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fluffybunnypants

16 February 2015

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Hype Season and Shenanigans Extended

You know what’s a bitch about prices around the PT season? Hype. You know what’s more of a bitch if you land on the wrong side of it? Speculators. I previously wrote a post that was more of a rant with some evidence rather than going into analysis regarding prices. But let’s bring Azusa and some other examples back.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking has had a couple healthy spikes in price over the years, but has generally remained appropriately costed for being a popular EDH general that sees some play in some of the more fringe decks in Modern and Legacy. Azusa then spikes up to right around $50 at this Pro Tour. Another card had a similar spike, but saw zero play (that I know of) this Pro Tour. Good old Leonin Shikari. I’ve heard all sorts of random speculation regarding this hilarious price spike.

That’s ruthless right there. There’s really no other reasoning that can be attributed to it other than a buyout (which it’s been widely attributed to across the internet). Apparently some douche bought out the few that were circulating in online stores. Normally when this happens, there’s some kind of hype attributed to it, but not in this case. I mean, there’s Tiny Leaders… but you can only play one in that format.

Let’s take a look at a couple examples of healthier spikes in price from the Pro Tour to paint a better picture. First, the winner.

Good old Splinter Twin. You can see the increase in price right around PTBNG during the Modern Boom, but then it decreases and evens out before getting a spike right at PTFRF. That’s a healthy spike of around $4. Something you typically see when a known deck wins a Pro Tour.

How about another example? Okay, let’s look at a card that was still very popular but had fallen out of favor with both Legacy and Modern players recently.

Liliana of the Veil saw a resurgence in play during PTFRF. Since her price plateau post PTBNG she eventually was used less and less, even more so recently due to the dominance of Treasure Cruise decks in both Modern and Legacy where she was far too slow to actively be useful, especially when you were just fueling your opponent’s delving capability with the +1. Naturally, she dropped in price, nearly back down to what her price was during ISD/RTR Standard. However, with Abzan suddenly being one of the decks to beat again post Cruise Gate, predictably, her price has seen a nice spike that starts off right around banning time. This sort of spike happens a lot with cards that were higher priced to begin with but fell out of favor for reasons xyz. Eventually Lili will start to drop back down in price, but she will probably remain above her previous high price unless WotC decides to keep their pimp hand strong. Yes, I just said that, it’s late, I’m tired and this isn’t the New York Times. If you didn't grab her before Cruise got banned, you've probably missed your opportunity at getting a decent price on her, until something else pushes her out of Modern and Legacy simultaneously again.

Another example? How about another card from the runner up?

With Amulet of Vigor you can see its initial spike in price due to people thinking it was pretty sweet during PTBNG and the Modern Boom. The spike wasn’t that big as the deck never really put up substantial numbers after that. We are seeing a similar spike in price after this last Pro Tour where it came in second place. It’s probably safe to say that Amulet will drop back down to where it was pre-spike, predominantly because of Bloom Titan’s difficulty to pilot, it’s lack of pedigree as a deck and the fact that Amulet is not a card like Candelabra of Tawnos (basically only used in EDH and High Tide in Legacy), despite being the lynchpin of the combo, and people cannot ask whatever the hell they want for it.

Just for the hell of it, three more examples. First, a card that has held steady post Modern boom.

Noble Hierarch is the go to mana dork in Modern at this junction. It’s Lianowar Elves with an upside and the target of much hubris from people who didn’t buy it pre-Modern Boom. A victim of its own popularity, it was the best opening possible in Birthing Pod, pre ban. It now sees play in Wilted Abzan and Infect in Modern as well as Infect in Legacy. It’s still highly playable post Pod banning, as this last Pro Tour has shown and as such, stayed right around where it was. Honestly, if its not banned (let’s be honest a ban is probably never happening here), it will remain right about where it is.

Golgari Grave-Troll currently suffers from Bitterblossomitis. It got unbanned in Modern and people speculated on it… hard, so hard in fact that people were buying it out pre-announcement. I mean, it was banned from the very beginning of Modern, it had to be capable of doing some straight busted things right? Well, maybe, but it certainly wasn’t showcased at the PT. However, it did create some collateral damage with its hype train. Check out Vengevine prices.

These prices will slowly decline, but probably not back to where they used to be as Dredgevine is now more viable, which isn’t really huge, but, hey, it’s something and there are people out there who will insist on attempting to make it T1.

Let’s take a look at another card that got a nice price bump from pure hype. Stoneforge Mystic appeared on a fake list of bans/unbans for Modern and caused mass speculation and buyouts of the card that resulting in a $10 jump in price. Note that it didn’t get unbanned, but has stayed right where it jumped to, presumably because people are reverting back to decks like UWR Delver in Legacy post Treasure Cruise banning in Legacy. Although, if it did become Modern legal, Misty would easily be an $80 plus card.

I would by lying to you if I said that people out there aren’t attempting to create fake price spikes where there are opportunities. It’s important to take a look at a cards history and potential playability before investing. A lot of people, including several main voice in the financing community pointed to Doran, the Siege Tower as a card that was likely to spike due to it starting to see play in Modern as well as being a great card for Tiny Leaders. As such, it has seen a healthy, natural spike in pricing that can plausibly be attributed to its success and popularity.

TL;DR

-Mass speculation and forced buyouts of cards are harmful to the Magic economy and are typically abusive to EDH players and people trying to build the most popular recent decks of any format. I'm not going to point any fingers.

-Don’t jump on a hype train.

-If you do buy into hype, offload that shit ASAP as groups who force a spike will typically slowly feed cards back into the market to turn a profit and the price will steadily decline.

-Old and limited print Legacy staples, regardless of how few decks they are actually played in, retain a higher value due to rarity.

-Tournament results do not force cards to spike drastically in price compared to their previous value; only hype and buyouts do that, keep that in mind when looking at price increases.

-Look at recent tournament results (not MTGO) to determine the chances of a card retaining an increased value.

For the lolz:

RIP Birthing Pod

I was one of the lucky ones who sold off his deck mere months prior to the banning. I mostly did it because I wasn’t playing it in Modern and it was starting to consistently place multiple times in the Top8 of high level Modern tournaments, which gave me a sinking feeling. Hindsight is certainly 20/20 in this matter as there was a valid argument about the possibility of WotC not banning it due to a ban leading to the invalidation of an entire archetype in the format, but there really wasn’t anything else that WotC could ban to bring the deck back down to earth as it mostly consisted of B- creatures, lands and 4 Pods. We can also look back and see how Wizards has previously treated similar creature tutors that created a color imbalance in the format at a competitive level (Green Sun's Zenith). We can now see Pod suffering from the same sort of price drop that Lili did, except it has been a much sharper decline when it was much less expensive and it is likely permanent unless Legacy manages to break it.

Maybe I’ll fire off some predictions before the release of DTK and we can see how they turn out.

But, let's keep it recent for now.

My current specs: 2/14

Outpost Siege - Criminally underrated card in my opinion. See an extra card every turn or cause removing your creatures to still be a pain in the ass. Seems pretty great to me. It’s currently only Standard playable, so I don’t expect a huge leap, but it’s still only $.50 as of writing this.

Humble Defector – Specifically foil ones. As of writing this, they sit around $5. I’m assuming that RDW in both Standard and Modern will want these. Also, there’s something charming about twinning one in Modern.

Tasigur, the Golden Fang - Foils are currently around $25 as of writing this. His price is probably only going up with time as long as he continues to see eternal play. Might as well.

Smother – Again, foils to be exact, I believe they are currently at about $1.50. I have seen a few other people point at this card with Tiny Leaders being a growing format. In Tiny Leaders it basically just reads pay 1B and 1 to remove a creature. Pretty useful I would say.

I'm not speculating into Doran, the Siege Tower as I believe that it has already seen most of its increase in price already.