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The latest round of Commander decks is what really did it. The straw that broke the camel’s back, or in this case finally helped me turn a corner in my mind.
I haven’t been a serious speculator in a while now (though I have been stocking up on Forked Bolts), but I obviously follow the market very closely. I’ve also been one of the biggest fans of casual cards for a variety of reasons. They’re easy to find, fairly predictable price-wise, and most of all, safe. Safe from being obsoleted by a new card, safe from the metagame shifting, safe from banning.
But they aren’t safe from reprints. And that’s where Commander 2014 comes in.
The Damage
A few rules about reprints have held true for a long time. No set-specific cards, nothing referencing a plane, nothing with a particular keyboard could be reprinted willy-nilly. This made speculating on these fairly easy, and it was great, easy and safe money.
Crypt Ghast is the latest to blow this old theory out of the water. Set-specific keyword? Who cares? Throw it in that mono-black deck just because.
But it’s not just Crypt Ghast, which would be manageable on its own. Look at this list of reprints which a year ago I would have described as fairly safe.
- Silverblade Paladin
- Twilight Shepherd
- Emeria, the Sky Ruin
- Rite of Replication
- Cyclonic Rift
- Goblin Welder. (Are you kidding me?!? Who expects this in a precon along with freaking Wurmcoil Engine?)
- Essence Warden
- Joraga Warcaller (Don’t worry, they reprinted all of the insane casual Elf cards in this deck. It’s going to hold up *very* well over time).
- Beastmaster Ascension
- Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
And this doesn’t even count other stuff previously viewed as solid but still risky, like Tectonic Edge, Return to Dust and Caged Sun--also reprinted.
That is, frankly, a lot of blowouts. And it makes me question my strategy going forward.
That giant stack of Chromatic Lanterns that I have? Not much faith in the five-year plan anymore. Dictate of Erebos? Way too popular to not reprint. Preeminent Captain? Just a matter of time.
Of course, raging about it won’t help. Wizards is always going to reprint cards, and there’s nothing we can do about that. What we can control, however, is how we react to the realization that seemingly nothing is safe anymore.
New Rules
I’ve decided the best course is to re-adjust some strategies moving forward. I’m still a fan of these casual and Commander specs, but I think it may be best to refine our plans moving forward to minimize our exposure to reprints.
Firstly, I think that we have to invest in anything Modern-playable with a huge grain of salt. We know the reprints are coming, and while there’s room to make money in the format, I think it’s more important than ever to diversify. Going all-in on the next Wurmcoil Engine is just a worse idea than spreading out your assets across the format, including the now-rotated shocklands and the rapidly-bottoming fetchlands.
New Rule No. 1: Look for Foils
I haven’t been a huge fan of foils in the past. The gains were there, of course, but they were always a known quantity and had a higher cost of acquisition, both in terms of dollars and the ability to even find them in trades. They’re also harder to move. All of these things made me prefer regular copies since you could spread your gains out over multiple copies and move them easier when the price went up.
But think of all the supplementary products these days. Duel Decks, Commander products, Planechases and Archenemies, etc. What do all of these have in common? They aren’t foil.
Look at something I wrote about last week: Path to Exile. The card has been reprinted a million times, yet only two of those copies (and a promo) have been in foil. Throw out Modern Masters since we’re talking about primarily-Commander cards here, and you see how I come to this conclusion.
Want to invest in Chromatic Lantern, as I suggested when it was printed? Get in on the foil copies. Both copies are up about the same percentage amounts in that time, but one of these is a hell-of-a-lot-safer bet to avoid a price-tanking reprint.
New Rule No. 2: Go Mythic or Go Home
Yes, it sucks to see Wurmcoil reprinted. But the odds of a big mythic being reprinted are infinitely lower than the odds of whatever random rare you wanted to spec on.
There were lots of casual goodies I suggested picking up in Magic 2013. Gilded Lotus, for instance, is up about 100% from the pricepoint I targeted. And while that’s great, this is also a threat to be reprinted at just about any time (and it was, in From the Vault: Twenty).
Compare that to another card I liked in Magic 2013: Akroma's Memorial. In the same time period, it’s gone from $4 to $10, and all the evidence seems to suggest that it’s the former that’s more likely to be reprinted soon.
New Rule No. 3: Go Cheap
If we can’t avoid the reprint risks entirely, the only thing left to do is hedge our bets, and that means going cheap.
For instance, I was a big fan of grabbing Sanguine Bonds when they were reprinted in Magic 2014. Here we had a previously-$12 card that was suddenly at dollar-rare status again. That seemed like an obvious pick-up that would rebound to $3-4 in 18-24 months.
And it probably would have, except that Wizards decided it needed yet another reprint and it showed up in Commander 2013 as well.
But this didn’t really hurt us all that much, and in fact didn’t touch the price of the M14 version. The reason? The low initial buy-in. Same goes for Crypt Ghast, honestly.
If we’re going to go for something that is most prone to reprint (non-foil, rare or lower), the most important factor is the initial buy-in. If you buy a ton of copies of something at $4-5, you’re really opening yourself up to getting blown out when the inevitable reprint comes. If you’re in at a buck instead? There’s a missed opportunity, but you’re not really out anything.
Rolling With the Punches
There you go. I’m not going to stop grabbing up copies of cards I think are casual or Commander favorites, but I’m dang sure not going to live by the old rules when Wizards has decided to change the rules of the game.
Magic finance is all about adapting and surviving, and that’s what I plan on doing.
Thanks for reading,
Corbin Hosler
@Chosler88 on Twitter
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