Overshadowing Standard

Posted on June 20, 2014

As always, this time of the year presents a wide variety of new Magic products, starting with the release of Journey into Nyx and subsequently the nearly paralleled Conspiracy and Vintage Masters. Last week, I talked about moving out of your old Standard cards and preparing for the next season. What I did not cover was how you can use these other releases to allow yourself to weather rotation.

I am not exactly a Magic Online guru, but I do have a reasonable grasp of the market, and if that is your primary Magic fix, I am sure you have already been Vintage Masters drafting. I have been drafting here and there, and beyond the fact that it is a ton of fun to play, it has also dropped the prices of many of the staples, thus giving you the opportunity to move in cheap during the next few weeks. This may only seem relevant to those looking to get into Legacy or Vintage, but the reality is that if you are looking to start dumping Standard online until the next season, Vintage Masters can be a great resource to keeping your collection’s value growing. By the fall, almost any staple from the set will probably be at least double of the current price, including, but not limited to, the duals. I did not have a ton of rotating Standard cards, and I have already unloaded what I do not use, but for those of you who have not, it is only going downhill from here to the fall.

It may also be worth looking at cards that suddenly have more versatility with the increased Legacy and Vintage card pool. Some cards that were not playable due to key portions of a deck being missing now have the opportunities to grow. These types of cards—and the currently cheap staples, such as the duals—seem to be easy pickups now that you can safely sit on them for months or longer and then come back to even more value. It should also be noted for the online community that Journey into Nyx cards are also very cheap right now, and with the excitement behind Vintage Masters, the set is probably being drafted far less, meaning we may see a spike in many of those cards even before rotation. If you know you want anything from the set—or from the block—it may also be an ideal time to buy in while dumping your rotating stock.

Now that we have the online community covered, the rest of you can wake up and start reading again. The advice and situation is nearly identical in the world of paper Magic to online, but with a few small differences. First of all, as fun as Conspiracy was, it is certainly not Vintage Masters, either in playability or in value. This means that though Journey into Nyx cards will be drafted less than is common this time of year, they will probably not be in as short supply as Dragon’s Maze was in last year. Modern Masters had a much larger draw and was drafted for as long as possible, but I do not see that same trend with Conspiracy. I do not expect another Voice of Resurgence either, as the set, overall, is more playable than Dragon’s Maze, and it has a great deal to offer across rarities and formats.

That being said, I believe with the extra printings of Conspiracy and the price drop that has followed, we are probably in the midst of some of the cheapest prices on some of the set’s more playable cards. I believe some of the more niche cards will have a while before they rise again, but given how cheap the prices have gone, it is hard to believe much of the set will go any lower. I believe some have a small ways to fall, but if you are interested in any of the cards, now is a fine time to trade for them. I may not put money down yet, but if you cannot find the cards in trade, that is also fine. As with the Commander decks, it probably will not take long for most of the cards that were worth money before the set to return to that point. They may not be worth as much, but the trend of these types of releases usually shows that, after the initial hype, it takes only four to six months for most of the played cards to return to between 60% and 80% of their previous prices. This, again, is not to say every card will be like that, but you can usually watch the trending cards and see when they plateau and inevitably begin to climb again.

Similar to the Magic Online community, you can use this release to mitigate your losses from Standard stock as you dump it into currently underpriced cards. Though the supply is still flowing, it is unlikely people will continue to draft this set in any regularity after a month, and from that point, some of the cards—specifically those only in Conspiracy—that are in demand will begin their ascents. Trading these out at a later date also should not be an issue, as specialty sets tend to not only hold value better, but also trend upward more quickly. I cannot say for sure exactly why, but that little set symbol makes a world of difference for some cards’ prices, and I expect nothing less from Conspiracy.

So, what do you do if you do not have the cards in your area to turn this stock around? There are a number of online tools, including a forum on Gathering Magic, which open up the community to trading. There are numerous forums and resources at your disposal, and though I cannot attest to one or another, if you do some research and ask around, I am sure you can find something that fits your needs. If anyone has any experiences he or she would like to share, or if anyone has a preference in which trading medium he or she uses online, feel free to share, as that is by no means something I would consider myself knowledgeable about. Trading through the mail can be a slower process, and, of course, it comes with risks, but most of the online communities have systems set in place to monitor reliable traders and weed the scammers out. That being said, it is still best to approach the situation with caution, and if something feels off, it is always okay to back out.

One last subject I want to touch on this week before I depart is Modern. There has been a lot of talk about why Modern prices have seemingly stagnated this year, and after discussing the topic while recording this week on Brainstorm Brewery, it only seems logical. After two years of a new format, most people who are looking to play Modern already have their decks or are currently being priced out due to the cost of entry.

We have seen this multiple times in the past with Legacy, Extended, and Commander. The prices will hold steady or drop minimally, but it seems that the days of overnight price hikes in the Wild, Wild West of Modern are subsiding. This is actually great news for players, as they can now concentrate on slowly picking up the cards they need rather than feeling rushed before another spike. For the finance community and speculators, this means you will have to find a new market to dive deep into and relegate Modern to just making constant profits. With the announcement of extra tournaments at StarCityGames events, it is likely some of the cards will rebound a bit with the added coverage, but I would not expect this Modern season to be nearly as turbulent as the last two. I hope we have seen the last of the inflated market for a while until a new format is introduced, thus making the finance end of Modern much easier to figure out. Most cards are at a fairly reasonable price for the play they see, and many of the cards that spiked so high from hype have now died down and settled to their appropriate marks based on play, not on availability alone.

I am looking for a topic next week if anyone has any ideas. I have an article ready, but given the research I would like to do beforehand, it may take a week or two to pull everything together, so if anyone has any compelling subjects he or she would like me to cover, let me know. This time of year tends to be fairly slow once the last set in the block and any specialty sets have settled. This gives us a chance to breathe and catch up as well as look forward to the core and fall sets—in addition to the looming From the Vault. As we receive more information about the new releases, I will, of course, be diving into that, but for now, it seems to be a great time to cover some of the less-talked-about subjects.

I am hoping to do a mailbag of sorts next week, covering a few topics, so please send your questions in no matter how long or short, and I will do my best to answer them either personally or over the next few weeks in this series. For now, though, it is time to return to some Vintage Masters drafting, so until next week, keep on grinding.

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand