One of the more interesting discussions on the Internet today (at least when it comes to the world of Magic finance), is the question of what the best long-term spec is to stock up on.

The original post over on Reddit created a flurry of responses, and I thought I would weigh in as well.

Responses ranged all over the place, from Deathrite Shaman to Herald of Torment (for after Standard rotation) to  Shocklands. There's a lot of valuable responses, and many of them are what I would consider good speculation targets, but I also noticed that they're all operating from a fundamentally different paradigm than I was when I approached the question.

All about the Casual

Most of the people replying had their eye on the competitive market. And it's hard to blame them, since that's what we deal with most of the time. But that's not how I approach it.

When we're talking about long-term specs, the main thing I'm looking for is consistency. I don't want something that could be banned next week or something that could be replaced or simply fall out of favor in the metagame. Instead, I want something I can lose in a closet for a few years and not worry about.

That something is the casual market. For me, this was an easy question. If I were to pick one card I wanted 100 copies of, with a sell date two years from now, I'd probably choose Chromatic Lantern.

Why?

It's simple. Because the card goes into just about any Commander deck, and even if something "better" comes along, you'll just end up running both. And Lantern still has a fairly low price considering it's a recent card. It's going to slowly go the way of Coalition Relic, which climbed up over $10 before being reprinted, and even now is still worth a decent amount. Even if Lantern doesn't increase 500 percent in two years like some of the riskier calls might, it's certainly not going to go down. It's a safe spec, and that's what I want long-term.

But that's me. What do you think?

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