Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: More than Meets the Eye

Readers!

We got dese dumb Transformah decks and I think they’ll do… not nothing? I expected more impact from the Street Fighter Secret Lairs and it seems like there are finally so many products that large numbers of people cannot be relied upon reasonably to engage with all of them. It’s great that not every product is for everyone, but how do we guess which products are for no one? People are going to buy these Transformers cards, sue, and some of them might even play EDH. However, I have no idea whether this will matter enough to sell singles. I’m going to do what I have always done hoping things just click or I figure out the next technique, but I feel a ton of instability in my life right now and it’s making me worry about everything I used to believe in.

I am going to act as though I think these Transformers cards will impact the game to enough of an extent that prices move, something that Street Fighter hasn’t really borne out yet. I’m hoping the Transformers stuff is important, but if it’s not, all I did was waste an article slot. You will have spent money. I am not telling you I don’t believe in my picks because I’m a bad at this, rather I am saying that I don’t have the normal confidence in the premise of this being a worthwhile exercise – I will identify picks the same way I always do. As always, there is risk – if this was easy money, everyone would do it and I would be a carpenter or something. Anyway, let’s do that thing we do.



We have a whopping 15 commanders in this product. It’s a lot of cards. I don’t know, I hate this, what do you want from me?


Let’s go in order of popularity until we stop wanting to, shall we?




High Synergy card piles are starting to look like the first 10 cards reprinted the next time they do a precon, something they do 11 times a year now. I don’t know, it’s really hard to be excited about these staples, especially when half of them were in a precon to begin with.




This is a real Timmy card and at $2 for a mythic and $4 for an EA mythic, I think we are basically at the floor. You can get these from TCG Player for basically buylist. I don’t know what the future holds, but a big, dumb, dorky creature like this that makes so much power is great, especially in a deck where you’ll creature 12 pre-combat effortlessly. Flame Rift gives you 12 mana in this deck, you’ll be farting out huge creatures in no time.




This is an absurd card, held in check by its high CMC in a deck where colorless mana is as abundant as water. I’m into this in the format in general. The biggest reason for some of these cards not doing better is people have never seen them before. I suspect Bronze Guardian hasn’t been seen much and any card that can go from $2 to $10 because it was on Game Knights is worth keeping an eye on, and you can keep a very close eye on them if they’re in a pile on your desk like all of my specs.




Why would this price go down before it goes up? This card is insane. Unfortunately, it’s one of only like 20 cards worth more than $3 from those precons, so…. whee. Does that make the buy-in higher than I’d like? A bit, but it won’t matter in a year.




I have told you and told you to get this card – I sure hope you listened! It’s half on TCG what they want on CK so, that’s something. I love this card and I don’t know why it’s hasn’t been reprinted, but I have basically made money on this card 3 times so it’s about time I lost all of it, I guess. This isn’t a buy because of Optimus Prime decks, but it’s not like those hurt.



The guy that turns into an 80s ghetto blaster is the third most popular, go figure.




So here is another troubling concept.




Curiosity Crafter was shown on Game Knights, to great effect I might add. It spiked accordingly, and hard. It fell way, way off – not settling midway between the spike and pre-spike price, but rather at barely twice it. Buying in at $1 trying to cash out at $2 is hard work, so you need to be ready to pull the trigger and list when they start to pop for $15. Are you that nimble? This is the best case scenario for a lot of specs. Seems stressful, right? This is how you make actual money on a $1 card, though.




I have made money on this card this year, but I’m not ruling out buying back the same copies from CK that I buylisted to them and trying again now that CK retail is below what I buylisted them for. I hope I see my same old copies and get to get paid for babysitting them again. Other cards that do this a lot are Teferi’s Puzzle Box, Anvil of Bogardan and Sunforger. Feels good to sell a company cards you just bought from it for more than you paid, it’s arbitrage without a third part. The dream.




This is the absolute floor for this card. It tanking because of a reprint rather than loss of adoption makes it basically impossible this ever sees $40 again, but what do you want for a seven dollar and forty cent buy-in?


