Grinder Finance – Toronto & Milwaukee Analysis

May 2, 2016 Jim Casale 7 Comments

Last weekend had Grand Prix Toronto won by Esper Dragons (notably the only copy to day 2 according to the day 2 breakdown here). The SCG Standard Classic (which is notably much smaller than an Open) was taken down by a very odd Naya Midrange deck. What does this do to the future of Standard prices? Well there weren’t a lot of colors in the top decks. That’s for sure.

Nissa and Gideon combine for the one-two planeswalker punch that currently support the G/W tokens deck. In Toronto, there were 10 G/W Tokens in the Top 32 and Gideon was played outside of that deck. The top 32 had 40 copies of Nissa and 60 copies of Gideon. That’s a lot for planeswalkers who prices have barely budged since the Pro Tour. This pair of walkers are from the same block so I think it would be wise to invest in them as they won’t rotate until next April. I think we will see them to continue to creep up by $0.30 per day until they pop. Nobody is noticing their slow ascension but once people do it will cause a price correction.

Next on our list of enemies is Tarmo…. I mean Sylvan Advocate. This card was the highest played card on the weekend. It showed up in staggering numbers at Toronto (69 copies in 32 decks) and almost as equally impressive numbers in Milwaukee (29 copies in 16 decks). It has already had a dominant rise the weekend of the Pro Tour but it keeps showing up in numbers suggesting it might be one of the best cards in Standard. It’s rare but possible for rares to hold values as high as $10-12 and this might be one of them. Oath of the Gatewatch was a small set so there may not be a terribly large number of them in the wild. If you are thinking of getting these to play with, you don’t have much to gain by waiting. Advocate is showing up in multiple different types of deck lists and is a recipe for a fast rising rare.

These three cards show up across multiple archtypes. Oath of Nissa is in G/W Tokens and G/R ramp decks. Declaration in Stone is played in White Humans, Bant Company, and G/W Tokens. Dromoka’s Command is having a last minute revival as the main form of removal for G/W Tokens and Bant Company. I’m not terribly interested in buying into Declaration which seems to be finally dropping in price as supply increases and Dromoka’s Command that rotates in September. Oath of Nissa feels like the type of card that will continue to be good card filtering into the next block and worth a pick up at $2.

Turns out there is an amount of extra text you can throw onto a Serra Angel to make it good. Archangel Avacyn rounds out the best performing cards of the weekend putting 73 copies into 48 decklists this weekend. There is apparently no stopping this train but the true value lies in the difficult of opening flip mythics. Without MTGO redemption kicking in yet, we are unlikely to see a reprieve in Avacyn’s price. It’s possible it might still not move that much given how much more the redemption supply will affect regular mythics instead of flip cards. If you’re not a Standard player you can probably find a much better time to pick this up. I’d estimate by the holidays of 2016 she will be a $10-15 card.

Modern

0 copies in the Top 8 of this open. Some decks in the Top 32 played a few copies of Ancestral Vision but Thopter Foundry is no where to be found. I think it’s almost safe to say that the Thopter Foundry unbanning is doing less than the Wild Nacatl unban. If you’re holding copies of these hoping they will go up I think it’s time to sell. I wouldn’t expect them to do anything but drop from here.

This card is dominating Standard and Modern and has seen a big resurgence from it’s all time low during the release of the event deck including it. If you’re a Modern player I would strongly recommending to wait for this to rotate before buying in. I’m not sure it will continue to hold it’s current price tag. It’s one of the few cards in the Abzan Company deck you play more than 1 of but that doesn’t mean it will maintain it’s $25 price tag. If you want to play them in Standard and Modern I would rather buy foil copies. There are a lot less of them out there and they’re unlikely to see as large of a collapse when Company rotates.

Final thoughts:

I’m going on a grinding binge. I’ll be at GP NYC this weekend and hope to pick up some sweet deals at the vendors.
Green is really good in Standard. We need to stop underestimating it.
White removal is still insane.

Sigmund Ausfresser

PROTRADER: Beating the Eternal Drum

May 2, 2016 Sigmund Ausfresser 6 Comments

This past week has been an absolute whirlwind for me and my family. We took a vacation to Disneyland in Anaheim, California. As you can imagine, activities were extremely fun while also draining. The return flight home was a characteristic redeye overnight trip resulting in high tensions all around. Needless to say, it was intense.

Therefore, I need to leave you all with one more abbreviated column for this week. With any luck, next week will see a return to normalcy and as a result, a return to our normally scheduled full-length columns.

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Grand Prix Toronto: Dealer Report

April 29, 2016 James Chillcott 6 Comments

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic )

The action on the floor at GP Toronto this morning is relatively mellow compared to the frenzy at some events further south. Basically none of the big names from American GPs seem to have made the trip, so the ten or so vendor booths are largely occupied by smaller stores from British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. Dealers on the floor so far include FacetoFace Games, Magic Stronghold, MTG Deals, Mana Toxik, Fusion Gaming, P Market Games, Tome 2, Wizard Tower. Game Keeper Onlineand MTG First.

A quick survey of the vendors on site, confirmed that many of the expected trends for the weekend are in play, with many of the Standard staples from the Pro Tour Top 8 selling briskly.

At MTGFirst, Jason reported that Hissing Quagmire, Declaration in Stone, Archangel Avacyn and Languish were all moving well.

At Fusion Games, word was that Sylvan Advocate and Declaration in Stone were the hottest selling cards of the morning.

MTGDeals called out Duskwatch Recruiter selling briskly at $3 CDN ($2.50 USD) and Tome 2 was sold out of Dark Petition at $12.

At GP Organizer FacetoFace Games Booth, Kalitas was nearly sold out at $35 ($28 USD). The current FacetoFace buylist can be found over here. (Editor’s Note: We’ll also be adding F2F to our Vendor sell price lists on this site next week.)

F2F was also offering some pretty sweet specials alongside their case of altered and rare cards. Here’s a taste of what was on offer, tax included and in CDN dollars (subtract 25% for USD). I picked up ten copies of Ulamog at $11 USD, confident that the card will top $20 down the road. Abbot is similarly tempting at close to $3 USD.

Sexy cardboard at the GP Toronto FacetoFace Games booth.

Here are the buy lists that were in play on the floor this morning. Keep in mind that vendor buy prices get significantly worse as the weekend progresses, so hitting up the vendors today is your best bet if you’re looking to go liquid on Standard and Modern staples or get top dollar on a big ticket item.

Here’s a few of the better deals I snapped up on the floor, all in CDN dollars, so discount by 25% for USD. I’ve been moving in aggressively on some of the Eldrazi I expect to regain staple status in Modern, including Reality Smasher, World Breaker and Though-Knot Seer.

Despite their recent spike over $40, I continue to find small pockets of the promo Birds of Paradise for under $20 USD. Might be wise to poke around your local stores for those.

Foil Korean Anafenza, the Foremost for $12 USD

Anafenza, the Foremost foils in desireable languages are on my acquisitions target list as part of a powerful Modern combo likely to be part of Tier 1 decks for years. I also picked up some Ancient Stirrings at .75/per, which seemed criminal and snagged 10 copies of Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger at $11 USD targeting a $20+ exit in a few years. Buy-a-box promo copies of Goblin Dark Dwellers were widely available around $3 USD, and I continue to run deeper on that card with expectations of a $10+ exit down the road. Russian copies of Westvale Abbey and Archangel Avacyn found below the average floor prices for English copies, rounded out my first round of purchases.

The prize wall for GP Toronto was looking relatively solid, and included plenty of goodies, including a sealed box of Revised and a ton of juicy foils.

Stay tuned for a mini-update Saturday evening once I get back from my afternoon play sessions.

Casual Fridays

What is Patience Worth?

April 29, 2016 Cliff Daigle 3 Comments

One of my basic tenets when it comes to Magic finance is patience. I don’t want to repeat a mistake I made, trading for a foil mythic the week it came out and paying far more than I needed to for the card.

Let’s be clear: I’m talking about cards for your Cube, your Commander deck, your non-competitive decks. If you need a card right away for Standard, well, you’ll pay what you need to for the card you want, and that is why Archangel Avacyn is a $50 card currently. She is seeing play in a range of strategies, she’s a double-faced mythic, and her casual appeal is very high too. The perfect storm of being expensive.

Her price has been one of the few that has ticked upwards since the set has come out. Our price tracker has her at $30 when released, and she’s been as high as $60. She is the outlier, though; lots of other cards have come down in price.

Today, though, I want to talk about those other cards, and evaluate two in particular.

It’s a truism that most cards get cheaper as time goes on and a set is opened more. You can see that in almost all of the cards from Shadows over Innistrad. Almost none have gone up in price, and some have come down quite quickly. It’s been a month and we can prices starting to stabilize, based on how much they have been played and been featured on camera.

Let’s look at Olivia, Mobilized for War, in foil because I have an all-foil Vampires deck.

Now, I have the magpie curse. I love shiny versions of cards and I pick them up whenever I can. I accept this as part of who I am, and I curse that the regular version isn’t good enough for my Commander deck.

This Olivia is a house in Limited, a cheap and good-sized flyer who grants haste to your next plays without costing any mana. Being free of a mana cost is why Lightning Greaves is better than Swiftfoot Boots, even as hexproof is better than shroud.

I hesitated at first, thinking that I don’t always want to pitch a card to make things bigger and hasty, but then I realized that it’s no-downside. You don’t have to, unless you want to. So I decided I was going to add her to the deck, and then it became a waiting game.

If I had pulled the trigger right away, that is a $25 foil. Not unreasonable for what she does, and if she blows up Modern (not impossible) this could be more. Still, that was more than I wanted to spend, so I decided to wait.

And wait, while it ticked downward.

And wait a little more, as the psychological need to acquire got stronger. I finally pulled the trigger Thursday morning, because it was down to $15 and I doubt it’s going to fall much further. I admit, the small tick downward in the buylist price has me thinking I should have waited, but frankly, I’m okay with a minor cost in order to get what I want now.

The same thing happened with Relentless Dead, where it’s dropped to about $15 in foil from highs of up to $40, but more interesting is that the spread (the difference between the highest buylist and the lowest vendor) is really close to zero.

In each of these cases, waiting saved me significant money. Right now, I can get two for the price that one would have cost me at release.

One thing I find quite interesting is how close the foils and non-foils are to each other. Generally speaking, foils are two to three times as expensive as the nonfoil. These ‘should’ be about $20 or $25, but are a lot less right now.

This is true for a lot of Shadows over Innistrad. The foils are a little underpriced, for reasons that aren’t clear. Will MTGO redemptions play a part? Is the demand for all the cards still high enough that the nonfoils have caught up to the foils? For instance, Declaration in Stone is $15, with the foils at $20. I think that in this case, demand for the card is so high that being foil is only worth a small amount.

The same price pattern appears in Pyromancer’s Goggles, which spiked pretty hard the last few weeks, and the foil is only a few dollars more than the regular. Interestingly, there are foil versions of Dark Petition available for cheaper than the nonfoil, after the Pro Tour-induced spike.

I think that the small gap between foil and nonfoil is due to Standard demand. I’m going to be keeping a close eye on these cards to see where they end up, because if this is a new pattern, I want to learn it right away. I can’t recall a time where so many foils were so close to nonfoils in price. Perhaps I didn’t notice it before? Maybe it’s an effect of two blocks or 18-month rotation? I’m honestly not sure, but if this is the new normal, it’s a significant shift.

In the comments or the forums, come talk about the narrowing gap, and if there’s other trends I’ve missed.

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