ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Advanced Economics & MTG Finance – Part 1

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By now it’s no secret that I treat MTG investing very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that I compare the performance of my MTG portfolio loosely with that of the S&P 500. And why not? If I’m going to legitimately invest real dollars in original dual lands, shock lands, booster boxes, etc. then it only seems appropriate that I compare the return on these investments with that of other investment opportunities.

But my holistic approach to investing doesn’t stop here.

This week I want to dive into a more advanced economics topic out of the field of game theory by applying one of the most well-known truisms of game theory to our favorite MTG topic: buyouts. That’s right. I believe that we could potentially apply an advanced economics concept to understand something reactionary and emotional in the MTG Finance community. Think I’m crazy? Think it can’t be done? Well, allow me to at least try.

Nash Equilibrium

Before I jump into concept application, I need to establish a few assumptions first. These suppositions are not very far-fetched, so I don’t think you’ll have difficulty accepting my thesis because of these assumptions.

First, let’s assume that when a buyout of a certain card occurs, everyone attempting to purchase the card does so “simultaneously.” That is, when we’re ready to pull the trigger and make our purchase, we aren’t waiting for someone else to take their turn making a decision before us. We click the buttons as fast as we can to purchase the copies we want. And in the meantime, everyone else is doing roughly the same thing. In other words there is no turn taking or prescribed order.

Second, we have to acknowledge buyouts occur in a non-cooperative manner. For example, when Den Protector spiked during the most recent Pro Tour, I wasn’t colluding with others in an attempt to obtain the market price I wanted. No strategy was involved in this regard. I rushed to eBay and TCGPlayer and picked up a bunch of copies as quickly as possible. I may have mentioned my actions on Twitter, but this communication was ex post facto. And even if I had cooperated with a friend, it’s not like the whole MTG community speculating on a card would ever work together – it’s an aggressive business we’re in!

With these assumptions in place, I will borrow Wikipedia’s eloquent definition of “Nash Equilibrium”:

“In game theory, the Nash equilibrium is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only their own strategy.”

John Nash was the famous economist who developed this theory and later earned a Nobel Prize for his work in the field. You may also recognize the name from the movie showcasing his genius and his struggles with schizophrenia, A Beautiful Mind.

NashHis Nash equilibrium concept describes motivations for people’s behavior when interacting non-cooperatively. (Aside: In game theory, any such interaction is referred to as a “game.” This is not comparable to playing a game of Magic – rather, the game I’m describing is the decision process of where we buy our cards and for how much during a buyout).

If we want to look at the definition of Nash equilibrium above, we can use specific terms to describe MTG buyouts. The first part of the definition describes the “solution,” or the actual outcome of everyone’s buyout decision (i.e. total copies purchased, where they were bought from, resulting price spike, etc). The second half of the definition is a bit more advanced. Essentially, the suggestion is that all parties involved know everyone else’s best strategy. In MTG buyout terms, we need to make one more assumption: the best action at the beginning of a buyout like Den Protector’s is to buy up copies at or near the starting price.

Den

When a buyout happens due to legitimate demand, the card’s price jump is more likely to stick. Therefore, purchasing copies at or near the starting price during a buyout is definitely the best strategy – it makes you the most money! Everyone knows this, and everyone knows that everyone else is also eager to buy those $1.50 – $2.00 Den Protectors before they double or triple in price.

Thus, we say the Nash equilibrium of the buyout is that everyone buys up more and more copies of the card and the price catapults higher. This is the best strategy because those who bought at $1.50 – $2.00 can in turn sell their copies for profit.

Prisoner’s Dilemma

With Nash equilibrium established, I next need to define the crux of this week’s article: The Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s this canonical example of game theory that I believe can be applied to MTG buyouts in a profitable way. But before jumping ahead, I first need to share another definition. Wikipedia defines the prisoner’s dilemma as “a game analyzed in game theory that shows why two purely “rational” individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears that it is in their best interests to do so.”

Originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher, the Prisoner’s Dilemma is a concept that can be applied to a diverse number of real-life interactions ranging from cola advertisements to nuclear stand-offs. My argument is that this sophisticated game theory dogma also applies to buyouts of Magic cards.

Explaining the Prisoner’s Dilemma is best done by example. The namesake explanation involves two strangers caught robbing a store together. They are brought to the police station where they are interrogated individually. The police do not have sufficient evidence to convict the prisoners of an armed robbery charge – only illegal possession of a weapon, which of course merits a much lighter sentence. So in an attempt to drive out a confession, they offer each prisoner separately the same deal: rat out your friend by confessing, and you will be rewarded with no imprisonment.

What’s the Nash equilibrium in this case? Put yourself in the shoes of one of the prisoners. If you assume your partner in crime is going to confess, then there are two possible outcomes: you don’t confess and take the fall, letting your partner walk freely while you suffer 20 years in prison for armed robbery and lack of cooperation with the police; OR you do confess, earning you and your partner a lighter, yet-still-strict sentence of 5 years in prison for cooperation. Given these two options, your best choice is to confess at least ensuring you avoid an unnecessarily long prison sentence.

Now what happens if you assume your partner is trustworthy and he is going to remain silent? Once again you have two choices: if you also remain silent, then the police cannot convict you of the armed robbery (there’s too little evidence) and you both receive a one-year sentence for illegal possession of a gun. On the other hand, if you confess, your partner would go to prison for 20 years while YOU get to walk away a free person. Given these two options, your best outcome is still to confess, since it means you don’t have to do any time in prison! That’s the best possible outcome for you!

The picture below depicts this interaction in a 2×2 grid.

dilemma

No matter what you assume your partner will do, the best decision you can make is to confess. And that’s what happens – both prisoners confess netting themselves the five-year prison sentence.

The advanced part of this comes into play when we compare the actual outcome with the optimal outcome. It is undeniably ideal for both prisoners to remain silent – it nets them the least number of total years spent in prison! But because of the selfish assumptions of Nash equilibrium (i.e. there’s little emotional motivation for helping the other prisoner), both prisoners end up with a worse outcome because they do not cooperate.

How does this apply to Magic? I’ll argue there are two applications.

Application 1: Instead of dealing with prisoners and robberies, we’re dealing with purchasing a quantity of a Magic card at a particular price. We’re all faced with the same decision point during a buyout – do you pull the trigger quickly and grab copies or not? The more copies you buy, the more opportunity you have for profit.

In this game, buying up a ton of copies is equivalent to confessing and cooperation involves collusion. How do the outcomes look?

If everyone rushes out and purchases a ton of copies in an attempt to make bank, many participants in this game are stuck paying too much. As we’ve seen many times in the past, a buyout leads to a card’s spike followed by a race downward in price as people try to sell their copies for a quick buck. Savor the Moment is a recent example of this trend.

Savor

Notice how copies are scooped up aggressively starting in the $2.50 range in late March and ending in the $5.50 range, only to see a drop back down to around $3.25 most recently. When everyone decides to aggressively buy, the price jumps too high, too quickly. In these cases many people are left holding excess copies they are unable to sell for much profit because the higher price inevitably leads to a glut of supply as people try to cash in on the spike. Of course, those who don’t jump in with their hard-earned cash are in the worst shape of all. They own zero copies and they are stuck either paying a higher price or waiting for a drop that may never occur (usually the price ends up higher than the starting price but lower than the peak). No one wants to be in this scenario as it’s the worst possible outcome.

So what does everyone do? They all buy up as many copies as they can, sending the price higher and higher! Missing out on the “next big opportunity” is just too painful.

My argument is that this is another example of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. We all “defect” by purchasing a ton of copies while leaving those on the sidelines regretting their inaction. But this leads to a subsequent market glut and difficulty in liquidating copies at a profitable price. I’d argue the best possible outcome would be if the people who wanted copies most purchased the playset they need and those who don’t really want copies just ignore everything. Such cooperation would mean that the people who want copies would get their copies, but those who don’t simply stay away. The price may tick up a tiny bit, but there would definitely not be a huge spike. Then people who decide they don’t want their playset anymore could sell for a small profit and there would be no race to the bottom. And those who didn’t buy before aren’t faced with paying 50-100% more should they decide they want to obtain copies.

To me, this is the very definition of a healthy market. When a card increases or decreases in price it does so slowly and due to the natural shift in supply and demand. Crucible of Worlds is a great example of a card that has never been “bought out,” therefore leading to healthy price appreciation and no huge drops.

Crucible

Wrapping It Up

So what’s the course of action here? Unfortunately, there is really little we can do to avoid the trap that is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. There’s a reason why both prisoners tend to confess, and Coke and Pepsi choose to advertise, and countries choose to invest in nuclear weapons, etc. etc. It’s not the optimal outcome for the entire population, but it is what inevitably happens thanks to Nash equilibrium.

I think the best thing we can do is at least make ourselves aware of this phenomenon before buying into the next spike. It would be naive of me to believe everyone can suddenly cooperate – it’s against human nature. But if we could at least communicate a little better as a community then perhaps we can soften the blow for those left holding the bag in a buyout. For example, when we make our purchases we could be more transparent with how many copies we’re buying and how much we are willing to pay for said copies. We could also make it public what our strategy is for selling – timeline and desired sell price.

Lastly, we could strengthen our relationships with others throughout the community. One thing Nash equilibrium always assumes is that everyone behaves rationally and in their best interest. Friendships and emotional attachment are disregarded. But of course these things DO exist in reality. By developing stronger ties with the rest of the MTG community, maybe we can all be slightly more sensitive to market manipulation. We’ll never eliminate price spikes altogether, but maybe we can help our friends avoid losing money by buying into the hype too late.

I’m out of words for this week’s column, but perhaps you’ve noticed something. I only shared one application, but I said there were two! In similar fashion to a “You Choose the Scare” R.L. Stein novel, I’ll pose the question to my readers: did you enjoy this topic enough that you’re curious to hear my second application as a Part 2 to this article? Or would you prefer I moved back to more traditional MTG Finance writing? Leave your opinion in the comments section, and we’ll let the majority rule!

Until then, thanks for reading!

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

  • There’s another reason I used Crucible of Worlds as an example in my article. Nonfoil copies of the rare are completely sold out at Star City Games. Tenth Edition copies are sold out at $30.79 and Fifth Dawn copies are sold out at $32.35. If these don’t see reprint in Modern Masters 2015, there’s no reason they won’t continue to slowly chug higher.
  • I honestly thought Bosium Strip was a forced buyout that would result in a subsequent price drop, just like my Savor the Moment example. But this has not been the case. Perhaps not enough copies of the card exist for the market to truly be “flooded” by eager speculators. In any event, SCG is sold out of the card at $4.89 and Channel Fireball currently has a buy price of $2.50!
  • Another card that has healthily grown in price over time is Umezawa’s Jitte. The card has always been popular in various formats where it isn’t banned, but it’s never really in the spotlight. Star City Games has only 3 total copies in stock, with 0 NM copies at a $36.55 price tag.
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MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (April 26/15)

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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 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 20 – April 26, 2015

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

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

SOLD (Pucatrade)

Most of my purchase activity again 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. I moved in a bit on Risen Executioner as a potential answer to point removal and counterspell strategies dominating the Standard metagame, chiefly in the form of Esper Dragons. Executioner, played in a shell with enough Delve or recursion to selectively remove other creatures from the graveyard, has the potential to force through a lot of damage against the relatively ponderous control decks. The card is performing for me in my Abzan Final Form deck so far, so I’m happy to pick up a few sets of a small set mythic at $2.50 that could easily find upside during it’s tenure in the format while enjoying long term casual upside. If the card doesn’t break out soon, I’ll be looking to snag more copies around $2 in early summer. Similarly, Flamewake Phoenix is something I’m working on reinvigorating in a tempo based U/R/w shell using Frost Walker, Stratus Dancer, Ashcloud Phoenix, Rabblemaster, Ojutai and Dromoka to pressure Esper Dragons. $1.25 is a nice price for a good rare with some decent chance at upside. The rest of my paper buys were just opportunistic price snags.

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.

Jared Yost

Jared says:

“Based on the thoughts I had about Commander 2014 targets, I thought I would pick up Teferi based on casual popularity. Along with Freyalise, he is one of the most desired Commanders from the set. Most players agree that the blue deck is the weakest, and my thinking is that many sealed copies of the deck are probably still sitting on shelves across various stores. This makes picking up the singles from the deck a good play and I found a nice deal on Teferi.

I picked up Retract due to seeing this crazy Modern deck called Cheerios, featuring Retract as one of the combo enablers for the equipment drawing engine that Puresteel Paladin creates. I’m not sure if the deck is powerful enough to rise above the hate of the format but for near bulk rare prices I couldn’t pass it up as a speculation target.”

Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin)

Travis says:

“Retract is in that funky Puresteel deck Gerry Thompson featured. It’s a Darksteel rare, 1 mana, powerful but niche effect, complete price floor currently at $.40 each.”

Danny Brown

BOUGHT (Pucatrade)

SOLD (Pucatrade)
“I missed the boat on See the Unwritten at 300 points, and I believe it jumped as high as 600 points after Battle for Zendikar was announced. Now I’m getting them for an acceptable price of 410 points. 
 
The other three cards are for my cube. The Thirst for Knowledge was not at all near mint, but I chose not to report it because it’s 49 cents. I don’t know if that makes me nice or part of the problem.
 
Of all the shock lands, I’m deepest in Steam Vents (thankfully). Every once in a while, I ship a few out to restock my Pucapoint stores. I’m a little surprised the Tectonic Edge promo isn’t higher, but with a potential reprint in Modern Masters 2015, I figured it couldn’t hurt too much to send it now. I’m pretty much out of Modern now, so I kept the one Deceiver Exarch in my cube and shipped the other three, because again, a reprint at common or uncommon would just kill the nearly $1 price. Finally, I lost value with the Blackcleave Cliffs by putting the stamp and the PucaTrade number on the envelope before noticing that it was a local who wanted the card. I probably could have salvaged the situation, but laziness won out when I could have saved myself the stamp and just met the dude at the LGS. Oh, well. In any case, I got this card for a dollar at Scars rotation, and I’m sick of waiting for it to go higher, so I shipped one out. I can’t imagine it will get a slot in MM15, but anything’s possible, I guess.”
Douglas Johnson (@roseofthorns)

 BOUGHT

  • 13x copies of Daretti, Scrap Savant @ $2.89/per
Douglas says:
“How many Planeswalkers in this game have an average cost of less than $5 and aren’t named Tibalt? Go ahead. Check. Daretti is an extremely powerful Commander in his own right, and fills a unique niche in the mono red Planeswalkers by having an artifact theme. I bought these from Troll and Toad, who also ships singles orders for free that total over $25. Even though this will likely be a long term hold if I’m aiming to sell for anything near $10, I have no doubt that these will be extremely easy to liquidate in my display case or trade out to local casual players for at least $5-6. “

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. 

Danny Brown

Trade Better

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Trading is one of the most fun aspects of Magic finance, but it can also be a huge pain. Between dealing with unreasonable people, trade sharks, and a constantly shifting market, actually completing a trade can be quite an undertaking.

But when we do make a good series of trades, it makes it all worth it, right? Flipping five or six uncommons you opened at the prerelease for a mid-tier rare that you trade for a spec target that doubles up and gets you a Thoughtseize or a fetch land is exactly the kind of story that makes people want to get involved in Magic finance. It makes a lot of sense that the MTG finance boom came right after Jonathan Medina’s Pack to Power series: everyone wants to be able to flip bad cards for the best cards, and Medina demonstrated to what extent it could be done.

traderoutes

Trading isn’t nearly as prevalent or popular as it once was, of course. I hardly ever find anyone at my LGS with a binder these days, and when I do, it’s virtually impossible to get any sort of fair deal. In recent experiences, I’m finding that people are either intent on sharking or so afraid of being sharked that they’re too timid to make big trades.

With this in mind, maybe it’s time to take a moment to go over some basic concepts involved in trading. For the casual traders, it will help you feel confident that you’re getting a fair deal. For the financier types, maybe it will help you realize that you don’t need to be getting twice the value as your partner in every trade. Making more trades with smaller value gains is generally more profitable than trying to rip off every person with whom you trade.

Understand Who Has the Power

It’s ten minutes before FNM starts, and you overhear an acquaintance trying to pick up his last Siege Rhino before the event. You’re tuned into MTG finance and know that Travis Allen has been touting this as a good pick-up for some time, and you happen to have a few copies in your binder. You don’t necessarily want to trade any away, but when the guy comes and asks you if you have one available, you figure it can’t hurt to take a look at what he’s offering.

“I’m not really looking to trade a Rhino away,” you say, “But if you make it worth my while, I could be convinced.”

You have the power in this situation. Your trade partner “needs” this card, and you don’t feel a particular drive to trade it away, so a “fair” trade is not to be expected here.

Many players completely fail to grasp this concept. In their minds, the only thing that matters is what the TCGplayer mid says, and if you ask for more than that, then they assume that means you’re trying to rip them off. As a result, these players enter a lot of tournaments with sub-par decks lacking many of the cards they need.

Asking for additional value to encourage you to give up a card you don’t feel particularly driven to unload is not trade sharking, unless you’re lying to your trading partner about what the cards in question are worth. If you start asking for unreasonable amounts of value, you might be approaching shark territory, but as long as your trading partner knows what’s going on, he or she can always just walk away. Then you’re not a shark—you’re just a bad trader who failed to close a deal. It’s when you misrepresent information that things get shady.

This power dynamic shifts a bit if you have cards you’re actively looking to trade away. I’m going to invoke Travis Allen again here, because he touched on this exact topic in his article earlier this week.

Basically, you shouldn’t be afraid to take a small loss on soon-to-rotate cards today if it means dodging a major loss on them tomorrow. I’ll give you a recent example. This past Friday, someone flipping through my binder expressed a passing interest in my Courser of Kruphixes and Sylvan Caryatids I hadn’t managed to get rid of just yet. My eyes lit up when he asked about them. He wasn’t exactly sure he wanted them, and was waffling a bit. Eager to make the trade, I gave him a few dollars in value on a $35 trade, and I made sure to let him know that I was doing that for him.

–Travis Allen

Travis went on to point out that if he didn’t make that trade, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have been able to trade off the cards until they were worth only $20, losing money in the long run.

So in that case, the other guy didn’t need the cards, he had a vague interest in them. That’s not the time to ask for extra value. If you think the card is going to go up or have a particular attachment to it, just don’t trade it. If you’re actively looking to get rid of it in the face of greater losses, give up value if you have to, within reason. Do you want to make the trade or not?

 Trading Horror Story #1

It’s June 1999, which would have made me 14 years old, I guess (yes, I’m an Old™). I have just opened what might be, in my young eyes, the sweetest card in Urza’s Legacy: Palinchron (aside to my aside: holy crap, I didn’t realize this had been ascending from $5 where I picked a copy a few years ago. Paying attention is important).

I don’t remember exactly what I was doing at the LGS that day. I was probably playing a match, and an adult guy I did not know asked to look at my binder. I let him, he asked if the Palinchron was for trade, I told him probably not but maybe, and he asked if he could take it out of my binder. Because I was a dumb kid, I said yes.

It wasn’t until later that night that I realized I’d never negotiated with him, and what do you know? The card wasn’t in my binder anymore, either. I never saw the guy again.

Lessons

  1. Don’t trade while you’re playing a match.
  2. Don’t ask to trade with someone who’s playing a match.
  3. Don’t let people steal from you, especially in such obvious and avoidable ways.
  4. Don’t steal from kids. (This one is especially important!)

Trading Up and Trading Down

“Trading up” refers to trading several cards of lower value into one or more cards of higher value. “Trading down” refers to the opposite: trading a high-value card for lots of cards of lower value.

Another concept players often fail to grasp is the idea that expensive, often out-of-print individual cards are harder to obtain and thus more desirable than an “equal value” amount of many lower-value cards.

Cards that are just above bulk, in the $0.50 to $1 range at TCGplayer mid, cannot just add up to Standard staples using the same valuation method. You may find finance-minded mages willing to trade down real cards for bulk rares, but they’re valuing them at 10 to 25 cents each depending what the card in question is.

Even something like trading actual Standard staples like Thunderbreak Regent or Elspeth, Sun’s Champion into out-of-print Modern or Legacy staples like Vendilion Clique, Tarmogoyf, and dual lands is probably going to require some sweetening by the person trading up. If you’re dealing only in trade, it’s a lot easier to pick up a pile of Abzan cards than it is to find someone in possession of and willing to trade a Volcanic Island.

Unless the person trading down is motivated for one reason or another (I’ve heard of shop owners all too excited to trade dual lands for Standard staples that people at their LGS will actually buy, for example), the person trading up should just understand they need to give up value. I recall a several-year-old Corbin Hosler article discussing trading a dual land down to a player for Standard cards (Huntmasters were involved, I’m sure of it) and Corbin explaining to the other guy that he was going to value his cards at buylist prices. The guy did not take it well, which is an example of why trading is so hard these days. Corbin was ultimately doing the guy a favor and he was not concealing information for gain, but the guy still thought it was unfair. This is why it’s so important to understand when you’re trading down or trading up.

Trading Horror Story #2

Basically by a fluke occurrence caused by the most casual of these events I have ever seen, I managed to win a Dark Ascension Game Day, including the playmat, with a non-optimized version of Illusions despite Delver being a well-established deck by that point. I just showed up because it was free to play and everybody who showed up got a Strangleroot Geist promo, which I thought was super sweet.

stranglerootgeist_MGD

I had only returned to Magic a few months earlier, at the Innistrad prerelease, so I was not very good at Magic, only vaguely aware of MTG finance (though I’ve always been value-conscious in most areas of life, so I was getting there quickly) , and not entirely comfortable in the LGS atmosphere. And get this—pretty much the only format I was playing at the time was Standard. (For real, though, I loved Scars-Innistrad Standard and would play it again if I could.)

I was playing with my sweet Gameday Champion playmat at FNM, and a guy kept asking me to trade it. I didn’t really want to, but he was persistent, so finally, I just said, “Sure, but you have to pay extra. I want thirty dollars.”

darkascensionplaymat

I had noticed that playmats generally sell for $10 to $20, so I thought I was really getting a good bargain here. Stupidly, I had failed to look on eBay and notice that these were going from $50 to $100 at the time. I traded it away for two Gravecrawlers and other junk I didn’t really want or need, basically because the guy wouldn’t leave me alone about it.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. A guy I was friendly with approached me later in the evening and said he was going to offer me four Seachrome Coasts (valued at $20 at the time) for it. This is when I was informed of the mat’s true value, and I was just crushed. The guy and his buddy took it upon themselves to go give $35 to $40 in value to get it back and offered to just give it back to me. Obviously, I told the guy it was his to keep, but he gave me a Seachrome Coast anyway, making it so I got a little bit more value for the mat and he got it a little cheaper than he originally intended. Horror stories suck, but this community can truly be awesome sometimes. (Sadly, neither of those guys play Magic anymore. For now.)

Lessons

  1. Don’t let yourself be bullied into a trade.
  2. Don’t trade something without knowing its value. You might regret it.
  3. Make good friends.

 All Things Being Equal

The best and easiest trades are when you have cards your trading partner needs, she has cards that you need, and those cards’ values are close enough that trades can go straight across with maybe some random throw-ins on one side or another.

Of course, Magic financiers don’t often have needs, per se. There have been times where I was trading with no particular goals but to make value. In these situations, you’re looking to have cards that people will need, so that you can have power in trades to get a little extra value. If you’ve got a bunch of stuff that nobody wants, you’re not going to accomplish your goals.

What about trading with financiers? Is it just not worth the time? In my experience, it often isn’t, but if you feel like doing it, it really becomes a game of who is speculating on what. You’re not going to get much current value out of your trading partner, so you need to figure out what he is bullish on that you’re bearish on, and vice versa. This is a way that two financiers can walk out of a trade and both feel happy.

Finally, I recall back in my Standard days that Silverblade Paladin was going for $9 or $10 at Star City Games but had a TCGplayer mid of $12. If you know anything about SCG prices, you know that it’s very rare for SCG to have a price below TCGplayer mid. I used this knowledge to trade for Paladins with people who used SCG prices and to trade away Paladins to people using TCGplayer prices. Noting value differences like this can often make you money.

As a general rule of thumb, it favors you to trade up using SCG prices if possible, and to trade down using TCGplayer prices if possible. SCG prices on high-value cards are closer to market price than bulk rares, which all get marked up to at least $0.50.

Trading Horror Story #3

One time, I was looking through a guy’s binder and a page had a crushed cockroach on it. That’s extremely gross, but I just chose to not mention it and quickly turned the page.

Then I got to the center of the binder, where the folios fold and there’s a little space in the spine. The entire spine of the binder was filled with cockroaches. An onlooker remarked in horror about it, I sat there shocked and appalled, and my trading partner profusely apologized and said he had been dealing with a huge infestation at home.

I did not complete a trade in that instance.

Lessons

  1. Don’t live your life in such a way that this ever happens.

That’s all I’ve got for this week, kids. Until next time!

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Tiny Thursdays: Shu Yun’s Tempest

By Guo Heng

Welcome to the first instalment of Tiny Thursdays, a column dedicated to exploring Tiny Leaders decks, with an emphasis on the financial side of the cards used in the deck.

Tiny Leaders is a fledging format. After the Cambrian-like explosion the format experienced early this year, the hype for the Tiny Leaders simmered down. However that does not mean the format was a flash in a pan. While the incredible momentum that propelled the format during the early part of the year died down, the format is still growing.

The Tiny Leaders subreddit and Facebook group today has double the number of subscribers compared to when I first wrote about them. Tiny Leaders even have their own official forum which launched early this month, but it has yet to achieve the activity level found in the subreddit and Facebook group.

More importantly, Tiny Leaders is still driving card prices, with the latest Tiny Leaders-related increase being Blasting Station. Tiny Thursdays aims to the contribute to the growing Tiny Leaders content out there, and explore the format from a financial perspective. This column will feature a Tiny Leaders brew each week and discuss financially relevant cards in the deck.

If there are any decks you would like to see featured, feel free to leave a comment below or catch me at Twitter @theguoheng. This week, we shall start with a leader I’ve always wanted to build around: Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest.

Shu Yun Goes to Value Town

Shu Yun Tempo by Guo Heng
Decklist generated using TappedOut.net

Shu Yun is most often compared to Geist of Saint Traft, one of the undisputed top tier decks in the format, with some arguing that it would be better to just cut the red and go Geist if you are gunning for a highly competitive build. After all, Geist decks are more streamlined and the majority of their card pool overlaps with those used in Shu Yun.

There are two reasons why I gravitated to Shu Yun rather than Geist. First off, having Red gives you more options for efficient removals like Lightning Bolt, Flame Slash, Fire/Ice and Lighting Helix rather than having to lean on enchantment-based removals like Oblivion Ring and Banishing Light to bolster the number of answers in the list.

Board presence king in Tiny Leaders and Red gives you a removal suite that does compromise your tempo, on top of access to much needed sweepers in the sideboard like Anger of the Gods and Pyroclasm to shore up the matchup against swarm decks like Ezuri Elfball, and the increasingly popular Grenzo Goblins.

The other impetus to run tricolor Shu Yun over bicolor Geist of Saint Traft is Dack Fayden. Dack Fayden is probably the best planeswalker you can run in Tiny Leaders due to the ubiquity of Swords in the format.  An unanswered Sword steals games and nothing turns the tide like stealing an opponent’s Sword and bashing him or her with it. From the playtesting I did with Shu Yun, I don’t think I have lost a game in which I stole opposing Swords.

Dack’s +1 was surprisingly useful even though it does not generates card advantage. Dack’s Faithless Looting filters away those late game Mana Leak and unwanted lands. Dack’s only downside is that he is already $27, and I could not list him as one of the pick-up targets in the next segment.

This Shu Yun list was designed based on the same philosophy Modern Jeskai ascribes to, that is to out-tempo and out-value your opponent. The deck switches gears at ease, depending on the matchup and draw and utilizes a suite of cheap, efficient removals to allow you to mount your offensive and control the board at the same time.

Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor fortify your board position while you cast answers to control the board, pulling you ahead both in the tempo and card advantage race. Stoneforge Mystic digs you the Sword for the occasion. Mantis Rider is a good tempo creature that plays the role of attacker and defender.

The removal suite consists of the usual Jeskai fare, a.k.a. the best one mana removals in the format. I’ve added a Condemn as an extra one mana answer because I realised that one mana removals were something I always love drawing while I was playtesting the deck. They always trade up and as a tempo deck, it’s exactly what I want. The more expensive removals, Fire/Ice and Electrolyze usually net card advantage. Detention Sphere and Council’s Judgment are necessary evils to answer opposing Swords.

Feel free to trade one-for-one in the early game. We have the ability to refuel with Ancestral Vision and to some extent, Dack Fayden. This build guns for the midrange game, which is why I’ve included Ancestral Visions in the list.

Now that let’s take a look at the cards in the deck that are financially relevant.

The Boss Himself

Shu Yun Price

The graph above depicts Shu Yun’s foil price. I’ve always preferred to invest in foils for cards that are used as commanders or leaders. They tend to generate a larger return and more importantly, buffer better against reprints.

Shu Yun foils at $7.64 denotes a 13.6x multiplier on non-foil copies, which are going for a paltry $0.46, signifying his popularity both as a commander and leader. Shu Yun has been getting a lot of attention as a commander since he was spoiled, and rightfully so. Shu Yun is one of the most fun to build around commanders to come out from recent sets. There are multiple ways to build Shu Yun: you can either go voltron, or thread down the combo route. And Shu Yun is allegedly quite sick in 1v1.

Shu Yun is the only Jeskai leader in Tiny Leaders, which explains his tremendous popularity in the format. Jeskai has always been a competitive color combination in eternal formats and prior to the printing of Shu Yun, Tiny Leaders players have to resort to a generic 2/2 ‘legendary creature with a UWR casting cost’ to play Jeskai.

Does Shu Yun’s popularity in Commander and Tiny Leaders make foil copies a good pick-up? Certainly. Just not right now. For two reasons. First off there is something peculiar going on with Shu Yun’s price.  Shu Yun’s foil buylist price dropped 24% from $3.12 to $2.51 two weeks back. However, two days ago Shu Yun saw his foil price hike as one major vendor increased their price for foil Shu Yun.

Whatever happens, it would be safer to wait until Fate Reforged hits peak supply at the end of May when DTK-DTK-FRF drafts are displaced by Modern Masters 2015.

The Loothouse

Desolate Lightouse Price

Desolate Lighthouse, which also sees play in Modern Scapeshift and Modern Splinter Twin, besides being a good utility land in Commander and Tiny Leaders, is just a $0.54 card. And Desolate Lighthouse would not be reprinted in Modern Masters 2015.

I think non-foil Desolate Lighthouse is a great pick-up at its current price. Foils are at $6.08, which is a whooping 11.2x multiplier from the non-foils. Either the foil is overpriced, or the non-foil is underpriced, and with the Modern and Commander play it is seeing, I am compelled to think that it is the non-foil that is underpriced.

The Catchall

Detention Sphere Price

Detention Sphere is another card in the Shu Yun list above which I think is underpriced. Detention Sphere is also a mainstay in Geist of Saint Traft Tiny Leaders and is a strict upgrade to Oblivion Ring as it catches those pesky tokens on top of everything else. Token strategies are not insignificant in the format. There are spirit tokens from Teysa and Lingering Souls, Grenzo’s goblin tokens, Thopter Foundry tokens, Bitterblossom tokens and the list goes on.

Detention Sphere is a decent buy in at under $1, but I would not go in too deep. It is a popular enchantment in Commander and could well be reprinted in the next Commander set.

That is all for this week’s Tiny Leaders segment. If there are any decks you would like to see featured, let me know in the comments below or beam me at Twitter @theguoheng.

 

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY