Seeing the Unwritten

By Guo Heng

Pro Tour weekends always excite me both as a player and finance writer. It is a weekend of breakout card(s) and wild price spikes.  It is a weekend showcasing the pinnacle of Magic innovation as pros around the world attempt to break cards from the new set. And the stakes are high: find the best deck in the format and they stand a chance to win a substantial amount of cash and eternal glory in the Magic community.

The interesting cards had always been those that were initially brushed off as unplayable and it’s always a joy to watch the Pro Tour competitors prove otherwise. Those were the cards that gave me those sweet moment of realization when I saw the pros do broken things with it. Those were the cards that spiked the hardest.

Those were the cards that I beat myself up for not divining their potential during my initial evaluation, but then again hindsight is always Marit Lage. In retrospect, every investor would have bought Apple shares in the early 2000s.

I will be adopting a slightly different approach to today’s pre-Pro Tour article. I will still be discussing cards I am betting on for the Pro Tour as I’ve did for the previous ones. Today I will also discuss the misconceptions that plagued early card evaluation. In the last few years since I’ve got in touch with my Spikey side, I’ve had the opportunity to witness plenty of misevaluated cards shoot up in price as they revealed their true color in the hands of innovative brewers. I picked up a few pointers after years of berating myself for missing out on those treasure cruises.

Prohibitive Mana Cost?

Boros Reckoner was $5 when Gatecrash was released. He was the breakout card in Pro Tour Gatecrash, where he was the most ubiquitous card in the top 8, seeing play in multiple archetypes in multiple copies. He shot up to the high $20s briefly and remained at $12 for most of his Standard life (with a spurt to the $20s again when Theros rotated in, probably attributed to the Red Devotion archetype).

Boros Reckoner was obviously a force to be reckoned with, but why was he shunned during his first few weeks of entering the metagame?

Boros Reckoner has a spot in the minotaur hall of fame for being the only playable minotaur in modern Magic.
Boros Reckoner has a spot in the Minotaur Hall of Fame for being the only playable minotaur in modern Magic.

Three white/red pips gave the impression that Boros Reckoner was difficult to cast on curve. The assumption turned out to be wrong, as the first home Boros Reckoner found was in an impressive Gruul list brewed by Tomoharu Saito. The fact that an RG deck did not had issues resolving a Boros Reckoner on curve proved that the minotaur wizard was easier to cast than initially assumed.

Boros Reckoner ended up seeing play in Jeskai and Mardu decks at Pro Tour Gatecrash, including Tom Martell’s winning list, The Aristocrats. It seemed that with a mixture of shocklands and enemy-colored checklands, fogging up three red/white mana on turn three was never an issue.

This Card Dies to X and X

Master of Waves dies to board wipe. Siege Rhino gets stalled by Polukranos, World Eater. Both spiked hard after the Pro Tour that followed their respective sets. Both ended up as Standard staples.

He moonlighted as Master of Wallets in late 2013.
He moonlighted as Master of Wallets in late 2013.

How did so many players and financiers, myself included, overlooked their prowess? Here’s where the usefulness of theorycrafting ends, and the importance of playtesting steps in.

A portion of the Pro Tour Theros players steered away from Mono-Blue Devotion, concerned that Master of Waves kolds to Supreme Verdict. The power level of the synergy in Mono-Blue Devotion was not apparent even to the then Team StarCityGames until Kai Budde and Gabriel Nassif began testing the deck on the side while the rest were testing legit decks. Mono-Blue Devotion allegedly put up such an incredible win percentage that it convinced nearly the whole Team StarCityGames to switch to it (I can’t seem to find the source for this anecdote. I was sure I read it in someone’s Pro Tour report. Do enlighten me in the comments if you recall whose article it was).

The emergence of Mono-Blue marked another milestone in R & D’s shift towards a more board-centric gameplay, which could be another reason Master of Waves, a cornerstone of a synergy deck, were initially discounted as competitively irrelevant. The theory that synergy decks lacks resilience against board wipes were challenged.

No matter how powerful a card is, it will always kold to another card. R & D have been doing a pretty good job at keeping powerful cards in check with safety valves over the past few years. A card without a weak spot would probably end up on the banlist.

Wrong Comparison

The oppressive Sphinx’s Revelation was hovering at merely $5 a month after its release.  Sphinx’s Revelation drew comparison to an older card which saw little-to-no play during its time in Standard.

Sphinx's RevelationBlue Sun's Zenith

In retrospect, comparing Sphinx’s Revelation to Blue Sun’s Zenith was completely wrong, but at a glance, both cards seemed to serve the same purpose of being a control finisher. Plus life gain used to be ascribed as durdly and was considered to be inappropriate for the high society of competitive Magic.

