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Early Rotation Planning & Modern Masters Updates

Magic finance expert Chas Andres tells you which Innistrad block cards you should buy, sell, and hold on to through the set rotation and takes another look at Modern Masters.

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Early Rotation Planning

It’s easy to talk yourself into keeping your Standard collection intact through the set rotation.

After all, Innistrad block cards will be legal through mid-September, and that’s a full three and a half months away! Assuming you play FNM every week and will participate in a couple of PTQs, GPs, or other weekend events, that’s about twenty tournaments from now. Throwing in the towel on twenty tournaments is tough to do.

Plus, so many of today’s Standard cards are going to see play in Modern, so why sell them at all? Sure, Liliana of the Veil retails for $50 right now, but if you sell it on eBay you’ll pull in, what, $40? Maybe? Factor in $8 for fees and shipping and suddenly you’re looking at close to $30 in actual dollars received. Assuming it’ll cost at least $20 or $25 to reacquire the card for next year’s Modern season, doesn’t it make sense to just hold on to everything instead of having to try and reacquire it?

As tempting as it is, I suggest taking a deeper look at the reality of the situation so that you know what you’re giving up by not selling your Innistrad cards now. And by now I mean two weeks ago—they’ve already started to drop. If you do decide to move on from some of your Standard collection, do it ASAP.

Right around this time last year, I wrote an article telling you which cards in Scars of Mirrodin block you should hold through rotation and which ones you should sell as quickly as possible. Let’s take a look at how I did on the predictions front: 

Good Sell Calls:

Bad Sell Calls:

  • None

In a nutshell, this is why you have to give at least some thought to selling out of Standard right now. Every single card I said would drop in price did so. Many of them dropped in price by half their value or more.

Of course, keeping a single Mirran Crusader—or even a playset of them—isn’t going to bankrupt you. In fact, paying $12 for the privilege of playing Mirran Crusader through the summer months last year was likely worth it to most of the people who did exactly that. Even hanging on to a single deck isn’t much of a problem.

The issue is your trade binder and collection. I know I had a few copies of Darkslick Shores that I acquired in February of 2012 and still haven’t sold. That’s a drop-off from $20 to $4 on a card I never played a single match of Magic with. If you have any cards from Innistrad block that aren’t in heavy rotation for you, sell them immediately.

Of course, there were some cards I told you to keep last year. I predicted that some would weather rotation and make the transition to Modern, Legacy, or casual play quite nicely and should be held on to. Let’s see how I did with my “hold” predictions:  

Good Hold Calls:

Bad Hold Calls:

Of the cards I told you to hold on to, most of them are currently worth as much or more than they were a year ago today. That said, they all bottomed out even lower, and the time to buy in was last November or December. If you had sold all of your Scars block cards in May and bought back in around the holidays, you would have been very happy despite any of my calls. Keep this in mind if you’re a Modern speculator who doesn’t currently own much from Innistrad block.

Of the four cards I missed on completely, by the way, two had their values ruined by overprinted Duel Decks. The other two I had pegged to be more popular in casual play than they actually were.

So what about Innistrad block? Here are my predictions for all the rares and mythics currently selling for $5 or more on StarCityGames.com:

Sell:

Hold:

My logic here is fairly simple.

Sell anything in the $40-$50 range. Even if a card reaches these heights in Modern later on, there will be a large drop in price first.

Sell all aggressive creatures unless they’ve already made a serious impact in Modern or Legacy. The barrier for entry on these making the transition is usually too high.

Sell all block sweeper effects unless they’re obviously better than Day of Judgment.

Sell all mana fixing lands that are worse than shocklands or fetchlands.

Sell all planeswalkers in Duel Decks unless they’re at, like, the Elspeth, Knight-Errant level of good.

Hold all casual creatures with high prices that are unrelated to Standard playability. If a card is $12 and has never seen any Standard play, it’s not going to drop off much.

Hold all planeswalkers that are casual favorites in the $15-and-under range and aren’t in a Duel Deck.

Hold all cards that are $30 and under and are already Eternal staples.

There’s one card on the “sell” list that breaks my own rules: Snapcaster Mage. I simply think that $30 is too much for a non-mythic rare in a set as popular as Innistrad. Tons of people have playsets of these for Standard right now, and not all of them will be playing Modern. The price will drop, though I don’t think it will drop as far as most of the other cards on that list.

I also gave a few recommendations on low-value cards to target in trade. Let’s see how I did:

Scars of Mirrodin

Mirrodin Besieged

New Phyrexia

My number one “grower” pick from each set panned out well, as each of those casual cards more than doubled in value. Unfortunately, most of my follow-up picks for each set were busts. As long as you traded for them instead of bought them, of course, you still likely did fine. The only card on this list that actually went down in price was Nim Deathmantle, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why the world hasn’t realized that it goes in nearly every Commander deck.

Here are my casual targets for Innistrad block, with only rares currently worth $2 or less on the table:

Innistrad

Dark Ascension

Avacyn Restored

Overall, there’s not a single one of these cards I feel as strongly about as Darksteel Plate, Caged Sun, or Asceticism. There was a card like that in Innistrad—Parallel Lives—but that jumped in price several months ago. If it drops thanks to rotation, pick them up. It’s a casual all-star. Overall, though, people are getting savvier about these long-term casual cards.

Return to Ravnica Buys

Cards can often jump in price during the summer months. Last May, the Innistrad duals were all about where they are now—in the $6-$10 range—but they peaked at $15-$20 last September. In general, the best time to pick up cards for next season is in June and early July—by August, they’ve started to spike in anticipation.

Here are some cards I’m going to monitor closely in case they start to spike:

Dragon’s Maze still has that new set smell, so it’s not worth speculating on yet. What Ravnica block cards do you like as summer pick-ups? Tell me in the comments section!

Modern Masters Update

Now that we know most of the contents of Modern Masters, it’s time to see how accurate my predictions were and, more importantly, how much each pack is worth.

First, let’s take a look at that list of Modern rares worth $25 or more and see how many of them actually made it into the set:

Confirmed at mythic rare:

Confirmed at rare:

Missing from the set:

There’s still room for one more rare left to be spoiled, but I believe it’s white and won’t be any of the above cards. The only “missing” card I’m shocked not to see is Thoughtseize, and I fully expect that’s because they’re holding it off for a more notable reprint. Expect it to show up in Standard again soon, possibly in M14 but more likely in Theros.

I know that a lot of you have been complaining about the Kamigawa Dragons taking up a full third of the mythic slots, and I don’t blame you. I’ve done my share of poking fun at that move myself. When it comes down to it, though, aren’t you glad they’re at mythic instead of rare? If those Dragons had been rares and Doubling Season, Cryptic Command, Arcbound Ravager, Pact of Negation, and Summoner’s Pact had been mythics instead—all real possibilities—the average pack of Modern Masters would have been worth sixteen cents less than it is now! Hey, it adds up.

And what about the other cards that made it into the set? Here’s how the rares and mythics currently stack up. All prices are SCG current retail. Mythics are bolded.

Table

If you average out the current pack values, an average mythic slot is worth $30.87. Tarmogoyf really does balance out the Kamigawa Dragons, it turns out. A rare slot, on average, is worth a cool $9.58. Added together and averaged out, the rare/mythic slot for each pack of Modern Masters is worth roughly $12.25. That’s just $0.25 off the SCG retail price for a full pack!

Now let’s take a look at the uncommons. There are going to be 60 of them, and as of now we only know 28. Of those 28, four used to be rares. Eleven others are currently worth $3 or more each. Once you factor in cards like Kitchen Finks that are still selling for $10, you get a retail average of about $2.50 for each uncommon slot.

Obviously, that price will drop. Not only are we still waiting for half of the uncommons to come in—they can’t all be Kitchen Finks, after all—but these values will almost assuredly depreciate. Even still, penciling in $1 for each uncommon slot isn’t unreasonable at this point. That brings the retail price of each pack up to $15.25.

On the common side, we know just 36 out of a whopping 101. Of those, the standouts are Rift Bolt, Lava Spike, Etherium Sculptor, Kodama’s Reach, Desperate Ritual, Empty the Warrens, and Echoing Truth. While it’s too early to predict an average price for the common slot, it’s clear that Wizards came to play ball.

It’s also still too early to talk about foils, though it’s clear that this is where your Modern Masters pack can become epic. I guarantee you there’s at least one pack out there with a Tarmogoyf and a foil Tarmogoyf in it, and the man or woman who opens it may actually keel over dead from the shock. This possibility is going to keep sealed boxes of this set worth a whole lot of money for years to come.

And ultimately, this is the reason to buy Modern Masters product at current prices. Several weeks ago, I told you that anyone who bought boxes at $250 or less would be happy with that decision and I stand by that. If you want to pay the $300, understand that you’re basically paying full retail for your Modern cards with the chance to open an epic foil or two that would make the whole thing worth it. That’s a gamble some of you may take, and some of you will win, but I won’t be joining you. I have a box pre-ordered at MSRP, and I’ll be attending GP: Vegas and as many retail-priced drafts as I can find. Otherwise, I’ll be leaving the pack-cracking madness for those with deeper wallets than I.

Until next time –

– Chas Andres