James Chillcott, What We're Buying

MTGFinance: What We’re Buying & Selling This Week (Aug 31/15)

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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 21st – Aug 31st, 2015

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

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

After completing the research for my new series, MTG Finance Growth Stocks, I put my money where my mouth is and dove in on a few of the specs that seemed most likely to pop sooner or later. Some of these cards were already on the move, but the exposure this week seems to have helped push foil Jace and Hangarback up to the next plateau.

BOUGHT

  • 1x Hangarback Walker (Foil) @ $25
  • 4x Hangarback Walker (Foil) @ $30
  • 2x Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy (Foil) @ $50

BOUGHT (PucaTrade)

  • 11x Hangarback Walker @ 1793 points
  • 2x Hangarback Walker (Foil) @ 3050 points
  • 3x Evolutionary Leap (Foil) @ 1200 points

Hangarback Walker is exhibiting many of the early signs of a multi-format superstar, showing up in a myriad of Standard decks and enjoying early experimentation in Modern, Legacy and even Vintage. As a colorless creature with a flexible casting cost and synergies with +1/+1 counters, artifacts, sweepers and resiliency against point removal, the card has the potential to show up in a ton of decks moving forward. A strong role player with little reason to ever be banned, Hangarback was one of my top picks for Modern foils likely to gain value ahead of the market average. The card has now gone through a buyout and seems to be settling between $40-50 for the time being.

Like Walker, Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy has taken the Magic world largely by surprise and it has proven value in both Standard and Modern with hints that it may even see play in Legacy or Vintage. As a summer set mythic that is exceeding expectations, targeting the foils was a no-brainer from my perspective. Now that the card has spiked feel free to unload for value if you can, or simply hang around for a year and hope for further gains.

Evolutionary Leap foils are a pet card I expect to end up in the $30-40 range within a year or two when someone figures out how to break the card in Modern or Legacy and wins a tournament with it.

 

Danny Brown (@dbro37)

BOUGHT

  • 4x Whisperwood Elemental @ 653 PucaPoints each = $4.57 each
  • 3x Sarkhan the Dragonspeaker @ 519 PucaPoints each = $3.63 each
  • 8x Wingmate Roc @ 282 PucaPoints each = $1.97 each
  • 2x Gilt-Leaf Winnower @ 103 PucaPoints each = $0.72 each
  • 1x Monastery Mentory @ 1606 PucaPoints = $11.24
  • 1x Soul Fire Grandmaster @ 899 PucaPoints = $6.29

Danny says:

“Whisperwood Elemental was the most promising mythic I found in my review of Fate Reforged this week. I tend to like buying cards even less expensive than this, but I like the card enough to speculate on a playset.

Getting additional Sarkhans is representative of my ever-increasing belief that this card will get somewhere above $10 this fall. There are still more on my list and I hope they get sent.

I was on the fence about Wingmate Roc, but Travis’s commitment to the card this week convinced me to pick up a couple sets. Thanks, Travis.

I only discovered Gilt-Leaf Winnower wasn’t $5 like ten minutes ago. I threw a playset up and two were committed before I even finished drafting my section of this article, so there’s some additional content for you. Supply of Magic Origins won’t be high and this is a really good card. I like it quite a bit at under a dollar and may go deeper.

Monastery Mentor and Soul Fire Grandmaster are both cards that are a little too expensive for my speculative tastes, but I needed these both for my cube. Now, if they spike significantly next season, which is not outside the realm of possibility, I’m certainly willing to turn them into profit and wait until rotation to make them a permanent part of my list.”

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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PROTRADER: To Redeem or Not to Redeem:Magic Origins

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By Guo Heng

Magic Origins redemption went live after the Magic Online downtime this Wednesday. Which means you could start transmuting those digital objects on Magic Online into tangible, tappable cards. A price disparity between Magic Online cards and real life (which shall be henceforth referred to as ‘IRL’) cards is ever-present due to a multitude of factors. The price disparity could sometimes be exploited to get your hands on cards below market price, especially foils from sets chock-full of eternal staples. (I’m looking at you Khans of Tarkir.)

Today we are going to crunch some numbers to find out if it is worth going through the effort to redeem Magic Origins, for both non-foil and foil sets.

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Casual Fridays

Setting Up for Future Spikes

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By: Cliff Daigle

I can admit it: I have four Hero’s Downfall left in my binder

They are still with me despite doing all I could to get rid of them in the months leading up to today. They sit there, tormenting me with their fallen value, their reminder of how they were over $10 at one point.

It’s a great card, don’t get me wrong, but since it’s rotating in a little more than a month there’s almost no one who needs them and zero people who will buy them. It sees almost no Modern or Legacy play, and while it’s a great card in Commander or Cube, it’s not a staple and it’s very common.

So I’m going to slide these four cards out of my binder and put them into a box of cards I’d like to make money on, but I likely won’t see an increase in value for some time. Call it a spec box, call it binder chaff, whatever label you want. I’m not going to to carry them around any more.

I like to look for cards that do something unique, and have a few of them set aside for the time when someone builds a deck that does something bananas, and sell into that spike. Think Lantern of Insight and the like.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx ($6/$31)

This is a tricky one to evaluate. Nykthos has showed up a little in Modern lists, but the foil split indicates that there’s a very strong demand in singleton formats like Commander and Cube. To be fair, the card is absolutely a win-more enabler, making gobs of mana when you already have a lot of permanents out there. Gaea’s Cradle is worse than a basic forest when you have no creatures in play.

I’m going to advocate holding your copies of Nykthos. Being in Magic 2015’s Clash Pack put some extra copies out there but it has good appeal and in a year or two I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gone up by 50% or more.

 

Sylvan Caryatid ($2/$5/$5 promo)

This is also making a small dent in Modern, popping up in four-color Gifts Ungiven decks that are trying to combo off at maximum speed. It’s okay in kitchen table formats, and as a creature that has hexproof and taps for mana, it’ll often find a home in combo decks or the like.

This was a buy-a-box promo and that does chip away at the price for the foils and for people who need only one. At rotation, I’ll be looking for copies under $1 to sock away for a while.

 

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion ($6/$14/$6 Duel Deck foil)

Having a duel deck version doesn’t faze me on picking up more than a few of the latest (and last?) Elspeth. Her abilities play together exceptionally well, and the only thing she can’t hold off is a swarm of tiny fliers. Her earlier incarnations have held up well, financially, and Knight-Errant is so good that it took several printings to bring her under $20, to her current $14.

I think that Elspeth won’t ever see a big spike, but she will see steady upward growth in the next couple of years. That’s one of the easiest ways to increase the value in my binder: Just be patient.

 

Master of Waves ($4/$10)

I wouldn’t mind having a spare playset of these to just tuck away and wait. They aren’t going to go any lower, as they fit well in token decks and Merfolk decks alike.

 

Garruk, Apex Predator ($8/$21)

This Garruk and Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker share a unique characteristic: They are able to kill other Planeswalkers for profit. That makes them wonderful to have in Commander games.

The rule has often been to pick up any planeswalker at $5 or less, but I don’t think Garruk will come down that far. I’m still happy to acquire copies at less than $10 and simply wait. He’s got a promo from San Diego Comic-Con that I wouldn’t chase very hard, but incremental growth over time will serve this one well.

 

Perilous Vault ($4/$13)

Another unique effect, and one that fits very well into colorless sweepers. It lacks the one-sided effect of Nevinyrral’s Disk plus Darksteel Forge, but it is an awesome answer to that same combo. I love having options for exiling permanents in Commander games, but this is easily reprintable. I wouldn’t keep more than two playsets for the long term for that reason.

 

Searing Blood ($.80/$5)

This is mostly a pass for me. Standard burn decks are packing this card, and while Legacy and Modern have Searing Blaze, which is both better and worse, depending on what your thought process is. Searing Blaze does give us a reference point, as it’s a touch more expensive than Searing Blood, but it’s not crazy-high. I’m not convinced that it’ll make huge inroads, as it’s mostly found in small sideboard quantities.

 

Nyx-Fleece Ram ($1/$4)

I think that this is in a tight race with Wall of Omens for a crucial spot that Wall of Denial used to occupy: The go-to place to stay safe from aggressive decks. At rotation, this should fall a little further and I would be happy to grab a few.

There are a lot of other cards that will likely go up, so tell me in the comments what you think is good value for a year or two from now.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Modern History Set Review, Champions of Kamigawa

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BRIEF INTROSPECTIVE INTRODUCTION: I was reading a strategy article this morning, and the author mentioned off-hand how exhausted he was of having to write about Abzan. It made me realize that even though Magic finance has its share of redundancies (do you know what “spread” means? Because it’s very important!), at least our primary focus doesn’t get bogged down by “that deck won again!” I dunno, it made sense to me when I thought it, but I also hadn’t had my first coffee. Anyways, have a great day and enjoy the article you’re about to read!

CHAMPIONS OF KAMIGAWA

I want to say one thing that is positive (kind of) about this set before we dive into it, and while this would probably fit best under the analysis portion, I think it needs to be front-loaded so that the prices all make sense. Champions of Kamigawa has done something that I’ve never really seen happen before, in that the overall value of the set surged with the popularity of Commander. This set’s EV was largely in line with Betrayers and Saviors, and now… well… it’s better. There were a handful of years where this set was nothing more than the Sensei’s Divining Top lottery, so it’s pretty interesting to see that there is still some hope for sets even after they are several years out of print.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY