Grinder Finance: The True Price of a Deck

June 30, 2015 Jim Casale 2 Comments

Editor’s Note: Jim Casale is a talented writer who has a lot of insights into how to get the most of your money when it comes to actually playing Magic, and we’re excited to welcome him to the MTGPrice team! I’m looking forward to seeing his content here every Tuesday.

– Corbin

By Jim Casale

I’m sure many of the readers of this article consider themselves players of Magic: the Gathering, a collectable card game unlike many others in its longevity and the size of its player base. The biggest barrier to entry for many players, like myself is the cost of buying the cards needed to play. I’m here to explain how to best avoid paying too much for the cards you need to play the game. Unlike many columns on this website, mine is not focused for the people that want to speculate on cards. My goal is to find the best time for players to buy the cards they need to play with. These cards may go up in price or may not but the value that you’re gaining here is by playing with the cards.

Many people have noticed the recent soaring price of modern cards. Snapcaster Mage, Blood Moon, Olivia Voldaren, Raging Ravine, Oblivion Stone, and Heritage Druid are just a few of the cards that seem to become unreasonably expensive. But what is the reason for all of this? Is it some black market underground dojo keyboard cagefighter speculators or real demand? Well it’s complicated but it’s most likely artificial demand not caused by buyouts but by players who are worried if they don’t buy now it will only go up. Panic is the real problem here. We need to be confident in our purchases and be able to build towards the deck we want to play in the future.

Which brings us to my point, what is the true cost of a deck? How does someone decide to “buy in” to a deck?

I have a theory to answer all of that. For many Magic players, cards they already own are a sunk cost. When debating what deck to play they do not associate the cards they already own as “costing” anything to them. Which makes a lot of sense, since you don’t have to go out and buy or trade for those cards. This artificially lowers the cost of a deck. If you already own Deceiver Exarch, Pestermite, Snapcaster Mage, and Cryptic Command then it’s a lot cheaper to play the Splinter Twin deck, even if you don’t own any Splinter Twins. The bottleneck is the card that is stopping people from making a deck and it is generally the most costly card in said deck.

Did you notice what cards got reprinted in Modern Masters 2015? Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Bitterblossom, Vendilion Clique, and friends are all expensive staples that are the bottle neck to building their respective decks.

How does someone who wants to build Jund look at the deck? Have you ever heard anyone complain about the price of Terminate as being the reason they are reluctant to build the deck? Absolutely not. They can’t afford the Tarmogoyfs, Liliana of the Veil and Dark Confidants that make up the most expensive parts of the deck. The true cost of the deck is not realized when the barriers are set so high. If a player opens a few of the expensive cards he or she needs to build the deck then true cost of a deck gets lower.

This is what is causing the spikes in cards that used to be “cheap.” Snapcaster Mage is the prime example of a card that is bottlenecking anyone from playing a blue deck in Modern. Previous bottlenecks to blue decks have been printed a ton recently and help build more interest in completing decks. The previous bottlenecks to build these style of decks were lands, Vendilion Clique, and Cryptic Command. I would venture to guess that with the abundance of shocklands from RTR block and the flood of fetchlands from KTK block that lands are no longer the biggest barrier to entry to building these decks. Vendilion Clique and Cryptic Command are on their third printing as of MM2015 and you don’t need 4 copies of either card to play the deck.

Where does that leave us? Well, at the point we are now. The demand for Snapcaster Mage rises because the true cost of building their deck is lower. If you need 4 Snapcaster Mages to finish your deck completely and they cost $25 then it’s pretty reasonable to spend the $100 and finish it off. If enough people do that then that causes the price of a card to rise. Snapcaster Mage can retail for almost $100 now despite being $30-40 throughout most of last year. Consumer confidence in its statistically-low chance of being reprinted coupled with the lowered true price of the decks, makes this card’s price sky-rocket.

What can we do about it now? Not really a whole lot. Maybe Snapcaster Mage will be next year’s GP promo. Maybe we have to wait until MM2016 or MM2017 for a reprint. Either way it looks like in the near future we won’t see a decline. The only reason eternally playable cards decrease in price is because of lowered consumer confidence because of a reprint, the actual reprint, and the card falling out of favor. The key to playing Magic affordably is to plan longer term.

The true price of a deck can be very low if you want it to be. Patience and smart purchases can lead to large savings down the road. I play Splinter Twin in Modern and have spent maybe $200 on cards for it in the last year. That’s a far cry from the $400 it would take just to buy a set of Snapcaster Mage. The key to this is finding the next bottleneck and purchasing those cards ahead of time.

Even right now, I can see a few cards that could bottleneck players in the future. For instance, if you don’t already own your shocklands I can’t recommend buying them any later. The market has been slow to mature due to their low played count in Modern but if we get more juicy land reprints in Battle For Zendikar (like many people suppose we will) then the hardest lands to get will be shocklands. Due to how flooded the market is, I doubt we will see them reprinted again in the near future (next 3-5 years). I would also recommend picking up a set of Khans of Tarkir fetch lands. They’ve bottomed out and started to rise and it really doesn’t get cheaper than now. If we don’t get Zendikar fetchlands in Battle For Zendikar then it is likely they fetches rise even faster. The key to finding out when to buy in is important. For Modern this season, the best time to buy cards not in MM2015 was once the spoiler was finished. The time to buy cards in MM2015 was the week before Vegas or on site if you were able to attend.

The next thing to consider is the reprintability and reprint schedule for cards. This doesn’t apply to Standard usually, but Modern-legal cards are frequently printed in a cycle. It seems Wizards of the Coast is intent on Modern Masters every two years and it will introduce new copies of existing cards too strong for Standard. When Modern Masters 2015 was announced it was also announced cards from that set would be no newer than New Phyrexia, meaning Innistrad and Return to Ravnica block cards were safe from reprint. That should have been your cue to buy the cards you need from those sets. You can wait as long as possible to see if a reprint is coming, but the backlash for an anticipated reprint not being in the set is fierce. Right now Scalding Tarn and Misty Rainforest’s price is inhibited by the anticipation of a reprint. If there is none, don’t be surprised to see them jump.

For Standard players, there is a cycle that ensures you always get your cards for the lowest price. Right now Dragons of Tarkir cards are insanely cheap. Planeswalkers that pre-ordered for $40 or more are now $8-10. With a lot of Standard’s heavily played walkers rotating out soon, it’s never been a better time to get into Tarkir Block cards. If you named the most played planeswalkers in standard you’d probably end up with Elspeth, Ashiok, Xenagos, and Nissa, right? Those all rotate in a few months. The Tarkir block walkers (Sarkhan, Sorin, Ugin, Sarkhan Unbroken, and Narset) are poised to take over. While it’s true some of those cards may not go up in price, it’s pretty likely they will also not go down. Bulk planeswalkers can usually hold a $5-6 value and heavily played ones can skyrocket past $30. I personally did myself a favor and bought a playset of all of the DTK mythics except the Dragonlords and Deathmist Raptor. It’s hard to go wrong there and it will definitely help the true cost of your deck in the future.

In the future I hope this column will help you buy into cards at the best possible time and take some of the surprise out of price jumps. As we are quickly approaching the release of Magic Origins, I will be addressing cards that I think you should preorder next week!

– Jim Casale

Danny Brown, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Buylisting Efficiently

June 30, 2015 Danny Brown 2 Comments

So, you have a collection that you want to sell all or part of to a buylist. Maybe it’s a collection you picked up off CraigsList, maybe it’s culling down your personal stock, or maybe you’re helping out a friend who found a box of Magic cards in his attic.

Whatever the case, you now have to balance two factors that are somewhat at odds with each other: 1) getting through the process as quickly as possible and 2) getting the most amount of money you can.

Everyone has his or her own method, and I’m interested in hearing the ways you’ve streamlined the buylisting process in the comments at the end of this article. First, though, we’ll cover some of my favorite tips to help you get your buylisting done as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Why Would I Buylist?

