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WEEKLY MTGPRICE.COM MOVERS: March 10th/15

8 Comments

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

5 Winners of the Week

1. Guttural Response (Fate Reforged, Mythic): $1.51 to $7.11 (371%)

I hear rumors that this card is spiking based on some fringe combo deck driving a buy out, but I’ve been unable to track down the relevant info. Clue us in via the comments section and we’ll update.

Format(s): ?

Verdict: ?

 

 

 

2. Pendelhaven (Legends, Uncommon): $10.00 to $15.00 (50%)

This is a common card in Infect strategies, and there really aren’t that many copies floating around despite the FNM, Anthologies and Time Shifted printings on top of the original. There are two Legends cards on our list this week, which just goes to show what you can expect as more and more MTG players get involved in MTGFinance and start contributing to buy outs on cards with low inventory. Whether you can move the cards into real demand is the pressing question in these cases, so if you want to hold tight on this one you need to feel sure Infect will be alive and kicking for a while in Legacy and Modern. So far all signs say you should be fine holding on to these for a while as a reprint is unlikely anytime soon.

Format(s): Modern, Legacy, Casual

Verdict: Sell/Hold

3. Tetsuo, Umezawa (Legends, Rare): $21.52 to $29.99 (39%)

This is a Tiny Leaders spec since Tetsuo is the only URB general available to that fledgling format. He’s also on the Reserved List and highly unlikely to be reprinted due to flavor/brand issues, so holding this guy for a bit isn’t a bad idea, at least until Wizards releases their inevitable Tiny Leaders product in 2017.

Format(s): Tiny Leaders

Verdict: Hold

4. Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea (Theros, Mythic Rare):  MoW – $3.00 to $5.50 (83%) , Thassa – $4.81 to $6.53 (36%) 

These two centerpieces of the mono-blue devotion stratagem are on the rise because, well, Shorecrasher Elemental.

A UUU 3-drop may be just the thing to bring this oppressive archtype back into play as a Tier 1 or 2 option in Standard, and it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that this card makes the archetype playable in Modern either, now that it has solid 1, 2 and 3 drops to lead into Thassa and/or Master of Waves and make a ton of tokens.  We’ll see how things play out, but I added to my positions in both cards on the basis that a failure to reemerge in Standard doesn’t necessarily count them out in older formats.

Format(s): Standard/Modern

Verdict: Hold

5. See the Unwritten (Khans of Tarkir, Mythic): $1.78 to $2.29 (29%)

I’ve had 40-50 of this card in my portfolio almost since release, on the basis that either Dragons or Eldrazi would eventually make it good. We’re not there yet, but with Battle for Zendikar confirmed for the fall set, we’re not miles out from this card becoming a real thing. The thing is, if it fails to find a home before rotation, it falls back to bulk and you get to hope your copies slow burn their way into success down the road on EDH/Casual demand alone.

Format(s): Standard/Casual/EDH

Verdict: Hold

 

 3 Top Losers of the Week

1. Hammer of Purphoros: $1.55 to $1.00 (-35%)

Making 3/3 tokens slowly just isn’t where you want to be in Standard right now and the rotation axe is grinding.

2. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: $15.59 to $13.05 (-16%)

The old girl’s had a good run in Standard, and she’s still a viable threat at the top end of several real decks, but her printing in the most recent Duel Deck this month is not going to help her. You should already have outed your copies toward the beginning of the year, and I wouldn’t be caught holding any of this once $35 card for much longer.

3. Sidisi, Brood Tyrant: $5.58 to $5.02 (-10%)

Sidisi decks are looking less and less viable as the Standard metagame keeps shifting fast and furious this spring. I’m actually more excited about the undead version of this character once DoT is out, so I think now is a good time to be outing your copies, possibly looking to pick them back up in the mid-summer doldrums when the standard staples take a beating.

Quick Hits

My underrated cards from Dragons of Tarkir currently include (full article coming soon):

  • Dragon Tempest
  • Descent of the Dragons
  • Sidizi, Undead Viziier
  • Assault Formation
  • Avatar of the Resolute
  • Kolaghan’s Command
  • Deathmist Raptor
  • A run on foil Command Towers is ongoing. Grab ’em quick if you need one for your Commander decks or just want to go for a ride to $10+ in profit.
  • Master of the Unseen absolutely dominated GP Miami last weekend, resulting in games so painful to watch it made my eyes bleed. The power of the card is no longer a secret however, and it will be topping this list next weekend along with Outpost Siege, another card that has legs on recently revealed power level.

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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The Gilded Goblin

Dragons of Tarkir First Impressions

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By: Jared Yost

We’ve gotten plenty of spoilers so far, so let’s take a look at what the new set is going to offer us for Standard and beyond.

Mechanics – Megamorph

What is this, Yu-Gi-Oh? Come on Wizards, we knew what would happen when you put that on cards. It would be the first thing that popped into those Yugioh players’ heads that you’re trying to convert to Magic. Clever, very clever.

Besides the Yugioh conversion implications, the name unfortunately does not live up to the hype when crossed over to the Magic world. The only difference between Morph and Megamorph is that it places a +1/+1 counter on the creature when you turn it face up. That’s it. Not double its power, double its toughness, give it some crazy new ability that we haven’t seen before… Nope, we’re just going back to old reliable (+1/+1 counters) in order to “balance limited”. Look, I’m not bashing the mechanic here – I actually think it is brilliant in it’s simplicity and flows well with the tie-in to the other sets of the block. But did you have to waste such an awesome name like Megamorph on something that only marginally changes the game at best? Let’s look at two of the better Megamorphs that we’ve seen so far to show some examples.

stratus dancer

Among the first Megamorphs revealed, Stratus Dancer is not something I would imagine as being “very large”, “huge”, or “extremely” morphed. Many of the cards with Megamorph are similarly underwhelming from a flavor standpoint. Looking through some of the first revealed commons and uncommons will show this.

Now financially speaking, Dancer itself has price breakout potential. I’m sure most of you reading this remember when Mono-Blue Devotion was one of the top decks in Standard. The card is quite an efficient beater and will perform exceptionally well in blue aggro decks. Outside of Tidehollow Strix, this is the best standalone 2/1 flyer for 1U (or UB) that Wizards has ever printed. And it has an upside! If you draw it late in the game and already have some flyers to get in and hit your opponent, you can play it as a Morph creature and then have a counter backup for any board wipes, or other nasty instants or sorceries, that your opponent throws at your dudes.

I don’t think we’re going to see a mono-colored blue aggro deck in Wedge Khans Standard, but stranger things happened and right now I can’t rule it out completely. Losing Nykthos hurts later when Theros rotates yet until then it could see a resurgence due to cards like Shorecrasher Elemental. Luckily, the card costs 1U and not UU which doesn’t rule it out from U/X or X/u Aggro decks in Standard. If a blue (or even blue splash) aggro deck does break out and this card appears as a playset in it, the price has a good chance of spiking short term. Stratus Dancer will be one of the Megamorph cards I’ll be watching.

shorecrasher elemental

Speaking of Megamorph, Shorecrasher Elemental seems pretty good in the Nykthos devotion blue I mentioned. Master of Waves is looking great to me right now to work along with Shorecrasher, and not just for Standard. The Modern applications of this card are also pretty interesting. It can dodge the spot removal in the format pretty easily and can buff itself up to block Siege Rhino’s if necessary. Playing one or two Shorcrashers in Modern Merfolk could help bolster the power of the deck.

Mechanics – Exploit

A more aptly named mechanic, Exploit allows you to do something powerful when a creature enters the battlefield by sacrificing a creature (even the creature with the Exploit mechanic). The marquee card spoiled with Exploit was Sidisi, Undead Vizier.

sidisi, undead vizier

This card seems decent to me. It should have a home in Standard, as a one or two of in Sidisi-Whip or a new archetype that spawns based on Dragons, in order to make the most of Exploit by sacrificing a token or other creature like Satyr Wayfinder in order to Demonic Tutor for whatever you need at the moment. At worst, it is a five mana Demonic Tutor. Not awful but not that great either. I’m going to wait for more cards to roll in from Dragons before making a final judgment. Suffice to say, not worth pre-ordering at $5 a copy.

Cards – Allied Commands

allied commands

atarka's command

At least the blue commands were revealed first, as everyone would be left wondering if there would be a command printed to rival the power of Cryptic Command in Modern. Unfortunately, Ojutai’s Command was so close but contained the word “creature” as Saffron Olive pointed out. If Ojutai’s Command could counter any spell, then we could be talking about a potentially game changing Command. As it stands, yes it is still quite powerful yet it will not have the impact in Modern that everyone was hoping for. In terms of Standard, the card is quite good though we’ll have to wait and see where it is played. Something to keep in mind is that it is also the buy-a-box promo, which usually means that Wizards thinks it will see plenty of Standard play.

Silumgar’s Command costs five mana, which is a letdown. That is a huge difference in formats like Modern and will prevent the card from being played as a playset in decks in Standard. However, Silumgar’s Command is powerful for what it does. Its modes can allow you to handle almost any board state in addition to being able to counter key noncreature spells. I like it, though again I feel that its price is limited due to the fact that it costs five and will not be played extensively across all decks.

Atarka’s Command feels Modern playable to me. Burn decks already splash green for sideboard hate like Ancient Grudge and Nature’s Claim, so having another version of Skullcrack opens up more options for them. The other two modes for Burn don’t seem that great but we have to keep in mind that this command only costs two mana – definitely the cheapest command we’ve ever seen. I will be watching Atarka’s Command very closely to see where it goes. 

Cards – Dragons!

dragons1

dragons2

dragonlord ojutai

The Elder Dragons in the set are all good in their own way, though I believe that Silumgar has the highest chance of seeing Standard play due to his Sower of Temptation ability of taking a creature or planeswalker from your opponent. Dromaka, Kolaghan, Atarka, and Ojutai are definitely casual hits but their effects aren’t quite as great as Silumgar in constructed.

Atarka would be my next guess at a constructed playable card, as it has an immediate impact on the game state by Bogardan Hellkite-ing the field. In addition, Atarka could also be played before turn seven due to the ramping nature of green. Though I hate to underrate Kolaghan, six mana is a ton for a finisher. Stormbreath and other cheaper dragons with haste seem much better suited as options. Lastly, Dromoka and Ojutai seem the least favorable to me from a Standard perspective. They are powerful yet don’t have an immediate impact on the board. 

Cards – Planeswalkers!

narset and sarkhan

Sarkhan Unbroken has been the most exciting planeswalker reveal. Shown on Friday at PAX East, the crowd oohed and awed in anticipation of seeing the card. They clapped and clamored profusely as each ability was revealed. As the final, ultimate ability of Sarkhan was finally revealed there was a roar from the crowd and thunderous applause for several seconds afterwards. I can say that this reception was justified.

The foil prices on Sarkhan are going to be absurd. Yes, he is going into every five color dragons Commander deck out there. Yes, he is also good in Standard and will be played in Temur decks for the foreseeable future. Yes, even the non-foils will be driven higher in price by the demand that casual players will place on the walker in addition to the tournament demand he will see. My advice though is just hold on for a little while and let the preorder honeymoon prices dwindle. You wouldn’t want to pay too much for Sarkhan, would you?

Narset Transcendent, while not receiving the type of fanfare that Sarkhan received, is still an awesome planeswalker in her own right. She is the control planeswalker that control decks have been wishing for all this time. She is to control as Domri was to aggro. Yes, she costs one more mana but for control decks it will be totally worth it. Again, like Sarkhan wait for the initial hype to die down, and then pick up copies.

I can see Narset being played in U/W/r Jeskai in Modern, or even Legacy if she proves powerful enough over the coming months. Control can more easily stack the top of their deck in these formats and her +1 ability is powerful alongside cards like Serum Visions or Brainstorm. Also, imagine rebounding Lightning Helix, Path to Exlie, Swords to Plowshares, Lightning Bolt, Brainstorm, etc. Seems like a ton of card advantage to me. 

More to Come

As the previews keep rolling out for Dragons of Tarkir, I will continue to keep my eye on any further cards that add or detract from the previews that have been revealed so far. There have been lots of great cards spoiled and the set release is getting my very excited for the end of March! Which cards have you been anticipating from the new set?

 

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MTGFinance: What We’re Buying/Selling This Week (March 7th/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 this week and why. These lists are meant to be both complete and transparent, leaving off only cards we bought without hope of profit, where appropriate. We’ll also try to provide some insight into our thinking behind the specs, and whether we are aiming for a short (<1 month), mid (1-12 month), or long (1 year+) term flip. Here’s what we were up to this week:

Buying Period: March 1st -7th, 2015

Note: All cards NM unless otherwise noted.

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

BOUGHT

  • 8x Thassa, God of the Sea @ $4.50 per
  • 4x Master of Waves @ $2.60 per
  • 8x Otujai Exemplars @ $8.00 per
  • 3x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver (Foil) @ $30 per
  • 3x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver (Foil, Japanese) @ $60 per
  • 3x Decimate (Conspiracy Foil) @ $4.00 per
  • 1x Lilianna of the Veil @ $58
  • 3x Abrupt Decay @ $10.40 per
  • 2x Chord of Calling @ $2.25 per
  • 17x Sliver Hive @ $3.50 per
  • 5x Tasigur, the Golden Fang (Foil) @ $24 per

SOLD

  • 2x Counterbalance @ $15 per ($5 cost)
  • 2x Ghostway @ $8 per ($2 cost)
  • 1x Mindbreak Trap @ $6 ($2 cost)
  • 2x Lotus Petal @ $4 (pack opened ages ago)
  • 1x Dark Citadel (Japanese foil) @ $14 ($8 cost)

Wow, what a week! Between the Dragons of Tarkir reveals and the Magic Origins and Battle for Zendikar reveals, there are a lot of fresh specs in play.

With the new UUU Shorecrasher Elemental revealed in Dragons of Tarkir, Thassa and Master of Waves both have a chance at seeing fresh play in standard, but I was already acquiring both cards on the assumption that they will find fresh homes in Modern/Legacy eventually or simply age well as casual specs. Either way, they are undervalued mythics and I’m going deep. As of this morning, they’ve both spiked 40-70% off the reveal of Shorecrasher Elemental, so we’ll see if a deck emerges with legs. Some of my copies were bought around $2-3, so I’ll be looking to out them immediately.

Otujai Exemplars was a value play, since I snagged it well below the average pre-order price. I think this card settles in the $6-8 range, assuming some standard play at top tables, but could rise later if it fits into a winning deck and supply has dwindled. I’ll likely trade out early and buy back in when enough packs are cracked to see a new low.

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver featured prominently in the winning deck at the first SCG Modern Series last weekend in the hands of Sultai master Gerrard Fabiano. He’s not a staple in the format yet, but any chance of this mythic planeswalker seeing continued play in Modern makes me willing to pick up foil copies at market price. Interestingly, the only Japanese copies I could find ended up being from Travis, who got in on them at $30 and is happy to nearly double up and move on to something else.

Decimate is a Conspiracy foil that is selling for 1/3 of the original foil. That gap will close, especially with more Conspiracy hoarded in sealed boxes than actually opened. It’s a great EDH/Commander card and should top $10 within a year or two.

The LoTV was a copy I found at an LGS that hadn’t boosted prices yet from her recent spike/US to CDN currency exchange. Abrupt Decay is a card we should all be acquiring in quantity. It will hit $20 within the year.

Sliver Hive is a highly specialized piece of real estate with huge casual demand, occasional Tier 2 Legacy play and a low chance of imminent reprint. As such I’m targeting an $8-10 price tag within 18 months and have been acquiring them in quantity since release.

As for Tasigur, my early call that he was underrated has come true, and I now expect this guy to be a multi-format player for many years. As such, his small set foils are pretty tasty at any price under $30 and I’ll aim to acquire plenty over the next few months.

On the sales side, I’m generally stock piling more than selling, but I cleaned out a few randoms this week, and I’m ramping up to out my Tasigur piles up 300% to move in on foils.

Jared Yost

  • 15x End Hostilities @ $1.60
  • 15x Whip of Erebos (Clash Pack FOIL) @ $2.60
  • 1x Saffi Eriksdotter (Foil) @ $17.00
Jared says:
“I bought End Hostilities due to the reveal of Ojutai’s Command and Narset Transcendent. U/W Control is getting good support from Dragons of Tarkir and End Hostilities will fit in the deck nicely.
 
I picked up the clash pick Whip of Erebos because I think its a nice long term hold for Commander. Whip gives a powerful effect to black decks and I like the art on the clash pack foils. It adds another layer of collectability to the card.
 
Lastly, Saffi was another Tiny Leaders pickup. In addition to Tiny Leaders she is also a decent Cube/Commander card.”

 

Travis Allen (@wizardbumpin)

BOUGHT

Short/Mid:
  • 7x Utvara Helkite @ $3.50
  • 14x Scourge of Valkas @ $2.75
  • 60x Scourge of Throne @ $5.00 per
  • 44x See the Unwritten @ $1.30
  • 121x Battlefield Thaumaturge @ $0.25
Mid/Long:
  • 95x Hall of Triumph Promo @ $0.49
  • 6x Sage of Hours @ $1.25
  • 36x Chord of Calling @ $3.25 per

Travis says:

Scourge of Valkas: Spreading out my Dragon holdings in anticipation of DTK increasing interest in the entire tribe. 

Utvara Hellkite: Ditto.

Scourge of the Throne: Dragons and dragon-related cards have been spiking a lot recently with Dragons of Tarkir on the horizon, and Scourge is well positioned. It’s been creeping up for awhile, and Conspiracy was not opened much. When I bought in I was intending to wait anywhere from a month or two to a year, depending on how long the demand took to squeeze the market. Turns out I was only a few hours ahead of the wave as we’ve already seen a good spike on Scourge this week!

See the Unwritten: Something will be battling against our heroes for Zendikar in the fall, and it’s a pretty safe bet they’re the Eldrazi. Who doesn’t want to dump the new Emrakul and Ulamog into play with this? At a little over $1 each, the card doesn’t even have to be good. People just have to think it will be in order to make a profit here.

Battlefield Thaumaturge: I’ve liked this card since it was spoiled, but never bought in. With Assault of Dragons in DTK, alongside another red token maker, you can kill your opponent turn four with a sequence of Dragon Tempest, Hordeling Outburst, Thamaturge and Assault. At $.25 the risk is very low and the price potential is in the double digits if the deck breaks out.

Sage of Hours: I talked about this card in my article on Wednesday.

Hall of Trimpuh: Glorious Anthem effects have always been popular, as noted by the >$1 price tag on the eponymous card despite six printings. A colorless anthem from a small spring set stands to be at least $1-$2, and possibly $3-$6.

Chord of Calling: Chord used to be a $40 card. It’s fallen out of favor somewhat lately, but with Birthing Pod gone, it is the best creature tutor in Modern. With the card at a lifetime floor, now seems as good a time as any to stock up for what could be a $7-$15 card in a year or two.

SOLD

  • 3x Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver (Foil Japanese): $60.00 per

Guo Heng Chin (@theguoheng)

Note: Guo Heng Chin buys from Malyasia, so his costs will tend to be different than for those of us based in the west. 

BOUGHT:

  • 1 x Foil Hypnotic Siren @ $1.90

SOLD:

  • 1 x Outpost Siege @ $3.25

Guo says:

“Both transactions were conducted during FNM at my local game store.

The foil Hypnotic Siren was for Tiny Leaders. It was a discovery by a friend and fellow Magic player, @rezaaba. A couple of weeks back he mentioned to me that Hypnotic Siren is one of the rare few control magic effects legal in Tiny Leaders.

I stumbled upon a foil copy at my local game store yesterday while sifting through a collection they have just bought. I’m not sure how viable Hypnotic Siren is, but she provides a rare effect in the format and has a Nyx-ified border, which means a very low chance of reprint.

I’ve started offloading the 16 Outpost Sieges I bought at $0.49 apiece last month. Outpost Sieges are currently retailing for $4 – $4.50 and while I’m fine with selling them at $3 – $3.50, I have a nagging feeling Outpost Siege still have room to grow.

Outpost Siege is pretty insane in Standard and Caleb Durward suggested that it may even be good enough for Modern in his article last week aptly titled ‘The Best Cards Not Being Played in Modern’.

I’m optimistic about Outpost Siege’s financial potential, especially when its from a smallish set. Or maybe I should just leave the last 10% to the next person.”

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.

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Casual Fridays

Prepare Your Wallet

8 Comments

By: Cliff Daigle

It’s going to be an expensive summer.

First of all, there’s going to be a very short window in which to buy Dragons of Tarkir cards. This will be under-opened in proportion to other big spring sets, like Rise of the Eldrazi and Avacyn Restored. Those sets were 6-of or 3-of for Sealed or Draft respectively, whereas Fate Reforged is still part of Dragons of Tarkir limited events.

Let’s return to our fictional LGS, where they do one FNM draft per week with exactly eight people, and look at the packs opened during the three ‘seasons’ of Khans block:

Season 1: Triple Khans 24 Khans/week X 12 weeks 288 packs of Khans
Season 2: FRF-KTK-KTK 8 Fate Reforged/week16 Khans/week 94 packs of FRF192 packs of Khans
Season 3: FRF-DTK-DTK 8 Fate Reforged/week16 Dragons of Tarkir/week 94 packs of FRF192 packs of Dragons

Totals: 480 packs of Khans of Tarkir, 192 packs of Fate Reforged, and 192 of Dragons of Tarkir.

From a ratio standpoint, we have a 5:2:2 ratio, meaning that Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir will have been opened less than half as much as Khans of Tarkir! Keep in mind that Dragons is a big set, with more potential mythics and rares.

Let me repeat myself, so you can see the severe disparity in packs opened. For three months, we drafted triple Khans. For three months after that, we drafted two packs of Khans, giving us a very large supply of Khans cards. We are about to have three months where just two packs of DTK are opened, and that three months is going to be reduced by some amount, depending on how much time stores and players give to Modern Masters in May. 

Modern Masters 2015 is released on May 22, a mere two months after Dragons of Tarkir arrives. If all events switch from Dragons to MM for that month, we reduce the third season’s numbers by a third, and have a ration of 480:161:130, or about a 4 : 1.2 : 1 ratio. That’s the worst-case scenario for doing DDF events, the reality is going to fall somewhere between that and the 5:2:2 ratio.

It seems unlikely that all stores will have enough product and enough interest to run a full month of Modern Masters events, but if there is enough money and enough hype around this set, Dragons might be the most chase of sets. Investing in singles from this set is likely to pay off well.

The analogy last year would be how Theros – Born of the Gods – Journey into Nyx drafting was impacted by Conspiracy. Even if it’s just a couple of weeks, a month tops, that’s a big chunk of already short time, and money that’s being spent elsewhere. I would imagine that Magic Origins will be drafted thoroughly (more on that in a moment) so don’t expect to have some drafts taken away from a boring set and given to the slightly older format.

The urge to pick up Dragons of Tarkir singles will be with me at all times, but especially this spring leading into summer. This is a big, ally-colored, powerful set, with cards that will be relevant for their entire Standard lives, which will end in fall of 2016. I fully expect to be trading for lots of these and buying a few too. I’m even thinking about pre-ordering some of these…no, wait, I won’t.

I’ll reiterate this piece of advice: Preordering is only good if you have to have a card for the first week that it’s legal, or if you’re 100% sure that the card is going to have immediate and thorough impact in Constructed. Most of the preorder speculation you do will not be profitable, as card prices drop.

Dragons of Tarkir might be different, but probably not. We will see. The small quantity and small window has me wondering. Imagine if there were 40% less Hero’s Downfall, or Siege Rhino out there! The Rhino might be a $25 or $30 card. As the spoilers emerge, we’ll have to be on the lookout.

In just a couple of months, we have Modern Masters 2015 dropping. At $10 a pack, this is going to bust your wallet into pieces. There’s going to be more of this printed than in 2013, and there’s already a markup involved…but that’s not going to stop stores from having $45 drafts.

I am leery of buying packs/boxes for value, but this will especially be true for MM2015 packs. I’m reserving judgement on what I’ll do until I know more of the set, but there is going to have to be TREMENDOUS value in the cards to make cracking packs worth it.

Plus, that value will have to stay high even as those super-valuable packs are cracked! The low print run and increased demand of new Modern players meant that cards like Vendilion Clique, Dark Confidant, and Tarmogoyf didn’t lose value (and went up in some cases!)

Perhaps this will be the fabled “No bad cards” set. Even the first Modern Masters had the Kamigawa dragons as a mythic cycle, so we will see what Wizards does to make four packs of this have the same MSRP as a From the Vaults set. Maybe we get the Praetor cycle, but those values would take quite a hit, likely losing half their value or more.

(As an aside, I know that MSRP is not a rule, especially for the FTV sets, but it’s still a number Wizards attaches to products.)

Next, we have Magic Origins in July. Not just any Core Set, apparently, and they wanted to avoid all the ‘M16’ jokes.

So far, we know that Nissa, Gideon, Jace, Liliana, and Chandra are getting the attention. We have been told that ten worlds will be featured, two for each planeswalker: an origin world and the first plane they went to.

I’ll talk more about those worlds soon, but we have it confirmed that Nissa’s home of Zendikar will be among the locales. It seems quite possible that the enemy fetches will be in Origins!

Since the ally fetches were spoiled in Khans, it’s been a matter of when, not if, the Zendikar ones would be reprinted. What a way for the Core Sets to go, with this one having Scalding Tarn and its brethren.

It’s been pointed out in several places that putting the fetchlands in a set will guarantee high sales, and that’s true, but Wizards has evolved its model to not need the summer set to be the big seller. There’s also the philosophy that Standard doesn’t need to have all ten fetches legal at the same time. Both of these feel true, but I’m aware that Wizards’ logic is not laways the same as mine.

I would advocate selling/trading your extra Zendikar fetches soon, no matter what set they are reprinted in they will take a hit. Keep the ones in your Commander deck, keep a set for Eternal play, and move the rest. Don’t get caught with excess stock when the spoiler hits.

We also have FTV: Angels arriving in August. I’m already on the record with my predictions, and I’m going to make a further proclamation: this will keep its value very well, and not just Avacyn. Angels are one of the premier and most popular tribes, and these foils are going to get snapped up and locked into thousands upon thousands of casual decks.

I think that you’ll be able to get these for around $60 once the initial IMUSTHAVEITNOW wave is done, and at that price, I’ll be happy to get an extra set or two for long-term storage. That price will change if the Angels in the set are pricier than I expect (It’s not out of the question for Wizards to go financially big and give us Iona, Linvala, Avacyn, and Baneslayer, for example) but that seems unlikely to me.

Patience on an FTV is often rewarded. Even Legends, which didn’t go for much over MSRP at the time, is more than $100 now. Part of that is the passage of time, since anything from four years ago has an increase in value, but there’s been a real increase for FTV: Realms in half the time.

Bonus Buy: I told you about Dragonspeaker Shaman a few weeks ago, and now Dragonlord’s Servant has been spoiled. It’s an uncommon, so it looks like the Shaman will not be in the set and the old foils are due to go up, what with all the new Dragon decks being built. I tweeted about it Wednesday, when TCG had 11 foils under $10 and 4 more between $10-$15.

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