Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
I started playing Magic in 1994. From those days of poring over printed price guides assembled weeks earlier, to having practically up to the minute prices at our fingertips digitally today, Magic finance has evolved considerably in the past twenty-seven years. Regardless of the decade, some Magic finance lessons are timeless and many of us learned them the hard way over the years. Hereâs a countdown of five of the worst MTG finance mistakes Iâve made over the years, what I learned from them, and best practices on how you can avoid them.
Mistake 5 (2000): Trading My Guru Lands For Standard Cards
From July 1999 to February 2001, Wizards of the Coast ran The Guru Program, a program to encourage existing Magic players to teach new players the game. Each "Guru" received a teaching kit including sample decks and earned points towards rewards for each person they taught to play. For every ten points a Guru accumulated, they were awarded a booster pack of the current set, and a unique-to-the-program Guru basic land, chosen at random.
I participated in the program for the early part of its duration and received my set of Guru basics in mid-2000. At the time, I was hot on building a new blue/red mana denial deck in Standard using Parallax Tide, and Tangle Wire and was actively trading for those and other rares to complete the deck.
At the time, I kept most of my Standard-playable cards together in one binder, and it was in this binder that I slipped my Guru lands. When I found a guy who had all the cards I needed for my deck, I was trading out of this same binder. He immediately spotted my Guru lands and offered me most of the rares I was looking for in exchange for the five of them.
The latest issues of Scrye and Inquest we were trading with didnât list the price of the Guru lands, but the owner of our LGS had his personal set in the case for sale at about $10 each. I was trading for Tangle Wires and Parallax Tides at $8 and $6.50 each respectively, so on paper I was getting a great deal trading for playsets of both for my set of Guru basics, but something about the trade felt off to me. I felt an attachment to the lands because of the effort Iâd put into obtaining them, and they were unique compared to the rest of the lands in my collection. I made the trade, built my new Standard deck, and enjoyed playing it, but I regretted parting with my Guru lands. This regret only intensified as they climbed in value exponentially in just that first year.
Lesson: If The Deal Doesnât Feel Right, Just Donât Do It
No matter how much value you appear poised to gain, if something about a deal feels off to you, itâs always better overall to just walk away. Sure, if Iâd held on to my Guru lands Iâd have certainly been forced to work harder to acquire the cards for my Standard deck, but I could have done so without giving up what turned out to be a lot of long-term value both personally and monetarily.
Best Practice: If Itâs Not For Trade, Donât Put It In Your Trade Binder
After this situation, I moved my cards that were for trade into a separate binder, and the only cards that went into that binder were cards I was absolutely prepared to part with. Doing this not only keeps me from having any qualms about what Iâm trading away, but it also saves anyone Iâm trading with time and aggravation. While it may seem an obvious solution for seasoned MTG financiers, I still regularly sit across from folks trying to make a deal only to find that most of whatâs in their binder isnât for trade, or they are hesitant to part with their cards, as I was in this example. Keeping your trade fodder separate from your real collection makes everyoneâs life easier.
Mistake 4 (2009): Trading My Dark Depths For Way Less Than Their Value
Today Dark Depths is a powerful and valuable card. Banned in Modern, it sees play only in Vintage, Legacy, and Commander. When Coldsnap first came out in 2006 though, the card was bulk, and I managed to pick up multiple playsets of them as throw-ins in trades because I thought the card was quirky and nostalgic. Fast-forward a few years later, the card had crept up in price, and I began trading away my stash of them at $3 each.
In September 2009, an answer to planeswalkers and anything else with counters on it was spoiled in the new Zendikar set. Vampire Hexmage not only killed planeswalkers, and answered some cards with counters, in combination with Dark Depths, it allowed you to quickly cheat out a Flying, Trampling, Indestructible 20/20. Dark Depths quickly shot up in price to around $20 or more. Not having seen the spoilers that day, I traded six of my copies of Dark Depths away at the $3 going rate theyâd been at and didnât realize until later that the price had exploded.
Lesson: Pay Attention To Spoilers, And Always Double Check Prices
I canât emphasize enough the importance of spoiler season when it comes to not only making value but protecting yourself from loss. Had I been paying attention, I could have either traded my Dark Depths at the new higher price, or if the price hadnât immediately spiked, have the knowledge that it likely would increase, and hold my copies rather than move them at a lesser price. I imagine every store who recently sold out of their copies of Chain Of Smog in the hours after Professor Onyx was first spoiled before bumping up their prices felt the same pain I felt trading away my Dark Depths.
Best Practice: Do Your Homework Before Making Any Deals
Sometimes sites wonât have up-to-the-minute price updates. Thatâs why itâs important to keep up on spoilers so you can react appropriately. As notable fantasy author Terry Goodkind is attributed to have written, âKnowledge is a weapon. I intend to be formidably armed.â
Mistake 3 (1998): Cashing Out My Non-Standard Cards To Buy My First Car
In 1998 I was desperate to raise enough money to buy my first car, every teenagerâs first major financial investment. I decided to get quick money by cashing out the non-Standard part of my Magic collection, because I wasnât using them. At the time, my Revised duals were retailing for $10-$15 each at most, so I took the $5 each I was offered for them, plus money from other rares, and walked out with under $200 cash in my pocket. I bought the car, a 1987 Chevy Monte Carlo with low miles, and it was a great first car, but the full-time job I picked up that summer paid way more in a week than the chump change Iâd parted with my collection for.
Lesson: When Cashing Out, Only Cash Out As Much As You Have To
Ultimately, I realized I shouldnât have cashed out as completely as I did, as I wasnât quitting Magic. There may be times when we need money more than we need cards, but ultimately, if youâre not quitting the game entirely, and you donât need the money immediately for survival, itâs better to hold cards that youâll possibly want to use down the road. If you sell them and want them later, you may be forced to buy them back at an inflated premium, as I was forced to do over the next several years.
Best Practice: Always hold onto your mana base.
If youâre not permanently quitting Magic, but needing funds has you considering cashing in, the best thing I could suggest is not to cash in your mana base. Sell your Thoughtseizes, your Force Of Wills, whatever you need to, but holding onto your duals, your shocks, or your fetches means youâll have a much easier time jumping back in when whateverâs going on in your life settles down. The most expensive part of a constructed deck, depending on the format or decklist, is usually the mana base, so itâs the only part of my collection that Iâm willing to hold onto at all costs.
Mistake 2 (2019): Sleeping on Mystery Booster "Playtest" Cards
When Mystery Booster playtest cards hit the market, they screamed to be added to my cube of Un-, Conspiracy, and quirky cards from throughout Magicâs history (looking at you Shahrazad). I assumed incorrectly when learning about them that they were part of the regular run of Mystery Booster products, akin to the recent Mystical Archives of Strixhaven, and not something exclusive to âconvention edition,â boxes of the product. With the main cards in the set mostly unappealing to me, I didnât pay much attention to the set, and slept on buying any of the playtest singles floating around at reasonable prices throughout most of 2020.
Lesson: Pay Attention To The Product Details And Know When To Buy
Pretty much any point in 2020 would have been a decent time for me to move in and start picking up Mystery Booster playtest cards. While the top-end cards like Slivdrazi Monstrosity have spiked and fallen and spiked again, many of the lower-priced cards like Wizened Arbiter and Bucket List fell from their initial highs and remained relatively flat for most of 2020.
Best Practice: If Itâs Something You Want, Move In When You Can
For cards that Iâd planned to buy and hold for personal use, I should have moved in on most of them early after the initial hype died down and prices flattened. Instead, Iâll be looking to draft as many events as I can at my LGS from the small round of product coming to them soon as part of WOTCâs Summer Of Legend, and hoping the influx of product will take the prices of singles back down to 2020 levels.
Mistake 1 (1997): Not Buying A Mint Unlimited Black Lotus For $275
As soon as I turned sixteen, I rushed out and got my first job bagging groceries at the local grocery store. Two weeks later, when that first sweet paycheck arrived, I went straight to the local card shop. My plan was to either buy Cursed Scrolls for Type 2 (Standard), or buy a couple booster boxes of Tempest and hope to crack them. As had been the case for weeks, the shop had no singles in stock, but the shop owner pulled two boxes of Tempest from the shelf behind him and put them on the counter next to the register.
âBefore I ring you out for these, let me show you something,â he said. He took me to a glass case that used to be filled with high-end sports cards, and now had several shelves of Magic singles on display. He opened the case, removed a card from its stand, and put a mint Unlimited Black Lotus in my hands. It was an awesome moment. I had some Unlimited, Beta, and Alpha cards in my collection, mostly commons and uncommons, but Iâd never even held a piece of power in my hands before that moment.
âIâll do it for you for $275,â he said.
