MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (April 11/15)

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

One of the most common misconceptions about folks involved in MTGFinance is that we are constantly manipulating the market and feeding players misinformation to help fuel achievement of our personal goals.

It 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 this 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 5 – April 11, 2015

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

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

  • 5x Eidolon of the Great Revel @ $6 per: Mid to Long
  • 3x Deathmist Raptor @ $15 per: Short to Mid
  • 1x Japanese Scavenging Ooze @ $6: Mid to Long
  • 1x Japanese Wooded Foothills @ $13: Long
  • 1x Flooded Strand (KTK) @ $11: Long
  • 12x Den Protector @ $1.25 per: Short

Pucatrade SOLD

  • 4x Den Protector @ $3.00 ($1.50 cost)
  • 1x Blood Moon (Chronicles) @  $21 ($11 cost)
  • 1x Sword of War & Peace (New Phyrexia) @ $19 ($7 cost)

Trades

  • 1x Dragonlord Ojutai (Out) for 1x Bloodstained Mire + 1x Thunderbreak Regent (In)
  • 1x Grove of the Burnwillows (Out) for 3x Stormbreath Dragon
  • 2x Haven of the Spirit Dragon (Out) for Dig Through Time + 4x FNM Squadron Hawk (In)

The Den Protectors were an opportunistic play after my early identification of the card as a major force in the early rounds of Standard at Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir yesterday. The card spiked hard towards $5 from $1.50 and I’ve already managed to flip most of the copies through Pucatrade. The rest of my purchases were just cards on my acquisition list that I snag whenever the opportunity arises.

Most of the rest of my activity was just a few minor value trades, as I am ramping up funds to jump in on some boxes of MM2.

 Guo Heng (@guoheng)

Bought (MTGO)

  • 4x Dragonlord Silumgar on MTGO for 4.39 tix per.
  • 7x Atarka’s Command. 3x for 2.59 tickets per, 4x for 2.69 per.

Bought (Paper)

  • 1x Dragonlord Silumgar for $4.64 from player.

Trades

  • Traded 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier (Out) for 1x Dragonlord Silumgar (In)
Guo says:
“Red aggro decks splashing green exclusively for Atarka’s Command was the most popular deck at the Pro Tour. There’s potential for a quick flip after the Pro Tour weekend, if a Red Aggro list top 8s. “
 Danny Brown
Bought (MTGO)
  • 36 packs of Khans of Tarkir (MTGO) at 1.3 tix each.
Bought (Paper)
*These are cube pickups:
  • Strip Mine (Fourth Edition) for 456 points
  • Thirst for Knowledge (Mirrodin) for 49 points
  • Tezzeret the Seeker for 1542 points
  • Mind Twist (Revised Edition) for 322 points
  • Lightning Berserker for 78 points
Bought (Pucatrade)
  • 2 Dack Fayden at 2496 points each.

 

Danny says:
“I started buying the KTK packs six at a time at 1.38 tix each. The bot I was buying them from lowered the price almost every time and I ended up paying 1.27 tix each by the last six. This left my total buy-in at 47.28 for the 36 packs, or 1.3 per pack. This pack price was completely driven into the ground due to oversaturation of the market by giving out KTK as prizes for the last six months. Now, though, Dragons of Tarkir is the prize pack for Constructed events, andKhans is a set with fetch lands. I haven’t done a lot of MTG finance-style activity on MTGO, but 1.3 per pack seems like a fine buy-in, and these tickets were just sitting there anyway.”
 
Foil Dack Fayden currently has a 10 times multiplier, which is probably appropriate for a powerhouse Vintage and Cube card. That said, Conspiracywasn’t widely opened, and unless Dack is reprinted somewhere, I can’t see this price doing anything but going up. It briefly flirted with a negative spread last week, but now it’s down to a more normal 28 percent. At the very least, I don’t see myself losing money here, especially since I used PucaPoints, and I don’t think it will be that hard to convert these points into cash on a 1:1 basis (meaning I believe that eventually a buylist will pay $25 for this). 
 
As I focused on in my introductory article, you’ll notice that I am using the non-cash resources at my disposal to pick up cards.  If you leverage your collection in the right way, you can be active in MTG finance while rarely spending actual money. I didn’t spend a dime on the game this week, but I expect to be able to profit of Magic anyway.
 
Lightning Berserker was 100 points last week, and will likely continue dipping until 25, but again, I embraced a lack of patience and went for it. Tezzeret could go down if reprinted in Modern Master 2015, but that seems like a longshot to me. All the other cards here shouldn’t be moving in one way or another and are good to have on hand for the format.”

 

Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin)

Bought

  • 20x See the Unwritten @ $3

“Card is looking good after taking the top slot in the rounds leading to Top 8, and should be good in the fall.”

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.

ADVERTISEMENT: Get the Cube Starter Bundle with the 3rd Edition Grimoire Deck Box, the brand new Grimoire Deck Box designed specifically for the red mage in you. 

Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir: Day 2 Coverage

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

Top 8 (in order)

  1. Ondrej Strasky (GR Unwritten Atarka)
  2. Adrian Sullivan (UB Control)
  3. Martin Dang (RG Aggro)
  4. Jason Chung (UB Control?)
  5. Shota Yasooka (UB Control)
  6. Marco Cammilluzzi (Abzan Control)
  7. Thomas Hendriks (GR Atarka)
  8. Andrew Ohischwanger (?)

Heading into the Top 8 the cards to watch are See The Unwritten, Dragonlord Silumgar, Silumgar, The Drifting Death, Whisperwood Elemental, and Dragonlord Atarka as cards that can see further gains if they reach the Finals.

Round 16 (Standard Round 10)

12:30 pm: Seth Manfield (Atarka Abzan) vs. Shota Yasooka (UB Control). Yasooka easily establishes control and takes Game 1. In Game 2 Dragonlord Silumgar steals an important Siege Rhino. Manfield tries get it back with Atarka, but runs up against a Silumgar’s Scorn cast as Counterspell and Yasooka takes over again to put himself into the Top 8 with our 2nd UB Control deck.

Round 15 (Standard Round 9)

11:35 am: Strasky closes out his match putting See the Unwritten into the Top 8 for sure. Expecting a bump on this card toward $5 if he wins with it Sunday.

11:16 am: Eric Froelich (Jeskai Tokens) vs. Adrian Sullivan (U/B Control). I’m really liking Jeskai Ascendancy as a pickup later this summer under $2. Sullivan uses Ugin to clean up Game 1. Froelich has trouble with land flood, allowing Sullivan to take Game 2 and qualify for his first Pro Tour Top 8 in a 20 year career in the game.

Round 14 (Standard Round 8)

11:13 am: Willy Edel breaks down his Sultai whip deck splashing Dragonlord Atarka, a card that seems likely to push up towards $20 exiting this weekend.

10:22 am: Martin Dang (RG Aggro) vs. Ondrej Strasky (Atarka Unwritten). Dang puts the slower deck away in quick order Game 1. Strasky stabilizes in Game 2 with Whisperwood Elemental. Strasky wins the match off of a strong See the Unwritten to put him out of range of the low casting cost aggro deck.

10:18am: Manfield (Abzan Atarka) vs. Andrea Mengucci (Abzan Control): Manfield continues his quest to conquer the Italian players this weekend.

10:10am: Samuel Black (RG Bees) vs. PVD (Esper Dragon Control): This is a key matchup this weekend with the control deck favored. An early Ojutai from Da Rosa is backed up by Silumgar’s Scorn and Silumgar the Drifting Death to dominate Game 1. PVD gets Ojutai and both Silumgars in play in Game 2 to totally destroy Sam Black.

Round 13 (Standard Round 7)

9:53am: Patrick Dickmann on Deck Tech #2 today. Jeskai Dragons!  Anger of the Gods (2), Valorous Stance, Aether Spouts (1) main deck. Leverages Draconic Roar, Silumgar’s Scorn and Haven of the Spirit Dragon with Thunderbreak Regent (4), Dragonlord Ojuatai (3), Icefall Regent (2) and Stormbreath Dragon (1). This is special to me since I built this deck 2 weeks ago and am running it in Standard. Dickmann is undefeated with the deck so far.

9:11am: Seth Manfield (Abzan Atarka) vs Marco Cammilluzzi (Abzan Control): 2 copies of Atarka define the Manfield deck. The card is everywhere this weekend and selling briskly. Elspeth once again doing work on camera here in Game 3. Manfield advances to 10-2-1 winning the match with his unique Abzan build.

9:04 am: Joel Larsson (RG Dragons) vs. Rick Lee (Abzan Aggro). Deathmist Raptor showing up again here, this time in the Abzan Aggro deck. Players head to Game 3 with one game a piece.  Dromoka’s Command doing good work against Larsson in Game 3 and Lee takes the game for the match win.

Round 12 (Standard Round 6) 

8:37 am: Dech Tech: Ondrej Strasky is featuring Atarka Combo (G/R Devotion). Deck starts with the Elvish Mystic, Sylvan Caryatid, Rattleclaw Mystic and Courser of Kruphix.  Mid-range threats include Polukranos, Whisperwood Elemental as 4-ofs, and Surrak, Hunt Caller and Boon Satyr as 2-ofs. See the Unwritten and Dragonlord Atarka as 4-ofs at the top end. Deck is 5-1 so far, and Ondrej is 10-2 so far.

8:15 am: Marco Cammilluzzi (Abzan Control) vs. Andrea Mengucci (Abzan Control): The Italian players take a game each off camera and we join them in a tight Game 3. This game likely to be decided based on who can stick an Ugin to trump any Elspeth, Sun’s Champion that might make it into play.

8:08 am: In Game 2 Cuneo gets down a Dragonlord Ojutai and throws off the danger of a Rending Volley from Cohen using Valorous Stance. Cuneo manages to fend off all further threat with control answers and puts Cohen down with ease and takes the match.

8:01 am: PVD (U/B Control) vs. Makihito Mihara (GB Constellation): PVD steal a Polukranos from Mihara with Dragonlord Silumgar to easily take control of Game 1.

7:46 am: Justin Cohen (Red-Green Bees) vs Andrew Cuneo (White-Blue Control): Cohen’s tech includes the ability to use Roast or Chandra, Pyromaster against his own Hornet Nest to create a pile of early bees. Stormbreath Dragon, Whisperwood Elemental, Courser of Kruphix and Chord of Calling are additional notables. The Cuneo control deck is running many of the usual suspects including a host of counterspells, End Hostilities and Dig Through Time, as well as Secure the Wastes to hold off aggro decks in the early turns. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is running the game for Cuneo, further proving her continued value in Standard.

———————————————————————————

Day 2 Set-Up

Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir has thus far been everything we could want in a pro level tournament, with a plethora of interesting new decks and a ton of drama. The metagame on Day 1 in Standard has advanced the possibilities for new and renewed strategies including Red/Green Bees, Bant Dragons, Jeskai Ascendancy Combo and Strength of the Fallen Devotion. Here’s our coverage of Day 1 so you can get caught up.

So far the stand out spec has been the run up of multi-purpose Dragons of Tarkir rare Den Protector. which has spiked from $1.50 to $4.00 within the last 24 hours.

Now after 3 rounds of Khans block draft, the stage is set for 5 more rounds of Standard to figure out our Top 8 players and decks.

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.

PT Finance 101 and Deal or No Deal

Good morning, and happy Pro Tour Friday! These weekends are some of my favorite all year. Even though we live in a time of plenty in terms of streaming Magic, there is just nothing like watching a Pro Tour. We’ll get to a couple of smaller topics as well, but I want to discuss what I am going to be doing this weekend, and what you should be doing also. We are also going to talk about my new favorite game in the whole wide world.

Pro Tour Finance 101

Before we begin, there are a couple things to know about Pro Tours to understand why they are unique. First of all, they have the highest stakes of any Magic tournament (outside of the new Worlds format, which is a closed event and only hosts 24 players), and they have very low attendance compared to most Grands Prix. Pro Tours are also in a weird space where they are open to the public, but are largely not considered public events. If you live near a city hosting a Pro Tour, it is cool to go check out, but there are largely not going to be the kinds of things catering to you that a GP might feature (don’t expect that $5 Commander pod to fire, for example). This used to not be the case, and for a while Wizards tried to offer other events to draw in people who weren’t local, but it largely didn’t work. Pro Tours were also briefly closed to the public, although that only lasted for maybe a year.

publicexecution

The reason why I stress the attendance aspect is because it directly impacts the amount of vendors interested in coming to the events. While big events like GP New Jersey or GP Las Vegas are great opportunities to buy and sell, Pro Tours are largely the opposite. According to the Wizards website, there were at most two vendors at Pro Tour Fate Reforged. There were three vendors at Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir, but none of the big names you would have expected to see made the trip to Hawaii. The last Pro Tour I personally attended was PT San Juan1 (what we would today call “Pro Tour Rise of the Eldrazi”), and there were actually a few big vendors there, but there was also the WPN Championship and a few other unique events happening there that same weekend.

A lack of on-site vendors means that players will often need to bring entire sets of Standard (or more!) to be personally prepared, or expect to pay a hefty premium to get the cards they want at the event. Add to this the fact that Pro Tours are occasionally held in somewhat exotic locales, and the scarcity becomes even more of a factor. Now, crazy “on the floor” prices for events are not anything new—but what they highlight is demand.

Widespread demand for a card means that several different testing groups have all “discovered” it, and that it factors prominently into the environment that is expected for the weekend. While the floor price most likely won’t stick in the outside world, the old one is sure to go up.

Something that is important to understand about Pro Tours is the impact that a restricted playerbase can have on a tournament. Since many of the elite players travel and prepare for the tournament far in advance, they are more likely to properly assess the hierarchy of threats in the format and develop a control strategy that is able to foil those threats. When given the opportunity, many of the world’s best players will opt to play a control strategy, as it typically is able to reward skill more than an aggressive approach. Perhaps to put it more accurately, better players will play decks that allow them to leverage their skill to an advantage. The upside here for us is that typically the cards that reward that style of play are more difficult to assess during spoiler season, and may currently be underrated.

Here are a few cards I am watching this particular weekend and why:

dragonlordsprerogative

Dragonlord’s Prerogative: I’ve been talking this up for a while, but the truth is that it needs to show up this weekend if it is ever going to. The “if dragon” clause doesn’t actually hurt you if you can’t meet it, and in some matchups it is going to be largely irrelevant. It’s good on rate, and buying in at the floor feels like a good opportunity (waka waka!).

Ojutai Exemplars: This card could very well be one of the best threats in Standard, or it could be a total bust. While the price has stayed pretty close to $7, the buylist price has actually risen since release. This could be indicating that demand for the card is strong and dealers don’t want to get caught with it out of stock.

The downside here is that if you go too deep on them, you’re going to be stuck with a bunch of copies of a white mythic four-drop that cost you $7 each. I’d snatch up a couple in trade as a hedge, or take a flier on a couple off of PucaTrade, but I’m not comfortable enough dropping about $30 on a set.

pitilesshorde

Pitiless Horde: Just like Prerogative, this card is so cheap that it won’t really destroy you if you don’t hit the mark on it. It’s a flexible threat that can be cast on curve in an aggressive deck, or very quickly close out the game in a control list. Black also has a lot of really sweet cards right now, so even a light splash for Thoughtseize is enough to cast this card reliably. Also, it matches up well against Ashiok, which seems like more than mere coincidence.

dromokascommand

Dromoka’s Command: In case you haven’t heard, I really like this card. I’m not sure about the financial upside here, since I’m not sure how much higher the price can go right now, but I wanted to be on the record that this card is bananas.

Dragonlord Atarka: This has sneakily gone up a couple bucks in the last few days. This is the kind of card that seems like an ideal target to try and cheat into play—and seems absolutely busted with multiple copies of Rescue From the Underworld. Of course, that is most likely not what is happening here, since a RG Dragons deck won the Standard Open last weekend (with two of these maindeck).

siegerhino

Siege Rhino: Haters are gonna hate, hate, hate, but he’s just gonna siege, siege, siege.

Deathmist Raptor: The card started presales around $5, and is now three times as much. If there is going to be a deck that takes full advantage of this card, it is at least being tested in preparation for this weekend. If it doesn’t appear, or the deck puts up an overall poor finish, these may begin to slip.

dragonlordojutai

Dragonlord Ojutai: This card has gotten expensive quickly. It definitely seems like a potential new UW Control finisher, but those typically only have one or two in the deck, not four. I actually expect this to start to go down, but if it does hit this weekend, I expect the deck to have four Dragonlord’s Prerogative in it.

Descent of the Dragons: Somebody is going to have an early feature match playing the deck that runs this and Battlefield Thaumaturge, and the hype train is going to briefly go crazy. The second you see this in round five or whatever, be ready to sell your Thaumaturges (if you have them). Neither card is something I like long-term, and the deck is, in all likelihood, not very good.

If you have any cards that you are watching, or want to talk about one I picked, let me know in the comments!

Deal or No Deal”

Pack Wars is a game-play variant that has a lot of different rules depending on who you ask. My favorite version, however, actually comes from the sports cards community: any number of players open a pack, and the player that opens the most valuable card wins all the packs opened that round. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with prices and bust extra packs. It’s very quick, though, and the suspense doesn’t build much (you pretty much know if you’ve won or not when you see your rare). Last week, my long-time friend (and local game store owner) Eric and I came up with an elegant solution that we call “Deal or No Deal.”

There are two ways to play—head-to-head or multiplayer. I think the first option is the most intellectually enticing to me, but the second one is what we have played the most. Either way, I’m getting ahead of myself, so here are the rules.

Head-to-Head Rules: Two players split the cost of a single booster pack (packs are $3 at Eric’s, so each player would pay $1.50). Open the booster without looking at the contents, remove the token2, and shuffle the pack. You may have a neutral third party randomize the pack if you so choose. Then, place the contents face down and spread out. Roll a dice to determine who goes first (or something more creative if you so choose). The first player will pick one card and reveal it and move it to the side. Now the second player makes their selection, reveals it, and moves it to their side. This repeats until all of the cards have been selected. The cards you picked, you own. Hopefully you got the better picks! The idea here is that if you play twice (or an even number of times), you have the potential to “break even” by getting a rare half of the time, but you could also win twice in a row!

Multiplayer Rules: Same basic thing, but each player contributes a pack. This way, there are multiple rares in the “pool,” a higher percentage chance for a foil, and more tension. It is also possible to get multiple rares for your $3 (or whatever your particular cost of entry is), so there is the sneaky potential for value. This mode is a lot of fun, because you can track how many rares have been revealed, and it seems there’s always one that doesn’t get turned over until the very end.

This game solves some of the inherent problems with other Pack War games. In the “best card wins” arrangement, the winner is simply whoever opens the best pack—you know right away that your Harbinger of the Hunt isn’t going to take down their Dromoka’s Command, and typically the only “excitement” is seeing which bulk rare has the highest TCGplayer median price. This also doesn’t have the value negative center that “Flip It or Rip It” has—it merely redistributes the pot, not destroys it. Next time I play, I’m going to record a round and post it.

Well, that’s all for this week. Good luck this weekend, and come on, Dragonlord’s Prerogative!

Best,

Ross

P.S. I’m interested in doing a mailbag article soon because they are less work because they are fun and people love them. Got a question? Submit it in the comments.

1 I went as a railbird, not a participant.

2 Obviously this is difficult to do if you are using Innistrad and Dark Ascension packs, since the check cards have Magic backs. If you are doing that, I say leave it in. Suspense!

Singletoned Out

I’m pretty excited by Zurgo Bellstriker. My first deck was mono-red, and back in those days, Ironclaw Orcs was considered one of the better red creatures for RDW. Don’t believe me? Check out Jon Finkel’s list for Worlds 1998.

ironclaworcs zurgobellstriker

Of course, Ironclaw Orcs wouldn’t be remotely playable these days. Zurgo Bellstriker hits a nice balance between power level and nostalgia, which is a great way to call back to now-obsolete-but-still-classic creatures.

I don’t just like Zurgo Bellstriker for the nostalgia factor, though. I actually think this is a powerful card, and it seems like tournament results so far agree with me. And a 2/2 for one will definitely see play in Modern and Legacy, right?

goblinguide monasteryswiftspear

On second thought, it seems like Modern and Legacy Burn decks have all the one-drops they need. Zurgo obviously isn’t going to see play in Commander, and I’m not about to say that Tiny Leaders will have a huge impact on his price, given that we’re still in the early stages of that format.

So it’s a Standard-only card, right?

You’re forgetting about the most important format: and Zurgo is pretty darn good in Cube.

Happy Cube
Preston Farr Sketch Blog

In Modern, Zurgo would have to be better than one of the two one-drops that Burn wants, and he’s just not. In Cube, though, Zurgo only has to be better than the worst card in the color. The fact that Goblin Guide is still the undisputed king of RDW doesn’t matter. What matters is that Zurgo is a pretty nice upgrade over something like Frenzied Goblin.

What Does This Mean Financially?

Maybe nothing! At the time of this writing, copies of Zurgo are $3.47 for non-foils and $8.61 for foils. Realistically, Cube will not drive the price of non-foils much if at all, meaning that cards only playable in Cube generally don’t have a huge non-foil cost.

Let’s take Gideon Jura as an example. This card was bonkers good in Standard, but at five mana, hasn’t really broken in to Modern. It’s also nowhere near as good in a multiplayer format as in one-on-one play, which is probably why I have never seen it cast in Commander (not to say it’s never happened—I just don’t play a ton of EDH).  Given these facts, Gideon is basically at the floor price for a good planeswalker:

gideonjura

But as you can see, the foil prices are about four times those of the non-foil copies, despite the card really having no demand from any established format other than Cube.

I’m not one of them (as I stated pretty emphatically last week), but many Cube owners like to foil out their lists. This means that, much like a Legacy- or Vintage-playable, if a card is good in Cube, the foils of that card are likely to increase sharply compared to their non-foil counterparts. This is especially true because not every player needs a Cube, and those that do have them only need one copy of each card. Foils are significantly rarer than non-foils, and that shows up in Cube demand.

It’s hard to find cards that are only good in Cube. A lot of the non-eternal playables are Commanders staples and vice-versa. Gideon Jura was a pretty good example, but here’s a few others that fit the bill to varying degrees (thanks, in some cases, to being banned in Commander):

Brain Freeze: $1.17 non-foil versus $5.83 foil
Upheaval: $1.99 non-foil versus $17.49 foil
Opposition: $2.76/$3.17 non-foils versus $31.24/$34.89 foils
Braids, Cabal Minion: $3.09 non-foil versus $32.77 foil
Reckless Waif: $0.08 non-foil versus $0.99 foil

You can see that cards deriving demand primarily from Cube (and I think the above apply, but feel free to prove me wrong in the comments) generally have a five- to ten-time multiplier on foil copies.

Granted, cards that are only good in Cube are few and far between, but adding additional demands to a card can only make its price go up. Thus, finding cards playable in Cube plus other formats that have a foil price only about double of the non-foil price may be good opportunities.

Zurgo fits that bill, but don’t buy Zurgo. This card was just released, and unless RDW just completely takes over Standard and stays top-tier, I don’t see it doing anything but going down for some time now. Zurgo foils at $2 compared to $1 non-foils? That’s when it might look like a tempting buy.

Speaking of red one-drops that are good in Cube and basically nowhere else, Firedrinker Satyr non-foils and foils are currently available for $0.79 and $1.81, respectively. I’m more inclined to wait until after rotation, especially since Satyr isn’t exactly a premium one-drop, but this looks like one with potential to at least double up.

Understanding Cube’s Weak Points

If you don’t play Cube, you may not realize what cards Cube players are most aching to see released. If you do know this information, that makes you better prepared to make moves for cards fitting in a particular category.

For example, I’ve talked a lot about red one-drops so far, and for a very good reason. Assuming a cube is supporting aggressive red decks (which I guess means assuming it’s not the Legacy Cube),  you simply can’t have enough good one-drops in your list. The same is true for white, as evidenced by the five-times multiplier between Soldier of the Pantheon‘s price points ($0.75/$3.78).  In the most recent set, Dragon Hunter might be a foil worth keeping an eye out for, although it’s uncommon and already at $2. Still, it’s new and will likely go down, which is why I’m saying keep an eye on it rather than to go buy out the internet.

Most of the two-color combinations are very deep, and most cubes don’t have a ton of slots for two-color cards. In particular, Boros, Izzet, Selesnya, and Azorius cards are going to be hard-pressed to fight their way into cube lists, since these colors already have so many great options.

The two-color pairs with the least depth are Dimir, Orzhov, and Simic. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any new Orzhov or Simic cards in Dragons of Tarkir, but we did get a couple tasty Dimir dishes:

dragonlordsilumgar silumgarscommand

There are a lot of factors that differ between Dragonlord Silumgar and Sower of Temptation, not the least of which are print run and age, but 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. The foils are already over $20, which just goes to show the cube owners are already prioritizing the blue-black card to help shore up a weakness in their lists.

Silumgar’s Command received high praise on the Joy of Cubing podcast, but virtually nobody expects it to be a player in Standard or other competitive formats. Foils are already $7.88 compared to the $1.53 of the non-foils, but I expect at least the non-foils to drop below a dollar. Could this be one of those cards that’s only good in Cube? If so, keep an eye on that foil price to see if you can jump in at a reasonable floor.

There are other things that cube owners are always on the lookout for, especially good mana rocks (meaning they cost two or less, or produce more than one mana) and good equipment (few and far between these days). There’s nothing like that in Dragons, but it’s something to be aware of moving forward.

Cube Makes the World Go ‘Round

At least that’s what enthusiasts of the format want you to think.

In reality, Cube is important to MTG finance because it lets us all play awesome cards that aren’t really good in multiplayer or competitive eternal formats (or are so good they’re banned, as is the case with a few of the cards I listed above). Many of these cards were Standard staples in their days, and are thus important to Magic history, but are in danger of being forgotten because nobody’s playing with them.

Besides people collecting for the sake of collecting, who else is going to want a copy of Eureka?  What about Old Man of the Sea? How about just Savannah Lions, which used to be considered overpowered but is now getting close to outclassed in Cube? Once we do reach the point of the Lions no longer being good enough, the card’s only demand will be from collectors and maybe kitchen-table players. That’s kind of sad, right?

Cube doesn’t generally cause huge spikes in non-foils, although it can certainly cause certain foils to get rather expensive. But Cube does keep cards like Upheaval and Opposition relevant, even as they’re banned or outclassed in every other format in which they’re legal. To me, the more relevant cards out there, the easier it is to make money with Magic. And isn’t that why we’re here?

So just like Jason exhorting you to try out Commander, I’m telling you that learning the ins and outs of why Cube is Literally the Best Format Ever™ will help you to better appreciate yet another aspect of Magic finance that can make you money. Happy cubing!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY