PROTRADER: EMA Aftershocks

June 3, 2016 Ross Lennon

A few weeks back, I openly pondered whether Eternal Masters would be able to serve as a better reprint vehicle than something like Commander or Conspiracy- each set prioritizing what makes it unique, rather than trying to fit “staples” of each format into three sets. While we haven’t seen what the Conspiracy or Commander offerings will look like yet, it’s fair to say that EMA has quite a few cards in it that are not strictly masters of eternal formats. We are also going to discuss the distribution issues surrounding this set, and how it might be best to approach acquisition early and in the long term.

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Casual Fridays

Eternal Masters: The Rares

June 2, 2016 Cliff Daigle 7 Comments

Here’s the list of rares in Modern Masters 2015 that are currently worth the MSRP of a pack:
Noble Hierarch $47
Spellskite $33
Fulminator Mage $29
Leyline of Sanctity $15
…and that’s it. Only four rares worth the retail of $10, and that doesn’t account for any markup you paid along the way.

I am pretty sure that there will be a similar trajectory for the rares of Eternal Masters, though some of the foils will have amazingly high prices. I’m expecting low things, much more in line with Modern Masters 2015: a few chase mythics, a little value at rare, and a lot of $5 and under cards.

I’m not going to go over every card, just the ones that I think will be near, at, or above the $10 mark by the time we get to Eldritch Moon.
Enlightened Tutor – Currently, this is solidly at $16 for the two nonfoil versions. Supply is tiny, though, and a lot of these are going to get put into Cubes and decks. I think this ends up just about $10.

Karmic Guide – The original is at $6, the Commander 2013 version is $3 and even the Judge Foil is barely at $20. This is the nail in the coffin, and will settle around $2.

Mother of Runes – Three printings keep this between $3 and $5, and I see no reason for that to change. The foils on this are interesting, as this art is more appealing than the other two foils, so we may see $25 or more on the foils.

Mystical Tutor – This is $8 with a From the Vault lurking at $25. It won’t be higher than $10, but it will be more than $5. The foils will easily be $25 or more, though, as people will get rid of the FtV foil and the unusual look those have.

Serendib Efreet – It’s never been good enough, though the stats alone are impressive. It’s a 3 /4 flyer for a mere three mana! It’ll be a dollar rare, unfortunately.

Ichorid – I’m inclined to say this takes a dive. Currently at $11, I’m pretty sure it’ll fall to $6 or lower. It’s just not popular enough. It’s possible that people open this and want to build a Dredge/Bridge from Below deck, but I highly doubt it.

Sinkhole – Let’s get this out of the way: It’s not going to stay $30. This was a judge foil in 2010, and while it was a common, it was last printed in Unlimited. I would be fascinated to know if there were more Judge versions out there than Alpha and Beta ones. I suspect it’s close, though I don’t know for sure. This is best friends with Hymn to Tourach, but as a rare, I think this is going to end up very close to $10 out of pure price memory.

Toxic Deluge – It’s played rarely but it was nudging up to $20 before the reprint news cut it to $10. I think it falls all the way to $5, and at that point, it’s intriguing as a pickup.

Gamble – There are enough decks that want this to keep the price high, though I feel it will fall to $15 or so. Losing half of its value is still painful. Foils on this could be quite silly, though, because a lot of Commander decks will love it.

Sulfuric Vortex – This will put all the versions to bulk, though the foils might make it to $5.

Heritage Druid – Elf players need to brace themselves, because this is going to drop like a rock. Three dollars, but the foil will be about $15.

Regal Force – This is a surprisingly awesome card in a range of creature decks, which you might not expect for its stats. Financially, though, this is going to be a $5-$7 card with the foils about $20.

Shardless Agent – The buylist on this has already dropped by $5 in the last couple weeks, and that’s a very bad sign for anyone who has these in stock. Once pushing $25, these will end at about $10.

Vindicate – That’s a scary graph for a card, gradual declines over the last couple of years and now this. It’s a universal answer, though, and you can never have enough of those. I want it to be higher, but this won’t be above $10.

Isochron Scepter – Once, this was expensive and amazing with split cards, but it’s gotten supplemental products here and there and this will put it to $2.

Sensei’s Divining Top – The top has dropped nearly $10 since being spoiled and that’s a very telling indicator. I personally can’t stand people running this in Commander, as it is incremental advantage in a battlecruiser format, and it just takes so long! I expect this to settle at about $10, but I’m prepared for foils to carry a big multiplier, likely to about $40-$50.

Maze of Ith – I love to think about cards where the FTV version is less expensive than the original. Is it the art? The foiling process? Maybe it’s amazing in 93-94? Thirty dollars is not where it’s going to stay, but I do think we are going to see some odd price disconnects with this. The Eternal Masters version will likely settle between $10-$15.

Mishra’s Factory – First off, I think your original four seasons versions are perfectly safe. Every other version is going to be just above bulk.

Wasteland – A Tempest uncommon, a Judge Foil, a Player Reward, a Zendikar Expedition, and now this. It’s had that many extra printings and I think all the specials are relatively safe. They will feel a bump, but the Tempest version has lost more than $20 so far and it’s going to fall farther. I think it ends up about $30, and that’s a price I’m going to think about buying a few at.

Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Back to Organizing (for the most part)

June 1, 2016 Douglas Johnson 2 Comments

Written By:
Douglas Johnson @Rose0fthorns
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Welcome back, and welcome to last week’s article as well. It’s a little lengthy but I’m proud of it all the same; we went and examined the different pricing metrics of TCGplayer high, median, low, and market price. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback so far, so it’s definitely one you don’t want to miss.

As for this week, let’s finally get back to processing and organizing our collections and bulk stuff. Instead of getting outside and enjoying the sunshine on Memorial Day weekend, my friend Sean Love and I were hard at work in the basement where it was a solid 20 degrees cooler than the heat wave upstairs and outside. I had one more objective that I wanted to make into a reality before I started on the 400k bulk in my closet, so we got to work.

Bad Binders

Up until this point, I’ve had about nine trade binders that were between halfway and completely full at all times. They’re the Ultimate Guard “QuadRow Flexfolio”, which I would not wish upon my worst enemy. I wanted them to be able to hold playsets of cards in a single row, but the quality of the binder was shoddy and the glue holding the pages together would rip all the time even with the simple act of putting a card in or taking it out. I’m no Tolarian Community College Professor, but I would absolutely stay away from this brand of binder and look for something else that’s more structurally sound. I owned the binders for less than four months before they started to fall apart, and I feel like I threw away over a hundred dollars on them.

So where am I going with this segue? Well, I haven’t regularly traveled with binders in almost two years. I don’t have a local FNM that’s less than a thirty minute drive, I don’t have the time to be a Grand Prix backpack grinder, and it’s not exactly like I even “trade” very often anymore (unless you count people bringing me lots of bulk to get “DJ Dollars” in trade credit). A few weeks ago, I asked myself why I’m even still using a binder system to loosely organize my relevant cards. It was a pain to constantly look through the majority of a “Green” binder just to see exactly how many Vengevine I had, and I wanted something that would help me find X card from Y set in under Z seconds. I was already constructing a framework for doing something similar with my Blueprintable commons and uncommons…. why not do the same with my “higher end” cards ($4+) that were worth selling on TCGplayer?

This article is made for those few of you who might not trade anymore, or go to events at an LGS. I recommend continuing to read especially if you have a sizable collection that you want to manage without using binders, sell by piece, or just know where your cards are for deckbuilding. Several of the pieces of advice are extremely similar to other articles I’ve written, so we’ll get set sort and alphabetize everything out of the way early. Netflix helps. I finally got started on Jessica Jones.

Ta-Da! I mean, it obviously took a lot longer than it did for you to check out the picture; roughly about eight hours of Sean and I working to set sort and alphabetize. (A skill that he is much faster than I am at). You’ll also notice that those BCW dividers continue to come in handy, although I’ll have to trim them down by a few centimeters if I ever expect to put a lid on this box and apply any weight to the top of the lid.

Because the long term goal of this inventory box is to have everything listed on TCGplayer by the end of the week (you can see my printed-out and hastily scrawled-on to-do list in the background), we also had to grade every card in the box.

origins — The “Origins” pile. Definitely losing some money on these Abbots here.

Some of you may remember that I sleeve everything over $2, regardless of what box it goes in. While I was using opaque sleeves for the cards in the binders up until this point (penny sleeves can be annoying to fit into binders without crinkling, at least for my personal preference), sorting my inventory into a 5K meant that I could penny sleeve everything to make it uniform. This also helped with grading the cards easier, being able to see the front and back at a glance. If you do find research, you should be able to find 10000 penny sleeves for around $45. Here’s some research.

Hopefully I’ll manage to list everything by the end of this week, and hopefully I’ll have enough time in the day to ship and pack all my orders. I had my TCGplayer store hidden for the past two or three months while I was working on school, graduation, GPNY and GPCharlotte, so I had forgotten what it was like to have to deal with this:

Now that that’s all settled, we can *finally* begin to work on set sorting this bulk that’s been accumulating in my closet. Phase one (which I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned in a previous article or not) is to make another series of those divider set tags so that each pile of set sorted bulk will be easy to find and alphabetize when the time comes. For now, I’ll conclude this brief article with a prelude of what your basement/living room/bedroom might look like once you get started on this project.

End Step:

Huh, there’s really not much to talk about here. Kind of a dry week, but that’s alright. I’m happy to see Realms Uncharted and Horn of Greed finally going off thanks to The Gitrog Monster, so I’ll be taking my copies out of the spec box and sorting them into my wonderful new inventory system, then putting them on TCGplayer. Until next week!

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Jason Alt

Cheating

June 1, 2016 Jason Alt 5 Comments

I spent a lot of time last week thinking about how we were going to build Superfriends decks in the future because our mana is going to be so crazy bonkers with the advent of a bunch of four-color decks that people will be able to be super greedy. While I think it’s true that Superfriends are about to get a bit of a bump, I think it’s also worth taking a lot at other ways players plan to play cards with their wacky new cards. I have a few different theses to cover so I’m going to launch right into it because I want to get all of my thoughts out before I hit my word cap. I mean, it’s a soft word cap. You’re not going to want to read a 4,000 word article, true, but I’m also going to hit like 2,300 words and think “I’m not getting paid any extra for this” and that’s going to sap my enthusiasm in a hurry. So, like I said, I’m not going to waste time – I am going to get right to it and cover what I want to cover. I think you readers are worth it.

Thesis Number the First – People Will Build New 4-color Decks

And why not? They’re going to get new cards that are 4 colors. I have to imagine there will be at least one good creature and one good spell per deck that are 4 colors and if it’s that hard to cast that spell, the effect is going to worth it. Just look at the spells we have now that cost 5 mana – Coalition Victory, Last Stand, Conflux, Maelstrom Nexus – these are good spells. They’re difficult to cast because they require a mana of every color and they’re even more difficult to cast in EDH because we have to have a general with all 5 colors in their identity.

4 color spells are obviously easier to cast than 5 color ones but not all that much easier and, again, you can only play them in a deck where the general has all of those colors in their color identity. How are people going to cast those spells?

They’ll fix their mana

This one seems obvious, but it’s worth mentioning. There are a few ways I think people will try this.

These would have been better to buy at their historic lows, but now that they’re starting to rebound, it seems fairly obvious that it’s time to get these if you need them. You can fetch these with fetchlands and Farseek and you don’t need to shell out for a Savannah to get basically a Savannah. Sometimes people put ABU duals in EDH decks. Super, go ahead and do that. Or, you know, sell them and build a new deck for basically every dual you sell. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life, but I will tell you that shocks are going to go up more and people will need them. In a 4-color deck you can play a lot of them. You can play 1 in a 2-color deck, 3 in a 3-color deck, 10 in a 5-color deck and 6 in a 4-color deck. If every new deck that gets built means the builder needs 6 new fetches, they will be closer to $20 than $10 in a year or two if they’re not reprinted. Return to Return to Ravnica doesn’t seem all that close so I think we’re safe for a minute.

Ditto here. These aren’t at a historical low or high, but I bet this plateau means they’re not going anywhere for a minute. Dealer interest is waning, so I’d wait for these to crater and recover, but EDH demand could give these some upside, although supply is super high right now with everyone having them in their decks and binders, still.

Them putting these in every deck seems as unlikely to me as them putting them in only some decks. I think this doesn’t get reprinted and I think the price goes up. Conspiracy might be a good venue to print this but I bet they won’t. I bet this card gets ridiculous before it gets reasonable.

This card has some real upside. It is a creature that is also mostly a Chromatic Lantern and people are starting to notice. With a new focus on mana fixing, this is going to be a player if people remember to use it. This even lets you use utility lands for mana if you have something like Tabernacle (you don’t have a Tabernacle) or Maze of Ith that doesn’t tap for mana.

This probably won’t get bought more because it’s so expensive, but I bet it gets played more. EDH demand could start to make it disappear from Pucatrade which could signal other markets.

This are like $2 in other printings. That has to change the farther we get from the last time it was printed.

How else will people play stuff in 4-color decks?

They’ll Cheat

Not at Magic, necessarily, I mean they’ll cheat stuff into play. There are a lot, lot, lot of ways to do this and they all have upside.

A guy with this in his Legacy deck isn’t going to trade it to an EDH player. He won’t want any of the cards the EDH player has. But some rando busting this in a pack in the LGS might be inclined. The new supply might hurt the price for a while, but if it gets low enough, EDH demand could buoy the price based on people who wrote the card of as unobtainable before now using it. This is a fine way to cheat.

This has been printed a ton but the price doesn’t seem to want to dip below around $7. This has a decent reprint risk but it also has demonstrated an ability to mostly shrug off reprints. I like this as a pickup.

Meanwhile I bet this never gets reprinted. This is starting to move up and I bet if more people play it because the new creatures are savage and hard to cast, this could see movement. This is just a solid gainer in my view and it looks like markets and dealers are finally on board with that assessment.

It would take a lot to drag this above bulk but it is worth remembering this card exists. It’s too good.

Bet you thought this was still bulk, didn’t you? Well, it’s not. The price has basically doubled in the last year and that’s good for business. This is on its way up and I bet this could hit $5 if it’s not reprinted. And why would it be reprinted?

I’ve made money off of this card twice and it would please me to do so a third time. With copies concentrated in the hands of dealers, how easy would that be? Very easy, that’s how. Very easy.

Mirri’s Guile, Sylvan Library and Sensei’s Divining Top are nice pairings with this spicy vintage. Cream of the Crop, too. All of those cards can go in a deck that can have green in it. Mayael, anyone?

I bought all of the copies I have years ago for $2 each. That’s about as fair as putting something into play with this. Granted it’s not the best way to throw out an Eldrazi, but can you really complain about having a creature that big if you miss a few of its triggers? It That Betrays doesn’t mind getting tossed out EOT with this beauty. This card isn’t even close to being done growing.

This may do it randomly, but don’t pretend it’s not cheating. This card is rare from an old set and it’s on the Reserved List. If this gets any notice at all it could hit $5 fairly easily and it would be pretty boss to chop into Pucapoints rather than buylist for $3.

Everyone realized this would be nuts with Narset and the price went up accordingly. However, this is a great way to cheat creatures into play. If you have nothing but fatties and tokens, it’s even better. This is taking a break from climbing, but it will be back at it as soon as something else is printed that is saucy with it and there is only one deck from Commander 2016 that won’t have blue in it meaning you have 4 chances to find something saucy to go with this.

Modern spiked this card, which sucks because that deck doesn’t play it anymore, the price is really high for an EDH card and the copies are concentrated in the hands of dealers meaning a second spike will be much harder and faster. The only bright spot is that this seems relatively easy to reprint. Just kidding, that’s terrible because everyone who paid $10 for these will eat it in that case. I don’t know when they’re going to reprint this, or even if they will, but this is destined to go beyond $10 just on EDH demand and it’s too much fun to play this card. Dealer confidence is creeping up which means they’re selling copies which means the price shift is organic and predicated on real demand. This bodes well. Graphs that look like this make me want to buy.

This is on its way back up. The reprinting made the price very reasonable but Modern hasn’t gone as cuckoo for this as they did a few years ago and the new supply did wonders for controlling the price. This is a very easy way to cast a creature with a nutty effect and goofy casting cost and you can even tap tokens to do it. What could be better? This is a fine way to cheat at Magic.

Legacy and EDH are keeping this card pretty expensive since it’s banned in Modern. Eternal Masters copies are going to make this dirt cheap and if this hits like $2 I recommend investing like $100. It could get reprinted again which will make it take a while before you can recoup your $100. More likely is that it recovers and lands around $5 because it’s so good in EDH. Less likely is that it’s unbanned in Modern and becomes like $15 overnight and then you look like Nostradamndamus. I’m not saying it will happen but I am saying that there are three basic scenarios and in the worst case you still break even eventually.

This card is very expensive. This card is also tailing down a bit and since it’s demonstrated the ability to be $25, you might want to watch it crash then buy in because it will go back up because how could it not? It’s Tooth and Nail. This is in so many EDH “I win” combos it isn’t funny. No, seriously, have you lost to this card? It isn’t funny. It’s annoying. I cast this entwined to get Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts on turn 4 one time. It wasn’t funny. I mean, it was to me, but when 4 out of 5 people at a table think something isn’t funny, maybe you’re the one who’s wrong. That’s Comedy 101.

At this point, I’m going to audible and save my second thesis for next week. We still have plenty of time before we start getting any cards previewed so we can look more at how players are going to cheat using the new cards next week. I have plenty to say on the topic and I really don’t want to load this article with too much information. Let’s reconvene next week and look at a second way I expect people to cheat using older cards to help them cast newer cards. It should be a hoot. Until then!

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