Will fetches be the thing to buy?

Hi Everyone!

If you haven’t noticed, I’m really excited about Fetches. I think other people will be too.

I think there will be one of two things that happen when Khans is released in a few weeks. I think that either fetch lands will be the focus, or they won't. If they do become the focus, expect everything to be inexpensive in Khans until the fetch hype dies down.

The other possibility is that they won't be the focus of the Magic Online community and people choose instead to invest in Vintage Masters cards because they are going off sale.

Obviously, the first option is a lot more likely and fetches will be the thing to buy. I bet they will be good in standard, but not as good as the Ravnica Duals were be. It's safe to say that formats other than standard will be what many (maybe even most) people want fetches for.

I don't know what everyone else is going to be doing, but I'm going to be buying all the "good" Modern, Legacy, and Vintage cards. Does that make any sense?

My strategy came from looking at Vintage Masters. Look at all the "good" Vintage cards that weren't in Vintage Masters. They skyrocketed in price. Wasteland went up to over $150. It was insane. They won't come out with another "Masters" set until next summer so if you pick up the "eternal format" staples the fetches will benefit all three eternal formats and the prices of the format staples should increase, just like when Vintage Masters came out. This won't have effect on the same scale, but the fetches will remove a barrier to the formats and will cause prices for other cards needed for the formats to go up.

The reason this happens is because there’s a value that the market holds regardless of the cards reprinted (regardless of the cards reprinted in the quantities wizards is willing to reprint). I don’t know what the key term to describe this is (I’m the very worst with key terms) but it’s a type of equilibrium. If the idea doesn’t make sense, another way to describe this phenomenon is water in a bathtub. When I throw my toy boat into the tub the water level rises everywhere except where the boat is pushing the surface of the water down. The water represents the cards needed to play in a certain format. The area the boat pushes the water down is the price of cards that were reprinted (lower). But everywhere else the water is higher (more expensive cards). I hope that helps everyone understand how the economy functions when Wizards reprints “expensive” cards.  

I have been buying all the Modern staples because I think with Vintage Masters being so popular that it already drove the prices of the older formats up and they likely won’t get a big boost from the fetch reprint. Another thing to look for is when Vintage Masters cards start getting expensive, the prices for the cards not in Vintage Masters will start to go back to their normal price. It’s a really interesting phenomenon.