UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Spikecatcher

By Guo Heng

There is a singular interest we all share in mtgfinance regardless of our motivation for engaging in mtgfinance: catching price spikes before they happen. Today’s article covers the tools we could use to help us stay ahead of price spikes. This article aims to be a summary of the resources available to both beginners and experts alike to keep ahead of price spikes, and indeed most of these tools are used by seasoned financiers. Whether you a beginner or an old guard, I hope you would find a thing or two useful in this guide.

Before I go on, let me share with you how I got into mtgfinance.

Why I Mtgfinance

I started Magic way back during Urza’s Destiny when I was a kid. Back then it was all kitchen table Magic and I was playing with a bunch of hand-me-downs from a cousin and whatever junk cards my neighbour, who had a veritable collection, gave me. The only time I had to fog up cash from my allowance was to buy the first dragon I owned, a Two-Headed Dragon (yup, I had something for dragons since I was a kid) and the occasional booster pack.

My first foray into low-level competitive Magic took place during Mirrodin, when I was a teenager. I was playing FNMs on a weekly basis and I managed to throw together an Affinity deck using my measly savings. It sounds unbelievable today, but back in 2003, it was possible to build the best deck in the format without having to spend a fortune. Those were the days where the most expensive Standard chase rares were $10 – $15, before the advent of mythic rares and $40 staples.

I stopped Magic when I went to college. Unfortunately there was no Magic scene where I was studying. I started again during New Phyrexia, at the height of Caw-Blade’s dominance in the format and Jace, the Mind Sculptor became the first Standard-legal card to hit $100. Knowing that Jace and company were about to rotate out, I begrudgingly waited for Innistrad to come out before investing in a competitive deck. It turned out to be a prescient move as Jace and Stoneforge Mystic ended up getting banned in the summer, a few months before they were slated for rotation.

However, come Innistrad, it was still quite expensive to build a tier one deck. Liliana of the Veil hit $50 briefly when Blue-Black Control and Solar Flare became the tier one decks during the early months of Innistrad Standard, and they both ran multiple copies of Lily. I began grinding PTQs during this time and the only reason I could afford to run Blue-Black Control was the fact that I preordered my Snapcasters and Lilianas, which turned out to be one of the rare few times an impulsive decision save me money.

At the same time I started listening to a fledgling podcast, the first ever to focus specifically on mtgfinance, Brainstorm Brewery. Brainstorm Brewery got me hooked on mtgfinance and introduced to me a lot of important fundamentals in mtgfinance.

When the metagame shifted to Blue-White Delver, I was late to adopt that archetype as Geist of Saint Traft, who was a $15 card during the first few months of Innistrad Standard spiked to $25 after Dark Ascension came out and I was finding it hard to justify spending so much on a new archetype. I ended up playing second tier decks, which compromised my tournament results for a couple of months. I reluctantly pulled the trigger and obtained my playset of Geists when he dropped back to $20 in the summer.

One of the things I’ve learned from my first year of grinding the competitive circuit is that the best way to keep up with the ever-evolving Standard metagame is to apply a bit of mtgfinance prescience in acquiring Standard staples. Unless you have access to a deep wallet or a playgroup with a large card pool, the privilege of playing the best deck every week is going to cost an arm and a leg.

The reason I got into mtgfinance is this: I’m a Spike trying to catch competitive staples before they spike. My primary motivation in mtgfinance is to make sure I can play tier one decks as they emerge, or tune my deck to include the latest tech, without having to spend a fortune doing so. Making a bit of money on the side is the icing on the cake and most of my profits end up subsidizing more Magic.

The best way to catch cards before they spike is to identify undervalued cards. Gone are the days where price adjustment moved at such a glacial pace and you can grab cards at their old price a week after the card saw a breakout performance at a large tournament. Card prices are propagated at a speed much faster than the monthly InQuest price list update these days.

Today, in your quest to catch cards before they spike, there are a few tools you should not leave home without. The following are the resources that help me identify undervalued cards and stay ahead of price spikes:

  • The mtgfinance community
  • Spread
  • The Magic Online metagame

The MTGFinance Community

Keeping a finger on the pulse of the mtgfinance community is the most obvious one and I think most of you readers would already be doing this. Below is my reading list for mtgfinance and go-to resources for mtgfinance discussions.

First off are the financiers to follow on Twitter.

MTGPrice writers:

Other mtgfinance writers:

Listening to Brainstorm Brewery is a great way to keep up to date with the latest in mtgfinance. As a ProTrader, you get early access, so don’t skimp on the opportunity to hear the Brew crew’s pick of the week a day before everyone else finds out!

It is also worth checking out format-specific podcasts if you are interested financially in a particular format but do not have the time to engage in the format as much as you’d like to. I love EDH, and I play EDH when I have the time, but being the Spike I am, Standard always takes precedent as it is a PPTQ format. I am interested in the finances of EDH for two reasons: A) I would like to get my foils before they spike. B) Being the most popular casual format, EDH is an important factor to consider when evaluating a card’s long-term potential. The power of EDH-demand as a price driver should never be underestimated. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is a contemporary example. Recently I have started to listen to The Command Zone and I’ve discovered that a number of cards which I have relegated as unplayable actually commands an interest in EDH.

Lastly, there are the forums. There are two mtgfinance-dedicated subreddits as of writing. The older one, r/mtgfinance is a compendium of articles and the newer one, r/mtgmarketwatch discusses individual cards.

And of course, the ProTrader private forums. If you have yet to check it out, the ProTrader forums is where you could find robust discussions about the latest card trends, the latest financially relevant developments in metagame and tips to help you get cards on the cheap. More importantly, you can find most of us MTGPrice writers actively engaging in the ProTrader forums discussions.

Spread

A card’s spread provides us with a metric to evaluate a card’s future price trajectory in an objective, unbiased manner.  Spread is the percentage difference between a card’s fair trade price and its best buylist price. Spread is an indicator of market demand for a card: if stores are increasing their buylist price while the retail price of a card remains the same, it tells us that:

  1. The demand for the card is increasing.
  2. The card’s current retail price would not likely hold as vendors adjust their retail price to complement their increased buylist price.

Jared Yost wrote a good article on spread a while back and I would definitely recommend reading his article to a more detailed explanation on spread.

A card’s spread could help inform us about likely trajectory of a card. For example, Ugin, the Spirit Dragon‘s surprisingly low spread is a good indicator that we would unlikely see his price tank in the short-term, as Jared elaborated in his Fate Reforged spread review.

Of course, don’t make your decisions based on spread alone. There could be a multitude of factors affecting a card’s spread. Spread is an objective metric to help you decide if a card is undervalued or not on top of your subjective evaluation. For example, Sarkhan Unbroken has a ridiculously low spread of 26% as of writing. His fair trade price is $16.49 while his best buylist price is $12.21!

One of the convenience of using MTGPrice to check the price of singles is the ability to view the buylist price of major vendors in a single page. Upon closer inspection we can see that there is only one vendor who is buying Sarkhan Unbroken at $12.21 (though they are buying 20 copies) and that particular vendor only ramped up their buylist price today. Could it be due to Andrew Cuneo’s spicy Temur ramp list which debut yesterday at the Standard Super League? I would not pick-up my Sarkhan Unbroken yet, unless I see other stores follow suit. If other vendors start ramping up their buylist price for Sarkhan, and if I start seeing Cuneo’s Temur list pop up on Magic Online daily events, or this weekend’s StarCityGames, I would start securing my own copies of Sarkhan Unbroken (disclaimer: I don’t have any Sarkhans yet as I’ve been picking up the blue Dragonlords rather than planeswalkers prior to the overall price spike for Dragon of Tarkir).

Speaking of tournaments, the next resource I use to help inform my mtgfinance pick-ups is the Magic Online metagame. Before I go on to discuss using the Magic Online metagame as a tool to help you identify potential breakout cards, I would like to make a little note about using Magic Online trends to make paper decisions.

Magic Online Trends as Precursors to Paper Trends

Magic Online trends are potent precursors to paper trends during the first few weeks following a set’s release. Magic Online is a testing ground for grinders and pros so when there is increased demand for a particular card, there is good chance the demand would translate into paper Magic soon, when the deck breaks out in large paper tournaments.

Master of Waves started spiking on Magic Online a few days prior to Pro Tour Theros even though it saw no play in the StarCityGames Open during the first weekend of Theros‘ release. The only explanation I could come up with was that the price hike on Magic Online before the Pro Tour was driven by Pro Tour players testing Mono-Blue Devotion, which turned out to be the breakout deck of the Pro Tour. Likewise, Dragonlord Ojutai was the most expensive Dragons of Tarkir card on Magic Online for weeks, but paper Dragonlord Ojutai only overtook the price of Narset Transcendent this week on paper. It should have done so a while back as Narset was barely seeing play while multiple copies of Dragonlord Ojutai were played in both Esper Dragons and Ojutai Bant, two tier one decks in the current Standard metagame.

The weakness of using Magic Online trends as a predictor for paper trends is that Magic Online trends are driven primarily by competitive demand. And it works best only during the first few weeks following a set’s release, before the set’s supply on Magic Online gets bloated by Magic Online’s never-ending drafts.

I could be wrong, and Magic Online price movements could still be a reliable predictor even when the set is relatively mature. But I would need to look more into that, and in the mean time, I would err on the cautious side and only use Magic Online price trends only during the first weeks of a set’s Standard lifespan.

What I am interested in Magic Online however, is the metagame.

The Magic Online Metagame as a Precursor to the Paper Metagame

There are not many good things to be said about Magic Online, but one of them is that Magic Online allows us to peer slightly into the future of the evolving competitive metagame, courtesy of being the testing and practice ground for grinders and pros. The Magic Online impact on the evolution of the Standard metagame was so prevalent that Wizards restricted the publication of Magic Online daily event results to only one daily event per day in their efforts to slow down the rate at which Standard was getting solved. A few years back, we used to be able to see the results of every daily event that took place and there were (and still are) multiple daily events per day.

Whenever a new deck or a novel twist to an existing archetype finishes in the money (3-1 or 4-0) multiple times in Magic Online daily events, there is a good chance we could see it in an upcoming StarCityGames Open or Grand Prix. Larry Swasey took down a Magic Online PTQ with Jeskai Midrange before Mitchell Manders used the same deck to win Grand Prix Bilbao a week later and brought widespread attention to the archetype.

Keeping a close eye on the Magic Online metagame helps you identify emergent archetypes before they debut on paper. That may not translate into finding undervalued cards all the time, as new archetypes using different combinations of old cards would not drive prices.

However, sometimes you may stumble upon the next big thing before it becomes common knowledge. Right now, the most popular deck in the Modern daily events is Grixis Delver. The Modern metagame is not exactly at the forefront of the Magic community right now as the current PPTQ season is Standard and we do not have a major Modern event until Grand Prix Charlotte in mid-June. Grimes’ Delver runs three Tasigur, the Golden Fang. Tasigur is trending down at the moment. I have just completed my playsets of Tasigur last week. But I will be picking up more Tasigurs when Fate Reforged hits peak supply in late May, a month before we switch to the Modern PPTQs. The banana-king may return a profit sooner than I initially expected.


 

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Why I Love Casual Magic, and Why You Should, Too

Tell me, what do you consider the best spec right now?

Is it Rattleclaw Mystic? After all, the little thing could go nuts if Birds of Paradise isn’t reprinted.

Is it Abrupt Decay? It’s safe from Modern Masters 2015 and could easily go to $20 by this time next summer thanks to incoming product.

What about Flooded Strand or Polluted Delta? Both are great fetch lands, and will be around forever. Staying with Khans of Tarkir, what about Siege Rhino? Surely it’s bottomed.

All of those are good answers, and all of those are varying degrees of good specs. But they’re not the answer I came up with.

My money is on Phenax, God of Deception. Or Kruphix, God of Horizons.

kruphixgodofhorizons

In a Magic world full of Spikes, it’s Johnny that holds my heart.

The Table… You Know Which One

The mythical kitchen table. The place where epic battles are fought and technically terrible games of Magic are played. The place where no one cares about the latest tournament results or that Ulamog costs a million mana, because they will cast him, darn it.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re on the spikier side. By that, I mean you’ve played Friday Night Magic. You may have even played in a larger tournament, or at least watched the coverage of one. You know the value of your cards and you keep them carefully sleeved.

But the truth is, we are the minority. The majority of players who spend money on this game are more interested in the cards their buddy is playing against them at home than they are in what LSV is sleeving up at the latest major event. People come into my store all the time who have never played outside of their homes. They have no interest in showing up to a tournament—all they want to do is crush their friend’s angel deck at home.

But don’t make the mistake of equating “casual” with “cheap,” because that’s just not the case. In fact, I sell more cards to these “casuals” than I ever do to tournament players.

It’s no surprise, then, that I say I love casual Magic. And so should you.

Casual What?

Before we any further, what exactly defines a “casual” card?

There is no hard-and-fast answer to this question, to be honest. A lot of times people conflate “Commander card” with “casual card.” And while the reality is very different and so are the market ramifications, the truth is they behave similarly pricewise. They’re dirt-cheap when they’re in Standard and typically grow from there, following the opposite path of most newly printed cards. So while I’m not calling them the same thing in theory, the truth is there’s not much difference in reality, at least when it comes to our strategy on them. That said, I’ll let Jason’s series fill you in on the Commander targets, and I’ll take care of the casuals.

Keep in mind everything can be a “casual” card, from the gods I mentioned earlier (I like all of these in the long-term, but especially the two I mentioned since they’re from small sets and are cheap right now) to the random lifegain cards that pop up from time to time. But I’ve done what I can do present at least some general guidelines.

Mill

Archive Trap is nearly $5 and still rising, while Glimpse the Unthinkable is the poster child here at $25. Hell, even Memory Sluice, a random trash common, is 50 cents. These cards are played in zero competitive decks, but still hold their value.

The reason? People love their mill, man. It’s a terrible strategy, but it never goes away. I (gently) tried to explain to a player at FNM last week who tried to convince me that playing one copy of Mind Sculpt in his Magic 2015 flashback Sealed deck was a good idea because, hey, you could mill their good cards!

It doesn’t make sense, but whatever. Just roll with it, and grab those Increasing Confusions as throw-ins or out of bulk piles while you still can. The card has languished for the last two years but has shown a little growth this year, and history tells us it will be $4 to $5 eventually. Obviously you’re looking at a long-term mover here, but it costs you nothing to hoard some of these and forget about them in the spec box.

Angels/Dragons

Without a doubt, these are the two biggest tribes when it comes to casual players. I’ve had people come in and literally say, “I want to buy every angel you have.” In fact, his buddy was with him and then said, “I want all your dragons.” If I didn’t see these two guys with my own eyes, I would never have believed this type of person existed.

But we need look no further than Dragons of Tarkir to the proof of this. Dragons from all over have gone crazy this year, from Scion of the Ur-Dragon to seemingly-random stuff like Utvara Hellkite and Scourge of Valkas. If it’s a dragon, it rose in price this year, and that’s not an accident, nor is it a coincidence that Wizards always includes one or two of these in each set.

There’s a big dropoff after that, but vampires and hydras have also done well historically. Captivating Vampire is $7 despite being in an Intro Deck.

captivatingvampire

There’s one other tribe I have to mention: the little green men. It’s not at all surprising that Wizards stuffed the mono-green Commander deck last year full of elves like Immaculate Magistrate and Imperious Perfect. Even the thrice-printed Elvish Promenade is worth a few bucks. People like their elves.

Lords/Tribal Cards

As much as I wish I was talking about Lord of Atlantis, I’m only doing so in the general sense.

People like to build linear decks at the kitchen table, and often that means tribal. I’m no different: I have a sweet Tribal Treefolk deck that I bust out for 60-card casual rarely, and I love my $4 Dauntless Dourbarks and $8 Timber Protectors.

The reason cards like Timber Protector and Elvish Champion ($4 despite numerous printings) and the aforementioned Captivating Vampire speak to this phenomenon. I’m not saying stock up on Rageblood Shaman (remember when people thought this was a good idea? Ew), but I am saying that stuff like Sliver Hivelord and Sliver Hive are good bets to steadily rise long-term. And I’m absolutely in love with Haven of the Spirit Dragon once it settles down a bit in Standard and falls to $2 or so.

Okay… but Why?

I’ve named a lot of good casual specs so far in this article, but the more important question is… why? What makes them better than speculating on a Standard or Modern card? After all, when those go, they tend to go big.

A few reasons.

Safety

Like I said before, these are almost always cheap at some point. They offer a super low buy-in point, and as such if they go nowhere or are reprinted into oblivion, you’re not losing much. On the other hand, they typically represent very steady gains every year. I know people refer to original duals as the “blue chip stocks” of Magic, but solid casual specs fill that role just as well while also having the advantage of starting out as penny stocks.

Predictability

Casual cards aren’t subject to the whims of the tournament crowd. We’ve all made lots of solid spec calls on competitive cards that never panned out for whatever reason (yes, this is where you remind me of my 94 Splinterfrights). Rattleclaw Mystic, for instance, could be a great spec heading into rotation. On the other hand, if Birds of Paradise is reprinted in Magic: Origins, then the Mystic isn’t going anywhere.

Casual cards don’t behave like that. Haven of the Spirit Dragon isn’t going to be made obsolete any time soon. And even if something similar and maybe better did come along, people are likely just to play both. After all, they can play as many cards as they want in their decks, so why stop at 60 if you have more sweet cards?

Ease of acquisition

As I spoke to above, these cards are not hard to find. Tournament players literally give away these cards or leave them on draft tables. If you want to be the guy grabbing all the Increasing Confusions at your store, no one is going to stop you. You can get these as throw-ins all day long, and no one will care.

And this even works with the obvious ones. I was all over Chromatic Lantern the minute it was printed, and despite it being such an obvious call at $2 people still threw these at me all day long. As we know, Lantern is at an all-time high of nearly $7 and is showing no signs of slowing. And I have a giant stack of these acquired solely through trades. This is not a humble brag: it’s proof of concept. Even when these things seem “obvious” to those of who care about finance, the truth is most players just don’t care.

Buylist Value

This may be a bit more anecdotal, but some of my best experiences buylisting cards comes when those cards are casual ones. Outside of the flavor-of-the-week Standard card, dealers usually have plenty of stock of something. They don’t need another Siege Rhino from you right now, no matter how busted the card is.

But they may need those Timber Protectors or Chromatic Lanterns. After all, the most common way for dealers to buy cards is from players at tournaments, which by default usually means tournament players. Those same players who threw all the Lanterns at me years ago and who don’t have any now.

To get the cards the casual players want to buy from them, stores often pay more on casual staples than they do random competitive cards. This is my experience and is not based on any empirical data, but it’s also how I operate when I buy cards. I have much more confidence in paying a good price for an Asceticism ($7 retail) than I do for a $7 Standard card that may or may not sell and may or may not stay $7 for long.

Keep It Casual

I love casual Magic. You should, too. And before I go, I have a few casual cards I haven’t yet called attention to.

  • Akroma’s Memorial. The Magic 2013 version is at an all-time high of $12, and this was a $20 card before the reprint. It’s going to get there again.
  • Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker is on a tear, and is almost $9. Again, we have what was a $20 card before a reprint. This has seen a lot of growth already this year so it’s not quite as attractive, but this is going to continue to climb.
  • Door of Destinies is at an all-time high of $3.50, and this will continue to climb back toward the $8 it was before the reprint.
  • Rise of the Dark Realms sits at $4.50 after some momentum, and as a mythic this one should rise at a faster clip than the others.
  • Gilded Lotus is also at an all-time high of $6.50 (noticing a theme of “casual reprints in core sets?”) and will be $10 within in a year.
  • Looking further ahead, Darksteel Forge has three printings and hasn’t shown much momentum this year, but it fits the exact same mold as Gilded Lotus, and Darksteel versions of this used to be $12.
  • Dragon Tempest and Dragonlord’s Servant are both on their way to bottoming out, and once they hit near-bulk status they become very good long-term players.
  • Adaptive Automaton is showing some steady progress over the past three months, and is likely due for a correction upward within the next year.

That’s a lot of picks, and truth be told I could go on. But then again, I love casual Magic.

 

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

Going Mad – The Observer Effect

By: Derek Madlem

If you haven’t caught on by now, I’m not your typical #MTGFinance guy. I don’t like graphs or pie charts and I don’t look at the daily gain / loss reports that are generated by various sites. I’ll confess that I don’t even read most of what my compatriots have written outside of Twitter. I often wonder how I ended up writing a weekly column dedicated to Magic finance when I take such an adversarial stance against the concept in general.

The Good Fight

But now I’m on the inside and I like to tell myself that I’m fighting the good fight … dismantling this Diabolic Machine from the inside.Diabolic MachineYou can see me there (sans beard) getting ready to thrust my sword into the evil gears that turn continuously powering this machine of destruction.

Don’t get me wrong, some of what we write about is useful. The basic economics put in Magic terms is hugely beneficial for people’s understandings of card prices and the how and why of their movement.  Understanding supply, demand, and price elasticity goes a long way into understanding how price spikes work. This is great stuff to know.

The finance community has come along way from the weekly articles where Medina taught us different ways to convince a stranger that their cards were worth less than his. But we still do a lot of things that I question.

The Observer Effect

The observer effect is a scientific principle that basically says you can’t measure something without effecting the results of that measurement.

For example, a mercury thermometer can’t take your temperature without absorbing some of the heat your body produces, thus altering your body’s temperature. Another example would be Jane Goodall studying chimpanzees in their natural habitat … you know what doesn’t occur naturally in their habitat? Jane Goodalls. By merely being there to observe, she altered the behavior of those she was observing.

While sometimes the effect of observation is going to be on the impossibly low end of the spectrum, like taking the temperature of the ocean. Other times it’s going to have a direct impact on the results, like you’d see in your psychologists office.

Where am I going with this and does it have to do with Magic cards?

BecvarOne of things you’ll see us Magic financiers do is send out Tweets like this one. We’ll suggest a card publicly because we’re an altruistic bunch and our only interest is to help others. We’re just thinking of the greater good and want everyone to make money. It’s our little way of paying our followers back for making us into the proto-gods that we’ve become in this cottage industry.*

*this paragraph contains copious amounts of sarcasm

Now first I have to admit that I pick Nick for this because we’ve had this debate a number of times and I’ve determined through repeated observations in the wild that he is an absolute monster and most who know him will back this up. He’s also (usually) a good sport when it comes to this sort of dissenting discourse.

Nick, whether intentionally or unintentionally, is having an impact on the demand for Hero of Iroas simply by talking about Hero of Iroas.

Hypothesis: by making a public observation of a card’s value, we’re affecting the price of that card.

The Morality of Intent

This is where things get murky for me, and where the debate has gone off the rails for everyone that I’ve ever attempted to have it with.

Why are we tweeting out or writing about this information? For some of us, it’s what we get paid to do. Providing you with insights on card value is what we’re getting paid to do, it’s why we’re here at all.

For others, it’s about building a brand … I don’t know what exactly that brand is selling, but branding is important you know!

Others still just want to be right, in public. We want that “I listened to this guy and made $100, you should listen to him too” endorsement. We want that credibility and to be considered an expert in our chosen field.

Sleight of HandUltimately it’s a performance, a magic trick we perform so that we can revel in the applause. It’s not enough to simply buy some cards and then tell people how much money we made buying those cards, we have to put on the show. And like any good magician, the audience is manipulated into seeing what the performer wants.

“Whoa whoa whoa, that’s sounding kind of accusatory”
-concerned reader somewhere

The Bandwagon

One of the most noticeable effects we’ve seen the last couple of years is the bandwagon effect in #mtgfinance. It starts with a card being mentioned, then the price starts to move, and then the next thing you know the silent masses buy out the card and relist it at ridiculous prices. But what happens when the buyout isn’t complete? The price comes crashing back down to reality because Bob’s Card Shack is still selling Bösium Strip for $3.

The reality of the bandwagon is that the more people that jump on, the more effective it is. If I invest in some cards and then convince you to invest in those same cards, I’ve created a ripple. If I convince you and 1,000 other people to invest in those cards, that ripple becomes something more.

Goblin RabblemasterSo what’s the difference between one guy buying out a 1,000 copies of a card and 50 people buying 20 copies each? When one guy relists his cards to sell at a higher price he’s just that crazy guy on TCG that sells things for way too much, but when 50 people relist at higher prices … it just might stick.

The Defense

I’ve asked numerous people why they tweet out “hot tips” if they aren’t trying to get more people to buy in and they’ve given me a variety of answers. Let’s look at a few of those ideas.

“I really think they’re a good investment” – if buying three was a good investment, why not buy six? Why not buy twelve? If you are 100% confident in an investment, why not keep your mouth shut and buy all available copies? Don’t have enough to buy all of them? Why not keep quiet and buy some copies now and go back for the rest when you can? After all, you’re going to make some serious bank right?

If you’re not 100% certain it’s a good investment, how sure are you? Should you be recommending people buy in on a card that you’re only 60% sure of? Are you trying to turn a 60% into a 70 or 80%? Who are you trying to convince that your target is a good spec? Yourself or the general public?

“I’m already going to make enough money off this spec” – Wut?

The idea that you can make “enough money” off of a spec target that you’re buying only to make money is kind of ridiculous.

“I don’t really think my tweet will have an impact” – then why are you tweeting about it? This is akin to the argument about mana weaving before shuffling your deck, either it does something and you’re technically cheating or it does nothing and you’re wasting your time.

Truth in Advertising

When I tweet about a card that I think is a good buy, it’s because I’m not 100% certain (I’m rarely more than 99% sure of anything). If I was ever 100% certain about a spec target, I would silently buy out the entire internet.

I want you to buy in too. I know that the more people who know/realize/believe a card is a good buy the more likely it is to become a good buy.  The more people on the bandwagon, the more profitable it gets.

I want to have credibility. I want to be famous. I want to be an authority on Magic finance. I want people to come to me with opportunities to work for them, I want a large network that provides me more of these opportunities. I want to see my phone lighting up with praise and testimonials.

I want to be honest. I want to be the change I want to see in the world. I want more people to be aware and honest about the things the Magic finance community does. If for no other reason than to avoid being implicated in a global pricing conspiracy orchestrated by a shadowy card Illuminati.

Observation Effect

This is where I restate my premise for dramatic effect and summarize the things I’ve said in a slightly different way.

Making observations on card prices absolutely has an effect on card prices. You know why the price of price of a Revised edition Ironclaw Orcs hasn’t really changed in twenty years? Because nobody cares. As soon as we start caring about a card and making others care about a card, we have an impact on it.

That impact varies from person to person. I could write about a card every week for a month and it would likely have less impact than Chas Andres or Gerry Thompson writing about it once. Some people are starting avalanches while others only have the clout to check the temperature of the ocean, but both are impacting the things they observe.

Command Tower

Let me make one thing clear – I’m not accusing or condemning anyone other than Becvar. If this article causes my peers to think before they speak and my readers to think before they act then I’ll have accomplished a lot.

Whether we choose to acknowledge, deny, or embrace it; all of our observations are impacting the cards we observe. Act accordingly.

For more hot card tips you can find me on Twitter: @GoingMadlem


[/hide]

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Safety Deposit Boxes of Khans of Tarkir

By: Travis Allen

After Modern Masters hit the streets not quite two years ago, I started acquiring Modern cards as much as possible. Anything that wasn’t printed in MM was fair game, especially anything with keywords. Spellskite? Scoop ‘em up. Snapcasters. Fast lands. Goryo’s Vengeance. Various other cards that I don’t recall at this point. Suffice to say, I spent well over a year trading for as much Modern product as I could. With the format growing in popularity and the big reprint vehicle in the rear-view mirror, I wanted as much of my stock as possible to be Modern staples. And that’s what I did for months and months.

Not that long ago, my consideration of that format as an iron-clad storage chest for Magic value began to wane. Modern Masters 2015 had been announced, and the number of places reprints were popping up was beginning to outnumber the amount of cards needing reprints. We’re now firmly amidst a sea of reprint avenues, each representing a potential hemorrhaging of value. I’ve been forced to stop stockpiling generic Modern staples and instead have been driven to find greener pastures in which to park my Magic value.

Standard card prices rise quickly and fall off almost as fast. Changes occur on a weekly basis. The entire market is far more nimble and lean than Modern or Legacy. And while nothing is as safe and effortless as plenty of Modern cards are, there’s definite money to be made. I can’t park a few hundred bucks in Spellskites anymore, but as long as I’m paying attention, I can probably make more money. The trick is not to chase weekly tides. Rather, I want to look at long cycles, and get in while they’re at their floors. Today we’re going to talk about Khans of Tarkir, a set that is rapidly approaching its local value floor, and where to put your MTG funbux for the next six months.

AAA Stocks

If you read my article last week all about rotations and pricing trends, you would know that Khan’s price peak should be some time in mid to late October, and that its floor should be between July and August. As good financiers who pay attention to the details though, we may notice that Khans is a little different than other sets . Whereas most fall sets are drafted through the spring, KTK is not. Once Dragons of Tarkir hit the market, KTK packs left the drafting economy. Is this enough to impact the price behavior?

Let’s do some homework and find out. After all, perhaps the most important skill to cultivate in this field is doing your homework. In order to make wise decisions, you need to ask questions, and you need information to answer those questions. And no, bugging myself or Corbin or whomever on Twitter doesn’t count as doing your homework. Check price graphs. Find cards that are similar and note their behaviors. Look back through older sets for comparisons. Without all of this effort, you’re not doing anything other than making wild guesses.

Alright, aside aside, we know the last time a set behaved in this fashion was Innistrad back in 2011. Once Avacyn Restored hit, Innistrad and Dark Ascension dropped out of the draft. Here’s INN’s price graph.

INN

Looks like the price floor is right where we expected it to be; between July and August. Excellent. Right now we’re six to twelve weeks from hitting the floor. How much further of a drop are we talking? Well, between today’s date in 2011 and the absolute floor that summer, Innistrad dropped about 18%. So we haven’t completely bottomed out yet, but we’re close. What we want to be doing now is identifying which cards we think will do the best through the fall rotation, and begin moving in on those. Starting now gives us a chance to decide our best course of action early, and time to start acquiring. Unless our plan is to just dump hundreds of dollars all at once on August 1, starting to trade today is a wise decision.

Today I’m going to start with Khans, and touch on Fate Reforged another week.

People have forgotten about Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker by now, given Stormbreath Dragon and a general preponderance of dragons in Standard. It may feel surprising today, but there was a time when Sarkhan was being compared favorably to Stormbreath, and he had a price tag to match.

Capture

While I’m not holding my breath for $50 again anytime soon, I do think that $8 is much lower than he can and should be. Admit it, you probably thought he was $10 or $12, right? We’ve collectively forgotten about him, and subsequently didn’t realize how cheap he’s gotten. His power level is undeniable though. He’s a five mana hasty 4/4 indestructible flyer—immune to cards like Ultimate Price, mind you—that can alternatively come down and nuke a tapped Ojutai. He’s a premier planeswalker from Khans, and when the index jumps 80 percent this fall, he’s going to be a big part of it. At the very least, we should see a price of $10 to $12, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him climb above $15 at some point in October. There’s few safer bets in KTK than Sarkhan.

Take everything I said about Sarkhan and apply it to Sorin, Solemn Visitor, only slightly less so. His price spiked less hard at release, only cresting $30, and he hasn’t fallen as far, with a current price tag of $10, but he’s still a powerful planeswalker that is trading well below his future value. What makes Sorin particularly good is that while Sarkhan is mostly sitting on the sidelines right now, Sorin is still getting in game wins here and there in various stripes of Abzan decks. We know beyond a doubt that Sorin is strong enough for a high-powered Standard format such as this, and when we suddenly lose half the available cards, his relative power level will spike. There are plenty of decks in the format where your opponent casting a Sorin and activating the first ability it is essentially game over. We even see Sorin pop up in Modern decks occasionally, which is a testament to his strength. I can’t get enough Sorins right now.

I’m struggling to reconcile Siege Rhino’s price with everything I know about Magic finance. We have a premier-level threat in two formats—Standard and Modern—and I can currently buy multiple playsets on TCGplayer for $4.25 a copy? What? Yes, it’s a fall set rare, and that means there is no shortage of copies on the market. But so what? Abrupt Decay was a fall set rare and was $10 while in Standard. In fact, it was in the same set as Deathrite Shaman, which was also at least $10. Oh, and both of those were also in the same set as shock lands.

My point is that while fall set rares tend to be suppressed, especially when good lands are in the set, I don’t believe that it’s enough to stop tier-one grade-S staples from hitting high prices. Nearly every year I’m impressed by how valuable some rare manages to be despite being a fall set rare. This year around that card is going to be Siege Rhino. I expect it will at least double to $10, and I think $15 is within the realm of possibility. We’re talking about what is arguably the best card in Standard and is also a full playset in one of the best Modern decks in the format. In fact, my goal between now and July is to sell some excess stock I have and buy up Rhinos in anticipation of this fall.

I was lukewarm on See the Unwritten when Khans was spoiled, but I didn’t know the next set was Battle for Zendikar, either. After BFZ was spoiled at PAX, Unwritten jumped from around $2 to around $6. It’s since pulled back towards $4, which is great for us: the lower the buy-in, the better. As soon as the first Eldrazi is spoiled, Unwritten is going to jump towards at least $8 as people get hyped to flip gigantic otherworldly monsters into play. Let me be clear here: Eldrazi don’t even need to be legal yet for this to double in price. At $3 or $4 in trade, this is a spec that will be profitable on hype alone.

If it’s actually good, we’ll see prices well into the double digits. See the Unwritten is a popular card across several demographics and formats, such as kitchen-table Magic and EDH, so any Standard demand whatsoever is going to push the price very hard. I’m in for seventy copies or so right now and I’ll be looking to expand that investment through trade binders this summer.

We’ve all come to take Sylvan Caryatid for granted. It’s been so long at this point it feels like a permanent fixture. She’s (they?) are on her way out though, and we’ll need something in her stead. Enter Rattleclaw Mystic. There’s really no other comparable mana fixer in Standard right now. It’s possible we get Birds of Paradise, which would be awesome, but I’m not holding my breath.

As a buy-a-box promo, we already know that Rattleclaw Mystic is slated to be a serious Standard contender, just as Sylvan Caryatid was. It plays extremely well with the Deathmist Raptor/Den Protector synergy that is likely to be the backbone of many Standard decks over the coming months, allowing them to splash into red or blue. Battle for Zendikar will have all sorts of cool things to ramp into. What’s not to like here?

Notable Exclusions

While Wingmate Roc performed admirably earlier in the season, I’m not particularly excited about it this fall. Our embarrassment of riches in the DTK dragons is my primary reason for doubting the return of the bird. With so many powerful flying threats such as Ojutai and Atarka, it’s going to be tough to find a reason to play a card like Roc. Does this mean the card has no future whatsoever and is total bulk? No, absolutely not. It could very well come to transpire that Roc ends up being a relevant component of the metagame this fall and hits $10 again. I’m not writing this article to look for “maybes” though. While you could do worse than Roc, I’d much rather put my Magic dollars into what I feel are basically home runs, such as Siege Rhino and Sarkhan.

I’ve been hemming and hawing over what to do with Dig Through Time while writing this article, and I finally realized that my indecision is exactly my issue with the card. Could DTT hit $15? Aaaabsolutely. No question. Is it a 100 percent slam dunk the way I consider these other cards to be? Not at all. It’s banned in Modern, which cuts a big chunk of potential demand out from under it. It sees some light play in Legacy, but rarely as a full playset. Browsing the EDH stats over at MTGS, Dig Through Time isn’t even a top-50 blue card in the format.

Perhaps my biggest concern with Dig Through Time is that it’s already a $6 card. That’s a tough number to make profit on when we’re talking about a rare rather than a mythic. When Siege Rhinos are $4, Dig Through Times at $6 are simply less appealing to me.

I fully understand if some of you out there want to go deep because you expect DTT to hit $15 this fall. It’s definitely a possibility. It’s the strongest blue card draw spell we’ve seen in ages, and it’s clearly eternal playable. It comes down to a matter of opportunity cost. For every Dig Through Time you buy, it’s one-and-a-half fewer Siege Rhinos available to you. At the end of the day, I’m more comfortable with Rhinos than Digs, though I can respect those of you that opt to pick up copies.

What do you think about the opportunities out of Khans?

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY