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Corbin Hosler, ProTrader

PROTRADER: A Million Modern Decklists

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I was lucky enough to be on the coverage team for Grand Prix Charlotte last weekend, and it was a hell of an event. I saw a bunch of Merfolk players in day two, I saw some really cool decks play out, and I saw a super healthy and diverse format at the biggest Modern event in four months.

There sure is a lot to take in from the event. We had seven distinct archetypes in the top eight, and even better is that several of them were absent from last weekend’s top eight at the Invitational. I know people get riled up over the Modern banlist and things like that, but it’s hard to look at Modern over the last two weeks and say it’s anything but an awesome format.

At least, that’s my take on it. So much so, in fact, that when I was typing up the decklists you can find here, I was amazed by just how deep the list went. We decided to post unique decklists going down to 64th place, and by my count, there are nearly 30 in that range. Absurd diversity.

So much so that when I submitted the piece to my partner-in-words Adam Styborski, I jokingly titled it “a million decklists.” We almost ran with that title on the coverage page, but while it didn’t quite make the cut there, it’s more than good enough as a title for today’s article.

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Corbin Hosler, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: One Last Look at Modern Masters 2015

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By: Corbin Hosler

Very rarely does something so thoroughly dominate the conversation as Modern Masters 2015 has managed to do, and it’s been a wild ride. From exciting spoilers and eco-friendly packaging to underwhelming rares and damaged and/or missing cards to the largest trading card tournament ever hosted, Modern Masters 2015 has certainly delivered in the Magic news cycle, if not in the hearts, minds, and wallets of all players.

That said, we’re finally moving past Modern Masters 2015 and into the time of Magic Origins. I think I’ve written about Modern Masters sets four of the last five weeks or something crazy like that. It’s not usually my style to harp on things for so long, but every week when I’ve sat down to write it has felt like this is the set we’re most interested in hearing more about, and the one on the forefront of people’s minds.

 

 

Barring any unforeseen developments, it seems like that time is finally moving behind us. I’m not promising no more Modern articles (after all, I’m working Grand Prix Charlotte this weekend, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the Modern metagame adapts after last week’s Invitational), but I do think I’ll be done talking about Modern Masters 2015 before too long.

That said, there are some odds and ends in my coverage of the set I want to put in order before I close the book on it. Thus far, I’ve focused on the hype, the early movements, the fallout from Vegas, and what effect the additional printings have had on prices.

Mat_MTG_GP_LasVegas

What I haven’t done is talk about the future of the set: where it’s going, what cards are good pickups now versus what will be good in a year, what cards to stay away from, etc. I’ve had a few requests for this type of analysis, and I want to make sure I take care of that before moving on.

So, with the preamble out of the way, I’ll dig in. The plan is to treat this somewhat like my typical set review, highlighting cards I feel strongly about one way or another.

Pick-Ups Now

Let’s start at the top, with the cards I believe have bottomed out in price already and will be trending upward from this point forward. In some senses, this applies to much of the set, but I want to use this first section to talk about those cards that are going to move back up the quickest.

The shortlist is pretty, well, short:

There are a few others I could maybe throw onto this list, but I want to be clear about why this is my shortlist. These are not the only cards that have bottomed out, but they are the ones I believe will stay bottomed out for the least amount of time. In other words, these highly-played cards will see a price rebound much sooner than some of the other cards in the set for which I believe there is more time to pick up.

crypticcommand

But these are the most desirable cards in the set, and the time they’re bottoming out is now, and it won’t be for long. The only true question mark is, with Grand Prix Charlotte this weekend being Modern, if we’ll see an effect similar to Grand Prix Richmond last year, where prices spike leading up to the event and then trail off afterward. That remains to be determined, but for now there’s not much to indicate that these cards will stay at this lower level for too long.

The Next Tier

Here we have the cards that I believe are good pickups, but not quite as pressing. Think of things like Lava Spike from the first Modern Masters. We knew it would be a good pickup, but it’s taken until this year (two years later) to really pay off.

These cards exist in Modern Masters 2015 as well, and I wanted to highlight a few of them.

Eldrazi

Prices are still trending downward on these, and I expect that to continue for another few weeks or even months. I’m not sure how much further these have to fall, but chances are it’s another $5 or so. Keep an eye for the bottom on these moving forward, and buy in there. These are going to be great gainers over the next few years, even if Battle for Zendikar comes along and gives us new, cool Eldrazi. Chances are these original Big Three™ won’t be replaced, they’ll simply be added to a larger roster.

On this note, I like Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple, as well. Temple is something that will quickly become a forgotten-about uncommon and a solid pickup, but I think the better bet is Eye. This thing is great in Commander, gets played in Modern, and will look especially impressive after we return to Zendikar and get more Eldrazi for it to play with.

Other cards I put in this category of “good pick-ups a month or two from now”:

Splinter Twin

I know this is an extensive list, but I’m trying to be as complete as possible. I expect all of these to bottom out in the next few weeks to months, but the main thing I want you take away from this list is that these are still staples. They’re going to fall lower and for a long time we’re going to take for granted that’s there’s enough of them to go around. But before you know it, it’s going to be 2016 and these are going to pull a Deceiver Exarch on us and shoot back up in price.

The Long-Term Only

Next up are the cards I believe are worth setting aside from your boxes, but will take significantly longer to rebound. For instance, Stonehewer Giant would be the poster child for this category in the original Modern Masters, and I think Creakwood Liege takes over that role this time around.

Still, these are worth setting aside. Throw them in the trade binder now rather than part with them for pennies on the dollar, and these will have the opportunity to make you money in a few years. On that note, there’s no rush to acquire these cards, but remember this list when we’re back in the summer doldrums a year from now and you need something to turn Standard stock into.

Commons/Uncommons

You definitely don’t want to forget about these, and I’ve seen a distressing number of these in draft leftovers already. Remember that something like Vines of Vastwood is a common that was super expensive (for a common) before the reprint, and will likely climb back to there before all is said and done. Just make a small box of these and lose it in the closet for a few years.

Special Cases

Foils

Before I wrap up, I want to hit on a few more things in the set, starting with some nice cards to pick up in foil, largely due to their Commander playability.

Conclusions

Largely, I think there’s still some room to fall for most of the set, and I’m not dying to tear into these in trade just yet. But I hope by breaking the set down in clear categories, I’ve been able to outline my strategy with this set going forward.

Of course, all of this is just my opinion on how to approach the future of Modern Masters 2015. What are your plans?

 

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter

Corbin Hosler, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: The Fallout from Vegas

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What. A. Week.

Vegas was crazy, and while we regaled with a few stories on this week’s Brainstorm Brewery, the craziness and great time that was had in Vegas is not the focus of this week’s article. After all, with so much financially-relevant happenings going down, how could it be?

The Bird’s Eye View

A few weeks ago I wrote about my thoughts regarding the initial price movements of Modern Masters 2015, with the promise to revisit those conclusions as more data became available. We now have some of that data, so this week I’ll be looking back at my initial conclusions and seeing what has changed since then.

There were more than 88,000 Modern Masters 2015 packs opened across the world last weekend, with many more coming in side events (which I went 2-for-2 on this weekend, yay!). All told, that’s a lot of Tarmogoyfs. And while many expected that to be good enough to crater prices, reality doesn’t seem to be lining up with that.

feat253c_overhead

At this point most of the product that was opened in Vegas or elsewhere has been processed by the stores that bought it on-site (and most players were selling the valuable cards they opened so they could go gamble), so we are at or nearing peak supply. In fact, given that some notable cards have already begun to rebound price-wise, we may even be past that point. With Grand Prix Charlotte coming up next week (I’ll be there working coverage, so come say hi!), we’re going to see continued demand for those cards opened in Vegas.

But before I get into specifics, what are we seeing with the set, and format, as a whole?

A quick look over the set shows that things are down sharply from a week ago, even if a few Mythics are bucking that trend. Sure, Mox Opal, Tarmogoyf and Vendilion Clique already seem to be bottoming out, plenty of other cards are still falling. Even Cryptic Command, Kiki-Jiki and the mighty Eldrazi aren’t done falling. So, for all the talk of peak supply and a bottom, there is at least some evidence to the contrary.

mm2_jap

But on the other hand, there are those that present the opposite of this trend. Tarmogoyf is of course the main offender (and we’ll get to that in a bit), but other highly-playable cards at Mythic and Rare are already beginning to flatline or rebound slightly. Mox Opal, Clique, Noble Hierarch, Spellskite and Karn are all showing, at the least, a steadying of prices.

Notice the trend there? The highly-playable, truly A+ staple cards are holding up against the reprinting. Everything else that held a big price tag at least in part to short supply based on print run is really dropping. Wilt-Leaf Liege, Elesh Norn, Daybreak Coronet, Leyline of Sanctity and more are all still dropping, as we originally expected with the large influx of new supply.

What does this mean moving forward? It means that Modern Masters 2015 is doing exactly what Wizards of the Coast intended it to do. No, your Tarmogoyfs aren’t going to be $50 anytime soon. But you’re also not going to be shelling out $100 for a super-niche card like Coronet that was only expensive because of its laughably-small print run however many years ago. I suspect the drop on these “Tier 2” cards will continue, and we’ll see them settle lower in the coming weeks and months.

The best of the best, though? I doubt we see much downward movement in that. Grand Prix Charlotte coming up will do a little to buoy prices, though it’s possible we’ll see some more leveling out after that, similar to how Richmond went the last time around. After Charlotte, Modern won’t be on the minds of most people until we hit Modern PPTQ season and Grand Prix Oklahoma City in September.

So, to sum it up:

  • High-end staples are bottomed out, and slow, incremental growth will likely return.
  • “Tier 2” cards will continue to slowly fall over the coming month before leveling out and likely staying flat for months to come.
  • Casual stuff, like Creakwood Liege, is being destroyed, and will take at least two years to come back, if Doubling Season is any indication.

The Big Ones

Dark Confidant

Dark Confidant

Time to get more specific.

Let’s start with Dark Confidant. Formerly the gold standard of both Modern and Legacy and a huge status piece, we’ve seen Bob fall from that lofty heights.

And he’s fallen hard. While Maher is still the third-most expensive card in the set, we’re talking about a card that was pushing $100 at its height. While Siege Rhino has done a number to push this guy out of the format, I’m not sold on his death quite yet, even if a field full of Affinity and Burn isn’t the ideal world for this guy.

Still, this thing has halved in price, whereas buddy Tarmogoyf has seen just a 25% reduction, even if we’re generous with the numbers. I don’t see a super-bright future for Dark Confidant at this moment, but if he continues to fall we may see an opportunity here. I’m not dying to buy in at $45, but if this thing starts to push $30 I like it as a pickup. This may not be in flavor now, but a metagame shift could bring Bob right back to the forefront.

Vendilion Clique

vendilionclique

The little Faerie that could. What’s interesting is that this may actually see more play in Legacy than Modern. Either way, the price here seems to have bottomed out, and I expect this to float around $45-50 for a while to come.

Tarmogoyf

tarmogoyf

Finally, we come to it.

Here’s what I wrote two weeks ago concerning where I saw the Goyf heading.

“The mythics will drop, yes, but not drastically. The most frequently played Modern ones like Tarmogoyf and Clique will hold up best, but as a whole, we’re looking at just 15- to 25-percent drops here. This will make these cards more affordable, but I really wouldn’t be surprised to look back at this set when Modern Masters 2017 comes out and see the prices right back where they started.”

Before I go any further, there’s something I want to address specifically regarding Tarmogoyf. I know we look at the market as some elusive figure that can be predicted but never controlled. And while in most cases that’s true, it’s not always that way.

Take, for example, Grand Prix Las Vegas and Tarmogoyf. Before the event we saw Goyf dropping toward $150 with momentum to go below there. Then the event starts and one dealer is paying significantly higher on Tarmogoyf than anyone else. Their price? $130 cash. That’ll put the stops on $150 retail Goyfs pretty quickly.

Everyone else raised their buy price to at least compete, and because of that you saw an average buy price on Goyf $10-20 higher than it likely would have been if not for the decision that dealer made to put their money into Tarmogoyfs.

The effect was felt. Instead of a falling Tarmogoyf price we have one that rebounded to $160 thanks to dealer actions, just like last time. Considering Tarmogoyf was retailing at $190-$200 before the reprint, this also leaves my prediction two weeks ago pretty spot-on. We’re done seeing Goyf majorly fall at this point, and even if it trends down to $150 I sincerely doubt it’s headed much further below that any time soon.

So where will the final price be? I don’t think it’s going to brush off the reprint and be $200 again in a month, but I think $150-175 will be where it oscillates over the next year. As I wrote two weeks ago, I would absolutely not be surprised to see it back at the same $200 mark by the time we’re writing about Grand Prix Vegas 3.0 and Modern Masters 2017.

Conclusions

Modern Masters 2015 is now officially behind us, and while I’m sure there will still be plenty of drafts over the coming weeks, it’s time to look elsewhere. Grand Prix Charlotte next week will be the best place to begin to do that, and Modern has certainly proven itself to be a fairly open format at this point, something I plan to address ahead of the event next week.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter
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Corbin Hosler, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Modern Masters 2015 Early Movements

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We’re just a week away now from Grand Prix Vegas and the Modern Masters 2015 onslaught that comes with it. I know I’m looking forward to it, and I’m not alone. We have a house rented in the city, and I’m looking forward to meeting both old friends and new ones while enjoying a great week in Vegas.

Of course, there’s another reason we’re there, one that isn’t a party. That would be Modern Masters 2015, and it’s looking to be a vitally important weekend financially. Much has been said already about the expected value of the set: complaints about it not being high enough or about it being too unevenly distributed. All may have some merit, but they’re also irrelevant at this point. As someone approaching this from a MTG finance angle, your goal should not be to discuss what should have been, but rather what is. And what “is,” means a set with some value at the top end and a pretty drastic dropoff after that.

 

Where Will Prices Go?

The million (or something) dollar question. I’ve been aksed this more times than I can count over the past month, and I’ve given a pretty consistent answer to it: I don’t know.

I realize as an “expert” in this field that’s not the answer people want to hear, but it’s being honest. When there’s no real precedent for this set given the much-smaller print run of the original Modern Masters, it would be incredibly disingenuous of me to tell you a month ago what Tarmogoyf will cost in six months. I don’t have any information to form an educated opinion, and I would rather say nothing at all than provide misinformation based on nothing but me wanting to hear myself talk about it.

My stance from the start was that we needed some empirical data before we could draw any conclusions, and that meant waiting, no matter how unfun that was.

Well, we’re finally starting to see some data, and so I think it’s time to begin analyzing it.

The Numbers

There’s this misconception that the first Modern Masters didn’t lower prices, or actually raised them, because, “Tarmogoyf, Cryptic Command, and Vendilion Clique!”

While didn’t-lower-prices complaint did hold true for those few cards, it’s far from true across the board.

Stonehewer Giant

Stonehewer Giant is just now starting to recover from Modern Masters, and it’s not the only card in this boat. So, before I go any further, let’s be clear about that. The vast majority of cards in Modern Masters 2015 are going to get rekt (I use words like that to sound cool. Bad idea? Okay, no more).

That’s not to say every casual or EDH card in the new set is going to tank and never recover. Doubling Season, for instance, has recovered very well from its printing in Modern Masters. But Modern Masters 2015 is going to depress them for a long time to come. That means something like Tezzeret the Seeker or—perhaps the best example—Creakwood Liege is going to tank and take a long time to recover.

Creakwood Liege

I expect Liege to tank down to  below $5 and sit there for a few years to come. This is all something we can determine just from comparing to the first set, and with the larger print run of Modern Masters 2015, this effect is going to be even more pronounced.

So that handles what will happen to the low-end, and that’s information we have access to and can easily extrapolate from. But it’s the high-end that everyone wants to know about, and it’s the high-end we’re just now beginning to see some data for.

The ‘Goyf Level

Tarmogoyf 2

Take a look at that Tarmogoyf chart. We’re seeing it predictably slide down. Compare to this chart from the Future Sight Tarmogoyf when the original Modern Masters came out on June 7, 2013.

Tarmogoyf 1

You can see there that the original Tarmogoyf not only didn’t drop, it actually rose in between the announcement of the set and its release. Viewed in that lens—a price increase despite a reprint incoming—it’s really not surprising that ‘Goyf spiked after the first GP Vegas.

Magic was growing very quickly around that time, and that growth makes sense. While Magic isn’t shrinking in 2015, it’s not experiencing the growth that it was then, either. Throw in a larger print run and the fact we’re seeing a price drop this time around, it makes a lot more sense for Tarmogoyf to fall lower in the coming months.

How low? I think that’s still to be determined, and what we see the price of the newest printing do in the next month is going to determine it. While I do expect a drop, I’m not quite sure I expect $100 ‘Goyfs, and I have a few reasons why.

The first is the recent news that there won’t be a second print run of Modern Masters 2015. Wizards got a lot of heat over the print run of the first Modern Masters not being large enough since it didn’t drop prices as much as people would have hoped, but people have to remember WOTC’s goals here.

The goal isn’t necessarily to make Tarmogoyf a $20 card, or even a $50 card—it’s to make it more available. While it’s easy to conflate availability with price, it’s not the same. Yes, there may be enough demand that Tarmogoyf stays around $200, but there’s also the chance that a player might pull one from a booster pack. The median price on TCGPlayer may not move much, but that possibility counts for quite a bit.

People are going to always spend money on some sort of Magic product, and over the next few months that money will be on Modern Masters 2015. The whole, “You know what goes good with a Tarmogoyf? Three more!” makes sense, of course, but it’s always used to explain why the prices are still unreasonable. But looking at it in the context of completing a playset, someone spending their typical monthly “budget” of Magic money won’t be spending much more than they usually would, but when they open a Tarmogoyf the cost of completing a playset is no longer $800, it’s now $600. That chance of opening a ‘Goyf is something that wasn’t available to players before, even if the prices are the same.

That’s the difference between “availability” and price, and the goal of Modern Masters 2015 is to make Modern more available, not necessarily cheaper, even though there is obviously plenty of overlap.

So when we talk about the lack of a second print run, it means this opportunity is going to be available for a shorter window of time for most players, and there won’t be enough time for supply to really flood the market. That’s a recipe for some short-term price dips but long-term stagnation or even growth, especially combined with this second factor.

That factor is the apparent lack of movement from some of the cards. Sure, we’re seeing some drops from the original printings as we expected, but the versions in Modern Masters 2015 aren’t starting anywhere near as low as we may have guessed. Fulminator Mage, for instance, has always felt odd as a $30 card, and it made a lot of sense when the new version opened at $20 in preorders.

But it didn’t stay there. Those cheap copies went fast, and the next wave of preorders came at $30. It’s settled around $25, lower than the original printing but not anywhere near as low as we might have expected. This is a trend spotted in several places in the new set. Of course, this price will likely continue to dip once copies actually hit the market, but given the single print run, this dip may not be as much as expected.

Conclusions

I was reticent to offer opinions before we had any data, but now that we do, I’m starting to form some suspicions about where we’re headed.

To summarize:

  • Low-end cards, commons/uncommons, and casual-demand cards like Creakwood Liege are going to tank, and they’re going to stay tanked for at least 12 to 18 months.
  • High-end rares like Noble Hierarch and Cryptic Command will end up being down 25 to 40 percent. This means $30 to $35 Noble Hierarchs and $35 to $40 Cryptic Commands. This is, of course, still just educated guesswork on my part, but it’s a start to some theories that will be refined in the coming weeks.
  • The mythics will drop, yes, but not drastically. The most frequently played Modern ones like Tarmogoyf and Clique will hold up best, but as a whole, we’re looking at just 15- to 25-percent drops here. This will make these cards more affordable, but I really wouldn’t be surprised to look back at this set when Modern Masters 2017 comes out and see the prices right back where they started.

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter