Greetings, Confabulators!

We've got another "From the Vault" set coming out, and there is no reason to panic. What is a new FTV going to mean for prices, Modern Masters and the future of prices? Let's examine what we know and what we can glean, shall we?

The Facts

What we know is really not much at this point. We've seen this art from one of the cards, but it doesn't really tell us a ton of info. An angel being dressed all in white doesn't necessarily indicate the mana cost of the card and the art doesn't really indicate which card it will be either with the small swords or the sheet over the face. Christine Sprankle said on Twitter she thinks it's Twilight Shepherd.

Certainly seems possible. Still, conjecture about the art isn't all that important because five of the FTV cards are going to get new art and there have to be bad angels in the set, too. Since we can't positively identify an expensive angel yet, we don't really know all that much.

We know the set is slated for August 21st, which is a long way off. Last time we had an FTV set, the whole thing was leaked early, but no one wanted to believe that the leaked cards we saw were the real set and that didn't affect prices a ton.

Even if we saw another leak this time around, if the leak is anything other than photographs of the cards, no one is likely to believe it due to the 50/50 real-to-fake ratio we've seen on leaks lately. Anyone who lost their shirt buying Bloodbraid Elf will tell you that.

I expect Wizards to try and control the flow of information, but I don't expect more than a card or two to leak early. I imagine they will potentially leak some more art at a PAX or ComicCon or something, but with other, more exciting products to pump, even that's not assured. FTV sets are an odd thing and the way they do them is almost like they announce them then forget about them until they come out. Obviously if they spoil something major, we'll have to act quickly, but I don't know if I would do anything on the basis of an unverifiable leak.

They're doing the set in English only and likely not selling a ton firsthand outside of the US. There is always a market for these overseas, but the difficulty paying MSRP makes it tough to wring money out of shipping these abroad.

That's really all I could glean from the announcement, which you can read yourself if you want. The rest of what we figure out today will be pure conjecture and should be a lot of fun.

Much-Needed Reprints

From the Vault sets historically bring crazy prices down. However, they usually don't bring specific prices down when those prices are high due to the playability of the card. There simply aren't enough copies injected into the market to satisfy demand, especially if the card is played as more than a one-of. Cards that are very expensive because they are in sets like Portal: Three Kingdoms are better targets.

Last FTV saw the reprinting of two such cards: Burning of Xinye and Rolling Earthquake, cube staples which were very expensive due to extreme rarity. Wizards has expressed a willingness to get copies of those cards out there for whoever wants one through reprints.

What they haven't been able to do with FTV sets is bring down the price of playable cards. FTV Legends is a perfect example of this. The price of Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre were relatively unaffected by the printing.

Ulamog climbed right back up to within $5 of its pre-spike price and it took years before the price of Kozilek, Butcher of Truth began to really diverge. Ultimately the extra printing knocked $5-$10 off, but when we're talking about a $40 card, that seems more like a bug than a feature. It certainly wasn't designed to bring the price of Ulamog down.

While those cards didn't see a big dip, we did see a profound price reduction on Sun Quan, Lord of Wu and Cao Cao, Lord of Wei. Why belabor this point? Well, I'll tell you.

In my first Modern Masters article a few weeks ago, I talked about the high price of both Linvala, Keeper of Silence and Iona, Shield of Emeria and the likelihood of one or both of them being featured in Modern Masters. What would the effect of a printing in From the Vaults: Angels be rather than a printing in Modern Masters? Would either matter?

Will It Be Either?

Before we look at what an FTV or MMA reprint would do to the price of Linvala or Iona, let's look at whether either card is even likely to be in FTV: Angels.

Historically, FTV sets are all over the place in terms of value, but lately they have had cards in "tiers" in terms of values. They generally reprint one high value card ($30 or more) and the rest of the cards are in the $5-$10 range unless they're in Portal 3 Kingdoms or another super rare set. Is there a card like this that fits the bill? Well, there is one.

On the left is the English Portal printing of Starlit Angel, on the right is the Simplified Chinese version. Since the card is pretty terrible compared with Serra Angel at the same casting cost (Serra Angel, by the way, roughly 100% likely to be in FTV Angels) its value is due to its extreme rarity.

If you're a collector and they reprint this exact art, will that effect the collectibility of the old one? Not likely. Chinese Starlit angel is going for $600 on Channel Fireball and copies sell for north of $400 on eBay all the time. The thing is, even if they reprinted the card in FTV, they'd have to do it in English because they said the set was English, and the card in English, even with the rare art, does not affect the collectibility of the Chinese Portal version. That's not to say it won't be in the set, but it is to say it doesn't accomplish the same thing that reprinting a card like Rolling Earthquake did.

The general consensus from the finance community on Twitter seems to be that Avacyn, Angel of Hope will be the "value" card in the set, and people are already talking about dumping their copies of Avacyn today while they're at their peak. Make no mistake--Avacyn is right in the FTV price sweet spot. They're roughly $35 right now and have room to go down if the card is indeed in the FTV set. I think if you're holding and worried, now is an excellent time to dump.

If the full spoiler shows Avacyn is not in the set, the price will rebound, but if you're quick, you should be able to buy back in--although not appearing in FTV: Angels doesn't preclude a future reprinting and you may want to just get out entirely.

Whatever your strategy is, I think the lack of an obvious Portal Angel to reprint for value control reasons means that Avacyn may not be the only expensive Angel in FTV: Angels. So while I think Avacyn is a good candidate, and I think selling now may be a good move, I don't think Avacyn's inclusion precludes the inclusion of another angel north of $30. One reason for that?

It's going to be very tough to find $5-$10 Angels to pad the set out.

Expensive Angels Are Easy

It isn't too tough to find super expensive angel cards that could stand to see a reprint. The only way to get foil Kaalia this week is to pay $100. They were $30 last week, but that was last week.

A foil Kaalia of the Vast in the FTV would be great, but can every $30 angel card make it in? I maintain that, no, certainly they can not. So how do we find enough $5-$10 angels to pad the set out?

This isn't so hard.

Piece of cake.

Uh Oh.

Either the set has mono $10 cards, or it has mono $1 cards. Gisela, Blade of Goldnight is $12. Razia, Boros Archangel is $1.50. The values of angel cards are all over the place but most of them are super cheap. Serra Angel is dirt at this point due to its 10,000 printings but it seems like an auto-include for flavor reasons.

What we're trying to do at this point is see if we can't build a 15-card roster including Linvala and Avacyn that doesn't wildly exceed the "pre-printing" price of another recent FTV and contain mostly crap.

If you look at the "pre-printing" price of Burning of Xinye ($150) and Rolling Earthquake ($200) you get a sense that we can justify two $30 cards if this set will bring their price down. Not only that, if you compare Avacyn to Ulamog and Linvala to Kiki-Jiki, you get similar price profiles in terms of their price relative to the rest of the set, albeit not in terms of absolute price.

So the real question is, absent a $200 card like Rolling Earthquake to put in FTV: Angels, can they get away with an Iona/Linvala? What would that roster look like?

1. Avacyn, Angel of Hope - $35
2. Serra Angel - $1
3. Baneslayer Angel - $13
4. Twilight Shepherd - $2
5. Gisela, Blade of Goldnight - $12
6. Akroma, Angel of Fury - $5
7. Pristine Angel - $2
8. Blinding Angel - $2
9. Platinum Angel - $7
10. Iona, Shield of Emeria - $28
11. Angel of Fury - $4
12. Angelic Arbiter - $2
13. Desolation Angel - $1.50
14. Exalted Angel - $3
15. Firemane Angel - $1

This isn't a prediction, and it's not even that likely a list. I just noticed that I built what would be a very gassy FTV for roughly the difference between the price of Rolling Earthquake before it was in an FTV and after it was in an FTV. There are lots of angels that seem possible such as Radiant, Archangel, the actual card Archangel, Angel of Despair, Stoic Angel, etc. The point is that even alternating expensive and cheap ones, we built a decent FTV. There are two cards between $10 and $20, two cards above $20 and a lot sub $5.

Could we build an FTV of all $5+ cards? Sure, but that isn't necessarily what the FTV sets have done in the past. I think the likely inclusion of some cheaper angels practically begs for the inclusion of a card like Iona or Linvala. I don't see a scenario where we don't get one of them in either FTV or MMA and I can see getting both; one in each.

In conclusion, I think the FTV sets are a good way to get rare cards into the hands of players and collectors alike and they can have an attenuating effect on the price of cube staples that people really just want to have but don't want to shell out $200 for. Absent an obvious angel to fill that role, I can see them printing several angels around Avacyn's same price, not just Avacyn.

My advice? If you're holding Iona, Linvala and/or Avacyn, I think we're seeing two very good opportunities to print some or all of those cards very soon and I would be very nervous about holding onto them. If you don't have them, I think we wait. That Kaalia deck might build itself once FTV: Angels comes out. As always, we're just speculating about the impending reprints, but this is Quiet Speculation.com. That's kind of our thing.