Tag Archives: City of Traders

City of Traders

PROTRADER: Presidential Conspiracy Theory

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Are you familiar with this piece of American folklore? The lives of John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln shared many facets, which depending on your understanding of probability, ranges from “unremarkable” to “concrete evidence in reincarnation.” Among those amazing coincidences are “last and whole names include the same number of letters” and “assassinated.” Here’s the Wiki page on the topic; I’d advise you refrain from viewing if you’re the gullible sort.

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(Seemingly) switching topics entirely, do the words “God Book” mean anything to you? If you started playing Magic in the last few years, probably not. Perhaps you heard tenured players use the term in reference to New Phyrexia, but if you weren’t playing back then, you wouldn’t have much reason to know what it is.

Those of us that were around for New Phyrexia are quite familiar with God Books though.

A whole sordid tale played out over several weeks, which you can read about here. It was the first major leak in modern-bordered Magic. The short version is that a French guy who was good friends with Guillaume Matignon and Guillaume Wafo-Tapa was goaded to releasing a pdf of the entirety of New Phyrexia on IRC. (Yes, IRC. Don’t know what IRC is? Don’t feel bad; it was just as irrelevant in 2011 as it is today.) Shortly after the God Book found its way into the hands of the public, and a month before official spoilers started, the entire internet-using Magic community had access to the entire card list.

It was thrilling and shocking at the time. (What was especially shocking was that not only was a Stoneforge Mystic answer not in the set, but they had doubled down with this new nonsensical equipment “Batterskull.” We all know how that one turned out.) After the initial excitement of pouring over the entire list, the fervor died down, and like the man who knows his girlfriend already found the ring in the jacket pocket, Wizards was forced to go through the motions with full knowledge that the audience lacked the emotional intensity so desired. Months later, once the dust had settled, several players were banned for years and the set was likely undersold as a result of diminished hype.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

City of Traders

PROTRADER: Hope Springs Eternal

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By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

The latest episode of MTG Fast Finance with myself and James Chillcott discusses the week’s biggest moves, our cards to watch, and Eternal Masters. Check it out here!

It’s been a wild two weeks, hasn’t it? I said in at least two mediums that Eternal Masters was a baseless rumor that sounded more like a Reddit pipe dream rather than an actual coherent business strategy, and then Wizards went ahead and announced it. The community was especially flush with drama regarding a few deepthroat-esque accounts regarding EMA, the full set list, and supposedly clandestine vendor operations. And to top it all off, a Maro Tumblr post sent pockets of the community into a tizzy with the perceived promise of a new constructed format.

Compared to June, when I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for article ideas, this is great. So many topics worth discussing!

I’ll start with an amusing image I posted on Twitter this weekend:

What are we looking at here? Within the 24 hours leading up to that tweet, r/mtgEternal was the subreddit which had grown the most across all of Reddit. Someone made a subreddit not for Eternal Masters, mind you, but rather this imaginary constructed format called Eternal, and so many people joined it was the fastest growing subreddit. Why? Where is all of this coming from? Can we profit on it?

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

City of Traders, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Bulk Does as Bulk Is

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By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Man, it has been a wild several days, hasn’t it? The amount of cards that have gained over 20 percent in the last week is possibly a record, with Modern excitement the catalyst for most. Oath of the Gatewatch is a deep set with an abundance of brewable cards, many of which are feeding the public’s ceaseless hunger for the Eldrazi deck that is consuming the format. It started out as just another fringe deck, but with pros getting on board and results beginning to roll in, there’s a chance we’ve got something special here. One day I think there were actually four separate articles on SCG about the deck. When you get to play a better Mishra’s Workshop that also tutors for threats—in Modern, not Vintage—you’ve got a recipe for shenanigans. I’ve been waiting since Modern’s inception to tap Eldrazi Temple, and I’m excited that the opportunity is finally here.

 

Outside of card prices, Wizards has apparently begun contacting stores to gently remind them that it’s against policy to allow proxies of any sort in any event, whether it’s a Standard FNM or an unsanctioned game of EDH. Unsurprisingly, this has ruffled quite a few feathers from the “Magic should be free” community that is so vocal on Twitter. It’s not surprising at all that Wizards is making a move on this, as the slope between writing “Gaea’s Cradle” on a basic plains and ordering a pile of counterfeits from China for $10 is as slippery as slopes can realistically be. One of my older articles on the topic made something of a round, in fact, incensing plenty. I’ll try to get some more words on paper about this soon, but one article at a time, you know?

What’s on the docket for today then? I asked on Twitter this week whether people wanted to read about: Oath of the Gatewatch’s positioning, PucaTrade’s burgeoning yet complicated economy, and extracting more value from bulk rares. I can honestly say I did not expect the bulk rares topic to win, but it did, so here we are. If nothing more pressing comes up within the next week I’ll probably try to tackle the Oath topic, since I think it’s a good one, and I’ll hit Puca sometime in the near future, too.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

City of Traders, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Their Second-Best Album

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By: Travis Allen

If you’re reading this the day it goes live, Christmas is in two days. My condolences to all of you that receive intro decks from well-intentioned relatives. I suppose it’s too late for my open letter to friends and family members of Magic players to be useful, though if you have one aunt that waits until the last second to do her shopping, perhaps she’d take it to heart.

Gift-giving holidays make me anxious in a way that few things do, and receiving things like Theros intro decks is part of the reason why. This person tried—genuinely tried—to give you something they they thought would be meaningful to you, and you’re forced to feign excitement for a stack of cards you normally wouldn’t accept for free. Nothing stirs up a slurry of decisively unseasonal emotions like off-the-mark Magic card gifts. Blegh. Here’s hoping you handle it better than I do!

This year I took control of the holiday and opted to buy myself a Magic-laden Christmas gift. I have to say, I really surprised myself with my generosity. My magnanimity knows no bounds.

kkkkkk

I ended up purchasing nearly $2,000 worth of Expeditions lands over the course of the last week and a half or so, with the intention of keeping basically none of them. This is a speculative purchase, and I’m looking to profit on these within the next four months or so. I’m not just horn-tooting, though. I want to show you why I considered this, the research I did, and how I arrived at my decision. It’s my hope that by illustrating my process, you’ll see that doing your homework is vital to succeeding in these endeavors, and hopefully be able to apply these techniques to your own purchases down the road.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.