Jason Alt, ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Dino-Might

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Readers,

I am really sick of talking about tribal decks. I want to talk about something that isn’t tribal and I’ve been doing that on Gathering Magic where I can. Since they decided to integrate Commander 2017 with Ixalan (which is neat, don’t get me wrong) they have mostly tribal commanders in Ixalan as well as the tribal commanders in Commander 2017. Most decks being built now are tribal. I want to talk about Marvin Feins or whoever and I’d like to talk about Tishana (as boring to build as I imagine Tishana is going to be) and it doesn’t matter because I have to talk about where I think the money is. I can’t ignore data because that’s irresponsible. So as much as I would like it if Tishana were likely to matter, I’ll save that for my Gathering Magic article next week (which you should absolutely read, by the way. If you find this article valuable, that is. It’s free to read, they can justify paying me if people read it and I talk about EDH cards which it turns out I’ve established are relevant) and focus on a deck I don’t even want to talk about a little bit but which was built 3x as much as Tishana.

Tribes Ruin Everything

I don’t pretend to understand EDH better than basically everyone who plays Magic and I’m certainly not inclined to pontificate that I can figure it out faster than that group of people known as “everyone.” I was worried that I would miss the boat entirely by waiting to get build data from EDHREC on the Commander 2017 commanders. It turns out everything worked like normal this time – we had a wave of people buying specs as soon as they knew the decks were tribal and most of those specs were bad. We had another wave of people buying when they knew what the tribes were, and most of those specs were bad. The prices on those cards are likely ruined forever, but organic demand didn’t drive them and you’re likely going to get stuck with your copies unless you bought a very small amount, in which case you didn’t really speculate. If you predict a card going from $2 to $20 and you bought 10 copies, you weren’t confident or ballsy and you didn’t get rewarded. If you predict 10 cards going from $2 to $20 and you bought 0 copies, you’re me, but that’s another story.

The third wave after the first two “Uh, I think I can figure out that a tribal Wizard deck is going to play Patron Wizard, EDH isn’t that tough to figure out, guy” speculators, we had the “normal” wave of cards going up based on people figuring out what people were actually doing. It took me a long time staring at Mairsil to figure out anything I wanted to put a cage counter on but the internet figured it out eventually, I wrote an article about Mairsil stuff like a month after Commander 2017 came out and those cards are popping off, a few a week. It’s 2015 again! So while the tribal decks make people think they knew what they’re doing get super confident, we can still do our normal thing.

 

 

Hateflayer popped this week, but it had been growing steadily recently and as we predicted, Mairsil gave it a lot of upside. Let’s compare a card like Patron Wizard which is at $20 instead of the $3 Hateflayer is currently selling for.

So we have 4 decks that were running it before and 94 new Inalla decks (it’s OK in Inalla, don’t get me wrong) jamming it. Do we think the spike to $20 was justified? Do we think it hangs out there? I’ll leave that for the bro finance crowd who thought it was super obvious to buy every Wizard despite none of the older Wizards really playing all that well with Mairsil or Kess at all. The decks were called tribal but 2/3 of the marquee commanders and like all of the other random commanders like Taigam(s) don’t care about tribes, really and certainly not in the way everyone who bought in the first two waves “knew” it would matter. $20 Patron Wizard is a joke but if you are one of the few people who need it for Inalla, the joke’s on you.

The stuff in the Mairsil deck that no one predicted when the card was first announced but going up later when we had pricing data leads me to believe that even though tribal stuff is “obvious” to some who think being able to make simple, superficial observations means that all of this is easy, we’ll still be able to make money by seeing what players are actually playing, buying before supply dries up and selling into the increased demand like always. Tribal decks screwed up a lot but they didn’t screw up everything.

Stupid Tribe of the Day

I don’t want to talk about dinosaurs but I sort of have to. Gishath isn’t a card that is particularly exciting to me but it’s getting built kind of a lot this week.

Anything that gets over the Atraxa hump is worth discussing. I predict I have to dig down a little bit to (I want to let you know that at this point in the sentence I conceived of and immediately abandoned an idea where I’d make a bunch of puns about an archaeological excavation for dinosaur specs and how they are like dinosaur bones. I don’t want you to think I’m the kind of guy who can’t resist a dumb metaphor but I also don’t want you to think I’m not smart enough to figure out there was an opportunity there). Gishath is made up almost entirely of terrible, bulk rare dinosaurs and uncommons plus the same tribal stuff that is going to go up a little but do you want to be paying $20 for a card that’s going to hit $23? With this many Gishath decks being built, there is going to be money to be made and it’s going to take some work to find it but we’ll do it.

Xenagos, God of Revels

An amount of reprint risk that I would classify as “moderate” has a lot of people spooked. Could this be in some duel deck? Maybe Inconic Masters? Basically, people are worried about this going in Commander 2018 and if it’s not, I think this is a real opportunity. This is doing an odd Shepard Tone thing with the price graph but I really think we’re at a tipping point. I don’t like to buy deep into specs that I advocate because I don’t want to be accused (more) of trying to pump and dump cards. It never feels good even when it’s ridiculous. I won’t say who but he knows who he is, accused me of trying to pump and dump Tropical Island because I said it would correct to be more than Bayou since it was less than Bayou at the time. So I guess if being ethical gets you nowhere, I might as well throw a couple hundo at Xenagos and see where it Xena…goes….from there? I probably won’t, but I should.

Real talk, there are only 139 listings on TCG Player right now, this goes in every Gishath deck plus it’s nutty in other decks plus it’s a decent commander in its own right. You can find these for like $7 online. Why isn’t this more money? Because the demand is organic and that doesn’t set off any alarms. You’re flirting with some (moderate) reprint risk (reprinting Iroas in a Commander set spooked people) but you’re also looking at some real upside. This is the second best Theros era God and it can break the $10 mark easily and from there, they sky’s the limit.

Selvala’s Stampede

This card isn’t Expropriate, but it’s a beating. With Conspiracy 2 being such a wildly unpopular set, it’s tough to get the packs moving. What’s driving sales? Leovold, a card banned in EDH? Packs that contain cards that can only be used in drafts? People drafting it? With boxes selling on eBay for basically dealer cost, Conspiracy 2 cards are on the way up. Unless they’re reprinted, something that’s doubtful in the case of a lot of the cards, demand is going to begin soaking supply. Selvala’s Stampede has a lot going for it and it’s particularly good in the Gishath deck. Some Legacy demand would sure be nice but since that’s not going to happen, we’re going to have to rely on scarcity, which is fine because scarcity is giving Conspiracy 2 cards all it’s got. 6 mana is super doable in EDH, it’s especially doable in a dino deck with a high mana curve that requires a ton of ramp and it’s asymmetrical. At $2 this card is pretty bananas, and with Leovold not as in-demand, expect the value from the set to go somewhere if the boxes are to maintain even dealer cost.

Congregation at Dawn

The second spikes are always the tastiest and while demand petered out after the first brush with greatness, new demand is coming for this card. Gishath is a “the top of your library matters” card and this stacks the deck for you, making sure you hit what you need. Triple Worldly Tutor seems pretty good to me for under a buck and we’ve seen this flirt with $5 absent organic demand. With more copies likely concentrated in the hands of the dealers and unable to mitigate a second spike, this card could climb to around $3-$5 and stay there. It’s a gamble so I think your best bet is to do what I do and buy collections and yank these out of “bulk” all the time. Foils are already $5 and those are even less reprintable and as lazy as that is intellectually, it’s a safer place to park money. Do I think enough people are going to foil their dinosaur deck that this is going to make more than one person money? Not really. Foils are great for someone to think of it and make some money selling the few copies they’re going to sell on TCG Player but they’re not great calls to give advice to thousands of readers. Maybe you can all fight each other for the few  copies left on TCG Player. You can count on reddit to make a “ZOMG BYEOUT!!!1” post when the stock gets low, you can count on a few lunatics to buy a foil card that’s useful in EDH (somewhat) and you can count on me taking credit for nailing another spec weeks early in my oddly prescient article series that no one reads.

1509 total decks is nothing to sneeze at. I thought maybe Dinosaurs might be a better deck than most to try and foil out since a lot of the dinosaurs are dirt cheap even in foil, but then you’re trifling with foil Urza’s Incubator, Mirari’s Wake, Cavern of Souls, etc and you’re stuck with a lot of cards from Commander 2017 that can’t be foil but you really want to be. In general, I don’t think people want foils of bad cards as much as people who sell one or two copies of that card a year claim.

Tribal Stuff

Herald’s Horn keeps going up and Path of Ancestry doesn’t. I’m not sure what to make of that. Horn presold for like $2 and is now like $6, Path presold for $3 and is now like $3. Sure, Path is in twice as many precon decks, but you want to know something interesting?

It’s twice as popular. I’m not saying those two effects should cancel each other out, and with Horn being buried in the terrible cat deck, supply isn’t quite at a 2:1 ratio in the world. Both cards are good but the price only moving on one of them is a little puzzling. Horn isn’t 3 times as good as Path and Path’s price isn’t commensurate with its popularity. All I know is that both cards are great and the fact that there is pent-up demand for them for tribal decks that aren’t being built from the precon means there will always be net demand. Who’s opening a precon, building a deck out of it and cutting either or both of these? In the case of Horn, you’re maybe building a Mirri or (the cat blacksmith, not interested in taking the time to look up his stupid cat name this close to the end of the article) deck and maybe you don’t need Horn, but I bet you don’t cut Path. These cards are going to be good forever and they’re awkward to reprint unless the Commander set has a tribal theme (even just within the one deck, doesn’t have to be set-wide).

Next week I’m not sure what I’ll have to talk about, but hopefully more people build Tishana and it will be interesting. I’d love to force my agenda on this conversation but we really have to go where the money is and this week there were 3 times as many Gishath decks. Next week, a lot could change. Until next time!

Watchtower

UNLOCKED: The Watchtower 10/2/17

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.

Ixalan is upon us, and players came out in droves this weekend to hunt for booty. Wizards sponsored two Grand Prix, but they were both limited, so all eyes were on Dallas for the SCG Standard Open.

After one of the worst Standard formats in the game’s history, this is a welcome refresh. Not only did you have a set full of cool tribes to get people’s juices running, players were also treated to a new day, a new beginning for Standard. And best of all, it didn’t disappoint! There were five archetypes in the top eight of the SCG Open alone.

This weekend’s headliner is probably Hostage Taker, which not only performed admirably, but was noticeably referenced in many of the top eight player profiles as the card that impressed them the most. The ship (hah) has sailed on Hostage Taker at this point, although there was really never a great time to buy in. The absolute lowest price point for this card I’m aware of was $4, which certainly looks good when they’re sitting at $12, but wait until you see how many copies actually sell, and don’t forget all the risk that’s wrapped up in that as well.

Walking Ballista

Price Today: $12
Possible Price: $20

It feels weird putting Walking Ballista, arguably the best card in Standard — a fact everyone knows — on this list. And yet, I find myself wondering if there isn’t still a good bit of room left for it to occupy.

In almost all situations I’d tell you that a $12 Standard card is not a wise investment, and that you should be selling them immediately. However, Walking Ballista isn’t your ordinary “good Standard rare,” in the way that Boros Reckoner was, or Hostage Taker is looking to be.

Walking Ballista first and foremost is colorless, which means anyone that wants to play it can. It’s also found in Modern, as, amazingly, the fifth most played creature, with 15% of decks looking for at least a copy. It even pops up in Legacy and Vintage, although not as much, and those don’t generate nearly as much demand as the former two formats. Shooty man robot even clocks in at a respectable 3,500 EDH decks.

My point here is that there’s a lot of demand from Standard itself, and also from most every other constructed format in Magic. $12 would normally be close to the ceiling on a strictly Standard rare, but with all of this additional demand, and the fact that Ballista isn’t set to rotate until next fall, there’s a lot of time for that price to creep up towards $20 between now March. I’m not advocating you run out and buy Ballistas or anything, but if you’re looking for something to trade for at your local store, you could do a lot worse.

Fumigate

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $6

Perhaps one of the more intriguing decks at the moment is UW Approach, which relies on Approach of the Second Sun as a win condition. It started peeking over the horizon during the last few months, and with rotation, is poised to be this format’s control deck. It relies on answering everything its opponents do and eventually casting Approach of the Second Sun. Twice.

What’s noteworthy about the lists from Dallas are that both have a dearth of rares and mythics. They aren’t even playing Torrential Gearhulk in the main deck this weekend. That may change, of course, but if that ends up being the default build, there will be scant few cards even capable of carrying a price tag in the main sixty.

If that’s where we arrive, Fumigate stands a good chance of coming out on top. It’s the default sweeper for the format, and with it’s added ability to gain plenty of life againt pesky vampire players and answer the otherwise unanswerable Carnage Tyrant, it will do a lot of work in UW Approach, as well as any other strategy looking for a sweeper.

There’s no reason to expect Fumigate to climb north of $10, but it’s not unreasonable that a key rare — and in fact one of the only rares — in the format’s control deck could climb to $5 or $6. Again, not a “buy them and stash them” plan, but a great pickup in local trades.


Herald of Anguish

 

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $12

Zac Elsik is as Zac Elsik does, and this weekend was no different. He took down the Standard classic with Grixis Improvise, which I expect nobody to know anything about. After all, why would you?

The overall plan for Grixis Improvise is to flood the board with artifacts, which allow for a well-ahead-of-curve Herald of Anguish. Playing out an artifact on turns one, two, and three sets up a turn four Herald, which is a 5/5 flyer that makes your opponent discard cards every turn and can start killing creatures when you untap. Turn four may be a little bit of the dream, but even on turn five, which I’m sure you can get to basically every game, he’s still a savage monster (that doesn’t die to Fatal Push, ever).

Herald’s appeal here is that he’s a mythic from a small set that’s currently $2 or less. Mythics that cost $2 or less that suddenly show up as a four-of in event-winning decks certainly draw one’s attention. If this has been the open, rather than the classic, I’d expect copies to be $6 or $8 this morning. With another high profile success, he could easily end up in the $10 to $15 range as the most important mythic in the deck.

And if you’re not into Herald, Tezzeret the Schemer is also an important card in the list, with prices currently at $8. If Herald gets a spike, Tezzeret will be due for a double up.

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Hour of Devastation Pickups

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As much as I love the release of a new set, it’s often profitable to take a moment and appreciate the set that’s leaving our draft environment, and while you can still open packs of it, we are at peak supply on Hour of Devastation’s cards.

Instead of focusing on Ixalan and what could be in week one of the new Standard, and the prospect of a Pro Tour in five weeks, I want to mine the set that’s leaving for some value before we kick it to the curb and act like Ixalan is the only one we’ve ever loved–for three months, anyway.

We’ve already had at least one big mover, and the question is, will the spike actually happen or all we just sheep?

Samut, the Tested ($4.50): Three weeks ago, on MTG Fast Finance, Travis talked me into this card and it seems a lot of people either followed his advice or came to the same conclusion. (It’s the style, of course!) The card has about doubled since then, and while Samut does play well with Dinosaurs, I think that the value has gone as a speculative pick. Please don’t pick up a playset of these on eBay for $20 and then turn it over again for $30. You’ll have made something like $2 all told after fees and shipping.

Look at that graph. Buylist today is more than it was three weeks ago. Verrrry tempting to get out now if you just got in, but I’d be holding just a bit longer. Remember, we’ve got one more set with dinosaurs coming!

That being said…if you’re going to play Dinosaurs in Standard, get your playset now. It’s definitely not going to be cheaper, and there’s no doubt that the card will be fun. I know that the saurians can go turn 2 Drover of the Mighty, T3 Ripjaw Raptor, T4 Regisaur Alpha, T5 Carnage Tyrant. That’s a terrifying curve, no way around it. There’s room for other cards, though, and Samut might just be the thing. I’m not buying more at this rice, but I’m fine trading for it.

Hour of Devastation ($3.50): Yes, damage-based board wipes are a bad thing in the land of ‘Enrage – draw a card’ and six-toughness hexproof. I think you should not be buying these….yet. Just because it’s bad against one deck doesn’t mean it’s unplayable. This has less room to grow, being a rare instead of a mythic, but if Dinos aren’t tier one, then this card will be.

Torment of Hailfire ($2.50): I foresee a Panharmonicon-like spike in its future, as it goes from ‘awesome Commander card’ to ‘new Standard hotness’ on the back of one good video or one on-camera display. Casting this for a bunch feels great in Commander, but it’s got real potential in Standard, too. I like buying at this price, because the casual demand will get there eventually, even if Standard doesn’t pay off.

(That’s a really low price for such a busted Commander card. Go buy some.)

Abrade ($2): You might laugh, but this is a go-to card for the next year for sure, since Kaladesh will rotate out at the same time. Smuggler’s Copter (itself a great pickup at $2, since it just won a Modern SCG IQ as a two-of in a Merfolk deck) isn’t a threat but there’s a lot of other good vehicles out there, and there’s no reason red decks won’t have this as a full set in the sideboard, if not the main. It’s even flexible enough to merit Commander inclusion!

I don’t see this being Fatal Push in value, but I think it’s going to go up by 50-100% in the next few months, so get your sets now. If you’re going to pick this up in volume, be ready to get out early, as it doesn’t yet look like this is Modern sideboard material.

Foil Swarm Intelligence ($1.50): I am always on the lookout for big silly Commander cards, and this is that card. I love getting foils for stuff like this at such lows, and for a card that basically bulk, this has a pretty big multiplier. Pick up some now, put them someplace safe, and when the time comes around, you’ll have a big gainer.

Finally, I want to bring up two cards that I am picking up at their lowest prices: Fumigate and Dusk//Dawn. Fumigate is up to $2, and that’s a solid price, unless it’s the new way to deal with the saurian menace. I can easily see this getting up to $5 if people become scared of damage-based board wipes.

Dusk might be positioned even better, because with Regisaur Alpha out, even the Ranging Raptors and the Drover of the Mighty will get destroyed. This is only $1.50, and a very solid pickup in anticipation of Standard use.

Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: Before There Was U

I use a lot of terms I made up and I would apologize for that but since all of my old articles (I’m talking back to 2011) are free to read online and I’m easily accessible to talk to on Twitter or in the comments section of this article, I feel like it’s pretty easy to clear up confusion. Some of the things I come up with require a lot of explanation (I’ve written like 150 article about 75% EDH deckbuilding and even I don’t really understand what it’s all about, yet) and some don’t. I would like to think that if I referred again to a U-shaped versus a reverse-J-shaped graph, you can figure out what I mean.

Just Explain It

I was going to save us all a lot of time by inviting people to go back and read my past articles

Just Explain It

That doesn’t seem all that necessary, I think the terms I picked are pretty descriptive and anyone who can’t figure out what I mean likely isn’t going to benefit from MtG Finance advice until they work on basic reading comprehension techniques

Is that the “Just junk it” lady from Mystery Men? Why are the fake other person’s voices that I use as a rhetorical effect always quoting Mystery Men? That’s so weird, right?

Fine, you win, damn. I’ll explain.

Even though I’m pretty sure roughly 100% of you know what I mean by U-shaped and reverse-J-shaped graphs, I think it’s maybe important to give some examples and at least discuss why I think those two shapes mean a lot to us when we look at EDH prices. You’r going to start seeing U-shaped graphs as missed opportunities which means reverse-J-shaped ones are going to start to look like dollar signs. I mean, not literally. That would be a weird graph shape, impossible on a line plot. Remember that one kid with the long, greasy hair who was still wearing JNCO jeans in like 2001 after everyone else stopped who was always programming weird stuff on his Ti-83 when everyone else was trying to learn integrals? That’s how you get a graph that looks like a dollar sign. Don’t be that guy.

A U-shaped price graph usually means that a price went down for some reason, almost always due to a reprint but sometimes due to a banning, and then went back up again due to demand soaking up the new supply or the card getting unbanned. Here are some classic U-shapes.

Something made the price go down and something else, sometimes time, sometimes an event, made the price go back up, If you bought at the top and sold at the bottom, you did a bad job. If you bought at the top and sold at the top, you broke even (ish) and if you bought at the bottom and sold at the top, you makea’ de money. We’re in the makea’ de money bidness around here, so identifying the first half of a future U-shape means we can buy at the bottom. Reprintings and sometimes bannings can create opportunities for us. Instead of talking about Ixalan or C17 this week, I decided to look at the stuff from Commander 2016 now that it’s been almost a year since it came out to see what is just about at its low point after its reprinting to see some nice reverse-J-shapes.

Backward J All Day

You may remember this graph from a preview article. Usually, the card’s price doesn’t recover as swiftly as it goes down, but sometimes it does. One day there are like 40 copies of a card on TCG Player for a dollar more than the low price and then all of a sudden they’re gone and the price corrects quickly. Even slow, consistent demand can trigger an avalanche when someone notices the supply is gone and they need to update their buy price. Cards that are sufficiently good in EDH (and sufficiently unlikely to get reprinted soon) will have upside, so identifying that low point, or one close enough to it that you’ll make just about as much money as if you bought in at the perfect time (which is impossible to know – buying in too early is as bad as buying in too late so I tend to not wait for signs that the price is on its way back up despite that being safer) is something we don’t do enough of in this series because I focus on the future in my articles even though I focus on everything in my own buying behavior.

For the purposes of this exercise, we should establish some criteria for a card to discuss. That way if I miss one, you don’t have to ask me if I think the card you caught that I missed is a good pickup because you can just check my thought process and make your own informed decision.

  1. I’m going with cards that were reprinted in Commander 2016, hopefully for the first time
  2. The card wasn’t reprinted in Commander 2017 meaning it most likely has until Commander 2018 is spoiled to grow, meaning we are at the halfway point and probable low point price-wise
  3. These are non-foil prices

Let’s look at some of the cards from Commander 2016 I think have some potential to rebound.

Dragon Mage

We are seeing a nice double dip here on Dragon Mage. It already cratered after its Commander 2015 printing which was predicated on it being a good card in the Melek deck (…..k?) and Commander 2016 which was predicated on it being a good card for Yidris (that’s legit). Dodging a reprint in Commander 2017, this is a dragon that fills hands up and also fills yards up, because reanimator is a thing. This recovered from its first reprinting and should shake the second off, especially with new Dragon decks not to mention decks like Yidris which are still being built being good venues for this. You can get the original version for under a buck but you can get the Commander 2016 version for like $0.60 on Card Kingdom. I think this has upside, is unlikely to get another reprinting soon and I think it’s at its absolute low. It’s considered a bulk rare and that’s where I am getting them. I pay like a dime or quarter when I see these in binders and I make a stack of them. This is low risk, low reward and that’s why I led with it. We can do better, but you can do a lot worse.

Cauldron of Souls

I feel like I advocated this when it was a better buy-in opportunity but with this declining lately, I think there is a chance to pick these up on the cheap. Decks like Marchesa will never go away and with so many ways to put counters on our creatures to erase the -1/-1 counters, this is a real card. Hapatra and The Scorpion King got people thinking about -1/-1 counters and this jumped a little on that weird logic, but I think as the price of this tails off, you’ll want to buy in. The next time there is a set where creatures get +1/+1 counters, this will go back up if it doesn’t sooner than that on its own. This isn’t all that likely to get another Commander deck reprint imo. This is a longer hold than some of the “sell this when Commander 2018 comes out” picks but this is still solid and if you bought back in May, you had a chance to make money on this card already.

Lurking Predators

This is a card that I identified before the ink was even dry on Commander 2016. I don’t know if this can be $7 again, but it can be $5 and it’s certainly not a $2 card. One interesting caveat about this card is that it’s in the Kynaois and Tiro deck with a ton of valuable cards that all took a hit with reprinting but which should all go back up. This is the worst-selling Commander 2016 deck, but here’s a list of hits.

Chasm Skulker

Progenitor Mimic

Collective Voyage

Tempt With Discovery

Blasphemous Act

Swords to Plowshares

Beast Within

Venser’s Journal

Ghostly Prison

Propaganga

Ash Barrens

Homeward Path

All of which excludes new cards that have upside like Sylvan Reclamation, Benefactor’s Draught, Entrapment Maneuver, Prismatic Geoscope and Selfless Squire. With MSRP holding prices down as long as the set is in-print, I think the prices have more freedom to go up when they’re not constrained by MSRP. We could see this deck silently creep up in price without us really noticing. You can’t have 2 dozen cards over $3-$5 when this is in-print, but two years later you can. I think that bodes as well for Lurking Predators as it does for any of the other cards on the list.

Master of Etherium

We’re breaking our rules a smidge like we did with Dragon Mage since this was already reprinted in Planechase, but this is not just an EDH all-star (it is) but also has upside from formats where people want to attack other people with robots. There is a lot to like about this card. It’s on a bit of a bounce but I still think we got in early enough that we can ride most of the wave to the top. There is more reprint risk for a card with cross-format applicability but there is also little chance of this ever becoming obsolete. I think this is in a good “historic high versus current price” sweet spot. I’d rather pay $5 for something that has demonstrated it can be $15 than pay $1 for something that hit $5 once and might be $3.50 again.

Venser’s Journal

The graphical data is a little confusing for this since really low eBay listings are throwing things off. The Commander 2016 version and the Scars version cost almost the same amount. I think we’re about as low as we can go on this card, which means there isn’t much space between its current price and its historical high. So what does that mean? Why didn’t it drop more? It failure to drop near its historic low following a reprinting is curious.

While the new version began around $2 or so, the older version maintained a lot of its value. It appears we missed our best time to get in on this card, which is odd because I didn’t really notice anything happening with it until this week. The crept up on us for sure. Card Kingdom has both versions for around $4 and that isn’t great for a $7 max card but the price on the older version maintaining so much value leads me to believe that this could rebound and exceed the past historical high. I don’t know what to do here 100%, but I do know that with cards like Tishana coming out, having no max hand size is more important than ever. Reliquary Tower, an uncommon, is currently worth more than Journal. I think even getting in at $4 could be profitable based on analysis of the price data which didn’t do exactly what we expect.

There’s a lot to unpack here so I will leave you to it. I pays to periodically go back over past sets and see if they did what you thought they would do. When we do Commander 2017 in a year, I’ll be sure to mention what I got wrong and what I got right, one probably louder than the other.

Did I skip a card you think has upside? What do you think is at its floor? Is a year the wrong timeframe since we missed the boat slightly on a few cards and we missed it majorly on a card like Wheel of Fate (though that was predicated on a printing outside of Commander 2017 that was impossible to predict)? Let me hear it in the comments! Until next time!

 

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY