Conjured Currency

Beaten by Avacyn and Ixidron, Part 1

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Alright, we’re laying off of the forced food titles for now. And don’t worry, this isn’t an EDH “bad beats” story about how I lost to a deck that contained both Avacyn, Guardian Angel and Ixidron. Instead of analyzing the Pro Tour that took place last weekend (several of my fellow writers already took care  of that before me), I’m going to be digging through my metaphorical closet, and checking up on some of my spec boxes.

I’m sure you’ve heard this common piece of Magic finance advice thrown around at least once or twice: “Just put in a box and forget about it for X years.” I’ve given that advice to countless people about many different cards, and used the logic myself to justify holding certain cards or product. While that mentality might occasionally help you from getting cold feet and selling out earlier than you should, it also has the downside of potentially forgetting to check on the card for significant periods of time.  I may or may not have missed out on significant profit margins by neglecting to actually flip through this box as often as I should, and the “tl;dr” of this article could basically be summarized as “do that.”

However! You want more than a synopsis of two words, right? I know that I’m definitely guilty of leaving cards in my spec box for much longer than I should, when I would be much better off cutting my losses and dumping some of this stuff back into my binders, TCGplayer inventory, display case, bulk rare boxes, or PucaTrade haves list. This week, I’ll be doing an exercise where I go through a bunch of the cards currently sitting “in the closet,” and decide whether they stay or go. I want to go over why I tried to forget about them in the first place, where I thought the cards were heading, and whether or not it’s worth throwing them back in the box for now. This time, though, when I throw them back into the box, I’ll (hopefully) make a better mental note of what my game plan is, and you’ll (hopefully) close out of the tab with a better idea of what you might want to hold onto for the future.

White

whitespec

What Gets to Stay? 

Seance, Faith’s Reward, and Retether all have a special place in my heart. While Retether has slowly crept up to $1.50 over the past year or so, none of the others have moved much, and I’m going to keep hoarding all of them until somebody breaks them all in Modern (unfortunately, they probably won’t be in the same deck.) I feel that each of these cards just needs one or two more cards printed to send them over the edge into value-rare status.

Preeminent Captain is the younger, less appreciated brother of Crucible of Fire. Both were casual all-stars, but then everything changed when the reprint nation attacked. They both were reduced to bulk rares, but I am a firm believer that both of these cards will rise from the ashes and slowly climb back to their former glory.

While I’ve long given up on the non-foil printing of Lingering Souls (really, Wizards? Did you really need to reprint it three times?), I still like the foil versions at $5 if you’re trading for them. The FNM promo recently spiked to match the pack foil, so I think there’s a decent shot at this version slowly creeping up to maintain its advantage over the promo.

What Has to Go?

Now for the fun part. where I get reacquainted with some of the cards that taste like regret. Seriously, though, I don’t remember putting any number of copies of Brigid in this box. I don’t know why I made that decision to pull them, or what made me think that they would go up in price. Whatever. Back to the bulk boxes you and Avacyn go.

Marshal’s Anthem was actually a card I was really bullish on—the card is an absolute monster in my EDH experiences, with the multikicker allowing it to be flexible at any point in the game. Unfortunately, when double checking its price tonight, I learned that it was in the Commander 2014 deck. Whoops.

As for the rest of the cards that see actual Constructed play, I picked up the Restoration Angels back when they were $5, and should have sold into the spike for $10. I got greedy, though, and wanted to hold out thinking that they would hit $15. At this point, I’m better off just adding them to my inventory elsewhere and getting full retail for them instead of watching them gather dust. I didn’t lose money on them, but I didn’t make anything either. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the same as losing money.

Blue

bluespec

What Gets to Stay?

I really wanted there to be an Archive Trap deck in Modern. Don’t judge me. It was going to be really cool, where they would crack a fetch land (I picked these up in response to the KTK fetch land spoiling), and you would cast Trapmaker’s Snare in response in addition to Archive Trap, and mill them for 26 at once. This was going to be awesome with Hedron Crab and Glimpse the Unthinkable. You know what? I think it still could be awesome. There’s the added benefit that Archive Trap is a mill card, and that automatically means it’s going to maintain its value, as long as it doesn’t see a reprint.

Thaumaturge, Trade Routes, Skill Borrower, Gather Specimens, Inexorable Tide, River Kelpie, and Swan Song all fall under my favorite two-word category: bulk rare! These are some of my favorite cards to pick out of the bulk lots that get sold to me on a regular basis, although I like the cards for a variety of reasons. Thaumaturge, Routes, and Skill Borrower are in the same boat as Retether, where I think they’re extremely close to being broken in Modern and being the next Glittering Wish, depending on what gets printed in the future. Gather Specimens and River Kelpie seem way too good in EDH to be bulk rares, and even bulk foil rares. Our resident EDH finance specialist would know more about those than I would though.

What Has to Go?

For some reason, I thought Jalira would be a popular mono-blue commander, so I set aside multiple copies (both foil and non-foil) while picking through M15 collections. Not the best idea. Even if she does end up being popular (which she didn’t), there were dozens of other better opportunities (like buying infinite copies of Crucible of Fire for $.30) to make money. I should have been selling these to buylists for $1 when I had the chance; now they’re going to sit in my $.25 and $1 boxes respectively forever. The same goes for Deadeye Navigator, which I thought would be an EDH all-star by now. Whoops. Sorry, Curse of the Swine: no matter how many  Pongifys you are, the fact that you’re sorcery speed and have a bulky cost makes you terrible, and a bulk rare.

I started pulling Ixidor and Ixidron after morph was announced, thinking that it would spark an interest in a casual 60-card morph deck that also utilized some of the older cards with the mechanic. While the foil of Ixidor jumped to $80, I figured that the non-foil could at least show a bump to above bulk-rare status. I was quite wrong. I also didn’t realize that Ixidron was even in the Commander 2014 lists, so that is definitely a red flag that I need to scour the lists of supplemental products more carefully, even if I don’t intend on buying any of them. I managed to avoid buying  Junk Diver because I actually looked at the red deck, back when I wanted to examine the Nekusar Effect.

Black

blackspec

What Gets to Stay?

I’ve already talked about Nyxathid extensively in my past two articles, and I just managed to sell off the rest of my foils copies after those spiked. Interestingly enough, the non-foil still hasn’t caught up, lagging at around $3 or $4. I think that the non-foils can still creep up to $5 or $6, so I’m holding on until then and then unloading. I’ll make sure to catch the exact moment when I sell on this one, because I’ve kept my finger on the pulse of the card so readily.

Plunge into Darkness, Necrotic Ooze, and Heartless Summoning are the black versions of Retether and Trade Routes here. They’re bulk rares (except for Ooze, which hangs out at around $1), so there’s not much to be lost by picking them out whenever you see them lying around in collections or on sale somewhere. Necrotic Ooze and Skill Borrower probably even go in the same deck eventually—I just think it needs one or two more broken activated abilities to protect itself form Bolt and get there. If there’s ever a combo deck with any of these cards, expect the price to spike hard and fast.

Meanwhile, Necroplasm seems like a perfectly fine place to be with the slow rise of Tiny Leaders. While the foil has crept up ever since the format gained traction, the non-foil has stubbornly remained a bulk rare. The card was only ever printed in the original Ravnica, and is a powerful sweeper of token strategies that just never dies. Is it going to be $10 tomorrow? Probably not, but i’d rather pick them out of bulk and wait instead of getting $.25 a piece for my copies. I don’t think foils are a bad play at $3, either.

Soul Spike already, well, spiked, up to $3 from bulk. However, I missed the opportunity to sell out on all of my copies, because I literally forgot that I owned them. The hype is over for now, and the deck that caused them to spike certainly didn’t stick around very long. At this point, I’m going to wait and see if it pulls an Amulet of Vigor at the next large Modern event; I’ll keep a much closer eye on it this time.

What Has to Go?

Some of these don’t even need explanations—they’re just obvious failed specs that I need to rip out of there and throw into the quarter box. Pain Seer, Baleful Force, and Palace Siege were all duds. Crypt Ghast got hit with a reprint in Commander 2014, stunting its growth and forcing me to settle with letting them ship out of my dollar box every now and then. Sudden Spoiling and Army of the Damned are both extremely powerful cards in Commander, but it looks like the degree to which the Mind Seize deck was overprinted is too much for them to handle, and I need to suck it up and just let them go for $1 each instead of hoping to strike it big.  Lastly, Ob Nixilis is an extremely powerful card, but I don’t think non-foils are the place to be. I’d be happy swapping these out at a 5:1 ratio, and putting the non-foils in my dollar box for casuals to become addicted to, while waiting for the foil to creep back toward the $10 range.

Meanwhile, I did manage to win out on Toshiro through Tiny Leaders. From $.25 to $2, I plan on buylisting my copies to CCG House for $1.50 and calling that a closed case. It probably would have been nicer to be on the foil end of that spectrum, but oh well.

End Step

I might sound crazy for saying this, but I feel like Tamanoa might actually be worth something eventually. It’s an obscure, niche rare from Coldsnap with zero reprints, and foils are only $3. Not being legendary is obviously a pain, but weirder cards have spiked. I’m not buying any and I don’t currently own any copies (as shown by the fact that there are none in the above pictures), but it’s definitely something I would set aside in my spec box if I ever came across them in a collection or bulk lot.

The foil Bladewing sitting in my box is actually one I picked up yesterday during a trade when I was looking for a few dollars to close out a deal. I was surprised that it was only $7 and that its price graph had been so flat, considering the massive spikes of older dragons surrounding the latest set’s release. Bladewing has reprints in Commander and From the Vault: Dragons, but both of those were the first supplemental products of their kinds, so the print run wasn’t exactly high. The FTV foil is even cheaper than the Scourge foil, which is very interesting. If you’re one of the EDH dragon players, this seems like a fine pickup while you have the chance.

I’m not a huge fan of sealed product, but I felt that $90 boxes of Conspiracy were too good to pass up, especially with free shipping and a small return via eBay bucks. If you’re interested in a similar price, ChannelFireball has a bunch for $90 before shipping costs. I only picked Conspiracy because it’s something that I am confident I can liquidate to any number of players in my local area for at least $90 to $100 if I absolutely have to. The prices on the foils in these boxes are absolutely absurd, and even the bulk rare foils can have as high as a 120-times multiplier.  If you’d rather stray away from sealed product, I can get behind picking up foil singles from the set that you think you can see yourself using in the future. At the very least, they’re very safe trade targets.

Cleanup Step

So, when was the last time you went through your spec box and analyzed every single card? I think I’ll save “throw it in the closet and forget about it” for discussions on sealed product and harder to move large-scale items, but you should always be keeping an up to date finger on the pulse of your “spec” box, especially when you’re waiting for the cards inside it to hit a target price so you can sell for maximum value.

I didn’t plan on making this article a two-parter, but I have too much random stuff in my spec box to go over without boring you to death, in addition to the above finance notes that I wanted to take care of this week. Next week, I’ll revisit the rest of the spectrum of my spec box, and go over how it’s been reorganized for proper maintenance!

Until then, let me know how you handle your own spec boxes below.

Going Mad, Uncategorized

Going Mad – Hold Your Horses There, Kids

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We had an exciting weekend of Pro Tour coverage, with many of us following the coverage live, or at least tuning into the expanded chatter that social media brings to our fingertips.

Many of us acted on what we saw in coverage and what we heard through our preferred social media channels. Some of us probably even received multiple emails telling us all the hottest cards of Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir.

Every time a card that hadn’t already spiked appeared on screen, a flurry of activity ensued. I know that I immediately rounded out a playset of Den Protectors on Friday when I tuned into multiple rounds highlighting the card.

WE HAVE TO BUY SPECS OR WE’LL DIE
–Average financiers

And now plenty of people are the proud owners of way too many Den Protectors—congrats, guys, you won! After all, nothing could possibly go wrong at this point, right?

The card more than doubled in value, so all these buyers essentially doubled their money in three days. You’ve gotten all those copies you bought in the mail already, right?

Top 8

Zero Den Protectors… but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good card, right? I bet we’ll see a lot of them in good Standard decks that people who didn’t make the top eight played, right?

8-2 to 9-1

Seven Den Protectors, but I mean, come on, right? Winning eight rounds of Standard at the Pro Tour is hard. It has the best players in the world, after all.

7-3 to 7-0-2

Two. Yes, the word “two” is a complete sentence, so get over it, grammar boy [Editor’s note: I think he means me…]. A total of two Den Protectors showed up in one list that performed 7-3 in the Standard portion of the Pro Tour.

53 Problems

So taking a look at the 56 best-performing decks in the Standard portion of the Pro Tour, only three of them included Den Protector, a fact that can’t be ignored unless CTRL+F is somehow malfunctioning in my browser… in which case, we’ll just carry on as though everything I’m saying is still factual.

When you’re looking for a rare to speculate heavily on, picking the card that appeared in less than six percent of the successful decks at a tournament is probably not where you want to be.

But the good news is that all of the folks that bought these up should get most of them in the mail around the same time the price crashes back down to the price they paid. Sorry, guys!

Thunderbreak Regent Promo

re·gent

1. One who rules during the minority, absence, or disability of a monarch.

2. One acting as a ruler or governor.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Thunderbreak Regent was never meant to be the king of the format, but in the absence of a true ruler, Thunderbreak does the job. Also, did you see how F***ING SWEET that promo looks? For the first time in years, I’m going to take a real deck to Magic Game Day. Here’s some MTG finance advice for you:

1. Learn to play Magic.
2. Top eight Magic Game Day.
3. Profit!

Notice how step two is filled in here?
If you take a look at how Thunderbreak fared at the Pro Tour, you’re going to see some significantly different results. A total of forty copies showed up in the top-performing Standard lists across ten decks, a little over 17 percent of the field.
While Thunderbreak didn’t show up as much as Siege Rhino (14 decks), it’s probably a safe bet that there are significantly fewer Thunderbreak Regents in the world than there are Rhinos… and it also turns out that dragons have waaaaaaay more casual appeal than rhinos, unless you happen to be  in the ivory trade (or whatever rhino horns are actually made out of).
So what does this mean? Thunderbreak is going to continue to be popular, thanks largely in part to its amazing little sidekick Draconic Roar. I still think this card has a little more room to go, probably another couple dollars after we see it tearing up an SCG open or two over the next couple of weeks, and there’s a pretty good lifespan in front of it if either Magic Origins or Battle for Zendikar feature a five-drop playable dragon to replace Stormbreath.

Analog Lag

One of the biggest pitfalls of Magic speculating is the idea that everything is a quick flip and a quick double up.  This is the finance equivalent of playing roulette and putting a stack of chips on black, repeatedly. Sure, the first time you hit, you’ve doubled your money (never mind that this poorly thought out metaphor doesn’t take into account the physical shipping of cardboard thousands of miles ).

Nobody can deny the appeal of buying  in a ton of copies of cheap rares at $2 a piece and “selling” them for $4, because maybe making $2 on a $2 card feels cooler than making $3 on a $7 card, (shout-out to Dragonlord Silumgar). But high liquidity is hard to achieve in paper cards and one of the biggest risks to these types of spec targets is the “analog lag” we see in the time it takes orders to be picked, packed, and shipped. The lucky ones had their orders shipped out on Friday, but I’m sure that some sellers didn’t get them into the delivery pipeline until Monday.

The Good News

There is good news, I promise. And by “good news” I mean “there’s still hope” that Den Protectors see an uptick in play over the coming months as more cards round out the archetypes

When I tuned into coverage on Friday, I saw a ton of sick plays with Protector on camera, so I added a couple copies to my PucaTrade wants list to fill out a playset. After waiting ten minutes and seeing no trades confirmed, I added two foil copies and two prerelease copies as well, figuring that I would take whatever editions sent first and remove the rest… then I fell asleep on the couch and woke up to find that I was to be the proud owner of too many copies of this card.

So now I can speak from experience that going too deep on DPs is not where you want to be.

I still have hope that all is not lost: I threw my Den Protectors and Deathmist Raptors into a Sultai Reanimator shell and had an absolute blast taking the deck out on its maiden voyage. Protector is a really sweet creature that allows for so much value to be ground out in the long games … I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of this card.

Completely Unrelated

This weekend, I also had the opportunity to work as a buyer for Nerd Rage Gaming at the SCG States in Indianapolis. Some of the things you notice when looking at binders all weekend for hours at a time are the cards that everyone wants to get rid of, the cards that nobody wants to get rid of, and the cards that nobody even had in their binders to make offers on.

I bought a ton of Monastery Mentors this weekend, even after lowering the buy price. This signals that players just aren’t as excited about this card going forward and there is a good chance it’s going to keep creeping downward over the next couple months.

Another card I bought way too many of was Tasigur, the Golden Fang—I couldn’t offer a number low enough to make people say “no” when it came to selling these guys. There’s a good chance that the supply of this card has reached critical mass and the people that went deep on these have lost confidence in further (short-term) gains.

I saw virtually no Silumgars, Atarkas, or Ojutais over the weekend, which signals that all of these cards are going to remain strong going forward. We sold every copy of Atarka or Ojutai within a few minutes of buying them—both of these were wildly popular all weekend long.

The cards that most surprised me this weekend were Dragon Whisperer and Ojutai Exemplars. I only saw one copy of each of these cards in anyone’s binders over the weekend, which is somewhat puzzling to me. I know Dragon Whisperer definitely has a fan base out there in both the mono-red and the dragon lovers communities, so I could understand that this card was being held onto by someone. But where were the Exemplars? I don’t even have an operating theory on this one outside of coincidence plus variance.

Fetch lands were very liquid all weekend long: we brought them in easily and sold them just as fast. Fetch lands are a good holder of value and people’s willingness to sell them shows that they’re still readily available in trade binders. Multiple people selling me fetches over the weekend commented in one form or another that they’d be easy to replace, so that signals that it might be a while before these see any significant upward pressure.

Until next time, you can find me on Twitter at @GoingMadlem, and I encourage you to check out my article on MythicMTG.com later this week, too. I’ll be going over the most fun Standard brew I’ve played in quite a while.

City of Traders

Pro Dragons Tour Dragons of Dragons Tarkir Dragons

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By: Travis Allen

A few days ago, Sam Stoddard posted on Twitter that R&D’s goal was to make dragons competitive in Standard. Mission accomplished, guys.

2x02_The_One_Where_They_Build_a_House_(107)

The breakout deck of the event had to be UB Control, insomuch as a well-known archetype can break out. After no real presence at any major events since the release of Dragons, this was the coming home party many were looking forward to. It wasn’t just reasonable, either—PV commented that it’s the best deck he has played at a Pro Tour in quite some time.

As many suspected, Dragonlord Silumgar is in fact the real deal. Without a removal spell handy, Silumgar puts games away in a hurry. Adrian didn’t run Silumgar, though he seems to be in the minority. Both the other two control decks in the top eight ran him, and he was peppered throughout the other top-scoring Standard decks. Consequently, some time over the weekend, he was bought out to nothing but a scant few foil copies available. His price isn’t soaring out of control though; I see a few copies available for $10 to $12 as of writing this on Monday evening. Even though Silumgar is an excellent creature in these decks, he simply isn’t needed as a four-of. While Ojutai and Atarka are arguably playable playsets, Silumgar is often found solo or as a pair. I anticipate we see his price hover between $8 and $13 for the time being, and quite possibly dipping below that.

Dragonlord Atarka, on the other hand, is the real winner of the weekend. There were seven copies across two decks in the top eight, and no shortage in the other top-performing lists either. It turns out that the mana engine represented by Nykthos, Sylvan Caryatid, and Courser of Kruphix is enough to get people to play four seven-drops in their decks. This won’t be the last we see of this going forward, and while the number will vary between one and four, I wouldn’t be surprised if most decks wanted nearly the full set. There’s simply no better creature to flip off your See the Unwritten with Surrak, Caller of the Hunt in play. Green Devotion is going to be a contender right up until October when Theros rotates, and even once it does, people won’t forget how strong Atarka is. Her current price tag of nearly $20 is still on its honeymoon, but I doubt we see prices below $10 in the near future. I’m a seller today, though once we’re at $10 I’m happy to start picking up copies in trade. The omnipresent casual demand for huge awesome dragons quietly exerts quite a force on cards like this.

The known dragonlord coming into this weekend, Dragonlord Ojutai, did alright, if not quite as well as Atarka and Silumgar. We saw two copies on Sunday and five decks in the top sixteen played him, as well—four of them control and the fifth Wescoe’s Bant list. All said, that’s six high-profile decks he appeared in, though five were the same archetype. What’s that mean for his current price tag of nearly $20? I’m selling into post-tour exuberance. A $20 price tag usually indicates a card is the best or second-best card in the set, and I’m not convinced yet that it’s Ojutai. I seem to be in the minority on this, though, so if you want to hold, I guess I can’t fault you. I’m concerned that as a blue and white dragon, he lacks a lot of the casual support that the others enjoy, which means he has to work a lot harder in Standard to sustain the same numbers.

A blue dragon we can afford to be more interested in is Icefall Regent, up to $5 on the back of this weekend’s admittedly minor showing. I didn’t see much of it on camera, though I didn’t watch all of the coverage. There were five main deck copies between two of the control lists, and people apparently latched on to that. I liked it in my set review, and I still like it now. It’s great at stopping Siege Rhinos or Surraks from beating you up, and following up a Thunderbreak with Icefall is going to be absolutely miserable to break up from the other side of the board. At $5, I feel like we’re at 75 percent of the card’s price potential, so I’m holding off, but if we see this dwindle back below $3 it’s worth getting in.

Thunderbreak Regent did reasonably well, and the $10 price tag is sticking. We’ll see variations in this number in the coming weeks, though don’t expect it to stray far south of that. Don’t feel bad trading into a set at this point if you need them.

One last dragon worth noting is the big kahuna himself, Ugin. Five of the top eight lists had at least one copy, and six of the sixteen top-performing Standard decks ran at least one as well. That means that 38 percent of the best Standard decks in the room had Ugin in them. Taking a quick peek at Modern statistics, the only cards played in more decks than Ugin is are Lightning Bolt, Island, and Spellskite. Standard has five or six cards that show up in more decks than Ugin, but still. His presence is impressive. Add to this that he’s desirable in nearly every single other format—Modern, Legacy, Cube, EDH, and casual—and you have the makings of possibly one of the most expensive cards in Standard since Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Ugin is comfortably over $30 right now, and I think it’s more likely than not that he reaches $40 while still Standard legal, with prices north of that entirely possible. I’m willing to trade for him aggressively, and if you can get foils in trade for under $100, take those deals. When was the last time we saw an iconic mythic character that pinged every single player demographic in every single format?

Halfway down the mana curve is Surrak, the Hunt Caller, who is certainly worth watching after this weekend. While not every deck capable of generating GG was running him, plenty were. It seems as if he’s going to be a frequent member of the green party in the coming weeks. With copies available below $3, I’m happy to trade for him all day. At the very least, you aren’t likely to lose any value in that transaction, and over the next few weeks we may see him quietly creep up to $5 to $6 or more.

As for cards that play especially well with Surrak, I’m a big fan of See the Unwritten. We already saw a taste of it in the top eight at the Pro Tour, with Ondrej flipping Atarkas into play off of it. Surrak turns on the ferocious trigger, and putting just about anything into play will turn on his hasty formidable trigger. It’s a match made in heaven. With dragons running rampant and Eldrazi on the horizon, I feel like you can’t miss buying into this at $2 to $3 a copy. When the first Eldrazi gets spoiled this September, this is going to hit double digits. I’m in for sixty or seventy copies right now, and I’m looking to pick up more during the summer lull.

Sticking to cards red in cost and spirit, I don’t see much beyond Zurgo Bellstriker worth discussing. As is often the case, the format’s burn decks are often comprised heavily of commons and uncommons. It seems as if Zurgo was a two- or three-of most of the time, which doesn’t surprise me. While UB control may not mind getting stranded with an extra copy of Silumgar, or Abzan midrange with an extra Elspeth,  a small red decks is really going to feel it when one of its cards is legend-locked in its hand. His price is currently around $3, which feels about right. There’s upside here in the $5 to $6 region if it turns out that cubes and casual players alike take to dash, but without that additional demand, he should stay at $3 and below.

The top eight composition tells a story. While that story is one many will read, it’s not the whole story. Only one player in the top eight had a top-performing Standard deck; the rest got there in no small part due to their draft records. If these eight decks weren’t the best Standard decks of the field, then what was?

Six of the top sixteen were various flavors of Abzan. The breakdown leans in midrange’s favor, though both aggressive and controlling builds were represented. Siege Rhino, Anafenza, and Tasigur were the cornerstone threats of these decks, with Dromoka’s Command making a healthy showing as well. Both Siege Rhino and Tasigur being as cheap as they are is an anomaly and every single time I sit down to open another’s binder these days, I’m scanning for them. Getting them at $5 and $6 in trade is going to pay off this fall unless Wizards decides to totally hose me by putting them at uncommon in Origins or something. I also don’t really understand Anafenza at $4 or $5 right now. She’s a premier threat in Abzan Aggro, which I guess we’ve decided is a real deck. I’m happy to trade for her as well right now. I don’t think you stand to lose much here, and there’s a definite upside near $10 as a mythic.

Dromoka’s Command is showing up in lists all over the place, from Abzan Aggro to Bant Heroic. Tom Ross wrote a well-deserved love letter to the card last week describing that it seems to do far more than it reasonably should. With copies pushing $10, I can’t advocate acquiring any at all, though if you need them to play with, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. The ship has basically sailed here: sell ‘em if you got ‘em, and stay away otherwise.

 

The rest of the top sixteen was a mix of UB control, various similar types of green devotion, and a clever Collected Company brew out of Bram Snapvendragoners that looked to flip Avatar of the Resolute and Reverent Hunter into play. It seems like everyone and their brother wants Collected Company to be good right now. I’ve seen it floated as an engine in more Modern decks than Heartless Summoning already, and even in wacky UG Standard decks with Shorecrasher Elemental and Silumgar Sorcerer. That $4 price tag is going to hang strong for a while as people try their damndest to get it to work in every format imaginable. There’s a possible jump to $8 on the horizon if it really does get cracked, though that level of success seems remote at this juncture.

Den Protector had a solid showing on camera this weekend, which drove it upwards of $5. It plays well as a method for combo decks to Gravedigger lost components, midrange decks to buy back Downfalls, and aggressive lists to keep up the threat density while presenting a semi-evasive clock. Overall, it’s a very reasonable creature, though I think we’ve found its price ceiling. The effect is useful, but morphing is a high cost, and it’s not splashy or exciting as “just” a two-for-one. I’m selling my spares.

On lands: fetches should stay steady and rise down the road. I take them in trade anywhere I can get them. It looks like the pain lands started dropping off recently, which is to be expected. Get rid of them soon. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is just going to keep rising. Trade for it. Haven of the Spirit Dragon’s price remains intransigent at $4. That’s a nut I expect to crack this summer.

One of the juiciest parts of Pro Tours always comes in the two weeks after, when pros begin discussing the decks they landed on, but more importantly, what they didn’t land on. Some of my favorites to watch include Sam Black and Zvi Moshowitz. While the Pro Tour does an excellent job of fleshing out a metagame for the rest of us, it’s easy to forget that it’s only a single event on a single weekend. Decks that were not viable at the Pro Tour may be excellent two or three weeks later.

For instance, with the success of control this past weekend, expect to see a lot of Foundry Street Denizens in the near future. As red decks beat up on control, midrange strategies such as GW Devotion lists will rise in strength, and then combo decks like Jeskai Ascendancy will be able to beat up on a midrange-heavy format. Lee Shi Tian and MTG Mint Card were on the deck this weekend, and while he tweeted that the format took the wrong turn for them, it doesn’t mean we won’t get there eventually.

Knowing what decks just missed the meta is good, especially when they’re new brews. Maybe Sam will tell us that his team was on a Sarkhan Unbroken list right up until the night of the Pro Tour, when they realized it just couldn’t beat UB Control. That type of information is excellent—we get confirmation of cards and interactions that are definitely strong enough for Standard but that just didn’t have the weekend they needed. Insights into decks that weren’t chosen and why they weren’t chosen gives us a crystal ball through which to see into the future. We can’t be sure that our supposed Sarkhan Unbroken deck will assuredly take over Standard at one point, but we can at least know that it’s capable of it. Watch for “almost played” lists for insight into what may take over the next Standard GP.

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Putting the “U” Back in “Obvious”

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No.

I know what some of you are thinking. “This title is some clever pun about how there is a ‘u’ in ‘obvious’ and it’s a play on the word ‘you.'”

You’re so vain.

No, this article isn’t about you, it’s about EDH cards that make a nice, predictable shape on their price graphs—and how we can use that information to our advantage. If you want, we can talk about the factors that contribute to that shape. Just kidding, we’ll do it if I want, and I want. Sorry if you were looking forward to not learning anything today. Yes, I realize I promised this would be a series about EDH finance, but we still have to talk a little finance.

I feel like the EDH case is easier to make to the finance community than the finance case is to make to the EDH community. If you’re someone who just wants to slang some cards, why would you care about graph shapes?

Basically, my hope for this series is that I may be able to make some of this material accessible enough that someone who is interested in saving money but not interested in speculation or really even paying a ton of attention to the finance market can save some money on EDH staples they will buy at some point regardless. I also think people who are interested in finance but not terribly interested in learning all the idiosyncrasies of EDH can avoid making some mistakes with card buying. This is a concept that both groups can apply without having to learn a ton about what the other group is up to.  Would I hate it if this piece got passed around /r/EDH? Nope, not even a little.

Predictability

We could have made a  prediction about the price of a card like foil Chromatic Lantern and it may or may not have been true. The problem with making a prediction about the value of a card is that sometimes we put our blinders on and look at the price as something we view through a keyhole. We get one glimpse of the value as a fixed point in time and sometimes it jives with our prediction and sometimes it doesn’t. Most people don’t view finance this way anymore, preferring to see a graphical representation of price as being less static, which is preferable. Otherwise, trying to get a sense of a card and how it fits into the overall tableau of prices is akin to the proverb about the three blind men feeling different parts of an elephant and all having very different ideas about what the elephant looks like.

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Thought of the Week UK

How do we avoid their ridiculous fate and get a sense of what the next elephant will look like before we wait two years for enough data to see if our predictions panned out? Well, we could palpate said elephant for two years, or we could just look at a picture of an elephant and extrapolate. You’ve seen one elephant, you’ve seen them all: that’s how predictability works. So what does an elephant look like?

The Elephant in the Room

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The “elephant” metaphor is a goofy one, but I think it illustrates how sometimes we put our blinders on. We all do it. I bought foil Lanterns and it was for too much money. I sold foil Lanterns and it was for too little money.  How badly did I punt? Well, not terribly and in fact, I did really well by most MTG finance standards. However, I was groping around in the dark and making guesses based on my experience, which means I was in okay shape since I spend a lot of time doing this. However, when the blindfold came off and I saw the real picture, I felt a little foolish, like a guy who described an elephant as having two tails and no trunk because he spent too much time around the ass end. What did my elephant drawing look like?

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The black arrow represents where I bought my foil Lanterns and the red arrow represents where I sold. In for $10 (cash on site, no fees or shipping) and out for $17. A 70 percent gain is pretty good in this game, but not great. Now, am I kicking myself for not selling at $25? Nah, the window was too small. Still, now that I have the whole “hindsight is 20/20” picture, we could have easily doubled up and done a lot better. The thing is, I had ample opportunity to buy in at $7.50 (cheaper from players, although anyone who has a foil Lantern isn’t usually coming off of it for $7.50!)—longer than I had to buy in at $10. I was following the price so intently, waiting for it to come down from its initial price of $15, that I didn’t stop to consider that there is a right time to buy and I might not have been buying at the right time. Let’s look at the three parts of a clumsy elephant metaphor an elephant and see where we buy and where we either sell or dive into a theoretical swimming pool full of our theoretical “winnings” like Scrooge McDuck.

Tail

This is a politer way to say “ass end.” It’s possible to buy too early, and when we’re dealing with EDH foils, impatience is a real thing. People are impatient about the cards they want to use to play Standard events, and EDH players have read the spoiler and identified the cards they want for their decks, and the foil people have already decided they want foils. Sometimes buying before the card really establishes itself means you can save money, especially since people tend to assume a two-times multiplier for foils even though the EDH foil multiplier is usually higher. Cards with no 60-card applicability are usually identified as EDH cards very early, and for this reason, it’s almost never a good idea to buy in early if you want a foil copy. For the purposes of simplicity, I’m lumping Cube in with EDH to an extent, which is convenient and not ridiculously intellectually lazy. Cube has nuances, but for the moment, we’ll assume Lantern is a 100 percent EDH card because I don’t feel like picking another example that has no cube applicability now that I’m this deep into the article.

It’s possible to buy too early and this is what happens in 99 percent of cases. If you think a card’s value can go up in the short term (like two to three weeks), preorder, I guess, but this very nearly never happens. If you’re impatient, understand you’re going to overpay and you deserve it. However, I almost bought in at the ass-end by buying in at $10. Buying in even earlier at $15 would have been the mistake I mostly managed to avoid.

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All you see is a foil non-mythic in the post-mythic era screaming out of the gates at $15. That’s pricey for a card in Return to Ravnica, a set that everyone knew would break sales records. If all you can see is the tail, you might think an elephant looks pretty ridiculous, but figure that’s how things are. You can buy in here if you want, but that’s almost never a good idea.

Trunk

Party! This is the upside area. We saw a decline and then the price started ticking up. If this happens after the card rotates out of Standard and it has no use in Modern or Legacy, it is EDH playability, Cube desirability, and casual appeal that will buoy the price. And buoy the price these things did, sending Lantern to $25 for a brief, shining moment. It will see $25 again, and relatively soon. They aren’t printing more unless they do another Commander’s Arsenal, and even then, the set foil will maintain most if not all of its value.

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If you’re inclined to sell, this might be a time to do it. You can buy here if you want the card, just like you could have if you were impatient. But the relationship between the trunk and tail is a special one because sometimes people don’t check out the midsection and end up losing out. How? It’s probably pretty easy for you to figure that out—incomplete information leads to incorrect conclusions.

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If you imagine someone who checked the price of foil Lantern when preorders went out and decided it was too expensive and decided to wait a while for the price to go down and checked after rotation, you can imagine them seeing the price be roughly the same and assuming the price didn’t go anywhere. Finance people check prices a lot more often, and people trying to find a deal may check more often than that, but we’re illustrating a point here.

Cards that are EDH staples have a nice, predictable U shape to their price graphs, and we can use that to our advantage. If you ignore the $15 at both points of the U because you know what the shape is going to look like, you’re in good shape.

“Got it. Don’t pay too much for cards. Great article, moron.”

The point here isn’t that you should pay attention to prices, although you should, The point isn’t that you should avoid paying too much by buying too early or too late, although you should.  Did you already know that a card like Lantern would start high, get lower, and go back up? Great, so did I. And yet, I was a blind man fumbling around to an extent. I knew that prices would go down because supply would go up as more packs were opened and the set was drafted, but my buying activity was still suboptimal. I bought below $15 thinking I was being smart and I still ended up overpaying. I paid too much attention to the numbers on the graph when the letters were just as important.

“Letters?”

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Peak supply happens when the set is just about to stop being drafted. People redeemed foil sets of RTR for the shocks and gave zero craps about EDH cards. People busted a foil Lantern in a draft somewhere in the world probably once a day.  Why buy in for $10 in March 2013 just because $10 is less than $15 when the price was $2 cheaper a month later? Did I know that would happen? Well, no, but it was pretty predictable, wasn’t it? In hindsight, of course it was. And that is what we want to do in the future.

The Next Elephant

The next card that will follow this pattern will be an EDH staple, likely one printed in Battle for Zendikar. It will preorder at a very high price initially based on Cube and EDH hype. At peak supply, the price will fall. It will likely flag until rotation or after rotation and then it will begin to tick back up as copies dry up and people build more decks.  A lot of the cards in Battle for Zendikar will do this because of how supply and demand works, but EDH cards don’t have other factors obscuring their fates. EDH staples also have the distinction of being identified as desirable foils irrespective of how they fit into Standard.  We can predict an early over-evaluation, a decline, and upside. Does this work for non-staples? Not usually.

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What’s going on here?

I think I may start ending every article with a “Why isn’t this card worth more?” discussion question. So why aren’t we seeing our sexy U shape here? Is Progenitor Mimic not ubiquitous enough? Does it not get played as much as we thought it would? It has no Cube applicability like we see with Lantern, so does that mean EDH needs to take the hit for all of its price? Was it speculated on early driving the price up artificially? Are we done seeing a decline and seeing the best time to buy in? Does it have room to fall?

Understanding what is going on with Progenitor Mimic is going to help us figure out what to do the next time we see a card that looks insane in EDH, so let’s revisit Mimic next week There’s a lot going on here, and if we decide this is a good time to buy, $12 into a probable $20 feels pretty good if we can avoid getting eaten alive by fees at both ends.

Let’s start talking about Mimic in the comments and the forums and we’ll have our heads right when we revisit next week. Until then!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY