Tag Archives: Magic The Gathering

Mastering Speculation

MTGFinance in the Era of Reprints

There is little question that Magic: The Gathering players, speculators and vendors are facing a new era in the game we love. Print runs, release schedules and reprint cadence are all up and competitive tournament support, sealed product prospects and Hasbro staff rosters are down. A community once dominated by Standard, Modern and Legacy players has now morphed into an EDH driven market surrounded by a double handful of smaller formats. Crypto hype echoes across the collectibles markets, exacerbating the boom and bust cycles.

Gone are the days when a Magic player could reliably sit on almost any sized collection of singles or sealed products and reasonably expect that the value of that cardboard treasure hoard would simply go up and to the right.

Instead we are forced to confront the simple fact that now, perhaps more than ever, the people that make the game we love are under significant pressure to make more and sell more, without much regard for the longer term consequences. In many ways we can lay this at the feet of late stage capitalism, as the obsession over revenue and profit growth leads to bonus chasing executives making decisions that help short term graphs without considering player growth, player commitment, or the health of the game.

And yet, if we intend to make and save money playing this game that we love, we must still find a way to navigate through. So what do we do?

Singles Aren’t Dead, But They’re Injured

There isn’t any way around it. Magic singles speculation is just more risky than it used to be, even when you do everything right. Sure, I’m having my best year ever for singles sales, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy or automatic.

WoTC is simply putting out more products, more often, and with a greater focus on premium sets and direct to consumer sales via the Secret Lair product line. This results in dozens of more reprints on key staples throughout the year. What’s more, even a recent reprint doesn’t necessarily guarantee that your spec will be left alone, as we’ve seen multiple examples of cards getting double tapped within the same calendar year.

As such, any given basket of intelligently selected staples can be expected, on average, to produce a lower margin than it did five or ten years ago. Does that mean that Magic singles are simply untenable for speculation purposes? Well, no, despite the talking heads that are making money generating content that will tell you otherwise .

The reality is that from any reasonable perspective Magic is in the strongest position it’s ever been. The shift to Secret Lair products cuts out most of the middle men, boosting profits. Overall revenues and profits are at all time highs, and the Lord of the Rings set was likely the best selling Magic product of all time, generating massive amounts of free press coverage as players rushed to find the precious. Partnerships with major entertainment brands via the Universes Beyond might dilute the narrative of the game, but it also expands the reach of the brand and pulls in fresh interest that otherwise seemed hard to reach. EDH is the king of formats, encouraging players to build massive collections and featuring a natural rotation of archetypes and a self-regulating power level.

And take it from someone that sifts through the data each and every week to see what’s gaining ground: there are simply hundreds if not thousands of relevant price increases on Magic singles every year even in the midst of the era of reprints. (And naturally, there are just as many cards that lose ground.)

There are new cards still in print that take off due to meta shifts. There are niche cards that get activated by the hot new commander of the month, providing a strong selling window that collapses a few months later. There are premium versions of cards that have plenty of printings that can shake off reprints as the best chase version available and accelerate when put under the spotlight. Smuggler’s Copter gets unbanned and turns into a rocket ship. Many Planeswalkers have simply never received a reprint at all, and with the recent narrative shift away from them in general, this trend is unlikely to reverse. Sol Ring gets infinite reprints, but the players still float the Masterpiece Invention version over $650.



There are also still plenty of cards that go 2-5+ years without a reprint, and another group that are simply unlikely to ever get a reprint for one reason or another. The simple fact is that as the card pool gets larger and larger, even the new reprint cadence cannot keep pace with the entire pool of staples and niche cards that are needed by players across multiple popular formats.

On the other hand, your bread and butter EDH staples are very likely to be kept in print in one form or another more or less constantly. Cards like Smothering Tithe, Rhystic Study and Doubling Season have to be assumed to be within a year of another reprint at any time and that absolutely impacts how you should approach their presence in your inventory.

Another major source of risk is power creep leading to prior staples falling out of a key meta like Modern. With a Modern Horizons set being delivered every two years at this point, and a generally high power level expected next summer in MH3, there’s a good chance that a card that seems like a good spec today will end up forgotten by next fall.

And yet, there are FAR more Magic cards worth more than $10, $20, $50 or $100 now than there have ever been, in large part due to the increase in premium treatments and lottery cards at distinctly low print runs. EV continues to drain from regular printings to premiums, resulting in solid access to key staples at lower prices that no player should complain about. The singles market is far from crashing, but it’s a different beast for sure.

All of this adds up to a need to stay on top of things if you want to succeed.

Focus on Scarcity

The collectibles market has long pivoted on scarcity. To wit, the entire industry rides the tension between supply and demand, always trying to maximize profit by producing as much as possible without crashing the market and eliminating the demand. From comics, to beanie babies, retro video games, and 80s action figures to the dozen or more prevalent cards games that survive alongside Magic, Pokemon and Yugioh, there’s always a scarcity driven market to collect and profit in, and always a risk that it will all go sideways.

As such, it behooves us to pay close attention to what parts of the Magic product line are more scarce than others. Time Spiral Remastered, ONE Compleat Bundles, and 40k Premium decks all spring to mind as examples of sealed product that caught some folks flat footed and made others healthy returns on the flip.

You also have to watch for products where demand is so high it makes even high print run items seem scarce. The Lord of the Rings Collector Boosters were strongly profitable before the 1/1 ring was found, when sourced intelligently. Some of the forthcoming Marvel x Magic releases over the next few years may well behave in similar fashion.

On the other hand, there is little evidence that buying most Draft, Set or Collector Booster boxes for a long term hold is a good idea as very few are holding a price tag above their original retail lows. The shift to even more expensive Play Boosters in 2024 is unlikely to improve this scenario. And while I have heard rumors that CB releases are going to be more limited, I’ll believe it when I see it.  


Focus on Strong Art

One of the hallmarks of the Booster Fun era has been a strong commitment by WoTC to lean into alternative art treatments and work with world class artists capable of generating significant demand.

Some of the best examples of strong art leading to profit can be found in a carefully curated selection of Secret Lair releases. What do all of the below releases have in common? They far surpassed financial expectations because people simply loved the art and/or theme of the release. Plenty of Secret Lair releases do not achieve profitability in a reasonable time frame, but enough of them do that leveraging the frequent 18-30% discounts for mass ordering can often be a solid move.



Alternate art cards have also been some of the few things in the game to avoid specific reprint risk….so far. An Artist Masters set in 2027 wouldn’t surprise me at all, but until then, fantastic alt art cards are going to be one of the best bets for gains.

Overseas arbitrage

At present the JPN Yen is near historic lows against the US dollar, resulting in some fantastic opportunities to pick up relevant singles on the cheap. Many Japanese stores stock both English and Japanese copies of recent singles, so even if you aren’t comfortable selling Japanese cards on Ebay (a tactic I leverage regularly for strong profits), you can still stock your stacks. Shipping from Japan was very tricky due to COVID restrictions a couple of years back, but is now back to their typical quick and cost effective export options. While the largest stores will ship direct overseas, many of the best buys are found at smaller stores that only ship locally, so a domestic shipping address is very handy.

In terms of buying singles in Europe (eg on CardMarket.com), your best exchange rates were in the fall of 2022 when the USD briefly overtook the Euro, but there are still some strong buys to be made at current rates when focusing on undervalued EDH staples on both continents.

In both cases, making a friend overseas to bounce ship your purchases is your best bet, though reshipping companies can also be used at lower margin.

Selective Buylist to Retail

If you don’t care to mess around with overseas shipping, you still have some solid opportunities to get cards cheap enough to add to inventory on home soil.

And though I don’t really expect the local LGS network to just disappear overnight as some naysayers seem to believe, there may well be a reduction in buylist strength both from major players and local shops as they struggle to adapt their business models to the shifting reality of vending this game. If those gaps appear, it may well be worth filling them by making public offers on Twitter, Facebook and Discord to scoop up cards.

A well run buylist doesn’t care if a card is $20 or $40, as long as it can be acquired at 50-65% of that price and sold again long before the next reprint cycle. TCGPlayer vendors have direct access to a common buylist on that platform, which can be an excellent option once you are in the trenches. But remember: in the era of reprints you want most of your inventory to be high velocity, because you never know when the next version will appear.

MTGO Against All Odds

Years after I thought it would be shuttered MTGO is still chugging along in the hands of a 3rd party, and the quick fire shifts in the online meta for Standard, Pioneer, Modern and Legacy on that platform are still leading to wild gains (and losses) for speculators that stay on top of things. The MTGPrice Pro Trader Discord maintains a channel specifically to address this market, but playing your format of choice on MTGO is also a fun and effective way to keep in the loop.

Inventory Maintenance

With reprints at a higher frequency, sitting on deck stock is more foolish than ever. Holding a stack of previously $10 first printing cards that dropped to $1.75 on three printings in three years? Get out now and repurpose the pennies into something more productive, because that rebound may never come.

Cracked a box of collector boosters and pulled a sweet serialized card on a week one? Sell it now at the market high, and if you really want it for a deck take another look in 6 months once the hype cycle has moved on.

Snapped off some 1st edition Lorcana in a sweet Pro Trader group buy? Sell into the hype before the market catches up and blows you out.

You’ve got to be nimble if you want to survive.

The Vendor Perspective

Many of the loudest voices heralding the death of the Magic economy are vendors and given their position at the center of that market, their voices are certainly worth paying attention to. No one who lives and breathes MTGFinance every day would disagree that WoTC, their vendors and the player base could all benefit from a better defined reprint policy that creates more space between key reprints.

That said, it is important to recognize that a lot of their comments are issued from a position of exposure from within an aging business model that no longer makes sense.

For years many major TCG shops prided themselves on keeping binders of every set published in stock at any given time. They bought at low buylist rates from folks that came to unload their decks or collections, and restocked the binders with the cards they took in. Very little was done in your average shop to measure sales velocity, time on shelf or card popularity trends as most singles weren’t even tracked individually at point of purchase. They knew next to nothing about the purchasing habits of their clientele and their in store merchandising was nothing more complex than placing products up on the shelf behind the counter and hoping they sold through in a reasonable time frame. Many failed to sell online or did so sporadically with weak marketing campaigns.

In short, they were running an inherently inefficient business that only got worse once sitting on a broad swath of buylisted singles for longer time periods got more dangerous. Slowly but surely, buying a $50 card at $30 started to look risky if the reprint would end up under $20. And once COVID lockdowns hit, many of the smaller stores with weak financials simply ended up in bankruptcy.

And yet, some smart and better financed operators have found success shifting into a “gamer’s tavern” model, taking on liquor and food licensing and higher overhead to operate very successful businesses with multiple revenue streams. CK owned Mox Boarding House, Storm Crow Manor and Snakes and Lattes all survived COVID and are thriving in various parts of key North American markets. FacetoFaceGames in Toronto and Montreal has ditched the binders in favor of select singles in their showcases and sells ice cream out the window all summer. Smart business evolves.

The Skeptic’s Scythe

At MTGPrice we strive to provide a rational, well informed and action oriented approach to MTGFinance, aimed at helping players and part-time vendors to minimize their costs and maximize their gains.

We will continue to draw attention to the best opportunities in the Magic market and adjacent markets via articles on this site, the MTGFastFinance podcast and our excellent Pro Trader Discord community.

And while we do our best to provide the very best in financial content, we encourage you, now as ever, to apply the skeptic’s scythe to our recommendations and discussions. Ignore two thirds of what anyone tells you might work and focus on the top third of your opportunities and you’ll end up with less dead stock and more acceleration. Apply the same rule of thumb to all such content from other sources, and combined with the strategies above, you’ll have the best possible shot to make and save money playing our favorite game, Magic the Gathering as the era of reprints continues.

James Chillcott is the owner of MTGPrice, Co-Host of the MTGFastFinance Podcast, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy art fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

Commander, Deck Doctor, EDH, James Chillcott

Hobbit Banquet: Your Complete Guide to Upgrading the Food & Fellowship Commander Deck

With the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Magic the Gathering set now fully revealed it’s safe to say that Commander fans have plenty to be excited about. From fantastic new commanders to excellent new staples in multiple colors, the LOTR experiment seems set to be a great success even without the intense hunt for the 1/1 The One Ring.

Alongside the main set release, WoTC has also tabled the usual slate of four new pre-constructed Commander decks. In looking over the deck lists, one of the decks in particular jumped out at me as being particularly synergistic and primed for easy upgrades. Take a gander at the Food & Fellowship deck over here. And here is my upgraded version: The Hobbit’s Banquet.

It should come as no shock that Wizards wants their Frodo and Sam deck to be popular, but given that Food has been one of the more underwhelming tokens in Commander play to date, the freshly acquired power level of this strategy based on all the new cards may catch many players off guard.

The first key pillar of strength in this list is your access to dual commanders. The partner ability has already proven to be highly effective in strategies like Tymna and Thrasios, and the synergy between Frodo and Sam is much more specific. Frodo’s role here is to leverage consistent life gain from food tokens and other sources of life gain to ensure that you can achieve all four levels of the ring tempting you by the mid-game, and in doing so, generate a ton of card advantage. Let’s review what the temptations the ring has to offer, shall we?

So along the way we get to keep choosing a new ring bearer, and eventually our ring bearer is legendary, can’t be blocked by creatures with greater power, loots on attack, forces blockers to be sacrificed at end of combat and hits all opponents for 3 if it hits a player. That’s a pretty good stack of bonuses, especially when the emblem can’t be interacted with and the bonuses last all game once you have them. Sure, they can keep killing your ring bearer, but the reality is that in this deck, they are going to have other threats to worry about that don’t care about attacking. This means Frodo will often get to do his job pretty well at least into the mid-game, where your combo kill plan can take over.

As the other half of your dynamic Commander duo, Sam is an excellent engine for any food deck. He guarantees food production every turn, and makes all food cheaper to activate by 50%! That’s a very important set of abilities for this deck, so generally speaking you will want to spend more resources protecting Sam than Frodo.


Food Engine Supporting Cast

While Sam and Frodo form the core of your synergy, their friends greatly expand your combo potential and all work together as a finely tuned value engine building towards draining or bleeding out the table.

Merry, Warden of Isengard and Pippin, Warden of Isengard provide excellent food synergy in this deck, and also help further your theme of constant access to key creatures via their partner ability enabling you to pull the missing warden out of your deck when you cast the other. Merry rewards artifact production with 1/1 lifelink tokens, which all of your token doublers interact with and the lifelink on those tokens assists with your life gain synergies. Pippen makes food tokens for one mana while also providing an overrun effect for the mid to late game once you have a pile of food. Both cards being halflings means they are also solid ring bearers and can make good use of Bilbo’s Ring.

Meriadoc Brandybuck provides backup for Sam’s food during the attack phase strategy. Banquet Guests cast into a board with four food tokens would cost WG for an 8/8 that can sac food to gain indestructible until end of turn, marking it as a sneaky Hogaak variant in this build. Frodo Baggins ramps up your incidence of ring temptations and provides an additional ring bearer option.

Rosie Cotton of South Lane makes one or more food tokens and rewards further token production of any kind with +1/+1 counters on any creature other than herself. This was very good in games where she showed up. Peregrin Took both doubles food production AND lets you trade food for cards. Excellent! Treebeard, Gracious Host was a monster in the games we played last night, adding two or more food to the table while immediately providing the threat of growing itself or a ring bearer to massive size in short order.

Lobelia, Defender of Bag End lets you sac your array of artifacts to either cast free spells or drain the table. Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant ramps up the life gain, and provides a ridiculous end game should said gain get out of control. Samwise Gamgee helps crank out food and then turn that into additional redundancy if you need to retrieve one of your many historic cards from the yard.

Token Doublers

Cards that can double (or quadruple or more!) your token output are fantastic in this deck. Not only are they ratcheting up your food production, but they also have a shot at multiplying incidental creature tokens in the build from cards like Farmer Cotton, as well as clues and treasure from Academy Manufactor or Smothering Tithe. As such, you will definitely want all of Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession, Mondrak Glory Dominus and possibly a Doubling Season in a flex slot. These cards all interact, to additionally multiply token production from 2x to 4x and beyond, so critical mass is a good way to end the game in combination with your drain effects. Chatterfang, Squirrel General is a natural fit here from multiple angles, providing a forest walking ring bearer, a ton of squirrel tokens to double and some creature control on an adorable body.

Win Conditions

This deck doesn’t need to win in combat at all, allowing you to ignore a lot of what your opponents are up to in your average game and just focus on establishing and protecting your engine. Your primary route to victory will typically consist of overwhelming artifact token production leading to mass artifact sac to drain the table.

Agent of the Iron Throne (CLB) can’t be used as a background in the command zone here but it is still excellent in the 99 given that you have two commanders and are likely to have one in play to bleed the table whenever you sac artifacts. Nadier’s Nightblade (CMR) is even better, as it loses the requirement for a commander to be present, and drains rather than bleeds. And of course Mirkwood Bats is the nastiest of all, bleeding each opponent on both your token creation AND sacrifice.

Disciple of the Vault can only bleed one opponent at a time, but it does so whenever anyone sacs a treasure so it seriously punishes a treasure heavy pod for just one black mana.Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and Sanguine Bond punish a single opponent for your constant life gain. Add in Exquisite Blood to complete the two card combo if you’re into that sort of thing. Bloodchief Ascension furthers your table drain shenanigans.

I prefer Protection Racket in my drain focused decks, but you may decide to find room for Black Market Connections as an alternative. Finally, Felidar Sovereign presents a must kill threat, lest you win the game on the following turn. Aetherflux Reservoir can fill a similar role. I haven’t included Bolas’s Citadel here, but that’s also an option.

Protection Spells

As with most low slung creature combo decks, you are particularly vulnerable to sweepers and given that your action relies heavily on both creatures and artifacts, you aren’t going to be looking to run many sweepers of your own. Instead, you will likely want some efficient point removal, defensive enchantments and a quiver of instant speed protection spells to protect your creature combo engines.

Heroic Intervention, Teferi’s Protection, Akroma’s Will and Clever Concealment provide an excellent core protection package. Given your access to dual commanders, find room for Flawless Maneuver if you like instead of my chosen Shalai, Voice of Plenty. Serra Paragon recovers most of what you might care about ending up in your graveyard.

The One Ring provides a turn cycle of respite from most threats with trailing card draw balanced against life loss you can easily stomach given all of your food tokens.  Bilbo’s Ring does excellent work in this deck full of hobbits and ring tempting, making sure your ring bearer is unblockable and hexproof on your turn and drawing a card per attack cycle in a deck that could care less about the single life loss. When the ring is on Frodo, you get to draw up to 3 cards per attack via the combination of rings and abilities.

Flowering of the White Tree puts a tax on targeting your various legendary ring bearers and combo pieces, while simultaneously turning them into bigger threats and doubling your creature token size. Boromir, Warden of the Tower is a fresh white EDH staple that does double duty here, protecting your team and shutting down cascade shenanigans, pitch spells and any other free spells your opponents are trying to leverage. Samwise the Stouthearted provides additional protection for your key engine pieces while adding a ring temptation trigger.

Removal

I’ve chosen to go light on removal here, but season to taste. For now I’m running just Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, and Claim the Precious to deal with key threats. Voracious Fell Beast provides a solid ring bearer that can kill three creatures and make three food tokens. Beyond that you’re looking to race to the end game by draining the table so get your your spices and get cooking.


Life Gain Doublers

Boon of Reflection neatly doubles all your life gain. So does Rhox Faithmender and both cards are auto includes here.

Utility Cards

The Ring Tempts You ensures you max the ring benefits quickly and draws cards everytime you name a ring bearer, again, for life you can generally afford to lose. Lotho, Corrupt Sherriff is a great commander in its own right, and does solid work here generating treasure tokens at largely irrelevant cost of life. Likewise, Orchish Bowmasters is a great new black EDH staple that does the same kind of work here as Lotho, namely via punishing opponents who are trying to do too much by pinging any target and providing creature tokens that can end up doubled if you don’t already have one. Rapacious Guest adds additional synergies between food and the attack step.

The Great Henge isn’t at it’s best here, but as The Party Tree box topper, it still is likely to cost 4 mana or so in the mid-game and provide card advantage, mana ramp and consistent life gain. Shadowspear helps ensure you have consistent access to lifegain and trample for your ring bearer, with the side benefit of letting you remove hexproof and indestructible from opposing threats, and can be searched up with Urza’s Saga.  Revive the Shire gives you a regrowth effect that also incidentally makes a food. Delighted Halfing provides an additional Cavern of Souls style protection from counterspells on key legendary spells, of which this deck has plenty. Gilded Goose doubles as mana and food production, so it’s a no-brainer. Trail of Crumbs ties everything together, both generating food and allowing you to turn food into cards.

Blind Obedience slows your opponents down while letting you leverage spells cast into additional table drain. Shelob, Child of Ungoliant might be a hot new spider commander but she also does solid work in this deck as a massive threat with built in protection and the ability to significantly upgrade dead utility creatures from your opponents into food with upside. Denethor, Ruling Steward provides additional table drain, and his creature replacement ability interacts really well with your token doublers. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse bleeds your opponents for card draw while boosting your life gain and providing a solid ring bearer.

War of the Last Alliance searches up two key legends out of your deck and then sets up a big attack phase while tempting your ring bearer. Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit grows a creature, draws a card and makes two food, capping off with a big creature token payoff. Dauthi Voidwalker does its usual thing here, keeping opposing yards in check while also presenting a nasty ring bearer. Angelic Accord rewards your constant life gain with 4/4 angel threats that can present an alternate win condition. Inkshield goes a step further, heading off a potential killing blow from an opponent and likely unleashing a devastating torrent of tokens from your token doubler effects. Kambal, Consul of Allocation provides additional incidental drain and Esper Sentinel draws cards for minimal cost as per usual and Smothering Tithe does the same for treasures that might get doubled. Necropotence cleanly draws a ton of cards given your life gain potential.

Nasty End and Deadly Dispute both allow you to trade up easily on cards in a deck with so many cheap Legends and artifacts. I’ve been trimming tutors from my decks lately, but clearly Worldy Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Eladamri’s Call, Demonic Tutor and so forth can all boost your consistency in high powered pods.

Key Lands

The Shire offers additional food production which is perfect here. Minas Tirith provides optional card draw during your frequent attacks and rarely comes into play tapped.

Because you’re gaining so much life, you can absolutely lean into the pain lands in this deck and run Mana Confluence, City of Brass, Horizon Canopy, Ancient Tomb, Brushland, Caves of Koilos and Silent Clearing.

Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth auto fix for two of your main colors. If you’ve got them, the full suite of fetch lands and shock lands are a lock. Add as many of the CMR/CLB duals as you have on color. Urza’s Saga can get half of the Cat Oven combo or Shadowspear, Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. If you’ve got a Gaea’s Cradle it will do work here. With so many powerful enchantments in the deck, Hall of Heliod’s Generosity is likely to do work. Volrath’s Stronghold does the same for your key Legends.


The Specs

Now from an MTGFinance perspective, speculators and players should likely focus on cards with lower supply, less printings and a high chance of being added to variants on this build.

A couple of key options include:

– Academy Manufactor FEAs, $16 and climbing with plenty of existing EDH demand being expanded upon with the advent of this food deck
– Boon Reflection, last seen in Double Masters and available near $5 in both foil and non-foil though it could see a reprint in a Secret Lair or Commander Masters this year
– Rhox Faithmender foils, single printing from 2013, currently near $10 but headed to $20+ if it doesn’t catch a reprint
– Feasting Troll King is a solid threat in this deck if your mana base can support it, and FEAs are single printing, low supply and sitting at about $10.
– Angelic Accord hasn’t caught a reprint since IMA, and foils are sitting hear $6 with very low supply
– This deck generates pressure for Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession and Doubling Season, but that pressure base is already large, and at least some of those have to catch a reprint in Commander Masters.

Here again is a link to my upgraded version of The Hobbit’s Banquet, all ready to serve as a jumping off point for your own culinary delights. Bon appetit!

James Chillcott is the owner of MTGPrice.com, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy art fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994. He has been producing MTGFinance content since 2012.

Floor Reports

PREMIUM MAGIC THE GATHERING CARD ARBITRAGE AT MAGICCON MINNEAPOLIS

Hi everyone! Thank you for the tremendous support and positive feedback I received from my first article! I could not ask for a warmer welcome.

As some of you know, I recently returned from MagicCon Minneapolis, which is the second of four major MTG conventions this year that will culminate in the World Championships in Las Vegas, Sep 22-24, 2023. The three days in Minneapolis allowed for the meeting of friends both old and new, countless games played, and much exciting business to be conducted. For this article I want to focus on one aspect of my experience, specifically my observations on collecting and trading premium Magic cards in the current environment. 

A key focus for me lately has been the recent releases of the serialized cards in MOM, the “giveaway” Secret Lair cards (limited each to 295 copies), and the Secret Lair Prize Cards (exclusive to MagicCon events). Why do we care about these cards in particular? The short answer is that MTG as a collectible card game is evolving and for all of you engaged in the MTG Finance community, it is imperative to take note of the opportunities for short term arbitrage associated with time boxed or location specific limited releases. Allow me to illustrate my point here through several personal anecdotes from the floor of Magiccon Minneapolis. 

First, let’s begin with the serialized MOM cards. As a refresher, WOTC decided to serialize in editions of 500 each of the 65 Multiverse Legend cards from MOM and the 5 new Praetors. That’s a whooping 35,000 serialized cards injected into the MTG community. The community’s feedback I would argue has been mixed. While everyone loves to see Ragavan in a masterpiece frame, not everyone is so enthused by a serial number stuck to a card with the same art with average foiling. Furthermore, no one can really understand why a bunch of uncommons (Daxos? Yargle?) get serialized treatment. These are indeed somewhat baffling production choices. On the other hand the unique art exclusive to the serialized versions of the new Praetors are stunning ultra low print run collectibles and the market has responded accordingly.


I arrived in Minneapolis with 8 serialized cards, including 3 serialized new Praetors (Elesh Norn, Sheoldred, Jin-Gitaxias). I had snapped up these Praetors during the prerelease windows (each at $800 or less), theorizing the unique art would make them quite desirable. I consigned the 8 serialized cards through a vendor friend of mine who had a booth, and 6 cards sold including all the Praetors (Elesh Norn $2000, Sheoldred $1700, Jin-Gitaxias $1500). A few points here worth reporting: 1) the vendor noted that many buyers came up looking for serialized cards, and the Praetors were some of the most asked about cards at the show; 2) all the serialized cards sold within 5% of the asking price; and 3) there were few serialized cards on the floor until the last day and almost no Praetors (whatever was tabled, ended up sold). 

My takeaway here is that serialized cards with top-notch unique art deserve special attention. When these cards also happen to be playable, as is the case with the Praetors, the demand and price support are readily found in the market. Note that even without unique art, I had success selling my serialized Emry, Lutri, and Zada at a profit – simply because they are playable and as a “one of a kind” serialized card, they found a home in someone’s very blinged-out EDH deck. It’s clear that serialized cards will exist from here on out given the announcements for LOTR. Though it may be tempting to brush off serialized cards as some lame marketing gimmick ported over from the sports card world, we have enough data at this point to show that there is clear demand from buyers for these cards as a new tier of premium MTG collectible. The fact that EDH is the dominant format for MTG and is a singleton format only helps the cause for serialized cards, as players are indeed willing to spend to “bling out” a favorite deck. The obvious corollary is that there’s going to be downward pressure on the basic versions of serialized cards, as the value in new sets is now spread out and skewed in favor of super-rare chase cards. 

The second anecdote I’d like to share concerns probably one of the ugliest MTG cards in recent memory (my subjective opinion shared by many!).  I present to you the Secret Lair 295 Giant Growth:

This specimen is limited to 295 copies, which were given out randomly to MagicCon attendees (with a bias towards content creators and kids). This Giant Growth is the second Secret Lair 295 card given out, with the first being the Shivan Dragon (see above right), which was distributed at MagicCon Philly. The dust has settled on the Shivan Dragon, and we know that the current market price is around $2,000 based on extensive data points from Facebook sales. Giant Growth is virtually unplayable in every format. Given the troublesome art and the lack of playability, a couple vendors I know of took the brave step of paying $500 for the Giant Growth as the first copies hit the floor. I immediately went and bought 2 copies each at $600. One vendor professed that the card probably should be worth $200 as it’s so unappealing and was worried he’s taking a bath by even paying $500. My own logic however was that the card is a serialized release tied to a major MTG event. While this is no Shivan Dragon, there will surely be foreign buyers and other premium collectors that would pay $800? Even $1,000?  Within hours I had my answer. SCG said they were buying copies at $1,000 (which came down eventually to $500 during the weekend), and on Facebook, copies sold to collectors pretty briskly at $800-1,000 (as I’m writing this article, this is still the market price). I sold both my copies on the first day within hours of receiving them for $1,000 each, pocketing $400 profit per copy. Sweet!

Lessons learned? The principle of scarcity is relevant here in that the limited supply of this card, which was released within a very narrow window, created its own demand. Collectors and vendors did not want to miss out, and this pretty mediocre card still found its support in the market at a robust price. With these limited releases, especially with cards that are mediocre at best, it’s important to move quickly and take advantage of scarcity value. You need to know your outs (Facebook groups and Twitter), and be disciplined and informed with the right data (i.e., Shivan Dragon 295 is $2,000, so an out for Giant Growth at $1,000 is more than respectable). We can expect more of these 295 cards will appear in MagicCon Barcelona and Vegas. If offered the opportunity to buy a mysterious 295 card on site for $500, would you? The answer may well deserve to be yes, especially if the print runs and singles event releases stay consistent.

My last anecdote concerns a very special card shown here:

Ragavan needs no introduction, but this is the Secret Lair Prize version. This card exists in foil only with a total population of 128 copies to be distributed during the four MagicCon events this year. To date, 64 copies have been put into circulation, and it’s worthwhile to study the price behavior for this card. I attended MagicCon Philly and was an aggressive buyer of this card as soon as copies came into circulation. Vendors had originally buylisted the card at $1,000, then $1,250, and eventually close to $2,000. It became clear that there was extraordinary demand, as the art is highly unique and desirable to many for this truly iconic card. I was able to procure two copies of this card at $2,200 and $2,400, which I then sold shortly after Philly for $2,800 and $3,300. I flag this particular card because coincidentally in Philly, the Multiverse Legend version of Ragavan was announced including a serialized edition. Many thought that this Secret Lair Prize version was doomed for failure because the same card is being hit for reprint twice in succession and both in a premium treatment. 

The question is what happened in Minneapolis? Instead of seeing any price pressure, the Secret Lair Prize Ragavan saw a significant price increase. Vendors told me they had to pay $2,400 to $2,800 in buylist just to get a copy. Most copies procured also had ready buyers on the back end. Meanwhile, serialized Ragavans (not special numbers) have slipped to the $1,200 range even when many swore that the Masterpiece frame can’t be beat. It is clear that yet again, the art matters and for a staple card like Ragavan, the very limited number of 128 copies will carry the day. It does not matter that a Masterpiece frame exists, as that art treatment is printed into oblivion now and the serialized version of Ragavan is the same card. 

Recognizing this unique price trend, I suspect that this Ragavan may see yet another ratchet, especially in 6 to 12 months once all copies are given out. I opted to reinvest some of my gains from above into a personal copy.  

I hope the above stories from the floor provide you all with some interesting windows into how the MTG community is responding to the recent limited and special edition cards. I will look forward to reporting again soon when LOTR drops and we see some numbered rings enter the market and we get a glimpse of how the market forms on 1900 serialized Sol Rings and the mighty single copy of The One Ring. Until next time!

The Collector

5 Premium Magic Cards Every Commander Player Should Own Under $20

Bolas’s Citadel Old Border Promo Foil – $5

Bolas’s Citadel is in 105k decks on EDHREC, and 12% of all black decks, marking it as a super staple of the format. As a WPN wide distribution promo this version of Bolas’s Citadel has plenty of copies lingering in the secondary market, which is doing a great job of keeping it’s price in check . The old border treatment is very interesting when paired with a colored casting cost artifact and the mystical art of the citadel looks good in the frame. Add in the classic foil WoTC swoosh and you’ve got a solid version of one of the most powerful black cards in the format. 

Double Masters 2×2 Borderless Foil Bounce Lands – $15/set of 10

Providing ramp in multi color EDH decks and the ability to trigger Landfall or abuse CIP effects on your lands, the gorgeous new borderless bounce lands from Double Masters 2022 are super cheap at $2 or less per foil copy and a great edition to any Commander collection with full sets running for just $15. 


MSCHF x Secret Lair Swords to Plowshares – $16

Despite Swords to Plowshares being the 3rd most popular EDH card of the last 2 years according to EDHREC, it hasn’t received that many premium versions that really draw the eye. The MSCHF x Secret Lair may push the definition of budget given a 5x multiplier vs. regular copies, but it is very unlikely to catch a reprint and should age well as copies steadily drain out of the resale market. If you’re playing white in Commander, you are playing this card, so you’ll never be without a place to rock this unique treatment as your deck collection grows.

Arcane Signet Dan Frazier x Secret Lair: $18

There have been plenty of Arcane Signets printed over the last few years, and there will be plenty more in years to come, but the Dan Frazier x Secret Lair version stands head and shoulders above the rest. During the inventory rush when this drop arrived in vendor hands months ago copies could be had for $10-14, but this retro art style by the artist who handled the P9 Moxen is still a solid deal at $18 for the regular version and even $30 for the foil etched. As the second most played card in the format this will be a coveted collectible for years to come.

Secret Lair Blasphemous Act Borderless: $15



The most played sweeper in Commander is easily Blasphemous Act with the card appearing in 30% of all red decks. By far the coolest version of this perennial red staple is the Secret Lair borderless version featuring a homage to horror exploitation films of the 1970s. With massive eye appeal and ultra low chance of reprint, this sexy sweeper wil draw comments at every table you wipe with it.

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