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ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: A New World of Arbitrage

June 22, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 6 Comments

In recent weeks I’ve dwelt on general finance strategy as we navigate this turbulent Modern season. I suggested trading out of Modern staples as they spike and acquiring some higher end, safer MTG investments. I also touched upon my emotional rationale for abandoning Modern – at least in the short term – to move into a format I am more excited to play.

I had planned on writing an even more bearish article about Modern this week. In fact, I was planning on making the bold claim that Modern was at a local “top.” Prices are destined to fall from here, right?

Except that MTG Price writer Travis Allen already did this. Right here. For your convenience, here’s the excerpt I’m most interested in:

“…while conventional wisdom seems to be that competitive seasons cause price movement, our evidence from last year doesn’t support that, and neither does the evidence this year. Last year, it seems that all of the spikes happened ahead of a GP, and then either remained stagnant or even fell after the fact. This year, we’ve seen a truckload of price spikes…

What’s our takeaway, then? Well, if history is any indiciation, it’s that we’re sitting at the top of the market right now. Modern staples will generally remain stagnant or even decrease in the next four months.”

YES. Very yes. I applaud Travis for sharing his bold and potentially unpopular opinion that Modern has topped. Frankly, I couldn’t agree more.

Now What?

Let’s assume you’ll consider what Travis has said, and that you’ll sell a lot of your recently inflated Modern staples. You know the ones I’m referring to: your $90 Snapcaster Mages, $50 Blood Moons, $15 Serum Visions, and $5 Lantern of Insights.

The decision to sell cards like these would generate a sizable cash position. So what do you do with all these newfound profits? Sitting on cash seems miserable, so there must be a better place to park resources right?

Well, you could try and acquire Modern staples which haven’t spiked yet. I can think of a few viable examples: consider Tendo Ice Bridge, which is already practically sold out across the internet (Disclaimer: I have 1 copy listed for sale at an artificially high price in case this spikes).

Worldspine Wurm is another example. The card was a four-of next to Nourishing Shoal in the creative reconfiguration of the Goryo’s Vengeance strategy. While Shoal went from $0.75 to $15, the Wurm barely moved a muscle. Guess which one is likely to have more casual appeal, by the way.

Despite these and a few other ideas, I don’t believe Modern is where you want to invest your recent profits. Even if these ideas do move higher, they’ll be facing headwinds all summer as the format quiets down. Better opportunities exist. I can think of lower risk propositions with immediate upside potential. In fact I can think of a number of ways you could apply some capital and generate immediate returns even by buy listing, and it doesn’t require collection buying.

It’s All About the Benjamins

I enjoy relating MTG Finance to stock market investing. I detect many parallels between the two, despite some dissonant opinions amongst the community. At last, this knowledge may provide actionable benefit. It all relates back to the strong US Dollar.

Actually, strong is an understatement. CNBC icon Jim Cramer prefers to refer to our currency as the “Super Freakin’ Strong Dollar”. As ridiculous as that sounds, it’s probably a more accurate statement. Here’s why:

Since mid-2013, the US Dollar has been on an absolute tear jumping in value by 15-20%. This, paired with recent weakness in the Euro, has led to some very favorable exchange rates for the arbitrage seeker.

The result: cards – especially high end cards – for sale in international markets are now more attractively priced. While the US Dollar has pulled back from its highs a few months ago, those in the U.S. still have a clear advantage.

I have a couple specific examples I can share.

First, if you have a friend you can trust in Europe then I’d highly encourage you to explore Magic Card Market (www.magiccardmarket.eu). Through a quick search, I readily found an arbitrage opportunity with Beta Scrublands.

One seller has a NM copy listed at 599 euros ($680 USD). If truly Near Mint, Star City Games will buy that same card from you for $900. Card Kingdom would even pay $910. I’m confident there are many other opportunities on the site if you’re willing to spend some time searching. I’d recommend looking at other high end staples such as these.

Don’t have a friend in Europe? No problem! Today your US Dollar can purchase more Japanese Yen than any time since 2011!

The implications to this are huge, if you are willing to buy from Japanese vendors. The good news is many Japanese vendors will ship directly to the U.S. One site I would immediately trust is Saito’s digital store front, http://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/.

Again I would recommend browsing some high-end cards, though I suspect with the currency conversion so favorable there are numerous opportunities across all formats. Through a recent search, I found a sweet arbitrage opportunity:

Using the exchange rate Hareruya generously provides, you can purchase an Alpha Savannah Lions for $123 + shipping. Channel Fireball is paying $125 for the same card, and Card Kingdom is paying even more: $135. In this particular example no immediate opportunity exists. Shipping will cause this deal to fall short of immediate profit (though I have requested scans of the card – it truly looks Near Mint). But there is a right to succeed here. I know of a few other solid opportunities on this same site by simply running searches. Putting together a larger purchase could help you overcome shipping costs, enabling arbitrage or, at the very least, very good deals!

Final Thoughts on Arbitrage

I must acknowledge this article is highly geared toward the US investor. In reality, there are opportunities for everyone to get involved. People in Europe can engage with those in the U.S. to help identify opportunities in the European market. The same goes for those in Asia who have access to the Japanese market. We can all work together and benefit from the gap that exists across continents.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t at least briefly touch on the risks associated with this endeavor. Shipping costs and condition are a huge factor – it’s not cheap to move cards over oceans, especially in quantity. And although a picture is worth a thousand words, it could also cost you a thousand dollars if it’s not high enough quality, causing you to mis-grade a card before buying. There are also currency conversion fees you need to consider. These are all powerful reasons for why opportunities are still aplenty. The risk is sizable and real. But so are the opportunities.

And if international deals aren’t your forte, consider some local “arbitrage” opportunities. High end cards can be very difficult to price correctly if you’re not heavily involved in this space. By searching one of the billion MTG Facebook groups, you may come across a steal.

A friend directed me to a particular Facebook group focused solely on “sick deals”. That’s right – you can’t list a card for sale in that group unless you’re at least 10% below eBay / TCG low pricing.

If you don’t like international orders and you don’t like Facebook, I have one last idea of how you can find attractive deals. I have one word for you: misspellings.

Check out the website www.fatfingers.co.uk. This website allows you to search every country’s eBay site for common misspellings of eBay listings. I was skeptical at first, until I tried it out. Believe me when I say, this site works.

These Taiga prices may not be the most attractive, especially given their poor condition, but the proof of concept is still there. Notice how both these listings currently have 0 bids? That’s probably because only a handful of people have actually seen these listings. If nothing else, the site can be very entertaining – you’d be amazed at the many ways some of these Magic cards can be misspelled!

Wrapping It Up

With spring’s Modern GP behind us, perhaps we are once again seeing a peak in Modern staples. If this is true, the time to sell could be right now. I have been moving out of Modern very actively in recent weeks, putting my money into older, more stable cards. If history repeats itself, we could see a price bump on stuff like Dual Lands and Legacy staples later this summer or early fall. And even if we don’t see a sudden spike, these are still very solid cards to park your money. You could do much worse with your recent profits.

If you feel like trying something new, give a gander to the websites I mentioned above. The strong US Dollar can drive some very attractive deals on international sites – especially in Europe and Japan where currencies are particularly weak. While I haven’t pulled the trigger just yet on these opportunities, I have been watching them closely in recent weeks. Once I accrue some additional capital I just may make my move.

Just proceed cautiously, as there are risks associated with buying internationally. Fortunately those risks can be reduced by placing larger purchases to overcome shipping costs, and asking for card scans before buying. Using common sense, you should be able to navigate the pitfalls of international buying, leading you to profitable arbitrage opportunities. At the very least, consider international shops (even just north of us in Canada) when looking for attractive prices driven by currency exchange.

And if you insist on staying domestic, give the Facebook groups a try. You never know what deals you may discover.

…

Sig’s Quick Hits

I’m not kidding when I say Tendo Ice Bridge is all but sold out on the internet. I see 3 copies on TCG Player and a couple on eBay and not much else. Star City Games is currently sold out at $5.85 but I suspect they’ll relist higher when they do get more copies in stock.
Wurmcoil Engine’s price took a hit when it appeared in a Commander product. But since bottoming out last winter, the artifact creature has steadily risen. Star City Games is sold out of nonfoil copies of the card. That $15.35 price tag could approach $20 before the summer is over, especially if Tron remains popular in Modern.
I’m going to go out on a limb here. A while back I noticed SCG was frequently sold out of Power. Every time they would get a Mox in, the card would sold quickly thereafter. Then Star City Games shook the entire Power 9 market by bumping their buy prices up significantly. Since then Power has stuck at a much higher price than before. I’m noticing a very similar trend on A/B Dual Lands. They have almost none in stock, despite their already aggressive buy prices. It would not surprise me to see them move the entire market on A/B Duals in the next 6 months should this trend continue.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Player Finance – Tournament Finance 101

June 19, 2015 Ross Lennon 1 Comment

Today’s article is going to be the first in a series of semi-related subjects. The theme of the next few weeks is something that gets kind of lost in talks about Magic finance: how to weigh decisions and opportunities as a Magic player, and not just as a finance person. Today, the subject is going to be making the best financial decisions regarding tournaments.

The best example of what I mean is taken from a recent tournament experience that I had with a friend of mine. The two of us were going to attend a TCGplayer Platinum event (a Standard 1K, but it also gave out playmats and points down to top 16) that was being held in Orlando. That’s a little bit of a drive, so I got up pretty early to make sure I was packed and able to eat a decent breakfast. My buddy texted me at 8:00 a.m., half an hour before I was supposed to pick him up, to tell me that there was a Modern PPTQ being held much closer to home later that day. I’m not sure how I was able to develop my response so quickly, but it was (verbatim), “I’d rather pay $30 and win cash than pay $25 and win Dragons of Tarkir packs.”

Choose Wisely

There are a lot of Magic tournaments happening on a lot of different levels in the US right now. While central Florida has always had a strong Magic offering, even in the game’s lean years, it has never been as popular as it is today. This creates the situation of occasionally having to decide which tournament is worth attending. Even if you are not a competitive player and are only looking for trades, the following breakdown should have a lot of information to consider. The type of tournament can often tell you a lot about the other people that will be in attendance, which is a good predictor of whether or not you will find desirable trading partners.

First, what type of tournament is it? This is the most obvious question to ask, but you have to make sure that you unpack the answer fully. Obviously a Legacy and Vintage tournament is going to draw some high-rollers with big collections, but if it is scheduled against a large Standard tournament down the street, it may not even fire off.

More important than the format (because that stuff you can probably figure out on your own) is determining who is involved in running the event. Take the example I discussed up top: my choices were a Standard cash tournament (backed by TCGplayer) or a PPTQ (which is run solely by a local store with the PTQ invite coming from WOTC). In order for a store or event organizer to run a TCGplayer tournament, it has to buy a package from the company and adhere to the rules set forth (the same is true of SCG events). The TCGplayer Platinum event only had 20 players, but because TCGplayer mandates that any tournament run in its name always honor the advertised payout, the tournament organizers couldn’t flake out at the last second (although I’ve seen some try). This means that the TO is required to give out the full $1,000 plus the playmats, points, and other crap that they promised it would, or risk never being allowed to do another one again (although, with only 20 people showing up, that may not be a bad thing).

The PPTQ, on the other hand, had over 50 players, crammed into a much smaller location (needless to say, we were extremely lucky we picked the event we did). The PPTQ tournament organizer didn’t have to pay the upfront cost of a “tournament package,” nor was he beholden to any guaranteed prize support beyond the PTQ invite (which is of no cost to the TO). Both tournaments cost $30, but the winner of the 1K got a guaranteed $400, while the winner of the PPTQ got a box of Modern Masters 2015 and the chance to play in an even larger tournament to make the Pro Tour. If we can assume the price of a Modern Masters box is $200 to $225 (which is what most are clearing for on eBay), then the invitation needs to be worth roughly $200 for the tournaments to have equal payouts (the invite, to be fair, does include that Liliana promo; also, I am ignoring the potential of selling the playmat and point cards for the 1K winner). And while I don’t have written confirmation of what the prizes for second to eighth place were for the PPTQ, what I’ve heard anecdotally doesn’t stack favorably against the payout from the 1K. Also, apparently the AC broke at one point (which is not a good thing to happen to a room filled with Magic players in June in Florida).

In all honesty, I knew that the cash tournament would likely be pretty small, but I didn’t expect it to be less than half the size of the PPTQ (which I did expect to be at least somewhat larger). The cash tournament, as part of TCGplayer’s package, was advertised on the front page of TCGplayer, and got mentioned in some of the constant contact emails that TCGplayer sends to Florida subscribers. Beyond that, in order to know anything about the event, you had to follow the organizer (a small game store outside of Orlando) on Facebook. When TCGplayer offers advertising in its packages, many game stores, especially those who don’t have a large presence in the greater community, just assume that they are paying someone else to do the hard part for them. The truth is, most people don’t bother to read the constant contact emails, or they have tuned out the tournament feed on the right side of the TCGplayer website since it works as basically a cork board for the entire US.

The PPTQ system, on the other hand, is not advertised in the same way, but has the stronger backing of the Wizards website (which isn’t very good, but it has more reach). Since PPTQs are more “official,” and the PPTQ system is very important to players right now, they are more likely to seek them out. Because the current PPTQ system only offers a PTQ invite to the winner, there are a subset of competitive players who will seek out and play in every PPTQ possible, hoping to take one down. Whereas cash tournaments once supplemented a yearly schedule in between PTQs, now PPTQs are often held in competition with each other or one-of cash events.

So far, it seems as though players are valuing PPTQs extremely highly, likely due to their inherent scarcity and the idea that they have variable difficulty. A lot of people end up thinking that if a store that they’ve never heard of is holding a PPTQ, then it will be smaller and therefore easier to win—except that it appears as though they are going to draw a crowd regardless. The only PPTQ I’ve played in was a few months back, in a store with a small local crowd, and they were turning people away the day of.

This is another big factor to consider: is the tournament being held outside of the store’s physical location? PPTQs, especially those being run by stores without a lot of non-FNM tournament experience, are reaching the point where they often include a friendly visit from the fire marshal. The PPTQ the other week had 52 players in a somewhat small store, whereas the 1K was at a hotel (there was also a comic and toy convention the same weekend). The 1K, in addition to the package price that the TO paid TCGplayer, had to pay rent for the space for the day.

When tournament organizers have to pay rent, they usually let other people help, and this means that there was vendor space available! Yes, the twenty-player, cash tournament had two vendor booths (the store hosting the event plus one other). Vendor booths are a delight unto themselves, and if you know the store doing the vending, you can typically play to its strengths. I knew the alternate vendor at the event (I have a friend who works there, although he wasn’t present at the tournament), so I was able to unload a lot of Standard stuff I didn’t want into a Taiga and an Ali from Cairo¹. Most stores are not going to have the space to have a second vendor come in, even if they wanted to (and they don’t), so this cooperation is something you’ll only experience when a TO is shelling out a couple grand in rent for a day.

I’ve only played in one PPTQ so far, and my guess is that the quality trends overall with the quality of the store and its tournament history. I’ve read some horror stories about events being understaffed, although now that local stores aren’t hosting actual PTQs, those stories have seemed less severe.

A Little Self-Examination

Ultimately, you need to make the decision that best compliments your goals. If you want to play on the Pro Tour, then you need to play in a lot of PPTQs (and probably a healthy amount of Grands Prix, if we are being realistic)—there is no other way to get there.

But if you are like me, then you typically want to maximize your tournament opportunities. I don’t play in Magic tournaments every weekend, so when I get the opportunity to, I like to play in the one with the single biggest impact. Look at the value of first place compared to the value of eighth place, and then try to figure out what a top eight split would most likely be. This is the primary reason I am down on PPTQs: the most important part of the payout cannot be split eight ways.

The Star City Games IQ tournaments, by contrast, have fixed this problem by introducing a point structure into the mix. I’d like to see WOTC adopt this technology for the PPTQ system, but the company has publicly stated that it doesn’t want Pro Tours to be too big, which is a problem SCG doesn’t need to consider for its Invitationals. The IQ tournaments also have a guaranteed cash payout. Any time a tournament is giving out cash, it is nice to know that there is another name (SCG or TCGplayer) behind the TO making sure things go off without any snags.

Small Tournaments, Ranked

My personal hierarchy of (small) tournaments is as follows:

TCGplayer 5K (Diamond)
SCG Premier and Elite IQ (5k and 3k, respectively)
TCGplayer 1k (Platinum)
SCG IQ (the other tiers)
Not play Magic and have a lovely family game night
Money Draft with friends
Money Draft with enemies
PPTQ (Standard)
PPTQ (Sealed) – because nobody would show up!
PPTQ (Modern) – because everybody would show up!
Do that thing with my hand and a knife from Alien
SCG Open Trial
Grand Prix Trial
Throwing my cards into the sea while somberly reflecting on life’s pains and sorrows
SCG Game Night

Closing Thoughts

It’s quickly worth mentioning that while the SCG IQ events have a pretty high value, the Open Trials and Game Nights are basically playing slot machines that pay out in playmats or animal-themed trinkets. I never calculate the “value” of a playmat into my expectations of a tournament result, because so many of them are hard to move (this is because the tournament package mats have a higher distribution and less importance than one-off playmats, like GP mats).

TCGplayer points sell well because they can be used for byes in events, they can buy you into the big invitational that just happened, or you can get, like, Frank Lepore’s autograph. The typical value is 1.5 to twice the point value of the card, but sometimes you can negotiate for less. Then again, on the day of a 5K, I’ve seen people pay three times or higher.

Hopefully you enjoyed this first installment on tournament and player finance! And as always, if you know somebody who wants to buy a pile of ugly playmats, point them my way.

1 I blame Sigmund for making me want to buy old stuff.

Finding Value, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Modern Watch I

June 18, 2015 Guo Heng Chin 1 Comment

By Guo Heng

The Modern season is in full swing and as with every Modern season, there are bound to be multiple Modern cards spiking. It is easy to point fingers at perceived speculators buying out cards like Blood Moon or Jund mythics, but a more likely explanation is that we were watching market correction taking place in respond to the increased demand from an expanding Modern player base, as Corbin Hosler (@Chosler88) laid out in his excellent article a few days back. After all, new Modern players looking to grind the Modern PPTQs or Grand Prixes are likely to have to acquire their Snapcaster Mages, Cryptic Commands, Blood Moons etc if they want to run a tier one deck.

The combo-infested caterpillar that was Modern in 2011 has, through an unpopular series of bannings, metamorphosed into the colorful, vibrant butterfly that is Modern in 2015. Modern is becoming more like Legacy, where the top 8 archetypes differ from week to week and from region to region. A format where familiarity with your deck far outweighs trying to out-level the metagame as most tier one and tier 1.5 decks stand a chance of making top 8.

A common complain I hear about Modern is the format’s increasingly high barrier of entry, especially after the recent spate of price spikes. However a fact that is often overlooked is how a lot of these Modern staples in question were only mildly expensive for a long time before their recent spike. Snapcaster Mage was hovering around $25 for the majority of his life since he was printed in Innistrad and he was hovering around $35 for the better part of last year, before moving up to $40 this February. Blood Moon tanked to $7 when it was reprinted in Modern Masters and went on a slow but steady growth over the last two years. It only broke $20 at the end of last year and remained so until March this year. I can go on and on with examples, but you get the gist.

In a way, buying into Modern is very much like buying into Legacy, as a friend and fellow mtgfinance enthusiast Reza (@rezaaba) once suggested to me. Like Legacy, one does not simply build a Modern deck within a day. Buying into Modern is a long-term effort that requires you to acquire key components strategically.

That approach formed the idea behind this series of articles where we examine top Modern decks and find out which of their components are in their cheap phase now. I use the term cheap phase rather than cheap as the cards discussed in this article may not necessarily fit the definition of cheap, but they are in the price trough segment of their price cycle, and is probably the best time to get your own copies if you have been holding out. For example, I don’t think we are going to see Dark Confidant drop any lower than the $46 he is currently at, after the release of Modern Masters 2015. $46 would pale in comparison with his price two years down the road.

Let’s start with the top two decks from last weekend’s Modern Grand Prix at Charlotte.

Collecting Elves

The deck that took down the Grand Prix (though it would be interesting to see how the games would have panned out had the opposing Blue-Red Twin deck not been given a game loss for decklist error) and one of the new Modern archetypes spawned by the existence of Collected Company. A couple of the deck’s key components spiked hard after the Grand Prix, chiefly Ezuri, Renegade Leader who tripled in price regardless of the fact that he has two printings, and Cavern of Souls which was due for a spike anyway.

I wouldn’t necessarily call Collected Company a good pick-up right now as its price is currently buoyed by the Modern hype surrounding it, but there are still a few key pieces of Elves that I think are going to be worth much more in the future.

Chord of Calling Price — After all these month’s I’m still calling Chord as a pick-up.

A number of my fellow MTGPrice writers called Chord of Calling a good pick-up. I myself wrote about Chord a few times, when Chord was $4. While Chord’s price bumped up slightly after Elves’ victory, $6 is still a good buy-in price, considering how Chord was once a $40 card. Chord is also found in multiples in Abzan Company. Modern rares that are played in multiple copies in multiple archetypes are going to be worth more than $6.

The next card was brought to my attention when I saw Corbin’s tweet:

Not that this one was hard to see coming, but I believe we have our next $3-4 Common on hand. http://t.co/RYp0Irkizj #mtgfinance

— Corbin Hosler (@Chosler88) June 17, 2015

The link goes to the TCGPlayer page for the card below:

Nettle Sentinel was under $1 until last weekend. Now that Elves are a thing in Modern, Nettle Sentinel’s price shot up to $2.59. Yet I still think Nettle Sentinel has room to grow. Frankly I am surprised that a Legacy Elves centrepiece from a small set printed seven years ago could remain under $1 for so long. Now with the added demand from Modern, on top of the fact that Nettle Sentinel only has a single printing, picking up your own copies of Nettle Sentinel for under $3 does not seem to shabby.

The Evergreen Blue-Red Twin

If there’s one deck that is the quintessential deck of Modern, it would be Blue-Red Twin. Twin was one of the few tier one decks that emerged in Modern’s first incarnation back in 2011 and remained a tier one deck up till today. It took down two out of the four Modern Pro Tours, survived the slew of bannings which killed off more tier one archetypes than I can recall, and some say Twin is the sort of deck Wizards likes to see in the format: a turn four deck that is also interacts with the opponent.

Wesley See's Blue-Red Twin — Wesley See’s Blue-Red Twin

While the Twin archetype has evolved from it’s initial combo-orientated game plan, adopting a tempo-based strategy with an infinite combo in which the opponent has to respect at all times (and together with it a playset of Snapcaster Mage), the core cards of the deck remained the same. Surprisingly, Splinter Twin‘s price only broke the $10 barrier in December 2013 and prior to its Modern Masters 2015 reprint, it was still averaging around the low $20s.

Splinter Twin’s recent reprint brought its price down a little, with the Modern Masters 2015 version trending at $17. If you are looking to get your playset of Splinter Twin, go ahead and get them now. With a Modern Masters 2015 reprint, I doubt we would see another reprint anytime soon. Gone are the days of under $10 or even under $15 Splinter Twin, but we have yet to arrive at the days of $30 to $40 Splinter Twin. As the key component to one of Modern’s most popular deck, Splinter Twin will unlikely remain at $17 for too long.

That’s it. Remand‘s price has finally hit its lowest point since 2012. The Jace vs. Vraska printing brought the $17 uncommon down to $11 for while, but it started inching up again early this year and by April Remand returned to its old price of $17. After all, there is only so much the Duel Deck could do with a singular copy of Remand in each box. Amid the big name reprints and big spikes, the community seemed to have overlooked the fact that Remand is now close to it’s 2012 price. Yup, the most popular counterspell in Modern, the sixth most-played card in the format as of writing, is back to single-digit price.

Now is the best time to pick-up your Remands, even if you are not planning to run Splinter Twin. It is one of the most ubiquitous blue card in Modern after Serum Visions and Snapcaster Mage. My prediction would be that by the next Modern PPTQ season in the summer of 2016, Remand’s price would be back in double-digit region.

That’s all for this instalment of The Modern Watch. I would be rolling out the next parts throughout the next few weeks. We are in an exciting month for Modern. After a dearth of high level tournaments for nearly half-a-year, we are getting a slew of Modern events this month and new decks and techs are bursting out of the gates. With two more Modern Grand Prix – Grand Prix Copenhagen this weekend and Grand Prix Singapore next weekend – I can’t wait to see what new tech surfaces. My only hope is that no Grishoalband makes the top 8 of Copenhagen this weekend. I would be running that deck in Singapore next weekend and it would be nice not to have the deck in the crosshairs.

Share your thoughts below or catch me on Twitter at @theguoheng.

City of Traders, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Retrospective: GP Richmo…er, Charlotte. Whatever.

June 17, 2015 Travis Allen 5 Comments

By: Travis Allen

Every week for over a month, I’ve sat down to write my article, and while I had various ideas of what to cover (read: actually no ideas), I keep coming back around to Modern, as there’s been something both timely and worth discussing every time.

First it was the Modern Masters 2015 release and all that entailed, then last week it was looking into whether the set was bottoming out, and now this week it’s important we talk about the frenzy of activity leading up to Grand Prix Charlotte, and where things will go from here. If you’re sick of Modern cards, I apologize, but that’s simply where the money is this season. Don’t worry, it won’t be long before we’re in the two-month stretch where no card sees more than a five-percent change in value and I start submitting articles that are about the type of magic that involves top hats and rabbits.

What Spiked

Grand Prix Charlotte finished up Sunday evening with a big ol’ W for Elves (and Travis Woo). While that performance has moved the needle on several cards, like the now hilariously-costed Heritage Druid, decks all across the spectrum have been forcing out-of-stocks everywhere for the last two weeks. Before we get any deeper, let’s start with a top-32 breakdown of the event for reference. (Thanks to meposu of the MTGPrice forums for collecting the data.)

Abzan Company x4*
Jund x3
Burn x3*
Naya Company x3
Affinity x2*
Grixis Twin x2
U/R Twin x2**
G/R Tron x2
Temur Twin x2 (lower than other twin lists)
Elves x1*
Ad Nauseum x1*
Goryo’s vengeance x1*
Abzan(No Company) x1
Grixis Control x1
Grixis Delver x1
Lantern Control x1
U/B Faeries x 1
Amulet Bloom x1
* indicates top 8

While it didn’t manage to top eight, Jund led the pack on price spikes. It started with Olivia Voldaren, which climbed from around $5 to a price tag of nearly $15 at time of writing. Huntmaster of the Fells was next, with similar behavior. What’s most notable about these two is that Olivia was typically a one- or two-of at most, and Huntmaster doesn’t even make it into all lists. When these spikes were just beginning and word was spreading on Twitter, I began wondering if we were entering a frenzy. When cards that see minor play in a single format are selling out, it means the market is extremely bullish. It’s happened once or twice in Modern before, most recently last year ahead of another major Modern Grand Prix: Richmond. More on that later.

Jund didn’t just affect Olivia and Huntmaster, though. We saw Blackcleave Cliffs double to $10 and Raging Ravine triple to $10. Abrupt Decay gained a few percentage points. MPR copies of Terminate have risen considerably. Inquisition of Kozilek doubled to $15. Despite a Modern Masters 2015 reprint, Fulminator Mage has stopped falling in price entirely, and is in fact climbing.

The Goryo’s Vengeance deck has been responsible for quite a few spikes itself. After making top eight, the eponymous card rapidly climbed to $25. Nourishing Shoal, an obscure Kamigawa card that is undoubtedly sitting in bulk bins everywhere, is still trying to find a steady price in the $10 region, up from pennies. As I write this, Through the Breach hasn’t sold out yet, but I can’t find a copy at a single internet dealer, and there are only a handful on TCGPlayer. If it still hasn’t spiked by the time this goes live, I’m guessing someone will buy the last ten copies on the internet.

I could list card spikes for another five or six paragraphs. Deceiver Exarch, Disrupting Shoal, Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Oblivion Stone, Kitchen Finks… frankly, I don’t want to link them all. Just go look at the largest gains over the two weeks and you’ll see everything that’s doing well. A rising tide lifts all boats, and in the world of Magic, coastal towns are building levees as fast as possible.

What May Spike

How about what hasn’t spiked? The list is a lot shorter than it was two weeks ago, that’s for sure. I mentioned before that Heritage Druid has a jaw-dropping price tag of nearly $20 right now. While this uncommon has skyrocketed, Nettle Sentinel has quietly sat by, barely budging. It’s a common, which may cause you to wonder just how high it could possibly rise, but I’m not too worried about that. If an uncommon from Morningtide can hit $20, a set almost undoubtedly opened more than Eventide, why can’t a common reach $5 or $10? Sentinel is just as important in both the Modern and Legacy Elves builds. At $1 apiece, I have a strong suspicion that this is still well undervalued. Full disclosure: I may buy some by the time this article goes live.

In the same deck, Chord of Calling still speaks to me. It’s not going to see any dramatic movements in the near future, but it’s guaranteed to be a gainer over the next year or two. I’ve got a stack of thirty or forty and I wouldn’t hesitate to add to it if the right deal shows up.

Over in the Ad Nauseam deck, I’m a big fan of Spoils of the Vault. It’s an instant-speed black tutor. Sort of. The cost is high, but in a deck that’s either invincible, has a very high life total, or is searching for a four-of, it can be just what the pilot needs. We’ve all seen what happens to rares from the Mirrodin era when the demand is on, so at a $1 buy-in, this is low risk with an extremely high reward. What’s particularly appealing is just how cheap Ad Nauseam is to build right now. The deck has basically no real value in it. There’s a few Pact of Negations, sure, but that’s about it. Several of the rares required to function were printed in the first Modern Masters run, hampering their price tags severely. Even the mana base is extremely cheap for a Modern deck. When there aren’t any expensive cards in a powerful deck, there’s typically one or two that steps up. The same thing happened with Living End, and we could see it here. I’m in for a stack.

Back on the other side of the color wheel, I’m a bit surprised Scavenging Ooze is still around $5. I think we’re getting close to the end of that. This is a card less poised for a dramatic rise rather than simply gaining five percent week after week, a sign of steady public demand. This will reach $10—it’s just a matter of how long it will take. I’m dubious it’s the best place to park your money, as I think there are faster options out there, but at the very least, it’s safe.

A UB Faeries deck showed up in the top 32, an archetype that’s been remarkably quiet since the unbanning of Bitterblossom. Of all things contained within, Mutavault is my favorite card. This crashed extremely hard after its run in Mono-Blue and Mono-Black last year, from $30 to $10 today. Mutavault remains possibly the strongest manland ever printed, and I have no doubt this will continue to rise in value over the coming months, same as Scavenging Ooze. If you want foils, now is the time to act.

What Will Happen to the Spikes

All of this discussion so far is just a review of effects without consideration of the cause. Why did the entire Modern index jump so strongly? Is it all speculator buyouts (it’s not) or is it real demand? Will prices rise through the PreTQ season? Will they drop once Battle for Zendikar rolls around?

I’ll begin with an idea from my article scratchpad. I never got around to writing this particular piece, but it’s been sitting there staring at me since last summer.

I can still explain my thought process here a year after writing it down.

It was a few months after Grand Prix Richmond had occurred. Prior to Richmond, Modern prices were in a tizzy. The war drums were beating and the market hordes were marching. Check out some of these price spikes, all happening within a few weeks of the GP.

Those are all on the same time scale, highlighting that each saw major gains at the same time. In four months, when we look back at the price graphs for Olivia, Oblivion Stone, and Deceiver Exarch, it’s going to look the same.

What we’re seeing is that a major Modern GP, heavily publicized and run by a grade-A organizer ahead of a Modern season, is a huge catalyst for price changes. In other words, GP Charlotte is GP Richmond, simply one year later. Same organizer, same marketing. Last year it was a Modern PTQ season, this time it’s a Modern PreTQ season. Card trends before, during, and after Richmond should prove to be predictive of this year’s. One of the best resources available to financiers in any market, whether Magic or Wall street, is history. Those who don’t study it are Dr. Doom. Or something.

Look back at that idea I had scribbled down. The first third of it is that single events—in this case, Richmond and Charlotte—drive prices wild. The second third is that seasons—PTQ or PreTQ—apply less pointed pressure. What do I mean by that? Well, just look at those price graphs. All of the spikes are occurring right around the GP. Once you get out into May, there’s basically none. If the green chart is distracting, check out the blue buylist line. That’s a great indicator of market demand, and there are no jumps after the spring.

I’ve got more examples too, these more stark.

Birthing Pod was the deck to beat last year. There isn’t much contest to this claim: after a summer of dominance it was banned this past January. The card Birthing Pod, the entire engine of a to-be-banned Modern deck, the best deck in the format, couldn’t hold a price tag north of $10 through the PTQ season. And Scalding Tarn, after rocketing north of $100 ahead of the GP, continued to dwindle in price. Today it is $60, half of its former glory.

Birthing Pod and Scalding Tarn were two major, major staples in Modern at the time. The Grand Prix drove their numbers up, but the PTQ season was unable to sustain those new prices. They both subsequently sunk in price over the following months. The other cards I highlighted—Cryptic Command, Splinter Twin, etc.—did not suffer so dire a fate through the summer, though their prices were also moved by a single event rather than a PTQ season.

The point I’m making right now is that while conventional wisdom seems to be that competitive seasons cause price movement, our evidence from last year doesn’t support that, and neither does the evidence this year. Last year, it seems that all of the spikes happened ahead of a GP, and then either remained stagnant or even fell after the fact. This year, we’ve seen a truckload of price spikes, probably more than last year.

What’s our takeaway, then? Well, if history is any indication, it’s that we’re sitting at the top of the market right now. Modern staples will generally remain stagnant or even decrease in the next four months.

You may find this at odds with my article from last week, the tl;dr of which was that MM2 prices have probably already hit their floor and are beginning to rebound. This claim regarding MM2 does not clash with this week’s lesson. We’re essentially looking at two different halves of the market. Last week’s half of the market is all the brand new cards that were hit by reprints. Those are basically unable to spike, burdened as they are with supply. That’s the bottom of the Modern market. Prices have gotten as low as they can, and now they’ll begin slowly growing, and will continue to do so for months and months. The other half of the market is made up of the cards not reprinted. The Eternal Witnesses and the Goryo’s Vengeances. These were the cards ready and willing to be bought out. Now that that’s happened, they will remain mostly stagnant, with only minor fluctuations in price between now and September.

We should seek practical application of this information. Given the trajectory of so many of last year’s hot Modern cards, I don’t believe we’ll see many more price spikes this year. I’d say a good 80 percent or more of them have occurred already. We may see a few here and there, possibly in part due to Origins ramifications, but for the most part, if a card was going to see a dramatic rise in price this year, it has already happened. Furthermore, don’t expect prices on cards that have changed to change much more. Goryo’s Vengeance isn’t going to end up much further than where it is today. Nor will Olivia or Oblivion Stone or Blackcleave Cliffs.

If you’ve got any of these cards that have spiked, don’t feel bad about selling them. I’ve got several sets of Raging Ravine I’ll be listing shortly. While I believe they could potentially hit $20—look at Celestial Colonnade and Creeping Tar Pit—it could be months before that happens, and if the metagame swings back towards Abzan from Jund, it may not be before a reprint. I’m happy to take my profits and move on to greener pastures. Same for any of these cards that have spiked, and really, any Modern product at all that has seen generous increases recently. Is it possible there’s still considerable growth possible on any given card? Sure, but how likely is it, how long will it take, and how valuable is the money to you right now?

Snap Decision

Where I stand most starkly in contrast to the rest of the entire analytic field is Snapcaster Mage. Every person on Twitter is talking about how safe he is, how high his price could possibly rise, and just how far out of the park they’re going to hit this home run. While I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this, I am more bearish than my contemporaries.

Those price charts on Birthing Pod and Scalding Tarn scare me. Scalding Tarn especially, because I was there. I had ten or fifteen Tarns that I didn’t sell because I was hoping to eke a few extra dollars out of them over the summer. Rather than increase through the PTQ season, they dropped, and I ultimately sold most at around $60. Considering I could have been getting $100, and I had at least ten, that’s a solid $400 in lost profit that serves as a vivid reminder not to get greedy.

When I look at Snapcaster, I see red flags. Take a look at Snapcaster’s price chart.

And now, here’s Scalding Tarn’s chart, stopping just two weeks after Richmond last year.

Those are damn similar graphs. Of course, all graphs of cards rising in price are going to be fairly similar: the line gets higher as you go right. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that Snapcaster may retract in the coming weeks or months. Plenty of people are going to tell me I’m crazy, and that there’s no reason for Snap to drop. He’s played in a bunch of formats, there’s been steady price growth, there are no immediate avenues for reprints. None of this is incorrect. Of course, the same could all have been said about Scalding Tarn last April, and look where that ended up.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with my own Snaps yet. I’m looking to have some of my peers read this article and then have a conversation. Do we sell Snap now, at $75, and walk away happy? Do we hold out for $100 or more this year? It’s very easy to say that his price isn’t done growing and that there’s more profits on the horizon. That’s what everyone wants to hear. It’s a lot harder to say that this spike is not permanent and that if you don’t sell now you’re going to lose $20 on each copy.

How about you? Are you selling your Modern spec stock? Holding? There’s a comment section below—use it.

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