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MTGFinance: What We’re Buying This Week (Feb 28th/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 we go!

Buying Period: Feb 21st – 28th, 2015

James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

  • Long: 5x Daretti, Scrap Savant (NM): $3.20 per
  • Mid: 12x Soulflayer (NM):  $1.50 per
  • Long: 4x Polluted Delta (KTK, NM): $12.50 per
  • Long: 4x Flooded Strand (KTK, NM): $12.50 per
  • Long: 4x Windswept Heath (KTK, NM): $8 per
  • Long: 10x Kiora’s Follower (NM – Alt Art Foil Promo): $0.25 per
  • Long: 10x Plague Stinger (NM – Alt Art Promo): $0.25 per
  • Long: 10x In Garruk’s Wake (NM – Alt Art Foil Promo): $0.25 per

My buying pattern was largely opportunistic this week, breaking off whatever deals I stumbled across as I sell off many of my better specs from earlier in the year.

First off, tip of the hat to Brainstorm Brewery’s own Ryan Bushard for turning me on to Daretti, Scrap Savant as an undervalued planeswalker currently being held back by the total value of the other rares from the red Commander 2014 deck. Anything under $5 seems like a great entry point for a 1-2 year hold up above $10.

I’m in for cheap Soulflayers all day long, as I’m still relatively certain that the card finds a home in Modern and/or Legacy in at least a Tier 2 deck that will Top 8 sooner or later. I’ve play tested the card in Deep Sea Delver a bunch, and it’s power level in the Delve/Aggro-Combo builds that are floating around isn’t that different from Tasigur and can easily be better with the right enabling cards.

Though I believe that we will be waiting at least a couple of years to see real appreciation in the KTK fetchlands, I’ve started acquiring playsets at the low end of available pricing, while I keep an eye out for a $200 set of 20.

I also bought up a few more promo sets for the trade binder, since the price was so sweet.

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. 

  • 1 x Cartel Aristocrat Foil (NM): $2.77
  • 1 x Anax and Cymede Foil (NM): $1.94

Guo says:

“Both cards were acquired for personal use with store credit. I’ve discussed both of them in my article a few days back; I think both cards have a lot of potential in Tiny Leaders and foils are relatively cheap now. 

Cartel Aristocrat is a nifty engine card in multiple archetypes, and is a difficult-to-remove threat on her own. I got my foil Cartel Aristocrat for my Anafenza, the Foremost deck where Cartel Aristocrat was an MVP ( she is one of the sac outlets for the Melira combo and a formidable threat by her own when bolstered with Anafenza’s counters. A sword-wielding Aristocrat was quite the menace as well). 
Anax and Cymede is reputedly a tier one leader with multiple ways to build around. The obvious path would be the hyper-aggressive swarm builds, but I’ve seen RW goodstuff builds floating around too. Red has some of the best board wipes in the format and white some of the best removals.
More importantly, optimal Anax and Cymede lists could be assembled on a budget. Though I have no plans to venture into Anax and Cymede yet, I thought I should secure my own foil copy preemptively, in case it spikes in popularity as Anax and Cymede is an ideal deck for players interested in getting into Tiny Leaders on the cheap. “

 

Jared Yost

  • 23x Rakshasa Deathdealer (NM): $0.95 per
  • 10x Chord of Calling (NM): $3.99 per
  • 1x Anafenza, the Foremost (NM, Prerelease Foil): $17.50 per
  • 1x Alesha, Who Smiles at Death (NM, Prerelease Foil): $8.20 per

Jared says:

“I decided to pick up several Deathdealers, as I feel that they are very underpriced at $1. G/B/x aggro decks have been putting up decent results even after Fate Reforged has been released. Also, when Theros rotates out Deathdealer could shine in the post-Theros Standard environment.

I picked up some Chords this week as well due to the Birthing Pod ban. I feel that eventually Chord of Calling will be quite good in Modern. It was priced at $25 and higher before the M15 reprint. $4 seems very underpriced to me for such a powerful effect.

Lastly, I picked up the prelease foil Anafenza and Alesha as Tiny Leaders specs. Both generals seem strong in the format.”

 Travis Allen

Sold:

  • 16x Whisperwood Elemental, $12.50 per
  • 1x Azusa, Lost but Seeking: $39.00 per
Bought:
Nothing

So there you have it. Now what were you guys buying 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

The Shopping List

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By: Cliff Daigle

So next week we begin Dragons of Tarkir previews, though it seems like we just finished spoiler season for Fate Reforged.

There’s three premises I want to keep in mind as we leave Khans and enter Dragons:

#1: This is a big set in the spring slot, such as Rise of the Eldrazi or Avacyn Restored, but Sealed and Draft events are still opening some Fate Reforged. Those two sets have had a lot of value in the long term, because they were opened less than big fall sets. Dragons of Tarkir has a very good chance to contain some cards that will go up significantly, due to that reduced volume being opened.

#2: The new rotation schedule means that Dragons of Tarkir will only be Standard legal until fall 2016. This is the first spring set to rotate at a different time than the fall and winter sets of its respective block.

#3: Khans is no longer being opened in Draft or Sealed events, and that tells us it’s time to start picking up Khans cards, now that supply is at its maximum and prices are near their lowest.

With these ideas in mind (point #1 about which Dragons cards to buy will just have to wait three weeks till the full spoiler is out) I want to go over Khans cards that I think have room to grow in about the next six months, or grow even more if they have value outside Standard.

Fetchlands

Before anything else, I want to see what recent history has been like for the shocklands. I’m looking to see if they took a hit or even went up since they rotated from Standard.

Capture

Capture

Some fluctuation, and Vents is possibly the most popular shockland in Modern. Blue lands will often be a bit more expensive because blue has been the best color. (Note the price gap from Underground Sea to Plateau!)

So if I’m buying fetches now, I’m seeking pure value. I’m not going to see a big gain in price, but it’ll be excellent trade bait. At worst, fetches aren’t going to go down in price. At best, they begin a steady upward trend, but I think that is rather unlikely for at least a couple of years (going by what the shocks have done).

Foil fetches

I am going to bang this drum as loud and as hard as I can for you: buy these now. NOW. Foil shocks gained 20% to 50% within a year of rotating, and getting foil fetches right now will save you money in the long run. These will not take a hit at rotation.

Foil Delta and Strand will not stay under $100 much longer. They are just too good in the Eternal formats. The other three, being $50-$60 right now, are excellent candidates to gain value on a similar track as the foil shocklands did.

If you’re someone who likes to foil out a deck, or likes to have high-end foils, get on the wagon now. You’ll thank me. I want to reiterate this point: I don’t know what the ceiling is, I just know that we are at the floor.

Foil Empty the Pits

At $6, it’s close to a steal. It’s great in casual token decks, and Zombie decks too. If you wanted to wait, I’d understand, but don’t sleep on its long-term casual appeal.

Foil Monastery Swiftspear

You might laugh, but this is seeing a tremendous amount of Eternal play. For example, there was a Star City Games Modern open on February 16. There were five decks in the top 16 that ran a full playset of these in the main. Note it’s a nearly-$3 uncommon and a $20 foil. It’s not hard to imagine the foils doubling by the time rotation hits, and not losing any value at rotation, simply due to the number of people playing it in Legacy and Modern.

My colleague James Chillcott bought a foil set of Japanese Swiftspears for $32 at the beginning and sold them at $240. I would not be surprised at all to see the JP foils hit $75 or even $100 in the next year. This is one of the ways that a Burn deck can go from budget to pimp, and you should spend accordingly.

Siege Rhino

Another card that has lots of room to grow, now that Khans isn’t being opened as much. I like picking up both foils and nonfoils right now, at about $10/$20. I’d be looking to move the nonfoils in the next few months, but the foils could prove to have real legs.

Siege Rhino might be an excellent case study for Cube appeal. If you can manage the mana, this pays you off very well, but not every Cube is designed to have enough fixing for three colors on turn four. Sure, splashing for Fireball and the like is a longtime tradition, but would you splash this? Perhaps the better question is, can you?

Foil Clever Impersonator 

With a foil multiplier at about 6x, this has my eye. I’m all for picking these up and just waiting. As I said way back when Khans first came out, this is the best Clone effect ever, depending on how you feel about Phantasmal Image. Picking these up under $20 right now is a steal, because they are going to increase, slowly but surely.

Foil Treasure Cruise

While some vendors I talked to at GP San Jose wanted to be picking these up at buylist prices, there are plenty of larger vendors who are staying away altogether. (For instance, this card is not on ChannelFireball’s buylist.) If I were able to buy these at $3-$5, I would be thinking about it too.

As an individual, though, I’m staying away unless the price absolutely craters at rotation. The nearest example I can find to this card is Mental Misstep. It seems unlikely that a card banned in Modern and Legacy can have a price this high, but everything is keyed in on the price of entry. Did you buy at the lowest? Great! Sock these away for a while.

Foil Dig Through Time

I’m happy to wait until rotation for these to hit a low, because not enough people will keep this at that time, since it isn’t legal in Modern. It’s still Legacy-approved, though!

Don’t buy this yet…but be thinking about it.

Prerelease Foils

In case you didn’t know, both Khans and Fate Reforged had prereleases where a few foils were stamped with the date of that prerelease. There were 40 in Khans and 30 in Fate Reforged, and it’s not yet clear how many there will be in Dragons of Tarkir’s prerelease packs, if there are any.

These are not quite alternate-art cards, but they represent an additional layer of scarcity. When you find these in random binders, trade for them at the foil price or a little more. Having the rarest version of a card sometimes comes in handy.

All of these are things to consider, now that Khans isn’t being opened. This is different from rotational planning, these are cards that I’m picking up for the longer-term haul.

Next week, we cover this coming summer’s giant money vacuum!

 

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WEEKLY MTGPRICE.COM MOVERS: Feb 25th/15

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By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

Innovation continues to define both Standard and Modern as we roll on through one of the best constructed seasons in the last decade. Winners at notable major tournaments this past weekend define our big movers this week, as the community looks forward to Dragons of Tarkir spoilers in just a few short weeks.

5 Winners of the Week

1. Whisperwood Elemental (Fate Reforged, Mythic): $8.98 to $12.12 (35%)

Green was already the default best color in standard before Fate Reforged rolled up and dropped this sweet threat onto the table. Though many were dubious at first, recent showings at big standard tournaments has demonstrated that Whisperwood Elemental is an excellent way to close out games fast if your opponent isn’t packing enough removal. In partnership with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, and various mana dorks, this heavy hitter provides especially tricky scenarios for both aggro and control decks who will often have trouble going just one for one with the lord of the groves.  With FRF not likely to be as opened as many other sets, there’s a good chance that this one falls off a bit heading into summer, only to rise again at rotation. As such you can sell now if you got in early and don’t need them to play with. Otherwise, you’re safe to hold into fall.

Format(s): Standard

Verdict: Hold/Sell

2. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx (Theros, Rare):  $4.12 to $5.45 (32%)

Prices on this most wondrous of mana generators range anywhere from $5 to $8 at present, with scant few copies available anywhere in the $3-4 range it was trading at just a few weeks back. Blame the rediscovery of mono-green and green-X devotion builds, within which Nykthos is often the glue that binds the deck together, powering out Temur Sabertooth, Whisperwood Elemental and Hornet Queens with equal finesse. I’ve been a buyer thus far on any copies I could find under $4, but your best entry point may now be at rotation, where you should be able to scoop copies up and sit on them for a few years to double up.

Format(s): Standard, Modern, EDH/Casual

Verdict: Hold

3. Outpost Siege (Fate Reforged, Rare): $2.12 to $2.80

The other deck that is doing exceptionally well right now is R/W aggro, but in truth, getting a free card per turn for the low low cost of just 3R is likely to appeal to many decks over the next year. Heck, we use to pay 4 a turn for this effect! With constant play, this card could easily rise into the $6-8 range next fall, so if you can score some under $4, it seems like a reasonable bet on card advantage continuing to be worth of a few card slots for the rest of the year.

Format(s): Standard, EDH/Casual

Verdict: Buy

4. Genesis Hydra (M15, Rare): $1.95 to $2.44 (25%)

I’ve been holding some of these since they first came out, but they never really got there as a spec, so those 3 playsets will be finding homes in my trade binder and various casual decks once I’m done with them in Standard. The card is great, and there is some version of the future where it might even catch fire in Modern with Nykthos to power it out and do something ugly, but I wouldn’t be caught holding my breath on that, or very many of these at rotation either.

Format(s): Standard, EDH/Casual

Verdict: Trade/Sell

5. Asuza, Lost but Seeking (Champions of Kamigawa, Rare): $30.13 to $36.11

It’s hard to believe that I was picking these up last year at $6 as an EDH spec, and now here we are with Amulet Bloom earning Tier 1 respect in Modern and this card ensuring it has enough consistency in comboing off to make those bones. There is a solid chance this single print rare shows up in Modern Masters 2 this summer, so it’s probably time to claim whatever profits you can and look to pick some up on the cheap when MM2 prices bottom out in July.

Format(s): Modern EDH/Casual

Verdict: Trade/Sell

 3 Top Losers of the Week

1. All is Dust (Rise of the Eldrazi, Rare): $20.32 to $14.00 (-31%)

This is a great card in EDH/Casual environments, and cool factor has kept it up, but the threat of a reprint in MM2 is just too great for it to not recede into fearful territory. You should be unloading these.

Format(s): Modern EDH/Casual

Verdict: Trade/Sell

2. Whip of Erebos (Theros, Rare): $4.87 to $3.93 (19%)

This card’s been on a bit of a roller coaster lately with it’s price tightly tied to how well GBx Reanimation strategies are doing at big Standard tournaments. It will likely oscillate in the $3-6 range heading toward rotation, but you don’t want to be caught holding too many because this will be a low demand casual card come the fall. There’s also a fresh printing in the Clash Pack for the spring, which hardly helps.

Format(s): Standard/Casual

Verdict: Trade/Sell

3. Pact of Negation (Modern Masters, Rare): $14.78 to $13.07 (12%)

Given that this key card from the Amulet Bloom deck has been on the rise of late, I wouldn’t give this minor pullback much thought. Having just been printed in the last Modern Masters set, it’s pretty unlikely to see yet another reprint in MM2 this summer, so you are likely safe to snag these in the $12-14 range or in trades where you can, hoping it will rise into the $20 zone on the back of one deck or another.

Format(s): Modern/Legacy

Verdict: Buy/Trade

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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City of Traders

The Tool We Need and Probably Deserve Too

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By: Travis Allen

In the field of MTG finance (a name I find myself disliking more with each passing day) we focus on finding the cards before they get big. Scour MTGO dailies for growing trends, identify EDH cards before they blow up, pinpoint combo pieces that will get broken, recognize when a card is at the bottom of a valley. All of these, done well, will put you in a position to be profitable. Cards will be obtained for some number of dollars, and a few weeks or months later, they’ll be worth double, triple, or even ten times what you originally paid. Pop the champagne. 

We as a community tend to focus very hard on this part of the process – figuring out what cards are going to rise in value, so that we may obtain them before they do. Understandably so, of course. It’s the most difficult part of the entire profit cycle, which means it deserves attention, and it’s also the sexiest.

The latter half of the process is getting rid of cards after they’ve risen in value. I discussed this topic to some extent awhile ago when I had jumped in on Ghaves a week before he quadrupled in value. In short, it’s a lot tougher for this to be profitable than it may seem at first blush.

It is with this postulate that I today encourage anyone that is reasonably involved with buying and selling cards to consider a TCGPlayer seller account. Creating an account is simple, using the website isn’t too painful, effort required of you is no more than PucaTrade or Deckbox, and most of all, it provides a convenient avenue for outing your specs.

I’ll tell you right off the bat: there are better solutions out there. Members of the community that have made a full-time job of trafficking in Magic have no hesitation speaking ill of TCG from a seller’s perspective. I will not discount these concerns. Like eBay, TCG bends over backwards to protect the buyer. It is far easier to find people willing to use your system to make money rather than spend it, so their incentive is to keep the buyers happy, not the sellers. It’s not that they don’t care about vendors, but we are undeniably second to the people actually spending money. This leads to buyers usually receiving the benefit of the doubt in nearly all situations. There’s a ten day wait on receiving funds as well. If you’ve got a bankroll this isn’t much of an issue, but not everyone has that luxury. The UI is a bit clunky, with it taking far more clicks than it seems should be necessary to view and close orders, an issue compounded by the fact that their servers seem to take at least five seconds to respond to any request, made even more dumbfounding by the fact that I live within two hours of their offices. They take north of 11% of each sale you make, depending on how much the sale is for. (My own history shows an order total of $5.98 paying a 19% fee, and a $294 order paying an 11% fee.) This isn’t a totally unreasonable amount, as you’ll pay 10% at eBay plus PayPal fees, but it’s hardly any better.

So why, if there are so many complaints regarding TCG, do I recommend anyone that buys more than one or two cards each month with the intent of flipping them open a seller’s account? The easiest answer is that you get to sell for TCG prices.

When I discussed flipping Ghave, one of the limiting factors was the buylist values. $5 was the highest offering, which barely covered my investment. Meanwhile, over on TCG he was in the $10 range. At the time that wasn’t an option to me so I was stuck facing buylists, eBay, or finding private sales. With a TCG account, I’d get to tap into that $10 retail price tag. Suddenly my spec would have been far more profitable. Even if I wasn’t greedy and listed at $8 or $9 instead of the $10 to $11 others had him at, the margin would have been large enough for a healthy profit.

It’s frequently discussed in regards to specs that you never get to sell them for retail. You buy in at retail, and then after the card spikes, you have to sell at buylist or below retail. But with a TCG account, this is no longer the case. You buy in at TCG low, and when you decide it’s time to move your cards, you get to sell at TCG low. Selling via TCG doesn’t get rid of all the fees or inconveniences of other methods, but rather, it raises the price you get to sell your product for. This is why, for the average person looking to move a few playsets of Ghostway, it’s a preferable venue.

The volume of cards I’ve sold after adopting the use of TCG have increased dramatically. eBay is really your only other open market option, and the demand of shipping every single card with tracking information drastically cuts into your profit margins. Selling expensive cards on eBay is mostly fine, but Ghaves or Skullbriars or Past in Flames sucks out loud. Moving my operation to TCG I’m now able to list cards under $10, something I wasn’t comfortable doing with eBay. People are much less scammy on TCG, meaning you get to use plain white envelopes for smaller sales. This opened the door to putting far more cards from my binder up for sale. That Rafiq or promo Honor of the Pure been gathering dust in your binder, and you want the space? Pick up a Soulfire Grand Master last night and you want to ship it before it falls further? Onto TCG it goes.

What really drove me to discuss this today was a feature recently added. Foreign cards can now be listed, a major boon to both customers and vendors. When I returned from Japan I brought back thirty-eight Japanese Black Markets. Up until now I’ve had no reasonable way to sell them. With foreign support having been added, I can now list my Black Markets, and all the other Japanese product I brought back. It’s great for people that end up with foreign product in their possession, and it’s great for people that wanted foreign product in their possession, a challenging goal if SCG didn’t have what you were looking for.

It’s important for people buying and selling to know what’s available to them on both sides of the process. Knowing how to move your cards is just as valuable, or perhaps more, than knowing which ones to pick up. I’m not shilling for TCG, I didn’t get paid by them, and I have no vested interest in their company. They provide a service that is quite valuable to people that do this type of thing frequently, and it’s helpful to be aware of it as an option. It isn’t flawless, and there are options with better returns, but those options usually involve running a store, or at least a case in a brick and mortar, which aren’t reasonable for people that don’t want this to be a full-time job. If you’re a mid-level actor in this market, TCG provides you an acceptable venue to sell at retail or near-retail prices.

 

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