The Japanese Market

March 25, 2014 7 Comments

By: JT Neal

First things first, let me introduce myself. I’ve played Magic on and off since Ice Age, albeit only very seriously since Innistrad. I’m an American (Atlantan, to be specific) and I’ve lived in western Japan for the last six years of my life. The first five of those years were mostly spent in rural Shiga, a lovely prefecture with historical castles, Japan’s largest lake… and dismayingly few shops that run Magic events*.

Then, in 2012, I moved to Osaka. Japan’s second-largest city, Osaka is the seat of western Japanese cuisine, comedy and commerce. It also boasts the Nipponbashi district, second only to Tokyo’s Akihabara as a geek mecca. With one move roughly two hours west, I’d gone from Magical famine to feast. Of course, this bounty presented a new threat to my wallet; enter my budding interest in Magic finance.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a new hand at this, and I’m very grateful to be able to share my discoveries in an unfamiliar market with you all here on MTG Price. The Japanese Magic scene is vibrant and worthy of attention, and I think we can all stand to gain by learning a little more about foreign markets. I’d like to start off by going over a few things that might surprise a visitor or new expatriate stepping in to the Japanese scene for the first time. (As a note, all US dollar figures I’ve given are based on the current exchange rate as I write this, of 101.72 yen to the dollar.)

– There’s a surprising amount of English product available. Stores stock English booster packs, and many carry English versions of products such as Commander decks as well. As far as single cards are concerned, most shops that specialize in Magic will have any given card (with the exception of very new or very old sets) available in both English and Japanese.

Between high availability and a relatively older player base, card language is rarely an issue among Japanese players. I know Japanese players who strongly prefer to use English cards, fellow expats who strongly prefer Japanese cards and everyone in between. It’s easy to forget all about the language barrier once you start playing.

For the most part, stores charge more or less the same amount for non-foils in either language, though very new English cards and older Japanese cards may cost a touch more due to supply issues. For foils, though, all bets are off – if you visit, you’ll probably find that last Japanese foil Stoneforge Mystic you’ve been hunting for, but don’t expect to get a deal on it.

– Many shops explicitly prohibit trading on the premeses. The store where I usually play doesn’t, but trade binders are still a relatively uncommon sight there. There’s plenty of trading going on at Grands Prix and the like, but at least in Osaka, few cards change hands under store roofs. There’s cold comfort in the fact that buylist prices are often pretty competitive. They have to be, because…

– In urban Japan, game stores are typically found close together. If you don’t like the prices or selection at one store, the next may be as far as one city block or as close as another floor in the same building. Some stores handle this competition well, by aiming to have the lowest prices, or stock the fullest discount case, or host the most events. Unfortunately, some deal with it rather poorly; one Osaka branch of a major store has banned all cell phone use, and I’ve seen the staff harass customers for carrying shopping lists.

– And then there’s the elephant in the room: Singles in Japan tend to cost a good bit more than you’re probably used to. Individual packs for in-print sets cost around 300 yen, which is on par with retail price in the United States. Single rares and mythics, however, generally retail for about 120 to 150% more on this side of the Pacific.

This is a fairly consistent rule of thumb, but of course there are outliers. If you’re in Osaka and you need a True-Name Nemesis in your hands today, you’ll spend anywhere from 7000 to a whopping 10000 yen ($69-$99) for the privilege, depending on the store. Tokyo-based tokyomtg.com can hook you up for 5,500($53).

On the other hand, while card price fluctuations in Japan tend to match worldwide patterns, they often take some time to catch up to spikes in the United States. For whatever reason (and I’m open to theories), I have noticed this tendency is particularly strong with eternal-playable lands. Zendikar fetchlands, Wasteland, Rishadan Port, even Serra’s Sanctum; all of these afforded at least a week’s time to act after spiking Stateside.

Single prices do look a little more familiar if you browse Yahoo Auctions ((http://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/)), though there you run the same risks you’d run with eBay. Yahoo Auctions can be particularly intimidating to international shoppers, or those without much Japanese ability; if there’s interest I would be happy to provide a quick-and-dirty guide in a future column.

