Tag Archives: ProTrader

City of Traders

PROTRADER: One Thousand American Dollars

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By: Travis Allen

You’ve read lots and lots of articles about people’s Khans of Tarkir block picks for the upcoming rotation. Nearly everyone has written one, and when you combine everyone’s suggestions, you end up with a checklist of basically every rare and mythic from the entire block. At that point, it’s hardly useful. Sure, lots of cards are worth considering, but come on, what’s really the card people are putting their money into and banking on? What are the supposed “pros” of this domain doing?

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Danny Brown, ProTrader

PROTRADER: The Mythics of Fate Reforged

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Last week, we went over the mythics of Khans of Tarkir. With depressed prices due to peak supply and fetches driving everything else in the set down, mythics are great, low-risk investments that have the potential to see exponential growth due their relatively short supply.

Although Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir lack the downward pressure of fetch lands (apart from the rare FRF pack), they are both also at peak supply. Also keep in mind the huge effect that Draft has on card supply. Assuming equal number of drafts fired from last fall to now (which is almost certainly not accurate, but let’s roll with it), we have roughly this proportion of each of the sets in this block:

  • Khans of Tarkir: 55% (3x drafted in the fall, 2x drafted in the winter)
  • Fate Reforged: 22% (1x drafted in the winter, 1x drafted in the spring)
  • Dragons of Tarkir: 22% (2x drafted in the spring)

For context, that means that if one million Siege Rhinos were opened in drafts, there would only be 400,000 Tasigurs. And since Tasigur is a rare and mythics appear at a rate of one-in-eight, there would only be 50,000 mythics from FRK or DTK, compared to 125,000 of each mythics from KTK. Keep in mind that these numbers are all purely hypothetical—Wizards does not provide sales data to us plebs—but using these rough proportions can show you just how stark the difference in supply is from a fall-set rare compared to a spring-set mythic: in this case, a ration of 20 to one.

With all this in mind, let’s take a look at the mythics from Fate Reforged today. We’ll hit Dragons of Tarkir next week for you completionists out there.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Fantasy

Okay, I’m going to be real with you right now. Yes, you. I have been staring at a blank document screen for way too long. I kept trying to think of the best way to start this article off, because I’m really excited about getting to the actual meaty content of it—the part with actual substance—but I could not get more than one sentence in without deleting it all and starting from scratch. I considered doing some sort of flowery prose about how Fall brings the changing of leaves, weather, all that fartsy Robert Frost crap, but the idea made me sick. I didn’t want to get too jokesy with it either, because even though I’m going to be relating a very relevant topic to something some of you may know nothing about, I don’t want you to get the impression that it isn’t worth reading. So instead I’m busting down the fourth-wall and telling you what’s up, “High Fidelity” style, and damn the consequences. Today we are going to be talking about fundamentals of card evaluation (teaching someone how to fish1), and it’s going to be framed with the other big talent evaluation that is happening right now, fantasy football. Even if you don’t like football, it’s worth reading since I won’t get too off-topic. And I promise right now that this won’t be anything like my Fate Reforged set review. I promise to never do that again. Finally- moving on!

So, very quickly, for those of you who don’t know what fantasy football is (I think they call the fútbol version “League Manager” or something?): it is a means of predicting individual player performance over the course of a season. You select players, and everyone in your “league” of eight or more participants drafts players that they expect to have quality seasons relative to when they were taken in the draft. It takes American Football, the most kick-ass, high-octane, freedom-lovingest sport in the world, and makes it even better. I love it.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

 

Corbin Hosler, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Rotation Pickups – Theros Edition

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I guess it’s that time again. By “that time,” of course, I don’t mean it’s rotation, because we’re still a bit away from that, but I mean it is time to look ahead to the phasing out of Theros block!

You may wonder why I’ve been talking so much about rotation, and it’s because at this point of the year, the most important thing isn’t what new cards are dominating Standard (hello, Hangarback Walker) or what players are competing at the World Championship (which takes place next week at PAX Prime and is going to be awesome). Rather, it’s about looking ahead. There are a lot of people worrying about current events, and a lot fewer people worrying about what the landscape is going to look like two months from now.

And where others are looking away, we’re looing deeper. I’ve written in-depth over the past month or so about the way I see things progressing over the next few weeks and months in Standard, and considering that’s the place to put most of your money right now, I feel that’s justified.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.