Grand Prix New Jersey: On Site Coverage

By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

This weekend marks an exciting landmark in the history of Magic: The Gathering. At last word, Grand Prix: New Jersey, being run by Star City Games in Edison, NJ, from Nov 15-17th, was now likely to feature 4000+ players!

For context that makes GPNJ the third largest Grand Prix of all time, and the largest Legacy Tournament ever run!

With so many players gearing up for the main tourney and the plethora of alternate format side tournaments, it should come as no surprise that some cards have seen price hikes this week.

Tune in all weekend as we blog live from the floor and share info as it appears. All of the largest MTG vendors are on site and we’ll be interviewing them all weekend long to see what cards are selling out. But for now, let’s take a look at some red hot cards heading into one of the largest MTG gatherings ever.

Hot Cards Heading Into GP New Jersey

  1. Forked Bolt (ROE, Uncommon): $.50 to $2.50-$3.50 (+500%)

By now you’re probably aware that both Modern and Legacy are bowing to the might of Treasure Cruise and the return of U: Draw 3. This in turn has led to the advent of U/R Delver in Legacy and the need to kill multiple dangerous 1-toughness creatures like Delver of Secrets, Young Pyromancer and Spirit of the Labyrinth in the same turn with limited mana. Forked Bolt fits those needs perfectly and the spotlight has resulted in a 250%+ increase in price over the last couple of weeks. I could see the card grabbing another $1-2 in price before Treasure Cruise gets banned in Modern, at which point it could settle back toward the $3 range. This card is easy to reprint, so if you haven’t already won the lottery on it, I’d steer clear.

Verdict: Hold/Sell

2. Monastery Swiftspear (KTK, Uncommon):  3.50 to 2.50 (-31%)

Here we have another long term red role player that’s making a splash after it’s recent debut in Khans of Tarkir. It’s playable in Standard, Modern and Legacy and likely deserves to hang out in the $2-3 range despite the massive rate of copies being opened right now. There’s not much beef left on this bone, but I love foils as a mid-long term profit machines as we’re not likely to see a red creature this good for a while and Treasure Cruise’s likely banning in Modern won’t prevent this from finding a home in other decks.

Verdict: Hold/Buy Foils

3.  Price of Progress (Exodus, Uncommon): $5 to $8-9 (+60%)

Short of a reprint, this non-basic land hoser may have some more room for growth. There aren’t that many copies in circulation and with Legacy far from dead, the demand may be there to see this hit $10-12 within the year. It’s a great card in U/R Delver and against many of the decks that will try to prey on it this weekend, so the jump isn’t that surprising.

Verdict: Hold/Buy

4. Leyline of Sanctity (M11, Rare): $20 to $25 (+25%)

In a metagame where burn is going to put many a player to sleep, and TEPS and Storm variants are still skulking in the shadows, a card that can play guardian angel in your opening seven is a very good friend to have. With very few alternatives offering the same level of protection, we can expect this one to keep creeping up unless it sees a reprint in MM2 this summer.

5. Chains of Mephistopheles (Legends, Rare): $320 to $355 (+10%)

Sure this is a pretty expensive addition to any deck, but it’s also a pretty sweet answer to decks like UR Delver and Storm that want to draw a ton of cards in a given turn. Forcing them to discard as they draw can be back breaking and I’ve heard whispers of Maverick and Hate Bears variants likely to be running these showing up this weekend. As a Reserved List card there’s plenty of upside here in the long term, and renewed interest outside of the collector community could easily see this top $500 within 18 months.

Verdict: Hold/Buy

Watch for late morning updates on floor action straight from the mouths of vendors! If you’re on location, ping me on Twitter at @mtgcritic if you’re interested in joining our BringYourOwnPacks Draft Sat night at 8:30pm at the Courtyard Marriott.

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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Price Surprises (pt. 1)

By: Cliff Daigle

I’ve been playing Magic on and off since 1994. I’d sold out and walked away, came back, repeated the process. I spent a couple of years only playing MTGO, but paper is where I’m happiest.

Every so often, I have had double-takes and spit-takes when I see what a card has gotten up to. I think that the biggest one for me was when I got rid of more than 100 Hymn to Tourach, which were buylisting for $1 at a GP. Fallen Empires cards that were worth something?!

I’ve gone through the sets and I’ll be presenting some casual cards to you, along with their surprising price of $5 or more. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but intended to help you sort out your bulk rares or assist with pricing cards better.

Keep in mind that Reserved List cards will not be reprinted and have often been looked at as ‘safe’ investments. I’ll let you decide how safe cardboard is.

Legends: Pretty much everything.

I’m not even kidding. This set is from so long ago, and so rare, and so iconic, that lots and lots of the cards are worth more than you think they are. Willow Satyr is $15. Thunder Spirit is $18. Angus Mackenzie is $73. These aren’t being played in Legacy or Vintage, or even many Cubes. This is collectors, this is Commander, this is the casual market at work for most of this set.

The Dark: City of Shadows (RL)

I can’t tell you how many times this card pops up on ‘worst card’ lists. It’s slow and clunky and sort of terrible unless you have lots of crappy creatures laying around. Tokens, in other words. Being on the Reserved List means that this won’t get more copies lowering the price, and that’s fine. Not many people actually want this…but just enough do, to get this price.

Mirage: Shallow Grave (RL)

It’s instant-speed reanimation, which is very important for getting around those pesky ‘shuffle me into your library’ triggers. It’s a 4-of in Tin Fin Legacy decks, and is on the list. $8 is almost low for this card.

Visions: Undiscovered Paradise (RL)

This gets played in Dredge decks, as it can be used for any color of mana and then discarded to Putrid Imp or the like, hastening Threshold. I’ve seen it used to good effect with Exploration or Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

Weatherlight: Lotus Vale, Winding Canyons (both RL)

Lotus Vale is kind of amazing. It’s acceleration and fixing all at once, for the low cost of putting two untapped lands into the bin. It’s terrifying to play if there’s any bouncing going on, or nonbasic lands getting destroyed. Winding Canyons needs to be in more players’ hands, but more copies wimply will not be entering circulation.

Tempest: Mirri’s Guile, Coffin Queen (RL)

I had no idea Mirri’s Guile was so expensive. It’s not on the list, though Coffin Queen is. Guile isn’t in any top decks that I can find. It’s all about cheap card selection for green decks. It’s not as good as Sylvan Library, but it’s half the price in mana and in dollars.

Coffin Queen is a Zombie! I have four of her in an old casual deck built around the Visions Chimera cards. She’s not on the list, so maybe one day I’ll have her in foil. She’s another instant-speed reanimation method, but is more fragile than Shallow Grave. She’s pretty amazing for what she can do repeatedly, especially in EDH and its legions of enter-the-battlefield abilities, and I wouldn’t mind picking up a few spares for the long haul.

Honorable mention to the uncommon that is Horned Sliver at $3.50, two and a green to give trample is just silly. We love our casual Sliver decks!

Stronghold: Grave Pact, Mogg Infestation

Grave Pact has seen six printings, three of them in foil. All of the nonfoils are $10 or so, and the foils range in price depending on the art. This is pretty crazy, and if I ever have time, I’ll look up and see if there are other cards that come near to this number of printings while maintaining a price. Mogg Infestation is a two-way card, for doubling yourself up or for turning someone else’s board from value plays to a token horde.

Exodus: Hatred (RL)

I played Standard in the days of “No blocks? Tapped out? Ritual-Ritual-Hatred.” Pretty fun, especially when this was the same block as Shadow creatures. It’s a tough card to use in Commander, and that’s the primary consideration for its casual price.

Urza’s Saga: Contamination

This makes waves occasionally as a sideboard card in Legacy. It’s very good at locking someone out once it lands and stays, but it’s not hard to tap for mana in response and have it dealt with that way. Having a creature per turn is a big drawback in Constructed play.

Urza’s Legacy: No Mercy

Twelve dollars! For a card not on the list, seeing zero tournament play, and allowing something to hit you, it’s not a good deal for me. Interesting that this wasn’t used as a way to deal with True-Name Nemesis, since it gets around the protection by not targeting.

Urza’s Destiny: Yavimaya Hollow (RL)

Regeneration is a great ability to have, even with high-powered casual sweepers like Terminus or Toxic Deluge around. This is a sweet pickup for any green Commander deck, and you know that it’ll never be reprinted. Looking at this graph, I wouldn’t be surprised if it continued a slow upwards trend in price.

That’s part 1, to be finished next week.

For those of you attending GP Jersey this weekend: Stock up on worn dual lands. Get that MP Plateau and bring it back to your FNM, and watch as casual players feast their eyes. A surprising amount of Cube/Commander/Casual players could not care less about the condition of a card, as long as it’s sleeve playable. Trade/buy accordingly.

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Legacy Hero #3

Welcome back everyone for this weeks Legacy Hero.

Last week we went over a few things, including: the deck I’m going to build (Stoneblade Variant), touched on the legacy format pillars, how to free up some value for the trade binder by switching standard decks, and maximizing the resources at my disposal.

 This week I want to go over what Pucatrade is, what to do with Sealed Product, showing the finalized legacy build that I will be working toward, and what to do with our standard stuff we added to the binder from the Jesaki Aggro deck I was playing last week.

 I have only recently got on the Pucatrade banaaat is a great way to pick up cards. It is an even better way to turn the small stuff that is worth a little bit more than you would get on a buylist into big ticket items or the oddball cards that are cheap but hard to find like a Foil Children of Korlis (399 points). Basically, I’ve been listing the casual/EDH stuff, that is worth more than $3 and less then $10. Good example is the Foil Kaerveck the Merciless (839 points). Then there are the slightly more than worthless uncommons like Timely Reinforcements (47 points) or Essence Warden (96 points). I went through a bulk 1000 box that has been laying around my basement since the Gatecrash Prerelease, if I were to guess by the stickers on the box. I thumbed through it really quick, all the common, uncommon cards I thought that was worth more then bulk, all the foils and rares. The highlights of the box were Garruk, Primal Hunter, Teferi, Mage of Zhalfier, Cabal Coffers, and playsets of both Jorga, Treespeakers and Rite of Flame. To start my Pucutrade account I added all of these separated out items, a few emblems, and some tokens that I had.

Pucatrade also gives you a total of 600 points(one point is equal to one penny) once you do all the little things involved with setting up your account and shipping your first card, but remember that you are responsible for postage when you send something out, so I always try to trade multiple things to the same person. I have 743 points for shipping out 3 Portal Three Kingdoms Islands and requesting a Vision Charm to be sent to me. I’m saving points on here because I’m going to get a dual land out of this. I want to see how long it takes, and how much it costs in real dollars (shipping and materials) to get something that expensive. The Tropical Island from Revised is 21106 points ($211.06) and is supposed to be NM. Again, I am new to this concept, but I am excited to try it out for this project.

 Next we have the deck selection. I have been researching the Stoneblade/Deathblade archetypes, trying to find the one that stands out the most to me. Most of the sources suggest that the Delver variant is just better. I’m not sure if that is true, but I haven’t played a Delver variant or a Stoneblade variant since Treasure Cruise was printed. With all of the UR Delver running around lately, I’ve been playing either The Epic Storm, Show and Tell, or my own personal favorite,a Stifle-naught Delver variation. That is the beauty of the legacy format. There are SO many decks you can play. I keep a stack of proxies laying around to test different decks before sinking a major investment in to an idea. I can’t have plain, sharpie proxies like a normal person since I found these http://zeerbe.blogspot.com/. The Proxy Guy’s stuff is absolutely breathtaking.

 I have decided to build the UWr Stoneblade deck. This is mostly based on my personal play style, but also some research I have done, which I’m going to go over. The access to Pyroblast and Lightning Bolt outweigh Deathrite Shaman and Abrupt Decay in my mind. However, I will pick up a set of Shamans just in case the meta slows back down and lets the Deathrite Shaman build have the edge again. It does make some sense to snag a playset as a long term hold. The price has been steady and there is always the possibility of it being unbanned in Modern

.Deathrite

 

The other advantage of going with the UWr version is the cost of the mana base. Not having to get a couple Underground Seas and 4 Polluted Delta is huge. That is going to save at least $550.

Here is the base build I have settled on:

UWr Stoneblade W/Containment Priest (1st place SCG Legacy Open Columbus Rudy Briksza)

 4 Flooded Strand

3 Island

3 Scalding Tarn

3 Tundra

3 Volcanic Island

2 Plains

2 Arid Mesa

1 Karakas

1 Mountain

4 Stoneforge Mystic

2 Containment Priest

2 True-Name Nemesis

2 Vendilion Clique

1 Snapcaster Mage

4 Brainstorm

4 Swords to Plowshares

4 Force of Will

3 Lightning Bolt

2 Dig Through Time

2 Pyroblast

2 Counterspell

2 Spell Pierce

1 Treasure Cruise

1 Council’s Judgment

2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor

1 Umezawa’s Jitte

1 Batterskull

 

This deck lets us play with all of the new legacy toys like Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, and Containment Priest. Khans is as close to the bottom in price as it’s going to be,so anything Khans is worth getting now. The set as a whole is around $250, and 35 cards in the set are worth more than a buck. This is just a little more than the set of Theros, which has a about the same amount of cards worth more than a dollar.I can also build three different decks from the base of this one, so this another huge advantage to choosing this base.  Those three decks are: UWr Miracles, UWr Stoneblade, and UWr(Patriot) Delver.

Let’s take a look at core of the decks.

 

UWr Stoneblade Miracles UWr Stoneblade

 

4 Flooded Strand (4)

4 Scalding Tarn (3)

2 Tundra (3)

2 Arid Mesa (2)

1 Volcanic Island (3)

1 Karakas (1)

 

4 Stoneforge Mystic (4)

Containment Priest (2)

True-Name Nemesis (2)

2 Vendillion Clique (2)

Snapcaster Mage (1)

4 Brainstorm (4)

4 Swords to Plowshares (4)  3

4 Force of Will (4)

2 Pyroblast (2)

2 Counterspell (2)

Spell Pierce (2)

4 Counterbalance (0)

4 Sensei’s Divining Top (0)

3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor (2)

1 Batterskull (1)

Umezawa’s Jitte (1)

 

To turn it into the Delver deck I would just have to add some number of Lightning Bolt, Ponder, and Delvers. For Miracles, I would just need to add some tops and miracles.

 

I already have the Flooded Strands from my standard deck I parted out. As for the Brainstorm, Swords to Plowshares, Pyroblast, Spell Pierce, and Counterspell, they are readily available and fairly inexpensive coming in around $25 for the lot. I will be looking to get these cards as throw ins whenever possible. Your trade partner won’t usually walk away from a trade if you push for him to toss in that beat up counterspell he has.

 

What cards, out of the high end needs like the dual lands, force of will, etc, do I need to prioritize? You can’t count on the kids that need to sell some of their legacy stuff to pay some bills to find the best deal. You have to look at all the options. The option that I like the best is to focus on whatever is the cheapest to get. The best deal, to me, is to trade for the beat up Tundra out of my trade binder instead of buying the one in the case. As it stands right now my trade binder is ill equipped to get anything except for a few Force of Wills and that would leave things a little thin. I’m more than happy to get the cheapest sleeve playable option. Once the deck is built, then I can worry about a NM FBB Tundras or Japanese foil Stoneforge Mystics.

 

Speaking of trade binders, let’s look at what I was able to add to it by switching to the Jeskai Heroic Combo deck instead of the stale Jeskai Aggro deck I was playing. (trade value followed by best buylist prices per mtgprice.com)

 

+4 Flooded Strand 15.97/10

+1 Battlefield Forge 9.31/5

-1 Shivan Reef 8.18/5

+1 Temple of Triumph 5.46/3

-1 Temple of Epiphany 10.40/6

+1 Temple of Enlightenment 5.76/3

+2 Dig Through Time  8.71/5.01

+4 Stoke the Flames 5.26/3.40

+3 Brimaz, King of Oreskos 31.13/20

+4 Goblin Rabblemaster 16.17/10.64

+4 Mantis Rider 3.52/1.92

+1 Stormbreath Dragon 17.53/10.80

+1 Chandra, Pyromaster 7.62/4

+1 Elspeth, Sun’s Champion 32.72/18

+2 End Hostilities 2.31/1

 Out of those cards I’m going to keep the Flooded Strand and the Digs for the legacy deck. Stoke the Flame and Goblin Rabblemaster should move really quickly. I’ve been able to trade out any copies of those cards I’ve had for the past month or so. Temples have been slow but steady movers for me but great to have in the binder. Planeswalkers are another great staple to have in the trade binder.

I went to play FNM this past week but we didn’t have enough people show up on time to get anything going. Saturday was better since I got to play in a standard event that was offering the new Commander 2014 decks as prizes. 1st place got the first pick of the decks, and so on for the top 4. I really like the new Heroic deck. I was able to claw my way to 2nd place and I picked the white one. I’m going to wait until after the legacy GP to see if I need to part it out right away. I have my monthly  EDH game with friends this weekend. That will be a good place to look for some legacy stuff. These are mostly casual guys so I will be able to move a lot of the abstract stuff I have. I will make sure to take pictures of any trades and hopefully have enough time to upload my Legacy Hero trade binder online.

 Thanks again guys! mtglegacyhero@gmail.com

Follow me on twitter  @somethingsays

 Shout out to  The Proxy Guy. He has this really cool Community Binder Project and is a master of his craft. I would kill for some of his stuff for my cube. @TheProxyGuy on twitter. http://zeerbe.blogspot.com/

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Hunting for Commander Foils: Artifact Part II

By: Guo Heng Chin

Welcome back readers! This is the second part of the Hunting for Commander Foils series where we evaluate foil Commander staples to see if they hold any financial potential. You can find the first part here. Today we shall continue where last week’s article left off, shiny artifacts.

Taking into account the comments I have received for the first article in the series, I am going to slightly alter the format of the discussion. The first article was written in a pseudo-set review style in an attempt to cover as many cards as possible by working down the list used to rank the popularity of the cards. While I eschewed foils that are too expensive (no point harping about a $118 foil Sensei’s Divining Top if the majority of readers would not be willing to spend that much for it) or are stagnant price-wise, I covered foil staples that are already relatively expensive like Solemn Simulacrum.

My intention were to evaluate if it is worth acquiring your personal copy of those cards even though they may not be good spec targets anymore. However, it gave the impression that the article was discussing ships that have already sailed. Plus it seemed that a set review style would be too long-winded; last week’s article barely made its way down the top ten cards.

So I am opting for a more succinct approach this week: I shall focus only on the foil Commander staples on the list that are undervalued, a topic I think readers of this column prefer.

Before we get to the cards for this week, an obligatory shout-out to the super useful database in which we will be extracting our cards from:

50 shades of colorless.
50 shades of colorless by scoeri. This joke never gets old.

