Shocks might not be appreciating in price but I am lining up a 250 $ sale at tcg prices for these things, and they continue to fly out of my binder. Demand and relatively cheap prices for land base = growing format.

Legacy is more fun, but modern without deathrite is making up ground quickly. For me, legacy is useful in trying to predict what is undervalued, overplayed and/or overpowered. Deathrite banning seemed obvious even if I could never have guessed how it leaving modern would effect the meta. Meanwhile, cards like pgantasmal image and izzet charm are under reoresented in modern for now but will see more play as the format gets its own true name/baleful strix. Rug delver in modern already took notice of the charm.

I will admit that I was the most on the fence about tec. edge…but just because it can fit into lots of decks..doesn’t mean they will just throw it in…the price isn’t so out of hand that WoTC would feel the need to include it..

Original thoughtseize’s haven’t dropped to 15…sure they took a big hit, but they are still closer to $30-40. There’s a huge difference in what a mass reprint does (i.e. printed in a standard legal set) and a smaller reprint (event deck, duel deck, modern masters, commander product) does because the # added to the supply is drastically different. The beauty there is that it’s rare that a card as powerful as Tarmogoyf/Dark Confidant could be reprinted in a standard legal set. Thoughtseize/Mutavault are fine on their own but they can be put into just about any set without throwing it’s power level through the roof. Thus I tend to avoid speculating on cards which are good at what they do, but can fill set voids like that in order for WoTC to help reduce the secondary market costs for modern players.

Well to be 100% fair…WoTC CAN reprint anything (not on the reserved list) at any time for whatever reason…they choose not to for the most part because they understand that Magic cards need to maintain values on the secondary market or else people won’t feel as safe buying them (whether it be via secondary retailers or packs). That being said, they are showing a desire to keep modern affordable and they are willing to reprint the cards that they feel are getting out of hand, though they clearly are doing so from a very conservative point of view (Tarmogoyf/Dark Confidant/Vendilion Clique @ mythic, Thoughtseize kept it’s rarity, Mutavault kept it’s rarity, and only 1 copy of remand in the duel deck (when it could have easily been 2-4)). You will ALWAYS have the risk of reprint affecting your cards value, however, the good news is that (in one of my previous articles) I determined the typical value drop with a major reprinting was only around 27% (though it varied by card…one’s that used to be powerful and now are much more tame had a higher drop, whereas, one’s that are still just as powerful were a lesser drop). That being said, modern season hasn’t even “officially” begun, so any price drops caused by reprint (esp. from non-standard reprints) will likely be mitigated by increased demand for the modern season.

Well to be fair..the official modern PTQ season hasn’t begun yet (that starts in like June or so)..though given we had PT:Valencia and GP Richmond which consist(ed) of modern it appears that the whole “shifting the PTQ season back” attempt by WoTC didn’t really work. I do agree that Inkmoth Nexus’s promise is not looking all that spectacular anymore. Celestial Colonade has taken over as the “man-land of choice” now and Affinity didn’t put up good results at PT:Valencia. It’s still a powerful deck, but like Storm/Dredge in Legacy…the cards that hose it..do so really well and are plentiful. Inkmoth will get a bump when people start shifting their boards to focus on the main decks of modern and then it’ll do well and jump back on everybody’s radar. I do believe that it’s nearing it’s peak of demand and I wouldn’t invest much more into them for now.

Honestly…cards that creep up slowly are cards that are showing continuous increasing demand….thus they are not spikes. They are certainly not cards to just unload because you fear a price drop. Now that the Jace vs Vraska decklist is out everything but Remand appears to be safe for the moment (though we don’t know how many Remands you’ll get in the deck yet).