One of the most common misconceptions about folks involved in MTGFinance is that we are constantly manipulating the market and feeding players misinformation to help fuel achievement of our personal goals.
It recently occurred to us here that though we dole out a good deal of advice, most of you ultimately have very little insight into when we actually put our money where our collective mouths are pointing. As such we’ve decided to run a weekly series simply breaking down what we’ve been buying and selling each week and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought without hope of profit, where appropriate. We’ll also try to provide some insight into our thinking behind the specs, and whether we are aiming for a short (<1 month), mid (1-12 month), or long (1 year+) term flip. Here’s what we were up to this week:
Buying Period: April 12 – April 19, 2015
Note: All cards NM unless otherwise noted. All sell prices are net of fees unless noted.
Most of my purchase activity this week was dedicated to locking down a couple of cases of Modern Masters 2 on pre-order at a very solid price that helps ensure value regardless of the final set list. The Collected Company foil acquisitions are reflective of my belief that a strong Modern deck using the card is inevitable within the next couple of years. As a small set rare, the foils can easily hit $20-30 should the theorem prove out.
On the sell side, I was able to out some of my key specs from Dragons of Tarkir pre-order season for a true triple up on the Dragonlords. Over on PucaTrade I continue to dump cards I expect are either peaking or likely to decline due to imminent reprint, with an eye to trading up into a $500-1000 card within a month or two of frequent trading.
“I cashed the MTGO cards out right after the Pro Tour, riding on the Pro Tour hype. I made an insignificant sum on the four Atarka’s Command, which I bought for 2.69 tickets each. The Icefall Regent was a draft pick from a release draft I did. Rares on Magic Online rarely hold a price higher than 4 tickets. Even multi-format star Tasigur, the Golden Fang could not hold a price tag of 4 tickets, what more Icefall Regent who is also in a large set. Dragonlord Silumgar is a card I was bullish on in my Pro Tour prediction article. I bought a playset for my own use on Magic Online the morning before the Pro Tour when he was a mere 4.39 tickets (you know, in case he spikes). After three UB Control made the top 8 of the Pro Tour, and some spectacular Dragonlord Silumgar action on the day two and top 8 feature match, he spiked to 13 tickets on Magic Online. I decided to sell. I was sure Dragonlord Silumgar will drop back to under 10 tickets. He is now 16 tickets and is the second most expensive Dragons of Tarkir card on Magic Online. Oh well. I didn’t see that coming.
Re: See the Unwritten on MTGO, there was some great discussion in the Pro Trader private forums about the potential of See the Unwritten. I bought a couple more to bolster my long-term hold on Magic Online. I now have a paltry 9 copies of See the Unwritten.
I sold the paper Den Protector that I had opened in one of my pre-release packs to a player as I don’t think Den Protector has more room to grow. “
9x Bladewing the Risen (FTV Dragons) @ $5.99 each ($53.91)
6x Bladewing the Risen (FTV Dragons, SP) @ $4.99 each ($29.94)
1x Dictate of Erebos @ $.40
100x Heartless Summoning @ $.25 each
5x Ob Nixilis, Unshackled @ $4.99 each
19x SP Plunge into Darkness @ $.33 each
18x Skill Borrower @ $.25 each
40x SP Swan Song @ $.40 each
17x Trade Routes (8th Edition) @ $.25 each
1x Trade Routes (9th Edition foil) @ $2.99
Douglas says:
“For those of you who didn’t know, starcitygames.com is holding their annual Spring sale. While the prices of most staples aren’t cut by anything meaningful, there are still some deals to be had on bulk rares, which are my favorite speculation targets. I’ll preface this by saying that I usually don’t even pay $.25 for bulk rares (I only pay $.10-$.12 each when buying collections and bulk lots), but I’m putting this money down for fun and am perfectly aware that I might not make much of it back for several years. This type of speculation is a long-shot, and I don’t recommend throwing down cash unless it’s play money that you’re willing to throw away.
It shouldn’t take much explaining by me to see that a lot of these are just “Maybe this will eventually be in a Modern deck” bulk rares that I’m happy to sit on forever. Even if the theoretical decks don’t end up being good, I’ll be glad to have copies on hand to sell into the hype. Some other targets that I wanted but were sold out were Realms Uncharted, Gather Specimens, and foil copies of Deathbringer Thoctar. Meanwhile, Bladewing the Risen has been one of the only older Dragon cards to not see a ridiculous spike in the wake of Dragons of Tarkir. The only nonfoil printings are from Scourge and the original Commander set, the latter of which was the first supplemental product of its’ kind. Meanwhile, FTV: Dragons was also the first From the Vault set, sharing a ridiculously low print run. I believe a $6 price tag on the FTV foil will soon rise above $10. If you can still get in on non-foil copies at $1-2, I don’t think that’s a bad play either. Just remember that this is primarily an EDH and casual card, and you have to be able to unload all of the copies you get. I’m still sitting on 40+ copies of Ghave, Guru of Spores, so I didn’t want to go too deep on this because my only other out would be buylisting. “
So there you have it. Now what were you guys buying and selling this week and why?
James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.
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Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir has come and gone, and it has uncovered a lot of key information in the tapestry that is DTK Standard. I am assuming, of course, that this format (and all smaller, and therefore solvable, formats) is a game of Tipsy Tourney from Mario Party.
Den Protector already appears to be sliding ever so slowly back down, and I suspect that its price coming out of the tournament last weekend is its ceiling for the remainder of its life in Standard. Den Protector is the type of card that is very good in terms of potential in-game value, it’s pretty good on rate, and it develops your board (which is why it may be “better” than Restock2). On the other hand, Den Protector is not likely a four-of in more aggressive environments, it is not likely to trade up at three mana (and even less so at five), and in a pinch can always be replaced with something else (nobody’s deck needs Den Protectors, in the sense that they need Nykthos to gain buku mana, or they need Mastery of the Unseen to gain insurmountable amounts of life). Those factors (as well as rarity) are what I expect to keep Den Protector largely grounded for the time being.
Dragonlord Atarka, however, is about to get paid. You know that a card is good when three-color decks are splashing to be able to play it at a Pro Tour. We talked about him (her?) last week, and apparently my read on the card barely scratched the surface.
Want to hear that bad part? I didn’t pick up any extras going into the weekend. I know, I’m bummed. I really want to play that Atarka Abzan deck. So why didn’t I buy in? Because I’m an idiot. Let me give you a long-winded response why:
My Magic finance philosophy is largely defined by something that I first spelled out in January of this year.
The highlighted part is the most important, but I included the rest for a little context (it was B&R update time) and also because I liked The Office.
I try to approach Magic finance from the perspective of someone who is not a store owner (with the powerful ability to buylist), and has a fixed amount of Magic-dedicated capital to spend at any given time. While my two big buys prior to the tournament (Pitiless Horde and Dragonlord’s Prerogative) haven’t moved since the weekend, the buy-in for them was negligible. Had I bought Dragonlord Atarka in the days leading up to the tournament, they would have individually cost me anywhere from seven to ten dollars (my order of 26 Pitiless Hordes and 20 Dragonlord’s Prerogatives cost me about $17, shipped). Let’s say, just for fun, that I did buy 20 Dragonlord Atarka for $10 each (most places would upgrade you to free shipping at that point) the day before the event—the current best buylist price (as of Wednesday, April 15) is $11.75 to Troll and Toad. This means that if I want to make $1.75 (before shipping costs and ignoring any PayPal fees), I have to send these cards to Kentucky and hope they make it. The other choices are to try and sell them piecemeal on the internet or to PucaTrade them away for “value” (even though this means I won’t get any of that $200 seed money back in my bank account).
But let’s now say that the card didn’t break out over the weekend, either because of some unforeseen metagame wrinkle, or because the people with the best Atarka technology bombed out in Draft. In this case, I have spent $200 (a lot of money for me, and presumably most people) on something that I am about to have a very hard time recouping on. Even if that was all “Magic money,” suddenly my future buying power is hamstrung by the fact that I have a lot of money tied up in a card that I need to move at or above its current retail price.
Insurance and risk management professionals typically assess need by something called “MPL” or “Maximum Possible Loss.” If your $2,000,000 building burns down, blows up, or gets attacked by some kind of Cloverfield monster tomorrow, you have suffered the MPL ($2,000,000). While the technicalities are different, you should always approach an investment knowing what the MPL is. If I bought the dragons on Thursday, the best possible buylist price on Friday was $6.50, a loss of $3.50 on my initial cost of $10. In our worst-case scenario, Atarka bombs out at the Pro Tour as bad as that StarCraft guy they invited that one time, and the buylist price hovers around $5.50 (Thursday’s best price) to $6.50 until Magic Origins. If I want access to any of that $200 I just spent, I have to eat a loss of at least $70. Heck, I could have just bought a Wasteland at that point! Compare this to the maximum possible loss of the purchase I did make:
14 Pitiless Horde at 30 cents, total of $4.20
20 Dragonlord’s Prerogative at 38 cents, total of $7.60
12 Pitiless Horde at 43 cents, total of $5.16
Grand total of $16.96. Shipping was free on all of these.
Let’s assume that none of these cards ever get outside of a bulk box, and the best I am ever able to recoup on these is a dime each—the best case then is that I’m getting $5 in trade somewhere or a free value menu lunch at Taco Bell. Comparing this to the Atarka scenario, I’m getting back 27 percent of my initial investment, versus 65 percent for the Dragonlord, but the buy I made is diversified (two cards instead of one), it had much less investment of capital, and I got significantly more cards. Even if I get literally nothing out of either purchase, it’s much easier to justify losing (and subsequently make back) $17 than $200.
That’s why I’m fine losing out on things like Atarka: I’d rather kick myself for missing a winner than for picking a loser.
I want to touch quickly on a unique topic that has been pretty popular in the ProTrader forums the last week.
Brief Marketing Aside: By the way, if you aren’t on the ProTrader forums, you really should be. I know this is going to read as me towing the company line, but I really think it’s the best value in terms of subscription for Magic content (especially with all the cool stuff coming soon!). I was using MTGPrice before it was cool to use MTGPrice. Alright, alright, alright.
Anyway, the first hot topic has been the new prerelease foil treatment. Ultimately, the debate has come down to actual scarcity versus perceived demand. Prerelease Tasigurs are much rarer than set foil Tasigurs, but how much extra is that gold lettering worth? Currently, it’s actually a detriment to the card, with set foils being worth roughly $30 and the promos going for about $25. Siege Rhino promos are worth about two bucks more than the set foils, though, and both versions of Anafenza are about the same. The similarity in all of these cases is that there is more demand for set foils than promos (according to the “Wants” tracker on PucaTrade, at least). Part of this is going to have to do with uniformity for playsets—it’s a hedge against narrow corner cases, but competitive players typically want their cards to all match to avoid giving away information unnecessarily. If someone absolutely has to own the rarest version of something from this (and presumably future) block(s), then they need to own the prerelease foil. Ultimately, however, I expect the prices to largely resemble the set foil prices, since it will be easier to find complete sets of set foil Rhinos than prerelease ones, but the prerelease copies won’t be too undervalued since they will still have appeal in singleton formats like Cube and EDH. It’s going to be a learning lesson moving forward, but any prerelease foil that is ever significantly cheaper than the set foil is probably a good buy.
Well, that’s going to be all for today. As always, feel free to reach out in the comments if you have any thoughts about this week’s article, and I’ll see you next week! Oh, and don’t forget to submit your questions for the mailbag article! I’ve gotten some good ones already, and it’s been tempting not to answer them right away!
Best,
Ross
1 Prerogative did make a few appearances, though, and my genuine expectation is that it will get more attention after Khans (and with it Dig Through Time) gets rotated out of standard. Remember that DTK will be in the format longer than KTK.
2 It still amazes me that this card sees zero Constructed play. It was kinda popular last time!
From time to time, I like to go back into my archives and look at predictions I made, and see if I was right or wrong. Self-reflection is an important part of the process, and anything that improves my ability to gain value is good.
If you open the foil alternate-art Ugin, hold on to it. This weekend will represent the largest supply of these cards and the lowest price. If Ugin ends up as an awesome card in Modern Tron decks, then the pimp foil has yet another outlet to fetch a high price. Commander players all want the card anyway! (Including me)
Trade away almost everything else. Supply on Fate Reforged this week is at its lowest, and you should sell into the hype. Everything is hyped, so move it all.
The exception to this rule is WhisperwoodElemental. This is an amazing casual card but it’s also pretty great in Standard, as a free source of card advantage. I think it has room to grow, and multiple sites are increasing their preorder price on it.
I was right by about 50% on #1, mostly right on #2, and spot on for point #3. I’m actually a fan of picking up Whisperwood right now, because it’s just good. It’s six power and toughness for five mana, and is likely to be important for the coming year. Getting it now around $12 is okay, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit $15 or $20 around the time of Battle for Zendikar.
I told you to pick up foil Dragonspeaker Shaman at $8, and it’s gone up to $12. We might not be done watching it rise. I also called Utvara Hellkite, which has doubled.
I did not make good predictions about Dragon Roost, Dragonstorm, and perhaps worst of all, Scion of the Ur-Dragon. That one really stings. I seriously thought we would get a new 5-color dragon to play with, and that would preclude a run on Scion. The nonfoil has gone from $2 to $16, and the foils have gone from $50 to about $80. That’s a lot of value that I missed, because I wanted a new dragon.
The lesson here is that I need to make sure I don’t lose focus on what is, in my quest for what could be. Perhaps I was too bullish on a new 5-color legend, and lost sight of the fact that the old one would still be very good.
So the moral of the story is this: Wizards is going to make sure that the True-Name Nemesis problem doesn’t reoccur. Each Commander printing going forward is going to produce enough stock to keep everything very reasonable to very cheap in price. I was way off for almost every card, but my advice to stick with singles could not have been better. The singles prices for this entire set are rather low, and two of my favorites (Dualcaster Mage and Feldon of the Third Path) just got revealed as judge foils.
Looking at the prices for Commander’s 2013 release is even worse. You might expect otherwise, but no, this has three cards over $5. Next year, get out of the reprints and fast.
Overall, one of my worst sets of predictions. The lesson is learned, and I’m +1 to Humility.
One of the worst feelings as a writer for MTGPrice is when I advocate for a card and then that card tanks in value. I still like the cards that haven’t changed in price, and at the least, I haven’t lost any value on any of these.
I think Ash Zealot is still a great card in Modern. If Snapcaster is good and prevalent, isn’t this a fine answer for Burn decks? I’d rather be deep on this than Zurgo Bellstriker, right?
These are always good to look at in hindsight. Did I make accurate calls? Was my reasoning good?
I underestimated the appeal of Ajani, Mentor of Heroes in Standard. Plus, he’s relatively scarce, two factors that have kept him far above my target of $10, and also why I was so off on Nissa, Worldwaker. Garruk, Apex Predator, though, he did make it down to $10 but has bounced back up to $13. I was rather wrong about Jace, the Living Guilpact, though.
Perilous Vault went even lower than I thought it would, and I can’t wait to get foils around $15 when it rotates in the fall. I was spot-on with the Hivelord going to $7, though I was a few dollars off on the foil. The foil version of the Chain Veil is also a high split, at $1.50/$8.
Alright, I feel like it’s important for me to own when I’m wrong, and last week, I said this about Dragonlord Silumgar:
I just can’t help looking at Sower’s $17.44 price tag as a rare (from the pre-mythic era, yes) versus Silumgar’s $7 price point right now. Again, I’m advocating keeping a close eye here, as if this sees no Standard play (and I don’t expect it to see much, if any) it should drop sharply and present real opportunities.
It’s not like I said Silumgar was horrible in Standard and would surely be a bulk mythic, but I assumed that, like most six-drops, it wouldn’t be good enough. Considering I don’t play or watch much Standard at all, I was basing my belief that the card wouldn’t see a lot of Standard play mostly on Eric Froehlich’s analysis of the card on Constructed Resources. He wasn’t too wowed by Silumgar, and I took his evaluation at face value.
Frankly, I don’t feel too bad about missing here. I didn’t have strong reasons to believe the card would see play in Standard, so I didn’t buy in. From my perspective, it’s always better to not buy in and have a card go up than to buy in and have the card go nowhere. Sure, I might miss a few profit opportunities here and there, but I would rather save my limited MTG money for specs I feel very strongly about. Remember, my goal with MTG finance is to spend as little time on it as possible, so buying only to flip at about the same price is highly unattractive to me.
If you’re looking to play Silumgar in Standard, the traditional summer lull in prices should be a good time to grab copies if you don’t need them for upcoming tournaments. As for Commander and Cube, I’m pretty comfortable waiting for rotation, but if the card drops as low as $5 during Standard, I’ll snag a copy then.
The lesson for me here is that no matter how good the player, no matter how reasonable-sounding the analysis, no matter how sure you or someone you trust is that a card is or isn’t good: there’s no way to know for sure rather than seeing it played in games of the appropriate format. Of course, recognizing when the community at large has misevaluated a card is the best way to profit—it’s just so hard to go against the hive mind.
The Force Shall Be With You
Don’t you wish you could have gotten into Magic earlier? I mean, all those early sets were just packed with value—all you had to do was be there.
Well, I am not The Doctor, so I am not here to take you back to that magical time in the mid-’90s. But what I can do, right here, today, is point you toward something I’ve discovered in the last couple weeks that may or may not be of interest to you (and if it’s not, never fear—we’ll be back to more traditional Magic finance content next week).
In early March, a new app was released, currently only for iOS products but coming soon to Android, called Topps Star Wars Card Trader. I’ll give you one guess as to what the product is.
I happened to notice this in the app store, and being a lifelong Star Wars fan, I clicked out of curiosity and saw the phrase, “Open a free pack every day!”
You’re reading this site, which presumably means you’re a Magic player, which presumably means you like to open packs of cards. Being in the exact same boat, I was easily convinced to give it a casual try. But there’s no way these cards are actually worth anything, right? They’re digital collectible cards that don’t have an associated game, so obviously they’re just for fun.
Oh.
So, what we’re seeing here is the Black Lotus of Topps Star Wars Card Trader: “Vintage Han.”This is the most sought after card in the game (can we even call this a game?), and even though the app only debuted a month ago, it’s already selling in the $150 range and occasionally over $200.
Do I believe that in 20 years this will hit the numbers that Black Lotus has hit recently? Absolutely not. But it’s pretty clear there’s money to be made with this app. Here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to know for those of you who are interested. If not, skip this section to get back to why an app like this matters for MTG.
How SWCT Works
For the release period, Topps is giving out 25,000 credits for each day you log in, and if you log in seven days in a row, you get a bonus of 50,000 credits. These numbers will be reduced at some point, but this is the current system.
Most of the cards you’ll open in this app are from the base set. Each card has five rarities. From least rare to most, they go: white, blue, red, yellow, and gold. You can always find someone willing to give you nine of a lower tier for one of the next tier up, so completing your base sets is really pretty easy given enough time.
The money is in inserts. Understanding how inserts work is key to getting the best cards in this app.
From what I have deduced, there are two types of inserts: the first are inserts for a particular subset of cards, such as Hoth, Rebels, and Elite Soldiers.
Each of these sets has a specific number of cards to collect, and if you collect all the cards in a certain category by a certain date, you get an award card. The problem is that after the award cards are given out, these inserts lose a ton of value. It’s very common to see traders asking for inserts but specifying, “No Hoth,” which has already had its award date pass. I suspect that as Rebels, Elite Soldiers, and other sets pass their award dates, a similar devaluing will happen.
The other types of inserts are from marathon sets. Each day of the week, Topps announces a couple hours in advance which card will be available for the day. Each day has a different marathon set running, and collecting all 30 cards from a set over the next 30 weeks will result in huge rewards (with sub-rewards for each 10). The Vintage Han above is part of the marathon Vintage set, as is this one:
At first people were calling it “Vintage garbage.” Not exactly an inspiring name. Now it’s known as “Vintage steel,” which sounds so much stronger.
This set has proven to be the premium one on the app, and a new card releases every Thursday. Each card released has a set number of copies “printed,” and once those numbers are reached, no more will be made. Vintage Han is worth so much because only 1,500 are in existence (you can see the number on the back of the card at the bottom left):
The other cards that have emerged as the premium ones on the app are those from the Widevision series:
These aren’t fetcching quite Vintage-level prices, but they’re working their way up. A new Widevision card is released every Saturday. Like the Vintage cards, more are being produced every week, so the sooner you join, the better chance you’ll have to pick up the early cards that will be worth the most.
So, if you’re looking to spend a little time on this app in the hopes of making money, you should log in every single day to get your free credits, then be on the lookout for the release of the Vintage and Widevision cards each Thursday and Saturday. That bare minimum can potentially earn you a few bucks a week, assuming you’re lucky enough to open the good cards.
Now, how do you get these inserts? Basically, at the pre-announced time, they can be found in any packs sold on the app. Odds are also given for each card released, and tend to change regularly (inserts tend to be between 1:20 and 1:80 from what I’ve seen so far).
The packs for sale in the store also change regularly, but there are three that are always available:
When I first started using the app, the obvious choice to me was to always buy Boba Fett packs. Based on the number of cards in the pack being the same per 1,000 credits spent but offering the only chance at yellow-rarity cards (you have to pay Earth-legal currency or trade for access to gold cards), this seemed like the only way to go.
Then I learned something very important: insert odds are based on opening the insert per pack, not an insert being a particular card within a pack. This means that if you’re chasing inserts, you want to buy the Mace Windu packs, because they’re cheapest and will give you the most opportunities to open the card you’re chasing.
This is a really basic breakdown, but I certainly wish I had this information when I first downloaded the app a couple weeks ago. I personally missed the boat on Vintage Han, and each subsequent card has had a higher print run, so it’s unlikely we’ll see any with values that high. Still, Star Wars fans love their toys, and this one seems to have been adopted pretty quickly.
Why This Matters for Magic
What blows my mind here is that these cards are selling for real-life amounts of money despite having no gameplay valuewhatsoever.
This got me thinking: what if Magic did something similar?
Given that it’s clear that digital card collecting in its own right is something some segment of the population clearly enjoys doing, imagine if Wizards of the Coast created a Magic trading app.
I can see it now: sign in every day to get three free commons and an uncommon. Sign in every day during a week and get a free booster pack! Include trade functionality within the app, offer free stuff and special exclusive awards to encourage collecting, and give opportunities to get the best stuff for free (with commitment), and you’ll have people who don’t even play Magic collecting cards.
Now, here’s where it all comes together: connect this app with MTGO, so that any cards one opens or trades here are synchronized with one’s MTGO account. I think there’s a really good chance that once non-players collect a high amount of cards, they’ll want to find out how to play. How many people do you know that collected Magic for a long time before actually learning the game? I certainly know several.
Here’s the thing about Topps Star Wars Card Trader: there is no way in any possible version of history that I would give something like this any attention whatsoever except for the fact that it’s on my phone. I have a lot of demands on my time, and try to not to waste too much of it on frivolous nonsense. The exception is that sometimes you have to wait in line somewhere, or have to commute to and from work, or spend countless hours waiting for your kid’s baseball practices or doctor’s appointments or orchestra rehearsals, or whatever. In these instances, having something to do is crucial. As a result, I’m much less discriminatory about time-wasters on my phone than on my laptop, for example. If I have to kill time, I might as well be doing something reasonably enjoyable that might earn me a little money, right?
And since I first started drafting this article, something even more pertinent to Magic‘s future happened:
If people were trying to decide between MTGO and Hearthstone, it’s pretty clear which way they’ll be leaning now.
Look, we’re probably not going to get a mobile version of MTGO any time soon, if ever. Realistically, a collection management app with trading capabilities that links to MTGO seems nearly as unlikely, but it’s at least a little more within the realm of possible. It just seems like such a misplay for there to be no quick, easy, and official way to engage with Magic on mobile devices, given the trends in technology and popular culture. Such an app would also help fix the common complaint about player-to-player trading being virtually non-existent on Magic Online. I’d use it all the time. Wouldn’t you?
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
