UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Unstable Finance

December 1, 2017 Cliff Daigle

I love silver-bordered sets. I am exactly the target market for Unstable, because if you’ve got some weird way to play this game, I’m all over it. I’ve enjoyed all of my experiences with Unglued and Unhinged and I’m fully expecting to enjoy Unstable.

What needs to be said is that from a financial standpoint, there’s some very specific ideas to keep in mind as you pre-order Unstable and decide if you want to speculate in this market. I have been there, and I’ve got some insights that you should heed.

Big Idea #1: Time and Printing

Unglued was printed in August 1998, about five years after Magic’s debut, in the time between Exodus and the beginning of Urza’s Saga block. Unhinged was printed in November 2004, during Kamigawa block, one of the dips in Magic’s popularity.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Unstable will be printed and sold at a much greater rate, I’d guess somewhere in the 10-20x range. There is going to be so much more of this set, and even though we have mythics now, we are really lacking in iconic callbacks and inside jokes.

Big Idea #2: Who’s this for?

Unstable is aimed at people who want Magic to be weird. Unusual. Unexpected, random plays. This is not everyone, and that’s also going to contribute to the supply being quite significant. Anyone who wants Unstable will be able to get it, because people with a competitive focus are going to ignore it. When a sizeable piece of the market ignores a product, pay attention.

At the same time, though, Unstable is really going to appeal to some people and some playgroups. People who don’t who to their LGS might pick up an extra box or two just to draft it with their friends. Maybe this is the perfect holiday gift!

I am trying to keep my own bias in check here. Unstable is not going to be available online. I want to say that means more gets bought, but there is a very good chance it ends up like Conspiracy 2 and its super-top-heavy in prices.

Big Idea #3: The ballast of lands

There’s one land per pack, in a box of 36 packs. One in every 121 lands will have a Steamflogger Boss, apparently. That’s pretty guaranteed value, and that is unusual for Magic. If the lands are selling at $2 each from your store, they are getting boxes for around the $72 worth of lands they will get, and that’s before you get to the foils or chase cards.

If the land price is down at $1 retail, boxes won’t get cracked. If it’s at $2, then there will be stores cracking packs just for the land, and that will flood the market with every other card. I don’t know where these will end up long-term, but I know that for the next few months, lands won’t be over $2.

Let me illustrate this with Conspiracy 2’s prices, in nonfoil first:

And now the foils:

With this set, you can hit BIG. You can get a box on eBay for $90, and there’s two foil mythics that pay for the box and then some. Several others will cover half the value of the box, and there’s $2 Serum Visions at uncommon when you’re mining for value. Unfortunately, the average box is worth less than that $90, and it’s not worth the risk of opening a foil Berserk and nothing else in your 23 other packs.

Unstable offers 36 lands, 35 if you’re unlucky. If those get as high as $3 retail, you will be able to buy a box and get your money back just by selling those basics and the rest is extra value. That’s for us, but if you’re a big store who gets boxes cheaper, then the retail needs to be lower for it to be worth it to them.

I think the supply will be plentiful for 95% of the cards in the set. This is going to be printed a whole bunch, and there’s a built-in mechanism for keeping the prices of lands in check. There isn’t much that will hold a lot of value.

I want to say that some of the unique things will be valuable, especially in foil. They might be worth a few bucks, but the market is pretty soft for such things. Don’t rely on unique cubes to drive the price of Contraptions in foil or nonfoil. I have about twenty foil Cogwork Librarian that I picked up between $2 and $4…and it’s still about $2, three years later. The demand from cubers just hasn’t materialized yet…and likely never will.

Crow Storm foils will be valuable to some people as an inside joke. Most people won’t care. Some people will want a foil set of Unstable, and that’s a small part of the playerbase. The crazy-high foil prices for some Unhinged cards is entirely due to the relatively small amount that was printed. I surely have a pair of foil Little Girl because I have two daughters, and enough MTG dads feel the same way to push that to be a $20 foil common.

I’m looking at you, Summon the Pack. You’re not going to fool me.

Really, there’s only two cards that have the chance to be iconic, and I think that supply is going to impact these cards and keep the prices low: Urza, Academy Headmaster is exactly what an Un-card should be, and that’s before we even know the abilities.

The other is Spike, Tournament Grinder. I think that foils of this card have real potential, but as this is a rare, not a mythic, there’s going to be a lot out there. (Am I going to pick up two foil Spikes and find a way to frame my Little Girls growing up to be Spikes? Duh.)

If it had a different name, I would be all over Super-Duper Death Ray as a spec target, as this looks like it could be a real card. We’ve already given spells lifelink, why not trample? The name turns me off, though, so I think we will see this printed in a future set as Char-Broil or something generically red.

So don’t go crazy on the finances of this set. I don’t think it’ll be there in the long term, and if you want something from Unstable, definitely give it a week or two and see where the nonfoil basic lands end up in price.

Cliff has been an avid player of silver-bordered sets and any unusual way to play, most especially Momir Basic, perhaps the biggest bang for your buck and the best reason to keep MTGO the way it is. Follow him on Twitter @wordofcommander or catch his articles every Friday!

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader – Puttin’ on the Foil

November 28, 2017 Jason Alt

Let me just say that if you haven’t seen Slapshot, stop being terrible at life and correct that. If you have to stop this article right now and go watch it because otherwise you’ll forget, I’ll wait. I may or may not reference the movie a lot in this article so if you’ve seen it, prepare to catch a bunch of references. You know, unless I don’t do it.

I wanted to talk more about foil copies of the Top 100 EDH cards today because I think there is some still some value to be gleaned here so let’s take a look. The link is here. Also, I was missing a card and had to figure out what it was. I always do this, I miss some mundane detail! Wait, that’s Office Space, not Slapshot. What are the good Slapshot quotes? I don’t know, something about the team moving to Florida. Wait, I got a reference for this. “I ask him who own da mistake and leave card off of list.” “And what did he say?” “Ownsuh, OWNSUH!” I’m a guy who ownsuh his mistakes so let’s figure out what I forgot.

It’s a good thing I checked, actually.

Sweet Vindication

But not for me. I made a mistake and left a card off the list (A reader found it – nice save). I have been doing EDH decklists for so long, I probably saw the list was at 99 and said “Plus the commander makes 100) and called it a day. The card I left off the list?

This guy.

Vindicate isn’t quite the monster it used to be. Eternal Masters was designed to curtail the prices of certain cards that seemed overly expensive just due to scarcity and a few attempts at things like judge foils didn’t really curtail the price as much as they’d hoped. Eternal Masters seemed to knock it down a peg or two, making the cheapest non-foil available around $7.50. Here’s the really curious thing.

The same Card Kingdom that will part with a non-foil copy for $7.50 only wants $10 for the foil, pegging the multiplier at a mere 1.3. Is there a magic number it should be at?

On Magic Numbers

When a set is brand new, I go to the LGS for the prerelease. I don’t go to as many events as I used to – when Return to Ravnica was released, Bushard and I went to 6 prerelease events in a single weekend, which was an angry gauntlet by the end because after building that many sealed pools, you start to always make the finals and have to play the whole thing. Very little sleep, bad food, Magic all day and night – I couldn’t do it at my current age. I’d die. Now I go to one or two, which is too bad because trading at prereleases is the best. People look up prices but those prices are all about to change so if you’re getting out of stuff that’s going to plummet at peak supply and get into stable stuff like EDH staples, you’re going to get maximum trade value. Your trade partner is happy because they shipped old cards they don’t care about for new, shiny stuff and everyone wins for once. The best part about foils at these events is the foil prices are basically not known so everyone has to guess. What does everyone guess? “Uhhh, I don’t know… double?” Double seems about right. Most foils are twice the price of the non-foil at first so if you can grab foil EDH cards for a mere 2x at the prerelease, you do it.

Double isn’t always correct, but for EDH cards that get a lot of play, a multiplier below 2x is suspicious. Is it always going to be at least 2x if nothing is wrong? Not necessarily, but just flagging the cards that are below 2x (but above 1x which I already flagged because those are already worth having a separate conversation about which we did have) means we take a look at them and see why they are the price they are. Maybe they’re due for some divergent or even convergent growth.

Flagged

Having flagged the cards between 1.0 and 2.0, I have 14 cards to examine and see if there is an explanation for the price or whether I think there is room for growth (divergent or convergent) and therefore a correction is imminent meaning there is financial opportunity. The first one I’ll look at accidentally inspired this article. Like, I had no idea I was going to write about cards between 1 and 2x until I made that joke about finding the 100th card on the spreadsheet. With this spreadsheet, I just writing and the article develops around my findings. I know you don’t need to know about my process, but that’s got to be worth noting, right?

Vindicate

We caught this basically at a little above its floor. It looks like the reason there is a small multiplier is that the foil is about to grow in price.

The graph of the non-foil is showing similar signs of life. It could be that the growth about to begin will be convergent. However, with a 1.3 multiplier, the foil is probably a better investment given how close they are in price. If the multiplier holds, you’ll make more money. It won’t go any lower than 1.3x in my view since its growth will be predicated on it being an all-star in EDH and getting a modicum of play in Legacy. I think these cards like grow divergently due to the increased scarcity of the EMA foils (the cheapest foils – there are judge foils out there, but, still, this is a chance to get a $10 foil). $10 for a foil Vindicate seems reasonable and since the price difference is negligible and both prices look poised to increase, I think there is a play to be made here.

It’s possible that later in the article we’ll figure out that a 1.3 multiplier on a card that already has judge foil printings and got reprinted in EMA is a big red flag. That does describe a lot of the 14 cards we flagged, now that I think about it. What else was in EMA that may or may not have had a judge foil printing?

Wrath of God, Mystical Tutor, Sylvan Library and Vampiric Tutor are all EMA cards, all had foil printings (but only Wrath of God had foils in a real set before EMA) and all have a foil multiplier below 2.0. I think this says less about some “curse” the cards have if they’re in this category and more about the relative undesirability of the EMA foils for people inclined to play foil copies of the card. EDH players want the cheapest copy, usually and Legacy players want the sexiest. As EMA copies dry up, the cheapest Vindicate is starting to approach the cheapest foil, which should move the price of the foils just on principle. The smaller the multiplier, the more attractive the foils are as they become a “why not pay $1 more” thing rather than a luxury thing. Legacy players don’t want the cheapest foil available – at least not yet. I think all of these cards – Vindicate, Mystical Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Sylvan Library and Wrath of God all could have similar upside to Vindicate and we should look at their graphs.

We started here because I expected this to be the outlier. It has so many foil printings and with better art. There’s no reason to play this card when the player rewards foil is like $16. This could go up but I don’t want it at $10.

Dealers are starting to notice this card. The buy price is beginning to converge with the retail price. I think this card is a buy. The only other foil is the same art from Commander’s Arsenal and Sylvan has some cross-format applicability that should swipe some of the foil copies EDH players wanted for themselves. This is plateauing on top of the buy price beginning to recover – I don’t think it gets much more healthy-looking than this. I am REALLY glad I decided to flag these cards and take a look at them individually, wow.

This is a little different. When you’re talking about a $45 card, that 1.y multiplier starts to look a little different. This is almost a $90 card most places. I think if you’re going to shell out $90 for a foil, you shell out for the Judge foil. Also, I just realized the Judge foil is cheaper than the EMA foil (did NOT see that coming) and that was the one I used for the calculation. I don’t know why the EMA foil is $90 and the judge foil with the better art is cheaper, but that’s how it is. Let’s look at the judge foil to see how that looks.

It took a bit of a tumble. Apparently people prefer the EMA printing, which looks like garbage to me, but I’m one vote. So far we aren’t learning much categorically about these cards other than that we need to look at their graphs, but when we do, we usually see what’s what. I think the future of the judge foil is imperiled and with the future of the EMA foil being so bright the card has to wear shades, maybe this card was mis-flagged. While the ratio of EMA to Judge foil is 1.7:1 the ratio of EMA to EMA foil is 2:1. Still not great but it wasn’t what we were hoping to find.

This is about what I expected. Since the other foil is a garbage, curly FTV foil, the EMA foil is going to be more attractive. It’s the opposite of what I expected with Vampiric but it’s the same result. I like the future of the EMA foil, personally. There isn’t a ton more to say about it other than that I think the graph shape looks pretty healthy and this card is headed for some growth.

In fact, it seems like the foil is actually lagging a bit behind the non-foil. It’s what we expected – Mystical Tutor is banned in Legacy and that means that it’s likely that EDH demand is driving prices which means the cheapest copy (non-foil) will move first and if the multiplier holds, there is more growth potential in the foil. But this card has grown so much, it’s no longer even the cheapest non-foil.

As expected, the Mirage version took a bit of a tumble when the reprinting happened and is only now beginning to recover. Some people like the art with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch on it so that could explain the precipitous growth there. I think all Mystical Tutors have upside – they’re basically all a buy for me, even the white-bordered one.

I think this could recover as well. It’s the overall cheapest copy which means EDH players who just want the cheapest one irrespective of art or border or shininess will target this one. I think it has upside.

Even the FTV foil is starting to show signs of life. It took the same tumble as the others at the EMA printing but if you want a foil of the art with the tutor on it and not the purple alien hand holding a Baldur’s Gate mana potion, this is your best bet. I hate EMA foiling but with the price graphs all showing signs of imminent recovery, you basically can’t go wrong.

I expected to get deeper into the list but we had a lot to talk about today. I like when I start digging in as I write and find so much I have to postpone the rest of the article for a second part. That’s fine – next week we’ll be back to discuss the 9 other cards I flagged in light blue on the spreadsheet. Check it out and see if you find anything with those cards – I suspect you will find some similarities between some of the cards. Until next week!

Watchtower

PROTRADER: The Watchtower 11/27/17

November 27, 2017 Travis Allen

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

It’s a Monday morning and we’re all waking up from food-induced comas that lasted the last four days. As we trudge into work, there’s not even exciting results to reflect on. This weekend’s only event was team limited in Europe. Blegh.

Unstable has been completely previewed, so that’s cool. It seems as if the community at large is looking forward to the set moreso than most of itself had expected. I’m suspect that this will mean much for the prices in the long run though. It all looks new and shiny and fun today, but after four drafts the novelty may be well worn. Chances are a few of the cards in foil will hold value well, but not many.

Other than that, the only real news in Magic over the lasts few days was a stirring on social media when a prominent cosplayer decided to quit due to the constant harassment she receives, a lion’s share of which comes from one particular unsavory individual. I’m not looking to write at length about this here, but I’m not going to completely forfeit my soap box, small as it may be.

“Don’t harass people” is a simple lesson that we all should have picked up in kindergarten. A more salient point to take from all of this that’s less obvious is that choosing not to engage is engaging. Inaction is action for the status quo. Claiming that you don’t want to choose a side is choosing a side. We’re afforded no luxury of sidelines, and like it or not, you’re either supporting a message or resisting it.

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Time to Move in or Move on?

November 24, 2017 Cliff Daigle

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and has had the chance to do some awesome drafts with Iconic Masters, which has such a different play pattern than Ixalan draft. It’s a nice change of pace, but I have to admit, I really hated paying $35 for a draft when I knew I could get a box for $160 all over the place.

I don’t think Iconic Masters is done falling in price, but we are only two weeks away from Unstable drafts, and then it’s dead in December until after New Year’s, when we dive into Rivals of Ixalan previews and prerelease!

If it seems that time is flying by, I’m with you. I’m also keenly aware that lots of stuff has settled in price and that means I need to evaluate two things, as it comes to Amonket and Kaladesh blocks:

How likely is the card to see another bump before it rotates?
Is the card Modern/Legacy/casual playable, and what’s the demand going to be going forward?

Now if you’re thinking, “What the heck, did he say rotation? It’s December!” that’s not wrong but you need to be aware that there’s not a lot of chances for a deck to break out.

With that in mind, I want to look at some cards and see if I want to get in or move on.

Glorybringer ($6): Right now, creatures are dying all over the place. Four toughness is not enough, with this dragon and with Chandra, Torch of Defiance. The fifth toughness is a big part of the appeal with it comes to The Scarab God. Glorybringer is seeing some play in a range of decks, but it’s only a four-of in some of the new Mardu Vehicles lists.

Especially with a buy-in at this range, I don’t think this is worth a buy. It would have to spike past $10, into the $12-$15 range, and that means super-widespread adoption. Seems pretty unlikely to me, and since this doesn’t see much play. It’s in less than 700 Commander decks, so yeah, stay away.

Anointed Procession ($9): I have to be honest, I didn’t know that this had crept up to the threshold of $10. It’s now the #3 card in Amonkhet, and while I want to say that’s due to casual appeal, that’s not quite right. There’s a lot of these in EDH decks (4500!) and there’s a range of token strategies available in Standard. Bringing some Hidden Stockpile/Anointed Procession deck to FNM and making a huge stack of tokens does sound like a lot of fun!

Don’t count out the kitchen table players either. Something has been soaking up spare copies of this, to keep pushing it on the gradual upward curve. Legion’s Landing is the proximate cause, but at the root, the casual demand is super high on here, though the foil is still available under $20. I’m going to be looking for this to drop at rotation, but I don’t think it will fall far.

A caveat: This is very easy to reprint in a Commander product going forward. Be cautious if you’re stocking up.

Bontu’s Last Reckoning ($4): This is intriguing on a couple of levels. It’s hot garbage in casual formats, so that’s out, but it’s the cheapest Wrath of God variant available in Modern, where it’s popped up in a few sideboards. It’s not super-widely adopted yet, but there is room for that to grow. Lantern Control, a deck which is merciless to play with and against, has one or two in the board, as does 8-rack and some other fringe strategies. This price isn’t due to Standard, or to casual demand, so the amount of play it’s seeing has kept it from being a dollar rare.

I would like it better if it fell back into the $2 range, where it was a couple of months ago, but if it doesn’t dip at rotation, Picking up a few is something I can get behind.

Solemnity ($2): It’s got all sorts of fun combos, and frankly, it hoses a wide range of popular EDH strategies. Do note that it doesn’t care about planeswalkers, as happened in a game I was in. I’m hoping that rotation cuts this to a dollar rare or less, as it’s too unique an effect to stay this cheap forever. Also notable is that the foils are four times as much, but the card is only listed in 850 decks on EDHREC.

Panharmonicon ($3): If you don’t have a taste for reprint risk, this is a lock. It’s in more than 11,000 EDH decks. It’s the #81 artifact in that database, which is surprising to me until I looked at the list and saw all the mana rocks. Three bucks is too low for this card, it did make it to $10 when people were trying to get all the value possible early in the format. It’s highly reprintable, though…so the foils at sub-$10 are even more appealing to me. Foil Anointed Procession is already pushing $20, and this is the card that defines ‘win more’ which is what we all want to do deep in our filthy casual hearts. Go buy some of the foils right now and just sit on them for a little while, and thank me later.

Bonus Pick: The Chain Veil (Foil): There’s 23 copies on TCG right now, and none at several big sites. It’s only in 3500 EDH decks, but the supply is super tiny for a card that fits into the always-popular superfriends decks. I don’t think it’ll take long for this to get a hefty spike over $20, and while this is a strong contender to be put into a supplemental deck, I have a hard time seeing this in a Masters set or in a set that has foils.

Cliff is an avid Cuber and a player at a wide range of kitchen tables. He has yet to Top 8 a GP but eventually they will have a Cube event and he’ll have that locked right up! Find him on Twitter @WordOfCommander or here on MTGPrice every Friday.

MTGPrice Blog