower because they sold out and the scraper hits an art card or an oversized Planeswalker card or something. Sometimes the price is lower because CK hasn’t noticed the card is going gangbusters on TCG Player and no one bothered to scoop up the copies on CK. How many copies are we talking, anyway?

When it says “8 available” it means “8 minimum.” Card Kingdom has it set up so the Jasons Alt of the world don’t buy 300 copies and then tell them “You can hang onto those and just give me whatever you’ll be paying on your buylist next week.” How many EX copies, though?

You know that it’s actually 1 copy. Any number under 8 you know is probably their stock unless they have some unsorted yet. The cheapest copies have not sold yet, and they might even be cheaper than TCG Player. So far the opposite of what I expected is happening – and a trip to TCG Player might untangle this snarl a bit.

So not only is the real price above $4, it’s selling at that price.

The cheapest copy is actually $5.19 for a non-foil and $4.47 for a foil, because Collector Boosters have no pity or remorse and they fart more curly foils onto the market than the market needs or wants. The foil may be tanking but the non-foil price is going up. It’s above $4 and it’s going up.

Brainstorm Brewery listeners will be familiar with DJ referencing something he calls the “Direct Premium” and I think that may be the case here with the big partition between Zoopiez and TOA. I don’t know who Zoopiez is, but we all know TOA and they’re direct sellers. If a seller can get $6 for a card on direct, they will and the “last sold” price can sometimes confound the market price calculation. $6 copies selling on direct while $4 copies languish in stores with few sales and a good reason for that is the cart optimizer. The optimizer doesn’t always favor stores with the best price, it usually favors the largest inventories. That’s why you can get $1 more for a card because they have already paid shipping once and the optimizer will keep your copy in the cart for $6 rather than send the buyer a $5 card with $1 shipping because the $6 card with $1 shipping is calculated as $6 not $7 by the optimizer provided you have shipping set up to not charge $1 on each additional item. Another reason is that sellers are reluctant to list cards under $4 because after the flat payment and fees, you made less than buylist on a $3-$5 card.

Do I think that this card will continue to go up in price? I do.

Of the 28 non-reprint cards in the Brothers” War Commander decks, Workshop is played the most by a good 20% margin. It can go in any color deck, making it versatile enough to not immediately be ruled out as a potential staple, and it synergizes with weird, unfair lands that 12 year old me loved because they produced a ton of mana and 38 year old me loves because they still produce a ton of mana and they stopped making new Cloudposts because they were broken. It’s the most played card in precons that are all done getting opened because Brothers’ War was 9 sets ago (look it up) and it’s cheaper on CK than on TCG Player. One of those prices is about to change and my money is that the $4 will change to a $6 or a $7 soon, so get them at $4 why don’t you?

Also, don’t ask why the borderless version is cheaper, that makes no sense to me, unless you could only get the borderless one in collector boosters in which case it does make sense and I should just take out this paragraph where I figure out something obvious and act like it’s new information. Don’t let me forget to come back and delete this.

There is a good reason I always check when a card costs less on Card Kingdom – the scrapers on EDHREC are good but only as good as the API they access. I don’t have a problem with CK or their API at all, I am just saying that sometimes something was misreported and you can catch it with a quick spot check.

Well well well, what have we here?

And there you have it. The cheapest copy actually available is $8.49 for the non-foil, regular bordered version. If this sold out on CK at $8 but is going for more on TCG, I can’t imagine that CK is going to restock the borderless version for $8.

Also, TCG’s price was a little inflated at $8.89, but perhaps not for long.

The foils under $10 are gone, and the price is a bit all over the place, but it looks like nothing is even getting listed under $7 anymore whereas a few days ago you could snag one for $6.60. It looks like this isn’t actually cheaper on CK, but it did cause us to look at a card that might be making a move. It’s a mythic, after all.

A mythic that refuses to go below $7 no matter how much product is opened. Not that anyone is opening product from 10 sets ago (they released a new set since I wrote that previous paragraph).

It’s worth looking at cards like this, too, where the TCG Price is cheaper but, like, WAY cheaper. The thing about CK is that they can charge what they charge because people know and trust them and they have a great buylist where you can purchase cards with credit and like it or not, CK is the go-to shop for a lot of EDH Players. If CK is getting away with charging $18 for this card that may or may not be good, I’ve had no time to test it.

Great googily moogily, CK believes in this card the way The Darkness Believed in a thing called love. Is TCG Player really selling this for like half price?

CK may know EDH but TCG Player knows when a graph looks like this, it’s not time to buy, yet. I don’t know if the $20 on CK is correct, it might very well not be and they might very well lower the price soon. However, I have no confidence in this card as a spec. It’s likely not nearly as useful as people predicted it would be and the price tailing off on TCG as sellers race to the bottom coincides with there not being all that much you can do with this card. It seems like a bad card, it’s ranked 11th/28 in the set, which is a 40% which is a failing grade. I think TCG Player, a site that has multiple sellers competing with each other and where the price the card sells for is still falling, has it right here. Sometimes the cheap copies are a buy if the card’s $18 (or $20!) on CK is justified. In this case, seems not.

I hope it was informative to get a view into how I look at cards and evaluate them as specs. I didn’t give you my normal 5 specs this week, but if you’re feeling froggy, why not look at the other 25 cards we didn’t talk about from Brother’s War precons and see if any of the other prices seem off. A few are under $1 and I wouldn’t bother with those – any card less than the cost of shipping isn’t going to give you accurate price comparison data. That does it for me, nerds. Thank you so much for reading my stuff. Until next time!

Casual Fridays

Tom is going to be the Bomb!

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Earlier this week, we got our first taste of the Lord of the Rings set coming this summer. The One Ring has made Mind over Matter spike, there’s other combos coming, but for my money, this might be the best value-add in the set:

Tom Bombadil <showcase> [LTR]

Some cards have started to grow as a result of Tom’s preview, but there’s still a lot of planning that can be done and profits to be made when Saga-related cards start spiking in June.

A caveat here: We’re getting an Enchantment-themed preconstructed deck in Commander Masters in August, so some of these might be reprinted then, in the main LotR set, or even in a Secret Lair before then. These are the risks in the modern day, and while we can minimize the problems, sometimes a fresh wave comes along.

Power Conduit ($1.50 for the cheapest version, $22 for the most expensive) – This card has been a rollercoaster, allowing for multiple peaks and valleys as it interacts with new things.

Sagas really, really, REALLY want the ability to remove a counter. If you can remove a counter while the last chapter ability is on the stack, you won’t lose your Saga. From the Comprehensive Rules: “704.5s If the number of lore counters on a Saga permanent is greater than or equal to its final chapter number and it isn’t the source of a chapter ability that has triggered but not yet left the stack, that Saga’s controller sacrifices it. See rule 714, ‘Saga Cards.’ “

This means that we can re-use the final abilities of Sagas, as long as we can remove a counter at instant speed. Power Conduit is one way to do that, and it’ll do that for no mana, plus give you some +1/+1 counters if you’d like! I fully expect that you can buy these for under $2 for a little longer, with the goal of selling near $5.

Hex Parasite ($4 to $15) – This costs some mana, but works in the same way. 

Hex Parasite hasn’t ridden the same set of waves because it’s got a black color identity, and the only Saga commander we’ve had so far was GW. Make no mistake, though, a lot of cheap copies have already been scooped up. There’s still room for profit here, especially on the foils. I think a double-up to $30 is likely, as it was a third set rare from 2011. Barring a reprint, the supply here is tiny indeed. 

Resourceful Defense ($5 to $7) – There’s a lot of fun applications for this card, but it’s expensive to use. One thing that can happen, if you want it to, is that one Saga having its final chapter can trigger another Saga, and then a third, until all of them are done. You might enjoy those dominoes tumbling, you might not. If you have Myth Realized or MindUnbound, those are cards that would really like some spare lore counters, too. Either way, I’d expect the EA versions of this to hit at least $10, and possibly $15.

Scholar of New Horizons (both versions under $1) – This might be a great brick play, since it was in the precon retro border deck for Brothers’ War Commander. Again, we get to remove a counter and go get a Plains (note, not a basic version, so shocks/Triomes are options) because Sagas are mana hungry!

Historian’s Boon (all versions under $1) – Dominaria United Commander did have FEA versions of some cards, and that’s definitely where I want to be with these copies. The reprint risk is very high here, but at such a low buy-in, you can get a brick and not worry too much.

Chisei, Heart of Oceans ($1 to $11) – Removing a counter is generally good for Sagas, and while this isn’t at instant speed, it’s a way to keep using Sagas.

There’s other fun things that remove counters (Sanctuary Warden, Thrull Parasite) but there’s also some fun Sagas and accessories that deserve some attention too.

Hall of Heliod’s Generosity ($9 to $17) – Many copies have sold since the preview for Tom, but there’s still a lot left out there. Prices haven’t gone up much yet, and I especially think the retro foils from MH1 are the play here. It’s always good to recur your Sagas, but putting them on top is so wonderfully synergistic with Tom!

I fully expect the OBF version to hit $25, maybe even $35. A lot of copies were soaked up by other enchantment themes, and with Sagas constantly coming and going, the card will do a lot of work in this deck too.

Brilliant Restoration ($0.50 to $2) – There’s more than a few ways to bring back all enchantments at once, but this is the most recent and very inexpensive for premium versions. I generally prefer special frames over EA versions, but both of those should rise at the same rate because the two versions should have had roughly the same number printed.

Kiora Bests the Sea God ($3 to $6) – If Saga accessories are good, all the Sagas should come along as well. This is a strong candidate for a reprint soon, so I’m less eager to buy some copies, but I’m fully prepared for this to bump to $10+ if it’s not given new inventory. 

Phyrexian Scriptures ($2 to $9) – This had a List version that’s quite affordable, to go with Tom Bombadil being indestructible if you have the right amount of Sagas out on the board. Combining this and Power Conduit means you’re wiping the board every single turn, and that’s a glorious time indeed.

The Cruelty of Gix ($1 to $3) – Read Ahead is a very powerful ability with this deck, and it’s easy to imagine a scenario where the last ability is powerfully degenerate, given how Commander decks operate. These two black Sagas haven’t had a chance to shine, but I think Tom will bring out their best play patterns and really increase the prices.

The Elder Dragon War (bulk to $1) – All of these abilities are worth doing over and over again, so you decide which useful thing to repeat: pyroclasm, rummaging, or making Dragon tokens.

The Kami War ($0.50 to $2) – Again, this is a broken Saga doing broken things, and when you build the deck right you’re going to do those things on a loop! Enjoy!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

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