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Insider: MTG Stock Watch for 5/17/15

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Welcome back fellow speculators. It's time for another episode of MTG Stock Watch. As usual we'll start with the penny "stocks".

Penny Stocks

1. Timely Reinforcements (+23.5%) - This one isn't surprising as it's a premier sideboard card for decks with white against any sort of burn or aggro deck. Just the life gain alone typically is a two-for-one against burn and the tokens can often serve as crucial chump blockers to buy time or trade with Mono-Red's typical two-toughness creatures.

Its price was likely held in place by its potential to show up in MM2015, as we'll see this week a lot of our gainers are cards that didn't show up in the MM2015 spoiler and a lot of our losers are ones that did.

timely

2. Urza's Power Plant (9th Edition) (-19%) - This one is likely due to some additional ones being posted on TCG Player. The total number of them listed on TCG Player (as of me typing this up) is 20. Given TCG Player's algorithm, if one or two people list a few at TCG low they can easily lower the mid price by a decent amount (which always happens with outliers and small populations of data).

power plant

3. Urza's Mine (Mouth) (Antiquities) (+15.7%) - There are currently closer to 50-60 copies of this listed on TCG Player currently, which isn't a tremendous amount, but enough that a single seller couldn't likely affect the price without posting it as something astronomical. The tron lands all managed to bypass a reprint in MM2015 (which is honestly a bit surprising given the fact that they brought back Eldrazi).

mine

4. Urza's Tower (Mountains) (Antiquities) (+15.2%) - Similar to Urza's Mine above, there are again over 50+ copies of this card on TCG Player currently and it dodged MM2015 reprint...this is the most "pimp" version you can get that isn't foil.

tower

5. Apolcalypse Hydra (MM2015) (-13.8%) - This card's price was heavily propped up by casual demand from a lackluster set. Being a mythic in that set the price was pretty stable, but a reprinting as a regular rare in MM2015 has killed any short-term profits to be had on this card (either the Conflux or the MM2015 versions). I expect both will continue to drop.

apocalypse hydra

6. Insurrection (Commander) (+13%) - This Commander all-star is finally seeing an uptick, though with three printings (Onslaught, Planechase, and Commander) the upside is limited, though not nearly as much as it could be given that the two reprints were from shorter-print specialty products.

insurrection

7. Ojutai Exemplars (DTK) (-11.1%) - This DTK card had a lot of hype going into its prerelease that has simply never panned out. Similar to Ojutai's Command, a lot of pros expected a solid white-blue deck to rear its ugly head back into Standard, though it's humorous to see that both Ojutai's Examplars and Command pre-sold for more than Ojutai himself.

If this card continues to fall, it may be something worth targeting in the next month or so (before Origins spoilers start hitting) as it does have a lot of useful abilities and is already a fair costed creature in and of itself.

exemplars

8. Treetop Village (Antholigies) (+8.2%) - With the banning of Treasure Cruise and Birthing Pod, we've seen an uptick in Junk Modern decks and this is often one of the more preferred manlands for said deck (though I'm a bigger fan of Stirring Wildwood myself). The trample is crucial with all the Lingering Souls tokens abounding everywhere.

treetop

9. Snow-covered Mountain (Coldsnap) (+7%) - This one seems a bit odd, until you realize that Skred Red has been picking up steam in Modern as the lands are the same as mountains...but they often turn Skred into an instant-speed Flame Slash (which is often what these red aggro decks need to get past a Spellskite without using up two cards.

I've also known quite a few EDH players who like to play with snow-covered basics (especially mono-red players, because Scrying Sheets is a fantastic card if you can support it.

mountain

10. Collective Voyage (Commander) (+6.5%) - This one isn't all that surprising either. Green is known to be the best color in EDH and this is a card that goes well in both "group hug" style decks and any big ramp decks.

The fact that it's limited to basics can also mean that it's a super cheap one-sided mass ramp spell (I've played quite a few games with it where some of my opponents simply got to shuffle their decks after finding nothing). I still like Tempt with Discovery more, but Voyage can be played in Tiny Leaders and Tempt can't.

voyage

Blue Chip "Stocks"

1. Dark Confidant (-12.65%) - This one is no surprise. Dark Confidant is seeing very little Modern or Legacy play now and his announcement in MM2015 just adds more to the supply when demand was already waning.

This is a pretty large drop and it's likely to continue downward (at least for the next few weeks as all the MM2015 copies enter the market). With the banning of Treasure Cruise, I wouldn't be surprised to see Bob actually start to see more play again.

confidant

2. Tarmogoyf (-4.44%) - While it was spoiled in MM2015 a while ago, we're now in the week of MM2015 release and likely many of those who've held onto them thinking they'd remain safe have accepted that the MM2015 print run is considerably larger than the original Modern Masters run and thus there will be a lot more added to the supply than the first go around.

Still that's a pretty minor drop for Modern's premier card, which just goes to show not only the strength of Tarmogoyf, but also the belief of the player base that its current price is relatively accurate.

goyf

3. Bayou (+2.7%) - We're starting to see an uptick in the BUG decks again as they have some of (if not the) best tools to fight combo decks as well as stick a threat that provides a solid clock (usually True-Name Nemesis or Tarmogoyf), though Tasigur has occasionally made an appearance.

bayou

4. Show and Tell (-1.97%) - With a resurgence in tempo decks in Legacy the combo decks typically take a back seat, at least until the tempo decks begin to focus on the mirrors and sacrifice sideboard slots usually reserved for combo decks to beat each other. Then combo wins the whole thing and they have to go back to boarding for it.

show and tell

5. Tropical Island (+1.51%) - As I mentioned with Bayou, this is another of the key lands for both BUG and RUG and is the cheapest of the blue duals.

trop

6. Plateau (-1.4%) - We haven't seen much URW Delver or Stoneblade variants recently. These decks tended to be best when fighting against other Delver decks, so with a rise in those I would expect a rebound on the URW decks, especially the Stoneblade styles as Delver decks have a really hard time beating a Batterskull or a Sword of Fire and Ice-equipped True-Name Nemesis.

plateau

7. Underground Sea (+1.3%) - The third in our BUG lands with an increase, we see that despite being the most expensive dual land...there's still room to grow.

usea

8. Taiga (+1.05%) - I'm honestly not all that sure on this one. This dual is typically only seen in Jund and Lands decks and neither of those seems to be having any sort of resurgence (Lands mainly because of the cost of Tabernacles and the fact that it is typically a very slow deck) and Jund because it doesn't have blue in it. It's important to note that Taiga has actually returned back to its pre-spike price of last March/April.

taiga

9. Volcanic Island (+0.6%) - We're starting to see a resurgence in RUG Delver strategies again and this is one of the two lands in the deck (though actually not the most important one).

volcanic island

10. Sneak Attack (-0.5%) - As mentioned with Show and Tell, the "Sneak and Show" strategy is on a downturn, except at least with Show and Tell there's always the Omni-Tell deck option. Sneak Attack has seen play in the mono-red decks also utilizing and Through the Breach, but typically Show and Tell is simply a better option than Through the Breach (primarily due to the two mana difference in cost).

sneak

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