Questions and Answers

Hi Everyone!

Recently, I received an email from a friend of mine. They asked when was the right time to buy cards from new sets for use in their eternal format decks (including Modern). He assumed the proper time was when the card rotates out of Standard.

This question intrigued me because it was interesting that there seems to be an assumption that cards are cheapest right after they rotate out of standard, that's a good rule of thumb, it's even a rule most of the time, but sometimes it's not.

Let's go way back and look at Abrupt Decay. If you look at the price today, it's more expensive than it ever was in standard (excluding a few short times the price fluctuated a lot from day to day toward the end of it's standard tenure). It did drop in price during the online Khans pre-release but wasn't out of standard yet.

The price fluctuates a lot, and if you have a look at at price over time for Abrupt Decay, you'll find one thing, the price goes up. I know it's easy to look back on and say earlier is the time to buy. I think taking a calculated risk is well worth it when it comes to cards to play with.

Playing with cards isn't like investing or "trading" cards. You want the card and you're going to keep it. What's the best approach? The best approach is to get the best price when you do buy the card (obviously).

The best time to buy cards is usually sooner (if you don't know, I have written several times about how we only provide you with ideas and theory to help you make better decisions, there aren't any "hard and fast" rules that will make you money). I say usually because when the set first comes out and the prices are highly inflated you don't want to buy. You also don't want to buy right after a big tournament where the card performed well.

Let's jump to our old friend Abrupt Decay again. It's a reactive card and isn't really "tournament winning" so it didn't really have any ridiculous jumps in price after putting up results. It also was $7 upon release, then dropped very quickly to $1. Then crept up over time and is now higher than it ever (pretty much) was while it was in Standard. This means the sooner the better, except when it first came out was good advice. The one other issue is that the card could be a flop and not be good in your eternal format deck, but that's the risk you take when buying cards to play with.

Good luck on your purchases! Remember, sooner is better, but not too soon, and that doesn't always apply if the card is no good.