Proteus Staff is another one that has been creeping up, and looks like the foils had a small spike. While obviously excellent in Narset, it’s a niche card that you really have to build around to get maximum value out of it (I vaguely remember some Talrand, Intet, and/or Tibor & Lumia and Melek storm builds that made use of it).

The list I linked runs 0 candelabras….

It was the first deck I am proud to call my baby.

Also, don’t worry about saying stuff like “I stand corrected”. This isn’t an argument, we are all trying to figure out how the new paradigm will affect prices.

That was my first spec as a QS insider

Meanwhile Proteus staff is older than those cards and better in Narset and other EDH decks and it is much flatter.

You’re all welcome.

Aggravated Assault isn’t legal in Modern, I think you mean Waves of Aggression, which I will agree spiked 100% because of Woo (and why I left it off the list specifically), though it may have seen steadier gains eventually as people picked up copies for their Narset EDH. I only remember Waves from Woo’s initial list, but if Savage Beating was also in there than I stand corrected.

I think going from “unplayed” to “played in a popular deck” in EDH matters. Going from “played quite a bit” to “played quite a bit more” matters significantly less. We’re all trying to make sense of what happened here.

Daretti’s entire kit is stupid powerful and I love using his emblem with Mindslaver.

Aggravated Assault and Savage Beating went up because Woo brewedd with Narset in Modern. Nekusar made a lot of older cards go up, which I accounted for, I think. Forced Fruition was the newest card the really moved in price. Even Nekusar decks weren’t enough to make a newer card like Reforge the Soul move a ton.

Agree with this. Forgemaster has been inching upward all year. The top 8 was a nice catalyst, but this was a buy primarily because of edh and casual demand.

Apparently you don’t remember all the EDH-only cards that went up in price when Nekusar was spoiled: Forced Fruition spike, buyouts on Judge foil Wheel of Fortune and Phyrexian Tyranny, much smaller gains on stuff like Breathstealer’s Crypt and Teferi’s Puzzle Box that you still could’ve profited on had you specced it like you should’ve specced Kuldotha Forgemaster (assuming you were interested in getting in on Forgemaster).

EDH certainly drives prices on cards, it’s why Aggravated Assault and Savage Beating have been steadily creeping up, why the internet has been cleared out of foils of all the extra attack step cards (two aforementioned, Seize the Day, etc.) and Slobad.

If the price increase is less than the variance between shipping prices on TCG Player, yes, the performance is flat. If your entire gain is negated by fees, you really didn’t do all that well. Not only that, if it only goes up a small amount, you’re out is to buylist which cuts 60% off the retail price plus you have to pay shipping again to send to a buylist. Yes, the graph moved. But we need the graph to move enough that we can actually make money without having to buy thousands of copies.

And how long should I have sat on Forgemaster while I waited for it to get on camera in a format people pay attention to? Forgemaster is played in every artifact-based EDH deck just about and it was the price it was. Getting played in one more isn’t going to make it spike. EDH demand is relevant for very rare cards, very old cards and very new cards (which I guess is the “very rare” category). EDH play is something bad financiers use to justify a card spiking after the fact. It takes a lot of people buying in to make a card spike and that isn’t going to happen with Daretti being spoiled otherwise Trash for Treasure would have gone through the roof instead of not moving at all. We’re past the point in MTG Finance where cards spike for entirely rational reasons. One Travis Woo makes more cards spike than 10,000 Darettis.

Except you could’ve done this exact scenario with Kuldotha Forgemaster (and probably any other rare that is currently bulk or close to it, since there’s probably more copies available to purchase out there). There was still a window both after Daretti was spoiled and after it Top 8’d Edison when you still could’ve picked several copies of it up at that price at sites like TCG, Cardshark and Amazon as well, or probably nabbed a bunch by throwing up a buylist on MOTL.

FWIW, I’m of the opinion that this is more of a “spec because Daretti” scenario than a “spec because Top 8” scenario, considering MUD’s been a know quantity in Legacy (and Vintage) for a long time and has randomly top 8’d events in the past with little to no movement. Unless of course everyone is switching to this deck in Legacy to metagame against Delver and Burn, because it seems like a sweet choice.

You know what I meant. You can’t buy a rare for a quarter online in response to a tournament result nor can you buy locally in the kind of quantity you really need to buy in to be able to benefit from a modest price bump like Forgemaster got. Making $20 on a spec seems like a real waste of being smart.

You most certainly can…I’ve purchased bulk rares from local players repeatedly.