Sphinx’s Revelation’s tacked on life gain was the sole factor that pushed the card from a just ran to a four-of staple in blue-based control decks. Drawing seven cards, even if your drew into your Supreme Verdict to reset the board, would be irrelevant if you were dead to a Lightning Bolt the next turn. But draw seven cards and buy yourself an extra turn? That is a world of difference. Now you can sweep the board and have enough life to survive a burn spell to untap and unleash your grip on the board with your clutch of spells.

Sphinx’s Revelation did not spike following a breakout performance in a Pro Tour, but that could be ascribed to the fact that Pro Tour Return to Ravnica was Modern and was taken down by Second Breakfast.

The price of Sphinx’s Revelation started ascending a few weeks after the Pro Tour when Bant Control started to abuse Sphinx’s Revelation in tandem with Thragtusk and rarely went below $20 throughout most of its life in Standard.

Too Conditional?

Topdecks be damned.
Topdecks be damned.

A card that works best only when casted off the top of your library and only if it’s the first card you draw that turn? It’s a little too conditional to be a four-off in your 75.

Even the  mighty LSV is susceptible to occasionally misevaluating a card’s potential. Bonfire of the Damned was ChannelFireball’s  preview card for Avacyn Restored. Excerpts from LSV’s constructed evaluation for Bonfire of the Damned:

“This is clearly not as insane in Constructed, but I wouldn’t mind firing it out there.”

“Where this shines is in creature mirrors, where you can blast their team, even get them for a few points, and then smash with everything. As a one or two of, since it is an X-spell, it could be pretty damned good in RG beats, or any red deck that can ramp a little and wants something to kill Lingering Souls.”

Jund, the tier one deck during Innistrad – Return to Ravnica Standard liked Bonfire of the Damned so much it ran four copies of it in its 75.  LSV was half-right, Bonfire was pretty damned good in beats. So good they ran a full four in the main. Just for topdecks like these:

It’s hard to judge the merits of a card with novel, never-before-seen mechanics like Miracles without playtesting with it.

Dragons at the Pro Tour

Now that we’ve went through the pitfalls of card evaluation, here are my picks for the breakout cards for Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir.

Tarkir dragons’ birdliness was never more apparent than in Ojutai and his brood.

Dragonlord Ojutai has spiked. At $18, Dragonlord Ojutai is the most expensive Dragonlord, double the price of the second most pricey, Dragonlord Atarka (I guess I was wrong on Atarka).

If you’ve bought into Dragonlord Ojutai at $6 after reading my article a few weeks back, now is the time to sell if you are not keeping them for yourself.  Dragonlord Ojutai is one of my horses (or dragons) for the breakout card of the Pro Tour, but at $18 he is already flying close to his ceiling. Don’t get Icarused.

Dragonlord Ojutai is one of those cards that seemed too conditional on paper, but performs better than expected in playtesting.

Draw me like one of your French EDH commanders.

I am surprised that Dragonlord Silumgar has not been seeing a much action besides Shaheen Soorani’s sideboard and as a one of in Reid Duke’s Sultai Reanimator which was runner-up in the recent StarCityGames Invitational, and Andrew Ziggas’ Sultai Reanimator, which was coincidentally also runner-up in a TCGPlayer 5K.

Perhaps the pros were merely sandbagging their super secret Dragonlord Silumgar tech for the Pro Tour.

I’ve had the opportunity to run Dragonlord Silumgar last weekend at a PPTQ and he was by far the card I was most impressed with in my deck. Dragonlord Silumgar was in my sideboard as a two of and I’ve brought him in for every single post-board game as per Shaheen’s recommendation.

Reid Duke was spot on when he mentioned that Dragonlord Silumgar ‘knocks it out of the park’ if left unanswered. Not only did Dragonlord Silumgar single-handedly took down games if left unanswered, he was a card I was happy to see when I was winning or losing. When I was ahead, Dragonlord Silumgar helped close games and transformed my Silumgar’s Scorn into Counterspell to tighten my vice-like grip on the game. When I was behind, Dragonlord Silumgar generated instant board presence. The Dragonlord held the skies pretty well too, with a five toughness and Deathtouch.

I suspect Dragonlord Silumgar is currently not seeing the play he deserves due to the perception that he dies to too many cards. Like Master of Waves. From what little experience I’ve had with him, Dragonlord Silumgar was surprisingly resilient with his five toughness. If your opponent was not running Hero’s Downfall or Murderous Cut, he or she would most likely require two cards to take out Dragonlord Silumgar, putting you ahead in parity. Like Master of Waves, Dragonlord Silumgar spells game over for your opponent if he or she does not come up with an answer fast enough.

At $7, it may be prudent to acquire your playset right now in the not insignificant probability that Dragonlord Silumgar actually turns out to be a super secret tech at Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir. I have a feeling that one copy in the sideboard is way too little for a card as game-breaking as Dragonlord Silumgar.

$7 is also not a bad buy-in price if you are interested to speculate on Dragonlord Silumgar.

Kolaghan’s Batman pose.

My last dragon in the race is Dragonlord Kolaghan. I know, I was extremely disparaging in my review of this Dragonlord. I was disappointed that Wizards spent one valuable Elder Dragon slot on an Elder Dragon that is nigh unplayable as a Commander. I also thought she was too clunky for Standard play.

Gerard Fabiano’s paragraph on Dragonlord Kolaghan changed my perception on her. Gerard Fabiano made good points that Dragonlord Kolaghan is a ” win condition that can sometimes lock your opponent out of racing back” and the fact that you can ramp out a turn five Dragonlord Kolaghan in Jund builds. However, he relegated Dragonlord Kolaghan to the sideboard at the StarCityGames Syracuse Open.

$5.50 is pricey for a mythic whose chance of breaking out at the Pro Tour is hard to predict. Dragonlord Kolaghan is the cheapest of the Dragonlords though and my recommendation would be to hold her and see if she breaks out at the Pro Tour. And maybe trade into your playset if you have the chance to do so before the Pro Tour. I kind of regret trading off the Dragonlord Kolaghan I opened in one of my prerelease packs for components to update my Standard deck for Dragons of Tarkir. I’ll be personally looking to assemble my own playset of Dragonlord Kolaghan prior to the Pro Tour.

So the die was cast. My hat is now in the proverbial ring. Those three dragons are my bets for the breakout cards of the weekend. I did not mention Thunderbreak Regent as Thunderbreak has already broke out, or shall I say stormed out, during last week’s StarCityGames Syracuse Open as one of the most played card in the top 8.

Have a good week ahead and happy Pro Tour weekend!


 

In Defense of Durdling

Since I am writing finance articles for MTGPrice exclusively now, it felt appropriate to do an introductory “first” article to introduce myself and my goals for the series I’ll be writing. Why the ironic quotes around “first”? Well, as much as this feels like a new beginning, I have contributed to MTGPrice in the past.  This is as much a homecoming as it is an introduction.

Still, a lot of you weren’t around last time I was here, so it’s all new to you. Perfect. Even though I’m merely resuming writing, I am launching a new series and I am excited about it because it’s well within my wheelhouse. Corbin introduced himself and his goals very well, and I think I would like to do the same.

I want to talk about EDH and its financial implications.

I will now take questions.

EDH Finance FAQ

Q: Why not continue your previous series from where it left off?

A: It was a little dry and technical. It was sort of a blueprint for how “not to” MTG Finance, which is useful, but I also said nearly everything I wanted to say in that series. I covered some more related topics on Quiet Speculation, but I think repeating what I already wrote is a lazy way to start a series. I am sure I will end up reiterating some things as they come up, however.

Q: What are your goals for the series?

A: I want to cover the nuances of EDH and how it uniquely pertains to finance in a way that formats like Standard do not. Some of our instincts as financiers are very good and some of them are very, very poor. Learning those nuances is very helpful in finance, and since I’ve been deep in EDH for two years, I feel like I have learned a lot I can pass on. You learn by doing, or by following along with people who have been doing. I am sure most of you would rather just read about my trial and error process than reproduce it yourself. There has been quite a bit of error and it’s been enormously instructive. I’m looking forward to passing that knowledge along to people who have great finance instincts and are eager to learn about how EDH is unique.

Q: Will you cover Tiny Leaders?

A: I am sure I will. There are some corollaries with EDH and there are some wild divergences. I don’t understand Tiny Leaders as well as I would like to, but I am investigating it on a weekly basis and learning more all the time. If I say anything about a format like Tiny Leaders that I don’t understand as well as I understand 100-card, it will be because I’m very confident in what I am saying. The last thing I want to do is lead people astray and have them end up holding the bag on bad specs that were hype-based rather than reality-based. If Tiny Leaders has staying power as a format, it’s worth taking some time to really understand it. I have some impressions on the matter that I will share in the weeks to come.

Q: Is EDH finance really all that different?

A: Yes and no. While good cards are going to be worth money and bad cards are going to be worth not money, just like in other formats, there are some nuances. I have learned a lot through trial and error and I want to impart some of that hard-earned experience. It’s easy to buy too early, sell too early, misread signals, and buy the wrong things. Good cards end up worth nothing three years after they’re printed. Mediocre cards rocket up in price. Even people who understand EDH as a format very well struggle sometimes. How can someone who doesn’t pay attention to EDH at all be expected to make sense of it?

EDH Finance isn’t harder than any other facet of finance, but there are some rules that don’t apply to other types of finance. Once you learn those rules, it will all start to make sense. You could take the time to learn some of the nuances on your own, but you don’t have to. I’ve got you covered.

Q: I don’t care about EDH.

A: …that isn’t a question.

Q: I don’t care about EDH?

A: That’s not really… you know what, forget it. I’ll actually field this one.

I don’t care about Vintage, but if I find a foil Vandalblast in a bulk foil bin for $0.50, whether or not I care about its Vintage implications is irrelevant: I am either knowledgeable enough to stack that scrilla or I’m not. My personal feelings don’t enter into what is essentially a financial transaction. In the same way, you shouldn’t leave money on the table because you aren’t an EDH player. If you know the Blackhawks are going to win the Stanley Cup, you bet on them regardless of whether or not you know how to skate.

Making smart moves in MTG finance requires you to pay attention to as many facets of the game as you can manage, so it will help a lot to at least knowing what’s going on in EDH when major events like a drastic rules change take effect or the spoiling of new cards from a Commander set get revealed. Knowing how to handle those situations means you buy ahead of hype and sell into it. That’s the play, after all.

I keep talking about how I plan to codify as much of what I’ve learned as I can, freeing you up to really focus on other aspects of finance, but I think now that I have outlined my goals for the series a bit and still have your attention, I want to make the case for caring about EDH yourself. I want to help you know what you’re talking about. I am even going to try and convince you to build a deck and play a few games. Do you have to? Nope! But I think you’ll be glad you did. You can take that to the bank.

download (8)
Better do what he says—he looks crazy.

 

In Defense of Durdling

I am a pretty late EDH convert. I wasn’t excited about the format initially and when I saw huge, durdly games with five players take up an entire card table with gigantic board states and no one able to really swing profitably, it turned me off in the same way it has a lot of people. I couldn’t see myself investing two or three hours into one game without starting to wonder which make and model of pistol had the tastiest barrel.

When Innistrad block came out, trading at large events was still a thing, but barely.  I would spend hours before the event packing my binders with a mix of casual and competitive cards. I would make sure I had a long list of staples specific to the event I was going to. I made sure I knew the prices of every card in my binder so I could cut down on the time people spent looking cards up. I was ready.

I needn’t have bothered.

One particular SCG Open weekend, I got to the event site both days with the cards people needed for either Standard or Legacy. I got a few trades in with people frantically trying to get the cards they needed for their decks, but for the most part, people just bought the cards they needed for the event. The trades I did get in took too long because my trade partners wanted to look up my cards and their cards to make sure that even though I was willing to trade them the card they couldn’t play the event without and take whatever they had in their binder so long as it was worth it for me financially that the trade wasn’t in my favor by as much as a quarter. After the event started, the only people trading were other sharks, and trading with them was only semi-productive. If you are forced to trade straight across with someone who knows prices as well as you do, all you can do is target cards you think will go up soon and try and maximize the number of cards you don’t think will go up that you get rid of. It’s worth doing, but only just barely.

The worst part was that it didn’t even matter that I was showing up with a fully stocked binder. If I’d bought 20 copies of Snapcaster Mage, I could have had the only card anyone asked for and had a better time. People would look through three binders that had thousands of cards and say, “No thanks, I didn’t see anything.”

If this had been a GP, I could have sold cards to the dealers and made the trip worthwhile, but this was an SCG Open, so even that wasn’t an option. Dejected, I slumped down in a seat far from the trade tables and the action of the main event. I dropped my binder on the table a little harder than I meant to and the gust of displaced air buffeted a pile of booster pack wrappers sitting between an older gentleman and his pre-teen son sitting near me at the table.

They looked over at me and both eyed my binder. The older man said to his son, “Why not ask him?” and the kid asked me, “Excuse me, do you have a…” and I thought, “Great, he gets to be person number 400 to ask me for Snapcaster Mage. Best weekend ever.” But instead, he finished his sentence with: “Ludevic’s Test Subject?”

Ludevic's Test Subject.full

I snapped out of my funk. “Uhhh, yeah, absolutely.” I put my binder away and got out a different binder. Both of their eyes widened. I flipped the binder open and asked, “Do you want the set copy or the promo?” which was met with a “There’s a promo?!” from both of them. I slid a copy out and set it on his mat. The thought of looking through a binder didn’t appeal to me, so I was prepared to just give him the card, but he said, “Will you take a Garruk for it?”

I think at the time, Garruk was worth $25, so that made the trade roughly… $25 in my favor. I tried to give him a playset, but he said, “It’s for my blue monsters EDH deck. I only need one.” He handed me the Garruk and turned back to his father, elated, and they started picking up the pack wrappers and throwing them away. “We bought a box of Innistrad but didn’t get any Test Subjects,” the dad explained. I was stunned. He was happier with his bulk rare than I was with my planeswalker.

I had to know their secret. Over the next hour, we went through my binder page by page, pulling out cards for his blue monsters EDH deck and other cards he just liked. Every time I told him it was okay to pull more cards than me, he looked at me like I was either nuts or untrustworthy—like I was someone in a police procedural keeping the criminal on the phone long enough for the police to trace the call.  He pulled out cards until he couldn’t find anything else he wanted and then I made some suggestions for cards he already owned that he could put in the deck.

All in all, he probably got $18 worth of cards and I made his whole weekend. I got a $25 card for $18 worth of bulk rares and garbage, but that wasn’t the most important part of this interaction. I was beginning to realize that I had been trading with the wrong people.

I decided to try and build some EDH decks, and after going to a local shop on EDH night, I was able to trade a small number of expensive cards for two complete decks—decks I could work on improving. Not only that, but I traded out a ton of the weird, foreign, and foil cards I couldn’t sell on TCGplayer and had been sitting on for months. They didn’t just want Snapcaster and the other ten cards that were getting played in Standard. They wanted everything. All of a sudden, my bulk rares were worth their weight in gold.

I had stumbled into a community that still trades cards. A community that sees the value in cards like Boros Battleshaper and Progenitor Mimic. A community that isn’t looking to optimize their decks, instead focusing on optimizing their experiences. We should be thanking them, frankly, because if it weren’t for EDH and other casual play, only like 100 Magic cards would be worth money.

Standard couldn’t make Chromatic Lantern worth $6, but EDH did. Modern couldn’t make Creakwood Liege worth $11, but EDH did. And Legacy couldn’t make Savor the Moment worth $5—only a speculative, targeted buyout predicated on the notion that the card is somehow good in Tiny Leaders could do that.

Savor the Moment.full

If you haven’t gone to the shop on EDH night, maybe try it one week. Take your trade binder with you, if you even still have a trade binder. You might be surprised at how much fun you have. You might see some cards in play that you weren’t aware of. You may do what I do all the time:  see EDH cards in action and think to yourself, “Why isn’t this card worth way more money?”

That’s one of the burning questions I hope to answer with this series. Whether or not you take my advice and find an EDH group to trade with and learn a little bit from, we’re all going to benefit from discussing EDH with some scrutiny and an eye toward figuring out how EDH-specific finance works.

Thanks for reading! I am glad to be back writing here at MTGPrice and I am really glad to be writing about EDH and finance in the same column, finally! Check back next week and let’s start trying to figure out why certain cards aren’t worth more money.

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WEEKLY MTGPRICE.COM MOVERS: April 6/15

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

5 Winners of the Week

Most of the movement this week is coming from the ever-shifting Theros/Khans standard format, with new cards ascending and some old favorites slowly falling from grace. Let’s have a look at what’s up:

1. Bosium Strip (Weatherlight, Rare): $0.75 to $7.98 (964%)

This card is long forgotten by most of the older players and utterly off the radar for most new players, largely due to it’s one and only printing back in Weatherlight. Someone decided to make a move on it last week because it ostensibly has potential in the Tiny Leaders format. Rares from fifteen years ago are like super-mythics today so it wasn’t hard to corner the market here. As an utterly unproven card with largely casual appeal you should be digging copies out of your bulk box and posting them for sale immediately.

Format(s): Tiny Leaders/EDH/Casual

Verdict: Sell

2. Sapling of Colfenor (Eventide, Rare): $4.08 to $8.40 (106%)

This card is also a casual play speculation target, though this time EDH duty as a sweet general is the motivation. I’ve actually been fooling around with this card in Modern lately as well, as the power level is higher than it looks with the right build. Even so, this is another slam dunk chance to sell into the hype, holding back a copy for personal use.

Format(s): EDH/Casual

Verdict: Sell

3. Obelisk of Urd (M15, Rare): $1.89 to $2.76 (46%)

Both mono-red and mono-black aggro decks are trying to breath new life into this super-anthem in Standard, but its impending rotation this fall makes me want to wait until they drop back to $.50 to acquire any. If you aren’t using your copies, trade away now and max your value as they’re unlikely to rise much beyond $3.50 between now and October.

Format(s): Standard/Casual

Verdict: Sell/Trade

4. Thunderbreak Regent (Dragons of Tarkir, Rare): $7.82 to $10.98 (40%)

This is one of those cards that we all saw in the spoilers and said “yep, that’s good, moving on”. Sometimes though, it’s the deceptively simple cards that are the ones to watch, as proven by the appearance of this flying beat-stick in multiple mid-range GR and Temur builds, including 15 copies in the Top 8 of the SCG Open this weekend. Play that heavy, in a set with lower than usual EV (Estimated Value), can lead to some expensive rare cards, and this one is pushing past $10. My gut says this falls back to $5-6 during the summer doldrums, shortly after the release of MM2, so if you popped some, I’d trade them out now and reacquire later on for max value.

