Tag Archives: Magic finance

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Uncommonly Valuable

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When you’re sitting there, sifting through those bulk collections that I know (almost) all of you are buying throughout the year, one of the key types of cards that you should be looking for are uncommons. Yes, commons are important too in these bulk searches for treasure, however the uncommons are going to be what surprises you most in terms of value when you go to cash out your findings to the highest paying buylist.

My goal today is twofold. First, I’m going to quickly review what the most valuable uncommons are that you should be looking for when sifting through the bulk of bought collections. Most of these cards will be obvious, but I’m betting that some of them might be a surprise.

Then, I’m going to take this a step further and point out which foils you should also be looking for. Foils, as you’ll find, are quite an interesting market, and the amount of a play a foil receives in Modern, Commander, Legacy, or even Vintage could drastically alter the price. Many of the uncommon foils that I’ve found are actually are individual buylist line items despite their rare use, and you want to make sure that they aren’t being accidentally thrown in with the rest of bulk foils. Albeit, not that many collections will have a large amount of foils, especially foils that are from older sets, however foil picking shouldn’t be discounted either. Now is as good a time as ever for checking to see which uncommon foils are demanding the highest buylist and eBay prices in the market.

With that out of the way, let’s review the nonfoil uncommons that are valuable to see if there might be any surprises in there.

Figure 1 – Most Valuable Recent Set Nonfoil Uncommons $2 or More eBay Sorted By Highest Buylist

 

No suprise that Aether Vial, Top, and Duel Deck Demonic Tutor are at the top of the list. Essential staples in their respective formats, they carry the highest eBay price and buylist prices. Arbitrage is particularly close on Aether Vial – I could see this one jumping in price in the near future, especially with the next wave of Modern tournaments coming up early next year.

Shardless Agent, Enlightened Tutor, and Cabal Coffers are all great uncommons with a ton of casual appeal. Shardless Sultai seems to come in and out of favor in Legacy, so there is demand there for the Agent but I think that is mainly coming from casual players. Enlightened Tutor and Cabal Coffers are still $10 even with reprints, which bodes well for their futures. I expect we’ll see reprints of these cards soon enough, but even with a reprint I could see them do a Ghostly Prison and still stubbornly maintain a price above $5 due to the “discovery” effect where newer players who just started playing the game see their power and move to pick them up for Commander.

Mishra’s Bauble still surprises me – where is this played again? If anyone picks up a collection with Coldsnap, look for these guys among the bulk. Sterling Grove is another uncommon that is valuable to vendors especially since the Daxos deck, though lacking green, could sway players to start creating enchantment based decks with green in them since Magic’s history is full of great green cards that support enchantments.

Mother of Runes has a high eBay but low buylist price, which indicates to me that the eBay price is going to start going down. Mom’s should be traded to players looking for them, as buylist is fine for this uncommon but you will get more bang for you buck if you move them over a medium like Pucatrade.

Ancient Ziggurat, Footsteps of the Goryo, and Guttural Response are the final uncommons I would like to mention. These uncommons are surprisingly valuable due casual and Modern appeal. Footseps and Response have their niche in Modern, while Ancient Ziggurat has a huge casual appeal and is an uncommon with only one nonfoil printing.

All in all, I don’t think you guys will find this uncommon list that surprising. Let’s move on to the foils, which are certainly more interesting.

Figure 2 – Most Valuable Recent Set Foil Uncommons $4 or More eBay Sorted by Highest Buylist

 

Right away, I’m sure you noticed that this list is waaaay longer than the previous list. Suffice to say, there are plenty of foil uncommons that have gained value over the years. We see that Goblin Matron is currently commanding the highest buylist price – even with Top being sold at $110 eBay, Matron still eeks it out by a margin of $6. Bare in mind, this is one vendor who is offering the noted buylist price, so for other vendors the buy on Matron could very well be lower. Still though, it shows that the demand for foils is a totally different market than nonfoils since Matron didn’t even show up on the nonfoil list!

So, apparently foil Choke is being sold at $80 on eBay! This is crazy to me, as it is a purely sideboard card that will almost certainly be reprinted at a future date. This indicates to me that unless you’re playing a totally Russian foiled Merfolk, maybe you should consider moving this foil…

Foil prices drastically reduce from there, where most are $30 each or lower on eBay. The obvious outliter here is 9th Ed. Urza’s Mine, but the eBay data is skewed since the buylist is only $25.

Aven Mindcensor is still a sought-after foil, being present in both Legacy and Modern in D&T and Hatebears builds. With only one printing in Future Sight, I don’t see this foil dropping until a reprint in a Modern Masters type set.

     

As we move down the list, we start seeing strange foils such as Boil, Crypt Rats, Serra Advocate, Reprisal, Mistveil Plains, and Breath of Life pop up. Did you guys even know these cards existed? Well, if you have foil copies then someone out there is looking for them, and finding stuff like this in collections is always a treat.

Some interesting eBay foil prices include Izzet Staticaster, Sustainer of the Realm, Blood Artist, and Victimize. All of these on eBay are being sold at a fairly high price for a foil uncommon yet buylists are quite low compared to eBay prices. This tells me that players are seeking them, but stores aren’t – probably because they are very hard to move. Cards like these should probably be sold at eBay or TCG since even after fees you are going to get more for them than you would just outing to a buylist. Something to keep in mind in case you come across a few of these types of uncommon foils.

Final Thoughts

I’ll be using these lists in the future when looking through collections, to try and maximize the amount I can get out of them. I hope you guys find the lists useful as well, since there are plenty of eye popping numbers in the data especially concerning uncommon foils.

Let me know if I missed any uncommons from recent sets, nonfoil or foil, that you have your eyes on for value moving forward. I used the MTGPrice ProTrader data collection methods to aggregate this data, so if you become a ProTrader you too can get easy, current access to this data at your fingertips.

ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser

PROTRADER: Long Term Buys – The New World Order?

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A number of general strategies have tended to pay off on Wall Street over the past century. You know the type – diversify, buy what you know, focus on top and bottom line growth, be greedy when others are fearful, etc. While never guarantees, following these guidelines will generally lead you towards better, more consistent financial reward when investing.

Some MTG finance strategies parallel that of Wall Street. In Magic there’s still benefit to diversification, for example. There are also unique strategies worth noting for this hobby in particular – pay close attention to Standard rotation, make note of when Modern season begins, buy and hold Power for the long term, etc.

But not all adages echoed across MTG financiers are permanent truths. Sometimes confirmation bias (a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions) can cloud judgment and lead to incorrect conclusions. Even some of the most tried and true hypotheses can’t be confirmed as general investing truth due to the dynamic environment we’re in today.

This week I will touch upon a couple investing fallacies that I’ve personally bumped into recently, and how I’m shifting my investment strategy accordingly. I also haver a hypothetical question that will really shake up people’s mindset (well, maybe).

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Floor Reports

Floor Reports: Grand Prix Pittsburgh

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Hey guys! GP Pittsburgh was a great event to go to if you were looking to grind the tables and buy some cards. With prices in their seasonal decline, many opportunistic players were there looking to acquire underpriced staples and discounted deals. I myself did not play sanctioned magic at all during the weekend, and I’m sure that the other price writers present will be covering what happened with the TO and the GP as a whole. I can say that because the venue was packed, many grinders had extremely good weekends and I was lucky enough to partake in the spoils. After feedback on my twitter account from these articles, I also will be grading the vendors just like school.  Let’s get into the plethora of vendors!

Strike Zone

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StrikeZone seemed to barely be vending this weekend. They left early all three nights, and were one of the later vendors to be arriving on site during Sunday morning. I think they ran out of cash due to their proximity to the entry hall, and as a result didn’t have to grind the long hours that the vendors farther away from the action had to. Their buy prices weren’t the best, but there were enough people selling to them to make their booth worth it. The weirdest part about buylisting to StrikeZone was the fact that they make you organize the buy piles into set and alphabetical order, which is something few lazy Magic players do. They used to be one of the top vendors to sell to, but it seemed that their prices waned with the sun at this GP. I sat down with them as they perused through my binders, but said no to all of their offers confident that I could get more for my cards elsewhere this weekend.

Grade: C (Average)

MTG Card Market

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MTG Card Market was at the very end of one of the two rows of vendor tables. They seemed to get little traffic because of this, and their buy prices weren’t amazing. They did however grab quite a few quarters this weekend out of my ogre box, perhaps in an attempt to get cards in at all! Jameson was quite friendly to everyone who stopped by however, and quite a few Chicago locals were selling to them this weekend.

Grade: C (Average)

Channel Fireball

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Channel Fireball had a booth about four booths down from the GP entrance. They were packed all weekend, and paying highly on miscellaneous cards. As a GP mainstay, many people were selling to them due to their brand loyalty and credit bonus. Their buyers were very friendly and I sold a couple hundred dollars of mid-priced cards to them. Taking credit, I was able to pick up some blue-chip modern staples such as Noble Hierarch and Thoughtseize that I’m confident will see nice returns next year. They also bought over 100 Snapcaster Mageand 100 Rhystic Study from individual buyers, which was pretty funny to see.

Grade (B) Above Average

Savage TCG

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Savage has vended the last couple GPs in a row. They always seem to attract a crowd, but didn’t have any stellar buy prices this weekend. They did, however, have low prices on played cards and had multiple Legacy staples at attractive buy prices all weekend. It seemed that they sold a lot of these to cube enthusiasts as quite a few happy people walked away with new cards. I didn’t sell anything to them or buy, but I always like to stop by and see what they have for sale.

Grade ( C) Average

Gaming ETC

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Gaming ETC had an interesting booth setup this weekend. Half of their booth was covered in miscellaneous Magic products such as playmats and sleeves, compared to other vendors’ higher-margin items like packs and played binders. I wasn’t happy with their high sell prices and low buy prices, and the demeanor of their buyers didn’t make it seem like they were happy to be there.

Grade (D) Below Average

Jupiter Games

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Jupiter seemed sparsely populated all weekend. They had both low buy prices and high sell prices. Their buyers seemed to be on their phones for most of the GP, and they only seemed animated during the busy Saturday morning. Next time, I don’t think I’m going to stop by Jupiter if this trend continues.

Grade (F) Unsatisfactory

Wizard Tower.com

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Wizard Tower was one of the most interesting vendors this weekend. They had electronic boards that made seeing buy prices easy. They also had some of the highest buy prices on casual cards this weekend, and had the line to show for it. The weirdest thing about their buying practice was that they manually looked up inventory numbers of each card that they were interested in buying. Selling to them took about twice as long as usual, which was fine for me as I wasn’t playing in the GP, but could be harder for those who were. They almost ran out of money on Saturday, as I was paid quite a bit of money in $5 dollar bills. However, their buying staff was top -notch and friendly. I’ve never seen them vend a GP before, but they will be one of the first stops I make if I see them at another. Phil was one of the nicest buyers I worked with all weekend, and made small talk with me while waiting for their inventory to load on his computers.

Grade (A-) Excellent

Ice Imports

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Ice Imports is another vendor that has been showing up lately at many of the GPs.  They had sell prices somewhere between TCGLow and TCGMid, which was pretty good for a booth. I wasn’t a fan of their buy prices, but they did have quite a few people selling them cards. Their buyers were asking people as they walked buy to sell them cards/ look at their shelves, which means they weren’t just sitting there during slow booth times. Busy times for booths happen between the breaks in each round when players are killing time, and slow times happen during the first 15 minutes of each round.

Grade ( C) Average.

Kirwan’s Game Store

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Kirwan had a small booth in a corner of the room. It didn’t seem that they were buying many collections, but the people selling to them were selling giant collections that took quite a bit of time to buy in. I didn’t sell anything to them, but their hotlist was around 5% less than the top buylists in the room which wasn’t bad if you were looking to get credit for a specific card.

Grade (C ) Average

MTG Deals

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MTG Deals has earned the reputation of one of the top vendors to stop by first at any GP. They definitely lived up to it as this GP. They had a pretty busy booth, and solid buy prices. I sold 10 Expeditions to them at barely below TCGLow, and their buyer Dave was friendly. He also offered a higher number on cards after I said no to the initial offer, which was a nice change of pace. At GPs you can always barter with vendors on high-end cards on the numbers you want, but it was nice to see him haggle with me on $20-$50 cards. I would recommend stopping by MTGDeals as one of the first booths at any GP.

Grade (A-) Excellent

Coolstuffinc

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Coolstuff Inc also had a ton of traffic this weekend. I bought quite a few $16 original Modern Masters packs from them. Although the EV of the packs was great, my pulls weren’t. I sold them quite a few cards that they were paying extremely highly on, such as Modern Masters Slaughter Pact at $7. Their buyers were friendly, and I was satisfied with some of their cards in their played/ foreign binders such as a japanese copy of All is Dust at $4.

Grade (B) Above Average

RIW Hobbies

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Being one of the booths directly next to the doors of the room, RIW was quite busy this weekend. They had cards at retail prices, but had a ton of people buying from them. Customer service was exemplary with Marcel doing his best to accommodate weird card requests and talking about the history of the shop with people. They brought all of their sealed product and product damaged from their fire that had happened a couple months ago in a discounted binder. The cards didn’t smell smoky, but the prices were on fire in this binder. I picked up a promo Eternal Dragon for $5 in the binder, and one of my friends got a foil Sphinx’s Revelation for $10. I recommend stopping by RIW in the future if they still have this binder in the future, or to pick up packs for drafting with your friends.

Grade (B) Above Average

Brimstone Games

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Brimstone brought the greatest amount of sealed product to the GP this weekend. Although their buy prices weren’t stellar, the selection of packs was quite insane. I bought a few original packs of Ravnica for fun at $20 each and pulled a Remand and an Overgrown Tomb. Their buyers were quite friendly with many people coming over to admire their sealed wares, asking how much they were, and then leaving after hearing the answer. For example, there was a sealed box of foreign Urza’s Saga on display. Many people incredulously walked away after hearing the number, but it didn’t seem that bad if you were in the market for something so rare. In the future if you want to see some unique stuff, I recommend stopping by Brimstone Games in the future.

Grade B (Above Average)

Face to Face Games

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Face to Face was also situated near the doors of the venue, leading to a high amount of people stopping by. Their buyers were very friendly, but it seemed like the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar hampered their buying power this weekend compared to other vendors. They had prices around retail as well, but due to brand loyalty still had quite a bit of traffic. I was sad to say that their booth this weekend didn’t stand up to the pleasure of their game center in Canada. Had their buy prices been higher I would have sold them some stuff, but I was in the business of making the most money on my cards this weekend.

Grade (C )  Average

The Comic Book Store

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These guys had solid traffic all weekend, with many locals stopping by to sell cards. I wasn’t a fan of most of their buy prices, but they were paying highly on Command Tower which meant that there must be a huge casual market for them. Their buyers were friendly, but I didn’t sell them many cards.

Grade ( C ) Average.

Aether Games

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Aether has consistently been one of the first vendors I have stopped at at nearly every GP. This weekend was no different. They were paying $17 on Thoughtseize, $2 above the TCG Low at the time. I sold them quite a few Emrakul, the Aeons Torn at $19 and Leyline of Sanctity at $7. They were paying the highest in the room on the fetch land Expeditions, and also were paying $50 on the SCG Tasipurr playmats. They bought so many of these cards at their high buy prices that they dropped many of them after their quote was filled. One person singlehandedly sold them almost 200 Thoughtseizes. Their buyers were friendly, and very professional. I also bought quite a few cards from them this weekend. I bought them out of Japanese foil Plains at $5-6, depending on the art. With those prices barely above English, this is something that I expect to see better returns on then their English counterparts. I also bought quite a few Russian fetch lands since I like Russian more than English cards. Overall, I would recommend making Aether one of your first stops at any GP.

Grade (A-) Excellent

Troll and Toad

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You could barely tell that Troll and Toad had a presence this weekend. Whether it was their low buy prices or shipping practices, they had almost no traffic this weekend. They have also been known to not honor their online buy prices. Cards were haphazardly flung into their cases in different directions, and their buyers seemed quite moody as well. This is the exact opposite of what a vendor should be like at a GP, and I was extremely unimpressed.

Grade (F) Worst Vendor at the GP.

Empire Cards

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Empire had a good selection of high-end cards and sealed product this weekend. I sold them quite a few standard cards that were not tier 1 anymore. I also bought a few RTR packs for fun, but didn’t open anything worthwhile. If I see them at a GP in the future, I’ll probably stop by again but nothing they had blew me out of the water.

Grade (C ) Average

Grinder Gains http://imgur.com/5ZTdiNY

The floor was extremely busy this weekend. With the venue packed to capacity, most of the grinders there Saturday sat by the last row on circular tables. Many people gave up value to get Expeditions at a loss, and as you’ve probably read by now Expeditions are finally rising from their floor.

Trinisphere was virtually nonexistent in anyone’s binders, and had a strong demand from grinders even though no one had any. There were many established shops grinding inventory, with many getting rid of fetch lands for local goods as fetches have finally started to dip back down.

I also helped a friend get a Black Lotus this weekend. He came up Saturday afternoon with a binder full of dual lands. I had already asked each vendor their buy price on duals, and had calculated the amount of credit/ cash he would receive in order to make it easier on him since he would only be at the GP in a couple hours. We ended up trading 24 mainly non-blue duals for a MP- Black Lotus that Aether had at 2300 in buylist. Aether was offering the highest in the room on dual lands this weekend, which was odd as I had heard that almost no vendors wanted duals the week before. Coolstuff also only wanted mint duals and had extremely low prices for even SP duals, something I think more vendors will be shifting to in the future.

After four straight weeks of GPs, many vendors were also out of cash. Only Aether, Deals, and CFB had cash left towards the end of Sunday, meaning that desperate or lazy Magic players got the lowest amounts of cash offered and still took it. If you want to sell at a GP, make sure to sell before the GP even starts Saturday morning.

Overall, GP Pittsburgh was a fun time from a financial perspective! With no GPs for the next six weeks, I expect card prices to drop more overall as people try to sell off inventory by the end of the year. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments, or reach out to me on twitter @LengthyXemit.

Bonus Bits

“The only difference between half the vendors and the grinders is a table” – @Zachsellsmagic

“I’ll take bulk rares over staples any day” Thomas Dodd (Owner of CardAdvantage)

“Sell your Abrupt Decays” Anonymous

 

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

Standard Deck Value Check

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There seems to be an uproar this Battle for Zendikar standard season with the price of Standard decks. Never before since the original Zendikar block have Standard decks reached heights bordering on $1,000 – at least during the first few weeks of the set’s release. However, the price of decks has settled back down even though everyone is playing three or four colors since we have fetchlands and fetchable duals in Standard.

Looking at the price of top decks of the format, we are safely now below the $1,000 mark.

Price of Standard Decks as of 11/21/2015

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Unfortunately, many of the decks are still over $500 with two of them (Dark Jeskai and GW Megamorph) even bordering on the $700 mark which I still think is way too expensive for Standard. As others on MTGPrice have pointed out, this boils down to a combination of fetchland reprints and the last Magic Core Set being released. The reason that the Core Set is important here is because it is released right in the middle of the summer, which is a known downtime when it comes to players purchasing cards, which lead to the price of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy reaching the lofty heights of $80 and up for a short time.

Now as we approach December, the price of Standard decks are starting to settle down again but they still feel expensive to me. Where are the current values of the decks now?

Abzan Aggro

Since Abzan Aggro now contains a full playset of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, we know who the main offender is here. Also, Den Protector is still around $13, which is lower than its previous high of $16 but still very expensive for a rare. Its unusual for rares to maintain a price this high for very long – I mean, even Snapcaster Mage wasn’t much more than $20 during its lifetime in Standard, and it was one of the more dominant cards of the format. I’d keep a close eye on Den Protector since Dragons of Tarkir will be Standard legal for longer than Khans and Fate, so Den Protector might break $20 if it continues to be a strong inclusion in green strategies moving forward.

Hangarback Walker is also a good chunk of the price, even with an event deck printing to help get copies out there. I feel like we’re going to encounter another Thragtusk situation here, since even that had an event deck printing and still reached highs of almost $30 during Innistrad Standard. Funny how some of these situations mirror Innistrad Standard so closely, but I guess history is doomed to repeat itself until we are fully into the new Standard rotation schedule that Wizards has planned out for all future sets.

Ultimately though, the largest chunk of the deck’s value is of course from the lands. Playing twelve fetchlands, four manlands, and a few of the new battle lands, that is close to $250 tied up just in the mana base. This isn’t a good thing, definitely not from a player’s perspective, and I’m hoping it is going to get better once the fetchlands rotate from Standard.

Dark Jeskai

Jace, Vrn’s Prodigy takes up a huge chunk of the deck where four of them will cost you almost as much as the fetchlands in the deck priced together. It is pretty funny of me to say this, but I would much rather trade four Jaces for twelve fetchlands than I would ever want to keep holding four Jaces. I think he is going to drop like a rock when he rotates from Standard, and many players are going to be (rightfully) pissed off when he starts plummeting in price back down to the $20 or lower range again. I realize that Jace has plenty of eternal appeal in Modern through Legacy, but do you really think that is going to make his price continue to command $30 or higher upon rotation? I’m not that confidant, especially when I know fetchlands have proven to be very lucrative in the past.

Speaking of fetchlands, I think the ones in this deck in particular (Bloodstained Mire, Flooded Strand, and Polluted Delta) are still pretty lowly priced considering how the Zendikar fetches ultimately ended up in the $50 and higher range once Modern became a thing, and blue ones reached heights so high that people’s heads were spinning for a while. Do I think we’re going to see $80 to $100 (or above) Polluted Deltas eventually? No. But I do think they have a great chance of hitting at least $50 during the height of Modern seasons in the future. Not this Modern season of course, but a few years down the line you’ll be very happy that you stocked up on blue lands in particular once Modern ultimately becomes the eternal format of choice.

Esper Tokens / Esper Control / Esper Dragons

      

Again, we have Hangarback Walker, Gideon, and the manabase taking up the majority cost of the Esper Tokens deck too. The cards are the same, just assembled in a different order alongside of choices like Secure the Wastes and Wingmate Roc to help generate creatures as the game goes on. I expect Gideon to keep dropping until around February / March of next year, once Oath is released and players have their eyes on new cards coming out from the new set. If he still continues to be a powerhouse, he could retain a high price due to the lower power curve of Battle for Zendikar overall but even then I still think he is due for  drop as we proceed through the winter doldrums.

Besides lands, Little Jace and Ugin are the big offenders from Esper Control, along with Dragonlord Ojutai for those decks that may maindeck him or bring him in from the sideboard for certain matchups. Ugin is interesting to me – his price isn’t going down any time soon, yet I can’t help but feel he will take a hit in some way upon rotation even though he is one of most popular casual planeswalkers to come along since the release of Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker – you know, being Bolas’ counterpart and all. I like holding onto extra copies but we all know that the even deck / supplemental product printing for Ugin is going to be a matter of when, not if. I think it is best for extra copies be moved, especially since we are in the hype of R/G Ramp that is jamming a full playset within the main deck.

Finally, Esper Dragons is definitely packing the Dragonlord Ojutai’s, along with again Little Jace and the lands to accompany the deck. The pieces are again just reconfigured to make the maximum use of the “dragons matter” spells from Dragons of Tarkir, which we’ve all seen are excellent when used to their full effect. Dragonlord Ojutai is without a doubt tanking upon Dragons of Tarkir rotation but could see a huge spike when Khans and Fate Reforged rotate, since he is one the powerhouses that is remaining to help the Esper Dragons deck continue to be a force in the metagame. Keep a close eye on him and sell into any hype he might see when Khans/Fate Reforged rotate in the upcoming months.

GW Megamorph

     

We have a mix of high value cards here in the form of Den Protector, Deathmist Raptor, Nissa, Vastwood Seer, Dromoka’s Command, and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar (along with of course lands, but at this point I believe that goes without saying). Interestingly enough, none of these cards are rotating at the next rotation schedule, so I think GW Megamorph should be heavily watched to see where the core pieces of the deck are going in price since fetchlands are going to rotate soon too. I wonder especially if Dromoka’s Command is in for another spike – copies were super cheap after the event deck printing, and they have rebounded nicely over the past few months as Dragons of Tarkir is drying up and players have been focused on the expedition lottery in Battle for Zendikar.

I guess what I’m saying is that GW Megamorph is still going to be a huge force in the metagame even once rotation happens, so I expect at least one, if not several, of the cards to experience spikes (at least in the short term) after Khans and Fate rotate.

4C Rally

Finally, the last somewhat expensive deck is 4C Rally which makes use of Collected Company and Rally the Ancestors to defeat opponents by overwhelming them with creature value. Little Jace again is a huge offender in this deck and even Collected Company is still commanding an $8 price tag – certainly better than the$16+ it was once it exploded into Modern, though still one of the more expensive pieces of the deck. I definitely think it can potentially be higher priced once rotation happens. Collected Company is the card to watch from this deck, as Modern demand in addition to Standard demand could propel it past $10 again despite the event deck printing.

Wrapping Up

     

All in all, yes – Standard is expensive but at least we’re not shelling out $1,000 for decks at this point and they are only going to get cheaper once the fetchlands rotate from Standard. Keep an eye on all Dragons of Tarkir and Magic Origins staples, as the upcoming rotation will not be affecting them negatively in price and several of the current staples will probably see significant gains once the new metagame shakes out. As always, I love to hear your thoughts in the comments so let me know what you think about my analysis and what your own has been since Battle for Zendikar has been released.