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The sky is falling. Modern Masters 2(015) has been confirmed and everyone is now in a rush to sell off their Modern cards suddenly at risk of reprint.
The money is rolling in. Modern 2015 will bring in infinitely more Modern players, and now is the time to get in on cards before they spike! After all, the first Modern Masters raised prices!
…
Those two sentiments are the ones I’ve seen most commonly expressed after the long-awaited announcement of Modern Masters 2015 edition at Worlds last week (which, by the way, was awesome).
I think both views are, at the least, overstated. At worst, it’s fear-mongering or an opportunistic attack. I’ve talked in the past week mainly about slowing down. We have plenty of time until the set actually releases, and we have several months until anything major actually happens.
At least, that’s my take. Today I want to look historically at Modern Masters and see if we can construct a rough timeline of what Modern Masters 2 will look like. Let’s start with the roughest outline, but the one that has largely become the narrative.
Late 2012
Modern Masters is announced. Tarmogoyf sits at $100 and Dark Confidant is around $40.
June 7, 2013
The set is officially released. Goyf sits around $110 for the first week or so of release. Grand Prix Vegas happens and the big vendors start buying up Bobs and Goyfs. They skyrocket to $70 and $145, respectively.
Today
Goyf is $190 and Bob is $80.
First Takeaways
When people talk about Modern Masters “raising the value of Modern,” they’re referring specifically to these two cards. And superficially it’s true--they’re more expensive now than they were before the reprint.
But that misses a lot of context.
Modern Masters raised interest in the format by quite a bit, and these two cards represent the chasest of chase cards for the format. But while increased interest in the format did drive their price up, they’ve stagnated in 2014. In fact, both are essentially flat from where they sat in March. That’s a lot of money to tie up in an asset that didn’t move in nine months.
There’s another interesting note on these two cards. Everyone expected them to be in the set, and yet the prices didn’t move at all in the last months of 2012. You may have expected a dip in prices on the news, but it just didn’t happen. And, in fact, they began to climb again in 2013. Vendilion Clique followed the same trajectory.
I think this gives us a pretty reasonable look at the top end, so let’s move onto the lower end.
I think this is another data point worth considering. Here was essentially the holy grail of casual cards reprinted in the set, and it did take a hit. It plummeted hard from a high of $30 in May 2013 to a low of $17 six months ago. Since then, it has begun to rebound, despite the printing of other similar effects (like Primal Vigor), and is now pushing past $20 again (not a bad place to park some money in 2015, by the way). Meanwhile, lesser-tier casual cards like Stonehewer Giant lost about 50% of their value and haven’t recovered.
Let’s try one with its value tied to competitive play: Blinkmoth Nexus. $13 in the months leading up to the reprint (again with no appreciable drop before the printing), and it bottomed out at $8 before rising back to $11 today.
Let’s try a more fringe one next: Ethersworn Canonist. An important sideboard card, it sat at a solid $10 at the end of 2012. It plunged hard after the printing and bottomed out at $4.50 early this year, where it sits today.
Let’s try the power uncommons next, looking at Spell Snare and Kitchen Finks. Both were around $10 before the reprint. Again, we see both plunging hard after the reprint, falling to $4 by the end of 2013 and sitting there today. Looking farther down the ladder, we see Lava Spike, a common, falling from $4 to $1 (though it is rebounding recently thanks to the resurgence of Burn).
I realize it’s hard to distill an entire set down to a few cards, but the trends I’ve highlighted above hold true across the set in the majority of cases. And that is enough to draw some pretty definitive conclusions about the newest round of Modern reprints.
Conclusions
I think we can delineate some pretty distinct categories of cards, and I’ll do that in a moment. But first, let’s consider what’s happened with the two spoiled cards: Emrakul, the Aeons Torn and Etched Champion.
Both are beginning to slide off the cliff. The prices are trending down and so is the graph, something that seems like it will continue for at least a while moving forward. I’ll address these as we come to them.
Chase Mythics
I just don’t see these moving all that much. Sure, Emrakul isn’t Goyf or Bob, but I have little doubt it won’t follow their path when it comes to Modern Masters 2015. The initial sell-off here seems fine since it’s only a few percentage points of movement but there’s no way we should see a drop of 20%. In other words, I don’t expect Emrakul to fall below $40.
The same likely goes for the other truly chase mythics from the set. I can see the Praetor cycle taking a hit of 30-50% if it’s included, similar to how the Kamigawa Dragon cycle was. The casual mythics won’t hold their value, but I expect Eldrazi or new Goyf/Bob/whatever chase mythic is printed to hold.
The moral here? Don’t panic-sell. Because even if Emrakul were to fall to $35, you’re not really making any money by getting out now. Top buylist on MTG.GG is $32, and even if you get a little more than that you’re basically breaking even by reacquiring. If it follows the chase mythic trend from Modern Masters you’re actually losing cash in the transaction.
Competitive Rares
There will likely be some exceptions, based on the metagame. For instance, Cryptic Command took a bit of a hit before rebounding hard and ultimately rising. But that’s as much due to meta shifts as it does anything about print runs.
Still, competitive rares will hold decently, and a few could even become the next Cryptic or Vial and rise later. Should something like Birthing Pod or Spellskite be reprinted at rare as I expect, the prices will stagnate and drop some, but like Blinkmoth Nexus I don’t see the bottom completely falling out. That means holding onto your copies of cards like these is actually a fine strategy if you believe as I do that this set will drive renewed interest into Modern.
Chase Casual Rares
Basically, if we see Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger at mythic I don’t expect a huge price decrease. That said, the future upside will be significantly limited.
Suppose we get It That Betrays at rare in this set. That’s an $11 casual card I could see being put at rare. I expect a trend similar to Doubling Season on these truly popular casual cards. We could easily see a 20-30% drop on these, but again I’m not sure how much you gain by selling out and rebuying. Trading stuff like this away seems like a better idea, and after a year or so when they bottom out I’ll actively like picking them up again.
Casual Rares
Basically whatever Commander goodies they decide to toss into this set. These are going to get wrecked. Unless we see something on the hugely-popular level as Doubling Season, these are the ones to move out of in the next few months.
Because the drop looks to be so precipitous, I’d rather oversell here than undersell. The cost of reacquiring something like Eldrazi Temple is a lot lower than holding onto copies of this level of card and watching them lose 50% or more of their value.
Uncommons/Commons
Get out of Goremand and Inquisition of Kozilek and Serum Visions now. These cards seem very likely to be reprinted, and they’re looking at a halving (or more) in their price. Can’t recommend holding these.
Wrap-up
What I discovered in looking back over the original Modern Masters is that we never really saw a panic firesale. For the most part, all the price drops (or gains) came when the cards were actually reprinted, not when they were announced or spoiled.
This reinforces my belief that there’s no reason to panic right now. Move out the stuff I suggested now, but a “wait and see” approach on the rest actually seems viable. Remember, this is a nearly-unprecedented occurrence for all of us, and I’m simply doing my best to read the tea leafs and learn from the past.
Thanks for reading,
Corbin Hosler
@Chosler88 on Twitter
Your entire article ignores two things that are massively different between this release and the last one.
1. Supply on MMA2 will be much much larger. Low side is 2.5-5x as large a print run. This matters a lot.
2. That surge in demand was because MMA made a lot of people at the shop level realize Modern was a new format they might be interested in. At that point Modern was a relatively new concept. There will be much much less growth in the formats customer base this go around because most people know about Modern.
1.) You have no source for this. They said it will be larger but still limited. Anything else is just conjecture, and more people play the game now than did two years ago.
2.) This is a matter of opinion. There are a TON of people who’ve wanted to get into Modern but haven’t been able to due to lands and the rest. Fetchlands were the first huge move, and this will be the second. I’m of the opinion there’s still plenty of pent-up demand, it seems you disagree. Either way, it’s a question of opinion and not fact.
1. They are printing in two more languages. It stands to reason that in order to do this the total print run will be larger than the English on print run of MMA.
2. This is not a matter of opinion but merely a misunderstanding of what I am talking about. The difference between now and then isn’t in “people who want into modern but currently are waiting”, it is in “people who did not even know Modern was a real format” vs “most people now know”. Modern was still a new enough format that most LGS’s didn’t have a crowd playing it. Much like Commander made even more people aware of EDH (without changing the barrier to entry) MMA did similar. MMA2 will not have this effect on any appreciable scale.
1. Of course, no one is or will dispute that. That’s a hell of a lot different than making a hyper-exact statement like “2.5-5x as large on the low side.”
2. I can agree with that. The thing is there’s basically no way to calculate what that actually means in terms of players entering the format.
2.5x is a very conservative estimate with 2 new languages. 2.5 times the print run by itself is game changing in terms of how it impacts prices.
Basically one thing we can know is. all signs are more cards+less format interest generated means this set will be harsher on card prices than MMA.
Sure, we might not see Tarmogofy increase in prices based on a hypothetical MM2015 reprinting (depending on how much MM2015 is printed and how many new players pick up the format), but if you look at the price histories of cards that were not included in MMA, especially Zendikar block, pretty much everything that could be considered a modern staple doubled in price within six month, some faster (before their increases could really be attributable to the GP Richmond spike).
While I’m not buying cards that could be reprinted in MM2015, it’s hard for me to imagine cards from Innistrad and Return to Ravnica not increasing in price. I guess that is some slight chance that everyone who wants to play modern already is, and getting other staples cheap doesn’t impact the prices of Shocks, Snappy, and the like, but that seems pretty unlikely to me.
For Zendikar block, the time to get in was before the end of January 2013 (about six months post-rotation). This is the same place RTR will be over the next month or so, and if we are using MMA as a guide, I believe there is should be some sense of urgency in picking up RTR block staples now.
I agree, RtR seems ripe for picking up. I may have to revisit my Rotation pickups article for it now that we have this info.
Speaking to the limited quantities issue, you don’t think that 3 languages makes it automatically 3 times as much as MM1? Sure, they may not print as much in Chinese or Japanese as English, but can’t we make a fairly good assumption that a 3x multiplier makes sense?
Also, everyone may know about Modern now, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has gotten into it. I think that more interest does exist for the format out there, but I am not sure if 9.99 packs will help spike it. I do understand that WOTC is smart enough to not leave the money on the table they did with MM1. I hope that means the set was put together with a pack EV worthy of the higher price tag. It does seem dangerous though since if this is going to become yearly, as the new name suggests, it will be hard to maintain the value of those packs.
I seriously doubt as much Chinese or Japanese product is printed as English, so I think automatically assuming 3x is erroneous. The fact is, it’s best to not make assumptions here because we really have no idea how much more there will be.
The language print at the very least seems reasonable to say a double or more in supply (which is what I said). Then on top of that they are printing enough for 3 worldwide GPs simultaneously to have enough product for 20k players AND side events. Sure you can say this is conjecture, but guesses and conjecture are literally the name of the game when it comes to predicting future valuations of something.
Bottom line? I think it’s worth getting against all of the advice in your article. You should be selling with both hands. Print run aside, this establishes supplemental reprint sets as a fixture in an environment of stagnating game growth. You’re asking people to fiddle while Rome burns.
Supplemental reprint sets have been a given for 2+ years. This changes nothing in that regard.
In terms of railing against all the advice I offered, I suggested trading away or selling everything but the truly chase Mythics and Rares. I’m not sure that’s akin to “fiddling while Rome burns.”
Even if there is lots more MM15 printed, the excess supply could be made up for by the increased booster price and the increased player interest in modern WOTC has now proven that it doesn’t want to crash the secondary market multiple times. My bet is they’ve hired an economist to tell them the right amount to print to have a larger but not overwhelming affect on the market and that Corbin’s analysis ends up roughly correct.
The other thing to realise is that it’s still 6 months away and we still have very little information, I like acting contrary to the fear and would adopt a hold/buy policy especially for the next few months.
Even so, as Corbin points out all assumptions at this point can’t be proven. Making any choice now means you have to accept that you could be wrong and the nature of he game is that we have to make some kind of choice.
So no matter your view accept that there’s a real chance you’re wrong and that your expected edge front his discussion/decision is minimal at best given the incomplete information we all have.
Regarding the commons and uncommons.
What effect do you think it will on the price of foils?
Also, New Art. Modern Masters had quite a few cards with new art and “down-grades” (rare to uncommon/uncommon to common). If Serum Visions had new art, would the price change more then $2? Manamorphose got new art and the MM version is more the the original (except foil).