Tag Archives: Magic finance

The Unpredictable Wizards

August 13, 2015 Cliff Daigle 7 Comments

A long while ago, I made a set of predictions about From the Vault: Angels. I was right about eight out of the 15 cards. And while I think my picks are better, Wizards is always going to do what it wants.

And that’s something we need to keep that in mind going forward. Wizards of the Coast employs some very intelligent and very confusing people. Trying to predict what will and won’t get printed/reprinted/banned/unbanned is an exercise fraught with peril and likely missteps.

Today I want to look at some…curious decisions they have made and see if there’s lessons we can glean.

FTV: Angels

While all of the choices are defensible, there’s a couple of pieces of information that are very clear: Wizards isn’t trying to just increase circulations of cards. This is the third piece of art for Akroma, Angel of Wrath and the second ‘special’ foil printing. If you count the reprint of Duel Deck Anthologies, then that’s the fourth.

That’s not the strangest choice in the set, though. That honor goes to the inclusion of Iona, Shield of Emeria just two months after having her as a mythic in Modern Masters 2015. Iona is a worthy choice to go into the FTV set, but it’s almost as though each of the two sets didn’t know the other was including her. Just one of these two sets would have been enough to increase her copies in circulation, and she was only at $20/$80 before.

From the outside, it’s impossible to say if this was a communication error or a conscious decision to really push Iona into a low price. But since we are on the outside, we are left to wonder what the motivation was. There was a slot in either set that could have been another card, but who knows what could have been.

Fetch lands and Battle for Zendikar

When the name of the fall set was revealed as Battle for Zendikar, the five enemy fetch lands immediately took a dive on price, losing more than half their value in some cases. Writers and financiers and players all jumped to the conclusion that the cycle would be in BfZ.

And then, Mark Rosewater dropped this bomb via tumblr:

Was there a voice anywhere that said the fetches were NOT in BfZ? Would you have listened if you’d heard one?

For that matter, who had any inkling that Wizards wanted the allied fetches in Modern and would put them in Standard?

Again, we are forced to confront a very basic truth: Wizards works at their own level. This is true of why Duels is now only on the newest Apple versions, why Magic Online has all of its changes (including the still-missing Leagues!) and when it comes to what is and isn’t in any set or product, outsiders are merely tossing darts at the wall while blindfolded.

Building decks at the end of Standard

What would the last two years have been like if Herald of the Pantheon or Starfield of Nyx had been in Theros block, or even way back in Dragon’s Maze? I can’t remember seeing as many cards dedicated to upgrading an archetype as what showed up in Magic Origins. Granted, this is the last core set, and it’s only legal together for a few brief months, but wow. This is another thing we never saw coming. What is the next two sets going to bring for Abzan or Megamorph decks?

Takeaways

So if we can’t accurately predict what Wizards will do, what can we do to gain a little power over the future?

The easiest course of action is to do nothing. Don’t attempt to speculate or predict and don’t attempt to gain from foreknowledge. We’re all just guessing now.

With a little thought, though, we can make some inferences based on negative information. For example, we know that Commander 2015 will be enemy colors. Instead of trying to predict what will be in those sets (my gut tells me to get out on Prophet of Kruphix, for one) we can infer that allied-color cards are safe for now, so go ahead and stock up on things like Privileged Position or Oona, Queen of the Fae.

Keeping today’s lessons in mind, don’t presume that this winter’s Commander decks will have Arid Mesa and its buddies. We need the set of filter lands just as badly from a price perspective, especially the enemy ones that were only in the barely-bought Eventide. There hasn’t really been a big land present in each of the Commander releases so far, but today’s whole point is that we can’t predict accurately what Wizards of the Coast will do.

Still, though, keep in mind that everything will get reprinted eventually. There’s too many outlets. We have Conspiracy, Modern Masters, Clash Packs, Event Decks, judge foils, GP promos, and special releases like foil Force of Will or the foil promo Genesis Hydras being given out when you buy two old packs at my Target. Everything not on the reserved list will be redone. It’s only a matter of time.

Going Mad, Uncategorized

Going Mad – Stay Classy Grand Prix San Diego

August 12, 2015 Derek Madlem 13 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

It’s the week after a Pro Tour and we’ve seen the decks that are sure to dominate the Standard format until rotation, the format is solved and it’s pretty obvious where to place our bets. We’ve had a couple weeks of SCG Opens and then the culminating tournament to solidify the metagame and declare a public enemy #1. Now we’re just coasting to the finish line as we wait for a new set to be released and we can start this process all over again. Right? Right.

Well… wrong

Skimming through the top 32 decklists, I was expecting to see a good percentage of the field rocking the Ensoul Artifact Thopter deck that took Pro Tour Magic Origins by storm, after all it was clearly “the next Caw-Blade” if you listened to the Pros and the parrots in the coverage booth. What happened in San Diego is a testament to R&D’s ability to create a variety of flexible cards to combat a variety of threats; and by variety of cards, I am actually just referring to exactly one card – Dromoka’s Command.

Dromoka’s Command may be the first card printed as a utility spell to have an entire archetype form up around it. Dromoka’s Command is the backbone that the entirety of the Green-White Megamorph deck builds around. Not only does Dromoka’s Command effectively remove enchantments from the board, it is also does pumps creatures, prevents damage, and removes opposing blockers… three things that seem to be relevant in most games of Magic, killing enchantments is just a bonus. But it’s power was not relgated solely to the Megamorph decks, it also showed up heavily in a variety of Abzan decks. This all proved to be bad bad news for those Thopter decks; as it turns out, a deck that’s built around a couple key enchantments is vulnerable to enchantment removal +1.

Dromoka’s Command showed up in 17 of the top 32 decks, pretty much the only non-land cards that saw more action were Courser of Kruphix (19 decks) and Den Protector (18 decks). The most surprising bit in all of this? Dromoka’s Command is somehow still under $4. Dromoka’s Command is one of those cards that’s going to see play for years, it’s not quite Abrupt Decay level of utility in older formats, but it’s rarely a card that you’ll disappointed to draw. This also seems like a great long-term pickup in FOIL as it’s currently sitting at a very meager $11.

I am also an advocate of picking up at least a playset of Dromoka’s Command because it has roughly 14 months until rotation, which makes it a fine card to buy purely for play value (dividends) and there’s ample opportunity for it to creep up in price this October as the format shifts.

The Card that Isn’t

A really spicy brew took down the title in San Diego, this deck relied heavily on one card: Sphinx’s Tutelage. The deck featured an array of cheap draw spells that allow you to essentially burn through your deck grabbing more and more draw spells and dumping more and more cards into your opponent’s graveyard, looking at the decklist I have a hard time figuring out how this deck came out on top after 18 rounds of Magic… but even a ham sandwich can win a tournament if it draws the right pairings each round.

Sphinx’s Tutelage is a card you can invest in… I guess. But I’ll offer you a reality check: this is a niche strategy uncommon in a core set; this is NOT Stoke the Flames. Sphinx’s Tutelage is NOT Path to Exile or Murderous Cut or Bile Blight or any of the diverse playable uncommons we’ve seen crest $2 in the last few years. Sphinx’s Tutelage is a Hedron Crab or a Mind Funeral… it’s a card that in a couple years you might make a dollar off of. You’d probably be better served buying up copies of Alhammaret’s Archive, a card that should also hold onto some long-term heavy appeal in Commander.

While I am extremely skeptical about a deck featuring Sphinx’s Tutelage gaining traction in Modern, if it does you can expect Visions of Beyond to be the big winner… not a mass printed core-set uncommon. Being a cheap draw spell coupled with the Ancestral Recall payoff makes Visions an absolute all star alongside any conceivable Sphinx’s Tutelage build IF such a thing ever comes to fruition, which I’m currently doubtful of.

That Vastwood Seer

Nissa, Vastwood Seer continues her run as the most prevalent flipwalker, showing up in a stunning 15 of the top 32 decks compared to a paltry 6 decks for the former financial frontrunner Jace. Nissa is clearly here to stay as a heavily played Mythic staple and Jace is establishing himself as an all star role player. Expect their prices to continue diverging as Nissa hovers around $25 with a slow decline and Jace continues to adjust downward at a much faster rate.

The rest of this pantheon is performing much more in line with my previous expectations: ie, not at all. There isn’t a single copy of Kytheon, Chandra, or Liliana in the top 32 decks and that should put the writing on the wall as far as these cards go. While we’ve likely not seen the last of Liliana, Heretical Healer thanks to her inclusion in those Modern Collected Company decks, the outlook is grim for the other two.

The Card that Wasn’t There

On the breaking news front (at the time of writing this article) we have the full spoiler for FTV: Angels and it doesn’t include Linvala, Keeper of Silence. While this would have mattered a lot more before they banned Birthing Pod than it does now, it still puts a lot of pressure on this Mythic Modern staple. At the time I’m writing this Linvala is hovering around $35… but you’re probably looking at $50+ Linvalas today as you read this. Special thanks to the finance community for that one guys! In reality this card was likely to go up either way, people just have a psychological disconnect when it comes to FTV printings. A card like Linvala will stop climbing for fear of a reprint and then once that fear is confirmed or denied, it will adjust accordingly. This was a good card to pick up either way as FTV printings are traditionally disliked by most players because the FOILs look fairly atrocious.

While it’s disappointing to see Linvala absent from this product, she can probably just go ahead and join the club alongside Damnation as a card that desperately needs a reprint and somehow dodges it time and time again despite numerous glaring opportunities to do so and we’ll now start the yearly tradition of excluding only the most obvious choices from the From the Vault releases. But if you look on the bright side, we finally have that Iridescent Angel reprint that we’ve all been waiting for! Now’s your chance to buy in.

There is still the outside chance that with the new block structure we’ll see a Linvala reprint in Battle for Zendikar. The absence of a Core Set means that a lot of reprints will need to be implemented within regular sets. This will essentially tie reprints of legendary creatures to their home planes as non-planeswalkers don’t really get to experience interplanar travel yet. Yet.

Fetchland Insanity

I have a proposal for most of you that are taken aback by the recent upswing in fetch land prices: don’t buy them. At this point it’s not a matter of IF but WHEN the Zendikar fetches will be reprinted. Wizards seems to be pushing enemy colored pairs over the next year with the reinclusion of the opposing painlands, enemy colored Commander decks, and the likely inclusion of the long-awaited enemy colored manlands as the flagship duals for Battle for Zendikar. That push, plus the acknowledgement that Modern card availability is an issue should be enough to sooth fears that these cards are just never going to be available ever again.

Whether those fetches show up in a supplementary product (unlikely) or the next large set (April, as the other fetchlands rotate out of Standard), they ARE going to be reprinted – it’s only a matter of time.

Now’s the time for some tough love. Dad talk, have a seat children. There’s been a lot of outrage about the new price of fetches being unaffordable… but were they really affordable before? I’m going to say that for those outraged at the new price that these fetchlands were never truly affordable. If they were – you would have afforded them. YOU WOULD ALREADY OWN THEM. Now they are just STILL unaffordable; functionally, nothing has changed.

In reality there are only a handful of decks that really NEED the exact fetch land for their deck, most decks are perfectly able to get by on Khans fetches with only a fractional percentage of a decrease in efficiency. What does that percentage mean for the average Modern player in weekly tournaments at the local shop? You’re going to lose, at most, one or two games per month, and those games are not necessarily going to mean the match. Does that percentage point matter more elsewhere? Only if you’re going to be playing in competitive level events that span nine to fifteen rounds on a regular basis.

The real question that you should be asking yourself is: if you have serious issues with card affordability, how do you justify spending $40-70 a pop to play in an SCG Open or a Grand Prix? Competitive Magic is expensive. It’s always going to be expensive and the rewards are a rarely going to be cover the buy-in. The entire game is built on the foundation that players will continuously buy more and more cards and that a subsection of those cards being worth money.

Transparency: I bought zero copies of Linvala or the fetch lands this week

Stay classy #mtgfinance

Sigmund Ausfresser

PROTRADER: A Deep Dive Into Fetch Lands

August 10, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 12 Comments

It’s been nearly three years since we saw the reprint of shock lands. In other words it’s been three years since dozens of MTG speculators invested in fistfuls of the Modern dual land – it was the beginning of a long, arduous journey…a journey with few bumps and even fewer profits. If bonds are seen as safe, unexciting investments then RtR shock lands are the epitome of MTG bonds. Except, with shocks there were no distributions or dividends.

Naturally, when Khans of Tarkir brought us the Onslaught fetch land reprint, many financiers, myself included, were leery of the investment opportunity. Could this be another shock land debacle? Would fetches be reprinted again and again in subsequent sets, making all prospect of profits virtually absent?

I’ll be first to admit I thought the answer to these two questions was “yes.” Acting cautiously as always, I limited my exposure to Khans fetches to no more than around twenty copies. When I shifted focus towards a portfolio refresh via massive liquidation at GP Vegas, I unloaded the vast majority of my Khans fetches. Fortunately, I made a handy profit on this pursuit. Unfortunately, I missed out on additional gains.

I hadn’t foreseen this:

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

July 13, 2015 Jared Yost 15 Comments

Magic Origins Clash Pack Review

Let’s take a look at the Magic Origins Clash Pack to see if it is worth picking up in order to boost the value of your collection. I’ll look at both the MSRP versus retail value of the singles and then compare them to my opinions of what the future value of the cards will be after their rotation from Standard. I’ll also keep in mind that some of the cards from the decks are alternate art foil, which could reflect their future value.

For the alternate art foils, I am going to use the TCG Median price since MTGPrice does not yet track the value of specific clash pack foil versions of cards. I will note the special foils with three asterisks ***.

Decklists:

ARMED	$$$	DANGEROUS	$$$
1 Anointer of Champions	0.22	2 Ainok Bond-Kin	0.28
1 Dragon Hunter	0.32	2 Disowned Ancestor	0.26
1 Honored Hierarch***	3	3 Lightwalker	0.42
1 Seeker of the Way***	0.71	1 Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit	2.47
1 Dromoka Warrior	0.18	1 Avatar of the Resolute	1.6
2 Topan Freeblade	0.28	2 Abzan Falconer	0.4
2 Undercity Troll	0.46	1 Tuskguard Captain	0.18
1 Consul’s Lieutenant	0.3	1 Mer-Ek Nightblade	0.18
1 Dragon Bell Monk	0.14	1 Abzan Battle Priest	0.19
2 Valeron Wardens	0.48	1 Longshot Squad	0.14
2 Citadel Castellan	0.76	1 Siege Rhino***	4.5
2 War Oracle	0.48	1 Elite Scaleguard	0.19
1 Outland Colossus	1	1 Dromoka, the Eternal***	0.5
1 Kytheon’s Irregulars	0.9
		2 Cached Defenses	0.42
2 Epic Confrontation	0.22	2 Map the Wastes	0.28
2 Enshrouding Mist	0.28	2 Incremental Growth	0.32
1 Feat of Resistance	0.15	2 Ultimate Price	0.68
2 Mighty Leap	0.28	1 Scale Blessing	0.2
1 Pressure Point	0.13	2 Dromoka’s Gift	0.4
1 Valorous Stance***	2	1 Suspension Field	0.24
2 Titanic Growth	0.3	1 Debilitating Injury	0.14
1 Dromoka’s Command	6	1 Abzan Ascendancy	0.3
1 Collected Company	18	1 Citadel Siege	0.72
2 Pacifism	0.5	1 Ancestral Vengeance	0.14

2 Blossoming Sands	0.3	2 Jungle Hollow	0.3
2 Evolving Wilds	0.44	1 Sandsteppe Citadel***	0.69
1 Windswept Heath	14	2 Scoured Barrens	0.3
11 Plains	0	2 Blossoming Sands	0.3
10 Forest	0	7 Plains	0
		6 Swamp	0
		6 Forest	0
Total Cost:	$51.83	Total Cost:	$16.74

The MSRP cost of the clash pack is $24.99, so looking at these two decks priced at $25 feels like highway robbery. Collected Company and Windswept Heath makes this a very juicy pickup indeed. On top of that they decided to throw in Dromoka’s Command, Siege Rhino, Honored Hierarch, and even Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit for fun.

The retail value of the singles versus the MSRP of the deck doesn’t automatically mean that everyone should buy this. Yet, I’m pretty sure this is the first clash pack released that is more than double its MSRP value in singles if you were to pay TCGPlayer Median for them. I’m wondering if that means the singles in the clash pack will drop significantly or if this clash pack will sell above MSRP for its life in Standard due to the value of the cards.

Big Reprints

Collected Company

So this card is almost $20 TCG Mid right now as a Standard legal rare. Only out since April, Collected Company has already spiked three times due to Modern hype and the amount of decks that it has helped to push in the Modern format, on top of Standard demand in decks like Devotion to Green and Selesnya Aggro. Please realize though that this card isn’t Snapcaster Mage, so I don’t think that the $20 and higher price point is going to be sustainable for long.

It took a long time for Snapcaster Mage to break the $25 barrier. While it was in Standard, not only did it NOT receive the clash pack treatment but it also never went far above $25 as a fair trade price and could easily be acquired in cash or retail for $20 or less. Collected Company isn’t going to be nearly as ubiquitous as something like Snapcaster Mage. I mean, Birthing Pod decks at one point was putting up numbers in the mid-30% range of Top 8’s in Modern and even Pod never went farther than $20.

Standard legal cards are tricky, though. Since CoCo is so popular in both Standard and Modern the new price could be sticking. However, with the clash pack reprinting I’m guessing that something similar to what happened to Courser of Kruphix is going to happen to CoCo.

See that dip there in Jan 2015? That’s about the time the clash pack came out. Courser dropped $5 and never recovered in price. Now, CoCo also has significantly more Modern demand going for it, which is part of the reason the price is so wild right now. Though I feel that as more Dragons of Tarkir packs are busted that the hype will die down and that Collected Company will settle between $12 and $15 for the rest of its Standard life with a dip at rotation. However, if you were savvy enough to get in on Collected Comapny at $4 prerelease prices then definitely get rid of any extras you have before the price starts dipping again. This is the highest we’re going to see it for a while, and the clash pack reprint means the price is only going down.

Windswept Heath

I don’t think the clash pack printings are going to have any effect at all on Windswept Heath’s price in the near future, other than to stabilize it further at $15 compared to the other currently Standard legal fetchlands. The price isn’t going to lower significantly, as I don’t think we’ll ever see sub-$10 fetchlands in Standard since they are so vital to mana bases in the format and beyond.

This is a great opportunity to get in on Windswept Heath once copies from the clash packs saturate the market, since I’m guessing that many players are going to want to pick this clash pack up for the value. Once the price on Heath stabilizes, it’s going to be nice to pick up extra copies to use as trade bait later in Heath’s Standard life.

Dromoka’s Command

Dromoka’s Command is never going above $6 due to the clash pack printing. It previously had highs of $10 closer to the release of Dragons of Tarkir, however now that the hype has died down and Standard might be taking a new direction as the fall approaches, demand for Dromoka’s Command has wavered and retailers have updated their prices to reflect that.

Siege Rhino

I think that similar to Whip of Erebos that the clash pack printing of Siege Rhino will reflect the pack version’s price. The alternate art isn’t great on this card, so the regular foils of Siege Rhino will still be worth more than the clash pack foil but will stabilize quite a bit due to the clash pack printing.

In general, I’m not sure if Siege Rhino will ever go much further than $6 retail during its remaining time in Standard. Abzan is already starting to wane in favor of other strategies, so the demand for the Rhino has also been waning.

Honored Hierarch

The jury’s still out on Honored Hiearch, as Magic Origins has just been released, however I think that it definitely has potential in Standard since Wizards is showing that they are moving away from one mana manadorks in favor of cards like Rattleclaw Mystic. My personal evaluation of the card is hot garbage, however I’m no professional player and also noted that Wizards released this as a rare which means that in playtesting it was too powerful as an uncommon (maybe for limited reasons?).

Either way, due to the clash pack printing and the already low price of $2.50 to $3, I don’t think that the Hierarch is going anywhere in price for the time being. Seems like it is tricky to get going in Standard, and even then your reward is only Birds of Paradise.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit

Any chance that this card had of going over $3 was just killed. Now that there are going to be even more copies of this version of Anafenza out there the price isn’t moving. In fact, it could even go down based on the release of the clash pack.

If a later Standard strategy utilizes her, the price might move back up towards $3 but I don’t think there is room for growth here due to the clash pack reprinting.

Summary

The awesomeness of this clash pack can’t be understated. There is a ton of value here and I’m sure I’m not the only person that noticed. The big-box retailers are going to sell this clash pack for $30 or more based on the card values yet there are always deals to be had. I’m sure plenty of retailers are going to have this for $25 (or less even) so if you want to pick up the clash pack for a cheap copy of Collected Company and Windswept Heath for Standard play you can’t go wrong.

However, I would caution that once the singles dip in price that the deck will get less and less valuable and therefore less attractive as a pickup. For example, after Collected Company and Windswept Heath stabilize in price, most of the value cards are going to be $3 and less with just tons of bulk thrown in there. It’s going to be hard to trade or out the cards as more time goes on, so if you want to make the most of this clash pack then it is better to sell or trade the singles sooner rather than later.

MTGPrice Blog