If you're reading this, that means you're an Insider here at Quiet Speculation. Based on that, I am making a very basic assumption about you: you hate losing value on Magic cards.

Well, I'm right there with you, friend. There's nothing I hate more than when I know I should be taking action on a card, but dither about it until it's too late. For example, Chord of Calling wasn't announced super early in the M15 spoiler schedule, but with convoke in the set, it was a likely candidate for reprint. I only had two copies of the original version, but it still bothers me that those copies now have a retail price lower than the buylist price before M15 (and they're still sitting in my binder).

With situations like that in mind, I'm interested in minimizing value losses from my cube in the coming year. Many of the considerations in this article will apply to your Commander cards, too, but I'm sticking with what I know, which is Cube.

Know Your Approach for Cube

Broadly, there's two ways one can run a Cube:

1. A gradually improving list that only switches in upgrades, never downgrades or lateral moves. This is the kind of cube that you tune and test and try to get perfect, and once a card has earned its slot, there had better be a really good reason to remove it.

2. An ever-changing list with cards moving in and out on a regular basis, for many different reasons: power level, fun, novelty, a sweet trade opportunity, or finance.

It's the last one, finance, that will be our topic today. If you're more the type of cube manager as described first above, you probably don't care that you're likely to lose value on Elspeth, Sun's Champion in the coming months. But if you're sensitive to value losses and don't mind a more fluid approach to cube building, read on.

Current Standard Cards

Cards currently in Standard are the ones that are most interesting for a manager of a fluid cube. The aforementioned Champion of the Sun is a good example here. There's no way a $20 retail price is maintained after a Duel Deck printing in the short term and rotation in the medium term. Planeswalkers that are only good in Standard and casual formats tend to drop below $10 after rotation, so trading them out now lets one lock in value at a higher price (with the intention to reacquire once the floor is reached).

Yeah, you're giving up playing with Elspeth in your cube or deck for a few months. That's why this approach is only worthwhile to those who are sensitive about value losses and willing to have a fluid cube that changes out cards regularly.

Other candidates for cards with prices derived mainly from Standard play that are likely to lose a ton of value at rotation are Sylvan Caryatid, Courser of Kruphix (although this one has poked its head into Modern on occasion), and Hero's Downfall (also negatively impacted by the pre-con reprint recently announced). Remember what happened to Thragtusk when it rotated. The clear call there was to sell and rebuy, and that's the case with many Standard cards.

Just because a card like Elspeth looks like a likely candidate to drop at rotation doesn't mean that Theros cards are a sell across the board.

Eternal staples, like Thoughtseize, might drop a little at rotation, but in general, these are cards that will go up until they are reprinted next. I'm not worried about any value lost on cards like Thoughtseize because I expect it to be minimal. Another big example of this kind of card is the Khans of Tarkir fetchland cycle. You don't need to worry about losing value on your personal set (assuming you purchase at or near the floor and don't overspend), so just hold them through rotation and continue to enjoy playing with them.

As opposed to Theros block cards, Khans of Tarkir cards are currently near peak supply, so acquiring the cards you want from this set right now is advisable. A year from now, when we're approaching the KTK rotation, we'll be looking to sell the Standard-only staples that have grown in price. Everything else will either be an Eternal staple or something that we acquired at its floor price, meaning a loss in value isn't really a concern.

The one category of current Standard cards I haven't touched on are ones like Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea. These are cards that were big last season, but because they don't see much current play, their prices do not reflect the previous year's demand and this year's lack of supply. These two cards in particular are both around $4, which is a floor price for each.

They could both drop all the way to $2 at rotation, but outing and then reacquiring for just a couple dollars is getting pretty nit-picky even by my standards. Some cards are just worth holding onto even if you expect to lose a buck or two, and that's where I categorize these. It's only ones you're reasonably certain you don't want in your cube in the long term that you should be getting rid of immediately.

Modern Masters Looms

The other category of card that is likely to lose value in the next few months is any card likely to see reprint in Modern Masters 2015. We've only seen one Modern Masters set released before for precedent, but I think it's fair to say that anything printed at common or uncommon is likely to lose most of its value, anything printed at rare is likely to lose significant value (but possibly regain it, as in the case of Cryptic Command), and anything printed at mythic is likely to lose minimal value.

This means that expensive commons like $7 Serum Visions and $5 Smash to Smithereens have got to go (this goes beyond Cube into Modern, by the way. And if you have playsets of these, the amount of money at stake is relatively significant, too).

Money uncommons like Aven Mindcensor and Goremand are also candidates of cards that are likely to drop to 50 percent of their current prices overnight. Goremand just got a Duel Deck printing, but there's nothing keeping it from showing up in Modern Masters 2015, too.

Casual rares have got to go, as those were the things that suffered the most damage after the first Modern Masters. Competitive rares are trickier, though. I already mentioned Cryptic Command, which has kind of a crazy chart:

Cryptic Command is an extreme, but here's a card that lost a little value on its reprint, only to gain a lot of value in the year since. This means that a card like Snapcaster Mage may not be a snap-sell.

Quick aside: The Modern Masters 2015 announcement doesn't specify Innistrad as a returning plane, but it doesn't rule it out either. It says, "including Zendikar, Mirrodin, Ravnica, Lorwyn, Kamigawa, and Alara." The first Modern Masters announcement very explicitly stated "Cards are reprints from Eighth Edition through Alara Reborn," so I think it is optimistic to assume Innistrad reprints are definitely coming. End aside.

Regardless of that aside, my point is that a card like Snapcaster Mage, which sees tons of play, may dip a little upon reprint, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have a fire sale on my playset. If anything, I feel fairly safe holding onto it.

Consider Your Buy-In Cost

There are other cards I don't feel so safe about. Ignoble Hierarch, currently sitting around $70, has been skipped over a few times now, and I'm not so sure it will avoid the reprint hammer again. If that happens, and it happens at rare, I am very confident the card will drop precipitously. However, I traded for my cube's copy quite a while ago, when the card was retailing for $25. If Hierarch is printed at rare and loses half its value, that still puts it at $35, above where I traded in a couple years ago.

This is a judgment call, honestly. I'm still losing a whole bunch of value if I don't rid myself of my Hierarch before the reprint, and even though I think it's one of the best mana dorks available, I don't need it in my cube.

There's other cards that I traded into well below their current retail prices: my $5 Stoneforge Mystic, my $10 Elesh Norn // Elesh Norn, my $15 Karn Liberated, etc. Any of these cards could get reprinted, but because I got in on my copies at the floor, it's very unlikely I'm losing anything other than virtual, perceived value.

In these situations, you need to look critically at the card and weigh 1) how much you want it in your cube versus 2) how much you want to lock in the value you've gained on the card. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what to do in those instances—you have to figure out what you value more on your own.

As Always: It's Okay to Lose Value

Sometimes being an MTG financier means you only see cards in terms of dollars and cents, but remember: it's okay to decide you like playing with a card enough that you are willing to hold a card through rotation or reprint in order to continue playing with that card. If that's how you want to roll, that's your prerogative. But if you just can't handle losing those extras few bucks, I hope today's article was useful to you. Until next time.