Modern Trends Part 1

Hi Everyone!

Today I'm talking about trends in cards popular in the Modern format. It's a really interesting format because it has a lot of characteristics of the older formats but also has its own unique traits that are interesting to identify and follow. It's a popular format that's about half the size of legacy so new cards have a tendency to effect it more. Additionally, a lot of the degenerate cards are found in the earlier sets. So this was decided as the cut off.

The biggest driver of cards popular in Modern is the Modern Pro Tour Qualifier season. That makes sense, right? When people want the cards to play in high level tournaments, the prices go up. The part that doesn’t make sense to me is that currently, there are no online PTQs. Wizards told us back in December 2013 that they would be back sometime after the events were suspended, but as of August 2014, they are not back. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me because people want the cards for tournaments but there aren’t any online. Many players playtest on MTGO because it’s convenient. That’s the reason I got into MTGO rather than getting into paper cards after all.

Now that we’ve identified the drivers of trends, how can we apply that new useful knowledge? Modern is more simple than the trend cycles of standard cards because the format has a much larger card pool, doesn’t rotate, and new cards have less of an impact due to the larger card pool. If you look at any card popular in Modern (remember there can be other factors like Vintage Masters bring Vintage to MTGO that drive up prices of cards like dark confidant). Let’s do our best to only look at cards that are played in Modern.

Let’s take Cryptic Command for this example. The price was driven down last summer due to Modern Masters being released, but the price slowly crept up until it peaked around $35. But it peaked in late March and held that range on price until mid-June. Pro Tour Qualifier season isn’t over yet, It’s got 3 more weeks to go, why is the price dropping? The price is dropping because (many factors contribute to the drop, I’ll cover those in an upcoming article once I cover all the different format trends individually) but the main reason is Pro Tour Qualifier season is almost over and most players who were testing, are done testing. It’s a phenomenon only found on MTGO, this does not apply to paper.

So the best time is between PTQ seasons, as close to between as possible. December and January are the best times to buy because that is the longest time since a Modern PTQ season and about the same time until the next Modern PTQ season.

So remember to pick up your modern staples between PTQ seasons and make some hefty profits right before the PTQ season.