Greetings, Spectators!

Is it just me, or did this Pro Tour feel a little bit different?

An Era of Volatility

There was a lot in my mind that differentiated Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir from one like Pro Tour Theros. For example, I heard a lot less about orders being cancelled.

Now there can be a lot of explanations for this. Maybe people were less outraged this time because they're so used to the cards they order on Saturday of Pro Tour weekend not showing up, a phenomenon known as "learned helplessness". Either it was happening less or people were bitching less, or the people who bitched last time were culled from my social media feeds because of all of their bitching. I'm not sure what's true, but, anecdotally, fewer orders were cancelled.

Another difference this time around is the diversity in possible cards. While the decks in Theros-era Standard seemed somewhat monolithic and mono-colored cards spanned multiple decks, we're experiencing that to a lesser extent. Whereas Theros had cards like Thassa, God of the Sea, Elspeth, Sun's Champion and Master of Waves that could potentially slot into a few of the relatively small number of decks considered "Tier 1", Khans of Tarkir is affording us more options and therefore more diversity.

It's not surprising to see a card like Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker command a high price tag due to his relatively high degree of adoption afforded him by being mon0-colored. What is also not surprising is that the color requirements of cards like Savage Knuckleblade and Crackling Doom put a bit of a virtual cap on their potential degree of adoption which limits their financial upside, especially in the short-term.

This last weekend at the GP in Los Angeles, every Khans tribe was represented, but older archetypes were as well. A diverse format means that there are fewer "must have" cards, and when those "must have" cards are identified early more often like in the case of Khans rather than late like in the case of Theros, there is less scrambling and fewer crazy price spikes.

That's not to say there weren't crazy price spikes. Somewhere at an event right now there is a person playing Magic who paid $80 for his or her playset of Dig Through Time because they bought on the eve of the Pro Tour from some lucky TCG Player merchant. Siege Rhino flirted with an absurd $14 and is already back down to reality. In fact, some of the only cards that are holding more than 50% of their Pro Tour weekend gains are mythics; notably Pearl Lake Ancient and See the Unwritten and even those cards took a significant hit.

I'll get more into that later, because it's kind of my entire thesis for this article. I could stop this preamble paragraph right now and segue into it, but you're not my boss and I have another point I need to make first, so why not just give me a minute?

A significant difference about this season was that I felt like I was paying more attention, and that had a significant impact on how I felt. When I didn't pay as much attention during Pro Tour Theros (I keep using it as an example because it felt like the first PT in a while where we knew how much MTG Finance had shifted and how efficient it had gotten), I felt bad, like every spike I wasn't ahead of was lost money. Couple that with people asking me financial questions because they were having as much trouble coping with the new paradigm as me and I was left with a real gut-punched feeling.

I still made money, but I made money because I was selling cards I'd traded for on hunches and generally just selling pack winnings and value trading gains into the PT hype. I'm really settling into the Medina method (it's better to buy cards for 40% of retail and just sell them on TCG Player than it is to spec) as my primary way to get value in MTG Finance, and when you have cards before the PT, the PT sure helps you sell them.

I was forced to pay more attention this time because QS experimented with having an irc chat for insiders and then a live-streamed google hangout to discuss prices. I participated in both the chat and the first google hangout and having to be able to answer questions and therefore having to know what I was talking about was good preparation for the weekend. I'm not trying to puff up Insider--if anything, you should all be kinda ticked off. I'm implying I got more out of it than the Insiders, and I got paid to do it because my life is dope and I do dope shit.

What Paying Attention Got Me

I've known for a while that buying reactively on the eve of the PT was a good way to overpay. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that was what we needed to talk about today. No, what I learned this time was that right after Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir, your window to really benefit from Khans of Tarkir was small and annoying. I don't like small windows. I like big ones, and I realized that there is a whole class of cards that we forget about when a new set is out and those windows close much more slowly.

Siege Rhino is a very good card. But even though no one disagrees with that statement, the price of Siege Rhino is tanking.

The card didn't get worse. The card isn't getting played less. The spike wasn't false hype.The reason Rhino is coming back down? People are opening the card.

Let's look at our window. The base of the spike peak is October 12th, the Saturday of the Pro Tour. Provided the Rhinos you ordered on Friday for $6.45 TCG Mid don't get cancelled like I'm sure some orders did, how are we doing?

Pretend we ordered 10 copies. You paid $64.50 plus $2.99 for shipping for a total of $67.49. The cards went into the mailbox Monday morning because they didn't process the order Saturday and there is no mail delivery (and therefore pickup) on Sunday. A standard three business days later, on the 16th, they arrive. If you listed them for the $9.96 they were TCG Mid, they likely didn't sell that day and the price began to decline. If you listed for TCG Low trying to be the cheapest and sell out, you sold them for $7.00 and then paid fees on top of that.

Now, if that doesn't seem like a fair comparison because TCG Low was $4.20 and not $6.45 so why would you buy for TCG Mid and sell for TCG Low, remember that we wanted 10 copies. There was only one seller with more than 4 copies selling for less than TCG Mid on the 12th. You're either paying TCG Mid or you're buying from a lot of individual sellers and exposing yourself to additional fees, additional wait time and more cancellation risk.

Ultimately this seems like a lot of pain for a small gain. With Rhino's price declining as increased supply offsets steady yet high demand, you are forced to either stick to your guns and keep trying to sell at TCG Mid and watch the price tank, or you're forced to sell for TCG Low and just offload them for pennies in profit.

Why let an increasing supply force you to make a hasty move? Buying at Mid and selling at Low is terrible, so why put yourself in that situation? Why not look at some cards with a known, steady supply?

Vault also went up, but while Rhino doubled, Vault tripled. While Vault isn't as splashy as a sexy, new card, Vault also has the ability to go in more decks than Rhino due to being colorless. Not only that, the number of Vaults out there is basically the number there are. No one is buying M15 packs and selling the cards on TCG Player. People are buying M15 packs at Walmart and playing them unsleeved on a kitchen table in Des Moines, Iowa.

Vault's price has already appeared to plateau, unlike that of Rhino which is going to see the price stabilization we're used to after a spike exacerbated by increasing supply. Increased supply will not make it decrease steadily forever, but it will make the card less stable. Why not buy into a more stable card?

It isn't just cards from core sets I like, it's any Standard-legal set not currently being drafted. I like cards from Theros block and M15 a lot more than cards from Khans block as specs around the time of the Khans PT for several reasons, and the next time a new block comes out and we have that first crazy PT, we can remember how this went and apply the lessons from this time to that situation.

• The supply is more stable.
• You can easily buy 10+ copies from one dealer and therefore make big moves.
• The pre-spike price is established by supply and demand only, not by guesswork like with new cards.
• You can trade for copies you're speculating on rather than being forced to pay cash.
• Their power level is established.

Rather than trying to buy unstable cards (especially non-mythics) I think the better play this time of year is to look at cards from older sets that have upside and stability due to a more defined supply. Rather than Pearl Lake Ancient and Siege Rhino, I have other cards in mind that it's not too late to go after.

This is a card that didn't really have a home but is getting one. Playable in Abzan decks alongside Siege Rhino, this is a little more awkward because it's tougher to cast on two without taking damage from lands.

Still, I expect this to see about as much play as a card like Rakshasa Deathdealer but without the specter of incoming supply limiting its upside. I'd get these to trade out rather than sell since its price already doubled this week. Still, not every card I like right now has recently doubled.

Whenever I see a bulk rare start to show up in decks, I pay attention. Playable in lots of control decks right now and benefiting from a cycle of lands capable of making sure you get a Mountain when you need it and being cheap enough to remove a creature like Goblin Rabblemaster early like you need to, this card does it all. This is a spec with a lot of upside and with a stable supply.

Narset, Enlightened Master isn't affecting many Standard prices, but she is making Relentless Assault effects go up based on the silly Goryo's Vengeance deck in Modern, but I don't think it stops there. Narset is one of the best EDH generals to come along in a long time.

If you don't think Narset is relevant to EDH, notice that the foil price of Proteus Staff doubled after Narset was printed. There is money to be made on non-foils as well and Staff is old enough that a reduction in supply will have a large effect on prices.

My Jerry Springer-esque Final Thought

New blocks make lots of cards go up, not just the cards in those sets. Focusing on cards from older sets with a more stable supply means your orders are less likely to be cancelled, your window to sell the cards is much larger and your upside margin isn't getting squeezed by increasing supply.

People aren't drafting M15 with Khans legal, they're not redeeming sets of Born of the Gods on Modo and they're not buying Theros boxes. Look at other opportunities when the market is volatile and you'll feel a lot less heartburn when the Pro Tour comes around.