1) I think you underestimate THS Limited. Personally, I played 3 Prereleases, 3 release drafts, and a GPT (Sealed) of the format and I love it. I think it’s the second-best format ever, next to Rise, and it’s not very close (albeit I only played RGD once and it was a retro draft so I don’t know if that would be better). It’s true that you’re playing battlecruiser Magic to an extent, but there is room for tempoey decks, and if you know what you’re doing it’s not hard to punish that guy Voltronning up his one creature for doing so. I think THS is one of the most skill-intensive formats we’ve had in a while specifically because it’s slow and the removal sucks so you can’t count on “Draw my 3 Doom Blades and my giant Hexproof bomb and go from there”.

2) I disagree about Shocklands, to an extent. Here’s the thing: As Marcel said on BB, we’re not going to have another Shocklands printing for at least 5-7 years. Modern is still a fledging format, meaning it’s currently growing (in theory; it might be stagnating, but I’d like to assume it’s actually popular). The pricing issue for Legacy is a real thing, and people will eventually move into Modern, either from Standard when their decks rotate, or from Legacy when the staples get too expensive. On top of which, it’s a PTQ season and multiple GPs each year that people are going to want to play and have cards for.

Basically, we have constant supply for 5-7 years while demand increases. If you know anything about basic economics, that means that the price increases. Of course, as you noted, once a certain price point is reached, all the speculators will sell in and drop the price, but realistically SCG isn’t going to drop their price overnight when the selling frenzy begins, and a lot of people (and, more importantly, B&M stores) use SCG as a baseline for pricing. This means that, unless you’re an eBayer or TCGPlayer-er, the price for you to get in or out is not going to drop even as supply increases relative to demand.

Which is all a very long-winded way of saying that the sky is not going to fall. Eventually demand will catch up to supply; demand will increase steadily forever and supply will never increase beyond the speculators selling out (at least in the next 5-7 years). SCG will not drop their prices to a level appropriate to the supply/demand curve, and will instead wait for demand to catch up to supply, and then continue jacking the price. We’ll likely see a plateau around 20-25 where the shocklands remain stable for a few months, maybe up to a year if the sellout is really bad, but realistically the shocks should be on roughly the same curve as the Zen fetchlands long-term. And by “long-term” I don’t mean “In the next 2 years or so, which is how long the shocks had to increase from when Modern was announced until when RTR was announced”, I mean from now until they’re re-reprinted, i.e. 5-7 years down the road.

Grand Prix Ft. Worth is early December – I expect that will be the best time to unload.

Should I hold fetches until modern season or should I sell them now? As long as I sell them at their current price, I’ll be making significant profit–I just can’t help but agree that they will be reprinted within the next few years assuming WoTC cares about people playing a format that was created in part to be more accessible than legacy.

I think your quote = “The return is not much greater than just buying cards at buylist and flipping.” is spot on!

It’s true in 99.5% of all cases and could be considered a MTG Finance Rule.

If you have the time to invest, you will always make more money by flipping cards asap after buying them (buy at buylist price, flip (close to) retail)

If you buy those cards at $8-$10 “now” and wait for them to reach $25 and they never do, you lose big time.

If you can buy at $5, and sell at $8-$10 “now”, you’ll always make money. Even if they start dropping, you made money…

But you need to invest time! =)

Why do you feel that there will be 2 peaks, especially the “highly likely one in the long term”? For them to go to $25 2-3 years after rotation means that the total future demand for them is TWICE as the total current demand. That is IMPOSSIBLE because even if Modern blows up and became extremely popular, you won’t even reach the total current demand now.

Not seeing what this has to do with the definition of flavorful. Innistrad was like, purely driven by flavor. Mono horror tropes.

No, Foil shocks have a different trajectory for a few reasons.

1. They weren’t in DGM (this is probably one of the biggest)

2. They have a higher buy in and are harder to trade for/buy at a lower value.

3. People enjoy “Pimping out” there modern decks since it is a non-rotating format and they can use the lands forever.

4. There are less people who are getting these for standard than normal shocks (meaning those who are getting them, are not planning to flip them or get rid of them at rotation).

With RTR and GTC being opened as much as they where (mainly RTR) these will probably hold value better AND increase eventually. They will probably take a while to increase since there is a large amount still floating around but with moderns growing popularity in the next year or 2 I can see these going up instead of down.

There is just a huge range between 12 and 25. I’m certainly not going to wait for the latter, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I should sell at the former either. Making more moves means more transaction costs, and having some of these in a portfolio makes sense to me because I see them as fairly low risk.

I’d be surprised if these don’t move to the mid-teens over the next few months. Worst case, if they hold steady for now and then crash to 6 at rotation, they’ll still recover over the next couple years after that. We’re looking at two peaks, a probable one in the short term and a highly likely one in the long term, and I’m okay holding on that basis.

That’s why I have both a time and a price target to dump the shocks. My time is November/December and my targets are $11-12 cash. But, I will go ahead and trade these heavily this weekend for rotated Innistrad block and then I will probably just sell the rest later.

You actually probably don\’t know my whole argument. This was not inspired by me seeing people on reddit saying \”Hey, should I sell the Purphoros I got at the prerelease\” and the top-voted comment being \”Herp, sell it and buy shocks.\”

Not \”Get in a time machine and buy shocks at $5\”. People still think shocks are a good investment. I think they aren\’t. Even if you bought in at $5, why the hell not dump them at $12? Seems like you can make more moves in the short term rather than wait for someone else to sell theirs at $25 and watch yours plummet until you sell yours for $6.

Compared to Kamigawa block? Come on. Kami block had giant horse spirits and Samurai and Elder Asian Dragons. Innistrad block was an epic struggle between humans and vampires. Yea, that\’s brand new.

That is an excellent point. I’m always into trading volatile over-priced cards for stable cards.

Agreed…The last shocklands I picked up…were at buylist price when my partner was trading for a set of Wastelands. I’m planning on using the gains now to trade towards other speculation targets. I feel the time to buy was before M14 really.

This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. I’ll gladly trade any niche hard to move or non nm into shocks because they’re extremely liquid and will probably be worth a little more Christmas time.

Becvar does make an excellent point. I haven’t bought a Shock Land in over a month, and even those were underpriced. As of right now, Shock Lands aren’t such a hot investment. I’m much more eager to sell than buy.

By that same token, could we also state that Supreme Verdict, Detention Sphere, Desecration Demon, and maybe even Jace AoT are also not such a great investment right now? After all, they’ve all gone up from their bottoms and as a result the upside is MUCH less. We’re only talking Shock Lands because of their Modern playability. But in reality, some of the same rationale can be applied to all Return to Ravnica block cards (which is why I wrote the article I wrote this week).

Basically, the time to REALLY buy shocklands has passed. I no longer think shocks are a good investment CASH wise (still good trade targets, but thats not the point). The time to buy shocks was when they are all around $5-8 on TCG. Now, they are all pretty much $8-12. This, the PRICE HAS ALREADY INCREASED AS PEOPLE WERE SAYING IT WOULD.

Is it done increasing? I think not. I believe the shocks will be a solid $11-16 each, colors depending, on TCG. The point in people haring to buy them was more “you can get these in cash/trade at 8, should easily be able to sell for $12 in the future”. Will they hit $20? Maybe, but I dont think so, mainly because of points which you have mentioned here.

But saying they are not a safe investment now based on your argument is very flawed, because a decent price increase has already happened. Of course, why the fuck would you buy a tomb at $15? But, you can get them at $9 easily right now. You could have gotten them at $7 a couple months ago (which was a great investment). You saying its not a good investment and looking like a genius….well, because NOW its not AS GOOD of an investment. If you wrote this about shocklands 2-3 months ago? I, along with 99% of the other financiers, would have laughed you off the block.

Inspite of this, I still love you. <3 <3

Just curious, do you think foil shocks have the same trajectory?