First things first - if you haven't seen the first Rise of the Eldrazi spoiler, go do that. When you've gathered your slack jaw from the floor, I'm sure the first thing you'll be asking is "Got any Eye of Ugins?"

Yes. Yes I do, and with any luck, so do you.

No one saw this coming. People speculating on Eyes were betting that they had at least another month or two before the first Rise of the Eldrazi card got spoiled. For whatever reason, Wizards decided to show us one big mother-loving Eldrazi. Despite the fact that, barring any further accelerants, he's rather unplayable, people have gone nuts. Eye of Ugin is $10+ almost everywhere, and sold out most places. They're around 6 tickets on MTG Online as well. The question is, what's going to happen in the coming months?

There are a few mitigating factors leading me to think Eye of Ugin is currently overvalued, given what we know. If new information comes to light, all predictions are rendered null and void, but for now, we know very little. We know RoE is a large set. We know that Standard will be the PTQ season as soon as RoE is released. We know that Eye of Ugin is a legendary land. We can guess that most Eldrazi will cost 7 or more, based on the ability set on Eye of Ugin. Considering that almost no deck will run more than 2, simply based on the legendary status, it seems overpriced.

The card's value will be derived from the tournament playability of the Eldrazi creatures (and spells, if there are any). A 10-mana creature with no protection is a pretty tough sell to the Spike crowd. It's fair to say that Kozilek, Butcher of Truth is probably one of the larger Eldrazi, and since there have been rumors of some common and uncommon Eldrazi, we can likely expect a few smaller, less bombastic and more "generic" Eldrazi. My thought is that they'll print Generic Filler Eldrazi, like a 7/7 for 8 with some unremarkable but relevant ability set. Even so, unless we start seeing some very inexpensive Eldrazi spells, Eye of Ugin won't accelerate them out in any appreciable manner.

Where does that leave us? With the assumptions put forth above, Eye of Ugin should NOT be a $10 card. Cards run as a 2-of in what seem to be casual "Timmy" decks that don't really do anything remarkable are not worthy of double-digits. It is my opinion that, given the information available to us and the projections we can make based on opinion and experience, that the card is being supported by hype alone and does not have long-term potential as an "expensive card".

The Eldrazi Rares and Mythics will probably start high - sky high. They're big, they're splashy, they're cool as hell. Unless some more cards like Everflowing Chalice come to print, they're also going to be very hard to cast. Remember, they're entering a Standard metagame filled with Jund and UW Control - two decks that love to stifle 'one big spell' strategies. PT San Juan is Block Constructed, so we may see decks that use Eldrazi spells there. It's entirely too early to know what the Block format will look like, since we're missing 2/5ths of the block, but we can make a few educated guesses. We can probably expect Vampires, which will be lacking the flagship Vampire Nocturnus. Hopefully a Lord appears in RoE. Bushwhacker decks might make a splash too, but it's unknown if the block format will even be relevant to non-Pro Tour competitors.

The short version of a long story is that Eye of Ugin is probably a $5 Mythic, not a $10 Mythic. Sharp spikes are much more common than sharp declines, since the only time a card's value truly takes a hit are upon its banning or rotation. Otherwise, people don't really want to support the fact that their cards are losing value, thus they will resist a decline.

This is a good time to remind people how I like to sell off cards I've speculated upon. I've taken this principle from stock traders - I like to sell enough off to cover my initial investment. This ensures you rarely lose money, although you occasionally do not max out profit. Still, it's better to miss a few dollars of profit while ensuring not losing money.

Another question I get a lot - "How much should I buy?" Well, this depends on a few things. Most importantly, your bankroll. Poker players understand bankroll management. They don't sit down at a table that requires heavy bankroll commitment, because they know that natural variance will eventually cause then to run badly. There's not a lot of luck involved in speculating, but there is some. Thus, minimizing the effects of variance helps to ensure profitability. If my MTGO account contains 300 tickets and no cards whatsoever, and I want to spend some amount on a speculation I'm very sure on, I still won't put anywhere NEAR 300 tickets on that one speculation. I'm more inclined to spend, at most, 30 tickets. It's not about the number of cards I buy - it's about my expected return on investment. By only committing 10% of my total bankroll, I am under no pressure to sell off my speculation earlier than necessary, I ensure that I'm not risking all of my money on one call, and I ensure that I can control my risk very accurately.

If you have 10 dollars to speculate with, you can't really get much work done. Instead of looking for a 10 dollar card to jump to 15 or 20, look for ways to trade that $10 for incremental value. For example, in my shop, Vampire Nocturnus is possibly the hardest card to find in Magic. If you traded around in my shop, and had a Nocturnus, you could easily get $15-$20 in trade for it especially right before FNM. That's the crux of bankroll management - keep your assets diversified so you never have all your money on one theory. After all, we're only human, and no matter how accurate my predictions or the predictions of anyone else may be, they can still be wrong. Your goal is to be more right than you're wrong, and less wrong when you have to be. Hopefully that answers many of the questions I've been seeing in comments and emails!

Update: Replaced 'undervalued' with 'overvalued' in the fourth paragraph.