Before we dive in, let’s address the question some of you may be asking: “Why would I buylist my cards? I could get more money selling them on eBay or TCGplayer.” While this is true, listing cards on those sites requires someone to buy your cards, which could take weeks or more. When those cards do eventually sell, it almost certainly won’t be all at the same time, which means you’ll be shipping out far more packages that if you had buylisted. And after all that is done, you still have to pay fees, cutting into that extra profit that seemed so appealing.

I was opposed to buylists for a long time, but with the advent of aggregated lists like you can find here on MTGPrice, the process became much faster and easier, as well as more profitable. I very rarely list cards for sale these days, instead choosing to send cards on my schedule either through buylisting or PucaTrade. That alone increases my MTG finance efficiency. Now let’s talk about how to improve the efficiency of your buylisting.

Sorting Things Out

We’re not going to go over how best to pick a bulk collection in this article. If you’re looking for that sort of thing, Douglas Johnson has covered that topic from numerous angles on this very site, as well as BrainstormBrewery.com. We’re going to assume that you’re starting from a point of having your mythics and rares separated out, with anything that is obviously bulk set aside. The same is true for commons and uncommons that you know (or suspect) may be worth the time to sell individually.

For years, I organized my cards by color, because from a player’s standpoint, that’s just the intuitive way to do it. Eventually, I started sorting by color within sets, because when you’re trying to build a deck for a particular format, you want to be sure the cards you’re choosing from are legal.

Nowadays I don’t really build any decks at all (I’ve been playing Limited and Cube only basically since my son was born a year ago), so anything I own is either in a trade binder, my cube, or my cube’s on-deck binder. Everything else is sorted in longboxes alphabetically by block.

Sorting alphabetically is key. No matter what buylist you’re dealing with, you will have to sort alphabetically—first by sets, then by card names within sets. However, I don’t like to go all the way down to the set level when sorting for a buylist. It just takes a little bit too much time, and it’s not that hard to flip through a block’s worth of cards a few times over when comparing to each set. That said, if you’re dealing with an absolutely huge collection, sorting by set instead of block will probably be more efficient by the end of the process.

Using MTGPrice to Your Advantage

If you go to MTGPrice.com’s homepage, this is what you’ll see at the top of the page. If you click “Browse Sets,” you’ll get a list that looks like this:

Pick up a pile of set- or block-sorted cards, find the applicable set(s), and then start comparing what you have to the buylists you see. Let’s say you’re looking to get rid of a pile of Modern Masters 2015 cards:

Initially, the cards will be sorted by descending price. Since you’re working from an alphabetized pile, though, you’ll probably want to click “Card Name” to make the list here sort alphabetically.

There you go! Now you can compare the pile of cards you’re holding to this list. If a buylist price looks acceptable, simply click on the card, click “Sell To” on the left hand of the screen, and note the name of the vendor offering the highest price.

So, if you were looking to buylist an Apocalypse Hydra for that tasty 39 cents listed above, you would see that ABUGames was the one offering that price.

At this point, I like to take a Post-It note, write “ABUGames” on it, and then start a pile of cards directly on that Post-It. For each new store that I am considering a shipment to, I’ll start a new Post-It note. Some people have playmats specifically for this purpose, but I’m not quite that fancy just yet.

The Alternative Method

If you have a completely unsorted pile of cards, you may find yourself not really wanting to go through and sort everything, especially if it’s a mixed lot with lots of different sets and not too many cards from any one block.

In this case, you can take the slightly more painful method of individually searching for cards by just typing in their names here on MTGPrice. In most cases, it will be less efficient, but there are certainly collections that warrant this approach rather than pre-sorting everything.

If your memory is not such that you can remember which pile you put a particular card in, though, you may want to at least sort cards so that that duplicates are together. Otherwise, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time searching for the same card over and over again.

Shipping Out

How you ship your buylist cards largely depends on how many cards you’re shipping.

If you’re doing a quick and easy buylist including a just a few cards (no more than six), you can send them in a plain white envelope with a stamp. However, note that this method will leave you with no proof your cards were actually sent, should you be the paranoid type.

Most buylist shipments will include a few more cards than that, though, and if they’ll fit, a bubble mailer is a fine option. You can buy shipping for up to three ounces for $1.93 through PayPal, and that comes with delivery confirmation, too.

I like to use team bags with toploaders on the ends for protection. This will ensure your cards are easy to access but well protected. Whenever you’re shipping Magic cards to anybody, including merchants, if you’re taping stuff up, fold over the end of the tape to form a little tab that makes it so the tape can be very easily removed. This is 100 percent a value play for you. Think of it this way: if you were the guy grading cards for a shop and somebody packaged something up in a way that made it really difficult to open, you would probably grade their cards a little more harshly, right? Not to say you would be dishonest in your grading, but you would be less inclined to give somebody a pass on borderline stuff. I want to do everything I can to avoid that.

Occasionally, you’ll need to ship a much larger buylist order that couldn’t reasonably fit in a bubble mailer. In these cases, I fill up a regular card box (the of which is size based on the number of cards, of course). To ensure nothing gets damaged in the mail, all empty space should be filled in with folded tissues, cotton balls, packing peanuts, or other soft material that won’t damage your cards. Make sure that when you shake the box, you don’t hear cards banging on the edges. Once you’ve got that done, tape it up very well (those things aren’t fully enclosed to moisture) and ship it out in the box itself. A recent 500-count box I mailed cost just less than $10. That’s kind of a lot for shipping, but presumably you’re getting a nice return on that many cards.

Know Your Vendors

Finally, do some research on the vendors you’re considering dealing with. Some have better reputations than others, and it’s important to know what you’re dealing with going in.

I won’t do any badmouthing here, but I’ll go ahead and say that I especially find it a pleasure to do business with Card Kingdom and ABUGames. AdventuresOn is fine but I hate buylisting on its website, and ChannelFireball pays quickly on the occasions that you actually like the prices it’s offering. I’ve had good and bad experiences with other stores, but these are names I tend to trust.

More Efficient Every Time

Each time I prepare a pile of cards for buylisting, I figure something out that helps improve my efficiency the next time around. What are your best tips for improving the buylisting process?

I’ll leave you with this one last thing: find something entertaining to listen to while you’re doing all this sorting—a podcast, a TV show, a web series, whatever. This is not very engaging work, but if you want to make money in MTG finance, it’s necessary.

Until next time!

Finding Value

Anatomy of a Modern-Playable

Image June 30, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 2 Comments

By: Guo Heng

One of the things I am excited about during spoiler season is spotting Modern-playable cards. It pays to be able to identify Modern-playables early on. Take, for example, two recent cards that shook up Modern in a big way: Kolaghan’s Command and Collected Company. Kolaghan’s Command, which saw only a bit Standard action in Mardu builds, was available at under $3 for two whole months. Collected Company was the cornerstone of Standard Green-based Aggro builds but it remained at its release price of $5 for a month-and-a-half before breaching into the double digit price region.

Modern has evolved into an eternal format that rivals Legacy in diversity and depth. Over the last month-and-a half, we saw four major events taking place in four different regions, with four distinct metagames. After nearly four years of existence and a slew of unpopular bannings which in hindsight were wise decisions, Modern has finally become the eternal format that we’ve always wanted. An eternal format where we can always play our favorite decks (unless yours is Birthing Pod), a format diverse enough for most decks to have a shot at taking home the grand prize, a format with a number of tier-one decks large enough to rival the cast of Game of Thrones. And more importantly, an eternal format without card availability issues.

Modern has never been more popular than it is today, which is why evaluating a card’s playability in Modern has become an essential aspect in the MTG finance reviews of new sets. Today’s article is going to discuss a few fundamental characteristics of cards that are able to break it in Modern. Seasoned competitive Modern players would likely be familiar with these points, but players or financiers who do not dabble much in the format may not be. This article is targeted at the latter groups.

Conveniently, there is a rather controversial Magic Origins mythic that was spoiled last week which we could use as a case study to find out what it takes for a card to break it in Modern:

One of the more polarizing Magic Origins card spoiled, reactions ranged from, “They’ve reprinted Timetwister!” to, “It’s Time Reversal 2.0!” More importantly, the majority of the discussion generated by Day’s Undoing centered around its impact in Modern. After all, the last time Wizards reprinted a Power 9 card, it broke the format and fell under the banhammer within a few months.

Does Day’s Undoing has the makings of a Modern-playable card? The questions below will help put things into perspective.

Is Day’s Undoing Competitively Costed?

The answer is an obvious yes for Day’s Undoing, but I chose to open with this question to highlight the first aspect of a card to look at when evaluating a new card’s Modern playability. In the same vein as Legacy, Modern is a highly efficient format and the rule of thumb for a card to see Modern play is that it should cost no more than four mana.

In a format where Remand is the most popular counterspell, Path to Exile the most popular spot removal, and 4/5 creatures cost one or two mana, attempting to resolve a high-casting-cost spell that does not win you the game immediately is just asking to be wrecked. Even at four mana, a spell has to pretty much do everything for it to make the cut in Modern, like Cryptic Command or Siege Rhino.

That does not mean that any cards that cost more than four are unlikely to see Modern action, but cards that cost five mana and above have to fulfill one of the following to have a shot at making it in Modern:

Be a hard-to-answer win condition, like Keranos, God of Lightning Bolts.
Wins the game most of the time when it enters the board, like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Ugin, the Spirit Dragon and fits into big mana strategies.
Is a combo piece like Ad Nauseam or a component of a deck that uses cheat-into-play cards like Through the Breach, Goryo’s Vengeance, or Summoning Trap.

Have you ever wondered why Standard all-star Primeval Titan does not see Modern play outside of decks that runs lands as their win conditions, such as certain Scapeshift variants and Amulet Bloom? Even though Primeval Titan generates insane value upon resolution, tapping six mana for a creature that is vulnerable to both Path to Exile and Remand exposes you to the risk of experiencing a significant tempo drawback.

Day’s Undoing is obviously within the casting cost restriction of Modern, so let’s go on to the next aspect of Day’s Undoing that is much talked about.

Is Day’s Undoing Part of a Two-Card Combo that Wins You the Game Upon Resolution?

One of the most-discussed aspect of Day’s Undoing is that you get a pretty good impression of Timetwister in Modern by coupling it with one of Quicken, Leyline of Anticipation, or Vedalken Orrery, but does it make Day’s Undoing good enough to be played in Modern? There are two questions to ask to determine if an interaction is powerful enough to work in Modern:

Is it a two-card combo that wins you the game upon resolution?
If the the interaction requires more than two cards, are the individual components powerful cards independently?

Most of the tier-one combos in Modern are two-card combos that win you the game upon resolution. Splinter Twin plus Pestermite. Ad Nauseam plus Angel’s Grace. Goryo’s Vengeance plus Griselbrand. There are plenty of other cool two-card combos, like Grand Architect plus Pili-Pala, but what what good is infinite mana if it does not win you the game?

The Kitchen Finks/Murderous Redcap plus Melira, Sylvok Outcast/Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit plus Viscera Seer interaction is the only tier-one Modern combo that requires more than two cards, and it only works in the format because most of the pieces are Modern-playable cards by themselves or have multiple interactions with other cards in the deck. Kitchen Finks is one of the best value three-drop in Modern, and Viscera Seer serves as a sac outlet that allows for plays like permanently exiling a creature with Fiend Hunter or turning Voice of Resurgence into a huge elemental in response to Path to Exile. Seer also helps sift through the deck to find combo pieces you may still be missing.

While Day’s Undoing paired with any of the three cards mentioned above gives you a Modern Timetwister, that interaction does not win you the game. Even worse, Quicken, Vedalken Orrery, and Leyline of Anticipation are cards that would not see play in Modern on their own merits.

Does it Really Fit into an Existing Archetype?

Collected Company was the card that Elves needed to ascend into tier-one playability. Kolaghan’s Command significantly bolsters Grixis decks as a highly flexible card that is useful in all situations, in the same vein as Cryptic Command. Treasure Cruise gave Blue-Red Delver an efficient way to refill its gas to out-grind the midrange Rock decks.

Players much better than me put forth compelling arguments for Day’s Undoing as a means for aggro decks to refuel their hands, but I am not entirely convinced. While I don’t agree with their perspective on Day’s Undoing, I would highly recommend reading their points to come to a conclusion yourself.

Hyper-aggressive decks (like Affinity or Burn) that are able to empty their hands pretty fast theoretically reap more value out of Day’s Undoing’s symmetrical draw effect. While your opponents may lose more cards from their pre-Undoing hands, the fact that they too get a fresh seven means that they will get to reload their arsenal of answers for your threats.

As an aggro deck, I don’t think you would want run out a Day’s Undoing against the majority of the top decks in today’s metagame. You wouldn’t want Jund, Junk, or Grixis to draw more removal after you’ve teased out the ones in their opening hand and subsequent draws. The fact that Day’s Undoing ends your turn as part of its resolution means that your opponent gets to decimate your board with his or her newly drawn hand first. You don’t want opposing creature-heavy decks like Abzan Company, Merfolk, or Elves to draw more creatures or lords to bolster their sides of the board. And you certainly do not want it against Twin decks: imagine them casting a Pestermite in response to your Day’s Undoing, untapping, and then going off. Not good.

The same applies to arguments about using Day’s Undoing in combo decks. You would be refueling your opponent’s counterspells and hand disruption.

Furthermore, the fact that Day’s Undoing costs three may render it too prohibitive to be included in Burn. Treasure Cruise and Deathrite Shaman were adopted by Burn as they both can be cast for just one mana, and Atarka’s Command is only two.

Verdict

I think Day’s Undoing is unlikely to see Modern play. It is not part of a two-card “oops, I win” combo, it does not seem to fit into any existing archetype, and it is very unlikely to spawn a whole new archetype as it is not an engine card.

Day’s Undoing is currently available for preorder between $17 to $20. My call would be to stay far, far away from it and sell or trade off any copies you open at the prerelease right away. I think Day’s Undoing will soon join its buddies Time Reversal and Temporal Mastery as cards that tried so hard to be a Power 9, but failed miserably.

The only upside about Day’s Undoing is that the card solidified Jonas De Ro as one of my new favorite Magic artists.

Do share your thoughts on this card and its breakdown in the comments section below or catch me on Twitter at @thguoheng.

ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Elves, Merfolk, and Goblins (Oh My!)

June 29, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 18 Comments

Has anyone even tested Goblins in Modern? The speculation is so rampant on a strategy that has yet to prove itself. Maybe people are forgetting there’s no Goblin Lackey, Goblin Matron, Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Warchief, Gempalm Incinerator, or Rishadan Port.

That’s a lot of gaps to overcome. Yet this still happened:

We are in the midst of rampant speculation on Legion Loyalist, Warren Instigator, and the catalyst itself, Goblin Piledriver. With prices this inflated, the risk of buying into these targets is at its highest. Being the steadfast risk intolerant speculator, perhaps I can propose some alternate targets – still potentially relevant to a Goblins Modern strategy – with a much more attractive risk/reward equation.

Goblins: Not the Only Tribe in Town

Goblins are an unproven strategy in Modern. This is certain. What’s equally certain is that Elves and Merfolk are proven strategies in Modern. Both decks won a Modern Grand Prix very recently.

I proffer this idea for your consideration: why not buy into some of the cards in those decks instead? Some of the critical pieces of these decks have barely moved! So while Warren Instigator, a card I’ve never seen cast in my life, goes from $10 to $17, you could be buying into something like Silvergill Adept near its 2014-2015 low!

Silvergill Adept is critical to the Merfolk strategy in Legacy and Modern. I hear getting a Merfolk in play while also drawing more Merfolk is a pretty sound strategy [Editor’s note: Best card in the deck, not close]. And there’s no way this card should be under $3 when Nettle Sentinel – a common from the same block – is around the same price.

If you’d prefer throwing your money into Mythic Rares, you could also consider Master of Waves. It’s about to leave Standard, but I suspect nearly 0% of its value is driven by Standard play anyway. This key Merfolk card can be found for under $4. I’d much rather have my money in these than, say, Goblin Rabblemaster – a rare about to rotate that does have value driven by Standard play.

Fish not your thing? You could pick up a couple of critical Elves pieces instead. Most of the best Elves targets have already spiked, but I could see Elvish Archdruid moving higher. It’s been printed a million times, but it’ll always have some demand keeping the price above bulk. And the further away we get from the latest printing, the more value it’ll become.

If you want to trade into something newer, you could always pick up Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. The card may dip slightly at rotation, but this land is powerful and should maintain value going forward. You will likely need to be patient with this one, since I’m sure a ton have been opened. Still, you could find far worse places to park money.

Goblins, Merfolk and Elves (Oh, My!)

The rise in popularity of tribal strategies has generated newfound opportunities in Modern speculation. Most Elves cards have already seen significant appreciation. Merfolk cards haven’t moved as much, but they should bounce nicely off recent lows. And of course we’ve all seen the rampant Goblins speculation this past week on news of a Goblin Piledriver reprint.

Rather than tossing the dice and gambling on one of these strategies, wouldn’t it be nice to find something relevant across all three? In an ideal world, you could acquire key cards that play an important role in all Tribal decks. This way no matter which strategy rose to the top, you’d have exposure to important cards.

I did a quick comparison between Knocinski’s winning Merfolk build and Malone’s Elves build to start. I’m immediately disappointed. I counted exactly one card in common: a singleton Cavern of Souls played in Elves.

As an aside, Cavern of Souls is positioned to continue hitting new all-time highs given its relevance in Modern and Legacy.

While my profits were still decent, I will be first to admit I made a mistake selling this one. This is definitely a case where my perpetual bearishness in Modern narrowed my perspective too much. This land will only go higher until it is reprinted. The current $50 price tag is likely to stick.

Despite the common “tribal” theme, it would appear these three decks all have completely different building blocks. Outside of Cavern of Souls, I see no overlapping card. Does that mean we should give up? Absolutely not – it’s all about speculation!

For example, couldn’t Aether Vial be relevant in at least two of the three tribal strategies? Elves may not want the artifact for now, but I could certainly see Goblins following the Merfolk approach to flash out instant-speed lords.

I really like the card’s price chart as well, from a technical standpoint. I see some healthy growth in both retail and buy list pricing. More importantly the buy/sell spread has narrowed in recent weeks – a likely sign of further price appreciation on the horizon. While speculating on a $30 uncommon is a tough pill to swallow, I’d still support grabbing a few copies. Feel free to grab the Modern Masters version if you feel better paying $30 for a rare instead.

Perhaps a safer target is a critical land that is near an all-time price low: Mutavault.

While this land isn’t so hot in Elves, I could see Goblins picking it up. And even if Merfolk is the only deck that runs Mutavault, it’s still an automatic 4-of in every Merfolk build. This is a card I’m willing to throw cash into; it can readily spike to $20 during next year’s Modern season or possibly earlier, if the Modern metagame leads the right way.

Perhaps I’m being naïve here. I’m focusing heavily on cards that these three tribal decks would want to play. But if I want to place bets on all three at once, perhaps I should be seeking out cards that beat all three of these strategies. I believe Anger of the Gods is already a viable sideboard card in Modern. A one-sided wrath for three mana is probably decent against all three tribal strategies. Be careful with Standard rotation – we may see a small dip before the card stabilizes higher. Perhaps trading for unwanted copies is the best play here.

If you’re looking for a more permanent fix, you could try Night of Souls’ Betrayal. It doesn’t kill as many creatures as Anger, but sticking two copies could really wreak havoc on tribal decks. The card has spiked recently but buy lists haven’t chased nearly as much. I’d watch that spread closely – the opportunity to pick up this sideboard card may close faster than you think.

Lastly, there’s my favorite sideboard tech: Engineered Explosives. This artifact seems well-positioned in a tribal-heavy metagame. Played right, you can set yourself up for a solid 3-for-1 or 4-for-1 play. This card is destined to go higher, and I don’t expect to see a reprint in 2015 or 2016.

Modern Not Your Thing?

Most of you know by now I’m not as excited about Modern as the rest of the player base. Even though I’m trying to flip Modern specs, I really prefer to sink my funds into safer investments. I still believe most Modern staples will pull back in price in a month or two, so I’ll be content to largely sit on the sidelines until then.

My quest to move profits into older cards is not a solo one, it seems. Did you notice some other really interesting price moves from last week? I’m talking about this:

And this:

These charts are extremely attractive from an investor’s point of view. Barring a minor hiccup on Library of Alexandria last year, we’re seeing monotonically increasing prices over time. I’m not sure if Mishra’s Workshop’s price tag will stick above $1000, as reflected in mtgstocks.com’s most recent Interests page. But the card will certainly maintain its upward momentum in the years to come. I’d pay close attention to that buy-list curve, in blue, on these charts. They will reflect how eager dealers are to pay higher prices for these old-school cards. Library of Alexandria is even playable in Old School MTG, perhaps catalyzing some upward price movement.

If I had to recommend picking one of these valuable Arabian Nights cards, I’d recommend Bazaar of Baghdad.

The card is a 4-of in Dredge, a powerful Vintage deck with an important defining characteristic: no Power! Once you have your 4 Bazaars, you’re most of the way toward building a viable Vintage deck. Even if you never plan on playing Vintage, you have to admit the artwork on the card is one of the sweetest in the game. I’ve been eyeing this for almost a year now, and I’m only seeing upward movement on prices.

Wrapping It Up

The theme of last week: tribal Modern decks and high end Arabian Nights cards. These are on opposite ends of the risk/reward spectrum. On the one side, we have rampant Modern speculation based on unproven deck strategies (Goblins). On the other side, we have measurable price growth in classic cards on the reserved list.

While my affinity is always to err closer to the conservative side of the spectrum, I see many opportunities in between. You don’t have to chase Warren Instigator higher to make money on the latest trends. There are far better plays – especially at this point, where prices have already jumped so high. Aether Vial, Nykthos, Cavern of Souls, and Mutavault are all well-positioned no matter which tribal deck earns the top spot of future Modern events. If you really despise all three strategies, maybe now’s the time to pick up your Engineered Explosives.

Targets like these are far safer than cards that have already spiked solely based on speculation. They have plenty of upside potential, with minimal downside risk at this point. These are my kind of pick-ups, and I’d encourage you to move some of your newfound profits into these cards as well. Give it a year, and you’ll likely be looking at more sizable gains. Plus you’ll have the upside of preserving your capital in case one of the tribal strategies becomes a major flop. It’s the best scenario for investing, and it’s why I’m moving my resources accordingly.

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

Some tribal-specific lands have moved a ton lately. Wanderwine Hub has jumped all the way to $11.99 at Star City Games. The major retailer has no copies in stock. If I was going to spend $12, I’d rather pick up a Mutavault anyway.
Gilt-Leaf Palace is the Elf equivalent to Wanderwine Hub. The only difference is Knocinski’s Merfolk build actually runs Wanderwine Hub, while Malone’s Elves list did not use Gilt-Leaf Palace. Despite this critical fact, Star City Games is still completely sold out of the palace, though their price tag hasn’t corrected the latest spike: it’s only $3.99…for now.
I wasn’t exaggerating when I mentioned how popular Engineered Explosives is right now. These tribal themes are only going to make the artifact more powerful. Perhaps that’s why Star City Games is completely sold out of all non-foil copies of the card, with a $17.99 price tag. These will retail for $20 very soon.

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