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.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Bulk Rares that I Don’t Want

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Written By:

Douglas Johnson @Rose0fthorns
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Writer’s Block

I’ve got nothing to write about this week. I had nothing to write about last week either, which is why I decided to burn up one of my vacation days and relax while the rest of the internet world burned. I could have just copied and pasted all of my tweets about the Reserved List and shambled together some makeshift satire article, but my heart really wouldn’t have been in it. Two weeks ago I continued on my discussion about in Customer Service #mtgfinance, so go ahead and catch up on those two links if you’re looking for an additional dose of content, while I think of something to write for this wonderful Thursday.

TCG Direct

This would have been a timely opportunity to write about the new TCGplayer Direct buylist that just launched this week, but I feel that I already covered a large majority of the questions that I’ve been approached with so far. That article can be found right here, but it can be summarized in a few points.

  • I’m not worried about the TCGplayer buylist encouraging locals to sell cards online as opposed to bringing me their collections for cash.
  • The conveniences you offer by having cash in hand and being available at odd hours of the day/night more than make up for the slightly higher percentages that TCGplayer’s buylisting vendors will offer.
  • I expect that your ability and willingness to buy “pretty much everything,” including bulk common/uncommons and bulk rares will sway people in your favor who want to get rid of everything in one fell swoop.
  • I don’t think many (if any) stores will be able to offer the competitive buy prices that the Blueprint will offer for your jank common and uncommon buylistable stuff. Thomas is awesome to deal with.

Bullet Points on Bulk Rares

It’s been a little while since I’ve covered bulk rares as a topic, but there are a couple more things I wanted to mention about them that don’t warrant an entire article’s worth of content. I know that I enjoy proclaiming that I “buy anything and everything” as a personal buylist, and I especially enjoy buying bulk rares because of how safe of an investment they are. However, there are a few bulk rares that I actually advocate staying away from and I don’t think I’ve made that clear in any of my previous articles where I suggested you buy dime rares.

  • Stay away from foreign bulk rares. Almost all of the non-competitive players I’ve dealt with will avoid foreign cards that they and their friends are unable to read. As such, non-English bulk rares are extremely difficult to sell in my 25 cent boxes, and I’m always happy to move them for dimes myself just to get rid of them.
  • Stay away from moderately played bulk rares. Maybe this is just a personal preference, but I really like my bulk rare boxes to all contain NM/SP cards. Sometimes I’ll leave in MP cards that have a retail price of $1 to effectively price the card at a quarter, but in reality it’s extremely hard to move played bulk rares. Basically, we don’t want anything that we can’t easily resell to SCG. I have all of my played and foreign bulk rares in a large box that I try to move for 10 cents each.
badbulk
Yuck.
  • Stay away from non-gold symbol bulk rares. Okay, this one’s a bit more unique. While these are still technically rares, they’re pretty hard to move when the non-competitive players think that you just accidentally left commons and uncommons in the box. Again, if the big-box stores don’t want them then neither do we. Channelfireball states explicitly that they only want gold symbol bulk rares, so feel free to turn away any 5th edition Shivan Dragons. I’d rather pay a dime for a  Necropolis Fiend any day of the week.

Image

bulk

Eldritch Who?

If you started reading my articles relatively recently, you might be confused by the lack of attention I’ve paid towards new set releases. I’ve yet to mention Eldritch Moon in any of my articles, and I tend to avoid picking out cards that I think will spike hard in Standard. It’s not that I hate the format, I just don’t trust my own card evaluations well enough to justify putting them onto internet pages for you to read and trust.

What I *am* good at, is picking out cards that most other players will write off as “just a garbage bulk rare”, and letting you know that the buylist is actually five times what you might have thought it was. Let’s grab a handful of cards out of a pile that I paid 10 cents each for, and take a look-see.

20160717_141738

There’s a lot of cards in this pile, and you might be wondering “Really?” on some of these cards that are all getting tossed into my “$1 each or six for $5” box.

Colossus of Akros

colossus

Yep. This guy is absolutely a $1 card, and I love being shipped  bulk lots off Facebook when I pay 10 cents each for these babies. I don’t know the exact deck this card goes in, which is weird because most casual only cards are pretty obvious where they’re being played. Maybe this is just a cheap alternative to Emrakul for the rampy Timmys? I don’t know, but I’m okay with it.

Cathars’ Crusade

crusade

This one is a bit more obvious. Everyone loves Tokens, and this card is a Commander gem in strategies like Ghave. Even though it was thrown in the mono-white deck in 2014, its’ shaken off that reprint and continues to creep upward, while more competitive Spikes blissfully throw it into boxes to sell for a dime.

Desecration Demon

demon

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. That graph gives me a chuckle, because people are always surprised when I buy their Desecration Demon for more than double what they expected before I throw it into the dollar box to sell off later. While I was initially confused as to why this didn’t drop to true bulk after rotation, I have a working theory that the demand from this card comes from being one of the few demons with converted mana cost of 4 or less that actually fits into “Demon tribal”, before you get into the big and scary demons where you have a lot more options on the curve.

Malakir Bloodwitch

bloodwitch

This one might be a bit more known because of its’ strong applications in Commander…. Oh wait, it probably wouldn’t. I recently played against an Olivia deck that ran this card, and I had to read it twice to make sure it was as good as they said it was. Yes, you drain each opponent, and you gain all the life that you stole. It’s Gray Merchant for people who like Vampires, and there’s a lot of people who like Vampires. This card has been a dollar for a while as you can see from the graph,but its’ gained some recent traction from being a seven year old vampire with no reprints, while having a random protection that ends up being very relevant.

End Step

  • I really don’t care about Eldritch Moon. I likely won’t care until a bunch of the cards in the set drop to bulk rare status, so I can start picking them up for a dollar (plus 20 cents) a dozen.
  • It’s very unlikely that Arachnogenesis goes any lower than the $2.50 that it currently sits at. I’m not saying it spikes, but I’m also not saying that there wasn’t just a Legendary Spider made that people have been waiting for.

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