Yes I very much like Torpor Orb under $1 and Spellskite 🙂 Good to see we are in agreement. This weekend’s GP should be very interesting to monitor. I suspect multiple cards will be moving in price in response to any successful decks, especially if new cards are showcased!

Modern is the easiest format to speculate on.

I noticed a simple trend in Modern. If price is high: sell. If price is low: buy.

This does not work in standard or legacy.

For a certain card in modern, use this checklist:

card played? yes –> price low? yes –> buy/trade

legacy cards: you can speculate on old cards, but that’s mostly risky.

you can speculate on new cards, but those are modern cards too (abrupt decay).

standard cards: standard prices fluctuate too fast (jace, architect of thought). You can invest in a card that is played, but if the price doesn’t jump before rotation, you’ll lose money. If you don’t sell fast enough, you lose money. A new set makes the format too unpredictable for speculation.

Also, this summer was the best proof how safe modern bets are:

it’s summer, modern season is delayed, but still we see prices go up. That’s clearly promising for this eternal format.

Fetchland are very high in price now. In standard, it would be too late to sell them now, but in Modern, you can still sell them.

Only thing you shouldn’t do is be too greedy and hope they are higher next year. We all know they are going to reprint them in the future. Make money now, and let them dump the price. After that, prices will go up again.

That’s why we buy shocklands last 6 months.

Thanks for the info! This is definitely worth exploring further. I sense a collaborative article in the future 🙂

Hmm.. link is not working, just search ‘redemption cutoff date mtgo’ in google, it’s the first link.

SOM, NPH and M12 will no longer be redeemable as of Nov 4th. Scroll to the bottom of the link for other dates.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/digital/magiconline….

“As a general rule, Magic Online sets will be available for redemption roughly one month after they are released. If a redeemable set runs out of stock before its Redemption Guarantee Date, the set will be reprinted. After a redeemable set’s Redemption Guaranteed Date has passed, such set will be available while supplies last or until its Cutoff Date, whichever comes first.”

What happened this year was that WoTC ran out of paper MBS sets in the early spring. Once that happened, you could no longer redeem MBS sets through the online store. There was a small announcement in the WoTC forums, but it was easy to miss. SOM and NPH are still available for redemption. MBS is the only set in recent memory that WoTC ‘ran out of’ before the cutoff date.

It’s quite possible that the fastlands are staying low in price because of redemption, though this is hard to prove. I could imagine that SOM sets are being redeemed for cards like Mox Opal, and the fastlands are meeting demand, keeping prices on those depressed. It could be that after redemption closes, we start to see some price strength in these lands. It will be interesting to watch.

Matthew,

Thanks for adding this MTGO perspective. Since I’m not on MTGO, I wasn’t aware of the differences in redemption dates. Why would SOM and NPH redemption continue on while MBS ends sooner? Is there rationale behind this? Certainly this is worth pursuing further. What other sets will be exiting redeemability in the near future?

On the other hand, supply of SOM and NPH is more dynamic due to redemption being open still. This might explain why prices on cards from these sets are more sluggish. Demand for cards from these sets goes up, supply goes up in response, muting any price increases or in the case of the fastlands, bringing prices down further.

Torpor Orb is acting differently, but I’d be hesitant to extrapolate price movement on a single card into any broader trend.

There are several factors you need to consider for card reprint potential.

1.) If printed in a standard legal set, would the card prove to be too good…the beauty of the older formats is that they weed out the weaker cards down to a much smaller card pool (usually). So reprinting a modern staple in a standard legal set runs the risk of warping the standard environment, however, it’s only these types of mass reprintings that greatly drop a cards value. Reprinting a card in a specialty deck (like the Planechase ones) wouldn’t cause it’s price to drop considerably like it does when it shows up in a standard legal set.

2.) Does the card contain mechanics/names that would feel out of place in new sets. This is one reason why I think Chord of Calling has jumped so high despite the modern season being a long ways away. It’s unlikely that convoke would be reprinted in a standard legal set (I think this one has a solid shot of showing up in one of the commander decks though). Another good example is Inquisition of Kozilek, as it has an Eldrazi’s name in the title, it would be very ackward to reprint in a standard legal set w/o referencing the Eldrazi. Phyrexian Mana is another good example (hence why a Spellskite reprint is far less likely than one of Torpor Orb)

3.) Can the card be “replaced” by a newer version instead of reprinting the old? I feel like Deathrite Shaman replaces Noble Heirarch in a LOT of decks, as it provides mana of any color as well as provides other utility. Losing exalted and the ability to always tap for mana was a fair trade for +1/+1 and all the other abilities.

I mention these because I consider these when investing in MTG cards for speculative purposes, given my previous article in which I broke down the typical drop in price for a reprint, it makes a lot of sense to determine the likelihood of a reprint before investing.

Jim,

I have the same exact concerns as you. This is why I don’t own any of the big ticket Modern cards AND why I’m struggling with whether or not I should sell my other cards that spiked. Colonnade was actually the main card that caused me to write this article. I own a couple sets and 3 set foils – not a ton, but enough to have profited nicely. I’ve enjoyed the latest run up in price and I look forward to cashing out. But what perplexes me is how these have been going up DESPITE the delay in Modern Season. Does that mean these will only go up higher in 8 months? What is the impact of reprint risk? How much of a gamble is it really? I don’t anticipate Manlands would be the first cards on the reprint list in Wizards’ mind, so they feel kind of safe, no?

Thanks for the comment – you are right in line with my own thoughts.

Thanks for the comment!

Is cost of entry really a problem? If so, then Wizards isn’t doing their job keeping the cost of Modern down. In Legacy I expect to be forced to play what I can afford. With Modern – a PTQ format – players should be able to select the deck they like best. If players are sleeving up Modern decks based on what they can afford, we have a problem. Don’t you think?

As for SOM fastlands – I have to imagine these dry up eventually, right?

LOL – I was questioning this myself!!! I’m so glad someone corrected me on this as I wasn’t sure. I figured he’s a 2/2 that causes problems, so I classified him as Hate-bear. I was not 100% sure if the 2 mana CC was a requirement.

I won’t make this mistake again 🙂

I seem to be in the minorty who think speculation in Modern is kind of like playing the lottery since everything can be reprinted. I feel like a lot of the cards being speculated on are going to find their way into another set before/by next June, whether that set is the commander decks, expansions, duel decks, MM2 or spoilers from M15. I feel the moving of Modern season was deliberate to allow for more supply to catch up with an increase in demand.

David’s first point pretty much aligns with what I was trying to say, it’s easy to buy the cheapest copies to push up the price (even incidentally: look at my examples).

As for Spellskite: speculators know it was priced much lower before. It’s one thing to buy something cheap, then resell, another to then buy again, but only slightly under what you sold them for recently hoping it will again make a big jump. That would definitely keep me from purchasing more now.

I can confirm manlands are popular in EDH, out of all cards mentioned in your article only Bassandra possibly has more appeal. It does take more experienced players to play them though. I play nearly every one I can in my decks, but many don’t realize home much value they can get from lands and just throw a bunch of basics and a few non-basics together and call it a day. I definitely agree that EDH popularity is taking a significant amount out of the market, though it’s not like everybody in U/W is going to think of playing Colonnade even if they easily could.

I suspect as others, the price movements have nothing to do with ‘modern season’ and more to do with modern becoming more mainstream, hence Melira and man-lands being bought, which are the basic components of the commons decks.

Tarmagoyfs played heavily in Jund which is currently out of a lot of players reach due to the price of the deck in total whereas the boggle deck has some pricy cards but the deck in general can win tournaments and is a lot cheaper. The ‘goyf’ is also used heavily in Zoo decks which although close to a tier 1 deck, isn’t seen or spoken about a lot. The price may not be moving as people aren’t demanding it.

Looking specifically at SOM fastlands, I’ve seen a lot of these in binders, whereas I haven’t seen many man-lands, so maybe people are able to trade for the fastlands they need quite easily but not be able to pick up man-lands as people see them as staples in other formats and don’t put them into trade binders.

Hi David,

Thank you for adding your thoughts. Both of your factors make sense to me and I admittedly didn’t consider them in my article. Speculators are definitely playing a part in price movements of Modern cards. But why are speculators targeting certain cards but not others? Just based on price? Why haven’t speculators moved in on Spellskite yet, for example? I agree speculation is a major factor, and it’s likely one of many in this complicated market.

Thanks for the EDH comment – this one I completely overlooked. I hadn’t realized Man Lands were popular in Modern. This makes me like them even more (though Colonnade is getting expensive!). This does explain some of the discrepancy between man-lands and Scars Fast lands, so I really appreciate the add!

1.) Speculators (like ourselves)- could very well be behind some of the price swings. Melira is a great example of a very cheap card that’s necessary for a specific deck. If someone decides that they want to take the risk and buys 100-200 copies at $0.5-0.75 than naturally they will pick up the cheapest copies, thus leaving the more expensive copies on TCG player and raising the overall average price. If people look at these graphs and see the price increase they will put theirs up at $0.75-1.00 or not put them up believing they will be worth $2-3 dollars come modern season. As has been mentioned in the forums, MTG is a small enough market that it’s quite possible for people to manipulate it for personal gain (even if it is unethical) and create self-fulfilling prophecies.

2.) Manlands are quite popular in EDH. As they provide a threat post wrath (of which there are a lot). G/W and U/W are very popular color combinations and Inkmoth Nexus can serve as an alternate win condition in a lot of decks. Scars fastlands are NOT popular in EDH as the format’s slower and they tend to always come into play tapped anyways. This could help explain why the manlands are going up in value, while the fastlands are stagnant.

Well, Magic is booming in popularity, imagine an area where “nobody” played Magic when Ravnica was released. I think demand for Chord of Callings from that area could easily result in all cheaper copies on TCGPlayer being bought (and this might then be noticed by us and might trigger other people to buy). Not that many have to be bought to cause an effect: it would only take buying the lowest 4 NM copies on TCGPlayer to make the lowest NM go from $30 to $35, if you bought the lowest 4 NM from Magus of the Moon you’d push the lowest price from $4 to $5 (and it would only take 30 copies to take it up to $6). The effect will be most profound when the factors are combined, Pod itself might be too recent to see a big effect as many are still available, but when an older card is needed I think it adds up.

I could have mentioned Ritual rather than Drain or Shop, any of the pillars of the Vintage format really. I was referring more to a larger, regional group of people liking a certain kind of deck than the value of those cards. Vintage writers refer to such differences in regard to their tournament preparations fairly regularly.

I just wated to illustrate that many factors combine. Availability (which I’m arguing can be local), Financial interest, Competitive interest (which I’m arguing can be local), Price (not mentioned before, but not everybody can afford $125 Goyfs, some areas may even be priced out of some decks), and I’m sure there are others too. I think what we’re seeing is consistent with localized demand, so I figure that will be one of the factors influencing it, though definitely not the only factor.

Thank you very much for presenting your theory – I appreciate the comment.

While I agree Modern traction is fairly regional at the moment, do you really think the supply of cards is small enough for regional play to have an impact? When you talk about Workshop or Drains, you are talking about cards with print runs far less than even Tarmogoyf and Melira. It just feels like 100 players in a given region playing Pod wouldn’t drive up price this much.

But I suppose as cards get older, there are just fewer that people are readily willing to sell. It becomes more difficult for dealers to restock Modern staples as they age, so price volatility is more likely. This in fact could be consistent with your theory.

Of course I don’t have the answer. But I do agree with your prediction that as Modern season arrives, everything will generally rise together (with the right proportion of price increase consistent with deck performances). It’s just interesting to see some cards take their turn a little earlier is all 🙂