Mox Opal had many factors for it to cause it to go up. The regular copies also soared because of increased play in Modern and a lack of reprint.

Compare this to something less tied to a Modern metagame, like Solemn Simulacrum, and you’ll see a completely different trend. You made money not because you bought a Masterpiece, but because you bought Mox Opal. (Still happy you did make profit though, nicely done :)).

Personally, I bought a set of mox opals. I paid on average 80€/card. Today I can already sell them for 100€/card.

20€/ card profit on 2 months is very significant.

I think there is a real demand and those prices will not go down easily.

Well they’re going to keep printing some form of Masterpieces…not sure how many iterations they’ll go through before returning to past ideas but I still think players will only spend so much on Masterpiece-type cards.

MM15 probably made more money for WOTC than MMA because WOTC printed much more of it. I just feel MM15, when compared to MMA (and certainly MM17), was less desirable.

Put another way if we poll folks on whether they’d want to pay $10 for a pack of MMA, MM15, or MM17, I would wager MM15 would come in last place in that poll.

My pleasure, I’m glad you appreciated the article.

Regarding Heavenly Inferno, let’s see what happens to the price AFTER the release of the Anthology series. My Duel Deck Garruk vs. Liliana has dropped in price since the Duel Deck Anthology release (although I’ll admit I haven’t been tracking the price closely).

I think demand for a reprint set of Modern should be analyzed differently from a Commander deck, but we’re both just making best guesses given the lack of data we have in this space. It’ll be interesting to see…I still would prefer to have funds parked elsewhere besides MMA boxes though.

The last group is not a growing group, but there is still growth possible in the modern player base, so shocks and fetchland foil have growth in my opinion.

Also, remember that those cards were printed recently. It’s obvious that you need some years before profit. The profit was so obvious that many short term investors jumped on it, and realized their money was locked, so they sold too soon already.

The only thing that can go wrong is that they reprint the same expeditions. Which is still possible of course.

Do not get me wrong, I actually agree with your article’s message that it is unwise to purchase MMA boxes at this time as an investment; a great deal of the contents inside will likely be reprinted within the next 4 years and the interest gained per box is unlikely to overcome the buy/sell spreads of vendors or EBay platform fees by enough to justify the purchase.

My counter-argument is simply about the lack of interest for the product beginning at this time. EBay has made it possible to reach a broad audience, and it does not take many bidders showing interest to push a product’s selling price towards its EV unless one commits a major listing error. Commander 2016 is being met by a level of acclaim from casuals that rivals the reception being given to Modern Masters 2017, yet I was still able to sell 2 dusty sealed Heavenly Inferno decks from Commander 2011 for over what they are worth despite full knowledge that the cards are being reprinted this year.

Until the contents of MMA drop significantly, I will feel confident about the appreciation of the boxes…in the short-term. Three months from now, after the post MM3 hype cools and cards snubbed from the set finish spiking, I will likely continue the process of strategically selling MMA boxes just so I do not get caught with a ton of them in case they announce a “Modern Masters Anthology” or a similar product.

Your article was a great read, thank you for taking the time to write it!

touché

Falling Star is a Legends Rare, it will always be in extremely low supply.

You guys may have a point on Goblin Wizard though.

So it’s up about $3 this year then. Definitely not something I’d chase here.

Patrick,

I appreciate your counter-perspective! I guess if I’m a player who wants to buy some Modern Masters product and I have $400 to spend, I have to ask myself: would I prefer 1 box of MMA or 2 boxes of MM17? Given all the value in MM17, I think I’d rather spend the money there.

Perhaps you’re right that MMA boxes won’t drop, but I can’t see them gaining a ton of interest now that a comparably strong Modern Masters set is so readily available. You also bring up a valid point on MM4 – there’s a constant threat that Wizards recycles back to some older reprints as prices climb higher, and this would really hurt values. I guess there’s no harm in holding another year to see how things unfold, but I think there are better places to park $400.

Thanks again for sharing! I hope others share their opinions as well!

That may be the case on Three Wishes, but as Tarkan pointed out Goblin Wizard has been trending upward for a while now. Also, the Falling Star spike happened before the CC issues as well – I know it was discussed on a podcast which took place before the issues. This is evidenced by the fact that stock of Falling Star remains extremely low on TCG Player despite the CC issues being resolved (I assume they were resolved, at least).

Goblin Wizard was actually trending up prior to the CC outage. I actually like this one longterm as an interesting casual tribal card 🙂

Would they be dead money if hypothetical MM4 contained a ton of MMA reprints? They would probably be tougher to move, but given how easily I have been moving Heavenly Inferno decks for $180-200 over the past month despite common knowledge that it is being reprinted in Commander Anthology this year makes me wonder just how long it would take for it to have an impact.