The list comes from an extensive Commander statistics database created and maintained by MTGSalvation.com EDH Primer Committee member scoeri. Every month, scoeri runs a script which trawls mtgsalvation.com for user-posted Commander decklists and breaks them down into various categories, giving an invaluable snapshot of the Commander metagame. You can find the lists here under the forum post Statistical Breakdown of the Commander Metagame. The database was last updated on 31 October 2014 with 3023 decks from 1473 users (decks posted or updated from 31 October 2013 – 31 October 2014). I am indebted to scoeri for the awesome database.

As with last week, we will be using the colorless list for the purpose of this article as the list includes artifact creatures while the artifact list only contains noncreature artifacts. Last week, we made our way down the list to Expedition Map. This week, the criteria will be stricter and we shall only discuss artifacts that possess financial potential. We will be skipping over popular, obvious and already sailed artifacts like Chromatic Lantern and focus on foil staples that are still cheap like this sacrificial deer:

Hart of Gold

Hart of gold.
Any more burnishing and you’ll scrape off  the foiling.

Foil Theros: $1.12

Number of Foil Printings: 1

The humble draft mana fixer, Burnished Hart has been getting a lot of love on the EDH subreddit and it is easy to see why: most Commander decks would like to have access to mana-fixing, and a double Rampant Growth on a bear (bear-hart) that fits into decks of any color has the making of a Commander staple, if it is not already one. Though more expensive than Armillary Sphere in casting and activation cost, the fact that Burnished Hart is a creature gives it synergy with a wider range of strategies: besides the usual artifact recurrence with Academy Ruins, it can be reanimated,  pulled out from your bottom (of your deck, hopefully most of the time) with Grenzo, Dungeon Warden, it triggers Sidisi, Brood Tyrant (which by the way has been growing in popularity as a Commander) and many more interactions a humble Armillary Sphere is not capable of.

Theros is still a Standard-legal set, but going for slightly more than $1, I see only upside for foil Burnished Hart. While I do not think foil Burnished Hart will grow to the double digit price of other common artifact mana-fixers like Dimir Signet and Azorius Signet due to the significantly larger print run of modern day sets like Theros, I am confident that foil Burnished Hart will exceed the price of other common rarity foil artifact mana-fixers on the top fifty list like Wayfarer’s Bauble, which is already less popular than Burnished Hart as of writing and is going for $3.81. The shiny fawn will take a while to become a full-fledged hart, get it now when Theros is abundant in supply and foil Burnished Harts are aplenty in bulk foil boxes before it becomes a $4 – $5 card. I know I am getting some myself.

Trading Cards in a Game of Trading Cards

Trading cards in a game of trading cards.
Where do you play a trading card game? Why, at the trading post of course!

M13 Foil: $2.79

M14 Foil: $1.98

Number of Foil Printings: 2

Trading Post is the Batman’s utility belt in Commander. Need to block a rampaging 12/12 Hydra Broodmaster? Here’s a goat. Need more lands? Sacrifice that goat of yours who is going to die anyway to get back your Wayfarer’s Bauble. Need more gas? Sac that worn out Worn Powerstone to further fuel your conquest. Life’s got you down? Toss away that 10th land you drew for 4 life.

Trading Post feels a bit like a Planeswalker in the sense that it generates incremental card advantage once per turn when it hits the board. Of course, I’m not claiming that Trading Post is anywhere near the power level of a Planeswalker (maybe except Tibalt) but it ekes you advantage over a prolonged game, and most Commander games tend to go long.

Trading Post is a Swiss Army knife that most Commander decks could find use for and yet foils of it could be acquired for less than $2. Granted M14 has just rotated out and being printed in both M13 and M14 created a huge supply. Nevertheless $2 is pretty close to bulk for foil rares, what more for a popular Commander rare. I suspect foil Trading Post will become one of those foil rares that surprises people when they look up its price a few years down the road. There’s always a risk of reprint, but at $2, how much can you lose? Plus foils do retain their value better than normal copies.

Foil Trading Post have a lot of room to grow, though I doubt it will be able to hit foil Staff of Domination prices due to Trading Post’s higher supply and the fact that Staff is ran as a one-of in Legacy and Vintage MUD decks (not that Vintage counts for much). However I do think that foil Trading Posts could hit $8 – $10 in the coming years.

Trading Post is also a pretty fun card to play, and its appeal as a ‘one-stop shop’ probably contributes to its popularity among the casual crowd. Did I mentioned, Trading Post has synergy with the artifact creature Burnished Hart too?

Signets That Shine

The most expensive foil signet of them all.
The most expensive foil signet of them all.
The cheapest foil signet of the lot.
The cheapest foil signet of the lot.

Ravnica Block Foils: $2.51  – $14.58

The cycle of signets from the original Ravnica block are some of the most popular artifact mana fixers in Commander, with four of them in the top fifty most played colorless cards list (five if you refer to the artifacts list).

But their prices are starkly different. You have foil Dimir Signet at $14 and foil Azorius Signet at $10. Foil Izzet Signet is around $7 and the rest are under $5. A foil Gruul Signet is a measly $2.51 and foil Selesnya Signet is no better at $3.16. They all have seen the same number of foil printings. So why the huge price gap between the most and least expensive signet?

The price pattern shows that the signets with green in them are the cheapest of the lot. Perhaps already having access to plenty of mana fixing, green-based decks do not run signets as much as the non-green decks do.

A quick glance through another database by scoeri breaking down the statistically average composition of the decks of the top fifty commanders validated the hypothesis. The green-based decks rarely included signets in their list, while the non-green decks often ran all the signets their color identity allows. Furthermore, the four signets in the top fifty most played colorless cards list (and the fifth signet if you count the artifacts list) are all non-green.

That makes the green-based foil signets a bad investment, regardless of how cheap they currently are. However foil Rakdos Signet and foil Orzhov Signet seem to be significantly lower than the other four non-green signets; they the only non-green foil signets available for under $5 but they see similar amount of play with the two most expensive signets, Dimir Signet and Azorius Signet. Boros Signet sees less play than both Rakdos Signet and Orzhov Signet and is $6.

Check out the top fifty most popular commanders over the past year, from the same database referred to by this article:

The real Hall of Triumph. The Journey into Nyx one was a knock-off.
The real Hall of Triumph. The Journey into Nyx one was a knock-off.

As mentioned above, most of the non-green decks run all the signets their color identity allows.  From the list we can see that popular non-green decks running Dimir Signet and/or Azorius Signet tend to also run Rakdos Signet (Nekusar, the Mindrazer, Jeleva, Nephalia’s Scourge, Marchesa, the Black Rose) and Orzhov Signet (Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, Sydri, Galvanic Genius, Kaalia of the Vast, Sharuum the Hegemon).

These Ravnican guild signets did not appear in Return to Ravnica and each signet bears the name of their respective guilds, so it is highly unlikely for the signets cycle to see a foil printing outside another visit to Ravnica, which probably would not happen within the next five years or so, a.k.a. a long, long time. So far they have been reprinted in Commander and Archenemy, both non-foil supplementary products.

I am of opinion that Rakdos Signet and Orzhov Signet are mispriced and are due for a market correction.

Closing

With the signets, we conclude the artifact segment of Hunting for Commander Foils series. Do comment on if you’ve enjoyed the approach I took for this article, and any suggestions for future articles are more than welcomed. You can find me @theguoheng or just drop a comment here.

Join me next week as I discuss the epic fails (and whatever little wins) I have experienced throughout my time in Magic finance and the lessons I have learnt from them. In the mean time, I can’t wait to finally unpack that Built from Scratch deck I have purchased over the weekend but have yet to find time to bring it out for a test run. Artifacts for the win!


 

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY