Having said that, let’s get back to Sig’s article.

This shop is willing to negotiate on the cards I get from them, so quite frequently I get slightly more and they are also sometimes behind on price spikes. Also I’ve got a deal with them that any card they sell over X gets me $0.48/$0.32, about 1/4th to 1/3rd of the bulk I get in gets these higher rates. For other cards they frequently give me credit close to TCGPlayer low or even higher, apparently they like using ABU as a price indicator.

I’m incredibly happy to have found this shop, but no, sorry, I won’t be sharing which shop it is as I’m pretty sure it will get flooded. I will say that it pays to thoroughly research where to move your bulk. I know I’ve seen others mention they get better than average rates in the US as well.

In these parts it is uncommon to see shops offer bulk rares as low as you’ll find them on TCGPlayer and due to shipping cost it wouldn’t be worth it for me to buy them there. It does however indeed happen that I can buy bulk rares below what I’ll get for them, I tend to fill out orders that way. Always nice to have a few random cards in there to somewhat hide a spec purchase.

Damn. I only got .20 in cash on bulk rares 🙁

Yuka,

I sure hope Shocklands do eventually pay out. I want to say the size of my shockland position is nearly 10% in my MTG portfolio. I went fairly deep here by my own metrics. Hopefully Fetch Land reprints will take some of the heat off Shocklands and allow them to stabilize a little higher in price. On the other hand I’ve sold all my unused fetches.

I have listed my set of Mutavaults on eBay. I wish I had more as this ended up being a terrific bet. But I’m eager to take my profits and move on. Also agree with your assessment on Thoughtseize and Snapcaster Mage.

You’re lucky you can get that kind of rate on crap rares. I don’t have such a convenient out. 🙁 I definitely like your approach.

Robert,

I flipped some of my Oozes quickly for short term profit but I am still sitting on about 20. It’s true these have gotten cheaper and therefore more attractive. I don’t hate them as a play, but I also can’t advocate buying tons. This could be a good one to trade into for the time being, supplementing with a few purchases on eBay when listings are super cheap (which does happen every once in a while).

Lol I look forward to the article! I may take Shocks out of my “not for trade” binder and move them into my trade binder in a separate section, with primary focus being to trade them towards foils.

Thanks for the comment, Matthew! I really hope you’re right – I dread a format full of mono colored decks. How boring and linear would that be?!

The next two sets of Theros block just HAVE to spice things up a bit. But if it takes too long for Shocks to get love again, there will be some downward pressure from Standard rotation – this is a ways away, but I don’t want to neglect the timelines we’re working with here.

Good point on Hallowed Fountain – I forgot it was in an Event Deck. I should check to see how other Shocks have moved in price at retail in a subsequent article.

I am still holding some hope for shocks based on the reasons you cited. Also, M14 is very interesting from a value standpoint. Core set boxes don’t usually run higher after they go out of print but with so many eternal playable cards, M14 could be an exception?

Agree with David’s observations here.

uuuugggghhhh jealous

I believe it’s a good time to sell Mutavault. There’s no reason that it will stay at its pre-M14 prices, which were around $25, after rotation 2014. Most Modern decks don’t use it, and M14 is probably being printed even more than Morningtide. Of course keep a playset, you’ll definitely need it this year. Thoughtseize, on the other hand, sees a tremendous amount of play across all formats, even more so than Snapcaster Mage. Of course it’s also got even bigger supply.

My reasoning for starting to move them now is that I was noticing more interest in them, combined with me needing a while to move them all and prices for most being at a level where the minimum I would expect to get is 70 crap rares, which at the rates I am getting is well beyond what I was aiming for with them (which is doubling up). Moving forward I aim to include new copies of those that traded in the auction until I run out.

I have a feeling that waiting for Modern season is still a decent move, so I am not going to discount them.I just know I’ll likely need a while to move them all so I’ll rather get started. Should I run out I can probably pick up a few more and keep converting them into crap rares.

Foil shocks I can agree with…I would love to start picking these up from people. My article tomorrow (hint hint) actually focuses on foils.

I like cards like doubling season etc a lot too. Hot foils are another place I think will grow with commander.

For shocks, I’d stick to foils, but even that is not really something that I expect to surge in price. People just use too few of these in modern and those who foil for commander want Ravnica foils….

I mean, look at Mono Black Devotion. This deck is probably as close to being as good as it can be. It’s already got great discard, the best targeted removal, good creatures that power up devotion, and a very good mana base.There’s no real weak points, so any new parts will be marginal improvements at best. You can make a similar argument for Mono Blue devotion.

From this sort of top down perspective, and with the knowledge to expect minor gods to be multi coloured, I think we’ll see the pendulum swing back towards dual and tri colour decks. Even now, I have been testing a jund build online that has impressed me with it’s power level. There’s still upside and time for the shocks to go from being just an ‘ok’ spec, to a good one.

There is still some hope for shocks as the Temple cycle gets filled out and more multicolored cards are printed in Theros block.

I’m not sure Hallowed Fountain is a great example of low retail prices, being the shock printed in the most recent event deck.

M14 really does seem to have a lot of value. I wonder if the EV is high enough to keep an eye out for cheap boxes or at least make it the set of choice for event/draft prize packs.

I don’t know many commander players who are willing to trade for the high end fetches (Strands/Deltas)…most of our guys view fetches in commander as nice-to-have’s…but they’d rather get their doubling seasons, tooth and nails, karns, sol rings, command towers, tops instead of perfecting the mana base…when games go longer (by design) then having a perfect mana base is less critical.