Arlinn was the reason I asked actually, I´ve already sold most of my stock of them. Hope december comes with better prices for the rest.

Tangle wire is a tough one, I’m just going to have to eat that one I think. Ah well. Sometimes I have to learn an expensive lesson, and this is one of them. I think the original thesis wasn’t far off, but it looks like Vintage Shops has bifurcated into decks that do use tangle wire and decks that don’t. Unfortunately the decks that don’t seem to be posting more 5-0 records. There’s also the long term risk of a Mishra’s Workshop restriction. That would seriously affect the Vintage metagame, with unknown results.

Heart of Kiran seems like it is getting some play in Standard, but will need some kind of shift in the metagame to go higher. This one is a hold, but if it gets back into the 10-12 tix range again, I’d be ready to sell some copies.

Lily is doing great things this week, it’s true. I think 40 tix is not out of the question, so it’s not too late to buy as it does seem to be powering higher.

Thanks for reading, and commenting! It’s great to get appreciation for my writing. I think working on the process of learning to become a better speculator has been my primary task in recent months, and hashing things out in the comments section is helpful in this regard. Cheers.

I like the part where you mention talking yourself into marginal specs. I wasn’t feeling your tanglewire spec at all, so I stayed away on that one. But I think it illustrates a common issue, seeing that one price spike and thinking that the card will get back to the same price relatively soon. After taking some big hits on similar specs, where there was a big spike I bought on the down swing and it never really did much after that. I learned that some cards have a nice spike, but if they don’t have staying power, or the format gets shaken up, then they don’t owe you any obligation to spike again. The past 6 months or so Ive been trying to stay focused on understanding the catalyst for the price spike before really diving in on a card. I still need to figure out what to do with heart of kiran and verdurous gear hulk, those seem liked sure bets pre rotation, at least that was the story I told myself. So I think its important to have an understanding of, what if the story we told ourselves doesn’t turn out to be true? Anyway, hope you can find a not too painful exit from the tangelwires sometime soon.

On a happier note. Lilliana the last hope is looking fantastic this week, Im hoping it continues to ride the modern wave. Cant tell if if should buying more and trying to catch it on the way up, or if the buying window is all done. I also noticed that Collected Company seems like a pretty good buy right now, if anyone has some spare tickets that they want to deploy. Its around 17 with fairly regular price movement, for its short post standard life, peaked at 27 not too long ago. Im digging that one. Went in on 8 copies might pick up a few more.

I bought all of the rotated sets, and I am still holding. I think December will be a good time to consider selling from these sets, balancing the opportunity cost of continuing to hold and the gains due to Modern play and redemption.

As for specific mythic rares, I do noticed there are wildly different results. Arlinn Kord from SOI has doubled since September, for example, while Linvala from OGW is flat to lower.

In general, I’d say there’s a few things going on here. First, there’s a component of demand from casual players, on top of demand from redeemers, and then there’s supply that trickles in from players selling their rotated Standard cards. Something like Linvala was still being played in Standard over the summer, so the supply coming into the market would be higher than something like Arlinn Kord which has barely seen any Standard play. Another example of a card that saw Standard play in the summer is Sphinx of the Final Word. It’s also flat in price since September.

Hope this helps! It’s not clear exactly what’s happening with individual mythic rares, that’s why I stick to full set specs.