Once upon a time, there was a little green creature that caused some pretty big problems.

The little guy was underestimated at first. He only cost 1G, and he started small unless there were a lot of cards already in a graveyard. Slowly but surely, he started seeing more and more play. After about a month, he was worth a solid $40 and was sold out everywhere. People were buying sealed product just to crack him. Good decks in Eternal formats started playing him as a four-of, and he gradually became accepted as a cornerstone of Legacy play.

The name of that card? Tarmogoyf. Scavenging Ooze.  

When Wizards of the Coast released the pre-constructed Commander decks last spring, Aaron Forsythe assured us on Twitter that the product would aimed at casual players. He told us that it wouldn’t be a backdoor way to reprint cards for Legacy without warping Standard. Even though there were new cards included and even though they were Legacy legal, we were told that they were unlikely to make much of an impact on competitive formats. Even more importantly, Helene Bergeot promised us that these decks would be churned out to meet demand. Unlike the From the Vault series, where limited availability is part of the allure, these decks were to be reprinted until we all had an ample chance to purchase them.

Going into the Commander release, I predicted that card prices would start high but would fall off quickly. If all of the above was true, I reasoned, why would the price of the significant singles add up to much more than the cost of the deck in full? While it was possible that some cards might retain a convenience premium, these things tend to work themselves out in the wash. And considering that every single deck came with both a Sol Ring and a Lightning Greaves, I had little reason to believe that any of the original cards would settle in at more than ten dollars.

What went wrong? What led us to a world where Scavenging Ooze is $40 and playsets of Shardless Agents were being listed on eBay for $50 last week? What is the future of these Magic releases where new cards are added to the format via pre-constructed casual decks?

This week we’re going to find out.

Rats Off To Ya

Pre-constructed decks used to be terrible.

They were called ‘theme decks’ back then, but their theme was usually just ‘unplayable trash that no one would ever want.’ Just as one example, the ‘Pandemonium’ theme deck from Apocalypse has a whopping two rares: Last Stand and Penumbra Wurm. The notable uncommons are…a Life / Death, I guess. Captain’s Maneuver isn’t bad. While some of these decks had an okay rare (Phyrexian Arena was in the ‘Burial’ deck!), they were considered to be very poor purchases across the board.

To the best of my knowledge, the first theme deck to contain a desirable card was released along with Betrayers of Kamigawa. The card in question was Umezawa’s Jitte, a card that was changed late in the playtesting process so no one at Wizards realized quite how good it would be. At the time, pre-cons generally retailed for ten dollars and Umezawa’s Jitte was worth a solid twenty on the secondary market. Finding copies of the Rat’s Nest theme deck with the Jitte was like finding free money.

As expected, most Magic retailers raised the price immediately and stores generally charged about the price of a Jitte for the entire deck. Those that didn’t were bought out within minutes. Your best chance of finding a Rat’s Nest deck came at the big box stores—Target and Wal-Mart—where no one was going to bother raising the price. I heard plenty of stories back then of people who were in the right place at the right time and ended up with five of them at MSRP.

There was a lot of speculation at the time over whether or not the influx of Jittes from the Rat’s Nest deck was keeping the price down. While I don’t know anyone who got raw numbers, it seemed as if there was less of an influence than if it had been a Prerelease card. Copies of Umezawa’s Jitte were still absurdly expensive and hard to find. Stores couldn’t keep them in stock, and often they couldn’t reorder until they had sold out of the other four theme decks that had to be purchased along with Rat’s Nest. Predictably, those four were terrible and didn’t sell all that well. For the most part, the only thing that Rat’s Nest added to the Jitte market was a fun little sub-game where some people were able to get a copy or two at half price.

Wide Release

Imagine if the Rat’s Nest deck had been a Commander or Planechase deck and was the only place you could purchase a copy of Umezawa’s Jitte.

Even though Umezawa’s Jitte doesn’t see too much Legacy play, it does see some. In fact, it sees enough play across all formats to be sold out on StarCityGames.com at $19.99. Betrayers of Kamigawa wasn’t a very popular set, of course, but the card was also released as a Grand Prix promo for a full year. Even though Rat’s Nest had the same wide release that the Commander/Planechase decks have, the card still sold for twice the MSRP of the deck. Had the deck been released today as the only place to acquire Umezawa’s Jitte, not even the lack of Standard legality would have kept the card under $50.  

I’ve spoken to several small retailers, and they told me that the availability of Commander and Planechase decks are lower than most people expect. While the larger stores are able to make bigger orders, most brick and mortar stores seem to have difficulty getting second and third orders on these fulfilled by their distributors. Because some stores had a single customer buy all of their decks on the first day of release, these decks never even reached many shelves.

That said, these Commander decks aren’t as impossible to track down as the Rat’s Nest theme deck was. A quick search of online retail stores tells me that two of the decks—Devour for Power and Mirror Mastery—are readily available for right around MSRP. Political Puppets (Flusterstorm and Chaos Warp) and Counterpunch (Scavenging Ooze) are easy enough to find in the $50 range—only $10 more than the retail value of a single Ooze. Only the Heavenly Inferno deck—which plays so well with cards released in Avacyn Restored—is difficult to find for less than $60. Planechase 2012 is similar; two of the decks are easy enough to find for the $19.99 MSRP, and the other two regularly sell for around $10 more.

This tells me that the wide release printing that Wizards is doing is just enough to meet casual demand without oversaturating the market. If too many of these units had been printed, the market would be flooded with the ‘bad’ decks and they would be easy to find for well under MSRP. Instead, the decks with less interesting singles are hovering right around retail price and those with tournament playable exclusives are worth a bit more.

Because the Ooze’s price rose so high and stayed that way for so long, I am fairly certain that these cards have proven to have the staying power to maintain their price above retail. It seems astonishing that a single card can be worth as much as an in-print deck that also comes with 99 others, but that does seem to be the case.

Of course, tournaments aren’t the only things that drive the price of cards. While no single card in the Heavenly Inferno deck is worth half as much as Scavenging Ooze, the whole deck sells for quite a bit more. This is because the product ties in absurdly well to all the popular cards in Avacyn Restored. Think about it: every Commander-oriented player who opened one of the mythic Angels or Demons in the set had to consider making a Kaalia deck, right? Much like Death Baron, the exclusive singles from that set are going to be worth money for years to come.

And don’t misunderstand—these cards ARE going to be worth money for quite some time.

The 2011 Commander decks went out of print about two months ago and are no longer available through most distributors. That means that the number of new ones entering the card pool going forward is close to zero. From here on out, we need to rely on reprints to get more of these Commander exclusive cards into the marketplace.

With that in mind, I’d like to take a look at a few of these cards and see if any of them might be good to pick up.

Commander 2011 Singles, Printed May 2011 — April 2012

Scavenging Ooze – $39.99

The granddaddy of Commander exclusive cards, this is one of the two that actually see play in Legacy. I would rate this card a strong buy if I didn’t believe it would be reprinted, but I think that we will probably see it again quite soon. Scavenging Ooze is good, but it’s not above the curve in Standard and I could see it making the scene possibly as early as M13. If Wizards wants to leave it out of Standard, we will likely see it in one of the next couple of judge packets.

Being printed in a normal set would likely push the value down to the $15 range, but the judge printing would probably not change the value too much. I just can’t see Wizards letting this one go for years and ending up as an $80 card.

Flusterstorm – $15.99

This card has already been printed as a judge foil even though it only sees a little bit of Eternal play. I think Wizards was a little worried about this one from the start, honestly, because any one-drop blue counterspell is going to be at least considered in older formats. It’s not even all that great in Commander and was kind of a bizarre choice to put in one of these decks at all.

Because it was just reprinted, though, I think its value is at an all-time low. Unless we see it in a Standard legal set, this card will likely end up closer to $20.

Kaalia of the Vast – $7.99

Doubling in price over the past few months, Kaalia is one of the best bets in this set to maintain value. While she can only be played in (or as the Commander of) a W/R/B deck, she’s a must have—and a must play—for anyone who likes Angels. She’s powerful, cheap to cast, and fun to play with. I also can’t imagine Wizards finding another good opportunity to reprint her in the near future. Long term, Kaalia probably has room to settle in the $12-$15 range.

Chaos Warp – $5.99

The nice thing about this card is that it gives red an answer that it has never had before. It was preselling in the $15-$20 range when the Commander decks were first spoiled, but it never made much of an impact beyond the other red Commander decks I immediately jammed this in to. I also find it to be an underrated answer for things in Cube, though it does have the tendency to backfire when your back is truly against the wall.

I don’t think Chaos Warp would be hard to reprint, and it would be a fun spell to mess with in Standard. However, Mark Rosewater said on Tumblr that this was a card he would have killed if it was on his radar. That being said, I don’t expect it back any time soon. I think $5 is a reasonable range for the card, though, and I don’t see it rising unless it starts to see play in Legacy.

Edric, Spymaster of Trest – $4.99

This cube staple also started in the $15 range before dropping off quickly. While the current Legacy environment isn’t favorable for Edric, this is a card I could see making in impact at some point in the future. He certainly isn’t lacking in raw power, and if he shows up in a Top 8 deck at some point in the next few years he’ll jump to $20+ and stay there. I’d take a flyer on a set of these.

Homeward Path – $3.99

The reason this card is so low is because Commander deckbuilders tend to prefer proactive effects to reactive ones. Homeward Path only shines against a particular kind of (really good, really annoying) opponent, and the other times when you really needed that second source of green will come up more often. I still think this card is underrated, and good lands always rise over time. I’ve socked a set of these away, and I have a few more hiding in decks. It’s quite a good card.

Most of the other Commander cards are readily available for under $3, but there are a few I like more than others:

• Hydra Omnivore, $2.99 — An essential card for any ‘big green stuff’ multiplayer deck. Not only does his power go up by a factor for each player in the game, but he only needs to hit the weakest target.
• The Mimeoplasm, $2.49 — An outstanding creature to lead a Zombie/Reanimator deck.
• Champion’s Helm, $1.99 — How many different Lightning Greaves style cards does one deck need? In general-centric builds, this is likely the second best piece of equipment available.
• Tariel, Reckoner of Souls – $1.99 — Very few Kaalia decks are going to cut this.

Planechase 2012 Singles, Printed May 2012 — April 2013 (Projected)

Sakashima’s Student – $9.99

This is by far my favorite Planechase card, and it’s actually not far off from being tournament playable. Phantasmal Image has shown that Clone with a drawback is a viable card for one and a blue, and this guy also has the ability to give you another activation on your comes into play triggers. Unfortunately, the fact that this card is so poor when you’re behind and in certain matchups probably dooms it to the casual sphere. I predict it will fall closer to $4.99 before rebounding a bit next year.

Maelstrom Wanderer – $7.99 & Shardless Agent – $7.99

At last, we come to Todd Anderson, the cascade deck he got from Gerry Thompson, and his fifth place finish in the Legacy tournament at SCG Open Series: Columbus.

I spoke with a few experts about how ‘real’ a deck this is, and I got the same answer from pretty much all of them: the deck is absolutely real, but it’s high variance even for a combo deck. There’s no plan B, and there are several hate cards it will just fold to. It can win out of nowhere, but its pilot had better know how to mulligan correctly and play aggressively.

Of the two Planechase cards in the deck, Maelstrom Wanderer is cute and a little bit clunky while Shardless Agent is absolutely essential. Apart from this one deck, though, the uses for these two cards diverge entirely. I can imagine Shardless Agent seeing play in other Eternal decks while Maelstrom Wanderer is likely going to be popular in casual and Commander circles. In both cases, however, I can’t see the demand dropping off anytime soon.

Even though playsets of Shardless Agent were being listed for $50 on eBay right after the tournament, not a single set sold for more than $12 until the middle of last week when someone pulled the trigger at $30. StarCityGames.com seems to be having a reasonable amount of luck getting people to pay $8 for these—their stock has steadily gone down over the week—so this price point seems right to me.

