Tag Archives: MTG finance

Danny Brown, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: PucaPro

May 19, 2015 Danny Brown 3 Comments

In just a few days, it will have been four months since I started using PucaTrade. Since then, I have more or less optimized my cube (which was no small task), gotten rid of a lot of junk I didn’t want weighing down my collection, and have spent zero dollars on Magic, aside from shipping, I suppose. It’s hard for me to overstate just how much use I have gotten out of this service in such a short time. If you’re not on board yet, you’re making a serious misplay.

This isn’t going to be a basics-of-PucaTrade style article. There have been plenty of those written, and the site is easy enough to use without me explaining it. Instead, I’ll be discussing some more specific strategies for using the platform to your advantage, as well as anticipating the best ways to adapt to several known updates that are already in the works.

PucaSavings

If you only see my summary on the site, then it looks like I haven’t done too well using PucaTrade:

“You have sent 200 cards with a total value of $903.68 and you have received 115 cards from other members with a total value of $699.31.”‘

Of course, that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Now things are looking much better. In my opinion, there is little point to being on PucaTrade if you aren’t able to request cards at a moment’s notice. For this reason, I never like to dip below 10,000 points, and in practice, I haven’t been under 20,000 points often at all.

In many ways, PucaTrade has become my primary way to attain cards, and I don’t want to miss out on good opportunities because I’ve spent all my points. If you’re a player needing to build decks at a moment’s notice, keeping a healthy supply of PucaPoints on hand is a great way to get the cards you need.

Another great benefit here is that I’ve shipped many cards that I expected were going down in value. In my article last week, many of the “sales” I discussed in anticipation of Modern Masters 2015 were, in fact, PucaTrade sends. If I had been trading these out at my LGS or a big event, I would have needed to find cards to receive in return, many of which would be less than ideal and not much better than what I was trading out. With PucaTrade, I was able to lock in value while I could, and have been storing that value for use at a later time. It’s glorious.

The Rhino in the Room

Of course, I’m well aware that letting this currency sit without gaining interest is inefficient. I could pick up over 50 Siege Rhinos with my current bankroll, and unless it gets included in a Duel Deck or something (what a gross thought), by the fall, I will almost certainly have made a hefty profit in either PucaPoints or cash—my choice. I am certainly picking up a dozen copies of a card here and a playset of a fringe spec there, but I still like to keep a good amount of points on hand. Besides, liquidating a huge pile of the same card through PucaTrade is not exactly easy, and things have to line up a lot better to make a profit buylisting.

The thing is, despite using PucaTrade as my primary MTG bankroll for the last few months, I have another reason to accrue points, and it relates to PucaTrade’s IndieGoGo campaign from a couple month’s back. Here’s the relevant section:

I’ve been a #mtgdad for almost a year now, and I’ve learned two things about it during that time:

Even with a supportive wife, getting out to play Magic is about ten times harder than it was pre-baby, and nowhere close to as attractive as kicking it at home with my son after a long day at work.
Drafting on Magic Online isn’t much better, given that I have to dedicate two to three hours and there’s no guarantee that the baby’s mood won’t change like sixteen times during that period. I’ve lost more than one game due to fussy-baby-caused misclicks or timeouts.

This means that I haven’t been playing nearly enough Magic in the last several months, and I don’t see my situation changing anytime soon. I continue to insist that Draft is the epitome of Fine Gaming™ (like fine arts, fine wines, fine cheeses, etc.), but because MTGO offers no way to play meaningful Limited games quickly, I think I’m going to have start looking into Constructed if I want to play more Magic within my current constraints.

I’ve messed with Standard, Block Constructed, and Pauper on MTGO in the past, but have not enjoyed them enough to do more than dabble and then taper off. What really catches my attention is Vintage.

Conveniently, MTG Goldfish’s metagame page lists the exact online prices for the top decks in the format. Ignoring Dredge and Workshop—because when I say I’m interested in Vintage, what I really mean is that I’m interested in playing Ancestral Recall and Time Walk—I can see that I will need roughly 700 tickets. This isn’t so bad when you consider these same decks are listing at around $15,000 in paper!

Still, this means that I’ve got some catch-up to do if I want to be on top of a Vintage deck when these PucaTrade updates go live. I’m also looking into the Facebook group dedicated for PucaPoint/ticket exchanges that Douglas Johnson mentioned in his article last week, as this was not a group of which I was previously aware. Maybe I won’t have to wait for PucaTrade’s updates, after all.

In my first article for MTGPrice, I pointed out that once you have a decent collection of cards together, you have a very liquid asset that you can use for any of your MTG needs, making playing for free—or at least not spending additional money—quite attainable for the average player. In this case, my goal is to play Vintage without spending any additional money (again, disregarding stamps and envelopes), and I’m sure I can do it. One of the greatest benefits to PucaTrade, especially once MTGO trading is added, is that you can turn your collection into anything you want it to be.

Perfect for Those Cards

I’ve touched on this before, but I feel like it’s important to point it out again because it’s such a crucial aspect to PucaTrade. I have speculated on many a card that has panned out, but only just.

For example, I’m pretty deep on Steam Vents, but unfortunately, got most of my copies for $8 each (in store credit) before the Dragon’s Maze reprint was announced. I traded for plenty more copies at $6 or $7, but I generally don’t like the idea of selling them for less than $8.

Currently, the best buylist price is at $7.40, but the retail price is closer to $13. The eBay average is $8, which means I would be losing money after fees. Without PucaTrade, this would just be a spec I had to sit on and hope would eventually pan out a little better, or occasionally find someone at my LGS who wanted to trade for a set. Instead, I’m shipping these out for more than 1300 points each at a slow but steady rate, storing that value for other speculation targets, cards for my collection, or eventual online Vintage.

Dealing with a card’s spread (the difference between buylist prices and retail prices) is one of the biggest obstacles to profit for a non-store-owning financier, but PucaTrade gives a new and very important out for specs that are mild successes or even failures. Previously, the choice was largely between selling at a loss or continuing to hold and hoping for further increases, but with PucaTrade allowing you to get what essentially amounts to the card’s full value in store credit, a whole new world opens up for outing these types of specs.

Know the News

Following along with PucaTrade’s blog is a great way to keep up with what updates are coming up. You also get great MTG market theory, like this gem from a recent update:

PucaTrade has taught me that Magic is fundamentally a game of excess supply. Whether you participate in a draft or buy a booster box to crack open, Magic cards enter your collection as random assortments that you may or may not want.

Part two of this article discusses PucaTrade’s approach to solving one of the service’s biggest problems: the difficulty of sending out popular cards, especially from Standard-legal sets. I won’t rehash it, but basically, they’re testing a “dibs” system this summer. It’s definitely worth a read.

By knowing that the dibs system is coming, you may decide that you are more comfortable committing some capital to Standard cards. Or maybe the fact that it may prove temporary will make you want to move into cards that not everyone will be looking to send. When I see an announcement that MTGO trading is coming up soon, that will give me a little extra time to have the points ready to get those Vintage cards I’m coveting. Paying attention can help you be ahead of the curve in many ways.

Closing Up Shop

I’m really proud of the section header above, because I’m using it both to indicate that we’re approaching the end of this article, and also to reference a frequent criticism I hear about PucaTrade. That’s efficiency right there, folks.

Invariably, any time someone writes an article about PucaTrade, someone will comment saying something like, “I would never put my cards into something like this. They could just pull the plug any day and then everyone would just lose all their points. This is obviously a scam.”

Look, I’m all about being risk-averse. And you’re right, PucaTrade could close down. But considering more than one million trades have been completed and there’s apparently more users active than ever, I don’t imagine a world where PucaTrade will close down, at least any time soon. Frankly, the service has already proven more reliable and personally valuable to me than MTGO, and now I’m on record as being willing to put in several hundred tickets towards a Vintage deck on that unreliable, bug-ridden joke of a client. If you have any kind of collection at all on Magic Online, any criticism of PucaTrade as a risky proposition is willful obfuscation of your true concerns, whatever they may be.

If you want to use all the tools in the financier’s toolkit, you’ve already taken the right step by signing up as a ProTrader here at MTGPrice. We can provide the data and the community you need to make the correct decisions in your Magic finance pursuits.

But if you haven’t signed up for PucaTrade yet, you are missing out on what is in my opinion the finest medium for exchanging Magic cards for other Magic cards that is available. That’s just my opinion, though. You should check it out for yourself to know for sure.

Ginger Ale

Financial Five: Modern Masters 2015

May 18, 2015 Houston Whitehead 10 Comments

By: Houston Whitehead

Though the majority of the MTG community seems to be in an uproar about the amount of value placed in Modern Masters 2015, profit can still be accumulated. As with many sets, cracking cardboard lottery tickets to push out those last few proxies in your Modern deck is not a road worth traveling. In fact, I wouldn’t take a road at all. I want to sit in a lawn chair off the beaten path with sunscreen on my nose and wait for the tidal wave of Modern Masters 2015 singles to wreck the complacent prices that have become accepted as part of a Modern player’s life.

The Twist

Normally, a Financial Five article will cover five new cards from an upcoming release I deem to possess profitable potential. Since Modern Masters 2015 contains 100% reprints, we already know many of the roles it plays or decks lists play four copies.

We all know…

…reprints bring prices down (unless you’re Tarmogoyf).

…format staple prices will recover over time (proven by the first Modern Masters).

…Modern will never be as cheap as you want it to be.

So this time on Financial Five, we’re going to discuss five cards worth picking up at the bottom of their financial decent that also have the most potential to recover over time.

Cryptic Command (TCG Mid $41)

From four copies in the UWR Control deck down to a double copy in Splinter Twin variants, it’s the Swiss army knife every blue player loves and everyone else hates. The top shelf $60 price tag was simply out of reach for anyone wanting to dip their toes into Modern with being forced to play the handful of budget aggro decks. During the early months of 2014 (six months after the Modern Master release) Cryptic sat at an understandable $25. I think the 2015 print will bring it back to that desirable price and slowly start to creep back up as early as the Origins release. Pick up $25 or under.

Karn Liberated (TCG Mid $36)

Starting at $50, Karn has already taken a couple steps down but I don’t think he’s done yet. Though he honestly only sees competitive play in TRON variants, I think Commander players will have a large influence on recovering his price. Though the recovery will be slower than Modern staples, like Cryptic Command or Noble Hierarch, I think he will land $25 or under and creep up in the long run. Pick up $25 or under.

Splinter Twin (TCG Mid $21)

Love it, hate it, or still want it banned, we have to respect the power of Splinter Twin. Over the last year this card alone has spawned so many variants you’d have to go to college to count that high. It’s the definition of a format staple and a worthy reprint. Twin’s price wasn’t out of control yet but was clearly teetering on the edge. I expect the bottom price to land around $10 and stay close to it for the next year. Pick up $10 or under.

Spellskite (TCG Mid $21)

This little 0/4 has been the chief of Splinter Twin’s security detail for close to three years. It’s won over a slot in Modern and Legacy Infect lists and, more importantly, can take a bolt. Though Spellskite’s price has been increasing faster than Meandering Towershell, I still feel a $10 price tag should be the lowest it will go before heading back up. Pick up ~~$25~~ $10 or under and your future sideboards will thank you.

Noble Hierarch (TCG Mid $41)

Let’s be honest, this price was getting WAY out of hand. I doubt Modern Masters 2015 will drop Noble low enough to satisfy every Modern player, but she sees too much competitive play to fall into a $10 range. I honestly feel $30 will be a reasonable price to go in at. You could get greedy and wait for a lower bottom but it won’t take long for the price to ascend quickly after hitting the bottom. Its existence in Infect, Zoo, and a variety of Junk (Abzan) decks will welcome all those looking to investing in Modern therefore keeping her demand high. If supply can’t keep up with all the new Modern players she might be back at $50 before you know it. Pick up $30 or under.

Wrap Up

I’m excited for the Modern Masters 2015 Limited format but don’t feel popping open $10 lottery tickets have enough to reward me financially. I think attacking trade binders and single cases is the best way to unlock those decks you have been wanting to pilot. I’m still thankful for the Modern Masters series Wizards of the Coast is printing though. Las Vegas weekend is going to be one for the record books.

If you’re attending Grand Prix Las Vegas and want to meet, hit me up on Twitter.

As always thanks for reading

@TNSGingerAle

ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Take Advantage of Modern Masters 2015 Emotions

May 17, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 3 Comments

Emotions can frequently fog one’s judgment in MTG finance. In fact, the same is true for stock market investing. Emotions explain why stocks and Magic cards can be over-valued and under-valued in the short term.

However I am in the camp that the Invisible Hand finds the correct price…eventually. It may take months or even years – but I firmly believe that over a long enough time horizon, fundamentals outweigh emotions. The true value of a stock or a Magic card will be reflected in its price over enough time.

Take for example the recent Twitter drama I caused by pointing out the low stock of Promo Command Tower on TCG Player. At the time, there were approximately seven copies in stock across five sellers. I purchased three copies and highlighted to the community how few remained.

In rapid fashion, the remaining copies were bought out, sending this card’s market “value” much higher. Disgruntled players criticized me for pointing out this shortage of stock, wrongly accusing me of a pump and dump or at the very least, market manipulation. I tried to explain that the true value would be identified given enough time, and that any short term spike was artificial.

Well, here we are a month or two later and Judge Promo Command Towers are back down to $28, only about 15% above where I bought my copies. It took a while, but the Invisible Hand eventually did take action to regulate the market and help identify the right price.

Applying This to Modern Masters 2105

The above example to me is a classic case study showcasing how markets can overreact due to emotions. The result is a brief moment in time where market inefficiency could be exploited for profits. While I did not make such a greedy move with Command Tower (I still own the same three copies), there are other short term opportunities that are worth considering.

With Modern Masters 2015 on everybody’s mind I thought I would take a look at some reactions to being either included or excluded from the set. In certain cases, we will be able to identify emotionally driven price changes. Perhaps there will be some situations where rampant sell-off could soon generate a buy opportunity. Conversely, cards dodging reprint may have overreacted to the upside creating a chance to sell into hype.

Over-sold?

Let’s start with a couple cards that have sold off dramatically since being spoiled in MM2015. The first card that comes to my mind almost immediately is Leyline of Sanctity. The Core Set rare has dropped nearly 40% since being spoiled in the reprint set.

This reprint was a major hit to the white enchantment. But my outlook isn’t such extreme doom and gloom. The card is still a clutch sideboard player in a metagame where Burn is relevant and even dodging Thoughtseizes and Inquisition of Kozileks (two excellent pickups, by the way) is quite handy. That being said, the card went from very low supply to…marginally higher supply? Think about it: will Modern Masters 2015 have a long-term impact on the supply of this card? Could an increase in Modern interest help drive demand, supporting this card’s price in the future? It’s certainly possible. My advice: keep an eye on this one – it’s selling off now and for good reason, but activity over the last day or two may suggest there are buyers at this lower price point. Once it stabilizes, Leyline can be a solid target.

Spellskite is another such example.

Like Leyline of Sanctity, this is another highly relevant sideboard card in Modern. After peaking over $30, the card rapidly sold off and crashed down to around $15, only to recently rebound back over $18. This is another example where the market is emotionally over-reacting to news. Will Spellskite’s price continue to drop? Possibly. But much of the drop is likely already priced in at this point. I’d keep a close eye on this one as well because as long as Splinter Twin remains dominant in Modern, this will be a highly in-demand card with plenty of fundamental strength. Don’t give in to short term panic selling if you can avoid it.

At this point you may be thinking only sideboard rares are experiencing this emotional sell-off. Guess again.

The most valuable card in Modern, Tarmogoyf himself, is also selling off in light of Modern Masters 2015. While his pullback has not been as drastic, a move from $220 to $171 is nothing to sneeze at. In this case, I suspect the selling may not be over just yet. But the bottom will arrive swiftly. And when it does, it will likely last for only a brief moment. If history is any indicator, we may see Goyf’s price recover almost as quickly as it drops. Let’s zoom in on June 2013, when the first Modern Masters was released.

We can see in the chart above that Tarmogoyf peaked at $180 in 2013, only to drop down to around $110 in light of Modern Masters. Less than a month later, however, the card recovered nearly 100% of its drop. By early 2014, Goyf recovered the full price drop and started to set new all time highs.

Using this data, I suspect we haven’t hit the short-term bottom on Tarmogoyf just yet. But we need to remain extremely vigilant. A major price drop out of fearful selling could generate the best opportunity to make short-term profits. The same theory will apply to other reprinted cards like Noble Hierarch and Mox Opal. These two cards have also sold off dramatically since being spoiled in MM2015. A short-term selloff will again be a terrific time to obtain copies. We just need to be very careful with our timing – when the panic selling is over we need to be prepared to acquire quickly. The window of opportunity may be very small.

Over-bought?

It’s no secret a few obvious exclusions were made from Modern Masters 2015. Cards dodging reprint in this set are bound to move higher in price. However in some cases emotions took cards into overbought territory, meriting a short term pullback.

Inkmoth Nexus is the poster child for such overly enthusiastic buying.

The nonbasic land skyrocketed 100% after we confirmed it would not be reprinted in Modern Masters 2015. I suspect this is driven highly by speculators, although it’s possible that some players held off on acquiring copies they needed in the hopes of a reprint. But you can see how the card over-shot to the high side in recent price action, and since the peak at $25 it has actually dropped 20% back down to under $20. The euphoric buying has subsided for now, but I’d watch this one closely. Another surge back to $25 is not out of the question, especially since the top buy list price hasn’t budged from $15. If we get back to $25 again I’d advocate moving extra copies to take advantage of everyone’s bullishness on the card.

Goblin Guide is another card worth a closer look after dodging reprint.

I want to highlight how much more subtle the price jump is in Goblin Guide. He went from $18ish to around $24, only to sell back down to $21. While less drastic, the trend matches that of Inkmoth Nexus. Emotionally driven buying by speculators and players who recognized cheaper copies won’t be entering the market any time soon, followed by an ensuing sell-off. If there’s another surge in the coming months, make sure you’re ready to pounce. Selling into emotional hype is the best way to maximize value from your cards when looking at a short-term time horizon.

The last example I want to cover is Serum Visions.

When news broke that the blue sorcery dodged reprint it shot up to $11.66. Euphoria was short lived however, as the card quickly pulled back to $9.45, not even $1 above its pre-hyped price. Yet again we see this same trend – overextended buying followed by an immediate pullback.

Should this price behavior happen again in the coming months, I’d be ready to cash out of excess copies. Not only does this net you higher gains, but it also ensures you dodge future reprint risk, such as an FNM Promo in the case of Serum Visions or perhaps a Battle for Zendikar appearance (Goblin Guide? Inquisition of Kozilek?).

Wrapping it Up

In the three examples I shared of cards overextending to the high side, I want to point out one important consistency. In each case, the card value jumped on emotional excitement only to pull back immediately thereafter. However in all three cases, the top dealer buy price did not drop alongside the value. They all jumped up and have so far been able to stick.

If this trend continues and buy prices remain elevated, it will provide very strong support for these cards. Therefore, before cashing out in future price jumps, I’d highly encourage you to inspect buy price trends first. It’s one thing if speculators are getting a little too enthusiastic about a card’s absence from MM2015. It’s a completely different story if dealers also join the fray. In cases where buy prices jump and remain higher, you may be best served by holding for a longer time horizon.

Either way, one must be very observant of trends over the next couple months. There will continue to be rapid price fluctuations as people overreact to market changes. Should prices seem to overextend either to the upside or downside, we need to remain vigilant and prepared to act. If a sell-off becomes overdone, the window to acquire cheaper copies may only be open for a couple weeks. In the case of rampant buying the window to capitalize is even smaller, lasting only a few days.

We’re entering a highly volatile time period in MTG finance. This isn’t the time to sit on inventory complacently. We need to be acting if we wish to maximize value from our collections, adding positions where appropriate and cashing out of others after a spike higher. Perhaps the best strategy shortly after Vegas is to move spiked cards into reprinted cards – selling high and buying low. It may be challenging to move cards that everyone is euphoric about into cards that everyone is dumping. But if you time things correctly you’ll be selling into hype and buying into fear, the perfect trading strategy if you ask me.

Lastly, if you’re truly too afraid of how low prices can go on reprinted Modern staples I urge you to at least consider moving overbought cards into more stable holdings. Cashing out of overpriced Inkmoth Nexus at a dealer, taking trade credit, and acquiring that Dual Land you’ve needed for your EDH deck could be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. This is especially sound advice if you don’t want to actively manage your MTG portfolio throughout Modern season.

No matter what you do, keep your emotions in check. We should use historical data from the first Modern Masters to try and anticipate where prices may go from here. With a little planning, we just may add incremental value to our collections simply by timing things right. Good luck to everyone!

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

While everyone knows about Inkmoth Nexus and Serum Visions, a few cards that dodged MM2015 reprint have remained under the radar this past week. Here are some cards worth keeping an eye on and possibly acquiring before the hype train leaves the station.

While it was printed in the first Modern Masters, there’s no Rift Bolt in MM2015. The result: this $2 common is poised to rise in value as long as Burn remains relevant in Modern. Star City Games has a dozen or so copies in stock across Time Spiral and Modern Masters, but keep an eye on dealer stock going forward. We could see some gradual, more sustaining price increases this summer.
There will be no Spell Snare in MM2015. I suspect this will mean stock of this card will be dropping in the next few months. Star City Games currently has just one Dissension copy in stock at $5.59, though they have 17 MMA copies at $5.65. Picking up these – perhaps even in foil – could lead to some gradual price gains throughout 2015.
Another solid target due for gradual price increase is Hive Mind. The blue enchantment has seen only one printing, back in Magic 2010. The card is relevant in Modern, and may see some casual demand as well. SCG has 11 total copies in stock, with NM pricing at $4.89. This seems very low for a card played in Modern as a 3-of or 4-of. If Scapeshift can be a $24.15 card on SCG, I don’t see why Hive Mind couldn’t move higher from here.

Accumulated Knowledge

The Fault in Our Cards

May 15, 2015 Ross Lennon 4 Comments

Hello! My name is Ross, and I am a finance writer here at MTGPrice. It is my sincere hope that many of you reading this are new to my work, and possibly even this site.

Typically, my articles are reserved for ProTraders, but I elected to make this article free as an attempt to reach a much broader audience, including (ideally) people who don’t typically read finance articles. I am writing this because there is a very negative stigma regarding “Magic finance,”¹ and it has seemingly only ramped up. I believe that a lot of people have very skewed and inaccurate notions of what Magic‘s ecosystem really looks like, and that is what drives a lot of this vitriol. My hope today (and in my body of writing as a whole) is to inform and educate, and hopefully this will help to dispel some of the misinformation.

Their Problems and Ours

It’s a common sight, especially lately, to see players bemoaning speculators as the limiting factor in accessing older formats. The first and most monumental truth that many people fail to acknowledge is that Magic‘s economy is driven in large part by the simple concepts of supply and demand. However, there is a serious wrinkle on the demand side of that equation, and it is something that I typically refer to as the “Zendikar Boom.”

Basically, the Magic population has grown extremely rapidly since the release of M10 and Zendikar (and, perhaps not coincidentally, Duels of the Planeswalkers), and that large player growth has had a radical impact on the prices of cards. Wizards has never liked to publish hard numbers, but we have a conservative estimate that there are over ten million currently active players, compared with the roughly five million from before M10. This means that the demand for Magic, in all forms, has gone up, while the supply has only gone up on newer products. Wizards prints based on their numbers and projections from previous sets, which is largely why Zendikar‘s first print run famously sold out shortly after release. They printed enough for X players, but Y showed up. Every year since, the print runs on new sets have increased, just trying to match the continuous growth in demand. On their end, it’s a great problem to have.

The problems on our end, however, are still being dealt with. Every set printed prior to the Zendikar Boom is now considered an “under-printed” set. Take, as a topical example, Serum Visions. Despite the fact that this card was a common, it currently retails for about $10. This is due, in part, to the fact that it was printed in 2004, long before the Boom², and therefore much less prevalent than today’s commons. There are other factors that push this particular price to its current degree (chief among them being that Fifth Dawn overall just isn’t very good), but the card is not $10 because a shadowy cabal of dealers decided to make it $10.

In fact, you can tell that the demand for this card is strong because the margin between its buylist price (what a store will pay you for it) and its retail price (what they will sell it for) is smaller than average. Theoretically, a store will usually buy a card for half its retail price, and sell it for the full amount. Any time the buying price is higher than 50 percent, it typically indicates that the store sells enough of them that they just want to make sure they have enough copies in stock. If you know you’ll sell a card right away, why not pay 60 percent? The buylist price on Serum Visions has been high for a while now, and I’ve seen vendors getting very aggressive (paying higher margins) on buying them, which just tells me they don’t want to get caught without them.

Causes, Fixes, and Scapegoats

Things like Modern Masters are attempts by Wizards to get some of these older cards into circulation without warping the next several years of Standard trying to hamfist previous blocks into the mix. It is far from a perfect distribution system, however, and the lower print runs will hopefully ramp up over the next handful of iterations (you can expect these sets to come out every other year for the foreseeable future).

I’ve personally missed out on playing a lot of Modern because of card availability issues, so I sympathize with those players who have voiced similar pains. But—this is important—the problem is not caused by the finance community. Magic is over twenty years old, but in some ways, it is still experiencing growing pains: it is trying to facilitate play experiences for several different types of players with a back catalog that is nowhere near large enough to cater to them all, and there are more players coming every day. It is this universal increase in demand, enabled with the vast permeation of the internet, that has allowed the Magic finance community to blossom.

The Magic finance community has existed for much longer than many people care to admit. Even though the concept of “Magic finance” was first made popular by Jonathan Medina and his articles on Star City Games, there were people making or supplementing their living off of Magic cards long before him—it was just much more difficult. In order to trade or sell in large volumes, you needed to either travel to several large events, or have a brick-and-mortar store.

Nowadays, you still need to do one or both of these two things to be able to call Magic finance a job, but there are opportunities for the hobbyist financier³. The truth is, most speculators are people like myself: I don’t own a store, but I’ve been around long enough that I know to ferret away extra copies of cards that look promising in the long term. Every “spec” I make is with the implicit understanding that this card won’t be sold for at least two years, if not more. Take, for example, Akroma’s Memorial, a card that was hitting $20 prior to being reprinted in M13, which caused the card to drop below $5. Trading for a couple of copies at roughly four bucks a piece is a great deal now, but invested as well is all of the time I spent waiting to move them now for $8 on a buylist or just over 1100 Puca Points. This is the surest and safest way to grow your Magic nest egg, but it is very slow and only pays in order of scale. Buying just one Akroma’s Memorial and sitting on it is a great way to get a free trip to Taco Bell in the future, but it’s not a living.

Speculators Aren’t to Blame!

I think one of the main reasons people vilify speculators is because they are seen as the driving factor in the ever-rising tide of secondary market prices. This is both false and true. In terms of overall market impact, hobbyist speculators are a drop in the bucket, and anyone with a larger scale operation than the hobbyist is typically some form of vendor. This is a significant distinction, because unlike hobbyists, vendors can’t wait two years for every card they buy to come to roost. While some vendors will pull the trigger on things that they don’t plan to sell immediately (typically high-end stuff like Power, misprints, etc), they need to make sure that everything else can move—the bills won’t pay themselves⁴.

On the other hand, the largest vendors (think Star City), have the capacity to buy more of these long-term targets, since they are doing so much business on a weekly basis (across the country!) that they can afford to buy and sit on more stuff. Star City is the largest vendor on Earth, which conveniently also makes it the largest speculator on Earth. It has both the capital and the exposure to buy everything it wants, without the concern of tying up too much in one card. I can’t buy a Mox Ruby and go about my merry way, but Star City can. And even though it’s hard to find Deathmist Raptors in my local area, Star City can buy every single one that comes across its tables (for buylist prices!) and sell them to anyone with an internet connection. Vendors have access to tools that hobbyists don’t, and the big vendors have tools that the smaller vendors don’t (you know, like their own national tournament series).

The natural check in the system is that when people begin to out their cards, the supply on the market is being increased. One of the reasons why shock lands from Return to Ravnica have not shot up post-rotation (there are a few) is because so many of the people who went deep on them are moving them to recoup their investments to move somewhere else. The new shock lands have stayed pretty steady (there are a lot of them, after all), so most people are happy to move them and free up opportunity capital.

Not That Everything’s Peachy

Where speculating has become an issue, however, has been with Reserve List cards. (We are not going to get deep into the Reserve List debate, because I went way over my word count last week, and I don’t want my editor or his family to hate me.) That being said, the list, as well as the inherent rarity of early sets, has definitely created opportunities for individuals or small groups to profoundly impact a card’s market value. When I say the card name Animate Wall, does anything come to mind? If you have a knowledge of the rarities market, then you know that there is an individual (I can’t recall his or her name) that collects Alpha Animate Walls, and owns a sizable percentage of them. In fact, if you own 11 copies of any Alpha rare, you own one percent of all printed copies. This is the reason why even the worst rares from Magic‘s debut set are worth over $100: there are so few available that it is possible for single entities to shift the entire market.

Of course, most people don’t feel the need to own cards like Roc of Kher Ridges or Animate Wall (which is actually not on the Reserve List), but it is certainly throttling the growth of proxyless Vintage (and certain Legacy decks). It is an unfortunate situation that is exacerbated by Magic‘s incredible growth over these last few years—one without a simple solution.

The good news is that in order to move the needle on something like Underground Sea (which was printed in Revised), you would need a much larger scale investment than something that only made it to Unlimited (say, Ancestral Recall). While Sea is played in more formats and, by extension, more players, the capital required to make a serious investment in copies would be staggering, on the order of, “Maybe you should go buy some real land instead.” I don’t know how many Siege Rhinos or Deathmist Raptors you would have to purchase to own one percent of all that were ever printed, but I can tell you it is a hell of a lot more than eleven.

BRIEF BUYING ASIDE: As a tip to all of you, I recommend only acquiring things like dual lands in person. There are so few that are truly in near-mint condition that you are more likely to be able to talk down to a better cash price. I personally have never bought a dual land that wasn’t a deal, and I don’t think you should either.

Hopefully, today’s article has helped to dispel some of the anger and suspicions that people cast on the Magic finance crowd. I know that this topic far exceeds what I have written here today, so I encourage you post any follow-up questions you have in the comment section below. I am always happy to respond to reader questions, and I try to check the section frequently over the weekend. If you take one thing away from this piece, it should be the following: Magic cards are expensive because Magic is more popular now than it has ever been before⁵, and even though speculators and the finance community are viewed as the carpet-bagging profiteers, they are largely just the small fish in Star City’s pond. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our cards, but in ourselves.

I hope you enjoyed my article today, and thanks for reading.

Best,

Ross

1 I’m not in love with this term.

2 In fact, a lot of players were scared away at this time- can you guess why? It rhymes with “Barcbound Bavager.”

3 I am even more not in love with this term.

4 Unless you have, like, auto-pay or something.

5 Even more so than when it was referenced on The OC! I know, right?!

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