Over the last couple of months, this has been a classroom filled with trade theory and homework assignments. Consider it payment to the ferryman; now you can crossover into the mind of the master (that would be me). Instead of talking about theory, you’re going to see it in action. I’m going to take you with me to my local game store to see if we can make some money. Let’s go.
I got a text from one of the local players; he wanted some stuff for a B/W Ally deck. Last year, I picked up tons of Talus Paladins and Kabira Evangels because a lot of local players were building Ally decks. This is typical for any deck that has a tribal theme; there’s a cross section of players who love to build those types of decks. The tribal deck of choice at the moment is infect. I’ve been trying to pick up infect staples for this reason. This is a perfect example of what I talked about last week with Momentum trading. I traded a pile of Allies which is
so last season
for stuff that’s relevant today.
My (29.34)
2x Talus Paladin 1.49
3x Kabira Evangel 1.99
4x Kazandu Blademaster .49
Hada Freeblade .99
2x Mimic Vat 3.99
Liliana Vess 4.99
3x Guul Draz Assassin 1.49
Mimic Vat is in high demand right now, but I’m happy to move it while the hype is heavy, and the price is fat. When I say stuff like that, people immediately respond with something like, “Do you think that it’ll drop in price?” Not necessarily, but since there’s no indication of cross-format play, I can expect this card to top out at $6. Getting $4 to $5 worth of in-demand cards is a great deal for me. Some people might be curious why I wouldn’t hold out for the $6 if I think that they have that potential. It’s because I don’t do business like that. I’d rather grind a dollar on a trade now than wait and hope to make $2 on a future non-existent trade that could only happen in a world where Mimic Vat has reached its full potential of $6.
If that world begins to materialize, then I’ll use “The Window” (we’ll talk more about this later) to trade for Mimic Vats before their price fully matures. In the meantime, stocking safe bets like dual lands and sideboard tech is a good way to prepare for price spikes, because then you can use your stock to get the cards that are rising. Before we talk about “The Window,” let’s look at this trade in more depth. I’m giving up more tribal cards (of the Vampire variety) and a planeswalker (I keep all planeswalkers in stock, since these are always tradable) for this pile:
His (34.37)
2x Darkslick Shores 2.99
2x Seachrome Coast 2.99
Memoricide 2.99
Basilisk Collar 5.99
2x Putrefax 2.49
Creeping Tar Pit 3.99
Chimeric Mass 1.99
Necropede Foil .99
Kuldotha Rebirth Foil .49
Myrsmith Foil .99
Net Gain $5.03
The
Scars of Mirrodin dual lands
are gaining the reputation that they deserve. I was listening to the Yo! MTG Taps and The Eh? Team podcasts, and someone said, “What’s better than being able to turn 1 Duress and then have Mana Leak mana on turn 2?” You can do this without the SOM dual lands, but they make this kind of play consistent and effortless, without using fetches and hoping to draw an M11 dual. In aggro decks, sticking an early threat under the counterspell curve is important, and these allow you to do that without sacrificing your mana fixing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mixture of these in different Extended decks next season.
Memoricide
is becoming the sideboard card of choice for dealing with the anemic threat density in the current Standard metagame. Players want to live the dream by stripping Titans or planeswalkers out of their opponent’s decks before they have the chance to cast them. There was an unusual amount of people looking for these during the MTGO launch of Scars of Mirrodin. The price is not going to go crazy on these guys since it’s rare (not a mythic rare), and it’s the buy-a-box promo.
Basilisk Collar:
I ran out of these when Naya was a hot deck, but now with the reprinting of Trinket Mage, I’ve been getting sporadic requests for this card. I wouldn’t call it an in-demand card, but it’s good to have a couple of these in your binder. Conversely, if you have a thousand of these, you might want to unload them. If Trinket Mage and Inferno Titan didn’t break this, nothing will.
Putrefax:
I’ve been picking these guys up for the infect crowd. I also want to say that I think infect is only a couple of cards away from being a viable strategy. If infect gets some love in the next two sets, then I could see the price of cards like this going up a tick. Keep in mind that Putrefax can be found as a foil in the Preconstructed decks for SOM. This is a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that because of the history of (most) Precon rares, you can pick this guy up for $1; the bad thing is that you probably won’t ever get more that $3 out of him.
Creeping Tar Pit
is the cornerstone for the U/B Control mana base, and the deck has been recognized as one of the better control strategies by deckbuilder extraordinaire Gerry Thompson. With all the planeswalkers that are out there, this little assassin does a great job of stealing loyalty counters. I’ve been picking these up whenever I can, and I can’t seem to keep them in the binder. Out of all the manlands, this and Celestial Colonnade have been the most desired. I still have stacks of the other ones. I wonder why. Actually I don’t wonder; it’s obviously because they’re not blue.
Chimeric Mass
is run as a one-of in every deck with Trinket Mage and rightfully so. I expect these types of decks to increase as control starts to become more prevalent. I’ve also seen this in a few Mono-Red Kuldotha Rebirth decks on MTGO. It’s good to have three to six of these in the binder. I wouldn’t keep more than that.
The foils that I chose are from casual decks that I’ve seen floating around the shop and MTGO. There’s a lot of value to be had in these types of foils. I pick them up at .50 and then trade them for between $1 and $2. That doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but it only takes one trade session with a trade partner who’s pimping out their decks. Before long you’re looking at $50 in $1 to $2 foils. Surprisingly, these small-time foils trade much better than expensive foil mythic rares. I have a foil Lotus Cobra, foil Vengevine, and foil Eldrazi Monument in my binder, but people flip right past those to the foil Ichor Rats.
The Window
While I was waiting for my next trade, I decided to look through the cases at the store. I always check for cards that are in what I call “The Window.” Last week we talked about recognizing cards that are on the way up. Cards that are in “The Window” are the cards that are in the early stages of relevancy. When a card is in these stages, there’s a window of opportunity to buy or trade these at last week’s prices. Good examples of these cards are:
Gaea’s Revenge – This card has doubled in value on MTGO. Check out Gerry T’s
latest article.
He applies the same logic to this card that I did in my
last article.
I got a kick out of this post from Kelly Reid on Twitter.
Survival of the Fittest – Since the
StarCityGames.com Legacy Open in Nashville
this card had been getting even hotter. That’s why I was happy to see this while browsing the display cases.
StarCityGames.com has the foil judge Survival priced at $59.99, and they’re sold out.
Net Gain $24.99
I also checked the cases for Gaea’s Revenge, but there were none. Thankfully I ran into someone who had one in their trade stuff. I started the conversation by asking the guy if he had a Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, which I needed for my Mono Black EDH Deck. He said yes and handed me an assortment of binders and boxes. After finding a Gaea’s Revenge in his assortment of cards, I knew that I had to make a trade happen.
My (32.91)
4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle 1.99
3x Consuming Vapors 4.99
Negate (Textless) 1.99
Time Vault (Foil Proxy) 4 is what I “paid” for it.
Mimic Vat 3.99
Did you notice the Mimic Vat? ItRf17;s probably going into the same deck that the Consuming Vapors are going in. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the Negate could also go in the same deck, but it doesn’t matter, does it? Sure it does. It’s important to know what your trade partner is building so that you can suggest other cards for them to pick up, like this foil Time Vault. In case you didn’t know, this card isn’t real; it’s a proxy. A month or so back, I traded a Plateau for a full set of foil Power Nine, the foil Time Vault and two foil Mazes of Ith proxied. It worked out to less than $4 each. I valued the Time Vault at $15 for today’s trade. This is what I ended up with.
His (41.99)
Terastodon (Foil) 3.99
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon 11.99
2x Putrefax 2.49
Gaea’s Revenge 3.99
2x Hand of the Praetors 5.99
2x Ezuri, Renegade Leader 2.49
If this were the end of the trade, it would’ve been okay, but hopefully you’d expect better than just okay from me. According to how we valued the cards, he was still about $14 short. I continued to shop.
His (29.41)
Thada Adel, Acquisitor 1.49
2x Spikeshot Elder 1.49
Academy Ruins 3.99
Chimeric Mass (Foil) 4.99
2x Genesis Wave 2.99
Genesis Wave (Foil) 7.99
Gigantiform (Foil) 1.99
Total 71.32
Net Gain $38.41
That’s a $38.41profit. Hopefully
Pete Jahn
doesn’t have a Premium account, or he’s going to have my head for this one. Before the morality police take out the handcuffs, would it make a difference if I said that this guy works for a store, pricing cards? Or that he even plans to open his own store? So how does something like this happen (well beside the fact that I’m a trade Jedi)?
It happens because even the people setting the pricing often don’t know how pricing works. Cards like Hand of the Praetors, Genesis Wave, and Putrefax are deceptive because they don’t seem like they’d have any value. They don’t see a lot of top tier play (Genesis Wave is getting there), but the casual demand for these cards seriously drives their prices. When people don’t respect the casual market, they end up mispricing their cards.
Another way that I gained value in this trade is from his unfamiliarity with foil pricing. He valued the foil Genesis Wave and the foil Chimeric Mass at $3, and he put the foil Terastodon at $2. Misjudging the price of a foil can happen to anyone; it’s even happened to me. Now I check the pricing for each foil that I have in my binder. When a new deck hits or a card becomes more relevant, then I recheck the foil pricing. This habit has helped me cultivate a good eye for foil pricing. If someone values a foil lower then my gut says it should be, I’ll pick it up. I didn’t know the exact price of these foils, but my gut said they were worth more than he wanted for them.
Before I move onto the last trade, I just wanted to point out the Spikeshot Elders that I picked up. This little guy is a one-drop, which means that his mana cost doesn’t prohibit him from being played in older formats. Also he doesn’t tap to activate his ability, which is a big plus. I like this card, but more importantly, people who are smarter than me like the card – Patrick Chapin and Cedric Philips to name a couple. I’m not
saying that he’s the second coming or anything, but I’m picking them up since they’re already in the some Red lists (
6th place Nashville,
Cedric’s List
), and at $1 you really can’t lose.
This last trade was a big one. I’ve had a long standing trade relationship with this guy, so I knew that we could cut the crap and get down to business. I didn’t bother with the lead binder. I handed him the “good stuff” binder, and he went shopping:
My (143.32)
Mana Crypt (Signed) 49.99
Land Tax (Foil DCI) 19.99
Seachrome Coast (Foil) 7.99
Glacial Fortress (Foil Japanese) $12 – I called it $12, there is no price on SCG
Day of Judgment (Foil) 5.99
Coralhelm Commander 3.99
Reveillark 3.99
Mimic Vat (Foil) 9.99
Sensei’s Divining Top 7.99
Wanderwine Hub 2.49
Fact or Fiction 3.99
Enclave Cryptologist (Foil) 1.99
Merrow Reejerey 2.99
Mulldrifter (Foil) 2.99 – Lauren Lee has infected my brain, and I almost typed
Mulldrifting
here.
Oblivion Ring 1.49
Silvergill Adept 1.49
Cursecatcher 1.99
Sejiri Merfolk .49
Tolaria West 1.49
Okay, so after looking through the “big boy” binder, he changed gears and decided to build a Merfolk EDH deck. It turns out that his playgroup is sick of him smashing their faces with his Zur deck, and he wanted something more “fair.” I worked with him on pulling cards that would be helpful to his newfound mission.
The only thing that I really “cared” about in this batch was the Mana Crypt, but it held a lot of weight in the trade and considering what I was getting, I was fine with letting it go. The Land Tax was part of a lot that I bought on eBay. I got four foil DCI Land Taxes for $12 each, and we valued it at $28 in the trade. Here’s what I got:
His (162.32)
Hand of the Praetors 5.99
3x Darkslick Shores 2.99
Abyssal Persecutor 12.99
Etched Champion (Foil) 4.99
Necrotic Ooze 2.99
Genesis Wave 2.99
Tempered Steel 2.99
Pyromancer Ascension 2.99
Haunting Echoes (Foil) 2.99 – Why doesn’t anyone play this in Standard?
Liliana Vess (Foil) 5.99
Ichor Rats (Foil) 1.49
Gaea’s Revenge (Foil) 9.99
Leonin Arbiter (Foil) 7.99
Vengevine (Foil) 59.99
Verdant Catacombs (Foil) 24.99
Mul Daya Channelers (Foil) 3.99
Net Gain $19
has been lurking in the shadows ever since his release. This card is good, it’s a mythic rare, and Gerry T feels like it might be
“Grossly Underrated
.” If there were a time to pick these up, it’s now. This guy is ripe with potential.
Etched Champion:
I’ve been hearing murmurings about this guy, and I’ve been selling a lot of them on MTGO. He may find his place in Legacy Affinity. Do I think he has potential? I don’t usually trade for cards with “potential” until they prove themselves, but when my trade partner valued him at $3, I added it to my pile. It’s hard to miss with a price like that.
Necrotic Ooze
is being played in one of the new Legacy Survival decks. It combos nicely with Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion. If you have both in the graveyard and enough cards in your deck, then you can kill your opponent instantly. This card has a lot going for it; it has casual appeal and competitive playability. It’s like Ranger of Eos was to one-drops; it gets better with every new creature that has an activated ability.
Vengevine
is seeing some serious Legacy play. The fact that they
haven’t been putting up solid results
in Standard has been suppressing its price, but I don’t expect this to be the case forever. Legacy players love their foils, so adding another foil Vengevine to my trade bait gives me the opportunity use it to trade with a Legacy player for something bigger like dual lands.
Final Tally
After a couple hours at the shop, I ended up with $87.43. That’s a freakin’ Jace, the Mind Sculptor! I hope you enjoyed this week’s article; if you like this style of trade analysis then let me know in the comments. Have a rockin’ week and thanks for all the Twitter responses from last week.