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Greetings, everyone and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Daily Stock Watch! Today, let's check out one of the cards that I've always believed to be one of the better cards in Standard.
If you haven't heard yet, Pascal Maynard made it to the finals of Pro Tour Ixalan (but lost to eventual champion Seth Manfield) using a UW God-Pharaoh's Gift deck that everyone else seems to have forgotten. The deck was missing the consensus money rares, but it surely didn't disappoint. As a matter of fact, it made finance junkies (like us) very happy because some cards will tick upwards, value-wise.
For reference, here is how the deck look likes:
UW GPG by Pascal Maynard
The biggest gainer for this deck over the weekend was Angel of Invention. The cat is out of the bag for that one, so we'll have to focus on what could be the next big thing in the coming days. We could make a case for the namesake card, but that card is a rare and its use will be restricted to this deck. Champion of Wits has already moved up prior to this top 8 exposure. Betting on this angel, in my opinion, would actually make sense.
Back in April of this year, this card was pre-selling for as high as $14.50 before it plummeted to the $5-7 range as the hype died down. This trend continued until it was down to as low as $2.32; a mind-whacking fall in value for a card that was high on some finance analysts' list of possible breakout cards. It didn't recover, spike, nor gain any steam in the coming months. Well, not until after this Pro Tour, I guess.
Standard's metagame has been dominated by energy deck variants (Temur, BG, 4 Color), Ramunap Red, Mardu Vehicles, and some rare appearances from UB Control. The format has been lorded over by these tried and tested mythics over the past few months; a company that I hope Angel of Sanctions would join some day.
The Mythic Standard
Although it is not as much of a game changer like the cards above, I still think that it could fit in as a good utility card in every deck that has access to white. Based on my Utility Checker, Angel of Sanctions was sparingly used in any top tier deck since it has been printed. Only 0.2% of decks have used about one copy of it in the main deck, while 0.8% have used at least two in the sideboard -- which further cements her image as a decent crit off the board.
You must be wondering by now why I'm still high on this card. I could cite multiple reasons on why I think there's a lot of upside for this card: first, it is a mythic rare that's not crappy at all. This card kidnaps a nonland permanent on the turn it arrives and when it comes back from the dead to haunt your opponent as a zombie (something that could be crucial going forward with regards to The The Scarab God's ability). Second, there aren't too many pricey cards on this GPG decklist. This means that casual or new players would have the tendency to create a deck like this for FNM and other Standard events that their LGS will be running. In that scenario, this card has the biggest potential, in my opinion, to gain extra value (but not big enough to buy you a new car). And lastly, I like looking at the angel archetype as something that holds its value post rotation. A lot of collectors and art enthusiasts buy these cards for a purpose that's way different from how we see it. I don't mind risking $2-3 for something that could suddenly go big in an instant without losing its casual appeal.
Oh, and let me remind you that Rivals of Ixalan will be spoiling cards in a month's time. If the things I'm seeing online are legit, it probably has actually started.
My final verdict for this card would be to buy, buy, and buy while it's cheap. Star City games is out of stock already at $3.49, but you could get tons of it at $3 each via Channel Fireball. If you have time, you could browse thru the multiple vendors that still has it at under $3 on TCGPlayer. I've been doing the Daily Stock Watch for barely two weeks but this is probably the one I'll be betting on the most. Feel free to buy foils as well if you have the ammunition (and guts) to do so.
Always feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. And if you want to keep up with all the market movement, be sure to check in with the QS Discord Channel for real time market information, and stay ahead of the hottest specs!
