My Long Term Binder

August 15, 2014 Cliff Daigle 2 Comments

I would love to tell you that I am a true financier when it comes to Magic. I wish I could say that I buy hundreds of a card on speculation that it will rise, and cash out handsomely when it does.

If you follow individual writers on Twitter, you’ll see that some of us do indeed carry out this large-scale investing. I admit, I’m jealous sometimes when I see that Travis bought 50 of something or Jim has picked up a stack of sweet Japanese foils.

I’ve got two kids under the age of two, so I simply don’t have the funds for large speculations. If I have gone deep on a card, I’ve traded, laboriously, for every copy of that card. I make it to FNM as often as I can, but I also do a lot of online trading.

For example: when Jace, Architect of Thought was $8, I traded for four. When it spiked last winter, I turned those into four Cavern of Souls and three Abrupt Decay. I’ve traded those Decays for six Hero’s Downfall plus a little, and two Caverns for five Thassa, God of the Sea. When those go up, I’ll trade for things I want for EDH decks, or more value in the future.

Today, I want to walk you through my long-term binder, and hopefully you get a sense of how to grow your collection’s value over time.

If you’re a regular reader of mine, some of these will sound familiar. I practice what I preach.

36 Prophet of Kruphix
Acquired at: $2
Target price: $5
Expected timeframe: One year or more

Yavimaya Coast being in Magic 2015 and Khans being about enemy wedges means that blue-green is a viable choice for colors this fall. If Riku or Animar are reprinted, expect Prophet to take off with either of those cards. Prophet is redundant in multiples, but this is one of the best things you could be doing in EDH, until it gets banned. It hasn’t yet, so I’m optimistic.

27 Thespian’s Stage
Acquired at: sub-$1
Target price: $3 or more
Expected timeframe: Years

This went up to $2 when the combo with Dark Depths was revealed, but it remains one of the best things you can be doing in Commander games. This is a cheap pickup and has good potential, as long as I can be patient.

8 Soldier of the Pantheon
Acquired at: $1.50
Target price: $3
Expected timeframe: less than a year

I think this would have a higher price if Selesnya Charm could target it. There will always be a white aggro deck, and this is two power for one mana with upside. I’m not expecting this to go crazy, just enough to make it worth trading away. It’s so low-risk anyway, even a modest gain will pay off nicely.

10 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
Acquired at: $5-$10
Target price:$10-$15
Expected timeframe: winter

This is a card I’m expecting to trade away at the height and then trade for a few at rotation in a year. I really like the long-term prospects on this, considering how good is is in casual formats. If devotion is a thing, it’ll need several of these and I’ll be happy to trade these away at an increased price.

8 Aurelia, the Warleader
Acquired at: $4
Target price:$8-$10
Expected timeframe:a year or more

I traded for these before we knew what Iroas, God of Victory did. Her price went up just a little, but she’s a mythic angel that does ridiculous things in the two most aggressive colors. I don’t see this sinking much when she rotates in October, and going on a slow upward climb. If you haven’t seen this used as a Commander, you haven’t lived!

7 Rise of the Dark Realms
Acquired at: $2
Target price: $5+
Expected timeframe: years

There’s not a lot else you want to do with nine mana. This being a mythic means that there’s a lot less as compared to In Garruk’s Wake, which is only a rare. I’m sitting on these for a long time. There’s a combo currently legal in Standard, this and the Wake. Kill them all, and then take it all.

8 Thassa, God of the Sea
Acquired at: $6
Target price: $10-$20
Expected timeframe: winter

This is a card I’ve been going for as a short-term target. It hasn’t showed up in Modern much, but it’s really powerful in heavy-blue decks. It sees some play now but that was when this was in print, and it will only take one strong finish for these to go through the roof.

10 Hero’s Downfall
Acquired at: $5
Target price: $10
Expected timeframe: winter

Another short-term target, this has got some great potential as this is an answer to lots of problems. It’s been $10 before as a card that was still being opened, and it won’t take much to get back to where is was, or higher

4 Foil Boros Charm
Acquired at: $8
Target price: $20
Expected timeframe: whenever Boros Burn wins a Pro Tour

I am sitting on a playset of these, because the foil price is so much higher. The charm is a great EDH and Cube card, and is a key Burn card. I’ve got a playset and a couple more in Commander decks, and I have no trouble seeing this get to a high price when something happens and it blows up. The nonfoil has already had an extra printing in an Event deck, so I’ve focused on foils.

That’s my Hold binder. Are there things I should add to it? What and for how long?

Uncategorized

Guest Article: Future Future Sight

August 14, 2014 11 Comments

By: Ian Shore

One of the most important things in this game is learning to read the tea leaves. Watching tournament reports, learning to evaluate cards, and knowing basic archetype strengths and weaknesses can help you evaluate data and start to learn to predict player and price behavior. The same is true of watching WotC’s behavior. MaRo’s blog, their two-year development cycle, their seven year “plan” cycles – watching how they work over the years can give you insights into where we’re going next, and might help you make and/or save some money along the way. We’ve had a lot going on over the last month or so, and I believe it’s telling us that we may be entering some new territory over the next few months. As always, this could be totally off. But that’s not going to stop me from introducing potential future #1:

1. Standard may be changing.

A weekend or two ago it was announced that all four PTs in 2015 would be featuring the Standard format. When asked why Modern was not being featured, the response was that Modern was stale and not “dynamic,” didn’t feature the newest MTG release, and that they didn’t want to have to resort to bans in order to get a fresh format every year. Standard certainly makes sense, in terms of featuring the newest release, but the last two years of Sphinx’s Revelation certainly do not bring the words “dynamic” to mind. The last few sets have only had a marginal shake-up of the format. The best decks usually have enough good tools to continue being good, and often end up getting even more tools to work with.

And WotC knows this. Which makes the decision to go mono-Standard a bit more puzzling, in that the “change” they desire doesn’t seem to be something that regularly occurs in the format. On the most recent godbook survey, players were asked how they felt about the length of time that cards spent in Standard. However, Aaron Forsythe recently ruled out a possible three-year extension to Standard, as it would keep problem cards in the format for far too long.

What, then, could be the change? The only other alternative solution would appear to be a move to an “eight set” rotation, rather than the two most recent blocks. Much like seven-set Extended, when a new set was released, it would simply knock the oldest set out of the format. This would most definitely create the “dynamism” that WotC is looking for on the Pro Tour, as each event would have cards exiting AND entering the format simultaneously, keeping the format churning month to month. This would also extend the length of time that 2nd/3rd sets are relevant in Standard, eliminating the “seasonal” cycle we’ve seen with PTQ seasons, rotation, and the concurrent ebb and flow of prices. It would also almost certainly increase sales for WotC, now that all sets would be in Standard for approximately two years.

And most importantly, it would “solve” most of the issues they have been fighting against with the format in regards to tournament exposure. Moving to an all-Standard PT set with the current Standard setup would likely start to result in more bans over the long run. Culling MTGO results doesn’t seem to have accomplished much in this regard, as the very large data set provided by SCG, TCGP, and WotC Organized Play results in metagames being very quickly established. We know they (and we) have been frustrated by their inability to make open-ended, interesting format. #SaitoWayfinder, Pat Chapin, and many others do their very best to try and both troll the world and open up the format, but the relentless tyranny of Sphinx’s Revelation or Thoughtseize decks ends up quickly stamping out the fun for people.

A change to Standard would be a radical change, but they’ve been making a number of those over the last 5-6 years. This would simply be another one, and it’d be one they could easily revert if, after the next year, it didn’t test very well. It’s a risky proposition, but one that could pay off huge for them. Speaking of things that are going to pay off huge…

8/13 edit: Apparently, I am not alone, as Chapin himself suggested a six-set rotating structure in a recent SCG article. I do think, however, that this would be too problematic, regarding both manabases and sets not being in Standard long enough, and that eight sets would keep things in a much happier place for most players.

2. Modern Masters 2 is likely releasing on 5/29. The North Amercan “TBD” GP location is Vegas.

Many of us have assumed that MM2 was coming this year, given the massive success of MM1, and the two – year Dev cycle that WotC works on. We’ve been getting indirect confirmation of this over the past few weeks. The first indication was at the SDCC panel. The small “bridge” set for Khans block is being released in January, a month earlier than normal. The large Spring set is coming out in March, one or two months earlier than normal. On the PT schedule, the Summer PT isn’t occurring until August. Meaning that there is now a 4-month gap between the Spring PT in early April, and the Summer PT in early fall.

And what could possibly be located, smack dab in the center of those? 3 “Location TBD” GP tournaments happening simultaneously on the last weekend in May. (notably, NOT Memorial day.) An unprecedented occurrence, one that we were told to “mark our calendars” for by Rich Hagon on the final day of the PT broadcast. The locations clearly aren’t “TBD” – they work too far out in advance for them to be undecided. So why hide them? Because announcing Vegas would give away what’s about to occur.

But that’s not all. Three Modern GPs are scheduled immediately following this event, one in the US, one in Asia, and one in Europe. I can’t tell you what to sell, or when, but I would strongly suggest moving Liliana of the Veil, a card that’s near-guaranteed to be reprinted in the set, or in a near-future core set like M16. Also, something we’ll also likely see? The Eldrazi legends. Why?

3. We are going back to Zendikar for at least part of the next block. Oh, and Delve is in Khans

In case you hadn’t been following Mark Rosewater’s Tumblr, Blogatog, he answers a lot of questions there. He likes being able to get the direct feedback, and contrast it with his market research, as well as to just get quick feedback regarding product direction and mechanics that he can’t otherwise get.

About a year ago, he suddenly started asking players a lot about Zendikar a. What would they expect of a return to the plane? What mechanics? Did they like annihilator? Would they expect the OG Eldrazi legends? And 3-4 months later, suddenly, we started to have answers. Annhilator was “likely” not returning when the Eldrazi did. The next time we see the Eldrazi legends, they would “likely” have new cards. You read MaRo’s tea leaves by noticing which questions he’s choosing to answer. This question in particular reads a lot more interestingly now than it did a few weeks ago: http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/57332759132/do-you-think-that-theres-enough-space-in-colorless-vs

In a similar vein – Mark’s brought up Delve a lot in the past month, and he’s previously emphasized it needed to NOT be in a GY-focused set, since it eats up graveyards and promotes non-interaction with them. Given this uptick in mentions, alongside the description of the mechanic at the SDCC panel, it’s almost certainly the BUG mechanic for Khans.

But, going back to Zendikar – we can also look at the most recent Planeswalker Guide on the WotC website, where there’s a very strong focus on the Planeswalkers who surround the storyline of the original Zendikar block. By itself, it means little. But in conjunction with Maro’s blog, the M15 usage of Zendikar, and all sorts of other factors, the constellation being formed points in a single direction.

So we know that Zendikar is coming up soon, seven years after the original block. Oh, and the original Zendikar block came up seven years after Onslaught block. Huh. What did those two sets have in common? Oh right.

4. The fetchlands are coming.

Aaron, Mark, and the other members of OP and R&D were shocked at the reaction to the Standard PT and PPTQ announcements, particularly as it related to the Modern format. From our outside point of view, it shouldn’t be surprising at all. But why was theirs different? Because they were aware of many things we weren’t. Modern Masters 2 is one of them. But simply printing Modern Masters 2 wouldn’t really do much to address the larger issues with manabases in the format being hyper-expensive, the biggest barrier to entry problem that the format has. So in order to get players into the format, you need to reduce those costs and make the manabases accessible. That means reprinting the biggest chokepoint in the format, and doing it through Standard.

That means Fetchlands.

Now, it’s been six years since we last saw Enemy Fetchlands, and thirteen since we last saw allied ones. We’re at the point where they’d naturally be reprinted anyway. Zendikar II (Reign of the Eldrazi?) is coming up in Fall 2015, and would be a natural fit for them. But in a year in which they are going to be making a massive push for Modern in May, that’s actually too late for them to assist, especially when trying to bump turnout at an event like GP Charlotte, run by none other than SCG, TO for the record-setting GP: Richmond.

This means that an appearance in Khans block by the OG Onslaught Fetchlands is actually quite likely. Especially given that we’re time-travelling in the block to an “Earlier Era” where dragons are everywhere. This would allow for the Enemy Fetchlands to be shelved for later, or simply reprinted in Zendikar block.

It is very unlikely, btw, that these lands show up in Modern Masters 2. They’re well aware of the barrier to entry problem that they present, and reprinting them in MM2 simply wouldn’t do enough to ease the supply issues on the basic lands. If we do get a land cycle in there, the Shadowmoor/Eventide Filterlands would be a much more appropriate set to use, given that they seemed to let people play a little too fast and loose with mana while they were in Standard. The allied manlands are another potential option, but given that putting the Enemy ones in Zendikar II would be an easy call, I suspect we may end up seeing those allied ones show up in a core set some day soon, given the need to reprint Colonnade.

And with four reasonable predictions out of the way, I’ll end with a crazy guess.

5. Tarkir is Dominaria

Morph, Arcanis in the Duel Deck (Onslaught), the first wedge cycles (Apocalypse), time travel (Time Spiral), a dragon Set (Scourge.) Where else could Tarkir be taking place but Magic’s home? 😛 Yeah, I’m probably wrong on this, but conspiracy theories are fun!

Obviously, only the folks over at WotC know the future, but that doesn’t prevent us from being able to profit off of it. If you can figure out what’s coming next, you can figure out what to do right now.

City of Traders

Common Cents

August 13, 2014 Travis Allen 5 Comments

By: Travis Allen

Money for Nothing

If you’re anything like me, you are constantly on the lookout for collections to gobble up. Your ears perk up when people talk about getting out of the game, you browse Craigslist for people offloading their kid’s old box of cards, and upon hearing someone comment that they used to play you immediately begin an inquisition into the whereabouts and age range of their cards. The end result of this is that you end up purchasing collection after collection. You strip it for the rares and foils then shove the boxes into a corner. Pretty soon, you have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lands/commons/uncommons with which you don’t know what to do.

The last time this happened to me I listed the entire pile on Craigslist as a great casual starter kit. I was up front about it not containing any duals or money cards, and that there were probably close to no rares. What WAS in the collection was commons and uncommons that spanned the entire range of Magic’s history, from a few odd Beta cards right up through Theros. I listed it for around $400, and someone picked it up because he and a buddy had been playing again and wanted fodder for decks. They certainly got their fodder. (As an added bonus it was a birthday present, and the guy buying it planned to stack all 100,000+ cards up in his friend’s bedroom.)

Before I listed it I did one final pass. I wasn’t looking for rares though; rather, I was looking for commons and uncommons. You see, the first time(s) through I was mainly looking for rares and money uncommons such as Lightning Helix or Kitchen Finks. The Zendikar box that had Explores, Expedition Maps, and Goblin Bushwhackers? I had skipped all that stuff. I left in the 30 or 40 Lightning Bolts and the multitude of Brainstorms that had accumulated through various eras. This time I pulled out any common or uncommon that looked remotely playable.

By the time I got all the way back through I must have pulled a solid 5,000 cards out, completely and utterly unsorted. I began plugging cards into MTGPrice to check their buylist value. Anything worth $.10 or more was kept, and the rest tossed back into the box. The work wasn’t all that bad really. I put on some ST:TNG and plowed through. Once I knew that the uncommon shard lands from SOA were worth more than ten cents, I didn’t have to look them up every time. Same with all the rest of the cards that kept repeating. After the first 1,000 cards or so, there weren’t too many repeats.

At the end of this process I had somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 commons that were all worth at least $.10, and much of it worth more. The problem at this point was that it was still totally and completely unsorted, as there were easily over 100 unique cards in the stack. Furthermore, even if I did sort it, buylisting a pile of that size is sort of a nightmare. Sure HotSauce gives $.45 on Crumbling Necropolis, but what if they don’t want twenty of them? What if they only want twelve? Well now I have to see who pays the next highest amount and sell some to them. What if they don’t want all the ones I have left either? Onto a third store. You can see how this could get tedious, especially taking into consideration that unless I did every order in a single day, the buylist requirements could change as I worked through the pile. Then I’d have to ship everything, make sure they gave me how much they were supposed to, and so on and so on. On top of that, had I gone through all of this, I surely would have ended up with some amount of cards left for various reasons.

So I procrastinated. I let the cards sit there in my room for a few months. Eventually an SCG open rolled through town and I figured I’d bring them with me to see what I could get for them. I wasn’t holding my breath but I thought it was at least worth my time to find out. After taking my third loss in Standard on Saturday, I grabbed the boxes from my car and plopped them on the buyer’s mat. I was expecting him to groan and slowly begin ctrl+f’ing the SCG buylist, sorting the cards into various $.10 and $.50 piles.

He opened one of the boxes, flipped through a bit, and told me he didn’t feel like looking all of it up. After a quick scan of the other two 1,000 count boxes he made me a simple offer: $.25 per card. At the end, I pocketed $650 cash for a few thousand commons and uncommons in the span of fifteen minutes.

I’m well aware that I probably could have eeked out a bit more money had I buylisted the entire pile myself, submitting five or ten buylist orders to various websites. Maybe I could have even got an extra $100 out of it. But think about it like this – all of that would have taken time and effort. A considerable amount of it, in fact. I’d wager that I would have spent at least four hours organizing all of those buylists, if not more. If you consider that I lost $100 shipping the entire pile at $.25/ea instead of buylisting it individually, and it would have taken at least four hours to do, I paid myself at most $25 an hour. I am completely happy to make that exchange.

The reason I present all of this to you is to illustrate two things. The first is that all those decent commons and uncommons that aren’t quite worth lugging around in your trade binder are still completely worth pulling out of collections. The only thing you should be leaving behind are the bulkiest bulk C/UCs. (Of which, to be fair, will comprise a majority of the collection). Make sure you’re still pulling each and every rare too! This same weekend a pair of friends had accumulated bulk rares over the last few months from buying binders from people, and ended up getting a crispy mint pair of Revised Underground Seas for them. (I personally have been keeping all my bulk rares. They’re never going to be worth less than $.10, so I’m not losing money holding onto them, and every now and then when a card spikes to $5-$15 I get to dig through the box and pull a few copies out. Disrupting Shoal, Fist of Suns, Genesis Wave, etc).

Perhaps more importantly, it’s worth it to appropriately value your time. The amount of effort it would have taken to wring a few extra bucks out of all of that would have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled the amount of time I had put into it. Screw that. Recognize that your time has value and that it’s perfectly acceptable to forfeit some amount of capital in exchange for your entire Saturday back. Whenever you’re thinking about investing a large amount of time into an activity whose sole purpose is to make you money, consider how much you’re making per hour. When it comes to things like sorting bulk commons, chances are it would be more lucrative to simply work a side job on the weekend.

Current Events

I’ve started trading my extra Liliana of the Veils. Her price has been fairly stable since early this year so I’m not expecting any big movements out of her in the near future. She may gain $10, but I don’t think we’ll see her climb above $80 or $90 TCG anytime soon. There are two reasons I’m looking to trade her right now. The first is that there were comments that she was initially in the file for M15. She was pulled for power level reasons (duh) but it shows that Wizards is looking to get her back into our hands. I don’t think we’ll see a reprint in Khans, but with MM2 looking so likely, and that being a perfect place for her, I’ve decided to start shopping her around. I’m not advocating any fire sales, but I’m happy to take Theros staples for her right now that are guaranteed gainers in the next few months.

People continue to clamor about fetches in Khans. Real quick, what I feel is one of the best reasons we won’t see them: Fetches came around last time with landfall. Both were wildly popular. Wizards wants to bring back both. Because of the five-tribe nature of Khans it can’t support landfall as a major mechanic. Since landfall wouldn’t fit well in Khans, they’ll hold it (and fetches) for a set that will better support both.

Buy Temples.

No, buy more.

Eidolon of the Great Revel wrecked my face in Legacy this weekend. Burn decks have always been tier 1.5 to tier 3 budget decks in Modern and Legacy. Eidolon is a big bump in power for them in both formats. Foils are around $20-$25 right now. At those numbers I’m happy to trade for them. I could see them at $30-$40 within a year.

Nissa, Worldwaker is the truth. She’s hanging strong at $30+. I expect she’ll dip, but I also think it’s unlikely we see her below $20 before the end of the calendar year. If you want a set, go ahead and trade for her. I will be.

Finally, this isn’t necessarily finance related, but I have a platform so I’m going to use it dangit. Wouldn’t Leyline of Anticipation be great in those Modern discard-heavy decks people are always trying to make? Think 4x Thoughtseize 4x Inquisition type decks. They can frequently tear the game apart in the first three turns but often lose to a Tarmogoyf or Bob off the top of the deck while some one-mana discard spell rots in their hand. With Leyline in play, you can cast those discard spells at the end of their draw step just like you would Clique. Leyline turns all those awful late-game Thoughtseizes into much more potent spells, as you can actually nab anything they draw before they cast it. Those decks often run Liliana or Smallpox or something similar, and are constantly discarding their own stuff, so pitching redundant Leylines would be fine. Drawing a late Leyline when you already have one in play is obviously bad, but now instead of having eight to twelve dead top decks in the form of Thoughtseize and Duress, those are all live and only the three other Leylines are dead. That seems like a solid trade. I doubt this makes those decks tier 1 contenders or anything, but it just struck me as an unusual card choice that could actually do a lot to shore up the problems those types of lists tend to have.

The Gilded Goblin

Ancestral Recall: The Wild West

August 11, 2014 Jared Yost

Jared is on vacation this week, so enjoy this article that originally aired December 23, 2013.

By: Jared Yost

Sometimes it feels like we are in the wild west of Magic: the Gathering when it comes to sudden price spikes and card buyouts that seem to affect the market on a weekly basis. It feels like every week I am hearing that this card or that card was bought out and the price has gone up 200%-400%. Just like a shootout, it seems as if the first person to draw their gun (or in this case, their wallet) and fire (click “add to cart”) is the winner. And it only seems to get worse as time goes on.

Let’s ponder for a quick minute – who the heck is actually pulling the trigger on these calls like Disrupting Shoal and Phyrexian Obliterator (which even seemed to spike twice?) Is it individuals that have amassed enough ammunition (money) and have good enough aim (experience) to hit every single target faster than the rest of us? Are they the Billie the Kids and Jesse James of the Magic market? Is there a domino effect of casual speculators with more money than sense?

The answer is probably yes to both. As the popularity of Magic increases, it looks like the sky’s the limit for the prices on some of these cards when someone discovers that they are undercosted and acts quickly to drain the market. If you are one of these individuals, my hat is off to you. Congratulations. You have done your homework, discovered an undervalued asset, and have capitalized on that asset. I’m not sure if there is any advice I can give you except to avoid the trap of getting in on a card too late, which you’ve probably avoided in 95% of the cases (there is always the potential for the double spike, though it doesn’t happen often – Jace, the Mind Sculptor did it in Standard). Just remember to strike while the iron is hot: those Disrupting Shoals aren’t going to sell themselves.

But It’s not even Modern cards that are experiencing these price hikes. What about cards like Wheel and Deal and Forced Fruition? Nekusar hasn’t been out for long and isn’t even the flagship commander of the Mind Seize deck, so why did these random cards that only fit into a narrow strategy in a specific causal format go up in value? I might have an idea.

Those holding the bag of cards that spike and then quickly plummet are similar to the penny stock investor, who decided “investing” in penny stock assets would result in a great return. However, the asset in this case is not a random number on a roulette wheel or any single name in a list of penny stocks – the asset is actually something that all of us are emotionally invested in. The first reason that these spikes happen is because players and speculators are both emotionally invested in the game of Magic.

Everyone that plays Magic is emotionally invested in the game to some degree. Otherwise, why play the game? There are literally thousands of other games that could be played instead, so what makes it so special? The answer is that playing the game is fun, the wonderful community is welcoming and friendly, the feeling of opening packs and sorting a collection can’t be beat, the feeling of chasing a collection and acquiring all of the particular cards you desire is amazing, the great feeling of putting a deck together and calling it your own is the best, and the support by the company that produces the game is fantastic. Without all of these factors, Magic would falter and slowly go away. It is stronger than ever now because all Magic players are able to get emotionally invested through all of these other aspects besides playing the game. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to Magic out there, whether they sell art related to the game (card alters), offer game accessories (dice, tokens, deckboxes, playmats, etc.), or are just reflecting on the community (Cardboard Crack). All of these factors help to cement good feelings in players’ minds about how sweet Magic is.

Right, so what does emotional investment have to do with price spikes? Well, when you get pretty emotional about something, it’s much harder for logic to factor into the equation. Do you want to buy those Disrupting Shoals at $10 because you think they’re cool and there is no way they could go down due to their awesomeness? If this is your train of thought, speculating might not be for you. Speculating requires a certain amount of cold logic and forethought that a lot players don’t want to apply to their favorite past time, which is supposed to be about fun.

Besides emotional investing, I believe another reason that these price spikes are happening is due to the rarity of the older cards compared to the newer ones (Wheel of Fortune anyone?). Back when Magic first came out, they had no idea how popular the game would be. They created the reserve list out of a fear of killing the game via reprints, and it seemed to work for a time. Because these cards can’t be reprinted, when a new card is released that synergizes or combos well with an old Reserve List card, that card can wind up spiking in value very fast. Even a rules change or unbanning could do this – Gaea’s Cradle and Time Spiral are examples of these cases respectively. With the Modern format Wizards can better control prices of newer cards, but older cards that are in Legacy and EDH are anyone’s guess.

In addition to Reserved List cards that are never getting reprinted, cards that could also receive a reprint but have not gotten one yet are also targets for spikes. Specifically, cards in sets that are post-reserved but pre-Modern, like Masque’s (Rishadan Port), Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught – these blocks were printed in a time where the Magic community was only a fraction of what it is today. If a card from one of these sets is discovered to be very synergistic with a new card it, it will spike out of nowhere because the amount of copies that exist are marginal compared to the demand it will see from interacting well with a newer card. It is very hard to keep on top of all the potential combinations that exist without a good grasp on the community resources available to discover these interactions. So I will state that card rarity is always a factor in a spike, because even uncommons (Remand) can become grossly expensive without a reprint.

Just because because a card is rare or hard to find does not mean that its spike is warranted. Aluren would be a good example of this – it’s a card that has a legacy deck to its name and is a casual favorite that a lot of players remember having tons of fun with. It never sustained its price, though, because the deck failed to put up enough results compared to other currently existing legacy decks. Due to the lack of demand, it then dropped down close to the original price from which it spiked. In order to avoid buying high into potential scenarios like Aluren, you want to make sure you pick up the card before it has seen a massive increase in price, you want to make sure that it can fit into a deck that has proven results backing it up, you want to make sure that even if it isn’t tournament playable that it can be popular with casual and EDH players, and you finally want to make sure that it is from a set that had a relatively small print run compared to current sets (like the post-reserve list sets I mentioned above).

So in summary, the combination of emotional investing and card rarity are a recipe for a card spike. Whether the spike is real or whether it will ultimately become a bust can be hard to spot without extensive knowledge of the current tournament scene and correctly identifying the casual appeal of a card. With time comes experience, and I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes in the past in regard to cards and spikes – I certainly have. All we can do is to keep working at it and make sure that the characteristics of a card match up well with the reasons a card could spike. It can sure feel like the wild west at times with all of these card spikes, but realize that many of them can’t sustain those prices for very long and are mainly driven emotional investing and card rarity.

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