Going Mad – So You Want to Sell a Wingmate Roc?

June 10, 2015 Derek Madlem 12 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

If you’ve followed my travels in recent weeks and months, you might have noticed that I’ve been working some events as a buyer for a few fine card retailers. On the other side of the table you notice things and you talk with the other buyers, and you encounter the same issues time and time again. Some people just don’t understand. That’s where I come in, because I’m here to help.

Obviously none of my employers would be thrilled if I was giving away their back end information so I want (need) to make it clear that these numbers are all semi-informed hypotheticals used simply to illustrate a point. Consider this all to be a work of fiction.

The Costs

One of the moments that arises when buying cards is people don’t understand why you can pay 50-60% all day long on $10+ cards but not on a $1-3 cards. The costs, kid. The costs.

There are a lot of things you just don’t think about as a consumer at an event. Most people don’t even consider that many events cost as much or more for three days than most of their local game stores pay for an entire month.

Let’s take a look at some “best case” hypothetical numbers here just to get a frame of reference.

Booth cost at a Grand Prix: let’s say you’re getting a bargain at $3,000 for the weekend. It’s got tables and chairs and probably some table cloths but it’s going to be a small booth.

Subtotal: $3,000

Employees: since you were cheap and opted for the small booth, you only need four guys to run it. You’ll need one guy at the buying station, one guy selling, one guy standing in the middle barking orders, and one guy that’s mostly just dead weight so the rest of you can resent him all weekend. Each of those guys is a Magic groupie so they’ll work for $100 a day, so that’s $100 x 3 x 4 = $1200

Subtotal: $4,200

Food: Did I mention you have to feed those guys? Since you’re in fantasy bargain town, let’s assume you can feed them for $5 per meal per person. $5 a meal at 3 meals per day, times 3 days times 4 people = $180. We’ll go ahead and round that to $200 because of snacks. Mmmm snacks.

Subtotal: $4,400

Lodging: Despite popular belief, the people working a booth at a Grand Prix DO NOT sleep in the event hall; you’ve gotta spring for lodging. That’s going to be four nights at a modest $100 a night because everyone is doubling up in queen beds for the weekend and running water is pretty sweet.

Subtotal: $4,800

Transport: Wow, this is getting expensive fast, luckily the GP was within driving distance so there’s only the $100 in gas to worry about. Never mind that you couldn’t really get to a GP in a vehicle that would get that kind of gas mileage, transport your whole team, AND supplies. Don’t forget parking for the weekend!

Subtotal: $4,900

Let’s go ahead and add another $100 to round it out, gummy bears and cocaine get expensive and hypothetical scenarios just work a lot better with nice round numbers.

Final Booth Subtotal: $5,000 (nice round number)

So in an ideal world where every card was purchased at 50% of retail and every single card is sold, that’s $10,000 in sales JUST TO BREAK EVEN. But realistically most sales are not occurring at events, they’re happening through online stores, brick and mortar stores, or through TCGplayer type sites that charge a percentage. Don’t forget that PayPal wants their cut as well.

So now you’re wondering why I spent 400 words explaining to you that it’s expensive to set up at a large event aren’t you? Don’t worry, we’ll get there eventually.

Some of you might be wondering why you only get offered $1 for that Wingmate Roc when it sells for $3? So take all that information above and keep in mind that you have to sell $10,000 in cards at a 50% margin just to break even. But in reality, there is no such thing as 50% margins.

Business is Expensive

There are more costs. Before you can even sell a card you have to sort, grade, price, list, and stock the cards. Then you start selling them, whether that’s in a brick and mortar store or an online retailer. It also turns out that there is no Magical Christmas Land where you get to sell through 100% of the cards you pick up so there’s always going to be some percentage of toxic inventory squishing that bottom line as well. Did I mention that there are still more costs?

Math!

So let’s look at that Wingmate Roc that you wanted to sell. For demonstration’s sake we’ll say that we paid $1.50 for it. When a store sells that card online they have to pick it, pack it, and ship it in addition to the sorting, grading, pricing, listing, and stocking the cards mentioned above. Even if they have the most efficient system in place for all these steps, you’re still looking at somewhere upwards of 25¢ in labor assuming they’re employing adults in America rather than children on the other side of the world.

According to about three minutes of research on TCG’s website, if you’re using TCG Direct you’re going to pay around 75¢ in handling fees. If you package the cards and send them yourself you’re paying 10% + 30¢ credit card processing fee or about 60¢ in total fees; we’ll just ignore the hypothetical customer service scenarios that can eat up your time when the guy on the other end of the envelope is mad because he was planning on getting his Wingmate Roc graded.

For those of you keeping score at home that’s $2.35 – $2.50 cost to sell a Wingmate Roc. Do you know how many of those you need to sell to break even? Let’s get out our calculators!

$10,000 divided by 50¢ is going to take selling 20,000 cards just to break even on that one event. That’s assuming you don’t have any other costs throughout the month.

I did a little bit of research and I was able to determine that there are remarkably few successful businesses built on the premise of “breaking even” every month, so we’d probably need to sell a few more than that if we wanted to be profitable.

Oh did I mention the plethora of other miscellaneous supplies needed?

Display cases
Things to write with / on
Clipboards
Sleeves
Rock star sunglasses
Boxes
Banners
Display boards of some kind
Extension cords
Computers
Portable internet connection
Those sweet custom buy mats you see at every vendor
Branded attire
Travel crates / suitcases / what have you

As you can see, there is not a lot money being made on Wingmate Rocs, but retailers are often “forced” to carry the entire line so that you can get all of your shopping done in one stop.

Assumption of Risk

This is a concept that’s absolutely lost on most people that sell cards. When a vendor is buying a card from you, they are also taking on significant risk. Magic cards are not something that people need to live, like water and food. The markets can be very fickle and when a card drops in value, whoever is left holding them is the loser.

When your Wingmate Rocs dropped from $7 to $3, you “lost” $16 on a playset. But if a store is carrying significant inventory of that card, say ten or more playsets, the loss shoots up into the hundreds of dollars.

When you sell cards to a vendor, they are betting that they can sell enough of those cards fast enough to recoup their investment and just hoping that the rest sell eventually. This is that toxic inventory that I mentioned previously. A card that’s not selling is just money that’s tied up and can’t be used to further grow a business, and it’s certainly not anything resembling profit. This toxic inventory factors into that bottom line just as much as the 30¢ credit processing fee on TCGplayer.

Unintended Consequences

One of the neat things that happens in doing thought exercises like this one is that you occasionally have a couple of “AH HA!” moments in the process and you make connections that you might not have made before.

For the last few years there’s been an “event horizon” for the prices on Standard cards. As cards approached that $3-4 mark they often quickly fell into bulk status and I think this might be much to do with the realities of selling a $3 card these days. Great examples in current Standard of cards that couldn’t escape the gravitational pull of a money sucking black hole are Mantis Rider, Surrak, the Hunt Caller, and Sidisi, Undead Vizier. All of these cards were worth $6+ at one point and then crept down to that event horizon and sucked into the cosmic abyss.

This theory would also explain the opposite effect, which would be the price of uncommons like Stoke the Flames commonly getting pushed up into the $4 range. If it’s going to take an offer of $1 to get a good playable uncommon out of a binder, then selling it for $4 is almost required at that point. As vendor you’re pretty much expected to have at least some of the current formats hottest uncommons, so to carry them you pretty much just have to ramp them up to $4.

What Did We Learn Today?

Well kids, we learned why vendors have to offer you the prices they do on low-cost cards like Wingmate Roc. It’s not just them trying to rip you off, it’s just an economic reality of doing business. The alternative of course is that we give up Grand Prix events all together and just go back to playing locally. You did know that all of these venues are essentially subsidized by the vendors right? Why else would a TO let in vendors other than themselves?

The other thing to consider going forward is that with the absence of PTQs, there are going to be a lot less “low cost” events for vendors to set up at. It’s a lot easier to show up and pay 50-60% on cards when your table only costs $500 to setup and you don’t have to plan on staying over night.

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The Chiba Report

June 10, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 7 Comments

By Guo Heng

First off, let me apologise for being missing for the past week-and-a-half. I was at Tokyo and Chiba for a week for the Modern Masters 2015 weekend and I had something urgent to sort out when I got back home. Now that the dusts have settled, it’s time for a Grand Prix report. My fellow MTGPrice writers have covered Grand Prix Vegas in depth over the past week: Travis Allen, Jason Alt, Corbin Hosler and Douglas Johnson regaled us with their stories of their time in Vegas, Derek Madlem offered his perspective on the infamous #GoyfGate incident and Sigmund Ausfresser shared with us the lessons he learned at the Grand Prix. I figured I was probably the only MTGPrice writer who went to Chiba, so now is my turn to tell my story.

The Largest Grand Prix in Asia

Unsurprisingly, Grand Prix Chiba turned out to be the largest Grand Prix to ever take place in this part of the world, with 4,000 players participating. It was also probably the fastest selling Grand Prix ever. Chiba hit the 4,000 players cap within 12 hours of preregistration going live. 12 hours. Preregistration opened at around 8 pm here in Malaysia, so I was lucky enough to be able to secure my spot in the event. I’ve heard about people living in different time zones waking up to a sold-out Grand Prix Chiba preregistration. A few weeks later the organisers announced another 400-ish slots being opened up from pre-registrants who did not pay.

Exclusive & Expensive Playmats

Securing a spot in the Grand Prix was only the first part of the battle. The dismal official Grand Prix playmat featuring the ‘new’ Etched Champion art was no worthy memorabilia for the Magic event of the year. Luckily, a week before the Grand Prix, the organisers revealed three special playmats for the event on top of the sweet new art Vendilion Clique playmat that the Vegas players had a chance to get their hands on. But lo behold, those special playmats were very limited in supply, with only 300 of each sold per day and they were only available on Friday and Saturday.

Having missed out on the playmats on Friday as I arrived at Chiba at 10 am, I popped by the Makuhari Messe Convention Centre at 7.15 am on Saturday morning only to be greeted by this lovely sight:

My heart sank when I saw the line. Saturday was my last chance to not go home with a crappy playmat. I lined up nevertheless. Fortunately by the time I got to the ticket station (you line up for tickets for the special playmats, then line up to pay for and collect them at a designated playmat station before 12 pm), the Vendilion Clique and Mark Tedin’s Great Evil playmats were still available. Unfortunately, the popular playmats, the two angel-themed ones – Johannes Voss’ Sakura Angel and Peter Mohrbacher’s Kushiel x Tokyo – were long gone.

I was close to the end of the line and they had some extra Vendilion Clique and Tedin playmats, so they were happy to hand me two tickets of each. I’d figure the Vendilion Clique playmat may be worth something and ¥3,500 ($28) was not too shabby a price to pay for a pretty sweet mat. I was not sure about the value of the Tedin one, but heck I woke up at an ungodly hour to get to the venue, and lined up for one whole hour, I might as well get another.

Japanese Grand Prixes have a knack for offering special playmats on top of the one given out to every participant, and some of them are worth quite a bit. The Johannes Voss Sakura Angel playmat sans the ‘Grand Prix Chiba’ stamp (the limited supply ones had a ‘Grand Prix Chiba’ stamp on the bottom right) was selling at Voss’ artist booth for ¥20,000 ($161) on Friday, and ¥15,000 ($121) on Saturday. That was way beyond my budget, so I begrudgingly passed on the chance to acquire the most sought after playmat at the Grand Prix. I ended up buying Peter Mohrbacher’s mecha-anime angel playmat for ¥6,000 ($48) and I had him scribble ‘Grand Prix Chiba’ on the bottom right corner where the stamp would have been.

Were $121 and $48 insane prices for a playmat? Check out the price these angel playmats were fetching on eBay a few days after the Grand Prix:

Then again the hallowed Ugin playmat awarded to the champion of Fate Reforged‘s Game Day was fetching $80 in the week following the Game Day but is now $60 – $70. The angel playmats are in scarcer quantities compared with the Ugin playmat but on the other hand, there are likely to be more people out there who want an Ugin playmat.

Cash is King

I did not brought as much cash as I would have liked to the Grand Prix. Instead I brought a bunch of Modern holds that have appreciated in value that I intended to cash out with the vendors such as these babies I’ve held for 2 years plus:

It turned out that the vendors at Japanese Grand Prixes were not able to buy cards from players at the venue. A vendor kindly explained something along the lines of their business license being restricted to the region in which their brick and mortar stores are based. Oh well.

I’ve always thought that Grand Prixes were great places to move cards to vendors as they are more likely to offer competitive buylist pricing with other vendors present in the venue. Plus, it is a lot easier to compare and find the best buylist price for my cards when all the biggest vendors are within 50 metres of each other.

Cash trades among players were a no-no at the Grand Prix and there were uniformed guards patrolling the tables to make sure that does not happen. As a law-abiding person in general and for the fear of being whisked away into the Japanese version of Guantanamo Bay, I dared not sell my cards to the binder traders at the trading tables.

I ended up wasting half a day to make a trip to Tokyo to transmute my Modern holds into cash to use at the Grand Prix. Two of the vendors brought mobile credit card readers but somehow my credit card refused to work on those.

Lesson learned. Cash is king at Grand Prixes. I know, it’s probably fundamental knowledge for most Grand Prix participants, let alone financier. I was trying to be a smarty pants by spending my yens on non-Magic collectibles during my stay at Tokyo and I expected to reload my cash at a Grand Prix by liquidating cards but it backfired on me. Next time I go to a Grand Prix I am going to stuff my binder with cold hard cash.

The EV of Side Events

I don’t usually join the fire-on-demand side events at the Grand Prixes I’ve attended. I tend to opt for the Super Sunday Series, or a whatever large open tournament taking place on Sunday. I missed the Super Sunday Series at Chiba as players can only register for the event on Saturday evening, during which I was in Tokyo offloading my Modern cards to refuel my yen. I couldn’t be bothered to make the hour-plus trip back to Chiba just to register for the Super Sunday Series.

So I spent Sunday morning getting in trades and hunting for deals as any self-respecting financier would do at a Grand Prix, and playing in the fire-on-demand Standard events.

The fire-on-demand side events turned out to boast an insane EV. They were eight-player single elimination events and the only prize was 12 packs of Japanese Modern Masters 2015 for the winner of each pod. The entry fee was ¥1,500 ($12) and each pack of Japanese Modern Masters 2015 was going for ¥2,000 ($16) at the Grand Prix. I assumed that I would have to make it to the finals before being able to split with my opponent. Fine, I just need to win two matches in a row and I trusted that Michael Villavicenci‘s Mardu Dragons would get the job done.

After spending the morning trading and buying cards, I signed up for my first Standard fire-on-demand queue in the afternoon. My first round opponent was running a Blue-White Control and after an intense first two games, I managed to resolve an Elspeth, Sun’s Champion and clinch the win for game three. As I was shuffling my deck in preparation for the next round, one of the remaining three players asked if I would agree to a four-way split for 12 Japanese Modern Masters 2015 packs. I said yes without hesitation and I’ve probably shook his hand harder than I should. It was basically ¥1,500, win one match and get ¥6,000 in products. That was a good enough EV to put a smile on my face for the rest of the day. I hurriedly signed up for another Standard fire-on-demand before the queues closed (I lost that one).

It may be worth checking out the fire-on-demand side events at Grand Prixes in the future if you miss day two and are not planning to play in the Super Sunday Series. I used to ignore the fire-on-demand events at Grand Prixes assuming that their EV would be crap, and I shall not do so anymore. Chiba’s fire-on-demand side events (not last chance trials) may be a one-off thing as the payout in Japanese Modern Masters 2015 packs bumped up the EV exceptionally and I don’t have much experience playing in those side events, so if you have any experience regarding the EV of these events, do share them in the comments. I would certainly keep an eye out for these events the next time I attend a Grand Prix.

Trades & Acquisitions

I’ve had the opportunity to do quite a bit of trading and purchasing at Chiba, something I don’t usually get to do much at Grand Prixes as you’ll usually find me playing in big events on all three days. The following are a few trades and acquisitions worth writing about.

Engineered Explosives, Outpost Siege for Jace, Architect of Thought, Purphoros, God of the Forge (Japanese)

The first trade I did at Chiba was with a reader from Toronto, Muki who recognised me from my mustache.

Quite a number of traders were looking for Engineered Explosives at Chiba, probably due to the fact that it was not reprinted in Modern Masters 2015. I was bullish on the long-term prospect of Purphoros, God of the Forge in an article on the Theros gods I wrote a while back and I think that Jace, Architect of Thought has a lot of potential in Modern and $3 is probably as low as he can go.

Engineered Explosives has the potential to appreciate in price this Modern season, as it is a Modern sideboard staple, but I was happy to trade off my extra copy for two long-term holds. The Outpost Siege was thrown in to even out the trade.

3 Geist of Saint Traft, 1 Disrupting Shoal for 2 Game Day Promo Thunderbreak Regent (Japanese), 2 Trinisphere

I traded off my Geist of Saint Trafts as their growth was a little too sluggish for my liking and I was happy to cash out with the small profit I’ve made from them. Disrupting Shoal was recently featured as a playset in the deck that took down the StarCityGames Modern Premier IQ the week before Grand Prix Chiba and I figured the hype might push Disrupting Shoal’s price up a little.

The Game Day Promo Thunderbreak Regent is another card which I am bullish on its long-term value. The regent’s current value is buoyed by the significant amount of Standard play it is seeing and it has a good chance of becoming a casual or EDH staple as a playable dragon. Foil promo Japanese versions seems to be a good place to be for cards like these. Having just bought one for ¥3,400 ($28) from a vendor, I was quite happy to get them in trade for ¥2,700 ($22) each, considering their recent eBay sales:

One of the reason I got into mtgfinance is to subsidise the cost of indulging in Magic. The Trinispheres were for a funky Modern MUD brew I am toying with. Legacy and Vintage MUD had always fascinated me and I am attempting to make it work in Modern. The lack of Ancient Tomb, City of Traitors and Mox Diamond makes the deck way less explosive that I’d like it to be and from testing it is probably destined to be a tier 2.5 deck. But it’s hell of a fun to play. The trader valued his Trinispheres at StarCityGames pricing at ¥800, significantly lower than the average e of ¥1,600 – ¥1,900 that vendors were selling their Trinispheres at. Certain eternal staples are valued differently in Japan.

Bought 2 Platinum Angel (Japanese), Sculpting Steel, Nevinyrral’s Disk, Trading Post Foil

The prices for casual staples in Japan really surprised me. Platinum Angel for just ¥400? And in Japanese? I’ll take two please (the other one was already in my MUD deck when I took this picture). I initially planned to just get one Platinum Angel for my Modern MUD brew, but I remembered reading about her in Douglas Johnson’s article a while back about the persistence of her price amidst two reprints and I decided to grab an extra. I guess I’ll save myself the trouble of swapping cards between my Modern and EDH deck. The Sculpting Steel was half the price it is going for outside Japan and I could do with one in my EDH decks. There’s nothing special about the Nevinyrral’s Disk besides saving me the trouble of finding one in Malaysia where it takes an adventure to locate and buy old cards. Trading Post foils at ¥300 ($2.50) seemed like a steal given its popularity in EDH and playability in Legacy MUD. I mentioned a long time ago that I am confident that foil Trading Post is a $8 – $10 card.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon Foil (Japanese)

The biggest acquisition of the weekend and the main card I was looking to get my hands on at Chiba. Before I let for Japan, I told myself that no matter what I am going to come back with a foil Japanese Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. Since I wrote a 3,000-word piece on the future price trajectory of the dragon planeswalker, Ugin’s role in the eternal formats has all but solidified as a staple in Modern Tron and Legacy MUD and I was keen to make sure that I have a foil Japanese copy when its price is still within my budget.

The first vendor I approached turned out to have the best price for foil Japanese Ugin, the Spirit Dragon at ¥15,000 ($122). Other vendors were selling theirs for ¥19,000 ($155) to ¥20,000 ($163). I hurried back to the first vendor to grab the Ugin, which was in pristine condition for ¥15,000 ($122). Foil Japanese Ugins were going for $137 – $174 on eBay during May and even the most expensive copy in the vicinity of the Grand Prix was just slightly above eBay’s mean.

Good deals are to be had at Grand Prixes, but make sure you grab them as soon as you can, on Friday preferably if you can make it to the venue by then. I made the mistake of hesitating when I saw a foil Japanese Eye of Ugin going for a mere ¥1,200 ($10) which was cheaper than an English foil on StarCityGames and a Japanese Game Day Promo Thunderbreak Regent for ¥3,000 ($24) on Friday. When I got back on Sunday after reloading my cash in Tokyo, the cheapest Japanese Game Day Promo Thunderbreak Regent was selling for ¥3,400 ($28) and the foil Japanese Eye of Ugin bumped up to ¥2,000 ($16).

Closing Thoughts

All-in-all Grand Prix Chiba was a different experience from the few other Grand Prixes I’ve had the chance to attend. For one, the number of playmats I’ve acquired (6) far exceeds the number of Magic matches I’ve played at the Grand Prix (2). And Chiba was also the Grand Prix in which I did the most trading, buying and socialising. Shout-out to all the Malaysian players and judges who were playing and judging at the largest Grand Prix in Asia, shout-out to Nick, a reader whom which I’ve been corresponding with over Facebook regarding the event and finally managed to meet in person at the Grand Prix, and to Muki: there’s no better way to conclude a Japanese Grand Prix than chatting about Magic over Kirin and ramen.

Jason Alt, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Gods and Generals, Part 1

June 10, 2015 Jason Alt 9 Comments

Maybe the title could have been “Gods as Generals,” because that’s what we’re going to talk about this week.

I feel like all of you are teaching me more than I am teaching you, which is edifying for me to say the least. Last week, my article had been up for 24 hours with zero comments, causing me to wonder whether anyone at all had read it. “That’s silly,” I thought to myself. “I bought my mother ProTrader access so she could read my articles and print them out and put them on the refrigerator so every time she went to get out some OJ she could be reminded that her favorite son was a writer and that spending $60,000 on a chemistry degree wasn’t a waste of money but rather a sound investment in a bright future.” I put a comment about how no comments meant no one was saying anything negative, and I got a lot of comments after that. Some of them were even about the article and not about the fact that it was behind the ProTrader paywall! Some of them.

And the ones that weren’t whining from poor people (it’s $5, guys. You make more than $5 a month if you get in a month late on a mediocre spec tip) were very insightful. I would have eventually gotten around to tackling the Theros block gods as spec targets in a future article. In fact, I’m such a professional, it’s likely I would have gotten around to it before rotation. Possibly before every other financier wrote their articles about what to dump and pick up at rotation. This isn’t my first rodeo. Also, I’m not so bad at this that I think the upcoming set rotation is a rodeo. That said, there are a few cards that, come rotation, I will be… bullish… about.

Let’s talk about EVERY THEROS GOD and how I feel about their current prices, because the gods are sicko EDH cards, after all. Let’s start with the monocolored ones and get as far as we can today.

Erebos, God of the Dead

This guy is falling off as we pass peak supply and Standard players realize they don’t give a wet fart about a Greed that can attack for five. That’s cool! While I don’t necessarily know I want this guy as my general, I have found quite a few decklists that feature him, including one I featured in an article. Erebos is also pretty dandy as part of the 99. He’s a damn Greed on feet, remember? In a deck lousy with black enchantments like Painful Quandary, No Mercy, and Polluted Bonds, this guy is dope.

I actually don’t think he’s done plummeting, though, and I think he could be around $3 at rotation. I would say I am like a 3/5 when it comes to how excited I am about picking this guy up at $3.

Before we move on, let’s talk about something I should have introduced at the very top but didn’t think about until now. Gods strike me vaguely like the planeswalkers did, but back in Lorwyn. Remember when there were only five planeswalkers? They were all money. They continued to be money approximately forever. Like, until the exact second that I said, “I feel pretty good about targeting any planeswalker that isn’t named Tibalt that’s under $5,” and then WOTC went, “Really, douchebag?” and printed approximately infinity RTR Jaces until they were $3 (and yet the price of Remand remained relatively undisturbed, go figure) and now people are emailing me saying, “Hey, you said planeswalkers under $5 were good so I spent my kid’s college fund on Duel Deck Vraska! Keep up the good articles,” and it makes me want to see which make and model of pistol has the tastiest barrel. Planeswalkers are the new hydras, readers. But I guess that’s okay since gods are the new planeswalkers.

It seems like they always will be, too, right? Gods are way harder to reprint in another block. They are legendary as hell and they need to be enchantment creatures with devotion. What are the odds we get both mechanics back if we revisit this plane in like five or ten years? Even if we do come back sooner than that, we will have made a ton of money on gods before then and won’t care. I feel good about a lot of them. Durdles will want to treat the gods like Pokémon and catch ’em all, and since most of them don’t suck in EDH, they’re pretty solid. So I guess I’ll give each god we discuss today a score out of five about how bullish I am about them at rotation.

I don’t know why I’m sort of asking you. This is my column, I can do anything I want. I could grade them on a scale from fart noise to confetti and you couldn’t do a thing about it.

Anyway, let’s get back to Erebos and look at his foil price.

That’s a graph only a mother could love. I am really loving this price/spread overlay view because it shows what two different “markets” are thinking. Players are thinking, “Yeah, $15ish foil seems fine,” and dealers are thinking, “Get that out of my face.” The price is tailing off a bit and it’s lagging behind the dealer buy price, which is tailing off precipitously. Dealers are not buying these before rotation and you shouldn’t either, not even the foils.

Since Erebos is useful as a general as well as in the 99, I do think the foils are pretty good. This seems like this could be a $20ish card in a few years. Why not? It’s a foil mythic that sees EDH play both as a commander and as a role-player in decks that aren’t necessarily multiplayer. Basically every new player who bought the Eternal Bargain deck and saw a Greed in it will drool over Erebos (or has already, hence the initial demand) and I don’t expect anything to make Erebos obsolete in his role as “best Greed variant ever.” If you wouldn’t play a 5/7 for four mana, or a Greed, or an “opponents can’t gain life” enchantment, perhaps you’d play all three. This card is fine, and if the foil dips below $10, I may crank my enthusiasm for the foil up to 4/5. Yeah. Ballsy. I am not going to give half measurements like “4.5/5” because at that point, you’re saying “9/10 but do some math, readers,” and I’m not about that life. A rating of 4/5 seems okay for a foil god like Erebos at around $8, a number that seems almost absurd because you’re approaching non-foil Garruk Wildspeaker money at that point and gods can be your generals, which is even cooler.

Heliod, God of the Sun

Wow, the market price is like, whatever, but the dealer price is showing fascinating behavior. It appears that Heliod, by virtue of being mana-hungry and durdly, made dealers hit a minimum “shits given” threshold and it looks like players were right there with them. The TCGplayer price is relatively flat, and that could be due to a lack of sales as much as it could be due to price equilibrium establishing itself. I feel like there is a pretty sweet narrative going on here and I bet it took place at a lot of PTQ and GP booths.

Dealer: “Those are the cards I want.”

Player: “What about Heliod?”

Dealer: “Yes, what about Heliod? What about him indeed?”

Player: “What will you give me? I paid $8 for this guy, give me something.”

Dealer: “I am not the least bit interested.”

Player: “Come on, man! I need money for [spray paint or drugs or diapers or whatever the hell kids these days are buying].

Dealer: “I will give you one whole dollar.”

Player: “… yeah, fine.”

As a dealer, you can’t really pass up a chance at a card that’s likely $5 to $6 in a few years if someone is coming off of it for $1, even if it is Heliod and no one is that jazzed about him. After a while, the conversation took a turn.

Player: “Got a Heliod with your name on it.”

Dealer: “I will give you seventy-five cents.”

Player: “I wouldn’t fart in your mouth for seventy-five cents.”

Dealer: “Okay, a dollar. Damn.”

When dealers could no longer get them for $0.75, they bumped the price back up to a “still insulting” $1. I think this is just about the minimum buy price at rotation. If any god goes below $1, or hell, goes below $2 and wasn’t dirt cheap already, that’s probably a decent snag. If you can pay at rotation what dealers are paying now, congrats, you’re thinking like a dealer. They know there is upside at $1. I’m like a 5/5 at $1 or less on these at rotation, which is handy because I don’t see rotation making the price go up.

Personally, I want to build an entire Heliod deck. Serra’s Sanctum is just yearning to tap for a million mana and fart out a ton of 2/1 clerics. Can you imagine Sphere of Safety if you have two dozen enchantment clerics out? Norn’s Annex, Ghostly Prison, hell, Test of Endurance for all the life you gain when you spit out a ton of clerics with Suture Priest in play. You can build pillow fort and use Heliod to give you all the enchantments you’ll ever need. This is a non-traditional general and mono-white tends to feel bad in EDH, so I expect the foil to be reasonable right now.

While dealers had to raise their buy prices a bit to keep the supply steady, no one seems to pay the foil much mind. I imagine it dips even more at rotation. I think if the foil hits $5, I’m in, but I’m like a 2/5 on the foil here. Foils have higher upside, but they do have some “new card smell” tax built in when they first rotate. This isn’t a super exciting EDH god for people who aren’t lunatics like me, so I am not going that deep. Obviously, under $5 is absurd for a foil mythic god as you approach its current non-foil buy price. At $1 for the foils, I would spend enough money to make the price go up by sheer virtue of how many I bought. At its current price, I’m a 1/5. I imagine this dips at rotation since none of its price is predicated on Standard or Modern or… being played by anyone at all, really. Sure, maybe I’ll revolutionize 75% EDH with my clericgasm deck, but this is probably just the weakest of the cycle and his price won’t recover until people forgive him for shiv-ing Elspeth in the McRibs.

It’s fair to say that I have talked too much at this point and I’m not going to make it to the ten multicolored gods. I was told to keep my articles “around 2,000 words” and I’m going to hit that before we finish this paragraph. Could I cut some preamble or my dealer skit? Yes, maybe. I could also cut your face. Cut you bad. Cut you so bad, your mama would cry. You want your mom to cry? Okay, then. How about I vastly exceed my word count mandate, upset my editor, give you some bonus content, and see if I can’t squeeze the rest of the gods in next week? I didn’t expect to find this much to talk about when I conceived of the topic, but discovering things that bear discussion is always fun for me and gives me the enthusiasm to barrel through. Three more gods to go—don’t get squeemish on me now. This next one should be easy.

Nylea, God of the Hunt

I figured we’d see stronger behavior from this card, as it’s played in a (fringe) devotion deck in Modern and isn’t a terrible EDH card. I actually kind of like this in decks like Omnath if you need a mana sink or a win condition. Giving Omnath trample is non-trivial and if Omnath dies, dumping the mana into an alpha strike at one or many players is worth doing. The Modern devotion deck is silly but functional. It seems like that modicum of non-casual play gave the card a multiplier over the price of Heliod, but the dealer behavior is even less encouraging. Dealers want to pay the exact same $1 for Nylea that they’re paying for Heliod and it seems like players, enchanted (pardon the pun) by dargons and knuckleblades and commands, are letting go of the gods.

You don’t want Nylea as your general. At all. Ever. That limits the upside of this card quite a bit. The Modern play only appears to tack a buck or two onto the price and dealers don’t seem all that convinced they need to pay competitively to get these. Their total lack of enthusiasm for this card is contagious. I like these at about a 1/5 unless they are like a buck at rotation. Could this get back to its current price in a few years? I think maybe it could. I think you are safe paying what dealers are paying right before rotation if people are dumping. Still, the slight rise in Heliod’s buy price shows that players are reluctant to take an insulting number on a god, and paying more than “an insult” may be a liability. I’d be careful here.

Ugh. $10ish? Why? Modern? It’s not EDH doing this. Dealers are paying just about 50 percent of this card’s value on the button and their price is roughly descending along with the retail price in a curious way. They are reluctant to stop paying real numbers on this card, but who’s buying? This has been a $10 foil for like an entire year and it’s puzzling. I’m sure this dips at rotation because it can’t hold its current price, but unless the bottom falls out entirely, I’m not bullish on the foil. Still, if this hits $5ish, I will feel very differently. This is seeing no Constructed play outside of that fringe Modern deck and it’s only okay in EDH, and that has kept the price from fluctuating much. That said, Erebos’s foil hasn’t tailed off much, and maybe that reflects dealers’ reluctance to rock the boat and TCGplayer sellers’ reluctance to race to the bottom.

Curiously, there are a lot of foils available on TCGplayer. Even with competition amongst dealers, these aren’t really moving a ton. But with foils, people who want them for EDH will buy immediately or wait quite a long time. Rotation could be what the patient players are waiting for. Still, with a lot of loose copies that need to get soaked up before the price will increase along with tepid demand compared to better gods, I’d need to see the foil hit $4 or $5 before I even give this a 2/5, which is so odd considering Nylea has more non-EDH utility than Erebos or Heliod. Still, who’s foiling their fringe Modern deck that has Primeval Titan in it? Curious goings-on here, to be sure.

Purphoros, God of the Forge

This is demonstrating some odd behavior. The spread became virtually non-existent very recently, then dealers backed way off. Let them. This is the money god.

Out of all of the original five, Purphoros is the best in EDH. At his current price, I give him a 3/5. If he hits $3, my score opinion will change to, “What score do I give him out of 5 at $3? His power and toughness.”

Purphoros is nutty. He’s unfair in Prossh decks. As a commander, he’s equally nutty, allowing you to KO people with a single tap of a Krenko. He’s bannably good in EDH and he may be the best god of the 15. Let that sink in. He can be had for twice the cost of Heliod, a god that failed to garner a following to such an extent that his buy price fell to below a dollar. This is the guy to watch, this is the guy to pounce on, and this guy alone is the one that had me wrack my brain for reprint scenarios. How do we get blown out here? FTV Gods? Commander’s Arsenal? I don’t see it. Commander’s Arsenal, by the way, is basically the only way we will ever see a foil reprint. What’s the foil doing?

Yes…yesss. Plummet, buy price. Drag the retail price down along with you. Good. GOOOOOD.

I am bullish at below $15 here, honestly. That said, with essentially none of this price predicated on Standard play, I have no idea how much the foil will go down at rotation, if at all. Still, any discount you get is good. If you can buy these for cash from players at rotation, go ham. I am in for X of these at $12 or below. This is a $20 minimum foil in a few years, barring a catastrophe like a reprint, but the foil seems safe from that fate.

This card is bugnutty in EDH and I’m very excited about the prospect of the price going down. If the price doesn’t move at rotation, I’d leave it alone. The price is probably currently too low, but I don’t know if there is a ton of upside. I’d give this a 2/5 for the foil at its current price just because it feels so… correct right now. Could this be $50 in a few years? Sure, but is EDH that much of a driving force? We’d need something in a four-of format to boost prices that much, so let’s take a hard look at this price and wait for rotation.

Thassa, God of the Sea

This is what a price predicated on four-of formats looks like. It’s actually basically as sad as the others, honestly. Gods have been all but abandoned in Standard in favor of multi-color decks that worry less about permanents and devotion and worry more about KOing faces. Mono-Blue Devotion rocketed this plucky god to superstardom, but these days the former star is closer to Marky Mark in the second half of Boogie Nights than she is to Marky Mark in the first half of Boogie Nights. I think this card has the farthest to fall, which is handy because it has the most reason to. Price memory is propping this up to a large extent, even though it sees only a modicum of play in Modern and its days in Standard are basically over.

This is pretty good in EDH, actually, but I feel like it’s underplayed. The scry is non-trivial and making a creature unblockable is sweet. I can see Thassa making all kinds of creatures connect: Thada Adel, Daxos, or basically any general. It’s underplayed in EDH and that may continue, as it’s also pretty much useless as a general.

Its current price has me hesitant, but with dealer confidence plummeting, I feel like the retail price could be $3 or less at rotation, and with its Modern playability and EDH potential, I’m a 3/5 or 4/5 at that price point. Dealers are paying that now, but they want to pay less, clearly. If you look at dealer buy price a few weeks before the fall set is released and target that as a retail price, you are probably going to be okay at rotation. If you can pay a couple bucks less and get copies from players, even better.

I don’t like the foil price at all, and I’m not sure what’s doing it. Price memory? Even the dealers aren’t that eager to pay less than they are right now and that seems really dumb. I don’t know if this is going to dip enough at rotation for me to care about it and I’m super bearish on it unless it cuts more than half of the current price. With the current value predicated mostly on price memory and Modern playability, the picture is very muddy. I’m calling this basically a 1/5 unless it gets so cheap that you don’t need my advice about whether to buy it. Corbin wants to foil out his Modern Merfolk deck—maybe he’s propping the price up. I’m just so meh about this foil.

Whole Lotta Words

There you have it. This was way longer than I was supposed to make it, but I wasn’t about to make this sub-series take a month or write about fewer than five gods today.

Keep giving me feedback in the comments section, because even if I come up with a good idea, I’ll write about what you want me to write about, unless your idea is terrible. In that case, I’ll send Corbin or Travis a text making fun of you, but I won’t do it publicly because I’m trying to work on being more “approachable” and “managing my brand” and “not getting any more death threats.” So keep the comments coming. Thanks for reading, nerds.

City of Traders, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Is Modern Masters 2015 Bottoming Out?

June 10, 2015 Travis Allen 3 Comments

By: Travis Allen

I normally try to write some sort of opening that segues into my article in order to ease readers into dense material and establish my voice as a writer. I’m on a bunch of painkillers today, though, so we’re just going to jump in.

Study 1: Modern Masters

Two years ago, when the first Modern Masters released, prices drove off a cliff. On many price graphs of original editions, there’s a right angle heading south in mid to late May 2013. Future Sight copies of Tarmogoyf, which had been $170 to $180, were now in the $110 to $120 range. Cryptic Command dropped from $45 to $30. Vendilion Clique from $60 to $45 or or so. Wizards’ goal was to take a whack at staple prices without flattening them, and the set did a great job—in the first few weeks.

It only took a month or two before prices on original printings began rebounding. Stores had trouble keeping boxes of MMA in stock at 30 percent above MSRP, which was driving prices up across the board. Lorwyn and Morningtide copies of Cryptic Command and Vendilion Clique didn’t wait long to begin regaining their lost value.

Meanwhile, the MMA copies didn’t waste any time at all. They came out of the gate at prices reduced from the original printings, of course, but that would be the lowest they’d ever make it. Take a look at the MMA printings of the same two cards, Cryptic and Clique, from day zero.

Both cards either stayed steady or rose immediately, at no point dropping below their initial prices.

Overall, here’s what we saw during the first MMA release: Original printings dropped in value around launch, as was to be expected. After all, it was the first time many of these cards were seeing a second printing. Several weeks later, they began regaining their lost value, and about a year later, they were fully recovered, if not above where they had been before Modern Masters. MMA printings of the cards started out at the lowest price they’d ever be, climbed immediately, saw little or no meaningful loss in value, and eventually skyrocketed in the spring of 2014, when the set saw huge gains across the board.

You got all that? Everything started low, gained value within a few weeks or even immediately, and never looked back.

Study 2: Modern Masters in 2015

Let’s turn our attention now to the cards in Modern Masters 2015 that were also in the original Modern Masters. The major question on everyone’s mind is, “When will the set hit the floor?” The obvious implication is that when we find the floor, that’s the time to buy.

I’m of the belief that we’re probably either there now, we’ve passed it already, or we’re within five to ten percent of it. While initially many of us were expecting to see considerably reduced prices on some of the rare staples, I don’t think we’re getting that low. Jason Alt and a few others, myself included, were discussing at one point getting in on Noble Hierarch at $14. I’m now about as confident as one can be in this field that we’re never getting that low, nor even close to it.

Let’s take a look at the behavior of a few cards to see how things are shaping up. Keep in mind that we’re only a few weeks past the release date, so we don’t have boatloads of data to work with yet. We’re looking for small indicators that are going to tell us where things are headed. Don’t expect to see major upward movements on price graphs yet, because that would mean that we had already missed the floor.

Here’s the MMA printing of Tarmogoyf in the last fifteen weeks.

We see that the Fair Trade Price has drifted from $210 in the middle of December last year to between $180 and $190 today. That’s a loss of roughly 12 percent, and the price hasn’t started to turn up yet. Check out the buylist prices, though, which is the blue line. It’s at its lowest point early in May: $106. On June 6, just a few days ago, it was $110. We’re already seeing the buylist increase on the MMA copy, just a scant few weeks after the release of MM2. Buylist prices are often indicators of future retail pricing. They’re an excellent way of gauging true demand.

How about the MMA copy of Vendilion Clique?

We see a big drop in the Fair Trade Price in mid-April, from $75 to a low of about $58. A few days ago the price was already up to $60, and hasn’t been below that point yet. Meanwhile, the buylist price bottomed out at around $38, and has since climbed to $40.

Cryptic Command has seen more noticeable changes.

Prices in early March and April were in the $55 to $60 range. On June 1, we can see a sharp drop to $35 (although this may be the result of some funny data). The price quickly springs back up, and as of June 8, the Fair Trade Price is already $44, up considerably from June 1.

The buylist line shows that there’s more to this than just retail prices behaving oddly. It cratered around May 10, but has already begun to see a good uptick at the end: from a low of $21 to $25 today. Is this the beginning of a rapid recovery for Cryptic Command?

New Phyrexia’s Karn Liberated has perhaps the most impressive stats of any of these.

In the last 30 weeks, his price has…not really changed. On November 11, his Fair Trade Price was $46.36. As of June 8, it’s $46.58. You can see the launch of MM2 between the May and June markers, with a drop in his trade price to $42, but by the time we hit late May, it’s already climbed back up. His buylist numbers remain consistent as well: $28 on November 10 and $28 today. What we’re seeing here is that Karn has barely been affected at all by the reprint.

Let’s do another recap. Since MM2015’s release, the previous edition of staples (Tarmogoyf, Vendilion Clique, Cryptic Command, and Karn Liberated) have seen the loss in value we expect with a reprint, and have since either begun to level off or increase in price since their recent lows. What we may be seeing here—I can’t be certain—is that the floor of format staples has been reached. If the trends established with those four cards remain consistent, it means they’ve already bottomed out, and will be increasing in price as we move forward. How are the MM2 copies of some of these cards looking?

Study 3: Modern Masters 2015

We’re seeing virtually no change in the MM2 edition of Tarmogoyf’s price. It starts at $165 on May 8 and is $160 as of this writing on June 8. That’s a three-percent loss in thirty days. It’s a loss, yes, but three percent is arguably negligible in a market as volatile as this. There’s certainly no indication that a major downturn is on the horizon.

Hierarch has lost about seven percent since May 8. Notice that around May 23, the price is actually a bit lower than it is today. In fact, it’s visible in Tarmogoyf’s graph as well, although it’s a bit tougher to see. Is it possible that prices bottomed out on the 23rd, just a day after the Modern Masters 2015 official release?

Fulminator Mage is funky compared to the others, and I’m not sure what to make of this data. It’s worth noting that it both starts and ends at $20 though.

Vendilion Clique looks like Hierarch and Tarmogoyf: the lowest point on the graph is the 23rd, and today’s price is only a few percentage points away from the starting price.

I’m not sure that everything has bottomed out yet, though. Here’s MM2 Elesh Norn:

We see a pretty steady 20-percent loss from release.

Iona has suffered similarly.

Conclusions

We know that after the printing of Modern Masters in 2013, across the board cards lost value. This wasn’t surprising. Then, while cards like Stonehewer Giant languished in bulk bins, and still do today, the true format staples bounced back quickly. Meanwhile, the MMA copies of format staples such as Dark Confidant never got much lower than their price upon release. If we use these findings to guide our expectations, we see that the same trends are already emerging in Modern Masters 2015.

Similar behavior is noticeable in two places. The most recent printings of cards in MM2 (MMA Tarmogoyf, NPH Karn Liberated, etc.) seem to have already stopped dropping, and in some places, may even be rising. MM2 copies of high-demand cards, such as Noble Hierarch, have seen either no loss or negligible loss since release.

Here’s where I am right now: I’m getting the impression that true format staples, the four-ofs, have just about found their floors. The other accessory rares and mythics that are powerful but that aren’t quite at the level of Tarmogoyf and Noble Hierarch are still suffering.

Our takeaway is that now is probably the time to buy into the absolute cream of the crop, because if they aren’t at their floor, they’re damn close. If you buy Tarmogoyfs and Cryptic Commands now, there are two outcomes: either they aren’t cheaper again for another two years, meaning you couldn’t have done any better, or they drop from where they are today, but probably only a few percentage points, and you don’t have to feel bad at all.

Why shouldn’t you feel bad if you didn’t buy at the absolute floor? At any time, any of these cards could spike hard. There aren’t as many new copies in the wild as people seem to think, and vendors have gotten a lot more aggressive with forcing the issue in the last few years. Maybe StarCity decides that Cryptic Command shouldn’t be less than $40, and just buys every copy on the market. Or Noble Hierarch. Or Mox Opal. Basically, if you buy now, you’re either getting in at rock-bottom prices or extremely close to them. If you wait, you only stand to save yourself a few bucks on what could easily be a $100 to $200+ purchase, and you also run the risk of getting blown out by sudden market movement.

Consider Mox Opal. Copies are available for about $35 right now, down from $60+. How much cheaper do you really think it can go? Do you expect it to keep dropping and dropping down to $20? If it hasn’t happened already, when three GP’s worth of cards were just opened and 60%+ of MM2 stock that will be opened this year just hit the market, why would it suddenly occur weeks or moths from now?

Recommendations

Here are the mythics and rares from Modern Masters 2015 that I wouldn’t feel bad about buying today:

If I don’t have it listed (Leyline of Sanctity, Splinter Twin, etc.), then I’m advocating staying away for now. These cards still seem to be on the decline. Is it possible they don’t level off, and instead just bounce straight back up? Sure. And if you are in desperate need of Splinter Twins, then you could do worse than locking in at today’s prices and being comfortable with that. If you can manage waiting, though, I would.

The list above is also my MM2 trade list—I’ll be happy to pick up any extras of these. I don’t think you can go wrong trading for any of these cards at retail today, and I think we’ll see pleasant gains on all of them between now and the end of the year. Hopefully they won’t have skyrocketed by October and I’ll be able to shovel money into them ahead of February next year.

Lessons Learned

It’s wild how fast the staples in Modern Masters 2015 seem to have leveled off. Initially we were thinking a month to three. Now it’s looking like half the chase cards in the set are on the rise and we aren’t even at Origins yet. We can probably stop using Chronicles as a reference point.

This set is a good indicator of how to think about reprints in the future. If it’s a tier-one staple and we’re expecting reprints in a non-Standard legal product, then we have nothing to fear. Supplemental product reprints just don’t seem to move the needle much on competitive staples.

Casual staples get hit hard, though, as we’ve seen time and time again. I’d warn against stockpiling too much money in any pricey casual specs. Kozilek, Butcher of Truth has lost 25 percent of his value so far, and I don’t think he’s done falling. That’s a big hit for such an awesome kitchen-table card. I would bet a card like Consecrated Sphinx would take an even larger hit, maybe a 50- to 75-percent loss if reprinted.

Do you agree with me that we’ve found the floor? Are there cards you think we’re better off waiting on, or that we should be buying now?

MTGPrice Blog