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PROTRADER: Fire Wil Wheaton, and the Rest of PAX 2015

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By: Travis Allen

The Shame of Seattle

Seriously. Did you watch the Saturday night PAX preview show? Juvenile actor turned soulless coalescence of toothless and vapid internet culture Wil Wheaton was joined by Ashly Burch—voice actor for a Borderlands 2 throwaway NPC, pedo-magnet, and 2012’s instance of companion cube Tiny Tina—to ham-fistedly bumble through skin-crawlingly awkward and forced dialogue that never missed an opportunity to remind the crowd that hey, we’re nerds just like you, we read Reddit and also know what memes are.

Within seconds, Wil had made an out-of-place and inappropriate “tap the police” joke, immediately followed by a slow, obvious explanation of the joke, attempting to wring any semblance of humor out of the flat reception. Within two minutes, we were treated twice to Wil regurgitating the tired cultural expression “that’s a thing,” met with near complete silence from an audience collectively wishing an aneurysm would free them from this violation of the Geneva Conventions.

For the entire rest of the hour-long presentation, every single time an Eldrazi appeared on screen, or someone said Eldrazi, or someone made the mistake of talking to him, Wil made a point of explaining how much of a fan he was of the Eldrazi and how much he hated allies, a fact that nobody cared about whatsoever before he said it once, much less the fifth or sixth time.

While every second he was on stage I was forced to weigh the excitement of new spoilers with the torture that was his continued presence, there were two moments that stood as shining beacons of his worthlessness, and I’m unsure which was more excruciating. The first was when he mistakenly said “buying” instead of “earning” in reference to acquiring coins in Magic Duels. He made a point to correct himself, and in the process referred to the clenching butthole of the legal department. And then the butthole of corporate. And then the collective buttholes of all of Seattle. It was a machine gun comedy of errors, and at any point in time he could have recovered by simply moving beyond his childish and immature butthole-oriented diatribe. Instead, he chose to make everyone in the room squirm at what they knew would result in a dressing down by whichever highest-ranking Wizards employee happened to be standing nearby the next time he walked off stage.

Or perhaps it was when he slipped “not all Eldrazi” into his inane “look at me, you’ve seen me on the internet before” drivel, quickly and casually normalizing the structure of “not all men,” a misogynistic hashtag that sought to marginalize the domestic abuse and violence suffered by women, which was shared through #YesAllWomen. Using this hashtag structure in such an offhanded way, aside from being yet another attempt to remind you that HEY I READ THINGS ON THE INTERNET JUST LIKE YOU SO YOU SHOULD CONSIDER ME RELATABLE, reveals how flippantly he regards vile, toxic attitudes.

Wil Wheaton, and to a lesser extent Ashly Burch, managed to make every single person in that room uncomfortable with his insistence that we like him simply because he browses the front page of Reddit every morning from the computer he bought with money earned while poorly performing as an ironically liked character from a science fiction show more than twenty years old. That Wizards continues to use him in its media campaigns is an insult to Magic fans everywhere. Such blatant pandering, and with such a poor tool, comes across painfully clearly as nothing more than a blunt, flailing attempt by marketing to connect with a demographic they’re having trouble understanding, even as that demographic continues to shower them with money. Do you think anyone in the top four of the World Championships, set to take place less than a day later, enjoyed his presence on that stage? Wizards, please stop using fleshy homunculuses stuffed with lame internet culture to sell us a product we’re already eager to buy. Treat us as people rather than a subreddit.

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Going Mad, Spoiler Coverage

Going Mad – Welcome to the Chase

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By: Derek Madlem

In case you missed it, Wizards broke the internet on Saturday night with their PAX preview party for the upcoming set Battle for Zendikar. The stream was pretty abysmal thanks mostly to the inclusion of Wil Wheaton making butthole jokes and telling us that the Eldrazi were the good guys… and that every single card was “AWESOME” even if it was probably closer to mediocre at best. They unveiled a lot of sweet things that I’m stoked to talk about in the coming weeks, but they also decided now was the time to jump the shark:

Sharks

In Battle for Zendikar we’ll have a subset of full art FOIL lands encompassing ten fetch lands, ten shock lands, and five of Zendikar’s new dual land… and they look AWESOME. They’re being referred to as Expedition lands and I want a playset of each… but I’m not exactly ready to sell off my Power 9 to acquire them. Did I mention they’re going to be rare? No, rarer than that.

In the stream they were described as being about the same rarity as a Mythic FOIL rare but a little more common because there are 25 of them vs. 15 Mythics. While we’ve yet to see exactly what that means in terms of actual rarity, there is roughly one FOIL Mythic rare in every 216 packs of Magic, so let’s use that as our starting point. For reference: there are 216 packs (36×6) in a case of Magic!

Parameters

So what are these going to be worth? It’s a safe bet to assume that all of these are going to be worth more than their regular FOIL counterparts, even if they do have a questionable hedron-laden frame.

Here’s what current incarnations of these cards look like financially:

Zendikar FOIL Scalding Tarn – $180
Khans of Tarkir FOIL Polluted Delta – $90
Return to Ravnica FOIL Steam Vents – $45

So what kind of premium do we place on the new hotness? The fetchlands are likely to hold a higher premium than the shocklands because of their inclusion in Vintage and Legacy, two formats where players are no strangers to “pimping”.

It’s no stretch pricing the full art Scalding Tarn in the $250+ range and I can see that anchor point pulling all of the other fetches up to the same price range with the blues easily settling in the $200-250 range and tapering down from there to Marsh Flats at $150 or so.

The shock lands are easily going to top out with Steam Vents and Watery Grave in the $100-125 range and the rest spanning the $75-100 range.

The new duals will bring up the rear with a likely top end in the $50 range based almost entirely on rarity as I don’t expect these cards to have much impact outside of Standard; there’s just too few scenarios where these are better in Modern than a shock land and they are unplayable in Legacy and Vintage.

This is the point where I insert a disclaimer stating that all of these estimates are probably on the conservative end of the spectrum, and that some of these (looking at you Scalding Tarn) could hit obscene numbers initially.

So that’s pretty awesome right? Even the disappointment of opening a tango land because it could have been a fetchland won’t feel that bad…a free fifty bucks is nothing to sneeze at! But what impact will these cards have on the financial market as a whole?

arid_mesa

Aggregate Pricing

For retailers, the bulk of the initial singles supply comes from opening boxes. Typically when you look at a new set, you’ll see that the preorder prices typically create an EV (expected value) per pack that exceeds the price of a pack. As time goes on and more and more singles flood the market, the value of a pack fast approaches an equilibrium where the singles contained within a box become roughly in sync with the price of a box…then MTGO redemptions hit the market and that price implodes as additional cards enter the market.

The effect this has on the secondary market is very noticeable once you know what to look for. Let’s take Khans of Tarkir as an example, because some of the singles prices are almost criminally low. Khans featured the five card cycle of fetch lands that we’ve all grown to love and everybody JUST HAS TO HAVE. Because those fetch lands took up so much of the EV equity, many other cards plummeted in price. As retailers and players alike shredded packs to acquire fetch lands, they were left with piles of Sarkhan Dragonspeaker, Siege Rhino, Wingmate Roc, and other competitive level rares…but they were only selling the fetch lands and were stuck with piles of these other cards – until they lowered the price.

The contents of an in-print Magic booster box can only be worth so much money. What’s this have to do with the Expedition lands? If the Expeditions lands average out to $120ish each and show up one per case, that’s essentially soaking up $20 in EV equity from every box, which will push prices of every rare in the set downward. Combine this with 50¢ a piece on full-art basics and you’re easily looking at $35+ EV equity being carved out of every box.

Earnings Expectations

Wizards of the Coast is a division of Hasbro, the company that derives much of it’s income from Transformers and and licensed action figures from intellectual properties like Spiderman or The Avengers. The licenses for much of the Marvel product lines can evaporate on a whim from Disney so Hasbro has a lot of it’s eggs in the Transformers basket, an intellectual property that has relied on half hour commercials (cartoons) and blockbuster movies to boost sales. With no Transformers movie on the horizon until 2017, Hasbro is looking elsewhere to make up that lost revenue…lucky for them, Magic has been experiencing year over year growth for the last seven or eight years.

For the most part, Hasbro stays “hands off” as far as Magic goes, relying on the people that have made the game a success to continue making it a success…but you can bet that Magic continuing year over year growth is an expectation that is on the table.

Last year Wizards sold more packs of cards than ever, thanks heavily to the fetch lands and partly thanks to a pile of dragons. This is awesome, a growing game is great for everyone involved right? But some growth is not growth…what do I mean? Let’s look at an example:

For the first year let’s say there are 10 total Magic players and they buy 10 packs each.

Magic sells 100 packs.

Which scenario the following year is better for the game long term:

15 total Magic players buying 10 packs each?
OR
10 total Magic players buying 15 packs each?

If you guessed 15 players buying 10 packs each, you and I are in the same boat.

So this year Wizards is staring down an expectation to beat last year’s sales, they’re already returning us to one of the most beloved planes to face down some of the most revered villains in Magic’s history and that should be enough, but what if it’s not? Enter Expedition lands. These are all but guaranteed to sell more product and Wizards is likely to experience another year of continued sales growth. But what happens next year?

Another gimmick? FOIL full-art Planeswalkers? Tarmogoyfs and Vendilion Cliques? Rishadan Ports and Wastelands? Wizards is painting themselves into a corner with the expectation of super ultra rare promos in future sets. If the sets after Zendikar and its expansion don’t contain this type of promotion will the players feel shorted? How much will that affect sales?

Seriously, how do they match this level of awesome in a future set without resorting to an escalation of gimmicks? Where does this road lead us?

Sports card collectors will tell you that they’ve been down this road before. The sports card industry underwent an escalation of absurdity when it came to chase cards and as collectors cracked open cases to find these ultra-rare chase cards, the rest of the contents (that would have traditionally been worth money) became near-worthless.

Hallowed Fountain

Why Now?

Why now? Seriously, why is Wizards resorting to gimmickry now? Since Wizards doesn’t release print run or player base numbers to the public anymore we can’t be sure what exactly Magic’s growth looks like. Did the Magic player base grow 2% last year but sales increased 4%? That’s important information to know.

My biggest concern going forward is where the growth is coming from, if we’re reaching a plateau in playerbase growth and Wizards is pushing out super ultra chase rares to increase revenue in a different manner, that will have a significant impact on the secondary market long term. Cards rotating out of Standard will take longer to rebound in price, or they might stop rebounding at all.

For a card to appreciate once it’s rotated out of Standard and into Modern, the demand for a card in non-rotating formats has to grow…something that won’t happen if supply greatly exceeds demand.

Miscellaneous Concerns

Another side effect of the Expedition lands is the shift from buying boxes to buying cases of product. I’m already locking myself in to either buy a case of Battle for Zendikar or none at all…missing the box that contained the Expedition land would be an absolute blowout when it comes to getting a return on your initial investment. Along this same vein is the reality that loose boxes will partly become “damaged goods” as retailers can just start opening packs until they hit the Expedition land and then put the rest of those boxes on the shelf to sell individually or as single packs. Sure those other boxes “could” have an Expedition land in them, but it’s going to be less likely given Wizards’ collation methods.

The impact on local game stores is also something to consider. Nobody opens a game store to sell packs of Magic, it takes far too many boosters sold to pay the rent; the real money is in singles. But what if the bulk of those singles aren’t worth anything anymore? Many retailers will tell you that their bread and butter is selling cards ranging from $5-20 because the margins are always good and the profits add up quickly. If the average rare in a set is worth 20% less because of super ultra chase rares, that’s going to have an impact on their bottom line. Sure, they can sell the super ultra chase rares as well…but almost anyone will tell you that they would rather have ten $20 cards to sell than one $200 card because expensive cards just sell slower.

Silver Lining

In a sense, the Expedition lands could have a very nice socialist redistribution of wealth effect on the secondary market. If so much of the EV equity is being soaked up by these super ultra chase cards, the price of most of the other cards should go down, essentially creating a situation where the people that have the money to shell out for these stupidly rare cards are subsidizing the price of singles for players that can’t afford them at all. This means that maintaining a competitive Standard deck will likely get a little easier…for the next two sets, then we’ll see where Wizards goes from there.

In Conclusion

I love these lands and very much want to own a playset of the shocks and fetches but know that despite my Magic budget and resources being well above average, that’s not even a fathomable reality for me. I couldn’t even begin to consider shelling out the $12,000 or so it would take to complete a playset of these cards. I’ve grown accustomed to not having everything thanks heavily to the From the Vault and San Diego Comic Con products, so I can live without.

I’m not against the idea of these cards existing, I’m against the level of unattainability that they’re being offered to us and concerned what this means for future Magic releases. Is it only a matter of time before we see these promo subsets with every release? What’s this mean for the secondary market as whole? These are real questions that we have to consider if we’re to continue playing the #mtgfinance game in the coming years.

Shameless self promotion: I’ll be working with Hotsauce Games at the SCG Open in Cincinnati this weekend, stop by and see us!

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – The Modern Masters Effect

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Last week I talked about the seasons of weather and how they affect standard card prices over their life time.  There are a lot of other factors involved with some cards that don’t follow the weather pattern.  I had a lot of feedback asking why I didn’t use more cards.  The truth is it was really difficult to pick another card from Theros that fits the usual price pattern of cards from a fall set.  Some cards, like Thoughtseize and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver see play in Modern.  Some cards, like Thassa, God of the Sea and Erebos, God of the Dead quickly fell out of favor.  And then the third group of cards, including Elspeth, Sun’s Champion and Hero’s Downfall saw big reprints despite never leaving decklists.  The card that follows Stormbreath Dragon the closest would be Xenagos, the Reveler.  He stayed relevant after his post-rotation high of about $20.  But he still was quickly phased out once people realized the decks he preyed on don’t exist anymore and less costly cards threatened him quickly and often.  While it is hard to truly predict what every card will do, there is a pattern to the rise and fall of most standard relevant cards.

But enough about Standard, let’s talk Modern!  It’s the glamorous format with some of the game’s most powerful creatures and spells and no rotation!  That means if you buy a deck it will always be good in Modern!  Forever!  That’s what no rotation means, right!?  Well not quite.  Your deck may not always be good, and your cards may not always be worth something.  That’s unfortunate nature of the beast that is Modern.  But there are some good patterns to notice that can cause card prices for Modern to quickly spiral out of control.

For this lecture I will need help from the audience.  Any Modern card out there want to volunteer?  No?  Nobody?  Well let me just look through my list of “Biggest misses of Modern Masters 2015″…  Ah yes, how about Serum Visions?  Everyone’s favorite $13 common!

serum visions

Well would you look a those beauts!  No, not these Beauts.  Those beautifully crafted number markers made by my exquisite MSPaint skills.  I decided this time to mark out some important events that influenced the cost of Serum Visions.  As you might notice, there are a lot of peaks followed by a mostly steady price.    The numbers here are important events in the price history of Serum Visions.

 

Event 1:

The date was March 7th, 2014.  It was probably a cool day in Richmond, Virginia.  I don’t know exactly; I wasn’t there.  StarCity Games was hosting Grand Prix Richmond.  This Grand Prix was one of the (if not the) largest Modern Grands Prix ever.  You know what happens when a ton of people gather in 1 place to play Magic?  They buy and sell a ton of cards!  Serum Visions had been on a steady upward trend but it was evident that stores couldn’t keep them in stock.  Boom, StarCity ups their buylist price and purchases Serum Visions from everyone in the X-3 bracket so they can go play other side events.  You can think of StarCity as the bad guy in this situation if you want, but eventually it was going to get there.  The real gritty truth of a buylist price is if it’s not high enough to keep a card in stock then players think it’s worth more than it costs.  We will see that is a common trend for eternal cards.  When supply is low, the best way to get them in stock is to buy them at large events where the card density is high.

You know what else happened at this event?

tarn

 

The spike of blue fetchlands also happened at this event.  You could buylist them to vendors for up to $75.  This overshadows a lot of other cards that also increased in price.  Obviously, we can see that the price point didn’t stick.  Khans of Tarkir fetch lands were announced later that year and eventually the Battle for Zendikar block which lowered consumer confidence in the prices of Zendikar fetch lands.

Event 2:

A lot of players expected Serum Visions to be in Modern Masters 2015.  The anticipation of a reprint can suppress the price of a card almost indefinitely.  It’s like a rubber band that is constantly being pulled back.  If people expect Wizards of the Coast to reprint the card and they don’t it snaps.  When the full spoiler for Modern Masters 2015 was released and didn’t include Serum Visions, people went crazy! Fifth Dawn  was released 11 years ago.  There is just not that many copies of the cards from that set.  Serum Visions, despite being a common, probably has less copies in circulation than Engineered Explosives, Vedalken Shackles, and Crucible of Worlds because they’ve all been reprinted.  Once again, the price stuck and people continued to fill out their blue deck lists with “4x Serum Visions”.

Event 2.5:

I didnt mark this on the graph but you can see it pretty well. The date was June 13th, 2015.  It probably wasn’t cool in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I also was not there, despite my love for the Modern format and my reasonable proximity to Charlotte.  Once again, StarCity games holds an enormous Modern Grand Prix.  As they often do, card prices increased after a weekend of increased buylists.  It was obvious that there was huge increase in the price of the card.  Consumer confidence was high it would not be reprinted.  This coupled with the fact that Modern PPTQ season was about to start caused another buying frenzy.

Event 3:

After a snapback from a brief $20 price point, people realized that it probably wasn’t worth that much.  The FNM promo Serum Visions coupled with the fact that Modern PPTQ season is winding down caused a small decay in the price.  It’s unknown if it will continue to drop through the summer but  I would be mindful of the price after Grand Prix Pittsburgh ( the last Modern Grand Prix of the year).  If it starts to keep a steady price, it’s likely it will stay there until a reprint or big event.

Summary:

Well, we can see here, that unlike Standard cards, the weather does not play a large factor into the price of a card.  Consumer confidence and large events have the biggest impact on card prices.  I would be mindful of GP Charlotte 2016 (May 21-22) and the summer supplementary product.  It’s unclear if we will see Modern Masters 2016 or something more like Conspiracy 2.  According to this annoucnement, Modern PPTQ season is from June 16th until October 9th.  I would recommend looking to finish up your Modern deck during the spoiler season of the 2nd set of the “Tears” Block (which is the un-announced block after Battle for Zendikar).

Although I didn’t go into a lot of detail, if you look at the price graph for Zendikar fetch lands you will see a similar slide as people think it’s going to be reprinted.  It is followed by a huge spike as it is confirmed to not be in Battle for Zendikar.

The Battle for Zendikar

But who wants to talk about spoilers?! I know I do!

omnath

I’m not gonna talk about everything, but this guy looks great! Yeah it’s only a 7 mana 5/5, but it’s got a lot of value going for it.  We will have Explosive Vegetation and Nissa’s Pilgrimage to help ramp out this bad boy.  He combos well with fellow elemental, Whisperwood Elemental.  To top it all off, he’s a great alternative beefy guy to hit off See the Unwritten.  I think Omnath will give Dragonlord Atarka decks another dimension that lines up pretty well against Ugin.  The fact that the original Omnath is a pretty popular character bodes well for his price point.  I don’t know what pre-order prices will look like when the article releases but anything $8 or less seems like a fine time to buy in if you want to play with this guy.

Danny Brown, ProTrader

PROTRADER: The Mythics of Dragons of Tarkir

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After hitting Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged in the last two weeks, we have inevitably arrived here. There are a few reasons why Dragons of Tarkir looks like the shortest in supply of the three sets in this block. Let me explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up: in a world where the same number of drafts fired every day of a set’s life cycle, there would be the same amount of Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir in existence, each with about 40 percent of what exists for Khans of Tarkir. In our world, though, Modern Masters 2015 was released while we were still in the honeymoon phase with Dragons. The cards are in the shortest supply of the block, which means buying in cheap could result in the largest percentage gains of the cards discussed in this series.

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MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY