UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Foil Redemption Finance: The Numbers for KTK, FRF & DTK

May 15, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 8 Comments

By: Guo Heng

With the full spoilers of Modern Masters 2015 unveiled last Friday, it seems criminal for an mtgfinance writer not to write about Modern Masters. Believe it or not, there is something else I am more excited about this week. Plus, my fellow MTGPrice writers wrote about Modern Masters extensively over the past few days. Jared Yost (@gildedgoblin) talked about the ups and downs of Modern Masters 2015, Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin) discussed the financial implications of the cards present in the set and listed a few cards to pick-up, Derek Madlem (@GoingMadlem) wrote about the potential impact of the set on individual reprints and yesterday Corbin Hosler (@chosler88) has some interesting things to say about adopting a next level approach to pinpointing which Modern staple could be the next Inkmoth Nexus.

I am excited because Dragons of Tarkir redemption has finally begun.

After last Wednesday’s Magic Online downtime, players could finally purchase redemption orders for Dragons of Tarkir sets. I have only hopped on the redemption bandwagon a few months back. The first set I ever redeemed was redeemed a Khans of Tarkir foil set to get my hands on foil fetchlands and shiny UR Delver components like Monastery Swiftspear and Treasure Cruise (this was prior to Treasure Cruise sinking under the weight of the banhammer in February). In March, I redeemed a foil set of Fate Reforged to get my copy of foil Ugin, the Spirit Dragon (whose price was adamantly high) and a plethora of EDH and Tiny Leaders generals and goodies.

And this Wednesday, I’ve placed a redemption order for a foil Dragons of Tarkir set to get my foil Dragonlords. After waiting for more than a month – a new set can only be redeemed a month after the set’s release on Magic Online – foil Dragonlords and a host of other DTK dragons would be flying to me in about ten days (on a FedEx plane of course).

Since I discovered the resoundingly large difference between digital and paper foil set prices, I’ve been using redemption to get my hands on eternal and EDH foils rather than hunting them down individually. It is a time-efficient method compared to procuring individual foils in trade or trying to snipe eBay auctions. But how much extra value do you gain from redeeming foil sets to get your expensive foils as opposed to trading for them or buying them straight from vendors? After all, when you redeem a foil set, you are paying for the other 200 or so cards in the set that is chaff (but shiny chaff).

In January, I advocated using redemption to get foil fetchlands on the cheap. Is that opportunity a one-off disparity between the intangible Magic Online foil market and the paper market? Or do we actually make a profit in foil redemption for the majority of sets?

Today’s article is going to crunch the numbers from the sets in the Khans of Tarkir block to answer those questions and give an idea of the value to be made, or lack of, from redeeming foil sets. This article will only cover foil redemption as the margin for redeeming non-foil sets are much smaller, especially after the handling price for redemption increased from $5 to $25 per set.

The Numbers

	Price of Set in Paper	Total Buylist Price	Price of Set on Magic Online	Price of Set on Magic Online Including Handling Fee
Dragons of Tarkir	$762.62	$445.84	$332.00	$357.00
Fate Reforged	$577.58	$224.35	$210.00	$235.00
Khans of Tarkir	$766.44	$362.13	$461.00	$486.00

The total price of the set in paper and total buylist price were calculated using MTGPrice’s browse set tool. The price of the set in paper is the total price of each foil in the set based on their fair trade price. The total buylist price is the total price of the best buylist price for each foil in the set.

The price of the set on Magic Online was calculated using Goatbot‘s prices where available, with any missing prices (Goatbots does not show the price of a card if the card is out of stock) filled in using MTGOWikiprice. If possible I prefer to assemble a complete set from a single bot or bot chain as the smallest denomination for Magic Online event tickets is 1 ticket ($1) and the remainder from any trades or purchases with bots that is smaller than 1 ticket will be kept on that bot or bot chain as bot credit. For example, if you buy a card priced at 22.42 tickets, you would be giving the bot 23 tickets and the bot would register the remaining difference of 0.58 tickets as bot credit, which would go towards future transactions with that bot or other bots in its chain. If you assemble your complete set using multiple bots, you could end up using more event tickets.

This price of the set on Magic Online column does not include the handling fee of $25 and shipping fee which is $2.99 if you are redeeming to an address within the United States and $29.99 if you are redeeming to an address outside the United States.

Is It Worth Redeeming for a Quick Flip?

Let’s assume we are redeeming sets off Magic Online and then buylisting every single card in the set, which is actually better off than selling the factory-sealed box on eBay. Recent completed sales for Fate Reforged and Khans of Tarkir foil sets sold for lower than the buylist total. I’ve compiled the vendor with the best buylist price for the expensive foils in the set and it appears that you would only need to buylist to two to three different vendors and at most four vendors to get the best buylist price for your foils. So at most I’d imagine the cost of packing and posting the foils to vendors to cost no more than $20.

Redeemed cards come in a factory-sealed box and are usually in near-mint condition (or Marcel-mint), so grading should not be an issue. In theory at least. Of the three redemptions I’ve done, all the cards were in perfect condition, save for Ugin, whose left border was slightly worn, probably due to shipping. The rest of the cards in that box was surprisingly in pristine condition.

If you live in the United States:

Profit = Total buylist price – Price of set on Magic Online + Handling + $2.99.

Dragons of Tarkir Profit: $85.85

Fate Reforged Profit: -$13.64

Khans of Tarkir Profit: -$126.86

If you live outside the United States:

Profit = Total buylist price – Price of set on Magic Online + Handling + $29.99.

Dragons of Tarkir Profit: $58.85

Fate Reforged Profit: -$40.64

Khans of Tarkir Profit: -$153.86

Currently, it looks like the only foil set that will be profitable to redeem and flip is Dragons of Tarkir. Even so, most of the buylists are only buying a few copies of the higher end foils, so at most a redeem and flip could only be repeated a few times, unless you have an outlet to liquidate the cards at retail value, say if you own a shop.

What about keeping the foils in the set that are of interest to you and buylisting the rest to subsidize the cost of obtaining those cards that you keep? Let’s have a look at the individual sets to ascertain the value of doing so.

Khans of Tarkir Foil Redemption

When my article about redeeming foils went up in January, a complete foil set of Khans of Tarkir could be assembled for $431. The price of putting together a foil Khans of Tarkir set has increased to $461 since then. The supply of Khans foils, especially the mythics dropped drastically after the switch to Dragons-Dragons-Fate draft on Magic Online. While researching this article, Goatbots ran out of the ten most expensive Khans mythic and I have to pull their prices from various other bots, though I rounded the figure up to get a closer approximation to that you have to pay shall you decide to assemble a full foil set of Khans right after reading this article. When I was assembling my foil Khans sets last December and this January, there were only a couple of mythics that cost more than 30 tickets. Today, there are nine mythics that cost more than 30 tickets, and two of them cost 40 and above.

Besides the rise in cost to acquire foil Khans mythics on Magic Online, the buylist price for marquee cards that used to used to make up a good portion of the set’s total buylist price dropped significantly, notably the Planeswalkers. When my previous article advocating redeeming a foil set of Khans and selling the other money cards to subsidize the cost of the foil fetchlands went up in mid-January, Treasure Cruise was still legal in both Modern and Legacy, and besides contributing to the total buylist price its presence also propped up the buylist price for Monastery Swiftspear.

Assuming that you redeem a foil Khans set solely for the fetchlands and buylist the rest ($139.99), taking into account postage to the vendors ($20) you would be getting your foil fetches for $366.01. The total fair trade price for the fetches is only $317.15. It looks like the window to get foil fetches on the cheap via redemption has closed.

I am pretty new to redemption, having started only last December. This is the first time I am observing the price pattern of foil sets on Magic Online and one thing I’ve learned is that the best time to piece together your foil set online is when the set is both being drafted and paid out as prize. Although a set could be redeemed up to two years after the set rotates out of Standard, the window to get reasonably-priced foil sets is small, mainly due to the scarcity of foil mythics after the set stops being drafted and handed out as prize. This does not seem to apply to non-foil sets as non-foil Khans sets are still aplenty on Goatbots.

Fate Reforged Redemption

While the price of a foil set of Fate Reforged on Magic Online has not changed much compared to its figures in mid-March when Fate Reforged first became redeemable (I recall paying just slightly more than 210 tickets for my foil set), the total buylist price for the foil set tanked. On 21 March, I posted in the ProTrader forums about getting a foil Ugin, the Spirit Dragon without having to pay his exorbitant foil price tag by redeeming foil Fate Reforged and selling off everything else. At that time, the total buylist price for a foil set of Fate Reforged was $301.17, and by redeeming and buylisting everything else except for Ugin, you could get your foil Ugin at a cost of $0.91, not including the postage cost for buylisting to vendors.

Unfortunately, the total buylist price for a foil set of Fate Reforged has dropped to a paltry $224.35 today. Nearly all foil Fate Reforged mythics and rares except for Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, Monastery Mentor and Tasigur, the Golden Fang tanked in April, probably due to the influx in supply from redemption. Those three cards retained their foil price on the back of eternal and casual demand.

Is it still worth it redeeming a foil Fate Reforged set to get your hands on a foil Ugin whose is stubbornly retaining a price close to $100 three and a half months after Fate Reforged‘s release?

Redeeming a foil set of Fate Reforged will cost you $235, not including delivery. Buylisting the set without Ugin would rake you $158.11. Crossing off $20 for postage to vendors, you would be securing your foil Ugin at $96.89, which is the same as a foil Ugin’s fair trade price. If you live in the United States, add an extra $2.99 to the figure for redemption delivery. If you live outside the United States, pop on an extra $29.99 instead. You would be better off buying a foil Ugin regardless of where you reside.

However, if you are keeping the foil Ugin, Monastery Mentor and Tasigur, the figures look slightly better. The rest of the cards would buylist for $109.50 and taking into account the $20 for postage to vendors, you would be getting your foil Ugin, Mentor and Tasigur for $145.50, which is $33.32 cheaper than the total fair trade price for those three foils. Note that this figure is only worth it if you are living in the United States as the $29.99 redemption delivery would wipe out nearly all of the $33.32 in saved cost. To be fair, it’s quite a bit of effort too just to get those three foils at $33 cheaper than fair trade price (the extra delivery cost from buying those three cards from a vendor negates the extra $2.99 for redemption delivery within the United States).

To be honest, the trouble of going through redemption and buylisting just to save $33 on the trio of eternal playable Fate Reforged foils is probably not worth the effort for most people. I personally don’t recommend doing so. As for myself I kept all of my Fate Reforged foil set I redeemed the set to get my hands on foil EDH goodies, and if I were to sell or buylist off the remaining non-eternal, non-EDH playables, the sum I get is not worth the trouble. I prefer to keep them as my collection. After all, even unassuming uncommons like Temur Sabertooth could one day be broken in EDH.

Dragons of Tarkir Redemption

By the virtue of being a new set, the redemption math for Dragons is different from its predecessors. As shown in the earlier segment of this article, it is profitable to redeem and buylist all of the cards in the set, even after taking into consideration the $20 postage fee to vendors. Just to reiterate, I would not recommend doing so as the high value foil mythics are wanted by the vendors only in small quantities.

As Dragons of Tarkir a new set, the buylist price for foil Dragons of Tarkir mythics are still in the higher stages of its price cycle and foils of rares that recently spiked like Collected Company and Den Protector are still commanding a good price.

The profitable redemption process is a good opportunity to get foil EDH and casual golds on the cheap. While Dragons of Tarkir does not have that many eternal playables as Fate Reforged and Khans of Tarkir have to offer, Dragons is a set chock-full of EDH and casual goods. I would say Standard as well, but I tend to shy away from Standard foils.

If you are looking to redeem a foil set of Dragons just for the Dragonlords, you would be getting your foil Dragonlords for a total of $34.89 if you are living in the United States, and $61.89 if you are residing outside, both of which are significantly cheaper than the $171.42 total fair trade price for foils of all five Dragonlords.

Both figures are inclusive of the estimated $20 in postage cost to send the other buylist cards to vendors.

The figures are $107.38 for United States residents and $134.38 for non-United States residents if you keep both Planeswalkers as well, though I would advice against so. Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker and Sorin, Solemn Visitor are currently buylisting for under $10, and while I don’t think Narset Transcendent and Sarkhan Unbroken would be tanking to such lows due to Dragons destined to be opened way less than Khans, they certainly would not sustain their current buylist price of above $30. On the other hand, the Dragonlords are seeing Standard play and on top of their casual and EDH demand, I am confident their buylist price would not drop much.

It may be better to ditch the foil Planeswalkers and retain the foil uncommon eternal playables like Rending Volley, Anticipate and Silumgar’s Scorn together with the Dragonlords. EDH mythics like Clone Legion and the cycle of rare dragons may also be worth keeping.

Do note that if you plan on redeeming foil sets of Dragons, it may be prudent to do it soon, before buylist prices for foil Dragons starts to drop.

Redemption Window

A few pointers I’ve picked up from assembling my four redemptions on the optimal time to assemble your foil sets:

On Goatbots, it seems that foil sets of the latest set is cheapest a week or two after redemption becomes available and it seems to remain so for a couple of weeks as the new set is still being drafted. I acquired my Fate Reforged foil set for around 220 tickets but it is going for 200 tickets today. I’ve compiled the figures in the table above on Wednesday, and today (Friday) Goatbots is selling a foil Dragons set for just 319.99 tickets, compared to the 332 tickets listed in the table.
If you are looking to ship of some of the high value foils in the set to subsidize the foils you are interested in, keep in mind that the buylist price starts to tank a few weeks after redemption begins. The buylist price for foil Fate Reforged mythics started to tank from beginning to middle of April. Fate Reforged redemption begun in the middle of March.
Foil sets become increasingly expensive to assemble once the set stops being drafted on Magic Online (as in not the primary draft anymore. You can still draft Khans on Magic Online, but the majority will be drafting Dragons), due to the scarcity of foil mythics. I resented having to fog up 12 tickets for Ugin’s Nexus when I was assembling my foil Khans set. You’d be hard-pressed to find one for under 35 tickets today.

I hope that this article answers any questions you have regarding the value of redeeming foil sets on Magic Online. Feel free to share your thoughts or questions below or ping me on Twitter @theguoheng.

Accumulated Knowledge

The Fault in Our Cards

May 15, 2015 Ross Lennon 4 Comments

Hello! My name is Ross, and I am a finance writer here at MTGPrice. It is my sincere hope that many of you reading this are new to my work, and possibly even this site.

Typically, my articles are reserved for ProTraders, but I elected to make this article free as an attempt to reach a much broader audience, including (ideally) people who don’t typically read finance articles. I am writing this because there is a very negative stigma regarding “Magic finance,”¹ and it has seemingly only ramped up. I believe that a lot of people have very skewed and inaccurate notions of what Magic‘s ecosystem really looks like, and that is what drives a lot of this vitriol. My hope today (and in my body of writing as a whole) is to inform and educate, and hopefully this will help to dispel some of the misinformation.

Their Problems and Ours

It’s a common sight, especially lately, to see players bemoaning speculators as the limiting factor in accessing older formats. The first and most monumental truth that many people fail to acknowledge is that Magic‘s economy is driven in large part by the simple concepts of supply and demand. However, there is a serious wrinkle on the demand side of that equation, and it is something that I typically refer to as the “Zendikar Boom.”

Basically, the Magic population has grown extremely rapidly since the release of M10 and Zendikar (and, perhaps not coincidentally, Duels of the Planeswalkers), and that large player growth has had a radical impact on the prices of cards. Wizards has never liked to publish hard numbers, but we have a conservative estimate that there are over ten million currently active players, compared with the roughly five million from before M10. This means that the demand for Magic, in all forms, has gone up, while the supply has only gone up on newer products. Wizards prints based on their numbers and projections from previous sets, which is largely why Zendikar‘s first print run famously sold out shortly after release. They printed enough for X players, but Y showed up. Every year since, the print runs on new sets have increased, just trying to match the continuous growth in demand. On their end, it’s a great problem to have.

The problems on our end, however, are still being dealt with. Every set printed prior to the Zendikar Boom is now considered an “under-printed” set. Take, as a topical example, Serum Visions. Despite the fact that this card was a common, it currently retails for about $10. This is due, in part, to the fact that it was printed in 2004, long before the Boom², and therefore much less prevalent than today’s commons. There are other factors that push this particular price to its current degree (chief among them being that Fifth Dawn overall just isn’t very good), but the card is not $10 because a shadowy cabal of dealers decided to make it $10.

In fact, you can tell that the demand for this card is strong because the margin between its buylist price (what a store will pay you for it) and its retail price (what they will sell it for) is smaller than average. Theoretically, a store will usually buy a card for half its retail price, and sell it for the full amount. Any time the buying price is higher than 50 percent, it typically indicates that the store sells enough of them that they just want to make sure they have enough copies in stock. If you know you’ll sell a card right away, why not pay 60 percent? The buylist price on Serum Visions has been high for a while now, and I’ve seen vendors getting very aggressive (paying higher margins) on buying them, which just tells me they don’t want to get caught without them.

Causes, Fixes, and Scapegoats

Things like Modern Masters are attempts by Wizards to get some of these older cards into circulation without warping the next several years of Standard trying to hamfist previous blocks into the mix. It is far from a perfect distribution system, however, and the lower print runs will hopefully ramp up over the next handful of iterations (you can expect these sets to come out every other year for the foreseeable future).

I’ve personally missed out on playing a lot of Modern because of card availability issues, so I sympathize with those players who have voiced similar pains. But—this is important—the problem is not caused by the finance community. Magic is over twenty years old, but in some ways, it is still experiencing growing pains: it is trying to facilitate play experiences for several different types of players with a back catalog that is nowhere near large enough to cater to them all, and there are more players coming every day. It is this universal increase in demand, enabled with the vast permeation of the internet, that has allowed the Magic finance community to blossom.

The Magic finance community has existed for much longer than many people care to admit. Even though the concept of “Magic finance” was first made popular by Jonathan Medina and his articles on Star City Games, there were people making or supplementing their living off of Magic cards long before him—it was just much more difficult. In order to trade or sell in large volumes, you needed to either travel to several large events, or have a brick-and-mortar store.

Nowadays, you still need to do one or both of these two things to be able to call Magic finance a job, but there are opportunities for the hobbyist financier³. The truth is, most speculators are people like myself: I don’t own a store, but I’ve been around long enough that I know to ferret away extra copies of cards that look promising in the long term. Every “spec” I make is with the implicit understanding that this card won’t be sold for at least two years, if not more. Take, for example, Akroma’s Memorial, a card that was hitting $20 prior to being reprinted in M13, which caused the card to drop below $5. Trading for a couple of copies at roughly four bucks a piece is a great deal now, but invested as well is all of the time I spent waiting to move them now for $8 on a buylist or just over 1100 Puca Points. This is the surest and safest way to grow your Magic nest egg, but it is very slow and only pays in order of scale. Buying just one Akroma’s Memorial and sitting on it is a great way to get a free trip to Taco Bell in the future, but it’s not a living.

Speculators Aren’t to Blame!

I think one of the main reasons people vilify speculators is because they are seen as the driving factor in the ever-rising tide of secondary market prices. This is both false and true. In terms of overall market impact, hobbyist speculators are a drop in the bucket, and anyone with a larger scale operation than the hobbyist is typically some form of vendor. This is a significant distinction, because unlike hobbyists, vendors can’t wait two years for every card they buy to come to roost. While some vendors will pull the trigger on things that they don’t plan to sell immediately (typically high-end stuff like Power, misprints, etc), they need to make sure that everything else can move—the bills won’t pay themselves⁴.

On the other hand, the largest vendors (think Star City), have the capacity to buy more of these long-term targets, since they are doing so much business on a weekly basis (across the country!) that they can afford to buy and sit on more stuff. Star City is the largest vendor on Earth, which conveniently also makes it the largest speculator on Earth. It has both the capital and the exposure to buy everything it wants, without the concern of tying up too much in one card. I can’t buy a Mox Ruby and go about my merry way, but Star City can. And even though it’s hard to find Deathmist Raptors in my local area, Star City can buy every single one that comes across its tables (for buylist prices!) and sell them to anyone with an internet connection. Vendors have access to tools that hobbyists don’t, and the big vendors have tools that the smaller vendors don’t (you know, like their own national tournament series).

The natural check in the system is that when people begin to out their cards, the supply on the market is being increased. One of the reasons why shock lands from Return to Ravnica have not shot up post-rotation (there are a few) is because so many of the people who went deep on them are moving them to recoup their investments to move somewhere else. The new shock lands have stayed pretty steady (there are a lot of them, after all), so most people are happy to move them and free up opportunity capital.

Not That Everything’s Peachy

Where speculating has become an issue, however, has been with Reserve List cards. (We are not going to get deep into the Reserve List debate, because I went way over my word count last week, and I don’t want my editor or his family to hate me.) That being said, the list, as well as the inherent rarity of early sets, has definitely created opportunities for individuals or small groups to profoundly impact a card’s market value. When I say the card name Animate Wall, does anything come to mind? If you have a knowledge of the rarities market, then you know that there is an individual (I can’t recall his or her name) that collects Alpha Animate Walls, and owns a sizable percentage of them. In fact, if you own 11 copies of any Alpha rare, you own one percent of all printed copies. This is the reason why even the worst rares from Magic‘s debut set are worth over $100: there are so few available that it is possible for single entities to shift the entire market.

Of course, most people don’t feel the need to own cards like Roc of Kher Ridges or Animate Wall (which is actually not on the Reserve List), but it is certainly throttling the growth of proxyless Vintage (and certain Legacy decks). It is an unfortunate situation that is exacerbated by Magic‘s incredible growth over these last few years—one without a simple solution.

The good news is that in order to move the needle on something like Underground Sea (which was printed in Revised), you would need a much larger scale investment than something that only made it to Unlimited (say, Ancestral Recall). While Sea is played in more formats and, by extension, more players, the capital required to make a serious investment in copies would be staggering, on the order of, “Maybe you should go buy some real land instead.” I don’t know how many Siege Rhinos or Deathmist Raptors you would have to purchase to own one percent of all that were ever printed, but I can tell you it is a hell of a lot more than eleven.

BRIEF BUYING ASIDE: As a tip to all of you, I recommend only acquiring things like dual lands in person. There are so few that are truly in near-mint condition that you are more likely to be able to talk down to a better cash price. I personally have never bought a dual land that wasn’t a deal, and I don’t think you should either.

Hopefully, today’s article has helped to dispel some of the anger and suspicions that people cast on the Magic finance crowd. I know that this topic far exceeds what I have written here today, so I encourage you post any follow-up questions you have in the comment section below. I am always happy to respond to reader questions, and I try to check the section frequently over the weekend. If you take one thing away from this piece, it should be the following: Magic cards are expensive because Magic is more popular now than it has ever been before⁵, and even though speculators and the finance community are viewed as the carpet-bagging profiteers, they are largely just the small fish in Star City’s pond. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our cards, but in ourselves.

I hope you enjoyed my article today, and thanks for reading.

Best,

Ross

1 I’m not in love with this term.

2 In fact, a lot of players were scared away at this time- can you guess why? It rhymes with “Barcbound Bavager.”

3 I am even more not in love with this term.

4 Unless you have, like, auto-pay or something.

5 Even more so than when it was referenced on The OC! I know, right?!

Casual Fridays

Watching the Sideboards

May 15, 2015 Cliff Daigle 2 Comments

By: Cliff Daigle

In Magic, the sideboard is a powerful tool. It allows for flexibility and power in different types of matchups. It also offers the unparalleled chance to turn a bulk rare into a $10 card.

Today, I want to go over some cards that are seeing some sideboard play in Modern and Legacy. These mostly aren’t four-of, so people are often willing to spend a little more for the foil, resulting in some surprising splits. There is a chance that if a card proves to be popular/effective in a sideboard strategy, that it may go even bigger.

I’m focusing on the foils today, but you’re free to think about the non-foils as well.

Two examples I want to mention:

Teferi’s Response ($1/$16)

This is an excellent example, as the foil has tripled up after some on-camera time at SCG Opens earlier this year. It’s played infrequently, but it’s such a blowout against Wasteland and Rishadan Port strategies. Even as a singleton in Legacy sideboards, it being a rare in Invasion (imagine getting this in your Grand Prix Sealed pool!) is enough to push the foil to these levels.

Smash to Smithereens ($3/$17)

This is the downside of speculating. We live in an era when reprints are becoming more and more common, and this card is in the midst of losing value since being announced in Modern Masters 2015. It was more than $5 in February, and the foil has slipped a couple of dollars as well. I’ll be interested to see where the foils end up, as Modern Masters is going to add a significant supply of shiny cards. This was a common in Shadowmoor, but is an amazing sideboard card in Burn strategies.

Now, let’s look at some cards that have potential to grow:

Feed the Clan ($.21/$.66) and Rest for the Weary ($.26/$.76)

I can hear you from here. “Lifegain cards? What?” I understand that reaction, but hear me out. In a Burn deck, which is always an option in Legacy, gaining 8 or 10 life is worth two or three cards to the fireslinger. Rest for the Weary is probably more consistent, but being green and two more life might end up making Feed the Clan an option.

Timely Reinforcements ($.56/$8)

It’s already an $8 foil, it’s true, but this card is such a backbreaker against Burn or aggro strategies that I think it can go higher. Two cards’ worth of life and three blockers is a lot to get from three mana. It’s easy to cast in a lot of decks, which is a big point in its favor.

Kor Firewalker ($.60/$5/promo foil $3)

Speaking of a backbreaker, this is a very tough card for a Burn deck to deal with, and the only thing keeping this from seeing more play is the mana cost. Not many decks in either eternal format can come up with WW consistently on turn two. Amusingly, this card shows up in some sideboards of Boros Burn decks as a card for the mirror match!

Rending Volley ($.46/$6)

I’ve mentioned this card before, but the foil being at only $6 when it’s so good against so many things, and being so cheap to cast…it’s a perfect storm. About the only thing it can’t do is get past an active Mother of Runes. It takes out combo pieces of Splinter Twin, it takes out Angels, Delvers, Snapcasters…it’s a long list of things that players need to kill.

Valorous Stance ($2/$6)

This is a $2 uncommon because it’s such a good answer to everything. This will be a more expensive foil as eternal decks pick it up as a way to save any creature from just about all removal. Toxic Deluge gets by this, but almost no other sweepers do. It’s true this isn’t a good answer to Swords to Plowshares in Legacy or Path to Exile in Modern, but that’s why it’ll be a sideboard card, not maindeck.

Destructive Revelry ($.26/$2)

Burn decks are starting to go Naya, adding green for Atarka’s Command in the main and this in the board. It’s an alternative to Smash to Smithereens that can also hit Leyline of Sanctity or Eidolon of the Great Revel in the mirror. It’s a versatile card that has a very good chance to go up farther. If the foils fall in price at rotation, picking some up at $1 or $1.50 is quite reasonable.

Searing Blood ($1/$6)

Speaking of great sideboard Red cards, this is outstanding. It’s not as good as Searing Blaze, but it’s not far off. The more creatures that get played, the better this gets. The mana cost is an issue, but as a very popular sideboard option, this has potential to grow to $8 or $10. If it dips to $5 at rotation, don’t be afraid to pick some up.

Leyline of Punishment ($1/$3.50)

This is one of the few ways that a Burn deck can deal with Kor Firewalker, since the prevention aspect of protection from red is not relevant anymore. This also stops lifegain, the other monster under the bed that scares Burn decks. At four mana it’s no good for the deck, though, so it’s in the opening seven or bust for this card.

Electrickery ($.21/$2.70)

It’s a singleton or pair in Legacy sideboards, dealing a damage to Snapcaster, Pyromancer, tokens, all sorts of things. It hasn’t seen as much Modern play lately, but if Mentor or Pyromancer blows up again, this might be the sideboard option of choice. It also answers unenchanted Bogles and a Mongoose without Threshold.

Nature’s Claim ($.30/$5 CNS/$9 WWK)

The reprint in Conspiracy didn’t hurt much, but it does give competition. This would be a $15 foil otherwise. It’s cheap and very versatile, a great answer to all sorts of problems. This card helps illustrate why Swords is an excellent answer, because when you’re ahead, a little life for the opponent is no big deal.

Kolaghan’s Command ($2/$6.50)

You may laugh, but it’s showing up in Grixis Delver decks. Imagine killing their Snapcaster while getting yours back, and being able to cast it again. Killing artifacts is useful, and discard at instant speed is rarely a bad option to have. It’s not terribly powerful but it is very flexible at a low cost. If it gets popular the foils will really go up.

Virulent Plague ($.27/$1.47)

There are a lot of options for reducing creature sizes. Curse of Death’s Hold, Night of Souls’ Betrayal, Illness in the Ranks, and so on, but this one might be the best for hosing a lot of Zombie-based strategies as well. It’s not going to cut it against Elves in Legacy, but being an answer to Splinter Twin might cause these foils to enjoy a decent spike.

Golgari Charm ($.57/$7)

Another answer for token swarms, but with more flexibility, this has been featured a couple of times in Legacy events. It’s also a very good Cube card, and it seeing more Modern play with Abzan on the rise. There’s a good chance that this breaks $10 in foil by the end of the year.

Izzet Charm ($.66/$3/$2.50 FNM foil)

Again, this is a very versatile spell that fits in a number of situations as long as you can cast it. Dig for your combo pieces. Kill an early threat. Counter a problem. Cubes love this card as well, but the presence of an FNM promo will probably help keep the price at $5 or less. There’s a chance this becomes popular, though, and it’s worth thinking about.

Corbin Hosler, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: The Next Level of Modern

May 14, 2015 Corbin Hosler 13 Comments

Inkmoth Nexus was the first domino to fall.

And, to be honest, it’s not much of a surprise, is it? Mox Opal is reprinted and Inkmoth Nexus is not, that means it should go up, right? Of course. That’s the easy call, and as we know by how quickly this thing disappeared, there’s no money there.

But there is money to made with the knowledge we gained from Modern Masters 2015, and that’s what I’m here to discuss today.

Our experienced staff of writers has done an excellent job breaking down what’s in the set and how they expect the prices on the cards in the set to react over the next few weeks and months. I won’t say much more on this except to expect drops. The whole “But the original Modern Masters increased prices!” line is old at this point, and, more importantly, inaccurate. Yes, a very select few cards rebounded, but the vast majority were either significantly depressed or absolutely crushed of all hope to rebound any time soon (RIP Stonehewer Giant).

The First Wave

As I alluded to above, the first wave is easy to tell. Basically everyone can figure it out, and sometimes those people even go and buy out Inkmoth Nexus. There’s nothing wrong with spotting this low-hanging fruit, of course, and I’d expect nothing less given how savvy the finance community has become over the last few years.

But the way I see it? Let others take this Level One approach. If you’re in early, then great. But if not? Let others chase, and move onto Level Two.

Once the low-hanging fruit is picked, it takes a little more work to find the good targets. And they’re going to, by and large, take a while to pay off. After all, if there was easy short-term money to be made on them, they would be Inkmoth Nexus and already be bought out.

When it comes to finding targets for something like this, the beauty is in how stunningly simple-sounding it is, as well as how much more difficult it is to actually pull off. Everything I’m going to present to you today can be found by anyone willing to put in the work. As the detractors of “MTG finance” like to claim, it’s not like we’re conducting rocket science here. And we’re not. But sometimes finding opportunity does take some legwork, and that’s not something everyone is either able or willing to do. And even if you have put in the work, you also have to know what you’re looking at, and nothing substitutes for experience in that regard. This list is by no means exhaustive considering just how many cards there are that see some amount of play in Modern, but this is wheat I’m working with over the next few months.

Anyway, let’s dig in.

Affinity

The plan today is to look at decks that will see a surge in play thanks to key reprints in Modern Masters 2015, and then evaluate how that could affect the market.

Nothing rests higher in that list than Affinity, and it gives us a ton to work with. Robots are notoriously easy to pick up and difficult to master, and with the only truly outrageous card being Mox Opal, there’s every reason to believe we’re going to see a lot of new players picking this up. After all, Affinity has the ability to win plenty of games out of nowhere, even if you’re still new and not good enough to squeeze every percentage point out of the deck like some of the masters.

So, looking at the deck itself, we see a ton of stuff that’s being reprinted. Mox Opal, Etched Champion, Cranial Plating, Darksteel Citadel and even Thoughtcast are all being reprinted, so basically half an Affinity deck is being handed to players in Draft.

A few key cards are left off, though. Arcbound Ravager is already $20, but I have no doubts this could be $30 in three months. It’s already showing growth and is an auto four-of in any build of the deck. Glimmervoid also likely has some upside at $10.

Looking at a few more niche cards from the deck, Steel Overseer could have a little upside at $7 and Master of Etherium could also see movement. Neither are exactly cheap buy-ins, but I expect them to see incremental growth this year.

Next up is a card that has seen a lot more than incremental growth: Creeping Corrosion. The green Shatterstorm, we’re seeing great movement on this recent bulk rare. You can still get these for basically free at your LGS, and they’re easy to pull out of any random pile of rares. But this has $3-4 written all over it, which is great considering your buy-in is going to be under a dollar.

With Smash to Smithereens reprinted, the next sideboard card that could see some movement is Shattering Spree. A lot less appealing than Creeping Corrosion due to the $5 buy-in, this nonetheless stands to see some gains.

Burn

Nothing huge included in Modern Masters 2015, though we do get Lightning Bolt at uncommon. Goblin Guide is a huge hole, but I’m not sure how much upside there really is considering that Burn has been the best it’s ever been the last few months and already taken cards like Searing Blaze on a ride up.

That said, Goblin Guide has been moving, and is up to $22. This is one of those Level One cards I was talking about, and I’m not sure how much this is chasing at this point. Could it be $30 soon? Sure, but when you’re buying in at $20+ it may be better to park your money in other options.

Molten Rain is an interesting option, and could be a $4-5 common in six months. On the other hand, it could also fall out of favor and languish at $2. Considering its recent stagnation I think it may be too late on this one, though you should certainly keep an eye on for this one laying around.

Infect

Noble Hierarch makes this instantly more available to play, and several other Phyrexian Mana spells being included makes it that much easier to put together. As we already know, Inkmoth Nexus gained big, Spellskite is being reprinted and Might of Old Krosa continues its crazy run from bulk three years ago to $7 today.

Is it worth buying into at that price? While it’s likely to continue climbing for awhile still, I’d rather sink my money into other pieces of the deck.

Two of them in particular, that is: Glistener Elf and Blighted Agent.

If you haven’t seen Glistener Elf as a money card yet, I hope you’re ready to change your mind. It’s well on its way up, and has doubled since 2015 began. Yes, we’re only talking about going from a quarter to 60 cents, but this is exactly where Serum Visions began. Where Gitaxian Probe was a year ago. Where Might of Old Krosa once was.

Glistener Elf will be our next $3-4 common, and Blighted Agent will trail a little behind. The promo version of Glistener Elf is likely the best buy at $3-4 given how very few there are in stock on TCGPlayer, and this could easily be $10 this summer.

The last piece is Wild Defiance, which has already seen astronomical growth. I don’t mind picking these up at $3, though I suspect it won’t go much higher than $5-6.

Elves

This doesn’t benefit so much from Modern Masters 2015 as it does from Collected Company. That said, we’re seeing the little green men popping their heads up all over Modern, even if it’s flown under the radar a little.

We actually saw large parts of this deck reprinted in Commander 2014, which limits the upside on some pieces like Joraga Warcaller (which despite multiple printings probably is still a safe pickup at its current $3).

But there are some pretty good picks here. One is Chord of Calling, which is super cheap since its reprint and is extremely good in these decks. While we’ve sometimes seen Elf decks go the combo route with Cloudstone Curio, the latest builds have been more of the face-smashing type. Craterhoof Behemoth and Regal Force are too expensive at $15 to be super attractive, but Heritage Druid is going to move from $5 to $10 very quickly. Even better could be the near-bulk Nettle Sentinel, which again is more of a volume play than anything else given it’s available at 50 cents a copy and 0 cents a copy in bulk bins everywhere.

…

There are, of course, plenty of other cards in Modern that see play that haven’t been reprinted. Restoration Angel, for instance, sees play across archetypes but hasn’t moved in price for awhile. But I believe giving too much information can be as paralyzing as too little, and naming every card in Modern that might go up isn’t particularly actionable. Instead, I tried to hit upon some of the cards that are impacted by recent events and are on my shortlist of cards to keep an eye out for at my store. Remember, when everyone else is worried about Modern Masters 2015 you want to be the guy worried about what isn’t in the set.

What do you think? Anything along these lines that is also a great target right now?

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

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