MTGFinance: What We’re Buying & Selling This Week (Aug 10/15)

August 12, 2015 James Chillcott 4 Comments

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

One of the most common misconceptions about folks involved in MTGFinance is that we are constantly manipulating the market and feeding players misinformation to help fuel achievement of our personal goals.

It has occurred to us at MTGPrice that though we dole out a good deal of advice, most of you ultimately have very little insight into when and why our writing team actually puts our money where our collective mouths are pointing. As such running this weekly series breaking down what we’ve been buying and selling each week and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought for personal use without hope of profit. We’ll also try to provide some insight into our thinking behind the specs, and whether we are aiming for a short (<1 month), mid (1-12 month), or long (1 year+) term flip. Here’s what we we’ve been up to this week:

Buying Period: Aug 2nd – Aug 10th, 2015

Note: All cards NM unless otherwise noted. All sell prices are net of fees unless noted.

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

This week I’m touring Bulgaria and getting kicked out of Turkey for making too much sense, but I’m still working on my deal to sell the Super Collection, and I’ve bought a few more copies of some cards that represented good short and mid term opportunities.

BOUGHT

5x Evolutionary Leap @ $11/per
2x Scalding Tarn @ $50/per
4x Verdant Catacombs @ $35/per

SOLD (Pucatrade)

2x Scalding Tarn @ $80.92
1x Verdant Catacombs @ $62.14

Leap is still on my mid-term acquisitions list because, as I’ve mentioned before, I see it getting busted eventually and winning something in Modern. The ZEN fetches were a common flip for MTGFinance folks that were paying attention last week as the news came out on the Mark Rosewater blog that we would not see them in Battle for Zendikar. I was able to out a few already via Pucatrade and would ship more if I wasn’t already holding 1000+ points that need to get traded for a juicy high end target before I restock. I expect these to float lower gradually on the perception that their reappearance is only delayed rather than cancelled and that they will be $10 cards by summer 2016.

I’ll be visiting one of the only MTG stores in Bulgaria next week, so watch for that report.

Douglas Johnson (@RoseofThorns)

“Bought on Wednesday at around 4PM at a nearby LGS, hours after the announcement of the reprint delay. I’m actively working on flipping these out asap:”

5x Misty Rainforest @34 each

9x Verdant Catacombs @37 each

7x Marsh Flats @25 each

6x Scalding Tarn @50 each

Jim Casale (@Phrost_)

BOUGHT

Foil windswept heath @ 4787 pucapoints
2x foil fulminator mage @ 3494 pucapoints /per
12x ghostfire blade @ 52 pucapoints /per
2x foil dispel (rtr) @ 525 pucapoints /per

SOLD

4x demonic pact @ $15/per

SOLD (Puca)

8x ghostfire blade @ 112 pucapoints/copy

Jim says:

“The weekend flip of ghostfire blade has been my biggest success. Moving cards for smaller margins on puca has worked out well for me thus far because of the minimal overhead (read: no fees) for doing the transactions. It has been a great place for me to trade stamps for foil fetchlands basically.”

So there you have it. Now what were you guys buying and selling this week and why?

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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Jason Alt, ProTrader

PROTRADER: The Naval Archives

August 12, 2015 Jason Alt 5 Comments

I’ve got boat puns for days. You can’t escape the boat puns. It’s like the boat puns are a boat and you’re just some guy in an inner tube. Nice inner tube, idiot. I’ve got a whole navy of puns.

You know what’s even better than boat puns, besides “nothing”? Making money. Dolla dolla bills, y’all! I mean, if you want to make money in larger quantities than single dollars, that’s on you. You don’t want to end up like Pablo Escobar, spending six grand a month on rubber bands to hold all of your money. If you used hundreds, you could get that down to $60 a month, which is way more reasonable. Or you could reinvest that cash in some sicko EDH staples and make your money work for you.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Going Mad, Uncategorized

Going Mad – Stay Classy Grand Prix San Diego

August 12, 2015 Derek Madlem 13 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

It’s the week after a Pro Tour and we’ve seen the decks that are sure to dominate the Standard format until rotation, the format is solved and it’s pretty obvious where to place our bets. We’ve had a couple weeks of SCG Opens and then the culminating tournament to solidify the metagame and declare a public enemy #1. Now we’re just coasting to the finish line as we wait for a new set to be released and we can start this process all over again. Right? Right.

Well… wrong

Skimming through the top 32 decklists, I was expecting to see a good percentage of the field rocking the Ensoul Artifact Thopter deck that took Pro Tour Magic Origins by storm, after all it was clearly “the next Caw-Blade” if you listened to the Pros and the parrots in the coverage booth. What happened in San Diego is a testament to R&D’s ability to create a variety of flexible cards to combat a variety of threats; and by variety of cards, I am actually just referring to exactly one card – Dromoka’s Command.

Dromoka’s Command may be the first card printed as a utility spell to have an entire archetype form up around it. Dromoka’s Command is the backbone that the entirety of the Green-White Megamorph deck builds around. Not only does Dromoka’s Command effectively remove enchantments from the board, it is also does pumps creatures, prevents damage, and removes opposing blockers… three things that seem to be relevant in most games of Magic, killing enchantments is just a bonus. But it’s power was not relgated solely to the Megamorph decks, it also showed up heavily in a variety of Abzan decks. This all proved to be bad bad news for those Thopter decks; as it turns out, a deck that’s built around a couple key enchantments is vulnerable to enchantment removal +1.

Dromoka’s Command showed up in 17 of the top 32 decks, pretty much the only non-land cards that saw more action were Courser of Kruphix (19 decks) and Den Protector (18 decks). The most surprising bit in all of this? Dromoka’s Command is somehow still under $4. Dromoka’s Command is one of those cards that’s going to see play for years, it’s not quite Abrupt Decay level of utility in older formats, but it’s rarely a card that you’ll disappointed to draw. This also seems like a great long-term pickup in FOIL as it’s currently sitting at a very meager $11.

I am also an advocate of picking up at least a playset of Dromoka’s Command because it has roughly 14 months until rotation, which makes it a fine card to buy purely for play value (dividends) and there’s ample opportunity for it to creep up in price this October as the format shifts.

The Card that Isn’t

A really spicy brew took down the title in San Diego, this deck relied heavily on one card: Sphinx’s Tutelage. The deck featured an array of cheap draw spells that allow you to essentially burn through your deck grabbing more and more draw spells and dumping more and more cards into your opponent’s graveyard, looking at the decklist I have a hard time figuring out how this deck came out on top after 18 rounds of Magic… but even a ham sandwich can win a tournament if it draws the right pairings each round.

Sphinx’s Tutelage is a card you can invest in… I guess. But I’ll offer you a reality check: this is a niche strategy uncommon in a core set; this is NOT Stoke the Flames. Sphinx’s Tutelage is NOT Path to Exile or Murderous Cut or Bile Blight or any of the diverse playable uncommons we’ve seen crest $2 in the last few years. Sphinx’s Tutelage is a Hedron Crab or a Mind Funeral… it’s a card that in a couple years you might make a dollar off of. You’d probably be better served buying up copies of Alhammaret’s Archive, a card that should also hold onto some long-term heavy appeal in Commander.

While I am extremely skeptical about a deck featuring Sphinx’s Tutelage gaining traction in Modern, if it does you can expect Visions of Beyond to be the big winner… not a mass printed core-set uncommon. Being a cheap draw spell coupled with the Ancestral Recall payoff makes Visions an absolute all star alongside any conceivable Sphinx’s Tutelage build IF such a thing ever comes to fruition, which I’m currently doubtful of.

That Vastwood Seer

Nissa, Vastwood Seer continues her run as the most prevalent flipwalker, showing up in a stunning 15 of the top 32 decks compared to a paltry 6 decks for the former financial frontrunner Jace. Nissa is clearly here to stay as a heavily played Mythic staple and Jace is establishing himself as an all star role player. Expect their prices to continue diverging as Nissa hovers around $25 with a slow decline and Jace continues to adjust downward at a much faster rate.

The rest of this pantheon is performing much more in line with my previous expectations: ie, not at all. There isn’t a single copy of Kytheon, Chandra, or Liliana in the top 32 decks and that should put the writing on the wall as far as these cards go. While we’ve likely not seen the last of Liliana, Heretical Healer thanks to her inclusion in those Modern Collected Company decks, the outlook is grim for the other two.

The Card that Wasn’t There

On the breaking news front (at the time of writing this article) we have the full spoiler for FTV: Angels and it doesn’t include Linvala, Keeper of Silence. While this would have mattered a lot more before they banned Birthing Pod than it does now, it still puts a lot of pressure on this Mythic Modern staple. At the time I’m writing this Linvala is hovering around $35… but you’re probably looking at $50+ Linvalas today as you read this. Special thanks to the finance community for that one guys! In reality this card was likely to go up either way, people just have a psychological disconnect when it comes to FTV printings. A card like Linvala will stop climbing for fear of a reprint and then once that fear is confirmed or denied, it will adjust accordingly. This was a good card to pick up either way as FTV printings are traditionally disliked by most players because the FOILs look fairly atrocious.

While it’s disappointing to see Linvala absent from this product, she can probably just go ahead and join the club alongside Damnation as a card that desperately needs a reprint and somehow dodges it time and time again despite numerous glaring opportunities to do so and we’ll now start the yearly tradition of excluding only the most obvious choices from the From the Vault releases. But if you look on the bright side, we finally have that Iridescent Angel reprint that we’ve all been waiting for! Now’s your chance to buy in.

There is still the outside chance that with the new block structure we’ll see a Linvala reprint in Battle for Zendikar. The absence of a Core Set means that a lot of reprints will need to be implemented within regular sets. This will essentially tie reprints of legendary creatures to their home planes as non-planeswalkers don’t really get to experience interplanar travel yet. Yet.

Fetchland Insanity

I have a proposal for most of you that are taken aback by the recent upswing in fetch land prices: don’t buy them. At this point it’s not a matter of IF but WHEN the Zendikar fetches will be reprinted. Wizards seems to be pushing enemy colored pairs over the next year with the reinclusion of the opposing painlands, enemy colored Commander decks, and the likely inclusion of the long-awaited enemy colored manlands as the flagship duals for Battle for Zendikar. That push, plus the acknowledgement that Modern card availability is an issue should be enough to sooth fears that these cards are just never going to be available ever again.

Whether those fetches show up in a supplementary product (unlikely) or the next large set (April, as the other fetchlands rotate out of Standard), they ARE going to be reprinted – it’s only a matter of time.

Now’s the time for some tough love. Dad talk, have a seat children. There’s been a lot of outrage about the new price of fetches being unaffordable… but were they really affordable before? I’m going to say that for those outraged at the new price that these fetchlands were never truly affordable. If they were – you would have afforded them. YOU WOULD ALREADY OWN THEM. Now they are just STILL unaffordable; functionally, nothing has changed.

In reality there are only a handful of decks that really NEED the exact fetch land for their deck, most decks are perfectly able to get by on Khans fetches with only a fractional percentage of a decrease in efficiency. What does that percentage mean for the average Modern player in weekly tournaments at the local shop? You’re going to lose, at most, one or two games per month, and those games are not necessarily going to mean the match. Does that percentage point matter more elsewhere? Only if you’re going to be playing in competitive level events that span nine to fifteen rounds on a regular basis.

The real question that you should be asking yourself is: if you have serious issues with card affordability, how do you justify spending $40-70 a pop to play in an SCG Open or a Grand Prix? Competitive Magic is expensive. It’s always going to be expensive and the rewards are a rarely going to be cover the buy-in. The entire game is built on the foundation that players will continuously buy more and more cards and that a subsection of those cards being worth money.

Transparency: I bought zero copies of Linvala or the fetch lands this week

Stay classy #mtgfinance

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Battle for Zendikar… Fetch lands

August 11, 2015 Jim Casale

Well this news is old by now. If you saw the earth-shattering announcement from Mark Rosewater:

As you can imagine from the staggering 1,150 notes, there was a lot to be said about this announcement. No fetch land reprints!? What is Wizards of the Coast thinking!? Well I will tell you fine Magic playing fellows, they were thinking they didn’t need to be reprinted. Modern just received a huge infusion of fetch lands that were not even previously legal only a year ago.

I’m going to take a quick second before I continue to urge you to buy your Khans of Tarkir fetch lands. Don’t finish that one sweet EDH deck you’ve been working on for months. Don’t buy into the UR Mill deck that just won Grand Prix San Diego last week. Do yourself a favor and just get your set of lands. And then go out and tell your friends to get theirs too. There is no place these cards can go but up.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

So yeah, Wizards was thinking that a fall set filled with lands that haven’t been printed since their original release in October of 2002 would be better. You know, like 13 years ago. So when you look at it like that ,there really isn’t a reason to complain about the Zendikar lands not being reprinted a mere 6 years later (Zendikar was released in October of 2009).

And then came the announcement that kind of felt like this. People panicked! What else are you supposed to do? They’re not getting printed! Well a product of nobody being prepared was really just a reasonable price for what Zendikar lands were available. And then quickly not available as people became prepared. The buyout was not silent but very deadly. Over night, as you may have noticed, every Zendikar fetch land has doubled in price. Is it going to stay that way? Probably not forever. Is it worth buying them now? Probably not anymore.

What a lot of people tend to forget is how powerful the Khans of Tarkir ones are in Modern. Many decks don’t actually need enemy colored fetch lands to function. There are one and a half exceptions to this. Jund is a deck that is pretty much unplayable without Verdant Catacombs. The main reason is you need to be able to fetch basic Swamp and basic Forest in order to play effectively around Blood Moon. But to be completely realistic, there is no way you’re able to afford the spells in Jund and not the lands. Any deck that plays 4 Tarmogoyfs is generally no longer shackled by the price of it’s lands.

The other land that sees a tremendous amount of play in modern from Zendikar is Scalding Tarn. This land is by far the most expensive and probably the most widely played. It’s also pretty replaceable. The reason fetch lands see such high play is the ability to fetch Ravnica shock lands but also to fetch basic lands to beat Blood Moon. If your deck has 1 Steam Vents in it then you can play Scalding Tarn, Arid Mesa, Misty Rainforest, Bloodstained Mire, Wooded Foothills, Polluted Delta, or Flooded Strand to fetch it. If those are you only concerns you have a ton of choices of lands to play! Unfortunately it is not that simple, you need access to appropriate basics. As a frequent fetcher of Islands, I can safely say that Scalding Tarn could be replaced with Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, or Misty Rainforest while only sacrificing tiny percentage points in your matches. The reality is there is not a lot of situations you want to fetch basic Mountain and therefore any Island fetch land will suffice. Modern has long been a Steam Vents vs Overgrown Tomb format and the reality is you almost never need to fetch basic Mountain.

Where do we go from here? Just play other Island fetch lands in your decks. You can play Modern and you will not likely lose to your inability to fetch a basic Mountain. If you want to play a Green and Black deck, well I have no alternative to offer you other than to buy Verdant Catacombs. It sucks they’re really expensive but there is truly no other alternative. Other than you know, the decks that don’t play fetch lands…

Which brings us to our Daily Double

Well if you can’t buy cards, you can always sell cards, right? Now I think is time to get out of any short term specs you have for Magic Origins. I personally have been selling out of a ton.

You know what to do when you double on a spec? Get out while you still can! I picked up 3 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy on Pucatrade for 1500 Pucapoints near release (about $15). I was able to sell them locally to a player for $30 per copy and plan to buy them back in October during Battle for Zendikar hype.

I sold these when the Pro Tour spike was in effect but I don’t think they’re terrible good to hold onto when they have a fair trade price of $9.25. I think it will quickly drop down to a $5 niche rare until it spikes another tournament. The risk that these fall before another spike is too high for my liking.

If you own these and don’t play Abzan there is not really any reason to keep them. Nissa is a $25 Borderland Ranger in a deck that is clogged at 3 more than a toilet at a frat party. With Hero’s Downfall, Deathmist Raptor, Courser of Kruphix, Abzan Charm, Anafenza the Foremost, and more at 3, there is little reason this will see enough copies to maintain it’s price. Similarly Languish has been described in Patrick Chapin’s podcast as a “Poor man’s drown in sorrow and a poor man’s crux of fate”. The reality of the spell is it’s unlikely to get played in huge enough numbers to continue to hold it’s price tag that is 4 times as much as Crux of Fate.

This card isn’t worth much but it’s worth more than nothing. It takes a lot for a card to be more than bulk in Khans of Tarkir due to the fetch lands taking up so much of the set’s value. Enjoy this short boost in value by trading your copies out.

Bull Market

There are some cards I think are still good pickups right now and have been acquiring them myself.

Low mana cost flexible mythic rare from a small set? This is practically the textbook definition of “could be worth a ton.” With the rotation of Elvish Mystic there is a real premium on good 1 drops that aren’t Red. It’s unlikely Abzan is going anywhere and with the rotation of Fleecemane Lion there are a lot less good things to do on turn 2. There are a lot worse places you could put your money than on this sub $4 card.

So this card is pretty close to bulk and I don’t foresee that staying that way in the future. The big difference between this and a lot of similar effects is that YOU choose everything. Is your best guy better than their worst guy? That’s pretty good because that’s the board state after this card. At a fair trade value of $0.69 there is little to lose by buying in now. It’s picking up a ton of steam on Pucatrade too. That has been a fairly good indicator that players value the card more than it’s current price. I also think the foil at $2ish is probably a good pickup as it does similar things to an EDH game.

And with this extra long edition of Grinder Finance I hope you all did great at Game Day and are ready for our first taste of Battle for Zendikar spoilers. I expect we will see some big reveals August 28-31st at Pax Prime.

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