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Daily Stock Watch – Sai, Master Thopterist

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Hello, everyone and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! It has been hard for us to find some value rares from Core 2019 as the vast majority of sales from that expansion have been brought in by the mythic rares from the set. From a financial standpoint, smart (like us!) and hardcore finance junkies know that at some point in time, a rare from the set will rise out of the ashes to become a prominent inclusion in a Standard, Modern, or Legacy winning list. Our card for today is one that has been making a name for itself in the competitive circuit of both Standard and Modern, and it's actually looking good for the years to come.


Sai, Master Thopterist first made waves in the Modern scene by showing up in the sideboard of some KCI decks then made more heads turn by showing up as sa four-of in a Blue-Red Aetherflux Reservoir deck that went undefeated during day one of Grand Prix Orlando 2018. The game plan was pretty simple for the deck and Sai was a perfect backup win condition in case things go bad for the Reservoir.

After getting a lot of exposure of the past couple of weeks, Sai has rebounded nicely from the sub-$2 range by going back to an average price of $3.31 as of writing to alleviate the pain of cracking M19 boxes. It would have easily been a good pick up when it went down to a little under two bucks, but I don't think that it's a bad pick up at $3 if ever you plan on getting them now. Sai is a formidable role player that will get its job done at any point of the game even though it looks a bit weak when you assess the card for its mana cost. This is why I think that this card is underrated despite of the multiple things that it could do, oftentimes at no cost at all when you have enablers such as Ornitopther, and should be valued more in the long run especially if the decks that are running it will prove to be consistently successful.

The Friends of Sai

It looks like these guys will be with Sai going forward as deck innovators try to come up with lists that could abuse its ability going forward. I'm not really a fan of slow and grindy, storytelling decks like KCI and Reservoir but cards like this one bring a different dimension to those archetypes just by being a part of the list's 75. By surprising your opponent off the board with it (in Modern) and forcing them to leave removals  (in Standard) against a spell-heavy deck, you're actually putting yourself in a good position to win games from different angles without having to deviate from original game plan. Sai should be a decent card going forward and is something that I'm considering as a spec target now while it's still cheap. It's a pretty safe bet that you could hold on to for a while and in multiples if you have leg room for doing so.

At the moment, StarCityGames and ChannelFireball are out of stock of Sai but there should be plenty of vendors via TCGPlayer that's still selling it for anywhere between $1.50 up to $4.98 for normal copies. Card Kingdom still has two sets at $3.99 a piece and is expected to run out of it soon. I would suggest that you scour the remaining normal copies from TCGPlayer as I expect less M19 boxes to be cracked as people gear up for the next set. Foil copies of this card will be great pickups at $7 or less and should command a good value in the long run. This should be a pretty safe bet with lots of upside and little risk in my opinion.

And that’s it for today’s edition of the Daily Stock Watch! See you again next time, as we check out a new card that should be on the go, or good enough for speculating. As always, feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. And if you want to keep up with all the market movement, be sure to check in with the QS Discord Channel for real time market information, and stay ahead of the hottest specs!

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