That does it for me this week, nerds. Thanks for reading. Until next time!

Casual Fridays

The Math of The Brothers’ War

Here we are, everyone, another installment of ‘How rare is rarer than mythic rare’ and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by some of these numbers. Things aren’t as insanely rare as they used to be, and yet they are still going to require a lot of packs to get what we want.

This set has TWO subsets of cards we care about: the Transformers subset and the Retro Artifact set. Each of those sets has chase versions too! There’s a lot to keep track of, but luckily, I’ve gotten good at parsing small details and figuring out some approximate drop rates for these cards.

So let’s dive into the odds and the math and the likelihood of getting the cards you want!

This set, everything we care about is in the Collector Boosters, as opposed to other sets where Set Boosters might have some of what we want. So all of these figures are calculated for those boosters and those alone.

It’s also worth mentioning that these are estimates based on best information. These aren’t for sure, locked in figures. The nature of statistics and probability means that some people will have better results and some will have worse results. 

One of the core principles I use in calculating these drop rates is the ratio of cards in a Draft booster: 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare or .5 of a mythic rare. Since we don’t get half of a card, I double that, so for every mythic rare, there’s 2 rares, 6 uncommons, and 20 commons.

There’s a slot dedicated to the nonfoil Commander and Jumpstart cards from this set. To be specific, that is the Commander cards plus the Jumpstart cards for a total of 26 rares, 6 mythics.

MythicRare
% chance to open any card of this rarity10.3%89.7%
# of packs needed for a specific card5829

Not a lot to see here, as there will be plenty of EA nonfoils going around. No foils to be had at all for these, unless something weird comes out like they’ve done in past sets.

In the Transformers slot, it gets interesting. First of all, the subset has the name BOT, which is so on point it hurts. Secondly, we’re told that all of them are mythic, so all are the same relative rarity. We’re outright told that 12% of this slot is Shattered Glass, the flipped-mirror universe where Deceptions are good and Autobots bad. We’re also told that foil SG cards are about as rare as Neon copies of Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos. Happily, I have that math handy from that article, so I know that it’s all about .6%, or 1 in 151 to get any Shattered Glass foil.

The article also indicates that nonfoil Shattered Glass is about as common as foil Generation 1 cards, so we get a rough breakdown of 75% nonfoil G1 (6 of 8 packs), 12.5% nonfoil Shattered Glass (1 in 8), 12% foil G1 (again, about 1 in 8) and finally foil Shattered Glass, which will be the 1 in 151 or so that we got from Hidetsugu, less than 1% chance. 

Then we get to the last slot in the pack, which has: Foil Extended Art, Foil Borderless cards, Foil Alternate-Art Planeswalkers, and foil Rare and Mythic Retro or Schematic artifacts. That’s a lot, and let’s look at the breakdown for how many of each type there are in that slot.

Extended ArtBorderlessAlt-Art PWRetro Artifact Schematic
Rare58603030
Mythic19021515

Doubling the rares gets us to a pool of 299 cards, and that’s where we can get a table that matches.

Chance is:Extended ArtBorderlessAlt-Art PWRetro Artifact Schematic
Rare1/149.51/149.501/149.51/149.5
Mythic1/29901/2991/2991/299

This is one of the lowest drop rates for rares we’ve had in a while, and might well lead to things like the borderless foil painlands being more expensive than expected. 

When it comes to the Artifact Archive, there’s a lot to unpack. Keep in mind that the schematic and the retro have equal numbers or each rarity. Schematic Helm of the Host is just as rare as Retro Helm of the Host. I don’t expect the prices to be equal, but the rarity is the same. 

The serialized copies of each of the 63 cards is a tricky problem to solve. Since there’s 500 of each, there’s exactly 31,500 serialized cards in existence. Several have been opened already! To calculate your odds of getting one of these, we’d need to know how many booster packs/boxes exist. We don’t have that exact number, so some estimations are in order.

We know Wizards’ annual reported revenue, and from that we can figure how big or little the revenue is from this particular piece of their pie. Can’t be too small, or too big. We also know that the distributor price (Wizards sells boxes for this price, we get retail with a markup) was around $135.

So here’s a table, with the percent chance and how many boosters, boxes, and income Wizards gets if that’s the number of boosters out there.

My estimate is that you’re at a .7% or .8% chance to open a serialized card, or around one every two cases. If we get new information, I’ll update this post.

What’s especially odd is that the rarity doesn’t matter. There’s the same number of serialized uncommon Bone Saw as there is the rare Ashnod’s Altar and the mythic Aetherflux Reservoir. I don’t think the prices will be the same at all, but the rarity and the drop rate are equal.

It’s also worth mentioning that for a price comparison, the Ampersand promos given to Premium WPN stores were in a similar vein. There were around 3,000-5,000 sets of those distributed, and now we’re getting 500 of each. These artifacts are some of the most popular Commander cards around, and I won’t be shocked to see them fetch truly premium prices. Again, rarity isn’t relevant. Burnished Hart and Swiftfoot Boots have higher EDHREC numbers than any of the mythics in this subset, and they are uncommon in this grouping. 

Does that mean they will be more expensive than mythic serialized cards? My instincts say no. This is the first crack at serialized cards for Wizards, and I am pretty sure that all of them are going to be quite expensive.

So let’s summarize things with a list of chase cards, and then how they compare with other Collector Booster sets.

CardOdds as a percentEst. number of packs needed
Extended Art Rootpath Purifier1.7% chance to open58
Generation 1 Arcee, Sharpshooter5%20
Foil Generation 1 Megatron, Tyrant0.5%180
Shattered Glass Ultra Magnus, Tactician0.5%180
Foil Shattered Glass Optimus Prime, Hero0.0004%2520
Foil Extended Art Tocasia’s Welcome0.6%149.5
Foil Extended Art Arcane Proxy0.3%299
Foil Borderless Brushland0.6%149.5
Foil Alternate-Art Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim0.3%299
Foil Retro Ashnod’s Altar0.6%149.5
Foil Schematic Aetherflux Reservoir0.3%299
Serialized Double Rainbow Foil Helm of the Host0.0001%9009

And finally, let’s do a comparison of other Collector Booster sets, and see where we land with this set:

Card/SetCollector Boosters to open one (approx.)Card/SetCollector Boosters to open one (approx.)
Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex (KHM)256Foil Etched Food Chain (2X2)280
Japanese- Language Alternate Art Time Warp Foil (STX:MA)309Red Soft Glow Hidetsugu (NEO)1,828
Foil Extended Art The Meathook Massacre (MID)151Phyrexian Foil Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (DMU)346
Foil Fang Frame Sorin, the Mirthless by Ayami Kojima (VOW)171Phyrexian Foil Ajani, Sleeper Agent (DMU)692
Extended Art Foil Jeweled Lotus (CMR)400The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale (DMU:LL)46,767
Phyrexian Foil Urabrask, Heretic Praetor (SNC)492Foil Alternate-Art Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim (BRO)299
Borderless Foil Ancient Brass Dragon (CLB)352Foil Shattered Glass Optimus Prime, Hero (BRO:BOT)2,520
Phyrexian foil (or foil-etched) Jin-Gitaxias (NEO)544Serialized Double Rainbow Foil Helm of the Host (BRO:BRR)9,009

As always, if you notice things I’ve messed up or overlooked, hop into our ProTrader Discord and tell me what errors I made, so that I can fix them quickly. I hope these odds help improve your buying decisions, and good luck with the packs you open!

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: Brother Vs Brother 2: The Rebrothering

Readers!

I hope I did a good job conveying that this week’s article has something to do with last week’s article, which you have of course read. If not, do read it because the tips in there will apply a ton still and some of the lessons in there are ones I’d prefer not to have to repeat. If you read last week’s article, perhaps you know that last week I discussed Urza and Mishra decks as potential sources for specs. I want to make sure you read last week’s article, because this week I am going to discuss Urza and Mishra decks are potential sources for specs and I want to make it clear that last week I was discussing Urza and Mishra cards that are different from the Urza and Mishra cards I’m discussing today and I’m just so, so tired. Over at EDHREC, somehow in our set review we remembered the main set, the EDH decks, but forgot the EDH-only cards in Set and Collector Boosters. Like, I get that it was my job to check that, and I shouldn’t be copping to it publicly but yeah, I didn’t remember to tell every single one of my writers they needed to check 5 different spoilers to make sure they reviewed every “White” card in the set, I guess I must be the one who’s doing it wrong. So yeah, I have amped up my griping about how many new products there are, but you can’t tell me this is healthy or sustainable.

EDHREC decided to make a change to the dropdown on the site.

Going to only 5 sets didn’t, and I am not making this up, give people a chance to see the set on the list of newest sets after the product was released. The schedule is a lot. I’m not talking about this because it makes me feel a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety about the future of the game that has been my entire career focus for a decade. That’s all true, but that’s not why I mention it. I mention it because I have to type something before I show you data so I can cut it off at the paywall until Thursday and I thought what better than to show off the new site dropdown and remind people that, yes, I did talk about Urza and Mishra last week, but it’s cool that I’m going to talk about Urza and Mishra this week because they’re completely different Urza and Mishra and I guess I wanted to let everyone know I thought that sentence could serve as a punchline if you’re properly primed. Are you good and ready to get some finance advice? I’m about to shut the curtain to first class if anyone wants to become a Pro Trader real quick so they don’t have to wait 48 hours for all of this hot finance info in a world where in 48 hours from now Warhamer 40K might get bumped off our “new sets” dropdown. Commander 2023 will be spoiled 48 hours from now, get with it.

OK, now that I’ve said both that all of my finance info from last week is still good and actionable and also that you can’t wait 48 hours for the tips in this article, it’s time to give you some data so you don’t send me dog shit in the mail because I made you read the last 2 paragraphs and your time is more valuable than mine is. I already knew that, I was just talking about how I don’t think I will have a job in a year.

You know who WILL have a job in a year? Whoever designed this Urza.

My thought process when I saw Sai, Master Thopterist and its price was “Man, would Sai be $5 if it hadn’t gotten reprinted? I should check that other guy…. what’s his name? You know, from Kaladesh? Padma something? You know what, I wouldn’t even know what to google, I’ll just look at the rest of the annnnnd there he is.”

I said “he” in the last paragraph but I actually have no idea what Padeem’s deal is, but it’s a good Magic card to have, I think. And yes, the answer to my Sai question is “maybe it would have hit $5 and maybe stayed there” based on Padeem’s graph.

These cards are nearly identical in how much they are played. If you look at Sai, you can either say “Well, I guess Padeem is an identical spec so instead of being sad Sai got a reprint, I have a spec to buy still” or say “So I could lose half my money overnight if this gets reprinted?” I think Padeem isn’t getting reprinted soon and I think it’s going to be a $5 card minimum when we get like 40 Artifact sets next year. Padeem only has to dodge reprints in the first half of the year for you to cash out until your spec was free and you doubled your investment and you can play Powerball with the rest of those Kadeems that won’t even be worthless but will apparently be $1.50.

The reprinting of Archmage in Jumpstart made the graph do this. It seems to me like the price reacted like it was predicated on scarcity-based demand, not demand-based scarcity like we like. But, like, if this hit $15 based on demand from basically just Breya for a while, a Jumpstart-worth of new copies can keep it from hitting $20 ever but I don’t know if you can’t triple up at a $2.50 buy-in on TCG Player right now. This could eat a reprint, though, because they love to forget about a card for like a decade, realize it’s expensive and then print it like 5 times. I hope that doesn’t happen here, this card sees some play.

I think these inclusion numbers are a little skewed and when Breya fever was at its pitch, these were played more than they are now, the tail-end of Emry and Urza, Grand Artificer decks being in the EDHREC database. I am pitching “all of EDHREC data ever” as a perk for people who subscribe to the EDHREC patreon and if that can happen, the value of the site for finance goes up even more. But I suspect that if you read my articles, you’re just listening to a butcher tell you about his special signature sausage spice blend and you literally couldn’t care less about how much star anise I use (just a leeeeeetle smidgen) and you want to just buy a sausage and get out of here. If you dabble in sausagenanigans (my Mom is a chef and that’s literally what it’s called I think), though, seeing cards trend in usage over time would be very valuable.

If I had a sweet tweet or excerpt from an article where I said to get this when it was a buck, I’d post it right here but I don’t have one. This is a $7 card masquerading as a nearly bulk rare because the set it was in was unhinged. This is much better than the other Sieges but people who don’t play a ton of EDH and some people who do play a ton of EDH don’t know this at a glance from the others. This is a buy imo.

I meant it, different Urza and Mishra. I feel like I’m trapped under an avalanche of cardboard.

I am so charmed by this card that I hadn’t read before just now because I literally just can’t keep up, that maybe I’m overvaluing how good it will be based on just this one deck, but I think that most Red-based Artifact decks make tokens and getting free value every turn seems really solid for a buck for a good-looking Extended Art card. I like this and I don’t want to say “I wish I had said to buy this at a buck and didn’t” because I’m saying it now, which means…I am probably wrong about this card… I don’t think I am, if you do, buy accordingly.

I forgot to tell you to buy the dip, but it seems like there was no dip to buy. This is a $10 card if it’s not reprinted.

I usually do 5 picks but then it will be uneven between Urza and Mishra and also this article was a lot of non-finance so I’ll give you a bonus pic but I’m not going to talk about it, I’m going to end the article here and just like post a pic of the graph of a card I like. Or do I dislike it? No lol, it would be messed up to do that. Here’s a spec based on Mishra I like. Probably.

The Collector

5 Premium Magic Cards Every Commander Player Should Own Under $20

Bolas’s Citadel Old Border Promo Foil – $5

Bolas’s Citadel is in 105k decks on EDHREC, and 12% of all black decks, marking it as a super staple of the format. As a WPN wide distribution promo this version of Bolas’s Citadel has plenty of copies lingering in the secondary market, which is doing a great job of keeping it’s price in check . The old border treatment is very interesting when paired with a colored casting cost artifact and the mystical art of the citadel looks good in the frame. Add in the classic foil WoTC swoosh and you’ve got a solid version of one of the most powerful black cards in the format. 

Double Masters 2×2 Borderless Foil Bounce Lands – $15/set of 10

Providing ramp in multi color EDH decks and the ability to trigger Landfall or abuse CIP effects on your lands, the gorgeous new borderless bounce lands from Double Masters 2022 are super cheap at $2 or less per foil copy and a great edition to any Commander collection with full sets running for just $15. 


MSCHF x Secret Lair Swords to Plowshares – $16

Despite Swords to Plowshares being the 3rd most popular EDH card of the last 2 years according to EDHREC, it hasn’t received that many premium versions that really draw the eye. The MSCHF x Secret Lair may push the definition of budget given a 5x multiplier vs. regular copies, but it is very unlikely to catch a reprint and should age well as copies steadily drain out of the resale market. If you’re playing white in Commander, you are playing this card, so you’ll never be without a place to rock this unique treatment as your deck collection grows.

Arcane Signet Dan Frazier x Secret Lair: $18

There have been plenty of Arcane Signets printed over the last few years, and there will be plenty more in years to come, but the Dan Frazier x Secret Lair version stands head and shoulders above the rest. During the inventory rush when this drop arrived in vendor hands months ago copies could be had for $10-14, but this retro art style by the artist who handled the P9 Moxen is still a solid deal at $18 for the regular version and even $30 for the foil etched. As the second most played card in the format this will be a coveted collectible for years to come.

Secret Lair Blasphemous Act Borderless: $15



The most played sweeper in Commander is easily Blasphemous Act with the card appearing in 30% of all red decks. By far the coolest version of this perennial red staple is the Secret Lair borderless version featuring a homage to horror exploitation films of the 1970s. With massive eye appeal and ultra low chance of reprint, this sexy sweeper wil draw comments at every table you wipe with it.

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