It seems that people are catching on.  Extended cards aren't quite as cheap as they once were.  The end of January is not far away, which means Grand Prix: Atlanta.  The format?  Extended.  Over the next 6 weeks, I'll be building a virtual portfolio of cards and doing a simple risk management discussion.  These articles will be a mixture of theory and practice, since we'll be paper-trading while we discuss the relevant topics that crop up.

To start off with, we need to define our goal.  My goal is to have a large cache of cards that are highly relevant to the Extended competitive season at a relatively low cost basis.  The idea is that we should be able to "cash out" at the Grand Prix by making favorable trades to players finishing decks and selling the rest to dealers.  That way we have a "clean" flip.  It's no fun to list every card on ebay or MOTL or your preferred digital outlet, but handing a few stacks to a large dealer of your choice can save a ton of time.  You're losing a percentage when you do this, but I can't suggest the practice enough.  It's a simple matter of trading time for money, so you find the sweet spot between the two and, if you do it right, everyone in the process gets what they want.

So, first and foremost, let's make a list of our favorite cards, and discuss their roles in the portfolio.  Think of portfolio-building as an art.  You're taking cards with different levels of liquidity, risk, value and quantty and stitching it together into a single conglomerated financial unit with its own risk/reward profile.  Sounds like a grand old time, doesn't it?  Let's budget $200for this experiment.  That should be enough to get us on the right track.  Remember, our goal isn't to build a deck, but to make an "exit" with either a) free cards, since we made our money back or b) more cash than we started with.  I'll be using the Magic Online Trading League price guide, since that data is pulled from the open market - eBay.

Ancient Amphitheater

I've written about Ancient Amphitheater before, but it's time to put my (fake) money where my mouth is.  This is the first card I'm going to add to my portfolio.  Here are the stats:

Cost: 0.50

Risk: Moderate/High

Target: > 1.50

It seems like copies can still be had for around 0.50 with ease, so rather than bargain-hunt for a few 25c copies, let's just load up at 0.50.  Risk is Moderate/High because there's no guarantee it will go anywhere, and if it doesn't, no one will want them.  Thus, being wrong likely means losing more than half your principal.  If we get it right,we can expect returns of 2.00 or higher.  Anything better than 1.50 is fine by me, since that approximately balances out the slightly higher-than-usual risk.

Mosswort Bridge

I'm a big fan of this one.  It's not hard to get 10 power on the board in an Elf deck, and Elves will surely have some legs in Extended.  Mosswort Bridge can power out free Bloodbraid Elves, Eldrazi Titans, or just more elves.  If the Elf deck is good in extended, expect this card to see some attention, especially with Oracle of Mul Daya accelerating the land drops in the mid-game.

Cost: 1.00

Risk: Moderate/Low

Target: 3.00

It's still not a "sure thing", but I'd venture to guess that the 1.00 copies will be an easy flip at 3 during the competitive season if the card sees any play.  I've noticed movement in a few places already, and I actually own a bunch of paper copies as well.

Gaddock Teeg

Cost: 2.00

Risk: High

Target: 5.00

Teeg is a specialty answer to a question that may never be asked in Extended this Winter.  I'm not certain I want to risk it, but I may add a few to the portfolio to see what happens.  A high risk for a decent gain on an insignificant amount of money could be kind of loose, but I think we'll do alright here.

Doran, the Siege Tower

Cost: 3.00

Risk: Low

Target: 6.00

I have seen a few dealers still selling these at 3.00, so you should be able to buy in that low as well.  The deck is a legitimate tier 1 threat in Exended, since its mana base is just about ridiculous.  The Doran deck will be good, no two ways about it, and people have forgotten that sets without Mythics still allow $10 rares.   I'd like a lot of money on this particular card.

Sygg, River Guide

Cost: 0.5

Risk: Low

Target: 2.00

Keep expectations reasonable for this guy, since he's only a 2-of in the Merfolk decks that have been popular of late.  Since he's so cheap, and the deck will certainly require a pair of them, this is a prime-time card that could make up a large gain in this portfolio.  We'll buy many, early, and hope to strike gold.  He can be found for less than 0.50, but you will find them easily at .50.

Ranger of Eos

Cost: 2.5

Risk: Low

Target: 5

I will say right now that both the cost and the target will probably be raised soon, but for now, I'll snag any Rangers under $3 that I see.  Considering the brutal suite of craetures Ranger of Eos can fetch now, I can't imagine they won't see play.  They even fetch Treefolk Harbinger and Flamekin Harbinger.  That's pretty nuts.  I won't account for it until I'm more sure, but I'd probably put the target at 6+ if I weren't being so conservative.

That should eat up $100 pretty quickly.  We'll add more next week when we use the other $100.  Now let's take a look at our current choices and see how many of each card we should acquire.  We'll plug the numbers into a little spreadsheet and see where we come out.  The percentage in the Risk column represents an approximate likelihood that the target is reached.  This is mostly just intuition and hypothesis, but should give a more realistic value of the portfolio's potential as a whole.  By continually measuring our risk assessment versus actual performance, we can learn how accurate our assessments are in the first place.  Here's the table.  Good things are highlighted in green!

Let me know what cards you think we should add, and I'll use your comments and suggestions to help me make decisions.  Remember, the goal is to make money, not to have any specific card(s), so always consider risk when you're doing your math.