Not too much to say today, other than to keep an eye out for an additional article from me later this week or early next week. I'm going to be tackling the problem of trading "sharks" from the perspective of economic efficiency. It's sure to be interesting, and probably contentious, so stay tuned!

With that, onto the analysis of this week's Standard market . . .

Winners:

Is anyone else bored with this yet? I know I am. Caw-Blade is good, putting another six people into the Top 16 of SCG: Memphis, yadda, yadda, yadda . . . (No, splashing Black or Red does not a different archetype make!) Moving right along, please keep your hands and arms inside the carpet . . .

Mox Opal is the only outlier here, given the gradual lack of Kuldotha Red in Standard events. While I originally thought that Into the Core event deck sales were driving this price, now I'm sure it's the resurgent presence of Affinity in Legacy (the price of Contested War Zone contributes to this conclusion). At around $200 to $250, the deck is a bargain, and it is competitive, if a little inconsistent, placing in the Top 16 of the past two SCG Opens (Memphis and Edison). Look for Mox Opal prices to level out soon, and probably drop a little after the run-up to GP: Providence (though who knows what the next set will bring).

The other interesting tidbit from the winners is the absence of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas from the list (his price increased by under $0.20 this week, below the $0.30 threshold I use). Neither Juza's nor Chapin's decks have posted any Top 16 finishes at recent major events. (Side note: LSV is running Juza's Tezzeret list through the Standard gauntlet this week, which may help explain why.) For my part, I'm glad to see the market function as expected. As I said last week, look to unload Tezzeret soon, because he won't stay at $50 for long if he doesn't post results (unless you are gambling on waiting until new artifacts are released in the next set).

Losers:

Most of these prices also follow trends from previous weeks. The U/B control finishers (Frost Titan, Grave Titan, Massacre Wurm, and Abyssal Persecutor) continue to drop in price, as do a number of other archetype staples that have yet to resurge in popularity (Highborn from Vampires, Eldrazi Monument from some Elves builds, All Is Dust from Eldrazi Green, Blightsteel Colossus and Inkmoth Nexus from Tezzeret, etc.). Constructed-unplayable cards (Glissa, the Traitor and Consecrated Sphinx) and overhyped cards (Thrun, the Last Troll) are also declining in value. Contested War Zone confirms the decline of Kuldotha Red, which has been replaced by mono-Red Sligh and Boros as the aggro decks of choice.

The most interesting changes this week relate to the cards on this list that are played in Valakut, all of which I believe are due, at least in part, to the pervasive misbuilding of the deck in recent weeks. That misbuilding is solely due to one card: Green Sun's Zenith. More specifically, the problem was GSZ attempting to replace Summoning Trap. For those of you who do not read Chingsung Chang's articles on a regular basis, his treatment last week of GSZ's attempted replacement of Summoning Trap in Valakut was spot-on. It also fed the trolls quite nicely, so the comments make for some interesting reading.

The core problem with GSZ as a four-of in Valakut is twofold. First, the card slows down you by a crucial turn or two if you use it to find a finisher, which is extremely relevant against the aggro decks. Second, GSZ is wholly unable to punish counterspells, which is a terrible problem when facing control. Valakut, as a deck, looks to present threats that must be answered, and Summoning Trap performs a function of punishing decks for having the wrong answer, or forces them to have multiple answers and the mana to deploy them in the same turn. GSZ lacks this capability. My core analogy in the comments was as follows: in general, GSZ if very good if you play it like a Trinket Mage or Knight of the Reliquary to provide a little extra value, but that makes it an extremely poor replacement for Summoning Trap, which functions in Valakut much as Orim's Chant does in Tendrils Combo—punishing counterspells and buying a crucial turn against aggro. If you are interested in a more thorough analysis, I highly encourage you to read Chingsung's article.

Why is this relevant to a financial article? The core change in the above table that differs from previous weeks is the addition of Green Sun's Zenith and Avenger of Zendikar to the loser's list, joining Primeval Titan, which has been losing value (since Valakut has been losing) ever since PT: Paris. Up until SCG: Memphis, Valakut had been losing, but at Memphis, the deck placed first and eighth, proving that Primeval Titan still has some game—though the card is not the dominant force it was before Paris. What were the only major changes to the deck? The Top 8 decks ran a combined main-deck total of seven Summoning Traps and one Green Sun's Zenith. Trust me, this is not a coincidence.

What happened in the market for GSZ was a price spike due to the card's being an excellent card to build around and possessed of such immense flexibility that people suddenly were jamming it into every Green deck they could find, across multiple formats. In some of these decks, it makes some sense (e.g. Legacy NO Bant and NO Show decks, as well as Combo Elves); in other cases, it was an extremely poor choice that took a while to be unmade. In the near term, I might expect GSZ to drop into the $8 range at major retail outlets, barring its finding a home in a more aggressive Standard deck (Fauna Shaman) or making a larger splash in Legacy. I expect its price trend to be similar to Inkmoth Nexus (or Stoneforge Mystic). Both have the potential to be money cards if they find the correct popular strategies, but it may take a while to find those strategies.

On that note, I will see you once more over the next week with an explanation of why sharks are a symptom of Magic trading actually getting better, rather than worse! Happy trading!