– Legacy is alive and well in Japan. My usual shop in Osaka runs at least two Legacy tournaments every week (it was four until recently, when they replaced two of them with Modern); another nearby spot runs Legacy events alongside their Standard FNM. There are several non-sanctioned Legacy events organized by members of the local community, too, like the popular Known Magician’s Clan ((http://mtgkmc.wix.com/kmc-invitational)). There’s growing interest in Modern among players, but for the most part the events aren’t there yet. I expect that to change as we draw closer to the Modern Grand Prix in nearby Kobe this coming August, though. Standard is, unsurprisingly, very popular as well, and Vintage events pop up from time to time.

I hope this has been at least a little informative or interesting. What would you like to know about the Japanese Magic scene? Please don’t hesitate to contact me here, or on Twitter @JohnnyToNowhere, with any questions/comments/complaints/foreign Gifts Ungiven foils you may have. Thank you for reading!

* Respect due to Dragon Tale ((http://www.dragontale.jp)) in Kusatsu, Shiga

Casual Fridays

Neat Tricks with MTGPrice.com

March 21, 2014 Cliff Daigle 1 Comment

By: Cliff Daigle

If you’re reading this, then you’re already aware that MTGPrice is the best price tracking site around. We are more than a set of numbers though, and today I’m going to walk you through a half-dozen tricks that will really enhance your experience with MTGPrice.

Trick #1: Price lookup history

If you use MTGPrice on a mobile device, usually while trading, you’ve probably had to look up several cards in a row. It can be quite annoying to have to look up prices a second time, as terms of a trade change. Here’s a tip for making that process faster and easier.

Since we put the price into the title of the page, all you have to do is look at your recent history in your browser. I have an iPhone, so when you go to the Safari history you see the list of cards and their prices in chronological order that you looked them up.

Until we have an official app, this is a really great tool when you’re working with a group of cards at once.

Trick #2: The Slider

For comparing historical trends, our slider is top-notch. We post our graphs in articles all the time, but seeing the drop from pre-order prices to bulk status reinforces how right you were to sell, sell, sell!

Conversely, you can see long-term trends this way. I know that there are lots of cards that have spiked in the past year, but there’s others on a slow upward trend. The really valuable tool is comparing very similar cards, like the Zendikar fetchlands or the Scars fastlands. While the price of the blue fetches is sky-high, it’s only a matter of time until the other fetches catch up.

#2 – Set Prices

If you look up one card, then you can click on the name of the set that the card is in. That gives you a list, sortable by name, price, and buylist price. This is incredibly valuable information, especially if you’re trying to trade for things that are going to sell easily for good money.

We also get that list ready pretty quick when a new set comes out. I use it as a tool for the early weeks of a set when I want to draft for money or make trades for the future.

#3 – Buylist comparisons

When you enter the cards you own into your collection, there’s a tool for getting the instant cash value of your collection. I realize it hurts to see the retail value of your collection, and then see that you’d get 60% of that in cash, but that’s the nature of the market.

Beyond that, when you’re looking at the price of an individual card, you click the ‘sell to’ button to show what different vendors are paying for that card. If there’s one vendor you prefer, you can check on them, or see what the trends are for that buylist price. Has it gone up and down a lot? Is it consistent? This will let you know.

#4 – Time Slider

For both the buylist and the value, our sliders can track the past two years. This is long enough to show a trend, a banning, or other spikes/drops. Two years is helpful for tracking the effect that Standard rotation has on the price of a card.

Right now, that means Innistrad block, which rotated a year ago. The most striking example of rotation affecting price is Huntmaster of the Fells. Slide its graph all the way out to 106 weeks, and remember when this was a $40 card.

#5 – Prices even though sold out

Finally, an overlooked feature is the ability to see what prices a vendor had for their card before they ran out of stock. We calculate the Fair Trade Price using what is in stock, but it can be very helpful to know what price was so good that they ran out! Sometimes this reflects a run on a card, or someone trying to run up the price by buying out a store’s stock.

When you click the button next to a vendor’s name, you’ll see what price they had. Again, if you like a certain vendor, you can focus there, or you can make a prediction on what they will restock the card at.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tour of some of our free features. Don’t forget about the lifetime Pro Trader offer! There’s a few spaces left and it is super cheap for all you’ll be getting!

City of Traders

Leaving Legacy

March 19, 2014 Travis Allen 24 Comments

By: Travis Allen

I addressed this topic about a year ago on my personal blog, but now feels like an appropriate time to revisit the matter and distribute the idea to more than those poor souls who had the link forced upon them eleven months ago.

GP Richmond was a lot of things to a lot of people. It was the largest constructed event ever. It was the largest event that many players have ever attended, and it was the largest event SCG had ever run. It was the first major Modern tournament many players attended. It was the catalyst that got many players off their butts to finally put together a Modern deck period. It was also a huge, shining beacon for the entire community: Modern is here to stay.

Richmond had a huge impact on Modern card prices, but that’s not what we’re here to discuss today. Rather, we’re here to discuss the impact it will have on Legacy card prices. I’ll sum it up for you.

Legacy is going to die.

Admittedly, it will never actually die die – someone, somewhere, will be playing it. Rather, it’s going to go the way of Vintage, relegated to its own tight-knit, late-20’s, financially secure old guard that spend more time thinking about, discussing, and goldfishing the format than actually playing in sanctioned events. When Wizards announced that the reserved list had not been repealed, but instead solidified, this thin slice of history became axiomatic.

The process will be gradual. The gap between the frequency that Standard/Modern staples and Legacy staples are sold at will widen at the local level. Less people will ask if you have Forces and duals for trade. (This is something that I’ve personally witnessed.) Richmond was the first horseman of the apocalypse, and SCG adding Modern as a major format to their open series will likely be the second. It will begin with just a few events where Modern shows up as a trial to gauge demand. It will be popular. Perhaps following that they’ll switch to a 75/25 split between Legacy and Modern. Maybe they’ll run Modern alongside Legacy on Sunday, creating a division between old eternal players and new eternal players. I’m not sure, and I’m guessing Pete isn’t either. But they certainly aren’t blind to the amazing demand for the new reality.

Think about all of this from a newer player’s perspective. I’m not talking about the guy that started six months ago and still has commons in his trade binder; I’m talking about the guy that joined up during Zendikar or Scars. Someone who came in during Scars block now has about three-and-a-half years worth of cards. They’ve got Birthing Pods and the Fastlands and a Thrun or two and maybe even a few fetches, since they were still Standard-legal (and $10) when they started playing. They just played through Return to Ravnica, so they have a full set of shocks. They did a draft of Modern Masters or two which helped procure a handful of staple uncommons and maybe even a Goyf or Confidant. Sure they don’t have a full Modern list together, but they’ve got a comfortable portion of several decks.

Where does that same player stand in relation to Legacy? He owns zero dual lands. He’s never had cause to own Karakas or Onslaught fetches or really anything on the reserved list at all. There is a far wider financial gap between a playable Modern deck and a playable Legacy deck at this point. And that’s just the cost in dollars. How about availability? Splinter Twin and Arcbound Ravager and Kiki-Jiki and Birthing Pod are in trade binders. Karakas and Counterbalance and City of Traitors are far, far less visible on a trade floor. Even if you find one, the owner is looking for a premium. After all, our junior player has no Legacy staples to trade away. That Jace is going to command an exchange rate.

Beyond the additional financial barrier, where is our budding Legacy enthusiast going to play? The Legacy scene is highly dependent on region, of course. Here in the tropical paradise of Buffalo, there are a whopping ten stores that sell Magic cards and run events. Do you know how many Legacy tournaments there are? One a month. Other areas have none. Sure, maybe you live someplace where they get thirty people weekly. That is awesome for you. But that is the exception to the rule.

As speculators, investors, and players, it is important to keep an eye on the future. It doesn’t necessarily need to start directly influencing our actions quite yet, but we would be remiss to ignore it. What does all of this mean for our Magic portfolios? Well, it means that Legacy staples aren’t really the bastion of stability you want them to be. They’re definitely more reliant than Ral Zarek or Trostani. But they aren’t going to hold all of these numbers forever, and they’ll only get less liquid as time goes on and less new blood enters the market.

First I’ll tell you what’s pretty safe. Tier S grade AAA reserved list cards are going to be pretty bulletproof. Think Dual lands and Gaea’s Cradle. Cards whose prices are predicated on their rarity and collectability will also remain valuable, such as power, Candelabra of Tawnos, and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.

What about the rest of it though? I flipped through the top sixteen of the most recent SCG open and here are a list of cards whose value is propped up in some considerable capacity by Legacy playability:

True-Name Nemesis
Daze
Force of Will
Sylvan Library
Mother of Runes
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte
Karakas
Stoneforge Mystic
Sensei’s Divining Top
Counterbalance
Natural Order
City of Traitors
Sneak Attack
Show and Tell
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Cabal Therapy
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Vindicate

Some of those will fare better than others. Force of Will is not on the reserved list and is played in exactly one format. As Legacy wanes, so will it. Stoneforge will hold a bit better, as she’s still excellent in Cube and EDH, and some small handful of pie-in-the-sky dreamers will hold out that she’ll be Modern legal some day. Reserved list cards will be more resilient, but won’t be immune to slow declines. If at some point in the future Legacy is no longer a main event at SCG opens, how many people are really going to want Lion’s Eye Diamond anymore? City of Traitors? Take a look at Llawan and Terravore. This type of behavior will be far more common than the other direction once we cross the tipping point and Legacy begins to contract rather than expand.

As a Legacy-invested player, what should you do about all of this? I’d start by picking a deck or two that you enjoy playing and making sure you’ve got it together. Then I’d start going through your collection and making sure you aren’t hoarding things unnecessarily. Do you have a pile of Daze or Swords to Plowshares? Into the binder they go. Unlikely to ever play the type of deck that JtMS is in? Maybe you consider putting that up for trade as well. Start considering what you actually foresee yourself using, and more importantly, what you foresee yourself never using.

You don’t need to firesale any of this. The TNN or Karakas can sit quite comfortably in a binder sleeve for over a year without any reasonable offers and that’s just fine. You aren’t looking to get out immediately, because the decline isn’t going to happen immediately. You just want to position yourself to capitalize on solid trades that may not come around again.

Before everything sinks, some prices will jump. There will be more spikes on Legacy cards. This is certain. But it doesn’t hurt to put the goods out there, just to see what types of offers you get. Maybe you’ve got a single Exploration that you’ve had socked away that someone ends up offering you a Karn Liberated for. A single Exploration decaying from the forces of entropy isn’t going to help you, but maybe you really needed that fourth Karn for your Tron list. You can’t get trade offers on cards that you don’t have available to the public.

I will reiterate that this is all long-term perspective. If someone is offering you a True-Name Nemesis for two shocks, take it. Don’t be afraid to make good trades that you can capitalize on in short order. What I wouldn’t do is pick up a City of Traitors just to have it, especially if it means shipping cards you would otherwise actually be playing with in Standard and Modern.

When you’re looking at cards to consider putting in the binder, remember our chat about Bayesian principles. Think probabilistically. What’s more likely, that this Submerge is going to be $20 overnight, or that it will slowly become less tradeable and less valuable?

I especially look forward to feedback this week.

Update – 3/20

I’ve received more comments on this article than any I’ve ever written, and it spawned quite a Reddit thread as well. There seems to be a lot of miscommunication about my message. I realize I haven’t communicated my ideas fully, and for that I apologize. Allow me to expand on the topic and hopefully do a better job making my point.

First, let me be explicitly and absolutely clear – nothing is happening to Legacy anytime soon. It won’t happen in a year. It may not even start within three or four years. This is not an immediate concern. It’s more of a “looking to the horizon” topic. Legacy has enjoyed a growth period of varying degrees for the last few years, just as all of Magic has. That’s also why we’ve seen the card prices rise as they have. I’m not telling you the death of Legacy is going to occur overnight or even within 12-24 months, so please don’t walk away with that message.

I do not want you to run out and sell all of your Legacy cards. There is no need to unload your favorite deck or dual lands this instant. Please don’t trade Underground Seas for Chandra Pyromasters. What I’m suggesting is that you consider looking through your stock and identifying what may be excessive. Definitely keep your set of Force of Wills. Maybe you put your three extra copies in your binder though. Do you have Explorations lying around that you can never see yourself casting? Perhaps instead of resting in your “never sees the light of day” pile at home, slide them into a binder sleeve. They could easily sit there for months at which point you decide you want to use them, and no harm done. Or, perhaps they snag a wandering eye and you pick up something you really wanted for them. Remember that Magic is a commodity market. This True-Name Nemesis is no different than that True-Name Nemesis. Trading away cards now doesn’t mean you can never have them in the future. Just because you take a good deal on your Mox Diamonds today, it doesn’t mean you can never have them back. If you decide in eighteen months that you absolutely need them, there will still be copies in the market for you to acquire.

I am not unaware of the emotional bond people have with this format. I get it. I really do. I play Legacy myself and I enjoy it thoroughly. You can do the most degenerate, wildest, coolest stuff this side of a Mox. People have far more attachment to their Legacy decks than Standard, and for very good reason. It took you far longer to build and cost you way more. I’m not telling you it’s suddenly irrelevant. All I want to do is make you aware that it may not always be the healthy, thriving format it is today. Sometime. Eventually. But not today, and not tomorrow.

Yes, SCG does a lot to support the format. They make money on it. Players play it. It’s popular. But did any of you notice that in 2013 there were multiple SCG events where Legacy wasn’t available? They’re not unaware of these concerns. SCG will milk this cow for all it’s worth, but when attendance dries up too much they’ll drop their buylist prices, sell out of their staples, and shutter Legacy at opens. Think of it like this – SCG can typically only manage to run one major event on Sunday. Do they run Legacy, which attracts 150-300 people, or Modern, which attracts 800?

Llawan and Terravore are not played in Legacy anymore, you are all correct. They were a component of the metagame, and have drifted away. Subsequently, their prices dropped significantly. My point of using these as examples are that these are two cards that were not caught up in the Legacy boom. Cards like Rishadan Port and Wasteland have exploded to keep pace with the current demand of Legacy. Meanwhile, cards that *used* to be part of Legacy have trailed off significantly. It’s easy to say that Llawan simply isn’t part of the metagame anymore, but three years ago she looked like she was an important format role-player. She was trading at $20+. Merfolk was and had been popular and Llawan felt fairly stable. Then the format shifted and Llawan’s usefulness declined. This is the point at which we are interested. If her $20 price tag was somehow inherent and separated from how playable she is in Legacy, she wouldn’t have dropped much. She did drop though, and that tells us something. All of these expensive Legacy cards are supported by their demand from that format. When that demand dries up, so will their prices. It certainly feels like City of Traitors is simply too powerful to not be in Legacy forever, but times change in ways that are difficult to predict. My point with these examples isn’t to show you why or how Legacy will fall out of favor, but to show you what will happen when it does.

This last point is something that I left out of the original post that I should have included. The most important reason that Legacy is not sustainable is the reserved list. I’m not looking to get people all hot and bothered, so let’s not go down that road today. It does have a drastic and severe impact on the format though, making it hard to ignore. Here’s the deal: dual lands are the backbone of the format. Our current supply of dual lands is it. It is the total amount we as a community have and will ever have. It is impossible to add more dual lands to the market. That means only two things can happen: 1. the number available can stay the same or 2. it can decline. Given that Magic cards are flimsy pieces of cardboard, it’s a safe bet that the number will slowly decline. Cards are damaged or lost or forgotten in basements and attics. Slowly but surely, the most essential cards to the format will become harder and harder to find.

Wizards isn’t looking to one-up these either. They’ve had their chance. If they wanted to make Legacy viable, they would have taken what steps they could already. But they didn’t. Instead, they introduced Modern. In Modern, they never have to deal with any of these issues ever again. Yes, some of the card prices are absurd. For right now. They aren’t in a rush to fix things. We think on a scale of months while they think on a scale of years. Yes, people don’t have beloved Modern decks. Yet. I’m guessing most people didn’t have beloved Legacy decks when that first became its own format either. Wizards has chose how our timeline plays out, and we’re all just left living in it.

Don’t think about Magic a year or two from now. Think about Magic five years from now. A decade from now. That’s the Magic I’m thinking of this week.

The Gilded Goblin

GP Richmond: A Tale of Two Tournaments

March 17, 2014 Jared Yost 1 Comment

By: Jared Yost

Unless you were on site, you would not have known that Starcity had to split GP Richmond up into two areas of the Richmond Convention Center. One room was the Green and White flights, and another room was the Pink Flight. As you might guess this caused a lot of controversy amongst the tournament attendees. Based on when you signed up for the tournament you may not have gotten to play in the same hall as your friends were. I was assigned to Pink and none of my friends were. Thus I was separated from my group that I came down with for the tournament all day. Despite this I had a really great time and wanted to share my experience with all of you.

What I Played

I went 4-3 Day 1 with UWR Midrange and then dropped after Round 7. Technically my final game Round 7 was a tie however I decided to concede the game to my opponent because we were both X-2’s at that point and neither of us would have made Day 2 with a tie.

Here is my list:

25 LANDS
4 Arid Mesa
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Island
2 Mountain
2 Sacred Foundry
2 Steam Vents
1 Sulfur Falls
1 Eiganjo Castle
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Plains
1 Tectonic Edge

13 CREATURES
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Grim Lavamancer
3 Geist of Saint Traft
3 Vendilion Clique

19 INSTANTS and SORCERIES
4 Lightning Helix
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Path to Exile
2 Mana Tithe
2 Electrolyze
2 Remand
1 Izzet Charm
1 Boros Charm

3 OTHER SPELLS
2 Batterskull
1 Isochron Scepter

SIDEBOARD
2 Wrath of God
1 Wear / Tear
2 Runed Halo
1 Spellskite
1 Shadow of Doubt
2 Aven Mindcensor
1 Baneslayer Angel
2 Counterflux
1 Damping Matrix
2 Threads of Disloyalty

This list is a facsimile of the deck that made the Top 8 of GP Portland last year and I liked it because I was familiar playing the list and also thought it would be a good choice against the various Affinity and Zoo decks that I foresaw playing against.

Based on the Top 8 I bet most of you are wondering why I wanted to run Wrath of God over Anger of the Gods. I thought about this choice for a long while and still decided to run Wrath over Anger because of Tarmogoyf and the possibility of seeing Thrun throughout the day. Wrath still worked pretty well for me but I never played Pod to test out how good it would be against that archetype.

I don’t want to harp on about my playing too much (since I’m sure you all want to hear about financial analysis) so here is how I did:

Wins:
2x Affinity
1x Mirror (UWR Midrange)
1x Scapeshift (Generic List)
Losses:
1x RG Tron
1x Scapeshift (Primeval Titan version)
Tie (then conceding afterwards):
Faeries

I did not get matched up against Pod, Splinter Twin, or RUG Twin at all, which makes me slightly disappointed since I wanted to see if I could win against those match ups. Luckily I avoided B/W Tokens, Living End, and Bogles, which are my deck’s hardest matchups. I also didn’t play against any random brews so I feel like I was able to get a lot of good playtesting at GP Richmond.

In retrospect, combo was a great choice for the tournament (thus why Pod got five of the top eight slots). However, combo and Affinity weren’t the only takeaways from the weekend. Modern is a wide open format despite the Top 8 results. There are a ton of decks you can play, and similar to Legacy the format rewards people for knowing how to play their deck really well. I was able to win a lot of games by just auto-piloting my deck through the usual motions due to all the interactions I discovered playtesting with it. I would bet the same is true for everyone playing Pod, Affinity, and U/R Twin that made the Top 8. They are all tricky decks to play at the best of times, so knowing your deck really well definitely gives you an advantage over less experienced players.

Card Financial Analysis from the Tournament Floor

Ironic that my tie is to the deck that people were laughing at and calling tier 2. Well, let me inform you – the person that I conceded to did make Day 2. Faeries can still sling some cardboard pretty well and my deck just happened to have a bad matchup against them. Bitterblossom isn’t an $80 card but that doesn’t mean that it is complete garbage. I would still watch out for Faeries pieces to move in the future. Some cards that I saw in the person’s deck that interest me included:

Creeping Tar Pit
Tectonic Edge
Mutavault
Spellstutter Sprite
Cryptic Command
Vendilion Clique

I would bet that out of these Vendilion Clique and Tectonic Edge are the safest in terms of going up in price and then holding onto their price until a reprint.

Based on my own matchups, and in addition to what I was hearing from other players, I want to target the following cards for future growth:

Pod:
Spellskite
Birds of Paradise
Restoration Angel
Chord of Calling

Affinity:
Etched Champion
Glimmervoid
Inkmoth Nexus
Blinkmoth Nexus
Arcbound Ravager

Scapeshift:
Scapeshift
Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
Primeval Titan

Merfolk (this deck went undefeated Day 1):
Aether Vial
Master of Waves
Master of the Pearl Trident
Lord of Atlantis
Phantasmal Image

On the trading floor, I was able to scrounge through $1 to up to $10 binders for deals. This was completely worth it. I was able to pick up Chain Lightnings for $6 HP, 4 out of the 5 Medallions (every color except for white) for $5 each, Chokes for $0.50, a playset of Scapeshifts for $36, and Japanese foil Myr Enforcer and Frogmite for $2 each. Unfortunately only one vendor had these types of binders but I was still able to get a lot for my money while on the tournament floor.

Everything else cardwise for Modern was totally over priced. One crazy card spike was Runed Halo, which went up to $15. Many dealers sold out of these during the tournament. I myself played two of them because they help my matchup against Bogles and Storm. I saw later that they also went up to $15 online yet I don’t think this price will be sustained. They are great sideboard tech at their best, so unless Torpor Orb is soon to become a $15 card I would not want to be picking up Runed Halos right now. Some of the cheapest deals were coming from Channel Fireball who were selling Celestial Colonnades for $17 each and offering great buylist prices for many Modern staples. I offloaded a bunch of Genesis Waves and Sigg, River Cutthroats to them for $3 each buylist which I thought was pretty good.

You could also find great deals on other products. Troll and Toad was selling Dragon Shield 100 count boxes for $8 each which is 20% off the usual going rate. I picked up a few boxes of these because you almost never see Dragon Shields that cheap.

Surprisingly, the Eternal Witness playmat that I received from GP Richmond is going anywhere from $55 to $80 based on complete eBay listings. If you didn’t do so well at the tournament, take solace in the fact that the playmat and GP Batterskull that you received (which is going for $30 at Starcity and anywhere from $35-$45 on other websites) more than paid for the basic tournament entry of $40.

All in all, it was a great weekend to find deals and discover which Modern cards are currently trending. I will be looking towards picking up pieces of Modern decks I am working on building (like Pod and Affinity) in anticipation of the summer and more Modern tournaments. Modern is a wide open format, so the field could change significantly going into the summer, but I have a good feeling that I will still be playing UWR Midrange going forward. Even though a lot of my games went to time during the rounds of the tournament it is the deck I know best how to play and I believe that this will lead me to more Modern success.

MTGPrice Blog