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Insider: MTG Stock Watch 10/5/14

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Welcome back readers/speculators to another MTG Stock watch. As usual we'll begin with our "Penny Stocks" section.

Penny Stocks

#1 Searing Blaze - Player Rewards (+206.7%) - With the recent success of burn decks, courtesy of Eidolon of the Great Revel, it's not that surprising that the original Searing Blood of Modern has seen an uptick in demand. The artwork is gorgeous and with the discontinuation of the Player Rewards program shortly after this one's release there just aren't as many out in circulation as you'd think.

searing blaze stock

#2 Hornet Queen - M15 (+144.7%) - With the resurgence of green as the dominant color of Standard, coupled with the fact that the mono-green devotion deck lost very little at rotation (mainly Garruk) it's no surprise that Hornet Queen has gone up in demand so drastically. My past FNM I actually played a Jund Monsters build running two of her; she won me two games by stalling the board until I was able to bring bigger threats to the table.

Her high CMC does usually mean she's a one- or two-of (not a four-of) so her price ceiling is somewhat limited. Still, if you picked any up at $1.50, a nice 144% profit is nothing to sneeze at.

hornet queen stock

#3 Jeskai Ascendency - Khans of Tarkir (+95.1%) - This one is no surprise either. It's blown up as a powerful and consistent Modern combo deck. There is concern about WoTC issuing a quick ban on the card (the Modern combo deck has proven it can pull off turn two wins, which WoTC is very much against for the format). I do think they'll let the metagame adapt a bit to see if it really will be oppressive, but if I had any foil copies of these, I'd out them now while people are still clamoring to build the deck.

Jeskai Ascendency stock

#4 Deflecting Palm - Khans of Tarkir (+26.4%) - This card debuted in the Jeskai Burn deck that won the first SCG Open post-Khans (and put another pilot into Top 8). It serves as an excellent foil to the deck's main problem, which is getting outclassed quickly (their biggest creature is a 3/3 flyer). Deflecting Palm can provide the quick psuedo burn spell needed to win before the opponent can stabilize or it can be used to save a creature from taking lethal damage.

deflecting palm stock

#5 Anger of the Gods - Theros (+25.9%) - This is likely a change forced by the emergence of the previously mentioned Jeskai Burn deck, whose entire creature base have a toughness under 3 (most of the time). Anger provides a nice turn three sweeper that can kill all the mana dorks currently seeing play as well as the hyper aggressive creatures currently being played. It even allows a Courser to survive through it, making it an excellent addition to G/R Devotion or various GRx monster decks.

anger of the gods stock

Blue Chip Stocks

Now let's look over our Legacy staple/blue chip stocks.

#1 Bayou - Revised (+3.53%) - This isn't wholly unexpected. The BUG style decks have been picking up steam recently and made up the entire Top 4 of the last SCG Legacy event. Black-green is a good color combination for Legacy right now.

bayou stock

#2 Force of Will - Alliances (-3.37%) - With an increase in BUG and Elf decks, the amount of decks that can two-for-one themselves to prevent a key spell from resolving takes a hit. Force of Will, while often considered a sacred cow for many decks, is the first card sided out in a lot of match ups. It has no home in Elves or Death and Taxes both of which have had strong showings this past year (especially Elves).

force of will stock

#3 Show and Tell - Urza's Saga (-2.38%) - This one's not a surprise either. While the power level of the Show and Tell decks is very high, they have to hit their combo quickly, and sometimes just durdle until they die. To make matters worse, resolving a Show and Tell or Sneak Attack through countermagic and/or hand disruption is getting more difficult--many decks, including Elves, are now splashing black for Thoughtseize to force the Show and Tell player to dig for extra missing combo pieces.

show and tell stock

#4 Taiga - Revised (-1.59%) - Zoo is still seeing almost no play in Legacy and this dual is basically reserved to Charbelcher decks if it sees any play at all. It's still a strong EDH land (as it has green in it), but even in EDH red is considered one of the weaker colors. It's also important to notice that like many of the duals (that all spiked back in March/April of 2014) this one overall is continuing its downward trend.

taiga stock

#5 Wasteland - Tempest (-1.37%) - With a rise in Elves the Legacy decks looking to deny their opponents any resources are having a hard time keeping Wasteland afloat. When the current bogeyman of the format plays a lot of forests and mana dorks, destroying a non-basic land isn't the place to be. While it does destroy the Gaea's Cradles which are often key to a fast Elves win, it doesn't shut them down outright like against land-light or mana-intensive decks.

wasteland stock

One interesting thing to note is how these staples have often waffled between going up one week and down the next. While the overall trend is still clearly negative across the board, this type of up/down behavior actually lends some credibility to the thought that they might be stabilizing in price.

Value Stocks

Our previous value stocks are finally starting to gain some traction as players realize that while fetchlands are good in Standard, scrylands are even better. Fetchlands offer untapped mana fixing at a low price (one life) and provide a card in the graveyard, but they don't provide continuous mana fixing (i.e. if I have a Bloodstained Mire on turn one that I crack for a Swamp to play Thoughtseize, I can't cast Eidolon of the Great Revel on turn two because I don't have double red).

While this seems obvious it's really only showing itself by the general positive trends we're seeing in all the temples right now. All of the Theros Temples show upward growth (which is somewhat surprising given that those are the most numerous temples). Temple of Malice from Born of the Gods has shown the most growth while the more expensive two (Enlightenment and Plenty) have remained relatively stable. Both Temple of Epiphany and Temple of Malady have had steady growth since the Khans release and if you picked up the Epiphany's when I first started this series you'd have doubled up by now.

Last but not least is Mana Confluence, my #1 pick for four weeks (two articles) running. It has gone from a $10 card to a $17 card--not quite the percentage jump as Epiphany, but still an impressive 70% gains in less than two months.

Growth Stocks

Finally we get to our growth stocks. We see a major hit for Innistrad, which may be an indication that people who previously wanted it for Snapcaster's or Liliana's are now fearing a reprint of sorts. This is somewhat ironic given that Avacyn Restored saw an uptick of 7.6% despite the fact that the previously #1 most desired card (Disciple of Griselbrand) was already announced as the next GP promo.

Mirrodin Besieged also took a pretty big hit within the past two weeks. I can only imagine it's a delayed effect from the inclusion of Sword of Feast and Famine in the Modern decks. As it was the chase card of the set, the uptick in supply has pushed people away from wanting to purchase boxed product.

Lastly we see Zendikar also taking a pretty big hit. This one isn't surprising given the ROI on a pack of Zendikar took a big hit with the announcement of the Onslaught fetches (afterall, it's much less enticing to crack a $50 Scalding Tarn then it is to crack an $85 Scalding Tarn).

Week of 10/05/14 Box Most Recent Completed Auction Second Most Recent Third Most Recent Fourth Most Recent New Average Avg comparison
Innistrad $177.50 $172.49 $169.49 $168.99 $172.12 -13.22%
Dark Ascension $99.99 $99.99 $99.99 $82.00 $95.49 3.66%
Avacyn Restored $135.00 $133.00 $139.00 $144.99 $138.00 7.61%
Scars of Mirrodin $187.99 $169.99 $147.50 $169.00 $168.62 0.07%
Mirrodin Besieged $138.49 $117.49 $145.99 $127.00 $132.24 -25.23%
New Phyrexia $294.90 $280.00 $295.00 $349.99 $304.97 -4.97%
Zendikar $405.33 $455.00 $499.00 $405.00 $441.08 -10.68%
Worldwake $622.00 $659.99 $740.00 $621.00 $660.75 -1.25%
Rise of the Eldrazi $625.00 $490.00 $485.00 $510.00 $527.50 -2.37%

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