City of Traders

What’s New is Old Again

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Another Pro Tour in the books, another slew of results to digest. The coverage team did a commendable job this time, and the abolishment of the “I think I’m stylish but I still want the world to know I love videogames” blazer and t-shirt combo made sure everyone looked professional. There were still a few holes – the lighting in the coverage booth was dim and and I’m convinced Rashad hasn’t played Magic in several years – but overall, it was a noticeable improvement to previous PT coverage. And a special thank you for keeping Sheldon out of the booth.

You’re going to notice a trend in this article. I’m going to mention frequently that you should be holding copies until the Modern PTQ season, which starts in June. Without getting too far into it, holding 95% of Modern cards between now and then is just a Good Play. There’s very little room for the cards to fall, with plenty of upside between now and the summer. 

The Top 8 was fairly familiar, but not without cause for discussion. First is the seventeen of a possible thirty-two Snapcaster Mages. Deathrite Shaman had been doing a great job keeping Tiago at bay, but now that the graveyard is relatively safe again he’s flashback. Prices have reacted accordingly and Snap is now more than double what he was heading into the weekend. $30 is the real price. There’s a chance we could see him in Jace vs Vraska three months or as a judge promo, but neither of those will have enough supply to really ding his price. There’s even room for upward growth before the end of this PTQ season. I wouldn’t feel bad holding my copies until June, or even later if you aren’t in a rush. Sub-$25 prices aren’t on the horizon until this sees its third or even fourth printing.

Hand-in-hand with Snap is Cryptic Command, which saw nine copies across four decks in the Top 8, or 28% saturation. Cryptic reacted similarly, with very few copies left under $45. The next time someone complains that Modern Masters didn’t do anything, feel free to point out that this would be more than Force of Will if not for that printing. Cryptic, like Snapcaster, has found a new home at $45+. Some finance types are doubling down, buying large quantities at $40 in anticipation of what PTQs will do to the price. If you don’t own any right now, I wouldn’t hesitate to grab them, and feel free to trade aggressively for spares as well.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure what the more amusing Sideboard Spike® of the event was – Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir from $7 to $20+ as a 1-of, or 2-of Porphyry Nodes, from $.30 to $8.

Birthing Pod had a strong showing but remains rather obstinate at about $10. I don’t think this has finished growing yet. We don’t have to worry either, as its performance wasn’t oppressive enough to warrant banning. I’m holding my copies for the PTQ season, but I’ll get out then regardless.

The three Razorverge Thickets in Jacob’s list are a good sign, and at ~$3, these are gold in trade. Gavony Township was a 2 or 3-of in every Pod list and is right around $1 right now. You may even be able to get them for free in trade. The ceiling on this isn’t too high, but I could see this buylisting this for $1.50-$3 later this year. Mostly, Pod was reasonably stock.

Affinity did what Affinity does. Mox Opal is now $50. June will be time to sell those unless you’re trying to cast droids yourself. It shouldn’t be able to climb much higher than that with basically only one deck in Modern casting it, and the Legacy demand isn’t great either. We’ll see a reprint before this thing goes much higher. Inkmoth Nexus continues to grow, weighing in at over $10 today. The price memory on this is definitely lower than that. It could easily climb to $15+ in the coming months, but it’s fair game for every non-expansion set. Holding this is akin to a (slow) game of chicken. 

As one would guess, Storm made the Top 8, although amazingly not at the hands of Finkel. He was playing it though, as was Kai Budde. Don’t gloss over this: the two best Magic players in the world were playing Storm. My guess is that Deathrite wasn’t actually too problematic for the deck, but a high percentage of Thoughtseize and Liliana decks was. With those two cards considerably less represented than they have been in the past, as well as a heavy presence of Wild Nacatl, often a prey of grapes, Storm was much more viable this weekend. I have no reason to doubt that Storm won’t be a meaningful percentage of the Modern metagame in the future. The internet agrees with me: Pyromancer Ascension has tripled to $9, and Box of Failures worldwide rejoiced to find their Past in Flames were now $5. These two I would actually sell right now if you have them. If Storm comes anywhere close to taking over the format Wizards will not hesitate to axe a few more rituals, and in the meantime there won’t be enough demand to sustain the post-PT highs. Sell them now, be happy with your profits, and have a plan to beat piles of goblins at your next PTQ.

One of the more unique decks of the Top 8 was Dickmann’s Tarmo-Twin. His revolutionary innovation of “take a good deck and shove Tarmogoyf into it” served him well all weekend. This list reminds me of the Twin Blade lists from the twilight days of Jace and Stoneforge, where your plan was to beat your opponent in the face with creatures, and while they attempted to deal with that you were always threatening to kill them at the end of their turn. Tarmogoyf’s reign as the best blue creature continues, and his price follows. Even Modern Masters copies are $150 these days, with Future Sight a solid $10 to $20 ahead of that. At this rate I don’t think $200 is out of the question this summer. A full 20% of the 18+ point decks played him, and every list had the full four copies. Combined with his continued Legacy performances, Goyf is not going to slow down anytime soon. If there was a banner card for how badly we need Modern Masters 2, this is it.

Remand was all over the place, in 62.5% of the Top 8 and 20.7% of the 18 pointers. I tweeted a few days ago that this is the card I most need to own for play purposes, but least want to for finance reasons. As the illustrious @plfeudo pointed out recently, JvV is prime for a Remand reprint. This will put a pretty serious damper on its price, since Duel Decks are always bountiful. Conspiracy will be hot on JvV’s heels as another avenue. It’s a bit risky, but I think the right call here is holding off if you don’t own any, and shipping if you do. I wouldn’t blame you if you disagreed though. Remand was confirmed as reprinted in JvV a few hours after I submitted this to go live. Their new ceiling will be around $8-12. Sell yours aggressively now.  This will also crush the price of Reaper of the Wilds in Standard for anyone that was thinking about going down that route.

The darlings of the tournament Blue Moon and Summer Bloom each had their own effect on the markets. Main deck Blood Moon was an excellent call, and now sits at nearly $15 as a result. Aside from the hilariously overbought Teferi, nothing else in the deck was really an unknown quantity.

Summer Bloom, on the other hand, did a bunch of financial work this weekend. After a strong showing on Friday, Matthias Hunt drove Amulet of Vigor upwards from a dollar and change to where its now settled at around $6. He didn’t have a hot day two so the card didn’t stay over $10, but I think $4 is the new floor here. It’s not the first time this card has spiked hard, and people may see Bloom as the new Eggs, with a slow rise in demand as PTQ season approaches. Primeval Titan is now also around $20 after proving that a six mana 6/6 is good enough in Modern. Without a reprint I think he could slowly keep creeping upwards towards $30. As long as they keep printing sweet lands he keeps getting more and more attractive. 

One card that didn’t react much from Bloom’s success that I think should? Gemstone Mine. Aside from being one of the best broken-combo-enabling lands in the format, it’s shown up in SCG Legacy events eight times already just this year. There aren’t that many copies around, and $5-$6 for a land this powerful is incorrect. $10 is completely plausible before the PTQ season is over, and if its well represented prices closer to $20 aren’t unreasonable. I’ll be looking to trade for these in every binder I see them in.

Pulling back a bit from the Top 8, what are some of the larger trends across the eighteen pointers? Spellskite was in a whopping 42% of lists. He’s about $13 right now but I’m guessing that rises to $20 this summer. Nearly every person playing Modern needs copies, and we have exactly one printing.

Vendilion Clique, by virtue of being blue, is now firmly $55. There really isn’t any ceiling in sight for this flock of faeries. They have similar availability to Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant, whose prices are considerably higher. And as with these two, Clique does quite well in Legacy. What can we expect here? Well without a reprint, I don’t think it’s impossible these will be close to $100 this PTQ season. At the very least, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them catch up to Dark Confidant.

Aaron Forsythe did a little digging himself, and the results are fairly interesting. There were a whopping eighty-seven copies of Anger of the Gods. People were scared of Wild Nacatl alright. That is a butt-ton of angry gods. This isn’t especially actionable, but it will help flesh out our expectation of the format’s progression.

Kitchen Finks were nearly as represented, but this issue is much more complex. @Chosler88 pointed out a few weeks ago that it’s a great pickup, as Modern Masters cards aren’t incapable of rising, and it looks fantastic in a world of Wild Nacatls. On the flip side of that, if Anger of the Gods is absolutely everywhere Finks looks a lot worse. $4 is pretty cheap, but the splash damage may harm their potential. I think our perspective ceiling is around $7 or $8 right now, but that is susceptible to change. I don’t think I’m a buyer but I’m happy to grab them in trade. One thing to consider: a huge percentage of people in the room are going to be either casting Wild Nacatl, Kitchen Finks, or Anger of the Gods. 

Forsythe also reported 55 copies of Splinter Twin. Twin has broken $15, but that still feels a little underpriced. I think $25 is closer to this guy’s real price, especially with the other half of the combo being a nickel.

Zoo was 10% of the 18+ field, which sounds about right. Nacatl showed up in various forms of Zoo, but never without our good buddy Goyf. The more aggressive flavors of Zoo and RG aggro were better represented than I would have guessed, and Goblin Guide has hiked it up to $12. I could see him continuing on to $15, and from there you’re in a position where reprints are quite possible and would be a bit of a beating on the price. Selling in June is the safe play here.

As expected, Geist of Saint Traft showed up in the Domain Zoo lists alongside a flurry of burn and Snapcaster Mage. Turn three Geist, turn four double Tribal Flames is just savage. Geist is $25 up from $15 just two weeks ago, and could easily float towards $30 by June. Hold now, sell later.

There were a few things I found were considerably under-represented compared to what I was expecting. For one, only a single 18+ had a copy of Gifts Ungiven. That’s wild, especially since Gifts is one of the best combo-enablers in the format with Unburial Rites. It also costs four and is in blue, which are conveniently hallmarks of Cryptic Command. Imagine playing a fair deck sitting across the table from four untapped lands that make blue. Do you attempt to add pressure and hate against the combo right into Cryptic mana, or do you hold your threats and end up facing down Iona, Griselbrand or Elesh Norn?

Gifts Ungiven is a powerful enabler that’s even breaking through to Legacy. $4 is just too cheap for a card that does this much. The Modern Masters printing is going to keep this from hitting $30, but $10+ seems so viable. It didn’t have a hot performance this time around, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of it either.

Other cards that basically didn’t appear? Vengevine. Bloodghast. Life from the Loam. Raven’s Crime. Seismic Assault. Demigod of Revenge. Lotleth Troll. Windbrisk Heights. Restore Balance.

A lot of people – myself included – were anticipating some hot graveyard action with Deathrite’s departure. Instead, we just got a ton of UWx and Wild Nacatls. I’m not entirely sure why that is. Perhaps nobody stumbled across a list they liked? Just because nobody broke it this time, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen. There’s definitely a deck in there somewhere, and we just haven’t seen it yet. Vengevine and Bloodghast are already $20 and $13 respectively without any results. Don’t sleep on your chance to pick copies up before they really do make a splash. 

Unlike graveyard strategies, Faeries did make a go of it. They only put up two eighteen or betters though. In spite of the fervor that ensued at Bitterblossom’s unbanning, many were doubtful that they were capable of keeping up in a more powerful format. Those naysayers appear to have been right. At this point, I would sell all of your fae and Bitterblossoms while there’s still reasonable demand. Even if Faeries do manage to do slightly better than we’ve seen so far, it’s highly unlikely it will be enough to sustain these prices.

Whew! That is a lot of results to chew through, and we really only scratched the surface. With GP Richmond on the horizon, we’ll get to see how the field adjusts in light of the Pro Tour. One thing I can’t help but notice is how relatively familiar the successful decks looked this time around. That doesn’t tell me the format is solved, it just means that nobody has found some of the more wilder combinations. In the meantime, I’ll do my best to keep you all apprised of the spicy stuff I see coming through the pipeline.

The Gilded Goblin

Four Pillars

By: Jared Yost

Hi all! This week I’m going to skip pro tour coverage (since my articles have to be reviewed a few days in advance of my publication date) and instead focus my article on a topic that I’m sure interests all of you – how do I decide if a card warrants my attention from a financial perspective? This article is going to be a change of pace from my usual format of rattling off individual trending cards that also include minor explanations about what you should do once a card spikes. I am purposely not going to name a single individual card to supplement my reasonings. I don’t want this piece to be a rehash of what I’ve done previously. If I list cards as examples it could influence you in ways that I may not have intended depending on the example. Instead, I am going to give you high level strategies for deciding which cards you should be trying to buy or trade for.

Strategy 1 – Pick a Format and Stick with It

I wouldn’t say that I’m a card price “expert” by any means, but at this point I would say that I have a firm grasp on the concepts that can predict card prices across all of the constructed formats. This is from months of trial and error per format, each time refocusing my efforts on another format to understand the ebbs and flows. Scavenging Ooze

Everyone starts somewhere. I’m sure you have a particular favorite format that you follow extensively and might even be competitive within. That format for me was Legacy. Unfortunately, the constraints of my current position have bound me in terms of actually being able to attend and keep up with Legacy tournaments, however, before I got into the financial side of things I was an avid Legacy player. It was all I ever thought about. The format didn’t bring me as much success as Standard could have (fewer 50+ person tournaments hosted), but I do have a Top 8 to a tournament that I participated in several years back that was hosted in Philadelphia on a college campus that was not DCI sanctioned. In a nutshell, I enjoy following Legacy activity and have a keen interest in the format from that perspective.

Even though my format of choice was Legacy, in retrospect I still feel that it helped my learning curve just as much as starting with Standard would have when I decided to seriously look into Magic finance. Legacy cards have always been expensive. If you are a serious Legacy player, you know that format staples need to be picked up as fast as you can afford them. Sure, the format is occasionally shaken up by new sets, but the core strategies of the format never change. Fast mana is good. A fast lockdown is good. Cards that deal with 95% of the threats in the format are good. And so on. Being able to find a card with these types of effects at a fair price for the card’s general rarity is what you should be looking to do with Legacy.

I had a budget, and needed to stick with that budget in order to finish Legacy decks I was working on. Thus, I learned an important rule of Magic finance – always trade overpriced cards in newer formats like Standard into more stable formats. I would sometimes get pricey mythics and rares that I would receive in drafts and trade them in for store credit. Once I had enough store credit, I would then get another high price Legacy staple. This greatly supplemented my own funds and over time I created a pretty decent Legacy collection. I have seen my Legacy collection, which I haven’t added that many cards to since my heyday, gradually grow into more value than what I paid for it when I first started playing Legacy. The Standard rotation exists where cards will drop in value, but Legacy never rotates.

For those who know Standard well, they knew much more about capitalizing on the rotation than I did when I first delved into card prices. I eventually learned how to approach Standard rotation, yet starting with Legacy wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I still learned plenty from Legacy prices. Once I grasped the concepts of Legacy finance, it was pretty easy to transfer those lessons to faster changing formats like Standard. If Standard is your starting point, you will have a nice transition to slower formats because you know that once you find something good you can be sure that it will gain value over time.

Trying to capitalize on Magic finance for every format at the beginning won’t work well for you. Once you become very specialized in one area, you can easily shift many of the lessons learned to another and then add the new observations to your existing knowledge. The first step however is getting familiar with the tournament schedule for your format if it is relevant.

Strategy 2 – Know the Rotation and Season Schedule

Cards that interest me can be completely different depending on what time of year you talk to me. Depending on how Wizards schedules their year, you want to make sure that you are interested in cards ahead of schedule before a lot of other players are thinking about the upcoming format or set release. 

Kataki, War's Wage

The most obvious example is that three sets rotate out of Standard at once every fall, four if you include the previous core set. What’s hard is knowing what to do in these situations other than dump rotating staples. You need to think ahead a little bit in terms of what types of decks people will be playing once fan favorites are gone. My strategy in this case is to focus on aggro decks, which are the easiest to pilot in an unknown format due to their more simplistic game plan. I find cards that won’t rotate that fit the profile “cause a lot of damage at a low mana cost” and try to pick them up in anticipation for the first few months of the new Standard season.

In terms of seasons, players will generally not be looking for Modern cards if we are months away from Modern season. Picking up Modern staples during the offseason is a good strategy because you will be able to pick them up at pre-spike prices and ensure you aren’t overpaying for cards during the season that could dip in price once the Modern season is over until next year again.

Of course, at set rotations and during seasons you also want to make sure you follow any Pro Tour coverage that accompanies them.

Strategy 3 – Follow the Pros

Though certainly not possible for everyone, if you have the chance you should watch Pro Tour coverage at the beginning of the seasons so that you know which cards the pros are playing the most. You have to be decisive if you are willing to do this. You have to analyze a lot of results within a short time frame if you want to be able to pick up undervalued cards before they spike. Due to the live streaming matches and the fast paced buying on the internet, hot cards are selling out in a matter of hours. If you have access to Starcity premium, you could try seeing which cards are trending from the various authors discussing their strategy before major tournament weekends.

Trust me, this one takes practice. I get the feeling that pros throw around a lot of misleading information in their articles, especially free ones – they may talk a lot about a deck or their testing with a deck but then play a completely different deck during the tournament. Your best bet is watching live coverage, you can’t hide what is public knowledge at that point. Twitter is also great in this regard. You can keep tabs on trending accounts that don’t have a stake in the success of an individual player or team.

Strategy 4 – Determine the Number of Decks a Card is Played In

Once you know the nature of the format pretty well, the set rotation schedule, the year’s seasons, and what the pros are doing, what next? Well, it’s really just a numbers game. Do the numbers for the card add up in my head? Karakas

This strategy is much harder to apply in a format like Standard rather than Legacy, which has a vast library of past and recent tournament results that reveal which cards see play across the most number of decks. In Standard the prices almost always reflect the amount of play the card receives, so no card appears undervalued. Once a card is found to be good in a strategy, or several strategies, the price has already spiked – unless it is a card from the most recent block or set in Standard. These are usually undervalued until rotation, so using what you know from Strategy 2 can help with formulating a plan with this strategy.

Unfortunately with this strategy, card demand these days can sometimes be driven purely by hype and not results. If I see that a card is spiking currently and that it only has one deck that is played in, or even no results outside of an MTGO daily that somebody streamed, I feel much better about missing out on getting them at their pre-spike price. These spikes tend to have a way of settling back down. However, there are two reasons why the card may retain the new price even for several months:

1. Because of the long price memory of players.

2. When a spike happens far enough in advance of a format, we need to wait to see if the hype can hold. (This is true particularly for the upcoming Modern season). The card will retain its price until this time.

In general, if a card is played in two or more decks that have Top 8’s under their belt and there are three to four copies per deck, that really grabs my interest. It will also grab my interest if a lot of hype is being generated about it during a Pro Tour and the deck is performing well within the tournament. I will then check the card’s price and if the price looks good enough for the card’s general rarity and the format I am looking at it would be wise of me to pick up a few copies before others discover how much the card is played.

I have been successful with this strategy from a Modern and Legacy perspective (easy for me to branch out to Modern due to Legacy experience, no rotation makes it easier) but with Standard this strategy is sometimes not as effective.

Why These Strategies?

If I was to describe the four pillars of Magic finance that I use to help guide my card evaluations, I would say these are it. These are the pillars of my financial knowledge that I use to help guide me in decisions I make every day regarding the status of card prices and where they are going.

These strategies aren’t hard and fast by any means, there are always exceptions to any rule. I’ve found that many of the mistakes I’ve made, however, are from directly not following the strategies.

Getting cards because I think they’re cool or will be good in Standard without researching the format. Bad idea.

Getting cards as soon as they come out without taking into regard rotations and schedules. Oh boy…

Getting cards before checking how much actual play they see or have seen in the past. Nope.

Well, you get the picture.

The fact of the matter is, Magic finance is hard. Really hard. I’ve been trying my hand at this for a year and half and I feel like I’m just starting to make headway. It takes a lot of trial and error in order to become even remotely proficient at this. Hopefully my lessons learned, if you will, can reduce your learning curve and make you better at this too.

Casual Fridays

Modern Staples

By: Cliff Daigle

Brace yourselves, I’m about to express a contrary opinion.

I don’t think shocklands, Thoughtseizes, Abrupt Decays, or Scavenging Oozes are going to see massive spikes in value when the Modern PTQ season hits. I also don’t think these will get affected by rotating out of standard.

Travis made a good point a while ago about how rotation out of Standard is no longer a sudden event causing prices to drop. It’s a far more gradual process now, with people getting value from their cards well before rotation. In the past, the PTQs in summer were all Standard, which kept some demand in place for those cards. Now? Who the heck knows.

Today, though, I want to share with you some ideas about why certain staples are going to stay financially stable at rotation.

#1: Modern is year-round, even if the PTQs rotate.

Wizards has gotten everything it wanted and more with the introduction of Modern as a format. It’s non-rotating, so there isn’t any turnover, aside from bannings. Interestingly, this means decks don’t get worse – the card pool improves but individual matchups can worsen.
Modern is not yet at the level of Standard when it comes to being played often at FNM, but all it takes is once a month to start getting a player base interested. Once that happens, people can tune their decks for a long time and gain enormous insight and experience with those cards.

#2: We have pet decks.

In Legacy or Vintage, you chose a deck and built up to it. The price was high but the cards were good forever. Modern has a lower cost to enter (not by much!) but a lot of players simply bring a deck they know from Standard. The unbanning of Bitterblossom might well signal the return if the Faeries scourge, a deck that was deemed too good at the beginning of Modern.

I don’t play a lot of constructed tournaments, but there was a 5-color cascade deck in Modern that was a blast for me. The cascades all ended in Supreme Verdict, Blightning, or Esper Charm. Awful mana base, slow as heck and often dead to Kiki/Twin, but nonetheless a good time for me.

Our pet decks often just get better in Modern. If you liked playing UW Delver of Secrets in Standard, wait till you add red for Lightning Bolt/Lightning Helix. Snapcaster never had it so good!

#3: Anticipation removes the rollercoaster.

One of the problems with sets being Standard-legal for two years (one for Core sets) is that there is time to add cards to Modern. We will know within a year if a card is good enough, and plan accordingly. There are exceptions, but as the years pass, the metagame and the pros figure out most of the interactions.

So what does this mean for you, the casual Magic finance here?

There are two main takeaways here:

First, If a card sees Modern play before it rotates out of Standard, don’t expect the price to fall at all. Our case in point would be Snapcaster Mage. He sees a lot of eternal play, and so his exit from standard saw barely a blip. 

Deathrite Shaman is going to be an interesting case. It’s too good for Modern but sees little Standard play. The price will be dependent on casual and Legacy play when it rotates this coming fall. I really don’t know what will happen to the price of regular Deathrites, but foils should stay consistent–people love to spend money in Legacy!

Second, when a card spikes in Modern, do not expect the price to fall back down slowly, even if it sees no play. I still can’t believe what Genesis wave got up to, and I have even more trouble believing that it has not yet come back down.

On a related note, the growth of modern has seen its staples continually increase in price. (Liliana of the Veil at $80?) Wizards is going to monitor the price of entry into Modern, and will use the tools at its disposal to help maintain card availability. I don’t know when it will happen, but we will see all of the fetch lands get reprinted at some point. Event decks, special issues, there’s lots of ways that cards can get printed again and those will be used.

Modern Masters was quite a success, on a ‘fun to draft’ scale as well as the ‘carefully reprinting cards’ basis. I would expect another round of that eventually, and probably with a larger print run.

I hope your PT speculations pan out! My prediction is that some weird and niche deck will light the world on fire. Something weird, like the Miracles deck or Eggs. Past in Flames/Young Pyromancer/Burn at the Stake combo? Who knows.

Have fun!

Think Twice

Four Speculation Tips During the Pro Tour

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By: Camden Clark

Undoubtedly with a new modern format, the upcoming Pro Tour will showcase Modern cards and decks that are going to soar over the next few months. These include short-term gains on cards that everyone jumps on and long-term gains on cards that will increase as we go into the Modern PTQ season this summer.

This begs the question: how do you identify these opportunities during the Pro Tour?

1. Be liquid

The most important thing you can do leading up to the Pro Tour is BE LIQUID. This means selling off some of those specs that have panned out. It’s a bit too late to do this in paper (unless you trade a bit at FNM), but on MODO you still have a day to liquidate certain holdings in order to be liquid.

Why is being liquid important? It’s the only way you are going to be able to capitalize on the shifts in the market that are inevitably going to happen in the coming few days. If you don’t have some legitimate capital to put behind specs, you will not be able to take advantage.

There are a couple of pitfalls. The first is liquidating current long term specs that haven’t actually paid off. If you have long-term specs that haven’t gained at all yet, you should NOT liquidate them. It’s not worth the loss taken to have simply an opportunity to get money. For example, if you’re on a long term hold on some casual cards like Parallel Lives, don’t sell out. It’s not worth it.

The second pitfall is investing too much into hype. If you invest too high of a percentage, you could lose A LOT if the spec doesn’t pan out. I know this sounds basic and elementary, but when you get in the heat of the moment, you might get pulled into spending over 15% of your spec money into today’s Nivmagus Elemental. Who really wants to get stuck with a bunch of their money in that?

2. Study the Pro Tour Coverage

There is a difference between “watching” the Pro Tour coverage and “studying” it. It is the difference between watching a deck and assuming you know how to play it and playing that deck yourself. The difference is MASSIVE. If you think you can watch the Pro Tour coverage and pick winners, you are in a much worse place than someone who is getting the whole picture.

What is the whole picture?

That is analyzing every part of the Pro Tour coverage. You have to see which teams are playing what deck. You have to see where there are connections between decks playing the same card. You have knowledge as a player what is good. Use that instinct to see the most played cards.

My personal investing style is to see what cards are in two different major decks that are doing well. This means taking notes on the featured decks, their players, and seeing how they progress in the tournament. If I see a card twice, especially in different decks, I start to watch that card. There will be some drastic inventory shifts: don’t miss out on that vital information as well

Here’s what I do:

I write down the player’s name. I write down the deck they are playing. I write down the cards I want to watch. Then, search them out on Twitter. If they have an account, I follow them because many Pro Tour contenders post updates. I also make note if they are on a specific team for the Pro Tour.

Here’s a picture of what I mean:

At the end of the first day, I will look at how they are doing in the current standings. I write down their current standings and make note of how other people on their team are doing and what the breakout decks are.

How do you make a move then?

You watch the standings verrrry carefully day two. You want to pay more attention to those who are higher seeded, and the breakout decks and cards that come from the upper brackets. Written coverage is invaluable to see how games went.

All I’ll say is: watch LSV. You’ll make a lot of money.

There’s another tool you should be using to its full extent:

3. Keep both eyes on twitter

This will give you the signal to move in.

There are two types of people I would follow extremely closely. These two groups are speculators and pro players.

Why follow speculators? It’s pretty cut and dry: they generate the investment demand. The moment Chas or Corbin says a nice word about a card, you should make a buy order faster than a Blood Moon can ruin a perfectly good game of Magic. I honestly would have updates sent to my phone. Considering this is a European PT, you should be paying attention this weekend and basically be on Euro time to catch the important tweets. You’ll have a major edge up if you change your schedule to accommodate the pro tour. It will allow you to move in faster on what the speculators like than someone who is paying absolutely no attention at all. I’d also appreciate it if you’d follow me. I’ll be tweeting my thoughts on the Pro Tour.

The pros also need to be followed. They have the first-hand information. They will provide the REAL demand from REAL players who actually want to play in the PTQs in the summer. Who to follow? As I said earlier, LSV will make you some serious money. If he mentions a card or deck, there will be a thousand people on it (see Travis Woo’s Ninja Bear Delver deck). I also like following Travis Woo. He generates a lot of casual demand for cards that otherwise wouldn’t see spikes.

You should also be following the #mtgfinance hashtag if you aren’t already. That will make you a lot and get a firsthand look into cards that are being buzzed about.

4. Watch these cards

This article wouldn’t be complete without some cards to watch. Here you are. Full disclosure: I have no stock in any of these cards. I too am waiting to watch the PT coverage. 

Huntmaster of the Fells

Using ProTrader, I have been watching the inventory data on this card. Copies of this card have been disappearing from all of the retailers. It doesn’t make sense; there hasn’t been too much buzz about it. There has not been a spike on this yet. It’s overdue. This card may see some play. I’m just not sure. I think you should watch it over the weekend and if you see it played just send some of your bankroll this way.

Restoration Angel

This one has to see some play.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse with this one, but there should be some good play here. I’m a buyer on this card if I even see it played ONCE. Especially in Kiki-Pod. I wrote earlier about how Restoration Angel could see play in a Kiki-pod list or even a RWU twin list. Or maybe Restoration Angel will blink some faeries. Definitely a card to watch.

Remand

I’d also like to watch the price of Remand. Splinter Twin and UR delver both play this card. I’ve heard buzz about both decks. I don’t think it’s out of the question to see a UB faeries deck with Remand as well. Keep a very close eye.

Kiki-Jiki Mirror Breaker

I think it will take the breakout of Splinter Twin or Kiki-Pod at this tournament to see a spike here. However if there is a spike, it’s potentially huge. I’ll be watching these decks closely as I think they could make up the new meta after the banlist change. 

Cryptic Command

Could we see 60 dollars for a now-eternal staple? Yes.

I have no doubt this will be played. I personally think it can make it to the finals of the tournament. I’m a buyer much earlier unless there are very few copies.

Thanks for reading! I hope y’all make a ton of money during this lucrative time. Remember to buy smart and follow me on twitter.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY