Marshall Suitcliffe talks about the draft format here: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/299
I have found GatheringMagic and Wizards together have the best spoiler pages (this time spoilers have been all over the place, being revealed buried inside articles, on reddit and elsewhere)
Gathering Magic:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152346165842025.1073741852.76993727024&type=1
Wizards:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/vintagemasters/cig
It looks like a fun draft format (especially for someone who was around at the time these cards were played) but lets talk about what this means financially for speculators and bot owners.
People will dump stuff on your bots
Some cards will probably never recover their value. Force of Will is never going to be a $100 card again (it is just a rare in Vintage Masters). The Dual Lands will take years to recover, if they ever do. Don't have your bots buying these cards.
So how do you handle this?
There are several options.
* Stop buying this week
* Lower your buy prices so that someone else gets dumped on
* Stay on top of what is being spoiled and immediatly adjust
You should have been aware of this risk months ago. Always look ahead and see what is coming so you can minimize risk. A small bot chain can get wiped out by a massive reprint release like Vintage Masters.
The weekly article by Pete Jahn is a good place to see what is coming. Here is his latest article: http://puremtgo.com/articles/state-program-may-9th-2014
Price predictions for Vintage Masters rares
When predicting card prices, it helps to look at precedents, similar sets that did similar things. Modern Masters come to mind.
The first question is if Vinage Masters will be drafted as much as Modern Masters. That is a very complicated question that probably deserves its own article. I will assume that it will.
The bottom for Modern Masters prices was July 2nd, 2013, as you can see here:
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/MMA#online
Cryptic Command was the most expensive rare at its bottom, costing 7.7 tickets on June 17th.
Demand for Cryptic Command was huge. Modern was popular already then. Vintage will never be as popular as Modern, not even if you include Legacy demand in that calculation.
Hypothesis: No rare in Vintage Masters will be as expensive as Cryptic Command.
So, if you time your buying right, you should be able to get Force of Will and Dual Lands for less than 7.7 tickets. Maybe even much less.
Mythics (and special rares like the power nine) are harder to predict.
What should you do if you have Vintage Masters rares?
Sell them. Yesterday. All of them. They will be crashing hard.
If you have money uncommons that are now being reprinted (such as Reanmite), your situation is even worse.
Commons (Daze is highly likely but not spoiled yet) will not be worth more than 15 cents (Manamorphose was one of the most expensive common in MMA and can be looked on as an example).
When should you buy Vintage Masters for speculation?
The bottom for Modern Masters was earlier than I thought before I started writing this article. My kneejerk advice would be to buy the week after the drafts end, but it is possible that you should buy earlier. So make sure you buy heavily into the set no later than the week after the drafts end. One caveat, though: If Vintage fails to take off, this might just be another Master's Edition set and you might have to pick your speculations carefully. If you bought into Modern Masters last year, it did not really matter which cards you bought. The majority of them have gone up.
Good luck and I hope you enjoy Vintage Masters.
Jace just spoiled on Starcity!
ReplyDeleteHello there,
ReplyDeleteNice article, thanks for sharing your thoughts about Vintage Masters!
I really want to play Legacy but I can't get through the money barrier, so I really hope that FoW and the Old Duals (perhaps Wasteland too) have their prices falling down to ~8tix, although I'm skeptical it will happen, since those cards are such good ones.
Hi there! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt is all about supply and demand. The demand for Cryptic Command was huge a year ago, which is why it was so expensive (compared to Kataki, Wars Wage or Blood Moon, other attractive rares in MMA). Do you expect more players playing legacy + vintage than played Modern a year ago (I do agree that FOW is probably better than Cryptic Command in its format, so that should be taken into acocunt too). I have estimated the draft format to be as good and attractive as MMA was. If this is not as popular as MMA, supply might dwindle, which will also increase the price of FOW and Duals.
But these things will probably be opened A LOT
MMA Blood Moon, as a comparison, hit 3.5 tickets on June 23rd, 2013
ReplyDeleteJust noted that only four rares in MMA are over 7.7 tix right now, despite a year having passed and Modern demand being really high right now (a few more will climb over that during Modern PTQ season, I am sure). Being a rare means that supply gets HUGE.
ReplyDeleteThe four rares are Blood Moon, Cryptic Command, Engineered Explosives and Ravager.
I have not calculated with the mighty power of Price Memory, but I doubt that will override Supply & Demand completely.
About VM drafts, flavor-wise speaking, I think there will be a lot of people playing it, if WoTC doesn't greedy on entry fees, since it will attract to itself: paper/online Legacy+Vintage players, Classic players and Cube players. Therefore I think VM drafts will be as attractive as MMA was.
ReplyDeleteEnded the draft events and so on, I think the number of people playing legacy+vintage will highly depend on the price of a few staples, since both formats are really fast so you don't have alternative builds without those staples (the exception being Legacy Burn/Goblins without fetchs/wastelands and Manaless Dredge)¹ like we have in Modern (Burn/Goblins too, Soul Sisters, Infect, MonoU Tron, Amulet
Combo)².
¹ I don't know Vintage metagame but I think it is more fast than Legacy so probably there isnt alternative builds (maybe 1 or 2 like in Legacy).
² I'm looking to the metagame shown by mtggoldfish.com.
I'm going to do bellow the same exercise you did at your last comment, this way perhaps I can better understand the article predictions:
I looked for some good rares/mythics that were reprinted in MMA (based on Extended Top 8 Decks from Por Tour Berlin 2008, Pro Tour Austin 2009, Por Tour Amsterdam 2010).
Time period = 1 week after MMA's drafts started on MTGO (2013-June 21th).
Tarmogoyf = 54.0
Dark Confidant = 17.6
Vendilion Clique = 22.3
Cryptic Comand = 8.8
Blood Moon = 3.6
Engineered Explosives = 4.1
Chalice of the Void = 1.5
Knight of the Reliquary = 1.8
Time period = Last day of MMA's draft events on MTGO (2013-July 10th).
Tarmogoyf = 55.1
Dark Confidant = 16.9
Vendilion Clique = 26.9
Cryptic Comand = 10.7
Blood Moon = 5.3
Engineered Explosives = 5.1
Chalice of the Void = 1.4
Knight of the Reliquary = 1.6
Seeing those prices, maybe we had good rares at low prices because people's attention was focused on the good mythics: Goyfs, Bobs and Cliques. Having said that, it could be that FoW and Old Duals³ will initially be price-wise analogous to MMA's Cryptic Command. However, which VM's cards will attract to themselves most of people's attention? One can easily say the Power 9. But, as was already announced*, any Power 9 will be less likely to get from a booster pack than a Mythic rare. Therefore, VM will need to contain good mythics more attractive for trade than FoW and Old Duals. Besides that, I did a little reading about Price Memory and FoW on MTGO is over 70tix since 2011. This way, it seems like players will continue to, at least initially, set high prices for VM's FoWs.
³ If they indeed get reprinted as rares. If WoTC reprints they as mythics instead, it means WoTC doesn't want Legacy/Vintage to be a popular non-rating format like Modern is? Why?
* http://www.wizards.com/Magic/tcg/productarticle.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/vintagemasters/productinfo
I'm trying to do this MTGO finance reasoning so perhaps I can learn something about it.
Thanks for your previous comments!
Great reply, Riemann. This is exactly the kind of logical reasoning and discussion I want.
ReplyDeleteForce of Will is confirmed as a rare and the Dual Lands are most likely rares.
Initially, price memory will rule the day, but I think the simple rules of supply & demand is what will set the prices.
By the way, I find predicting the prices of the Mythics and the Power 9 very hard. But the rares should not deviate too much from my predictions above. I would be surprised to see $30 Force of Wills in July
ReplyDeleteCheck out Pete Jahn's column for puremtgo (State of the Program) of May 23. There he makes some calculations on the spoiler and warns that the value in VMA is low. This probably means that the prices on chase rares such as the dual lands and Force of Will will increase
ReplyDeleteDid you consider the relative rarity compared to Modern Masters when making your predictions. My thought was that Vintage Masters will have significantly less effect on price than modern masters due to the large set size. In Modern Masters there were 15 Mythic rares so each Mythic appeared once in every 120 packs. This will be the same rate as the individual rares in Vintage Masters.
ReplyDeleteSo, FoW were never down under 20, no island-dual were down to 8 (U. Sea was 14 at it's lowest). Is this in your opinion just due to speculation/price memory or is it something else?
ReplyDeleteAlso, looking at mtggoldfish for the last week, all of power is falling, while FoW, duals, LED, Mana Drain and other high price rares/mytics are riseing, do you think this trend will continue?