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ProTrader, Sigmund Ausfresser, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Lessons Learned from GP Vegas

June 8, 2015 Sigmund Ausfresser 2 Comments

Two hours.

That’s the buffer someone important recommends when flying domestically. Being a classic rule-follower, I tend to adhere to such recommendations. Therefore, when my flight leaving Grand Prix Las Vegas was set for 9:10am, you could have bet the farm that I’d be walking through security at around 7.

That left me with two hours to reflect on my trip to the largest Magic event of all time while sitting at my gate in McCarran International Airport. But rather than thinking through my sick draws and tough beats throughout the event, I found my mind drifting more towards the financial lessons I learned while there. These lessons shaped my entire experience and have made me a much better financier.

I could spend this week writing about my performance in the main event, but doing so would mean an incredibly short article. As it turns out, I was one of the many hundred players who dropped before the event really got going. I wasn’t eager to battle in one event all weekend – I simply had too many other priorities planned. So when my sealed pool contained a foil Cryptic Command and a nonfoil Elesh Norn, I immediately decided to drop. Did I extract 100% of what I paid to enter the event? Close, but probably not. Did I make the right decision in dropping, allowing me to explore a number of other engagements and discussions? Absolutely.

Luckily the story of my main event participation is already over. Now I can focus on the important stuff. This week my hope is to document the tidbits I learned about MTG Finance & negotiation so that you and I can benefit when participating in future events.

Top Objectives for GP Vegas

Heading into the event, I had mentally listed out three primary goals and a number of secondary ones.

– Objective 1a: Purge as much MTG inventory as possible, leveraging top buy prices online and TCG Low to ensure profitable sales were made.

– Objective 1b: Network network network by connecting with as many Twitter people I follow as possible.

– Objective 1c: Acquire some Old School MTG cards (aka 93/94) to begin building a deck for this incredible format, preferably at good prices.

– Other Objectives: Play in some side events, do a little gambling, watch some hockey, etc.

I thoroughly prepared for this event by looking up the top buy prices of all my cards and tabulating the data alongside TCG Low pricing. Doing so ensured I would be selling to a given vendor near the top range of buy prices, extracting as much value from my collection as possible. This strategy yielded tremendous success as I managed to buy list nearly everything I wanted to at target pricing. In many cases I was even able to negotiate with vendors by highlighting their competitors’ buy prices. Paul Feudo (@plfeudo), buyer for MTG Deals, deserves special thanks for his openness to negotiation and for buying nearly all of my Shock Lands at top dollar.

My advanced networking with Twitter people also paid tremendous dividends. I met so many new people in the MTG community; I can’t fathom listing them all. By keeping engaged with Twitter throughout the event, I had many opportune meet-ups with some of my favorite Magic players. Highlights included the Friday lunch coordinated by the MTG Finance community, watching hockey and grabbing dinner with Andrew Magrini (@A_Magrini) Friday night, Saturday evening with a group of awesome people, Saturday drafting with Kaesi Corne (@GirlOnNerds), and Sunday drafting with MTGPrice’s own Corbin Hosler (@Chosler88).

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

My preparedness for objectives 1a and 1b was top notch, enabling me to accomplish both goals with impressive results. I met a ton of people and I sold a ton of cards at solid prices. Check!

This is around where Vegas luck had to kick in, because my preparations for acquiring old school cards were severely lacking. Sure, I looked up prices on a few cards I was eager to acquire. But my research was insufficient. Guardian Beast was towards the top of my want list, but I hadn’t realized how few copies would be for sale at the event. What condition was I okay with? What was I prepared to pay for a Chaos Orb? How good of a deal would I need on a Mox in order to pull the trigger? Who had the lowest prices on Juzam Djinn?

Sadly I had no definitive answers to these questions. So when faced with certain decisions – especially ones which were not obvious win/lose situations – I hesitated. Such hesitation nearly cost me some very attractive deals.

For example, I was alerted to one vendor’s favorable buy prices on moderately played dual lands by @LengthyXemit. They were offering around $125 on Tropical Islands, $160 on Volcanic Islands, and $180 on Underground Seas. Prices even went higher from there for SP copies!

This left me with a new question I hadn’t prepared for in advance: am I willing to sell my duals at roughly TCG Low minus 10% to free up cash and acquire some larger old school cards I wanted? After sleeping on the prospect I decided to pull the trigger.

The selling part was easy – I had TCG Player open, comparing quoted prices to what vendors had listed for sale. Most prices checked out.

Armed with the resources necessary, I hopped from booth to booth browsing high end cards in the hopes of finding a deal. I could not have been more unprepared for this shopping experience. Prices on high end cards are highly condition-dependent, and I hadn’t done any advance research to prepare for such a purchase. Completely lost, I reached out to Xemit for his guidance.

He connected me with one particular vendor. Through open discussion, the contact mentioned to me his eagerness to sell some high end staples in order to raise some much-needed funds. Turns out they ran out of cash early in the event! I subtly indicated I’d be willing to pay cash if the price was right.

We didn’t haggle long – he gave me his best price on a key card I was after. What DID take too long was my hesitancy. I sat there hemming and hawing, unsure if the offered price was truly the best. I began second guessing myself, and the vendor nearly lost patience with me as I asked him to take cards out of my binder to act as credit towards the purchase. Luckily Xemit stepped in and highlighted to me other vendors’ buy prices for the card in question. That was all the convincing I needed, and I was fortunate to pull the trigger just moments before the vendor changed his mind.

That same day I serendipitously stopped by the Aether Games booth to say hi at precisely the right time. They had just picked up an HP Juzam Djinn, which they knew I was after throughout the event. The offer Kyle (@itsyourboyLOPE) made was highly attractive, but once again I felt ill-prepared. My hesitation nearly cost me again! Xemit was nearby, and he confidently stated he would make the purchase if I wouldn’t. Fortunately I didn’t give him the chance, as I paid up almost immediately after he made the statement.

You’d think these two experiences taught me the lesson – indecisiveness is a major turn-off to vendors who are incredibly busy buying and selling at the largest Magic event of all time. Unfortunately, my thick-headedness required a third such experience before I would absorb the information.

Once again Kyle Lopez of Aether Games came across some nostalgic cards I was after. Only this time I walked by while Kyle was in the process of buying the cards I wanted.

Commence awkwardness.

Kyle looked up the two cards in question – an HP Chaos Orb and a Tawnos’s Coffin, and he made a simultaneous offer. He offered a given price to buy the cards from the seller, and then offered to sell me both copies for about $10 more in total. My hesitation nearly killed Kyle. Not only was it unprofessional for me to remain indecisive, but it also incorrectly reflected a lack of appreciation on my part. Kyle was doing me a favor that no other vendors in the room would probably consider, and I didn’t have the knowledge to make a call promptly.

With time nearly expired in Kyle’s mental clock, I was fortunate to come to my senses. A quick head-nod, and I became the proud owner of two 93/94 cards at just a few bucks over buylist. Xemit didn’t have to scold me as we walked away (although he did) – I was already scolding myself plenty.

Old Dog and New Tricks

Fortunately I did not make the same mistake a fourth time. I finally learned the power of decisiveness and I wasn’t about to forfeit the knowledge so soon. Sunday night as the event neared a close, I managed to acquire a final high-end card for a favorable price. I obtained the favorable deal by making a decisive offer and stating I was ready to pay cash should the vendor accept. They hesitated a moment, but ultimately gave me the deal! I was elated! Confidence does matter and it can play a huge role when negotiating deals with vendors. We are emotional beings, and we tend to look favorably upon people who exude confidence – something I had lacked throughout most the event.

While I was selling cards, I was fully prepared. Listing all my cards out along with their top buy prices in advance meant I could confidently negotiate and seek out top dollar from vendors. But my research ended there, leaving me weak-handed at the table when negotiating to purchase the cards I was after.

It took me a while to learn this lesson, but I finally got there after a few near-misses. It turns out you can teach this old dog some new tricks.

Wrapping it Up

Grand Prix Vegas was a tremendously valuable experience, educating me on a number of important MTG Finance matters. Next time I attend a major event such as this one, I’ll make sure to do far more advanced research on the buying side. A lack of preparation nearly cost me a number of attractive deals. Given my indecisive nature, I need to go above and beyond what the average person may do when planning out a buying strategy.

I also picked up other tidbits of useful info. I learned that Zendikar basics are buy listing for as much as $0.75 each now (I cashed out of mine in advance of their potential re-appearance in Battle for Zendikar). I learned which vendors paid well on small-scale casual cards (CoolStuffInc) and which vendors paid aggressively well on obscure foils (Tales of Adventure). Some vendors were highly approachable, while others remained cold and unmoving when it came to negotiation. All of these observations have made me a stronger MTG financier.

And even though I never played in the main event, I could not have been happier with the decisions I made. All that free time enabled me to focus on each of my objectives, primary and secondary. Despite a few hiccups along the way, I managed to accomplish each and every one with time to spare!

I even managed to participate in three MM2015 drafts, where I found occasional success. I am usually horrible in Limited formats, but perhaps MM2015 is one draft format where I sort-of know what I’m doing.

Overall it was a terrific experience and I am very glad I attended. And now I look forward to the next opportunity, where I can apply and sharpen my newly learned skills and strategies, making me an even stronger negotiator and MTG financier. Hopefully after reading this column you’ll also be even more prepared to take advantage of on-site deals by learning from my mistakes.

Sig’s Quick Hits

A number of the most successful Modern decks in last weekend’s SCG Invitational contained some number of Tasigur, the Golden Fang. I believe this creature will steadily see more play in Modern, driving his price higher as we approach Standard rotation. But I still prefer foils. Star City Games is currently sold out of set foils with a $29.99 price tag. The foil has around a 4x multiplier, and an increase in the nonfoil could lead to a magnified effect on foils.
Amulet Bloom was a highly successful deck during the same event. A few cards from the deck are likely to remain premium pricing, including Summoner’s Pact. SCG has just a couple copies in stock, with NM copies retailing for $14.99. This could be the next $20 pact if it continues to see play as a 4-of in Modern.
I’ve noticed Arcbound Ravager gaining some price traction in recent days. The rare dodged reprint in MM2015, and now Star City Games has less than a dozen nonfoil copies in stock. Their NM price is $21.45, but if they sell out completely I could see this tick higher in the coming months.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Bits ‘N Pieces

June 5, 2015 Ross Lennon 3 Comments

Today is going to be something a little bit different. Rather than focusing on a single main topic, we are going to do something in between that and quick hits. The main advantage to this format is that it plays into my attention-deficit diso-*logs onto Hearthstone*.

Two Different Spikes: There were two spikes this week (at least as of me writing this- Wednesday morning). The first was a prime example of an artificial buyout; foil copies of Retract skyrocketed overnight. The pucatrade value increased to roughly $80, and according to the pricing app I keep on my phone, that’s a steal.

There are some telltale signs that this is an artificial spike. First and foremost, it is important to know where the card fits- Retract is only played in one deck (to my knowledge), Puresteel Paladin Combo. The characteristics of the Puresteel deck are also indicitive of an artificial spike: it’s a fragile combo deck that goldfishes well and (with the exception of Mox Opal) is pretty easy to put together (and therefore easy to foil out). The person(s) behind this spike saw a lynchpin card in a combo deck that was last printed in Darksteel and isn’t likely to be reprinted anytime soon. The irony, of course, is that Retract is infinitely less important than the deck’s namesake, Puresteel Paladin- Retract can always be replaced by Hurkyl’s Recall in a pinch (it’s definitely suboptimal, but going from 1 mana to 2 is better than replacing Puresteel Paladin with Vedalken Archmage). This deck had a good finish recently (according to the deck tech that I linked to), but it is a lot like the Amulet deck- it can have a good finish when a player who knows the deck like the back of their hand gets hot on the right weekend, but this is not going to be a significant percentage of the environment moving forward. Honestly, it looks pretty sweet, and Puresteel Combo lists have been floating around for a while now, but this a deck only a speculator could love.

The second spike was much more sobering. Blood Moon looks like it is going to settle around $50 for most versions, and I honestly can’t say I’m surprised. If you read last week’s article (of course you did), then you know that Blood Moon falls squarely into one of the camps of cards that WotC’s developers are hellbent of keeping out of Standard (and would like to push out of Modern). Blood Moon, unlike Retract, sees play in multiple archetypes in both Modern and Legacy. The card is also an enchantment, which is a very hard type of permanent to remove when your lands can only tap for R. The scariest part is that the two most printed versions of this card were very likely Chronicles and either Modern Masters 1 or Ninth.

I mentioned Magus of the Moon a few weeks back, and it seems like this is as good a time as any to thoroughly evaluate the pros and cons. Unlike enchantments, red is very good at killing small creatures, which Magus of the Moon is. When the 8 Moon decks were in standard, some of the (what we would now call) Esper Control decks would run some burn spells in the sideboard to kill off Magi. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but it was pretty poetic. Something that is important to understand about Blood Moon (the effect), is that if you don’t have any sort of threat, then just casting the card isn’t going to win you the game. I’ve seen a lot of people cast a Blood Moon and just expect the game to end — only for their Tron opponent to make every land drop, play a Wurmcoil, and lock up the game. The upside to Magus of the Moon is that he is able to swing for two, and can at least apply some pressure until you’re able to find something to close it out.

It’s worth mentioning that I played a lot of 8-Moon in standard, and the deck really wants the redundancy of playing eight copies. The conventional wisdom is that “if you want to see multiple copies of a card in a game, play four,” but the real answer is “play eight.” For critical effects (playing a mana dork on turn 1, or a Blood Moon on turn 2-3), you typically want all eight, although the math is not that much worse if you go to seven (which I typically prefer when talking about mana dorks- that extra slot can be a finisher instead). Even though Blood Moon is viewed as a sideboard card, I think people are going to realize that it is good against so much of the field that the technology will transition into something like the old 8 Moon lists.

I made Chicken and Waffles for dinner the other night: and it was really good. Just thought I’d share.

Kolaghan’s Command: This card has gone from bulk to $6 in an impressive amount of time. When I wrote about the Commands way back when, I said that Kolaghan’s was the toughest to evaluate because it is so much more contextually dependent than the others. The card is certainly strong, it’s just costed one mana too high to be truly great. Dromoka’s and Atarka’s Commands are both insane, and a big reason why is their cost. The two mana Commands will be Standard staples for their lifespan, and both will find homes in Modern, Kolaghan’s Command is a maybe (but has stiff competition from former stud Blightning), and the other two won’t make the leap. There will be some market for foils of all five in Cube/Commander/Casual crowds, but not enough to lift the lesser ones from irrelevancy. I don’t feel safe buying Kolaghan’s Commands right now, but when Magic Origins comes out, the price may drop to $4 or less: that’s the time to snatch up an extra set or two if you think you’ll need them.

Spellskite and Noble Hierarch: I am going to be looking to buy these by the gross pretty soon. They fit in a lot of different decks, so I expect their prices to rebound more than something like Fulminator Mage, which is expensive, but also basically a Stone Rain. The trick is to find cards that are good in multiple decks, because a bigger pie-slice of players will want them.

Modern Masters 2015: Stores are getting opportunities from Wizards to reorder product, which didn’t happen last time. Granted, it’s not a full reorder, but it’s something. It will be interesting to see how many more of these opportunities stores are given, since absolutely nobody is going to say no. I’m a little surprised that more MM1 hasn’t started cropping up, given how much the distributors (supposedly) have ferreted away.

The Wild West Days of Modern: are not going to last forever. Eventually Wizards will have reprinted enough of the format to start to assuage demand, and I have to assume that the player growth booms of the last few years will begin to plateau. I don’t think there is a single Modern card I have faith in five years down the road, which is both good for the game and bad for hobbyist financiers/”speculators”.

The only thing that scares me about the future of Modern, however, are things like Blood Moon, that clearly don’t fit in the modern (lower-case ‘m’) development philosophy. Think about something like Candelabra of Tawnos in Legacy — there are so few copies of Candelabra in existence, that you could play in Legacy events for a year and never have to worry about it. Of course, there is only one Legacy Grand Prix in North America (or Europe or Asia) every year, so you’re typically JUST playing Legacy for cash prizes- not to try and climb a tournament ladder. If WotC manages to “push” something like Blood Moon out of the mainstream in Modern, without banning it, then it’s going to create a weird subset of Modern decks that will be similar to the “niche” decks in Legacy (like Candelabra decks).

I know there has been a lot of forum talk about Abrupt Decay, and I think the day it gets reprinted will be the unofficial end of Modern’s boom phase.

Abrupt Decay: would make a good GP promo, for what it’s worth.

The possible end of Community: was very heartfelt and bittersweet. I love that show, and can’t wait for the movie to come out. The tags at the end of the episodes this season were insane.

7^th Edition: is seriously an interesting set. So much of the art that was commissioned hasn’t been reused, and the fact that the foils are black bordered in the old frame really scratches an itch for the die-hard collectors. The only problem is that the set isn’t Modern legal, so you need to make sure that you double check the legality of cards before you pounce on them (the set has a lot of those color hosers we mentioned last week). There are TONS of foils worth $3 or more, and stores are actually buying them. Pacifism, a card that is reprinted CONSTANTLY, was at one point $9 for a 7^th foil version. 7^th Edition foils exist as this strange wormhole where they are sometimes the most unique version of a card possible. Although the price pretty much mirrors other foil copies, the 7^th Edition foil Evacuation features unique artwork (and old frame). Sustainer of the Realm, an unplayable uncommon, is $15 for 7^th foils, and under $2 for Urza’s Legacy foils (which may be a steal, when you think about it). Multi-format staples like Birds of Paradise and Wrath of God are worth over $100 for 7^th foils, which is pretty much the best you can do before venturing into foreign foils or Alpha/Beta. Static Orb, a card that is played in nothing but the past, is buylisting for $21 and retailing for $25!

The last I’ll say about 7^th Edition foils is that I’ve looked at a lot of price charts for individual cards, and their buylist prices have almost all gone up over the last year. This is worth a closer look, and I expect the forum discussion to be lively.

I’m super excited: about the Fantasy Football league we have brewing in the forums. We’ll have to set up a league and draft soon. I know it’s a little hokey, but I like doing it on NFL.com, because they have a lot of cool bells and whistles, and they do that very professional-looking “draft analysis” at the end.

I’m playing Abzan Aggro in a tournament tomorrow: and I really like the deck. I went up to the full four Dromoka’s Command main, and all I keep thinking is “why the hell didn’t I do this sooner?”. Obviously their futures aren’t the same, but the last time I said that, it was about Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Nothing else in the list worth mentioning, aside from two Pitiless Horde. That card is good too, just not as good as Dromoka’s Command or Jace.

I have a secret project: that I am very excited about.

Tarmogoyf: is probably not going to get below $100, but hopefully some day. I really wish they would just go ahead and put him in a “real” set- he’s honestly not THAT good. Even though I profitted on selling all of my Goyfs forever ago, I’m definitely feeling the sting of not having access to any now. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Next week: we will finish the Mirrodin block with Darksteel and Fifth Dawn. I know, I’m excited too.

Tell me in the comments: if you liked this format. It won’t be an every week thing, but sometimes. Also, tell me your thoughts on Community. I think my favorite episode this season was the heist one.

Corbin Hosler, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: The Fallout from Vegas

June 4, 2015 Corbin Hosler 3 Comments

What. A. Week.

Vegas was crazy, and while we regaled with a few stories on this week’s Brainstorm Brewery, the craziness and great time that was had in Vegas is not the focus of this week’s article. After all, with so much financially-relevant happenings going down, how could it be?

The Bird’s Eye View

A few weeks ago I wrote about my thoughts regarding the initial price movements of Modern Masters 2015, with the promise to revisit those conclusions as more data became available. We now have some of that data, so this week I’ll be looking back at my initial conclusions and seeing what has changed since then.

There were more than 88,000 Modern Masters 2015 packs opened across the world last weekend, with many more coming in side events (which I went 2-for-2 on this weekend, yay!). All told, that’s a lot of Tarmogoyfs. And while many expected that to be good enough to crater prices, reality doesn’t seem to be lining up with that.

At this point most of the product that was opened in Vegas or elsewhere has been processed by the stores that bought it on-site (and most players were selling the valuable cards they opened so they could go gamble), so we are at or nearing peak supply. In fact, given that some notable cards have already begun to rebound price-wise, we may even be past that point. With Grand Prix Charlotte coming up next week (I’ll be there working coverage, so come say hi!), we’re going to see continued demand for those cards opened in Vegas.

But before I get into specifics, what are we seeing with the set, and format, as a whole?

A quick look over the set shows that things are down sharply from a week ago, even if a few Mythics are bucking that trend. Sure, Mox Opal, Tarmogoyf and Vendilion Clique already seem to be bottoming out, plenty of other cards are still falling. Even Cryptic Command, Kiki-Jiki and the mighty Eldrazi aren’t done falling. So, for all the talk of peak supply and a bottom, there is at least some evidence to the contrary.

But on the other hand, there are those that present the opposite of this trend. Tarmogoyf is of course the main offender (and we’ll get to that in a bit), but other highly-playable cards at Mythic and Rare are already beginning to flatline or rebound slightly. Mox Opal, Clique, Noble Hierarch, Spellskite and Karn are all showing, at the least, a steadying of prices.

Notice the trend there? The highly-playable, truly A+ staple cards are holding up against the reprinting. Everything else that held a big price tag at least in part to short supply based on print run is really dropping. Wilt-Leaf Liege, Elesh Norn, Daybreak Coronet, Leyline of Sanctity and more are all still dropping, as we originally expected with the large influx of new supply.

What does this mean moving forward? It means that Modern Masters 2015 is doing exactly what Wizards of the Coast intended it to do. No, your Tarmogoyfs aren’t going to be $50 anytime soon. But you’re also not going to be shelling out $100 for a super-niche card like Coronet that was only expensive because of its laughably-small print run however many years ago. I suspect the drop on these “Tier 2” cards will continue, and we’ll see them settle lower in the coming weeks and months.

The best of the best, though? I doubt we see much downward movement in that. Grand Prix Charlotte coming up will do a little to buoy prices, though it’s possible we’ll see some more leveling out after that, similar to how Richmond went the last time around. After Charlotte, Modern won’t be on the minds of most people until we hit Modern PPTQ season and Grand Prix Oklahoma City in September.

So, to sum it up:

High-end staples are bottomed out, and slow, incremental growth will likely return.
“Tier 2” cards will continue to slowly fall over the coming month before leveling out and likely staying flat for months to come.
Casual stuff, like Creakwood Liege, is being destroyed, and will take at least two years to come back, if Doubling Season is any indication.

The Big Ones

Dark Confidant

Time to get more specific.

Let’s start with Dark Confidant. Formerly the gold standard of both Modern and Legacy and a huge status piece, we’ve seen Bob fall from that lofty heights.

And he’s fallen hard. While Maher is still the third-most expensive card in the set, we’re talking about a card that was pushing $100 at its height. While Siege Rhino has done a number to push this guy out of the format, I’m not sold on his death quite yet, even if a field full of Affinity and Burn isn’t the ideal world for this guy.

Still, this thing has halved in price, whereas buddy Tarmogoyf has seen just a 25% reduction, even if we’re generous with the numbers. I don’t see a super-bright future for Dark Confidant at this moment, but if he continues to fall we may see an opportunity here. I’m not dying to buy in at $45, but if this thing starts to push $30 I like it as a pickup. This may not be in flavor now, but a metagame shift could bring Bob right back to the forefront.

Vendilion Clique

The little Faerie that could. What’s interesting is that this may actually see more play in Legacy than Modern. Either way, the price here seems to have bottomed out, and I expect this to float around $45-50 for a while to come.

Tarmogoyf

Finally, we come to it.

Here’s what I wrote two weeks ago concerning where I saw the Goyf heading.

“The mythics will drop, yes, but not drastically. The most frequently played Modern ones like Tarmogoyf and Clique will hold up best, but as a whole, we’re looking at just 15- to 25-percent drops here. This will make these cards more affordable, but I really wouldn’t be surprised to look back at this set when Modern Masters 2017 comes out and see the prices right back where they started.”

Before I go any further, there’s something I want to address specifically regarding Tarmogoyf. I know we look at the market as some elusive figure that can be predicted but never controlled. And while in most cases that’s true, it’s not always that way.

Take, for example, Grand Prix Las Vegas and Tarmogoyf. Before the event we saw Goyf dropping toward $150 with momentum to go below there. Then the event starts and one dealer is paying significantly higher on Tarmogoyf than anyone else. Their price? $130 cash. That’ll put the stops on $150 retail Goyfs pretty quickly.

Everyone else raised their buy price to at least compete, and because of that you saw an average buy price on Goyf $10-20 higher than it likely would have been if not for the decision that dealer made to put their money into Tarmogoyfs.

The effect was felt. Instead of a falling Tarmogoyf price we have one that rebounded to $160 thanks to dealer actions, just like last time. Considering Tarmogoyf was retailing at $190-$200 before the reprint, this also leaves my prediction two weeks ago pretty spot-on. We’re done seeing Goyf majorly fall at this point, and even if it trends down to $150 I sincerely doubt it’s headed much further below that any time soon.

So where will the final price be? I don’t think it’s going to brush off the reprint and be $200 again in a month, but I think $150-175 will be where it oscillates over the next year. As I wrote two weeks ago, I would absolutely not be surprised to see it back at the same $200 mark by the time we’re writing about Grand Prix Vegas 3.0 and Modern Masters 2017.

Conclusions

Modern Masters 2015 is now officially behind us, and while I’m sure there will still be plenty of drafts over the coming weeks, it’s time to look elsewhere. Grand Prix Charlotte next week will be the best place to begin to do that, and Modern has certainly proven itself to be a fairly open format at this point, something I plan to address ahead of the event next week.

Until then, thanks for reading.

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter
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Jason Alt, ProTrader, Unlocked ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Tribal Gains

June 3, 2015 Jason Alt 14 Comments

It’s no secret that I was in Las Vegas for the Grand Prix and indeed the week leading up to it. If you’re worried that I’m going to skimp on finance content just because I’m coming down off of one of the best weeks of my entire life, fear not, there is a lot that I gleaned from durdling in the desert.

This Isn’t ‘Nam; There Are Rules

Maybe not rules as such (per se) but maybe guidelines. Axioms? Suggestions? Look, I’m trying to contrive a few chestnuts in this series so forgive me a few artistic liberties. Basically what I want to do is see if there are some quick rules of thumb (there I go again using the “r” word) that will help us decide which cards to start examining a little more closely. Is today’s discussion point related to the title? It is now. I was going to call this article “The Hangover” because I just got back from Vegas and obligations are a brutal transition from vacation back to real life and a part of me is afraid that I may have ruined the part of my brain that knows how to write about finance when I was trying to bankrupt a casino with free drinks at a Craps table. The truth is I’m not actually that hung over and that trip to the desert, specifically the tournament site has me thinking more clearly than I have in years. Before we get our first rule (but maybe or maybe not rule #1 with a bullet) in EDH Finance, let’s talk about my moment of clarity.

The Rain Man Speaks

My flight was a 7 AM flight because I broke one of the three rules governing things you don’t do at 7 AM.

Schedule a college class
Feed a Mogwai – technically 7 AM is after midnight. Better safe than sorry
Fly

A 7 AM flight is miserable for people who are used to getting up for work early every day, something I’m not about. A flight that early meant I should be at the airport at 5-ish so they can open each individual deckbox in my carry-on to check for any trace amounts of bomb residue or freedom. I guess EDH decks look like Semtex on a grainy television screen so both flights I had my bag pulled off the conveyor and scrutinized by the TSA. The inconvenience of being pulled out of line was bad enough without having to endure a TSA agent making minimum wage giving me a hard time for running Vivid Lands in a two-color deck. I get it; Vivid Crag is worse than Rugged Highlands. Get out of my face.

Being at the airport at 5 AM after spending the whole week still being awake at 5 AM meant it didn’t make much sense to go to sleep. Things had quieted down in the house where I was staying; until @XWolfmoon decided to casually mention the fact that he had a box of Conspiracy we could draft.

Being offered a spot in a Conspiracy draft is like being asked if you’re a God. You say yes. I said yes. Corbin Hosler said yes. Ryan Bushard said yes. Douglas Johnson said yes. @knife_city from the If Lands Could Kill podcast said yes. Basically, it was total gas. The only thing better than drafting Conspiracy is drafting Conspiracy for free. Sure, you’re basically just opening booster packs if you’re giving all of the value to the guy who let you draft his box, but if you complain about not getting to keep the cards in a free Conspiracy draft, you should probably move into a Unabomber-style shack by yourself because you don’t deserve to interact with people. We were happy to ship our cards back to our generous benefactor, especially when he said he really didn’t care about anything under $10. The generosity train kept rolling when he let me buy what I wanted from the draft openings for buylist. I couldn’t bring myself to keep $9 cards from a free draft, but paying $4 for them felt fine to me. Everyone was happy despite it being 3 AM of our last day in town.

When you may or may not be keeping the cards, money rares tend to stay in packs for a while. I snagged a 4th pick Dack Fayden because I wanted some tasty bait for my Deal Broker – I ended up getting a foil Rout for my UW skies deck. If you did plan on keeping cards under $10, would you draft any differently? I can see taking a foil Goyf over Burst Lightning, but how about a foil Hydra Omnivore? It wasn’t unusual for someone to ask “Hey, what’s a foil Hydra Omnivore worth?” but it was very unusual for… let’s say one hundredth of a nano-second to go by before, without looking up from his cards, someone to say “$18”

The room got quiet. Everyone looked over to see who spoke. Sensing the silence, Douglas Johnson looked up and said “What?” like it’s perfectly normal to blurt out the right price off the top of your head. I picked my phone up and checked, because, of course I did. I had to. We all had to know.

I’m an MTG financier. Corbin is an MTG financier. Ryan is an MTG financier. We were all at that table. If you’d asked, “Hey, what’s a foil Dack Fayden go for?” Ryan, Corbin and I likely answer the question simultaneously with the same or a similar answer. Hydra Omnivore isn’t Dack Fayden. Not only is the card obscure-ish, it’s only been a foil for a short amount of time, being first printed in a Commander supplementary product and getting the foil treatment when Conspiracy first launched. The price has been relatively flat but the creeping up of the spread (I used to use MTGStocks to make graphs for articles but I am really loving the spread overlay on MTG Price) leads me to believe the dealers like Omnivore at $18 more and more. Remember, these guys have a lot more historical data to look at. So do we.

This card has demonstrated an ability to be $15 non-foil. The reprinting injected a lot of new copies into the market and tempered the price of the non-foil, but all of the foil copies we have are from Conspiracy. A reprint of Omnivore is more likely to occur in supplementary product which would preclude a foil printing (unless it’s in Commander’s Arsenal, which would make people pretty upset since the card is not exactly a staple) so given that the card has demonstrated its ability to be very expensive and the fact that a further reprint of a foil seems very unlikely, the dealers are liking a $10 buyin more and more.

Hydras used to be a pretty solid investment due to their popularity with casual players, EDH playability, and the way they scale out of control into the late game. I wrote about why hydras aren’t as good as they used to be already but I hadn’t really stopped to think about why they were good in the first place. This weekend made me think about it a bit more.

Doug blew our minds with his exact hipshot call of the price of Omnivore, not because a financier knowing a price is spectacular, but because he clearly looked up the price of Omnivore recently. His decision to look up the price of a card earlier made him look like Rain Man counting toothpicks, even in a room full of financiers. It isn’t difficult to look up a price in advance of being asked its price, but that doesn’t change the fact that he couldn’t have known we’d ask and looked it up anyway. Why would he do that?

Wrong question. The question is “why hadn’t I?”

Tribal Matters

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. It wasn’t the first time that weekend DJ had demonstrated that he was very familiar with prices. Walking through the dealer hall, I stopped to talk to a vendor I had met at the craps table the night before and while I was gladhanding, DJ was checking the case. I was on vacation, not intending to buy or sell anything but we never really turn off our brains, do we? He pointed to a foil Cavern of Souls priced at $60. Most people wouldn’t bat an eye. “That’s not too much to pay for Cavern” most people would think. “It’s a good tribal card, it’s played in Legacy a bit and the foils looks cool.” What if you double checked to make sure $60 wasn’t last month’s price?

Because $60 is last month’s price. It’s this month’s buylist price, and any time you can buy a card for its buylist price, you probably should.

Could we have predicted this would happen eventually? Yeah, absolutely we could have. Would it have been good to buy these at $40 (or $25 buylist) a year ago? Well, obviously. However, every time a card is at a price and you can explain that price, people aren’t all that inclined to buy in. $40 for foil cavern right after rotation didn’t seem insane to people, but $100 for it now doesn’t seem insane either. What can we even learn from this?

The Lesson

Lesson One is to be like Douglas Johnson. Know prices not because you’re Rain Man and you memorize Magic card prices the way other savants memorize facts about trains or whatever but because you look at them a lot. Doug looked up Hydra Omnivore because he looks up a lot of prices often. Why not pick a few cards to check every week? Profound spikes are noticeable and MTG Price does an excellent job of taking notice. The data analysis tools at your fingertips as a reader of my articles and therefore an MTG Price Pro Trader are the industry benchmark as far as I’m concerned. If that makes me sound like a shill, I’ll point out that I still buylist using Quiet Speculation’s Trader Tools app. I like to use whatever I consider the best and I think our price tracking software is amazing. It can let you know about profound movements, but it can’t hold your hand and catch slow, incremental, inevitable growth.

You can read our reports but you can also check our graphs yourself. Price spikes are hard to predict sometimes months in advance but weeks or days in advance we have enough information about upcoming events that we can usually read the writing on the wall. True-Name Nemesis made Stoneforge Mystic go up in price. That was predictable. What should have been equally predictable was the price of foil Cavern of Souls going up the same amount of money over the same time period but doing it much more slowly and deliberately. Yet a dealer took the card to Vegas with the buylist price written on the toploader because he hasn’t bothered to check for a change in the last month and DJ ate his lunch.

We talk a lot about events in MTG Finance – something that changes the status quo or facilitates a price change. However, even though we all know this on an intuitive level, it’s worth repeating every time we open up an application or website to check price movements.

“Tribal Cards Don’t Need Events”

They don’t need to print a sweet new Goblin card or must-resolve Elf to make Cavern of Souls “spike”. Hydra Omnivore goes in Hydra decks (though not my Vorel of the Hydra Clade deck) for silly casual players and the fact that he’s a silly Thorn Elemental variant that gets better in multiplayer games (hence the bomb status in Conspiracy) almost feels secondary.

What’s next? Could be this, a land that is tribally-relevant, can get played outside of Standard, has casual appeal and when some jackass bought out TCG Player and listed his copies for $45, people probably went “Yeah, that seems OK.” Maybe they’ll say the same thing in two years when $45 is the real price. Or maybe it won’t be. All I know is that the spread is decreasing, the supply is not increasing and it won’t take them printing any more slivers ever again for this card to start to climb. The price looks very reasonable to me right now. But I’m checking back next week just to be sure.

MTGPrice Blog