Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – WTF is Printing and Collation?

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I’ve decided to start a little mini-series, appropriately titled “WTF is _” to take some time to discuss some topics that might not necessary be the most important finance topics but tangentially related to the cost of cards as a whole.  The first topic I’m going to talk about is collation.

Well if you go look up the word collation, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the way it’s used to describe Magic product so I’m assuming someone made the stretch to fit at some point in time.  I don’t know the etymology of the phrase but I know what it means.  Collation in Magic terms refers to the distribution of cards in a booster pack (or packs in a box, etc).   But before we can really dive into Magic’s collation process and what it’s doing today, we need to talk about the printing process first.

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Sheets

Since the dawn of time Magic cards have been printed on huge sheets of card stock and cut down into the much smaller cards we all play with today.  It’s not uncommon to see foil uncut sheets like these available at Grands Prix’s prize walls.  Generally each set has 3 sheets for each of the 3 rarities.  Generally…

Alpha

As a young upstart company without presumably a ton of financial resources it’s no surprise Alpha was a huge source of printing problems.  You ever want to make a vendor roll their eyes?  Ask them if they have any Alpha Volcanic Islands for sale.  Alpha was missing two cards that were part of Beta (Volcanic Island and Circle of Protection: Black) and that’s not even the worst part.

Here is a picture of Mark Rosewater standing in front of an uncut sheet of Beta rares.  You might not notice it quickly but I count 4 (FOUR!?) basic islands on this rare sheet and I can’t even see the whole thing!

mm45_beta1

In this second picture (of presumably a common, rare, and uncommon sheet) there yet still more basic lands on the uncommon sheet.

mm45_betaAll

The short version of this story is don’t buy an unopened pack of old Magic.  You could get some very bad cards as your rare.

Experimental printing processes:

Have you ever heard someone say something’s rarity is “U2?”  No they’re not talking about the band, but rather another experimental and now defunct printing process (kind of).  Most people assume that the Legends Karakas is an uncommon and so is Mana Drain.  They’re from the same set, right? Well yeah but technically, Karakas is a U2 and Mana  Drain is a U1 which means there are twice as many Legends Karakas in existence than Mana Drains.  The U1/2 distinction is how many times each card appeared on the uncommon sheet.  That also happened with the common sheet which lead to some weird situations.  Hymn to Tourach is a C1 in Fallen Empires but it has 4 different arts so it’s on the sheet 4 times…  Some commons only had 3 different arts (this different art experiment was also a bad idea) which means despite them both being C1, there are more of some than others.  But Fallen Empires also has other problems like it only being printed on two sheets (the other sheet had U3, U2, and U1 cards – which were Uncommons, Slightly more Uncommons, and Rares).  Wizards has since learned something from these mistakes.

Modern Day Printing:

Today, there are 3 sheets.  Commons, Uncommons, and Rares.  But wait, what about mythics?  Well it’s pretty simple to explain.  With the introduction of the colored set symbols to denote rarity, it became imperative that each card at the same rarity was the “same rarity.”  Some cards, like Mythic rares appear slightly less often than other cards in the same slot so they have a new symbol but they are printed on the same sheet.  The rare sheet for modern sets has 2 of each rare and 1 of each mythic – making mythics twice as rare as rare without the confusing R2/1 notations. But wait, there’s more!  Flip cards can’t be printed on the same sheet as normal cards because they don’t have the same backing.  Thus we have sheets that contain only flip cards and they are cut and inserted into the packs later as well.  BUT WAIT – there’s still more!  With Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon I am going to go out on a limb and make the assumption that they have split the flip cards into two sheets.  One with commons and uncommons (1 goes in every pack) and one with rares and mythics (1 goes in some packs but doesn’t replace the other flip card).  This printing process is different from Innistrad and Dark Ascension where there was only ever 1 flip card in a pack.

Collation

Okay so now that we’ve had that history lesson on what printing is – let’s talk about collation.  In the oldest years of Magic there was no collation.  The cards were printed, packed, and shipped.  Many cards appeared in the same order in booster packs and the same rares in the same order.  I vaguely remember in my earlier years, while drafting Onslaught, that there were some cards that often appeared before or after Sparksmith on a sheet.  With this information I was able to tell if a Sparksmith was likely in the pack and base my further decisions on that.  If you didn’t draft Onslaught you probably don’t get why Sparksmith is so important.  Basically it’s like opening a Pack Rat at common.  Maybe not quite that bad, but whatever – I’m getting off topic.

Recently

There have been strides made in order to limit the ability to know what rares would be in what packs.  This is also called “box mapping” and while I don’t do it or endorse it, many people try.  Some boxes are especially susceptible as a few years ago there was an app you could download to help you do it.  I don’t want to say it was box mapping for dummies, but it was.  As you can see here, it only took 8 packs to map out the entire box’s contents.  This is obviously very unsettling to people and had gone on through Gatecrash and Dragon’s Maze. Theros introduced new colation processes that had some packs shift and/or columns move that made it much harder to do.  As far as I can tell, going forward it has been pretty hard to map boxes.

Problem Packs

On more than on occasion we have seen some colation failures and it’s almost always at the expense of the player.  Modern Masters 2015 had a comical number of errors.  I experienced two different drafts where the number of cards in the packs was not correct (missing foil, missing rare, extra foil, or extra rare).  Then you have weird stuff like this box where every pack had a mythic.  This also happened in Fate Reforged where there were a number of people that opened a fetchland in every pack.

Eldritch Moon

So we have another problem this time.  “Box Mapping” has become too easy for the average player.  As you can see in this video, you are able to tell which art packs in a case has all of the non-flip mythics in that case.  While it’s not quite as bad as knowing where every card is in a box of a set, you can find most of the mythics pretty easily across multiple boxes with this technique.  In fact, after you find one mythic you are very likely on your way to finding them all.  This is a big colation problem and might be a result of using a different colation process from Oath of the Gatewatch which weirdly had 4 booster wrappers instead of the usual 3 of a small set.  It might also be a problem with how they decided to package flip cards from this set and it was masked by the 5 booster wrappers in Shadows over Innistrad.  The short version of this story is don’t buy loose packs.  The long version of this story is all of the words it took to get here.

Final thoughts from Last weekend

  • So, Spell Queller.  Who’s ready for a year of this guy?  I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the next few days since it’s already a $10+ rare but man there are so many Spell Quellers in the T64 of SCG Columbus.
  • Moving forward I think there will be an uptick of 1 mana ways to kill Spell Queller (Aerial Volley, Fiery Impulse, etc) but I feel they may fall short of killing the rest of the Bant Company deck.
  • Not a big splash of Eldritch Moon cards in Modern.  I wouldn’t give up on your Allosaurus Riders / Eldritch Evolution deck but I’m not saying it’s likely to happen.
  • Pro Tour is a few weeks away.  If you see cards under performing don’t ditch them yet.  You have a good chance to cash out during a weekend of spikes.  Last Pro Tour I was able to sell all of my Dark Petitions for far more money than I should have been able to get for them.
Sigmund Ausfresser

PROTRADER: Why the Rich are Getting Richer

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Something I hear about more frequently nowadays is the concept of a “fixed value” for a given Standard set.  In other words, once a Standard set is released and enough cards enter circulation, card prices adjust so that eventually the set’s overall value levels out at a specific number.  Call it $120, $140, or the cost of redemption – call it whatever you’d like – the MTG finance community largely embraces the concept that a single card can “absorb” most of the value of a set and push down the value of the rest.

This sort of constraint is limited fairly narrowly to sets that are still in-print and/or redeemable from MTGO.  There’s no similar limitation, for example, on the value of a Legacy and Modern deck.

Or is there?

This week I’m going to take a look at a few interesting trends across these eternal formats, and in turn develop some hypotheses surrounding the recent jump in many cards’ prices over the past few months.  Ultimately I’ll answer the bottom line question: are reserve list and other older cards in a bubble?

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The Modern Swoon?

This morning I was browsing values on some of the most popular cards in the Modern metagame.  I immediately noticed that some of the hottest cards – some even popular in Legacy – have been dropping in price aggressively.  Snapcaster Mage immediately comes to mind:

Snapcaster

Then again, this card did just see a promotional printing.  So let’s take a look at something also very popular in Modern that didn’t get reprinted in the past 6 months:

Spellskite

Perhaps Spellskite is suffering due to the banning of Splinter Twin in Modern.  It’s price did peak in January – the same month that Splinter Twin’s banning was announced.  Though it’s worth noting that this card is still a major staple of Modern.

And who could forget the savage beating Remand has taken lately due to its multiple reprints.

Remand

The charts above could lead one to believe the end is truly near for Modern.  After all, these are significant drops!  However, the interesting point I want to highlight is that while these Modern prices tumbled, a few other Modern cards have seen recent all-time highs!  Consider, for example, the Modern Masters reprint Kitchen Finks:

Finks

Collected Company broke into Modern and has filled the void in Melira combo decks vacated by Birthing Pod’s banning.  Therefore it’s no surprise to see this critical 3-drop storm to double digits despite the reprint.

Noble Hierarch is another card that was reprinted (this one far more recently) and yet has been overcoming the new supply and rising in value.  The Modern Masters 2015 copies are even hitting all time highs as we speak.

Hierarch

And who could ignore one of the greatest Modern gainers in 2016, sideboard tech Stony Silence?

Stony

All of these price movements can be explained individually with a fundamental idea.  Noble Hierarch is rising because it’s utility across multiple successful decks.  Stony Silence has surged since Affinity has strengthened in the Modern metagame.  You’ll also see easily explicable growth in cards like Inkmoth Nexus and Cavern of Souls.  Equally, there’s an explanation for price drops in those like Inquisition of Kozilek and Gitaxian Probe.  It almost seems like for every increase there’s an equal but opposite decrease.

Now let’s take a look at some Legacy charts.

Eternal Masters’ Force Majeure

When Eternal Masters hit hobby stop shelves worldwide, people had already anticipated what was to come – but only to a limited extent.  What I mean is, players knew Legacy staple reserve list cards were bound to jump.  This caused a small, temporary run on cards like Mox Diamond.

Mox Diamond

However the buyout was premature – after spiking to $120, the card immediately sold off again to reach a still-respectable plateau of $80.  That is, until Eternal Masters had sufficient circulation.  Now the card is butting up against that triple digit price point and it’s only a matter of time before it breaks through.

Perhaps the most noteworthy trend I’ve been following for Legacy staples – outside of buyouts and attempted price manipulation – is that of Dual Lands.  Some of the more popular duals have been screaming higher in a somewhat under-the-radar manner.

Sea

When Underground Sea last hit $400, many in the MTG community screamed foul.  And in fact, it did feel like that price target was forced a bit.  But here we are again at $400 – with even higher buy list prices – and no one is blinking (or if they are, they aren’t vocal on social media).  And it’s not just the most played duals that are moving.  Check out one that I’ve had my eye on for weeks: Taiga.

Taiga

Again we see a dual land peaking in 2014, selling off, and then returning to new highs.  Could this be a tremendous Legacy Renaissance?  Is the format surging in interest on the heels of Eternal Masters?

Possibly, but I need to now address the other side of this coin.  As reserve list staples surge higher, many Legacy staples have sold off dramatically in the wake of Eternal Masters reprints.  Karakas comes to mind first because the loss I’ve taken on my single copy hits closest to home.  But I wanted the card for Legacy, so I knowingly signed up for the downside.

Karakas

Despite being reprinted at mythic rare, the Eternal Masters reprint of Karakas really punished its price.  Rares in the set were set back even further.  Wasteland is one of the most played cards in Legacy, yet the card is notching two year lows on the recent reprinting.

Wasteland

Other cards that have suffered in price include Cabal Therapy, Jace, the Mind Sculptor, and Sensei’s Divining Top.  Of course these are balanced out by surges in cards like Counterbalance, Surgical Extraction and Lion’s Eye Diamond.  Some prices are dropping and others are on the rise.

Is there Incremental Money At Play?

Analyzing solely the data presented above, one may conclude that there’s no incremental value flowing into Magic.  However I’d have to disagree with this conclusion, and the reason is related to cards I haven’t even mentioned yet: Vintage and Cube staples.  No matter how much cheaper Mana Crypt gets due to its reprinting in Eternal Masters, it cannot overcome the fact that Library of Alexandria has gone from $300 to $800 this year.  The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale’s growth is likewise not explainable by the reprinting of Gamble.  Even if a playset of Gamble was given away at every Legacy Grand Prix, they wouldn’t get cheap enough to counteract the $300+ gain in Tabernacle.  Something more is clearly at play here.

My hypothesis is that there’s another driving force beyond just shifts in value from some cards to others within a metagame.  For high end cards to continue their climb, there must be incremental money entering the game.  And I can support this hypothesis with macroeconomics.  Consider this: interest rates are near historic lows – in some cases outside the United States, treasury yields are negative!  That means you can basically purchase a 10-year bond from the government (essentially giving them a loan) and you’d get less money back after ten years than what you provided.  Yup.  Negative interest.  It’s a reality.

This phenomenon has driven investors to look for places to park money in order to earn some sort of stable return.  Usually this void is filled by bonds and CD’s.  But when you’re getting less than 1% interest on these products, it drives people to look elsewhere.  Dividend paying stocks, such as Verizon, are hitting ten year highs as a result.  People throw caution into the wind and ignore valuation – they see a juicy 4% dividend and they pile in.

VZ

As investors struggle to find safe yields, they’ve been amassing large cash balances.  So to avoid sitting on piles of dead money, they begrudgingly put their precious resources to work in the stock market.  This is one reason why the market is hitting all-time highs – there’s simply nowhere else to go for reliable returns in this low-rate environment.

Or is there?  I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that at least a small amount of the most savvy MTG finance investors are looking at Magic as a superior alternate investment vehicle.  It may sound unlikely, but in reality it doesn’t take much for such a consideration to become reality.  People like Rudy from the Youtube channel Alpha Investments know that they can’t get better, safer returns from the market right now.  I myself have recently added to my MTG portfolio, lifting my exposure to the collectible card game to a personal all-time high.  In my brokerage account I’m unhappy with the funds sitting in cash earning 0.01% interest.  So why add more when I see attractive opportunities in Magic?  I’d wager Rudy and I aren’t the only ones thinking this way.

Wrapping It Up

What does it all mean?  I’m drawing two conclusions here.  First, I think the concept of Modern Masters and Eternal Masters sets reducing price of entry into eternal formats is a complete fallacy.  All Modern Masters sets do is shift value from one basket of cards to another.  For every Vendilion Clique and Dark Confidant there’s an Inquisition of Kozilek and Inkmoth Nexus.  It’s impossible for Wizards of the Coast to support Modern’s growth as a format and simultaneous reprint cards fast enough to keep values manageable.  And I’ll go as far as to say that Eternal Masters sets does more harm than good for the secondary market.  All these sets will do is push down values of reprintable cards and concentrate value in high end reserve list staples – thus rewarding those with large reserve list collections and strengthening the 1% of MTG finance.  In turn they can convert these profits into the very high end and drive prices to even higher levels.

The second conclusion I’m drawing is that I believe there is a growing number of MTG investors who recognize the opportunity in front of them.  Anyone who deals with the stock market and the MTG market can see how investments in high end reserve list cards and strategic sealed booster boxes are highly attractive versus an inflated stock market.  This is precisely why I personally decided to allocate new funds to my MTG account instead of my stock market account for the first time in three years.  If I want a safe, steady return I frankly like Origins booster boxes more than an expensive Verizon stock at this point in time.

So where do we go from here?  While I do see interest rates rebounding eventually, I’m not sure if that’ll drive prices of reserve list cards down at all.  If I think about Magic from the long-term view perspective, the value of Power, duals, and other high end reserve list cards will be proportional to the longevity of the game.  If Magic is around for another 23 years, I shudder to imagine what a Black Lotus could sell for at that point in time.  Considering a Honus Wagner baseball card sold for over $2 Million back in 2012, I’d say Magic cards have plenty of runway.  While the Honus Wagner card is far older and rarer than Black Lotus, there is one thing the Lotus has going for it.  People can’t enjoy playing a fun game with their baseball card…

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

  • I was not expecting this one. While Star City Games has a few dozen Underground Sea and Volcanic Island in stock, they have only 20 Revised copies of Scrubland available – none are Near Mint.  This goes back to my earlier point that all dual lands are on the rise now, and I suspect we haven’t seen their peaks yet.
  • A few weeks ago I picked up a single SP copy of Nether Void as a modest bet that the reserve list card would spike in price. One month later, I firmly believe we’re on the doorstep of such a jump.  Star City Games had a few copies in stock as recently as a week ago, but now they’re completely sold out.  TCG Player is also down to just a few copies.  Star City will inevitably raise their price now, and the momentum won’t stop.  DISCLAIMER: I have my single copy listed on eBay at the inflated price of $350 in case there is a spike.
  • Force of Will is still out of stock at Star City Games. Their Alliances copies are listed at $110 but there are none in stock and I suspect these will get re-listed $10-$15 higher.  This is 100% definitely the Tarmogoyf of the Eternal Masters set, rising in price despite the reprint.  It’s fascinating to watch Legacy cards react in price consistently with Modern cards during Modern Masters reprint years, only with more magnitude due to rarity and age.
Casual Fridays

The New Pattern?

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We are three months away from having the old pattern of Standard be gone completely. It’s a new and exciting time, as we try to figure out what effect there will be on our favorite cards.

Let me introduce you to how things used to be:
elspeth price

Do you remember her? Tokens all over, fetches finding battle lands, her sick combo with Wingmate Roc, where you could minus her to kill their Rhinos and keep your birds? How about with Devotion strategies? Remember when you had to have a plan for her?

Elspeth was a staple at first, her price dropping down slowly, but spiking when the new block was released. This is a trend that had been well-established, going back more than a few sets, where the next big set would introduce mechanics or decks that played very well with the cards from the previous sets.

Then, when the rotation was about six months away, the card would begin to lose value, as people got rid of extras and tried to keep no more than a playset. Elspeth was hit extra hard, as her Duel Deck vs. Kiora came out about the time of Fate Reforged.

That’s the old way. What harbingers do we have of the new way?

hangarback

Go ahead and look up how many GW Tokens builds are playing Hangarback. I’ll wait. It’s a long list. This card is a four-of all over the place, it’s seeing some Modern and even Vintage play, and yet here it is, south of $5 for a card that reeks of value! It’s gone down ever since its release!

Maybe it’s because of Magic Origins, maybe because it’s a rare. There are a lot of factors at play and I am not pretending to have all the answers. One card does not define a trend, but good grief, this is a powerful and commonly-played card to be so cheap and to have consistently fallen in value.

Here’s another card I’ve been watching closely:

gideon
Gideon is the first planeswalker in some time to be an automatic four-of, because his emblem is an easy out for extra copies. He is just as ubiquitous as Hangarback, and is a mythic! Despite all that, he is staying stable. The rotation for him is in 2017, so he’s got three sets to create a new pattern.

But will he? I like stability, but what I really like is the chance to go up. Unfortunately, that’s all it is right now: a chance. If there were more time to go, I’d like his chances more, especially as he’s BFFs with Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. That’s a combination I would like to put serious money on, except that the window for profit is a lot smaller.

Avacynprice

Avacyn is still being opened. She’s in one pack of Battle for Zendikar and we’ve got three months of EMN-EMN-SOI in front of us. She hasn’t hit maximum supply yet, but she’s so good and played so frequently that you might expect her value to be trending upward. Not at all, though, not at all.

I’m looking around, and I’m seeing a pattern of cards that are fantastic in Standard not growing in price as they used to. I’m not sure if it’s the timing, or increased awareness, or greater supply, but Standard doesn’t seem to have the big gains it used to.

Sure, we get spikes on Demonic Pact when Harmless Offering is spoiled, or Day’s Undoing gets a couple bucks thanks to a new prison-style deck, but those are small and don’t appear to be sticking around. Plus, those are rotating when Kaladesh arrives, and no one is going to buy more than the fewest possible.

So if Standard isn’t where we find the chance of increasing value, where do we look?

kalitas

Kalitas is not nearly as commonly played as Gideon or Avacyn, yet he’s worth more. He’s a small-set mythic, true, but look at where he’s seeing consistent play that the other two aren’t: Modern.

I’m also paying attention to Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. He’s golden in Tron, a turn-four play if you get the set plus an extra Tower. Oof.

Want another example? Look at Nahiri, the Harbinger. Same set as Avacyn, played in a lot less decks, worth about $5 more. She’s a two-card combo that takes a little time and has some potential for disruption, but the power, and the price, is worth the attention.

I’m not saying this is the pattern for all time in the future. I don’t have enough data to make that prediction.

What I am doing is keeping an eye on these cards, and others, in order to make sense of things. Maybe Gideon will spike in Kaladesh. Maybe Kalitas falls off the map. We will have to see, but these slow decreases for very good Standard cards may be the new normal.

I think Gideon and Nissa are going to tell me the pattern for the new Standard. If they go up during Eldritch Moon or Kaladesh, and then drop like rocks during Aether Revolt, that would mean the old pattern is still in play, just on a condensed timeline.

What I suspect, though, is that people have learned their lesson about the value of cards as they approach rotation. No one waits to out their extras anymore, and that could mean a whole new pattern to learn.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: The Next Big Move

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Okay, so today is the street release for Eldritch Moon, but we aren’t going to spend much time talking about that set. Instead, I want to talk about Kaladesh – or more accurately, the rotation accompanying it.

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked last week at FNM about “what’s rotating out”. Okay, so it was probably somewhere around four or five times, but still– that’s a lot of times to be asked the same question by a small crowd of people, especially when the answer is a pretty simple “nothing”. For whatever reason, the new (simplified!) rotation schedule has not yet trickled-down from the enfranchised players at the top to the lower-information players at the bottom1.

This really got me thinking however, and I think this is the best time to begin optimizing for the upcoming transition. One of the interesting, non-partisan elements of the current election is the discussion over how the transition will be made next January, even if the Democrats end up keeping the White House. It’s been compared to a new CEO taking the helm of a giant corporation, except that it’s unarguably even larger in scope. Both of the major parties have spent the last several months discussing how the protocol and procedure of such a move would take place; this isn’t as a means of political bluster, but as a way to avoid any costly hiccups or oversights. Stability and continuity is going to be the name of the game. Why should we approach Standard any differently?

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I mentioned the non-rotating rare lands a couple of weeks back, and this is certainly the foundational level of looking ahead. Being able to actually cast your spells is pretty important, and even though both cycles are going to have a tough time breaking into Modern, it’s not crazy to think that either SoI’s or BFZ’s lands could be commonly played in full sets. The Shadows lands all have a full year left in Standard, so the appeal of buying in at roughly $2 each now seems like it could easily pay off at some point in the next twelve months. My favorites here are undoubtedly Fortified Village and Port Town (White is VERY strong right now, and surprisingly deep in terms of deckbuilding options), but it’s worth mentioning that the red ones feel at least somewhat artificially depressed- don’t forget that R won like 3 Pro Tours in a row and could easily win another in the next year.

Building off of the revolutionary concept that Lands are good in Magic, the next look is to finding dynamic, standalone threats. It you look at winning games from the “Top Down” perspective advocated by Pat Chapin, then look for the things that are going to win you games either in immediacy or in essence just by casting them. One of the first things on my list here is actually a new card, Elder Deep-Fiend. This card saw a pretty interesting bump during preorders, and is probably going to see a small price shrink in a month (unless it is literally half the top 16 or more of PT:EMN, which is possible). Right now, it’s like the 2015 Minnesota Vikings or 2016 Jacksonville Jaguars2, a darling among the pundits that is going to have to prove the larger pools of doubters that they are legit. Emrakul is in this conversation to a degree, but she is definitely priced too high at $15, and I’m happy to wait that slump out.

Ulamog at $12 is only slightly more appealing, but World Breaker at $5 seems like the smarter play. World Breaker in application seems to certainly do enough to get the job done, and in conjuction with Drownyard Temple is able to take over most situations. The deckbuilding costs with splashing green for World Breaker are not terrible, since two or the best creature lands (Hissing Quagmire and Lumbering Falls) are simultaneously in G and the two best control colors. Staying in green, Cryptolith Rite seems like a solid buy at just under $3, especially since it’s high water-mark was more than twice as much. Cryptolith Rite is going to be in Standard just as long as Westvale Abbey (a tricky call at ~$7, but a powerful and broad threat nonetheless), and the two cards certainly pair well together. The trick here is to look for things that are good on their own, without relying on potential synergies that may prove too hard to bet on with yet-to-be-known mechanics from future sets.

A big reason why this is so important to focus on now is because Eldritch Moon rares/mythics are currently all at inflated values. The potential to convert something like a Liliana, the Last Hope into twelve or thirteen Fortified Villages seems like a trade that won’t be possible in a few weeks. Gisela, the Broken Blade was one of my favorite cards coming out, but I’m not sure how long she can maintain $24 without having that crucial fourth point of toughness. Spell Queller, the fifth most expensive card as of me writing this, is over $12 and still just a rare — I expect that value to crater as the set gets opened en masse. Heck, even Ishkanah, Grafwidow is floating around $10, and that card’s best home is probably Gauntlet Legends: Dark Legacy3.

Decimator of Provinces has already seen a slide down to about $5, and even though I think it’s probably safe there for a while (unless the card proves to be literally useless immediately, which I don’t think is possible), I think more mythics will be joining it by slipping down a few bucks in the short term. Consequently, cards from most of the other sets in Standard (not just DTK and Origins, which are entering their senior year) have had a small dip in value, making this the best time to buy most of the cards from any set BESIDES EMN.

Speaking of Origins (kinda), the slow burn on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is incredible to me. I’ve officially started targeting them aggressively, and if they get much lower than their current $30, expect to see someone with the capital stage at least a partial buyout. This card plays perfectly with the environment of the next few months, and is a proven player in Standard AND the Eternal formats. Ask yourself this- is there any point in the next 5 years where I would rather have a Tamiyo and a Grim Flayer OVER a Jace? This price drop feels like what happened years ago with rotations, before players realized that good cards were good even after they left the marquee format.

What do you think? Which cards do you think are safe or appealing in three or six months? Which EMN rares are best to trade away now?

Best,

Ross

1[‘condescending smirk’ emoji].

2DUUUUUUUUUUUVAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLL.

3The PS2 version, obviously.

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