From time to time, I like to go back into my archives and look at predictions I made, and see if I was right or wrong. Self-reflection is an important part of the process, and anything that improves my ability to gain value is good.
If you open the foil alternate-art Ugin, hold on to it. This weekend will represent the largest supply of these cards and the lowest price. If Ugin ends up as an awesome card in Modern Tron decks, then the pimp foil has yet another outlet to fetch a high price. Commander players all want the card anyway! (Including me)
Trade away almost everything else. Supply on Fate Reforged this week is at its lowest, and you should sell into the hype. Everything is hyped, so move it all.
The exception to this rule is WhisperwoodElemental. This is an amazing casual card but it’s also pretty great in Standard, as a free source of card advantage. I think it has room to grow, and multiple sites are increasing their preorder price on it.
I was right by about 50% on #1, mostly right on #2, and spot on for point #3. I’m actually a fan of picking up Whisperwood right now, because it’s just good. It’s six power and toughness for five mana, and is likely to be important for the coming year. Getting it now around $12 is okay, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit $15 or $20 around the time of Battle for Zendikar.
I told you to pick up foil Dragonspeaker Shaman at $8, and it’s gone up to $12. We might not be done watching it rise. I also called Utvara Hellkite, which has doubled.
I did not make good predictions about Dragon Roost, Dragonstorm, and perhaps worst of all, Scion of the Ur-Dragon. That one really stings. I seriously thought we would get a new 5-color dragon to play with, and that would preclude a run on Scion. The nonfoil has gone from $2 to $16, and the foils have gone from $50 to about $80. That’s a lot of value that I missed, because I wanted a new dragon.
The lesson here is that I need to make sure I don’t lose focus on what is, in my quest for what could be. Perhaps I was too bullish on a new 5-color legend, and lost sight of the fact that the old one would still be very good.
So the moral of the story is this: Wizards is going to make sure that the True-Name Nemesis problem doesn’t reoccur. Each Commander printing going forward is going to produce enough stock to keep everything very reasonable to very cheap in price. I was way off for almost every card, but my advice to stick with singles could not have been better. The singles prices for this entire set are rather low, and two of my favorites (Dualcaster Mage and Feldon of the Third Path) just got revealed as judge foils.
Looking at the prices for Commander’s 2013 release is even worse. You might expect otherwise, but no, this has three cards over $5. Next year, get out of the reprints and fast.
Overall, one of my worst sets of predictions. The lesson is learned, and I’m +1 to Humility.
One of the worst feelings as a writer for MTGPrice is when I advocate for a card and then that card tanks in value. I still like the cards that haven’t changed in price, and at the least, I haven’t lost any value on any of these.
I think Ash Zealot is still a great card in Modern. If Snapcaster is good and prevalent, isn’t this a fine answer for Burn decks? I’d rather be deep on this than Zurgo Bellstriker, right?
These are always good to look at in hindsight. Did I make accurate calls? Was my reasoning good?
I underestimated the appeal of Ajani, Mentor of Heroes in Standard. Plus, he’s relatively scarce, two factors that have kept him far above my target of $10, and also why I was so off on Nissa, Worldwaker. Garruk, Apex Predator, though, he did make it down to $10 but has bounced back up to $13. I was rather wrong about Jace, the Living Guilpact, though.
Perilous Vault went even lower than I thought it would, and I can’t wait to get foils around $15 when it rotates in the fall. I was spot-on with the Hivelord going to $7, though I was a few dollars off on the foil. The foil version of the Chain Veil is also a high split, at $1.50/$8.
Alright, I feel like it’s important for me to own when I’m wrong, and last week, I said this about Dragonlord Silumgar:
I just can’t help looking at Sower’s $17.44 price tag as a rare (from the pre-mythic era, yes) versus Silumgar’s $7 price point right now. Again, I’m advocating keeping a close eye here, as if this sees no Standard play (and I don’t expect it to see much, if any) it should drop sharply and present real opportunities.
It’s not like I said Silumgar was horrible in Standard and would surely be a bulk mythic, but I assumed that, like most six-drops, it wouldn’t be good enough. Considering I don’t play or watch much Standard at all, I was basing my belief that the card wouldn’t see a lot of Standard play mostly on Eric Froehlich’s analysis of the card on Constructed Resources. He wasn’t too wowed by Silumgar, and I took his evaluation at face value.
Frankly, I don’t feel too bad about missing here. I didn’t have strong reasons to believe the card would see play in Standard, so I didn’t buy in. From my perspective, it’s always better to not buy in and have a card go up than to buy in and have the card go nowhere. Sure, I might miss a few profit opportunities here and there, but I would rather save my limited MTG money for specs I feel very strongly about. Remember, my goal with MTG finance is to spend as little time on it as possible, so buying only to flip at about the same price is highly unattractive to me.
If you’re looking to play Silumgar in Standard, the traditional summer lull in prices should be a good time to grab copies if you don’t need them for upcoming tournaments. As for Commander and Cube, I’m pretty comfortable waiting for rotation, but if the card drops as low as $5 during Standard, I’ll snag a copy then.
The lesson for me here is that no matter how good the player, no matter how reasonable-sounding the analysis, no matter how sure you or someone you trust is that a card is or isn’t good: there’s no way to know for sure rather than seeing it played in games of the appropriate format. Of course, recognizing when the community at large has misevaluated a card is the best way to profit—it’s just so hard to go against the hive mind.
The Force Shall Be With You
Don’t you wish you could have gotten into Magic earlier? I mean, all those early sets were just packed with value—all you had to do was be there.
Well, I am not The Doctor, so I am not here to take you back to that magical time in the mid-’90s. But what I can do, right here, today, is point you toward something I’ve discovered in the last couple weeks that may or may not be of interest to you (and if it’s not, never fear—we’ll be back to more traditional Magic finance content next week).
In early March, a new app was released, currently only for iOS products but coming soon to Android, called Topps Star Wars Card Trader. I’ll give you one guess as to what the product is.
I happened to notice this in the app store, and being a lifelong Star Wars fan, I clicked out of curiosity and saw the phrase, “Open a free pack every day!”
You’re reading this site, which presumably means you’re a Magic player, which presumably means you like to open packs of cards. Being in the exact same boat, I was easily convinced to give it a casual try. But there’s no way these cards are actually worth anything, right? They’re digital collectible cards that don’t have an associated game, so obviously they’re just for fun.
Oh.
So, what we’re seeing here is the Black Lotus of Topps Star Wars Card Trader: “Vintage Han.”This is the most sought after card in the game (can we even call this a game?), and even though the app only debuted a month ago, it’s already selling in the $150 range and occasionally over $200.
Do I believe that in 20 years this will hit the numbers that Black Lotus has hit recently? Absolutely not. But it’s pretty clear there’s money to be made with this app. Here’s a quick breakdown of what you need to know for those of you who are interested. If not, skip this section to get back to why an app like this matters for MTG.
How SWCT Works
For the release period, Topps is giving out 25,000 credits for each day you log in, and if you log in seven days in a row, you get a bonus of 50,000 credits. These numbers will be reduced at some point, but this is the current system.
Most of the cards you’ll open in this app are from the base set. Each card has five rarities. From least rare to most, they go: white, blue, red, yellow, and gold. You can always find someone willing to give you nine of a lower tier for one of the next tier up, so completing your base sets is really pretty easy given enough time.
The money is in inserts. Understanding how inserts work is key to getting the best cards in this app.
From what I have deduced, there are two types of inserts: the first are inserts for a particular subset of cards, such as Hoth, Rebels, and Elite Soldiers.
Each of these sets has a specific number of cards to collect, and if you collect all the cards in a certain category by a certain date, you get an award card. The problem is that after the award cards are given out, these inserts lose a ton of value. It’s very common to see traders asking for inserts but specifying, “No Hoth,” which has already had its award date pass. I suspect that as Rebels, Elite Soldiers, and other sets pass their award dates, a similar devaluing will happen.
The other types of inserts are from marathon sets. Each day of the week, Topps announces a couple hours in advance which card will be available for the day. Each day has a different marathon set running, and collecting all 30 cards from a set over the next 30 weeks will result in huge rewards (with sub-rewards for each 10). The Vintage Han above is part of the marathon Vintage set, as is this one:
At first people were calling it “Vintage garbage.” Not exactly an inspiring name. Now it’s known as “Vintage steel,” which sounds so much stronger.
This set has proven to be the premium one on the app, and a new card releases every Thursday. Each card released has a set number of copies “printed,” and once those numbers are reached, no more will be made. Vintage Han is worth so much because only 1,500 are in existence (you can see the number on the back of the card at the bottom left):
The other cards that have emerged as the premium ones on the app are those from the Widevision series:
These aren’t fetcching quite Vintage-level prices, but they’re working their way up. A new Widevision card is released every Saturday. Like the Vintage cards, more are being produced every week, so the sooner you join, the better chance you’ll have to pick up the early cards that will be worth the most.
So, if you’re looking to spend a little time on this app in the hopes of making money, you should log in every single day to get your free credits, then be on the lookout for the release of the Vintage and Widevision cards each Thursday and Saturday. That bare minimum can potentially earn you a few bucks a week, assuming you’re lucky enough to open the good cards.
Now, how do you get these inserts? Basically, at the pre-announced time, they can be found in any packs sold on the app. Odds are also given for each card released, and tend to change regularly (inserts tend to be between 1:20 and 1:80 from what I’ve seen so far).
The packs for sale in the store also change regularly, but there are three that are always available:
When I first started using the app, the obvious choice to me was to always buy Boba Fett packs. Based on the number of cards in the pack being the same per 1,000 credits spent but offering the only chance at yellow-rarity cards (you have to pay Earth-legal currency or trade for access to gold cards), this seemed like the only way to go.
Then I learned something very important: insert odds are based on opening the insert per pack, not an insert being a particular card within a pack. This means that if you’re chasing inserts, you want to buy the Mace Windu packs, because they’re cheapest and will give you the most opportunities to open the card you’re chasing.
This is a really basic breakdown, but I certainly wish I had this information when I first downloaded the app a couple weeks ago. I personally missed the boat on Vintage Han, and each subsequent card has had a higher print run, so it’s unlikely we’ll see any with values that high. Still, Star Wars fans love their toys, and this one seems to have been adopted pretty quickly.
Why This Matters for Magic
What blows my mind here is that these cards are selling for real-life amounts of money despite having no gameplay valuewhatsoever.
This got me thinking: what if Magic did something similar?
Given that it’s clear that digital card collecting in its own right is something some segment of the population clearly enjoys doing, imagine if Wizards of the Coast created a Magic trading app.
I can see it now: sign in every day to get three free commons and an uncommon. Sign in every day during a week and get a free booster pack! Include trade functionality within the app, offer free stuff and special exclusive awards to encourage collecting, and give opportunities to get the best stuff for free (with commitment), and you’ll have people who don’t even play Magic collecting cards.
Now, here’s where it all comes together: connect this app with MTGO, so that any cards one opens or trades here are synchronized with one’s MTGO account. I think there’s a really good chance that once non-players collect a high amount of cards, they’ll want to find out how to play. How many people do you know that collected Magic for a long time before actually learning the game? I certainly know several.
Here’s the thing about Topps Star Wars Card Trader: there is no way in any possible version of history that I would give something like this any attention whatsoever except for the fact that it’s on my phone. I have a lot of demands on my time, and try to not to waste too much of it on frivolous nonsense. The exception is that sometimes you have to wait in line somewhere, or have to commute to and from work, or spend countless hours waiting for your kid’s baseball practices or doctor’s appointments or orchestra rehearsals, or whatever. In these instances, having something to do is crucial. As a result, I’m much less discriminatory about time-wasters on my phone than on my laptop, for example. If I have to kill time, I might as well be doing something reasonably enjoyable that might earn me a little money, right?
And since I first started drafting this article, something even more pertinent to Magic‘s future happened:
If people were trying to decide between MTGO and Hearthstone, it’s pretty clear which way they’ll be leaning now.
Look, we’re probably not going to get a mobile version of MTGO any time soon, if ever. Realistically, a collection management app with trading capabilities that links to MTGO seems nearly as unlikely, but it’s at least a little more within the realm of possible. It just seems like such a misplay for there to be no quick, easy, and official way to engage with Magic on mobile devices, given the trends in technology and popular culture. Such an app would also help fix the common complaint about player-to-player trading being virtually non-existent on Magic Online. I’d use it all the time. Wouldn’t you?
That’s the one thing I’ll never sell, unless it becomes a matter of absolute necessity for my family.
I’ve loved my Merfolk deck ever since I borrowed one to play in my first-ever Legacy tournament at a SCG Open and ended up splitting the finals of the event. From there I decided to build it myself, and these days I sling foil Fish in Modern every chance I get. Sometimes, I even do well enough to have a tournament report to write.
I’ll sell my dual lands. I’ll sell my binders, my bulk, my box of full-art lands, my Bazaar of Baghdad. Hell, if it came to it, I’d even sell my Mishra’s Toy Workshops that I received as a gift. It can all go—everything I treasure in a binder or a box in my office.
But I’ll never sell my Merfolk.
The reason? Because there’s plenty of wrong ways to do it but only a few right ways.
To quit.
…
If you’re reading this, consider yourself one of the lucky ones. You’ve never felt what it’s like to have to give up the game you love—to watch someone else coldly take what you worked years to build and carelessly dump it into a box. You’ve never given up a piece of yourself for reasons beyond your control.
Or maybe you have.
I’ve seen people quit this game for all number of reasons. They can’t afford it. They don’t have as many friends who play. They need the money. They ragequit after the latest tournament. But by far the most common reason is that they don’t have the time, something that encompasses many reasons. Sometimes it’s work; sometimes it’s a new baby or other family issues.
I’ve been there myself. When I graduated from college, I began to work as a sportswriter, and that meant lots of Friday-night games and weekend tournaments. Save for a few weeks in the summer, FNM was suddenly not a part of my life anymore.
And that sucked, there’s no way around it. I’m nearing a point in my life where career opportunities will allow me to work a schedule more amenable to Magic, and I’m looking forward to getting back in the game. But after college, I took the job I could get, and while I do enjoy it, being so disconnected from Magic still came as a huge shock.
But I didn’t quit.
Instead, my experience with quitting comes on the other side: the backend of a dealer booth. I’m the guy sorting your beloved cards into piles of money, though I try my best to not be cold while I’m doing it. Because I buy and sell cards out of an LGS, I have a large number of what you would call “walk-ins.” That is, people who have Magic cards to sell but aren’t store regulars. They probably Googled “sell Magic cards” and ended up with me.
I hear a lot of stories this way. People sell me cards for any number of reasons, and that’s fine. I always strike up a friendly conversation as I’m sorting through cards: Why are you getting out of the game? Why are you selling all your cards? It is both a curse and a blessing that Magic cards are valuable. The same thing that makes it tough to break into the game makes it easy to get out—there’s always someone willing to pay you for your cards. But the more people I’ve worked with, the more I’ve seen this same story come and go.
“Well, I played Magic ten years ago, and I sold everything when I quit eight years ago. I can’t believe how expensive it’s gotten since then! Anyway, I got back into over the last year but it’s not going to work for [INSERT REASON HERE], so I’m selling my stuff again.”
This is a common story: a player who quit and came back later, only to quit again. I’ve heard a lot of stories from players as they quit, and I’ve heard a lot of stories from players who have come back. If you want to quit, I would advise against you making a clean break, but if that’s what you need to do, here’s some advice.
Know What You’re Selling
Turning your cards into money is great. You never know what unexpected expenses are going to come up, and unlike a lot of hobbies, Magic is very easy to convert back into cash when you need it, whether that’s for an emergency or simply a gift. I was able to sell enough cards to buy an engagement ring for my now-wife, and I’m proud of the fact that I did it with Magic cards.
But remember this: sometimes selling everything isn’t the best option. Sell your Standard cards. Sell your Modern cards. Sell your casual cards. Sell your bulk. Maybe even move your nonland Legacy staples if you have them and you don’t think you’re coming back to the game. Because even if you do, that fancy finisher you have now may be outclassed by something by the time you get back, and that card is now worth less than it was when you quit.
But don’t sell your dual lands unless you have to. If you’re lucky enough to have any of the Power Nine, don’t sell them. These cards have only gone one direction since Magic was created, and while past performance is no guarantee of future returns, it’s also completely plausible that these cards will continue to climb. It’s a really crappy feeling for those of you who have come back in the last five years only to see the dual lands you sold a decade ago for gas money are often exceeding $200 now. Even if you’re out of the game, stashing these away in the back of your closet is simply a prudent financial move.
Take the Time to Do It Right
I see people decide to quit, and they take their stuff, unsorted, to Star City Games or even their local LGS to get rid of it all at once. I’ve found so many expensives rares in boxes of what I was told was common and uncommon bulk. If you take the time to go through your cards one last time and set these aside, you’ll be able to get real buylist values on these rather than losing them in the junk.
It’s really easy to dump your cards onto one dealer’s table and simply be rid of them all, but it’s almost always worth your time to break it down to a few different buyers or to sell your big-ticket items to another player, whether in person or through eBay.
One more thing—the most important thing—don’t sell your Merfolk.
Don’t Sell Your Merfolk
As I explained, there’s not much that could happen to make me sell my Merfolk. The day might come I have to sell all of my Magic cards. Despite our best plans, life has a funny way of happening, and I don’t know what might come up down the road.
But I’ll never sell my Merfolk.
This is the single best piece of advice I have. I literally cannot count the times I’ve talked to someone who’s recently come back into the game and has nothing. They have such fond memories of their favorite deck “from back in the day,” even though it’s probably terrible by today’s standards. But it’s precisely those memories that brought them back to Magic in the first place, and no matter what they may go on to build or accomplish in their second (or third or more) stint, it won’t replace that first love for their own personal Merfolk.
You’ll Be Back
No matter how far you distance yourself from the game, it’s hard to make it disappear completely. You’ll be surfing Facebook or Twitch a few years from now and see it pop up, and you’ll get that familiar twinge.
It’s only a matter of time until you give in. If you’ve played this game for any length of time, it’s impossible to get away forever. Most players know exactly how many times they’ve quit and come back, and they wear it like a badge of honor. That’s fine, but maybe try not to cost yourself some long-term money in the process.
With that in mind, here’s a short list of things you’re going to store away in the closet, even if you have to quit for a time.
Binders
Sure, your binder may be empty now after you unload all your rares from it, but when you come back, you’re going to need one again. Good ones runs upwards of $20 today, and will probably be even more expensive when you come back. I have a ton of extra binders I’ve gotten from people selling me collections, and they just rot away in a box in my home. You might as well let them rot away in a box in yours to save yourself some cash down the road.
Lands
This depends on your level of play in the game, but it’s worth noting. Sure, maybe you want to sell your expensive Standard or even Modern lands, but if you’re a more casual player who isn’t worried about the latest tournament decks, maybe just keep back some of the more simple stuff. Khans of Tarkir trilands, for instance, are commonplace to those of us in tournaments, but absolute gold for a new players trying to build casual or EDH decks. That could be you if you decide to return in a few years.
Deckboxes/Sleeves/Dice
Along the same lines, these are something you’ll eventually need again, even if you have no use for them now. A pack of sleeves may not seem very important when you’re up in the middle of the night with your baby son, but trust me, you’re going to wish you had them when that kid is spilling his drink on your cards when you teach him to play years down the road.
What If I’m Wrong?
I’ve written this article with everything predicated on the belief that you may return to the game someday. If you do, these things can make that transition back in easier.
But maybe that never happens. You leave the game and never look back. You save some of this stuff and it’s lost in your garage for years. Maybe you’ll dig it up and find out that the cards you saved have appreciated nicely in your absence from the game. Or maybe your now-teenaged kid will find it and make fun of you for being such a nerd. Either way, it’s worth it.
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 tookcare 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
