Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: The Magic Way-Back Machine

Readers!
Occasionally, I like to take a trip back through Magic’s history and look at old sets and see if there is anything we can learn. Released all the way back in December 2022, a set called Jumpstart 2022 came out, and while reviews were positive, the set was quickly abandoned by players and collectors later in the week when Starter Commander was released and the Dominaria Remastered spoiler season kicked off. What went wrong? Was the initial hype unfounded? Why did most people only play one Jumpstart prerelease event or fewer? Today we’re going to take a look at Jumpstart 2022 because no one knows what’s in that set and see if there is anything we can learn for the next time a set comes out (Friday). 

If you remember back to December 2022, Jumpstart had a very popular commander named Kibo, Uktabi Prince. If you can’t remember all the way back 3 sets ago, that’s OK. Not many people remember this, but there were actually 14 total Legendary creatures in Jumpstart – a sane and rational amount of Legendary creatures. It was a risky gamble and WotC, to their credit, learned their lesson and haven’t had a set with fewer than 50 Legendary creatures come out since. With only 14 Legendary creatures, did such a small (lol there are like 900 cards in this set and Ben Bleiweiss tweeted about it today but I deactivated my account so you’ll have to take my word for it) set impact the format?

As it would turn out, the impact of the set never truly materialized in the window between its release and the release of the next set and no commander got even 400 decks built around them in that period. The likelihood that builders would return to the set after this many products have come out in the interim seems unlikely, leaving me to believe that Kibo will remain the most popular commander. I think, however, there is some merit to discussing some of the other commanders because it’s very likely commanders with identical abilities will be printed in the next year due to the law of averages and we can apply these lessons to that product.

Get it? He’s a rabbit and his name is presto and he’s a magician and he pulls stuff out of his hat! That might not sound that funny to you, but when you realize that they only had a few weeks to work on this 819 (literally) card set, it’s amazing that anything this flavorful made it into the set.

First up, we have the new cards which people who built Preston when it first came out might not have had access to. These cards are all solid in a Preston deck, but I don’t see anything financially relevant. If these cards haven’t popped after this much time has passed, it’s unlikely they will because of Preston.

I fully realize that Teleporation Circle is NOT Conjurer’s Closet and never will be. But, like…

Closet really likes to be $10 despite multiple printings. I think with one printing, Circle can be $10 and I am betting on it.

I really hope it’s not obvious to you why this card never got there because it isn’t to me. This card is bonkers and it’s from a terrible set no one wanted to buy. And yet…

One nudge can get this from 15 pennies to 15 dimes, 15 quarters is not out of the question imo. I’ll take that. This card isn’t great and instant speed versions of this with upside like Otherworldly Journey exist but if you build this deck, you play every Flicker and that includes Flicker.

I’m personally building this as Bant landfall and relying on my lands to give me all of the triggers I need, but a lot of people insist on playing a bunch of dumb snow cards and I only like one or two of them.

Don’t even love this as a spec as much as I like it as a card and I’m marveling at how cheap every snow card from Kaldheim is. They tried to make snow a thing and Isu isn’t going to be enough. MH1 gave us good Snow stuff, but also made the boxes so irresitable there is too much of all of it.

Second spikes are great, but look at this graph to see what third and 4th spikes do. If you’re worried about the Mystery Booster printings, there is always the foil that costs… something.

CK does indeed have a $45 NM copy and 3 MP copies for 20ish but I am not convinced this is a $100 NM foil. CK has one if you think it is, though. There are a lot of MP copies on TCG player closer to $50 than $100 and this isn’t unreprintable, but the foil did get a little help from not being on The List.

Most of you will recall what a wild year 2022 was and though several products have been released since early December 2022, we’ll always fondly remember the two days we were thinking about Jumpstart before we started Dominaria Remastered spoiler season in earnest. Could we have had something special with Jumpstart like we did with Emiel and Tinybones and Allosaurus Shepherd, plus great reprints like Craterhoof? Maybe, but it doesn’t do us any good to look that far back and wonder “what if?” That does it for me this week, folks. Thanks for reading my words and brooking my tone. Until next time!

Casual Fridays

The 30th Countdown vs. The 30th Anniversary

Wizards of the Coast has had two big products get ordered recently, and this is before we get into any new Superdrops. The 30th Anniversary Countdown (hereafter known as the Countdown) set was 30 known cards, each packaged singly, with a 30% chance of being foil. The 30th Anniversary packs (which I’m gonna call the Anniversary set) was basically a reprint of Beta packs, with a little bit of editing, twice the dual lands, and a retro frame slot.

The Countdown was sold for $150 each, where you knew the floor was 30 specific nonfoils. The Anniversary packs, where you could open a Lifelace and a retro Chaoslace or perhaps Mox Sapphire and retro Black Lotus, were sold for $1,000 as a set of four packs.

One of these sets sold out in an hour, and the other was pulled after 39 minutes of apparently very lackluster sales. The question is why, and it’s worth thinking about in the context of future purchases and special sets.

It’s a touch simplistic to presume that guaranteed value is the only reason that the Countdown sold out, but that is where we need to start this discussion. Anniversary packs at $250 are easily the most expensive packs ever sold by Wizards, even the VIP from the first Double Masters was under $100 at the time. People expect a lot of their packs these days, after years of Booster Fun treatments. 

More to the point, though, it’s a contrast between an expensive and potentially profitable lottery ticket and buying $7 for $5 worth of pennies. We knew from the outset what the cards were in the Countdown, including the art and frame variations. We could easily establish a baseline based on current prices, including the most expensive card, Chrome Mox. 

These copies from Eternal Masters were $90 around the time of the announcement, and have fallen to around $70, close to the price for the Countdown. We are at max supply for that copy, and while you can crack for singles and make around $30 all told, I’m being patient with my copies.

Chrome Mox was just the most expensive card in the Countdown set, but it gave us a floor. When the entire set was revealed, we could do the math and see how singles were a bit over $200 at the time, and figured it would drop some once it came out, which it has. 

Even better, because any card is 30% to be foil, the value has nowhere to go but up! There’s a decent chance that the average Countdown kit is worth *more* than its cost, even accounting for the race to the bottom. TCGPlayer is bearing this out, with sealed sets selling for $200. After taxes, fees, and shipping that’s not a lot of profit, so I’m being patient, as I said, but this is when supply is maxed. 

Contrast this with the Anniversary packs, and the enormous gap between what might get opened. I spoke of opening two Laces, or two Lotuses, and that’s a delta measured in several thousands of dollars. We clearly love gambling, as Magic players we’ve been conditioned to rip open packs and look for that sweet sweet value. 

We’ve always had the chance that packs will contain cards which will be worth a lot less, even plenty of Foil Extended Art mythics aren’t worth the cost of a Collector Booster. However, that’s opening a $25 pack, or opening a dozen from a $200 box of those. Wizards is asking those players to fork over a grand for the chance to open a piece of Power or a dual land, when those duals can be had in NM for a lot less than $1000!

Also, none of these are ‘real’. We’ve had this discussion all over the place, especially in the context of gold border cards being ‘legal’ for Commander play. As game pieces, these are too expensive for what they are doing.

However, in those 700 words, I didn’t mention the collectors at all. These duals, these new Power cards, they aren’t going to be mistaken as actual A/B/U cards. Instead, these are new collectibles, rare as hell. That’s a different animal entirely, and that’s what you have to look at for Wizards’ thinking behind ‘wtf did they think would happen’?

A majority of Magic players are collectors too. We want to collect sweet versions of cards and then play with them too. The value of the card, its collectibility, is validating to us, giving us a rush of dopamine when we gaze upon that backwards-printed Viscera Seer and realize that I have only one of a hundred of these in the entire world. 

Not only do we get that feeling of joy, of satisfaction, but we also get to show it off in some way, most likely in a Commander deck or a sweet Cube. We get to experience the unique sensation of displaying a rare and valuable collectible, and the recognition of others who know how rare a card that is. 

This is why the serialized cards are performing so well: We love this stuff, and sports card manufacturers have been blazing this trail for a long time. We’re going to see more super-expensive packs, but we aren’t going to see this enormous gulf in the $250 packs. We’ll see one-of Unlimited Lotus Replica in foil with a rainbow Richard Garfield signature, packaged with a sleeve and slabbed case. 

The Anniversary packs were apparently pulled after 39 minutes of underwhelming sales. The lows were too low on these packs for Magic collectors, but don’t forget that Magic collectors have had 30 years to get their actual Power and dual lands. There is value in having these collectibles, but the whales who would be the market here weren’t going after anything better, just different. 

Fundamentally, I think that was the error here. Wizards thought there was a market for expensive packs, and there is, but the ratios were off. I won’t be surprised when there’s an announced run of 200 packs, with a selection of limited cards, and the packs are $1000 each.

This run at higher-end collectibles missed, but having this happen in the midst of the very successful serialized cards demonstrates that the market is there. Get ready for more.

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: The Main Monkey Business

Readers!

My goal of not writing about the same product 2 months in a row for all of 2022 is going nicely. This week I’ll be reviewing Jumpstart because why not? Jumpstart always sells a ton of packs but, also, the more linear type of Commander creatures favored by a straightforward product like Jumpstart can really move prices.

Member diss? You can argue that it wasn’t just Tinybones that did this, but this spike had come and gone before anyone had even heard the name “Tergrid.” This is a graph of the buylist price, not retail, mind you. I don’t know if anything from this Jumpstart will be this robust at lightning fires under the asses of some of the more lethargic prices of EDH-playables. Will anything from this Jumpstart be Tinybones two k twenty-two? I don’t know, but it’s my job to tell you if I see anything that might do some work. Let’s look at Jumpstart.

If this looks really preliminary, it’s because it is. The thing is, as much as I think Isu is a fun deck to run as just a crazy landfall deck that they don’t realize is landfall until you KO them for 20 unblockable, we can’t ignore the sick meme action that is Kibo, Uktabi Prince.

If Kibo is going to do some monkey business, I want to be the business man who gets in on the action. There will be banana tokens in these packs, too, and since Kibo is a mythic, the tokens will be at mythic rarity as well, so try not to toss them in the trash when you bust a billion packs of this stupid set. Kibo is legit actually probably really fun to play, so let’s get into it.

OK, so I have been looking at 10 card snapshots like this for a long time. Rather than go into like 10 different commanders, I’m going to do more of my work out loud in case you’re interested in my thought process. It’s been a few years since I have done this, so if you’re new, maybe more of my methodology will make sense to you soon.

You have to play Monkeys in a Kibo deck if you want to get full value out of his abilities, and monkeys and apes with very good abilities make up the bulk of this top 10. For those very new, “High Synergy” means the cards appear in a large number of Kibo decks but not many other decks. The higher the synergy score, the more specific the cards are to that deck. Seeing 9 strong apes here didn’t surprise me, but the 10th card being Viridian Revel is noteworthy.

If you don’t play EDH, and I don’t expect you to, you might not know Viridian Revel was touted tech for dealing with the deluge of Treasure Counter decks like Prosper. It was discussed on a few popular podcasts and inventory was impacted as they say.

This is a price graph I am way into because it tells me a few things despite not looking great at first glance. First of all, it spiked very hard and precipitously which means there was a low inventory situation and the market was shocked by a sudden spike in demand. The card has returned to halfway between what it was at first and where it spiked to, which we see a lot, but the buylist price went down. That means dealers aren’t aggressively restocking because they have a lot of the copies. When dealers have all of the copies of a card and it spikes, no copies are in binders or boxes for people to ferret out and the price will spike harder and faster the second time around. Viridian Revel is due for, if not a shock and a spike, at the very least a correction. I think it’s very reprintable, but those risks are the nature of our reality, now.

After high synergy, I look at top cards. Those are just cards played in a lot of the Kibo decks whether or not lots of decks play them or not. A lot of these cards will be monkey cards, too, but you’ll see a few format staples here sometimes.

Whenever a card as old as Monkey Cage, an ancient card from a set that came out when I was… in High School. Jesus, my skeleton suddenly feels like it has weight. Whenever I see a card from basically last century, I see if it’s a weird meme card that someone collects or if there are basically 900 $0.25 copies of the card on TCG Player.

As funny as it would be to spend a couple hundred bucks to signal to the market that there was a run on Monkey Cage, I saw something else in my researching the stock levels on this card.

Turns out Jumpstart may be the wrong place to try and find Monkey-adjacent cards to spec on until the full set is spoiled, I guess.

Once we’re past High Synergy and Top Cards, you may feel overwhelmed at the gigantic list of cards. It takes a while to remember which kinds of cards end up first on the list and which ones are undervalues and to get a knack for remembering cards that show up a lot. But usually when I write an article like this, I will think about cards that work BEST with Kibo. Sure, Kibo needs monkeys, but Kibo basically gives them an artifact to crack. They get benefit from it so there isn’t much point in not cracking it, which means you can hurt them from doing it to shut off your commander’s drawback, but you can also punish them for cracking their treasure tokens or having artifacts when you wipe their board. Vandalblast isn’t as good a spec as Viridian Revel in the medium term imo, but Vandalblast tells us people will want to wipe their opponents’ Artifacts and hurt them for it. That helps us narrow down the cards to look at and ignore format staples.

I quickly tune out the cards that I know are not tied to Kibo’s fate and look at the rest.

Did you know this was a million dollars? I noticed it came back down, but I also noticed that there is a little uptick. Going in to a bunch of Urza Mishra artifact sets means cards like this are only getting better. Maybe it’s worth pulling those Saga Uncommons out of bulk.

If we’re doing a “give them an artifact and then hurt them for having an artifact” thing, which cards HAVE to be in that deck?

If a graph tells me absolutely no information like this one does, it pays to see if we can check stock levels.

Looks bad to me, but that number can stampede quickly. The problem is, most of the sets listed are 4 at a time, so dealers backstock copies rather than listing them all and having them be subject to a buyout. The wall is low but it’s long and long is bad, too.

This card is far more… dare I say… tempting?

This took a bit to get from $2 to $3 but what about stock levels?

Welp.

For me, this is a good way to glance through a page and be reminded that cards I thought would pop that haven’t, like Ancient Runes, are getting another shot at it, potentially in a very populat deck. Cards like Powerllech are stupid and very funny in this deck and they cost less than a Doubling Season. I see Titania’s Song could be a thing and check to see if it has too many printings. It does. Branching Evolution from last Jumpstart is down to $10? What happened?

It’s down hard over the last few months, but with the +1/+1 counters decks coming out, I love this under $12 right now, especially if CK will be charging $25 for it in a few weeks.

OK, if someone on TCG Player wants $11.50 for a card CK will give me $13 in credit for because they think it will be like $30 next year, I won’t argue.

I hope this glimpse into my thought process was educational, or, more likely, you saw that I mostly do it like you do but you think your way is better. I’m sure you’re right. However, I do excel at paying attention very hard and I hope that means you didn’t have to this week. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!

Casual Fridays

Retro Artifacts go BRR

We are far enough into the set’s cycle that I can say this with confidence: It’s pretty amazing that we’re going to be able to buy so many awesome cards for some very cheap prices, and that they printed a set with two subsets: BRO, plus the BOT and BRR sets. Amazing stuff.

Right now, the serialized artifacts are taking all of the time and attention and money for this set. It’s understandable: there’s exactly 500 of each card, numbered and everything. It’s a gorgeous foiling, too, and we’ve even got crimped or other misprinted serialized cards running around! All the pieces are in place for the non-premium versions to tank pretty hard in the upcoming months. 

As such, I like to plan out my targets in advance for this sort of thing. I’m not buying now, and I’m not buying in three months. I’ve learned, and written about, the new timeline for cards being six months from release.

A note about the EDHREC rank: These rankings represent only the people maximally online and invested in uploading their decks. I haven’t put any of my decks up there, and there’s also a bias towards preconstructed decks. This is useful information, but it isn’t an all-knowing Oracle on the hill, nor a foolproof metric.

Swiftfoot Boots, Ashnod’s Altar, and Chromatic Lantern are by far the most popular cards here, but they will only be viable if the price drops to nearly bulk. Both of them have a lot of printings, and while the retro border is cool, this is absolutely a stay-away for me. 

Burnished Hart is in similar straits, but this at least is the only unique frame for the card. What’s warning me off is that there’s a Foil Extended Art from Commander Legends 1, when the FEAs were notably rarer, and that price is still super cheap. If you can get a lot of shiny versions for very very cheap, you might have a buylist play in the future, but I’m still not planning to buy.

Aetherflux Reservoir (current lowest priced version at $5, highest is $30, listed in 84,000 EDHREC decks) – Now here’s a card I can spec on. Foils for the retro and the schematic frame are $8 and $20, respectively, and that’s a big gap for cards that exist with the same drop rate. It’s got a pedigree, it’s a plan on its own in Commander, and it’s headed for its lowest price ever. I’m hopeful for foils in the $5 range in a few months, and that’s a lovely price for a mythic.

Altar of Dementia ($3 to $20, 64k decks) – There’s only two foils of this, one from Conspiracy and one from Modern Horizons, which you can see was released in June 2019:

We can see how cheap the card has been, and now we’re getting a whole lot more copies put into circulation. It’s a mythic now, not a rare, but that shouldn’t matter too much, given how frantically people are opening BRO Collector Boosters. I like this a lot long-term, and what I’m hoping for is that the foils (currently $5 and $13) keep tumbling lower. Even the Retro foil would be super attractive at $3, given that the other foils are over $11. I would also be interested in nonfoils if they got to the $1 range.

Mox Amber ($22 to $115, 58k decks) – You wouldn’t think that I’d be waiting on the big hit to come down, but I sure as heck am. The mad dash for serialized cards has Amber dropping from its all-time high:

And in fact, let’s zoom in on the recent part:

Yup, it’s fallen by half in the first month since its reveal and it’s definitely not done dropping. This is a marvelous candidate for buying something like 50 copies at ten bucks each around Easter. I can’t wait. The foils for the retro and schematic should get somewhat cheaper too, and will make the Dominaria foil prices look silly.

My only concern is that this card is an excellent candidate for Dominaria Remastered, and whatever special thing they have in mind for that set. Since that’s coming out in January, though, I’ll have enough time to make that decision.

Helm of the Host ($6 to $30, 57k decks) – I was surprised to see that this had only gotten a List reprint, but everything I said about Amber holds true here: It’s falling fast, it’ll fall for a while, and I won’t be shocked to see it in Dominaria Remastered. Once that hurdle is past, though, I’m really hoping that this ends up near one or two bucks a copy. Perfect buylist play once the retail gets to $5 again, and it undoubtedly will. This is one of the biggest equip costs commonly played in Commander, but there’s both ways around it and it’s always worth it anyway. There’s no special frame out there and not even a Secret Lair, so all the interest is going to go straight to these copies.

Ramos, Dragon Engine ($4 to $25, 13k decks total, 4k as Commander) – Finally, let’s discuss a card that has been looking for the right reprint home for some time. Wizards has done a lot to make Dragons a fun species to play, and five-color decks especially. There’s no shortage of ways to abuse this card, including ways to bounce and replay and break this ability right in half. Scrapbasket and Transguild Courier are cards I’ve seen do hilarious things. We can see the effect of all the recent Dragon goodness, as well as the effect of previewing the card, in the graph:

However, this card has been in tiny circulation for the longest time. It was a foil in the original Commander 2017 printing, and it was an Etched Foil for Commander Legends. That was it, till now. Its price was propped up by such small printings, and as such, I fully expect this to drop quite a ways…where I want to buy it up.

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.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY