I’ve outlined my daily website reading for the latest MTG Finance news in the past. I’ve mentioned sites like Twitter, mtgstocks.com, and especially our very own QS Forums. Even Reddit can, once in a while, have a relevant thread worth at least glancing at – although Reddit has not been a part of my daily routine. Unless I see a link from an established member of the MTG community, I ignore the site altogether.

Recently, I was playing around with various sites when I stumbled upon a gem of data I had not been previously aware. Namely, I’m talking about the other information on mtgstocks.com:

Have you ever explored this site beyond the daily and weekly Interests tabs? This week I’ll take a closer look at a couple of the other pages that may prove useful to you, along with a specific analysis of what I find there.

Analytics – All Time Highs and Lows

While the Interests tab is often the leading indicator for price trends occurring at a precise moment, there is a huge collection of data available in the Analytics tab.

The All Time Highs/All Time Lows page reveals just that: cards worth at least $5 that have reached their all time highs or lows in the past five days. Since the cards are sorted by date, you can even focus on the cards reaching highs or lows on any given day!

What can we learn from this page as of January 3rd?

Well, firstly, I count 24 cards hitting all time highs on January 3rd, along with another couple dozen hitting highs in the previous four days. This nearly parallels the 25 cards hitting all time lows on the same date – this appears to be fairly balanced. Thu,s there may not be an indication that the entire MTG Card market is trending one way or another. More on that later, however.

So we’re left to exploring a close up of the cards appearing on this list. The first thing I am observing is that there are a ton of casual/Commander cards appearing on this list. Many of these cards have been from older sets or sets with smaller print runs. No surprise there.

Examples in this category include Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (though she’s played competitively as well), Phyrexian Tower, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, Konda's Banner, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, etc.

Thus we can confirm that casual cards from older/smaller sets can be very good investments, even in an environment where card prices have trended poorly overall.

Other writers on this site have consistently pointed out strategic casual buys are the way to go, and this list certainly doesn’t refute their claim.

My one caution: be weary of cards on this list which aren’t on the Reserved List.

One random reprint – whether it be in a Duel Deck, Commander product, or one-off set like Conspiracy – will absolutely crush the price on cards like these. Demand simply cannot keep up with a sudden surge in supply.

Also on the all time high list are a handful of competitive cards across a smattering of formats: Glimpse of Nature (thank you Legacy Elves), Blood Moon, Scapeshift, Natural Order, Chain Lightning, Choke, Sylvan Library, etc.

This list is also very insightful because it reveals metagame trends in various formats. For example, the rise in popularity of Elves and Burn strategies in Legacy likely explains the movement in Glipse of Nature and Chain Lightning. While Scapeshift is not the number one strategy in Modern, it continues to be a Tier 1 or Tier 1.5 deck. Modern is also responsible for the recent jump in Choke.

Again, I’ll mention that we need to estimate how likely a given card will be reprinted before going deep. But if you want in on the hottest cards and metagame trends – especially in Modern and Legacy – the all-time highs list is a great place to explore once in a while.

On the flip side, the all-time lows can provide equal insights. Remember when I talked about the impact of reprints on prices? Well, a good number of all-time lows are due to recent reprinting, and the data present on this page is very supportive of such a thesis.

Reprinted cards seeing all-time lows include Misdirection, Pernicious Deed, Mutavault, Scavenging Ooze, and an a couple Shock Lands. What’s worth noting here is that it’s the original printings that are getting crushed, price-wise.

Even with Shock Lands, where the artwork differs between original and new printing, prices of the original Shocks continue to drop. To me, this indicates that Onslaught fetch lands will continue to drop even a couple years after their recent reprinting in Khans.

To those who think it’s not worth selling now and re-buying back in, I leave you this chart on Stomping Ground as my counterargument.

There’s a lot of downside left in Onslaught Polluted Deltas. Trust me.

The last reason I am arguing that the all-time highs/lows page is worth exploring on occasion is because it picks up on subtle, slow-moving trends.

I used to rely heavily on the Interests tabs to know what cards were hot and which were particularly cold. But we must remember that the Interests tabs only captures cards moving at a certain rate. There may be a handful of cards hitting new highs under the radar simply because their growth has been so slow.

This is precisely how something like Mikaeus, the Unhallowed can go from being a $4 card to a $10 card without my notice. It may have been an Interest once in a while, but not consistently enough to really get my attention. But now I’m looking back two years and I see an amazing bit of price appreciation.

Don’t miss out on this movement – the more aware you can be of such trends, the more savvy you’ll be as a trader.

Analytics – Most Played Cards

The other tab I wanted to take a quick look at this week is the “Most Played Cards” tab, also under the Analytics tab. This page gives you a handy snapshot of the most played cards in all formats over the last 30 days, updated on a daily basis.

The prices are a bit awkward because I believe the website refers to a somewhat odd default for pricing. Promo versions are often cited, hence the $750 price tag on Force of Will. But despite the odd pricing references, this page is still exceptionally valuable.

In fact, I’m not going to visit this page to see prices. Rather, I am interested in one thing only: what cards are hot.

From here, we can look at individual cards on the list to see which have pulled back in price – especially during the winter swoon. For example, I see Stoneforge Mystic showing up in the Top 20 of the Legacy list. Abrupt Decay is just one spot behind her on the Legacy list and it’s in the Top 20 for Modern cards as well.

Yet both these two cards are off their highs by quite a bit.

Since I don’t see either of them getting reprinted in the near term, I’d go out on a limb and recommend these as solid acquisition targets. In fact, I’ve already acquired a few copies of each in the last couple weeks. It’s reassuring to see that my bets on these cards are likely to pay out.

One other use for this list – you get an indication of which smaller commons and uncommons are worth pulling from bulk. Lightning Strike may be a $0.15 common, but it’s in very high demand given the Standard metagame.

Therefore, the next time you come across them in your collection, go ahead and set them aside to bring to your next FNM. You never know who will be scrambling for their last minute needs to finish a new Standard deck, and being able to trade these out would virtually turn bulk into some value. The same goes for Seeker of the Way, Hordeling Outburst, and Drown in Sorrow.

And More

I’m almost out of space, yet there are a few more pages worth mentioning! The Standard Analytics tab provides a nice summary of which cards have shown up on the “Interests” tab the most over the past 7 days. This tool is useful when cards are only moving up in 2-3% increments. One or two moves like this can easily be overlooked. But a 3% gain 7 days in a row can lead to a significant move!

The Set Analytics tab captures average values of every card in every set. While this data isn’t very interesting for something like Homelands, it can very useful when trying to identify a bottom in newer sets.

The Metagame tab captures the top decks played across each format. While the naming convention isn’t necessarily consistent with official names (e.g. “Team America”), it still provides an interesting snapshot into which decks are most popular right now and could possibly explain various trends.

For example, in the Legacy list, we see that indeed Burn is the most played deck currently and Elves is number 5 – hence the movement in Chain Lightning and Glimpse of Nature.

In summary, the data on mtgstocks.com goes well beyond the daily interests tab. Up until recently, I hadn’t really taken the time to explore the analytics tab, but a recent exploration has revealed a huge database of valuable information.

While it may not be necessary to check this tab on a daily basis, I can certainly see merits to reviewing it weekly or at least monthly. To ignore it is to ignore some of the more subtle trends in MTG Finance. Often times, this is where a lot of the money can be made. After all, everyone is now aware that Choke is randomly a valuable card. But not everyone is aware of Phyrexian Tower’s gradual rise in price.

…

Sigbits

It’s often wise to confirm that a card is truly hot by comparing the all-time highs list with SCG’s prices and stock. Here are some examples of hot cards that are truly in demand right now. All are worthwhile considerations for trade targets.

• Puppeteer Clique has been hitting all-time highs lately. It’s no surprise that SCG is sold out of the Shadowmoor rare at $5.15. I suspect it will be restocked at a higher price soon enough.
• Narset, Enlightened Master is generating a lot of interest in Time Walk effects. This explains the recent jump on Beacon of Tomorrows and Time Stretch. The latter is sold out at SCG for $6.19 and the former at $5.19.
• Is Gaddock Teeg even played anymore? I can’t say I’ve seen him cast in a competitive event for quite some time, yet SCG is sold out of NM copies at $9.19 and it has recently hit an all-time high on mtgstocks.com.