Faced with a choice of rolling the dice on two boxes of Tempest and not pulling the cards I needed for Standard, or owning not just an actual piece of power, but the most sought-after card in all of Magic, I hesitated. Either way, this was my entire first-ever paycheck Iâd be spending in one purchase. Did I want to spend that on just one card? Itâs laughable in retrospect, but these were the thoughts flashing through my sixteen-year-old brain. I handed the card back to him, walked away with my two boxes of Tempest, and away from the cheapest Black Lotus I ever had a chance of purchasing.
Lesson: When A Unique Opportunity Presents Itself, Take It
While I can and did have more opportunities to acquire cards for that Standard deck, that Black Lotus I passed up on buying was sold when I went back to the shop less than a week later. I never saw one in as good condition for that kind of price again. The lesson I begrudgingly learned was that sometimes unique opportunities will come along, and itâs important to be able to recognize those situations and act accordingly.
Best Practice: Be Open To Possibilities Beyond Your Goals And Expectations
I went into the shop looking to buy cards for Standard. By having that rigid goal, I was so tunnel-visioned into purchasing Tempest cards I was unable to recognize the unique opportunity I was presented and to act on it. By keeping expectations open in all my MTG financial moves, and in life in general, Iâm better able to act on unique opportunities when they appear.
These are some of the mistakes Iâve made over the years, and the lessons Iâve learned from them. While I know Iâll make more mistakes, the goal is always to learn not only from one's own experience but also from the experiences of others, which helps us all be better prepared to make informed decisions.
What are some MTG finance mistakes youâve made over the years, and what lessons did you learn from those experiences? Please share in comments or email me at pauljcomeau@gmail.com. I canât promise Iâll respond to everyone who emails, but Iâm interested to hear your own stories, lessons, and best practices.
After all I've said, there is a temptation to declare Izzet Prowess Tier 0, something I've never done before. I will resist this temptation and everyone reading should do so too. Izzet Prowess is nothing like Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis or Eye of Ugin-powered Eldrazi. The deck is slightly different from the previous few months when it was Tier 1, but not outstandingly so. Plus, it's taking over the top slot from another deck that just spiked out of nowhere. There's no reason to think that this spike won't also go away.
to the baseline. And May's baseline average points is 1.58, meaning that Izzet's performance was slightly below average given its population. To be Tier 0, I'd expect any deck to take down sufficient Top 16 or higher slots to stay above the base. Not necessarily sky-high, but well above the baseline.
Observation #1: Red decks are popular online
Observation #4:Â There is a correlation between price spikes and decks falling off
that consistently just squeaks into Top 32 the same weight as one that Top 8âs. Using a power ranking rewards good results and moves the winningest decks to the top of the pile and better reflects its metagame potential.
Finally, we come to the average power rankings. These are found by taking total points earned and dividing it by total decks, which measures points per deck. I use this to measure strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. Using the power rankings certainly helps, and serves to show how justified a deckâs popularity is.
Sultai Control was the best-performing deck relative to its popularity in May. What is Sultai Control? I'm using the descriptor as a catchall term for slow, answer-heavy BUG decks. Each deck was pretty different from the others, united only in speed and strategy. Which may have contributed to its good performance. It didn't actually make the power tier, and so isn't included, but Grixis Death's Shadow did the worst of any deck I've ever had in these articles. Its average power is 1; its presence in the population tier can therefore be attributed to its pilots stubborn dedication to their deck and not to any real success. Which is a paper-player attitude, and not something I'd count on from MTGO players.
For starters, 
I know I'm not the only one who began frantically searching Gatherer for Vampires when they spoiled Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord. Nor the only one crestfallen to discover that the best threat to cheat out was actually Morophon, the Boundless, which doesn't do much on its own. But man does it do much paired with a whole tribe.
Of course I was going to start with the Merfolk. The most important Merfolk printed since Master of the Pearl Trident, no less. Iâm neither joking nor exaggerating. Rishadan Dockhand, a 1/2 for one with islandwalk, is better than any other one-drop Merfolk printed since Cursecatcher. I 
all-Merfolk, all-the-time plan, Cursecatcher was a solid creature and piece of disruption. Over the years, the creatures got better and the spells got cheaper and suddenly Cursecatcher just didn't do much anymore. To have a chance, Merfolk needed something interactive at one mana, not more beef. The lords had that locked down.
That out of the way, how does being on a creature affect Port's power and playability? On the one hand, the ability to keep opponents off mana is powerful in Modern too. By which I mean Porting Tron. Porting Tron lands is awesome, and will feel far better than Porting Cloudpost in Legacy because it will happen more often. Dockhand isn't a land, so it doesn't tie down your own mana as much as Port. Thus, Dockhand won't harm your own board development as much as Port. However, this comes at the price of being a creature and therefore far more vulnerable than a land. Relying on Dockhand to save you is asking for heartbreak.
Next up is something I never expected to see in Modern: manaless discard. Grief is a more powerful but less flexible Entomber Exarch if actually paid for. However, its evoke cost turns Grief into Unmask. Or as Unmask was intended to be used, anyway. These days, Unmask is mainly used by 
Grief can only ever be used to disrupt opponents, not to advance one's own unfair gameplan. But critically, evoking Grief creates card disadvantage. Thoughtseize is a 1-1 trade whose value comes from trading up on card quality and mana value. An evoked Grief is -1 card (the exiled black card), then the discard is a 1-1 trade. It's harder to say if a 4-mana 3/2 menace is better than the discarded card. Free is much better than costing something, but that only actually matters if you then do something with the mana that's saved. And given the density of black spells that will be necessary to make Grief reliably free (using Force of Will 
Which is why Unmask never saw much play. The reason that Reanimator and Dredge are the only decks that consistently play Unmask in Legacy is that they don't care about throwing away cards. All that matters is setting up their broken thing, and if that happens, they should win. Thus, it's worthwhile to 2-for-1 themselves to ensure their opponent can't disrupt them or to get the needed card into the graveyard. Fair decks have never made use of Unmask because they have to care about resources. Records are thin because Unmask is from before the internet was widespread, but I could only 
Still, that strikes me as the best-case scenario, and constructing a deck to do so consistently makes me question how well it functions outside of that specific play pattern. The 
Immediately after Grief was spoiled, there was speculation that it was part of a cycle because it was an incarnation. That's a 
Cabal Coffers: Another Odyssey block reprint. It's much better now that Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Dryad of the Ilysian Grove exist and let Coffers see play outside of mono-black decks. It's much, much worse because the opportunity cost of playing lands that don't make mana themselves is so high in Modern.
me to ask why you need to use Dakkon to cheat in the artifact rather than just cast it? Or Refurbish it several turns earlier? Surveiling every turn is decent, especially as a way to set up graveyard synergies, and exiling creatures is very good. But is either enough for Dakkon to see play?
above three toughness. Also important to note, Yearling kills itself if played on an empty board. A chip off the old block.
Parsing the Modes
Plus, making a Treasure is actually better than just "sometimes costing one less." It's ramp. Simian Spirit Guide was just 
Kolaghan's Card Advantage
Not true of Prismari Command; only the mode pairing it shares with Kolaghan's Command will actually plus one indiscriminately, and that's also the most conditional of Kolaghan's card advantage parings, as it requires the opponent to have very specific permanents in play. Prismari's other commands of create a Treasure and draw two, discard two are a wash in terms of card economy, although the former generates an interesting ramp dimension and the latter provides card selection. Prismari Command is simply not a card advantage spell, and comparing it to Kolaghan's Commandâone of the format's premier card advantage spellsâtherefore runs the risk of selling the newer Command short. To Prismari's credit, 
Summing Up
caveat that it's only legal in one constructed format. Talk about a risky marketing move. As an early preview that can be played, what happens if it proves too good before it's even released? Or worse, not good enough? The former would make players dread the set; the latter would turn them off. It's a very fine line, and I'm not sure how it is playing out.
I've heard this called a card selection spell rather than a cantrip; it is both neither and both. It's only selection in that the caster chooses whether they want a land or a nonland. After that, they take the first instance revealed. The picked card being random doesn't really mean card selection to me. There's no choosing among options or setting up draws like Ponder or Oath of Nissa. It doesn't have a desirable effect and then replace itself, like Veil of Summer or Remand. It's not a tutor because the card is random. Thus it's not some freeroll card; players need to want to dig for a land or nonland to run Harvest.
The single most powerful usage, and where I think a lot of players are leaning towards, is using Harvest to guarantee land drops. A one-land hand with a cantrip is better than one with no cantrip, but it's still a risky keep. Replace that Opt or Serum Visions with Harvest, and this risky keep becomes a snap-keep. Theoretically. So long as Harvest resolves and you name land, you will make your next land drop. Will it be an optimal land? Who knows. But it will be a land, and that's most important. For most decks, this is no problem; one land is as good as another. In decks that require specific lands, lack of choice may be a problem. As such, I suspect that many players will try to
deck. Which means that 
Jund is decidedly midrange while Gruul is on the slower side of aggro, more like 
Brainstormed cards. I'm certain that players will try anyway, but if Historic Dreadhorde Arcanist lists 
