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Liliana of the Veil: After Delver and Pod got neutered, Modern's premiere Planeswalker has seen a steady rise in value along with a plummeting spread. It's interesting to see how the average retail price lags behind buylists. Look carefully at the 2YR graph; buy prices started increasing well before retail prices did. In fact, retail prices were still shrinking while buy prices were gaining. That's why looking at both sides of the market is the only way to get the complete picture. Retail prices always have a bit of 'wishful thinking' involved with them, but buy prices are open offers with cash money on the table. It's important to pay attention to both.
Ignoble Hierarch: Deathrite Lite is gonna see some camera time today. It's the premiere mana accelerator of the format, and the price already reflects as much. It's cooled off since it's October peak, but $50-$60 for a mana dork seems too expensive. That's all the more reason to expect a MMA2 reprint. Owners can enjoy any bump in price from the Pro Tour, but if you already missed the boat over the summer, you should probably sit this one out.
Gavony Township: Here's another great example of the value of better information. The 3-month graph on Gavony Township is basically useless, but the 2YR tells another tale entirely. It's been spotted at the Pro Tour alongside the Noblest of Hierarchs, and it's still a great combo with Kitchen Finks. The #1 problem here is that the spread is massive. That generally implies that dealers aren't moving through too many of them. This might be one of the better specs of the day, and I don't think it'll see a MMA2 reprint.
Expedition Map: Yep, another $1 common enters the ranks of Modern. Considering that this fetches any land, I'm surprised it stayed so cheap for so long. I like this chart; your eyes might be drawn to the buylist run-up in early 2013, or the long steady rise until late summer 2013, or maybe the additional gains in early 2014.
But what you really want to pay attention to is January 2015. The buylist prices were going nuts for the prior 3 months, and began a sharp ascent throughout the start of 2015. Once again, the retail price lags behind by a week or two only now experiencing the same gains. This card is not as common as it used to be - well, technically that's not true, but many copies have been filed away into boxes, binders and bins. They're not sitting on draft reject piles anymore, so they'll only get harder to find pending a reprint. There's no reason this can't be a "power common" like Serum Visions. If you can find any cheap copies, it might be a good time to take action.
Splinter Twin: No real movement in the last 30 days, but a small uptick in top buy price. Another card that's allegedly everywhere this weekend. Its fascinating to see these huge spikes followed by long cool-down periods.
Tarmogoyf: Interestingly, there's no buylist movement on this. Apparently dealers have all that they need. Despite that, there's a small uptick in retail price over the last 30 days or so. This card seems mighty expensive right now. I'm not saying it's a good sell-off candidate, but it just seems like $200 for a Modern card is not realistic. I think there's way too much price memory here, and not enough real results.
Golgari Grave-Troll: Note the interesting pre-spike on the 8th...someone had a theory it would get unbanned. A few days before the initial announcement, a dealer decided to increase their buy prices to just above the average retail price. That looks pretty savvy in hindsight.
Geist of Saint Traft: Despite the major run-up over the last month, Geist isn't really being spotted much at the Pro Tour. It looks like this has happened before; a big run-up followed by a steady decline when it proved to be nothing of note.
Vengevine: This was one of the cards we cited in our Insider email about Grave-Troll being unbanned. These second-order derivatives are often the most lucrative pickups after an unbanning; everyone's rushing to beat each other for the unbanned cards, while no one is looking at the bigger picture. Before this most recent spike, Vengevine was close to a 2-year low. And as usual, buy prices began wiggling up well before sell prices did. Will this do anything at the Pro Tour? We shall see.
Chalice of the Void: This is just a great example of a monster run-up on a card. As with Vengevine above, it all depends on how useful it proves to be in this Pro Tour.
Vedalken Shackles: This is one to watch for sure. Doug elaborated why in his Insider email.
Karn Liberated: Ugin's the new kid on the block and his favorite playtime friend is the Man of Steel himself. One of the finishers in TRON, we saw his price begin to tick up around the time when the format got shaken up by unbannings. It's a candidate for an MMA2 reprint, and it's really quite expensive. I don't know that I'd want to be buying these right now, but its definitely worth keeping an eye on this card.
Snapcaster Mage: It seems interesting that the retail price of Snapcaster is trending upwards right now, as it's not one of the cards that truly gained from the bannings of Birthing Pod and Treasure Cruise. Yet so does it ascend. The buy prices have been moving as well, but as usual the retail price seems to be reacting more sharply. The time to get these was either 2013 or last Fall. If you're an owner already, see how they do this weekend. If there's a sharp increase in price, consider a sale.
Blinkmoth Nexus: A top Pro team has brought UG Infect to the tables today, and if there was one card in the deck to pick up, it's this one. You can see the prices adjusting upward already at the end of this 2YR span. Wouldn’t be surprised to see this in MMA2, but the presence of the Infect mechanic makes it less likely.
Ghostway: A great example of a “spike out of nowhere” on a 3-month graph, but something you’d see coming a mile away by looking at the 2-year span. Rumor has it that someone's got a Ghostway Naya deck, built around Restoration Angel, Loxodon Hierarch and Chord of Calling. The deck looks real spicy; Doug included the list in his Insider email earlier today.
Past in Flames: So far, no mention of this at the PT but it's sure got an interesting chart. A glance at the 3M chart shows a slight uptick in average retail price and average buy price, but the top price remains the same. On the 2YR graph, you get a sense of just how volatile this card has been.
Geist will not be in MMA2. Its from Innistrad.
Same for Snapcaster Mage.
Oops, you’re 100% correct. Fixed.
The Chapin on Ghostway rumors… He is on something completely different. Haven’t even seen that deck, or heard talk of it on the coverage.
Infect.
Chapin is not on infect. He’s on some homebrew tasigur hybrid.
Each color combo in the first MM had its own theme. Personally I think there is a >50% chance infect will be included, my guess in either UG or GB.
Also, I sincerely doubt any Innistrad block cards will be included. I think there’s documentation somewhere stating MM2 will contain cards printed no later than Scars. I just don’t care enough to look
Snapcaster absolutely gained from the Treasure Cruise ban. It was arguably the best card in Modern pre-cruise and the fact that they don’t play exceptionally well together caused people to play fewer Snapcasters. Delver decks generally ran one, if any. With Cruise being banned, Snapcaster may be the strongest card in Modern.
Good point.
“Snapcaster Mage: It seems interesting that the retail price of Snapcaster is trending upwards right now, as it’s not one of the cards that truly gained from the bannings of Birthing Pod and Treasure Cruise. ”
I disagree. Snapcaster’s playability in modern in a lot of ways seems inversely corrolated with the existence of Cruise. Snapcaster is a part of Twin, which has been one of the big winners post-ban. On the other side of Treasure Cruise’s stint in modern, realize also that Twin was considered a tier 1 deck pre-KTK, and then became (arguably) a tier 2 deck in the face of a deck ruled by UR Delver and UR(w) burn.
Snapcaster is a card that can be better in decks that want to play a grindier, more attrition-based game, while the UR Delver meta was one that cut a lot of those kinds of decks out of the format.
Also on a more basic level, Snapcaster is kind of a nonbo with Delve cards like treasure cruise. Arguably, drawing 3 cards (or digging 7 cards deep) was a better use of your graveyard. Now, Snapcaster has more of a monopoly on the graveyard, making him a more effective 2-for-1.
I notice a correlation over the different graphs. They all jumped very high in the beginning of 2014. double or triple. that’s huge.
yep, absolutely. Modern has been a very interesting format to follow