If I had a playset of these right now, I would hold them and see if the card continues to win in Legacy. If it does, especially if it starts popping up in other decks, I could see the card climbing into the $12 range. If not, it should drop back to $2.99-$3.99.

Maelstrom Wanderer should settle around $4.99 unless it continues to see Legacy play as well. If it does, expect it to hit $15 thanks to the mythic rare symbol as well as casual demand.

Baleful Strix – $2.99 & Illusory Angel – $2.99

Both of these cards are similar role-players that are well worth monitoring. Similar to Shardless Agent, if they start cropping up in winning decklists they will triple in price overnight. Illusory Angel is especially worth watching, as her creature type will insure constant demand from casual players and Angel collectors alike.

Unlike the two cascade cards, either of these could be reprinted at either time. While they are evocative of existing planes, especially the Strix, they are still vanilla enough to show up in a Standard legal set should they need to. Because Planechase 2012 is so new, if these two cards don’t show up in tournaments soon I would expect their price to be cut in half over the next few months before bouncing back up after going out of print.  

How to Approach Cards in Fixed Sets

From a worm’s eye view, it feels incorrect to compare the value of cards in a fixed set like a Commander deck with those in a variable set like a booster pack. Two different worlds, right? If I buy the Heavenly Inferno deck, I know that I’m going to get exactly one copy of Kaalia. If I buy a booster pack of Avacyn Restored, I might crack an Entreat the Angels or I might get stuck with Conjurer’s Closet.

From a big picture perspective, of course, there is absolutely no difference between the two.

If I open one Heavenly Inferno deck, I have a 100% chance of getting Kaalia. In a given Magic set, I have less than 1% odds to open a specific mythic in a specific pack.

If I were to open ALL of the Heavenly Inferno decks, of course, I’d have 100% of the Kaalias. If I were to open all of the Avacyn Restored packs, I’d have 100% of the Entreat the Angels.

This second scenario, essentially, is the secondary market. Once enough packs of a set are opened, randomness is no longer a part of the equation in calculating the price of a card. The only things that matter are the rarity of the card (supply) and number of people who want it (demand). This factor holds true for fixed sets just as well as variable ones. Because Wizards doesn’t actually produce enough copies of these decks to totally satiate demand, the price for these cards is not bound to the retail cost of the product. The retail cost is part of the equation, of course, but it isn’t a hard ceiling.

In a few years, once the 2010 Commander decks have been out of print for a while, we will start to get a sense of what the ceiling on these cards really is. If Wizards is aggressive in reprinting the best of these in expert-level expansions—or they even decide to do another print run of the decks—I’d imagine that the prices will stay stable. If not, and the market for casual cards is still as hot as it is now, I’d imagine that these singles will keep steadily rising.

Tournament staples like Scavenging Ooze will rise and fall based on the popularity of Maverick in Legacy and whether or not they bring that card back, but the random Commander goodies—cards like Damia, Sage of Stone and Animar, Soul of Elements—will likely all be worth at least twice what they are now. I’ve stocked away four of each unique Commander card for my own personal collection, and they’ve already gone up a little just in the past few months. If you’re a huge Commander nut, I’d suggest you do the same—at least for the under $5 cards.

At some point, judging by the way things are going, there is likely to be a ‘Jace, the Mind Sculptor’ scenario with one of these cards. Something like Shardless Agent will actually become a four-of staple in a tier 1 Legacy deck, and demand will wildly outstrip supply. The fallout for that will be rampant speculation at the spoiling of these sets, most of which will be fruitless. As most of these are for fun or long-term speculation, I recommend holding off on buying singles until late September of the year following the casual product’s release. At this point, player attention is focused on the new block and card prices are at their lowest. This is when you’ll be able to snag the best deals.

A Call for Questions

Next week, I will be publishing a mailbag-style article where I will answer the most interesting reader submitted questions. Feel free to ask about Magic finance, but I’ll be sprinkling in a few fun, random questions as well. So whatever your question, ask away! Feel free to leave questions in the comments here, tweet them to @chasandres on Twitter, or send them via email to [email protected]

Until next time —

— Chas Andres