Format(s): Standard

Verdict: Sell/Trade

5. Dragonlord Ojutai (Dragons of Tarkir, Mythic Rare): $11.49 to $15.65 (36%)

My top pick from the DTK edition of Digging for Dollars continues to produce, up over 300% since I recommended snagging him for $4-5 just a few weeks back. There’s no doubt the card is powerful, but it earned 3 copies in the Top 32 decks at the SCG Open, so there is some doubt that we have further to climb. With returns like this locked in, I recommend selling. Sadly, this creates a conflict for me on at least 3 copies, since my new Standard deck is URw Ojutai Control.  If the card does fall back towards $5 at some point, I’ll be buying all over again, since it still has 18 months to find a proper home and a bright future in EDH/Casual circles regardless.

Format(s): Standard/EDH

Verdict: Hold

3 Top Losers of the Week

1. Congregation at Dawn: $3.41 to $2.00 (-41%)

The idea was that this card would be amazing with Collected Company in Modern to pull combo pieces to the top of your deck and go off. There’s a decent chance someone brings the deck into the spotlight soon as it’s already put up some results in Europe, but for now the hype has fallen back. If you had a stack of these in your bulk box, perhaps you had the chance to ship a few. If not, I think you may yet get another opportunity.

Verdict: Hold

2. Tooth and Nail: $11.00 to $9.02 (-18%)

I have no idea why this card is falling off, but it’s not particularly relevant in any format these days, so I’d ignore the movement if you aren’t holding, and ship if you are.

Verdict: Sell

3. Ojutai’s Command: $4.32 to $3.56 (-18%)

This card was on my list of overrated cards for Standard coming out of spoiler season, so I’m hardly surprised to see it falling back to a natural price in the $2-3 range. The decks that will play it will only want 2-3 copies max, and they haven’t shown up at top tables yet, so I’m staying well clear. The card isn’t good enough for older formats either.

Verdict: Sell

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

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What Warren Buffett Knows About MTG Finance

Last week, I shared an introduction to me, my motivations, and my risk equation. A Twitter conversation prompted the last of these, and it felt like an appropriate topic to share when establishing my investment style on a new website. In a way, it reveals what you can expect from me as a writer for the weeks and months to come.

But I’ll admit I got ahead of myself a bit. I began delving into the how before first covering the what. In other words, I haven’t even revealed what my current portfolio distribution looks like and how I came to these positions. Such an introductory piece is certainly merited, as it gives a baseline for future discussions. Additionally, the topic overlaps nicely with my general approach to resource allocation in MTG finance—a strategy I picked up from one of the greatest investors of all time.

Perhaps it is most appropriate to share the latter while integrating examples of the former throughout the column.

 The Oracle of Omaha

If I had to choose one particular influence in how I structure my investment portfolios—both in Magic cards and in stocks—it would have to be Warren Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha has been a successful, active stock picker for many decades. While it is cumbersome to establish a basis for his entire strategy here in one column, I will take the liberty to highlight a few key mantras I’ve picked up through my research.

  1. Find the right value at the right price.
  2. Stick to what you know.
  3. Take advantage of extremes.
  4. Know the management team.

Applying these strategies to stock picking is trivial and systematized already.  But did you know they are also highly correlated to how I conduct my MTG investing as well?

investidaglorioso

For example, consider the value equation and taking advantage of extremes. If I am confident a given MTG card or item is destined for an upward trajectory over long periods of time, then I’m most intrigued by that opportunity. The key, of course, is choosing your entry.

This is exactly how I approached my investment in shocklands. Recognizing the growth of the Modern format and WOTC’s dedication to helping it grow, I decided a sizable investment in shocklands was a wise move. Furthermore, the cheapest shockland during Standard block—Steam Vents—was also the cheapest for quite a while. Copies could be had for below $7 at one point!

Vents

The disconnect was that Steam Vents was one of the most played shocklands in Modern. Yet the card’s price was beaten and battered due to the high Return to Ravnica print run and the low Standard demand. Opportunity was knocking, and when I bought deeply into shocklands, I made sure to go deepest on Steam Vents.

The bet paid off to an extent. Just a couple years later, Steam Vents hit retail pricing nearing $14 and buylists have exceeded the low reached right around the release of Dragon’s Maze. This represents a nearly 100-percent gain from trough to peak. That was enough for me, and I rang the register at a recent Star City Games Open.

I noticed an extreme, I considered the long-term utility of the card, and made my bet accordingly. Warren Buffett would have been proud.

warrenbuffetukulele
Weekly World News

Of course, the other shocklands haven’t responded nearly as well, much to my disappointment. Abzan strategies are ubiquitous in Modern thanks to the printing of Siege Rhino, yet the shocklands corresponding to black, white, and green have barely moved. Overgrown Tomb from Return to Ravnica is flirting with its all-time low established back in May 2013.

Tomb

Would this worry Warren Buffett? Not at all. He recognizes that the market often takes time before realizing the mispricing of a given asset. Therefore, in a similar vein, I choose to sit on my copies and wait for the appreciation I’m confident will come. And if prices linger below $7, I may buy even more.  This is why shocklands remain a top holding in my portfolio.

Stick to What You Know

Because I track the Modern metagame closely, investing in shocklands is a large bet I continue to make with confidence. I understand how the format works—particularly when it comes to mana bases—and I use this knowledge to strategize how I invest.  I also recognize the risks associated with this investment and I am comfortable with the potential upside versus the downside risk.

This is directly related to another strategy of Mr. Buffett’s: sticking to what you know. Rather than chase the trendy stocks, such as 3-D printing or Chinese internet companies, Buffett prefers to invest in companies with tried-and-true strategies, large “moats,” and a history of consistent profit growth. Coca-Cola remains in Warren’s portfolio not only because of its dominant market position and global brand recognition, but also because he understands the company’s business model: make delicious soda consisting primarily of water; find an inexpensive way to bottle the product and distribute it globally; profit.

Do you believe me when I say this strategy is also directly applicable to Magic finance too? I use it all the time!

You may have heard me claim ignorance of Standard in the past. Nine times out of ten, the format bores me, and the constant fluctuation in which cards are legal and which aren’t can be bothersome. One month you could be battling with the best deck in the format, and then a new set could come out with cards that completely redefine the format. Worse yet, Standard could rotate, nullifying half your deck.

nullify

Because I avoid researching Standard, I also tend to avoid investing in cards from the format. Sure, I’ve had some successes in the past: the Innistrad checklands, Terminus, and a few others were very profitable for me. But I’ve also missed nearly as often as I’ve connected, making Standard a very suboptimal investment area. I simply can’t predict which cards will be good enough. The only buying of Standard you’ll likely see me do is pick up cards on the cheap for a quick flip during a pro tour or new set release. I almost never buy deeply into anything Standard.

On the other hand, I’ve done thorough research on sealed booster boxes. Over time, I was able to identify which sets were most attractive for investing. Once I was confident that certain boxes were undervalued and destined to go higher, I made my buys. The most significant investments I made were in Innistrad and Return to Ravnica booster boxes, though I dabbled in a few other sets as well.

The Innistrad boxes paid off very well, and every one of mine are already sold.

Innistrad

Although I did make profit on this venture, I’ll be the first to admit I sold way too prematurely. With cards like Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil hitting record highs, and the set being one of the most enjoyable to draft of all time, I should have trusted my gut and held longer. A tough lesson learned, but one worth exploring more deeply in a separate article.

What I did manage to hold onto are my Return to Ravnica booster boxes. This set was also talked highly of by Limited aficionados, and the set contains an array of eternal favorites including shocklands, Abrupt Decay, Deathrite Shaman, and Supreme Verdict. While none of these cards have hit the same price point as Snapcaster Mage, they all have significant upside as the set ages further. Eventually, these will hit a turning point and boxes will move higher. In fact, they’ve already shown some appreciation—when I bought in, it was around the floor price of $80 to $85. Now boxes are consistently selling for just above $100. It won’t be long before these go even higher, just like every booster box with eternal cards and a good drafting reputation. Applying this insight after thorough research has helped me make well-informed investment decisions.

Of course, investing in booster boxes isn’t all sunshine and roses. There are some major pitfalls I have also learned about. I’ll share details in a separate article some time, but I wanted to add this disclaimer here before a reader gets trigger-happy and randomly buys ten Khans of Tarkir boxes or something. There’s a reason I’m not buying more boxes at this point in time: the investment could still pay off, but I think there are better opportunities elsewhere. The key is sticking to what you’re most comfortable with.

Know the Management Team

You may be wondering how I could possibly tie this Buffett-ism to Magic investing. Sure, it’s good to have trust in a CEO like Bob Iger who has helped Disney grow substantially over the past few years. But there really isn’t any “management” team in Magic, is there?

Perhaps not precisely, but there is a parallel. Consider who the key decision makers are, and you can begin to understand their motivations. These motivations could have a profound impact on MTG investment choices.

Allow me to elaborate. Who is the “boss” of Magic? If you ask me, I’d venture that the Hasbro management team is the answer. They’re the ones cracking the whip and demanding certain profit numbers be hit by the WOTC team. So when they demand consistent profit growth of their brands, WOTC does what it can to deliver.

And boy, oh boy, has the company succeeded: recent sets have been blockbuster hits and supplemental products like Commander and Modern Masters have bolstered sales even further.

Of course, sales are surely augmented when Wizards dangles a carrot in front of us, right? Khans of Tarkir was hugely attractive because of the Onslaught fetchlands that were reprinted in the set. Commander products give us cards like Containment Priest and Flusterstorm, sure to delight any Legacy player. And I don’t have to tell you how easy it is for Wizards to sell a product with $200 Tarmogoyfs in the mix.

In other words, Wizards knows that reprinting money cards and creating new staples results in more product sold. That’s the management team on which I am focusing. It is their motivations that inform my investment decisions.

Board-Room
Business-Ethics.com

So how am I using this information to allocate MTG resources? WOTC continues to focus on reprinting to improve barriers of entry for Modern and, to a lesser extent, Legacy. Therefore I’m focusing resources on eternal staples which are either a) likely to dodge reprint in the short term (e.g., shocklands), or b) guaranteed to dodge reprint (e.g. dual lands).

In fact, the largest position in my entire portfolio—exceeding my shockland and booster box holdings—is my dual land position. I completely understand what drives their demand, I believe in their long-term price growth, and I know “management” won’t reprint them. It may take some patience, but dual lands have to be some of the safest investments one could make in MTG at the moment. And with recent pullbacks in pricing, certain duals are the most attractive they have been in many months.

Savannah

Trop

These two duals in particular have drifted lower since their peaks in May 2014. Just because white-green and blue-green strategies are out of favor at the moment doesn’t mean they can’t ever return to center stage. Legacy is an eternal format, and I have to believe eventually the metagame will shift yet again, yielding to new dominant strategies. For now it’s red-blue strategies that seem to show up most frequently, but in the future, who knows? All I know is that I want to build up my position of duals now while they’re flat, so that I have them during their next inevitable spike. As long as “management” stays true to their word and doesn’t reprint these cards, then we can be confident in their long-term success.

Wrapping it Up

Hopefully, this Wall Street-centric approach to MTG investing makes at least some sense. To me, it’s the most logical approach. I could try chasing the buyout of the day or flipping cards quickly for short-term profits. I could also try the slow, steady grind, trading with the sharks at major events. But both of these approaches are time-consuming and arduous.

I would much rather use my time wisely by investing in cards with good long-term value, confident growth, and a wide moat. I trust in an investment like dual lands because I don’t think they’ll ever be outclassed and their demand is very steady while supply marches lower little by little over the years. This same reassurance just isn’t available for a short-term investment.

And when I find these opportunities—especially the ones with high upside potential and low downside risk—I make a decisive move.  In a way, this is also related to a Buffett type of strategy.  Once we find a great opportunity, we shouldn’t be afraid to move in with our resources.  Consider how Buffett’s current stock portfolio is very heavily weighted towards four individual stocks, making up 62 percent of his portfolio!

Portfolio

I follow this same weighted approach in my own stock investing.  But I also allow this principle to guide my MTG investing as well.  This is the reason I’ve got over 50 percent of my total MTG portfolio tied up in three primary investments: shocklands (foil and nonfoil), Return to Ravnica booster boxes, and dual lands.  These are three asset classes I’m confident in, and so I’m allocating my resources appropriately.  While I have plenty of smaller bets, just like Buffett, I try to place larger amounts in the areas I feel best about.

I may not make the most profit ever by following such a conservative approach, but I know I won’t be losing money either. And seeing as my goal is to make money to fund a college education, I can’t afford to be losing money too often. Therefore, I won’t be deviating from my strategy any time soon—in both my stock market and my MTG market investments. To do so would be bad for business.

Sig’s Quick Hits

  • Want to play blue-black in Tiny Leaders? Don’t look to Star City Games, then—they’re all out of the only blue-black leader legal in the format: Sygg, River Cutthroat. They’ve been sold out of the creature for weeks now with that same $6.19 price tag. I’m waiting for the inevitable price bump.
  • Ad Nauseam strategies seem to be showing up a little more frequently in Legacy top eights since the banning of Treasure Cruise. Perhaps this is why Lion’s Eye Diamond is once again sold out at SCG with a price tag of $86.29. As long as it doesn’t get banned, you could do worse than to pick up a copy or two in trade if you’re looking for a long-term investment beyond dual lands.
  • Need Rift Bolts for your Modern Burn deck? You’re not going to find any at Star City Games. Despite being reprinted a couple of times, the card is completely sold out at the major retailer. Prices range from $1.85 for the MMA copy to $3.99 for FNM and Time Spiral versions.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY