This may be true to an extent, but aren’t there still tons of boxes for sale in the $85-$90 range? There’s probably a lot of RtR product out there, and it may take a while longer to overcome this volume. I’d love to see this product sell out everywhere, driving prices higher. It would be quite rewarding – perhaps I need to acquire a few more boxes of RtR before it’s too late?

Great point, Matthew. Everything doesn’t have to succeed simultaneously – I agree with you! I also agree that this type of hype is another selling opportunity. This was mostly the point of my article. If you got in near the bottom, you should be profitable here, and there’s little wrong with taking some profits off the table to reduce risk and exposure. Especially when cards haven’t been fully proven yet!

The cards don’t all have to be great at the same time in order for them all (or mostly all) to perform well as specs. As the metagame evolves different cards will see heavy play at different times and prices will spike at different times. I think all this hype and speculative buying could be viewed as a good thing as it is providing opportunity for those who took positions in cards at bottomed out prices to profit without even having to gamble on whether their specs will actually see heavy play in the new standard. It’s just another form of hype you can sell into.

I can definitely understand your argument regarding foil Lilianas. All I can say is that a reprint may not necessarily impact price as much as you think – especially on set foils. Still, I don’t plan on holding my 1 foil forever. If her price increases reasonably by 3rd Theros set as you predict, I’ll likely take my handy profit and move onto the next bet. I am not delusional enough to expect her to hit $400+ like foil Jace, and I’m certainly not going to sit around and wait for this to happen. Too much risk indeed.

All I can say is – buy Standard staples from sets which are getting “boring”. When people get really tired of drafting DGR over and over again, that’s probably when it’s optimal to pick up solid players like Supreme Verdict, Jace, Architect of thought, etc. Then as Standard is about to rotate you start selling while everyone else wants to buy all these strong cards to test with. That’s my strategy anyways.

Looking over my comments last night, I’m not sure Geist of Saint Traft is a good target. I recall that part of my reasoning the night before was that Bestow added a decent amount to Geists playability, but…there really isn’t any evidence of that.

However, I’m still a little leery of Lilliana. Foils don’t go up quickly (except in rare cases), and its often tempting to sit on them for years. And with a reprint being all but inevitable, that doesn’t seem like the safest bet.

What I’d do, personally, is sit on foil lillianas until the third set of Theros arrives, and then start selling. Its highly unlikely there would be a reprint that quickly, but by then the price should be increasing at a more gradual rate.

Then I’d sit and wait for Lilliana to be reprinted, and (assuming its printed in something like Modern Masters 2 and not a core set) start snatching the original Lilliana foils. Panic selling should put them low enough for a tidy profit once people realize mythic rare foils are still hard to come by, even after being reprinted.

But thats just my two cents.

Anyway. On another topic, do you folks see any ways this feeding frenzy thats currently going on can be leveraged? I doubt QS is the only group thats frothing at the mouth for easy money. I can’t see a way to take advantage of it other than just selling into the market while people are scrambling for States but I’m not as experienced as some of the people on here.

This is a very valid point, David. And no bannings on the horizon to ding Liliana in Legacy as far as I see. Thanks for the add.

While I agree with many points on both sides. I do NOT think Modern is the driving force for demand of Foil Liliana’s. Legacy is the culprit for that one.

Thank you very much for the comment and thorough analysis.

Many of the points you made above are valid – I tend to shy away from speculating on expensive cards because they require a much larger investment. I don’t have the time to launch into an extensive counter-argument, so I’ll try to be brief.

Liliana is arguably the most played Planeswalker right now. Jace is banned in Modern and he and Liliana are neck and neck in Legacy. Yet foil Jaces continued to rise to astronomical levels after he left Standard a couple years ago. Liliana may follow suit – perhaps not to the same levels but certainly higher.

I don’t get very excited about Geist, on the other hand. He was played heavily in Standard and he sees considerably less play in Eternal formats. Granted his price reflects this, and I do often condone investing in cards that have fallen out of favor but should see a recovery. But I like to bet on the sure thing more often than not. Foil Lilianas just feels safer to me. Tarmogoyf and Jace 2.0 have both been reprinted recently yet original set foils are still way expensive. I don’t think the reprint argument holds as strongly here.

At the end of the day, I think I have a little preference bias in this debate. I never played Geist but I was rarely intimidated by him on the other side of the table. Meanwhile Liliana has just demolished me in the past. But they are both legitimate targets – this may be a good debate to continue in the QS forums 🙂

I do have one question though. This may just been my sleep deprived brain throwing gibberish, but why would you want to grab foil copies of Lilliana of the Veil over something like Geist of Saint Traft? I get that Lilliana has MUCH more potential for profit, but…Lilliana seems much more risky than the Geist.

Think about it. Its become a MASSIVE force in Modern and I believe (again, sleep deprived brain) legacy. The price even on the non-foils is huge. Its also a card with a fairly generic title (The Veil in question is an artifact of Lillaianas, if I’m not mistaken. Its not bound to Innistrad in any way).

With all this in mind, reprints seem pretty much inevitable. Even assuming wizards doesn’t just shove it in the next Modern Masters, it can be reprinted at any point.

Geist of Saint Traft on the other hand…less so. Its name is strongly tied to Innistrad (Geist has never been used in any set other than Innistrad, and seeing as its a derivative of “spirit” it isn’t likely to be used. In addition, Saint Traft refers to a specific person/former person in Innistrad) and due to the fact that its colors aren’t in favor right now (the whole pod/jund situation) the price is lower then it should be.

And for the critical point. Most people who want foils have been playing Modern for awhile (This is just my assumption. It seems unlikely that someone dipping their toes will run to foil out their decks immediately). The people who want foil Lillianas, in all likelihood already have them. A lot of the interest can be attributed to speculators who wish to have them to hoard for a later sale. It seems like a similar situation to the one you wrote an entire article about above.

The Geist on the other hand, isn’t quite so risky. Its at its low point, its a mythic in a soon to (VERY soon to) rotate set. It has applications in modern (even if its deck(s) aren’t dominant at the moment), and due to Modern kicking off later than usual, has a decent period of low interest to let you snap up deals as they arise. The margins aren’t as good as Snappy or Lilliana, but it seems like a MUCH safer bet.

…So, what am I missing? I’m sure theres something. But for the life of me, I can’t see what it is.