A good time to buy Modern staples

Modern Master 2017 have been replaced by Amonkhet and now is the time to get your Modern staples from MM3. Also, other Modern cards are down generally because everyone is focusing on Amonkhet, both limited and the new Standard.

I decided to put my money where my mouth is and invest heavily.



This time I invested as a long-term player of Modern and not a speculator. Still, I think I made some solid investments.

Here is a list of the stuff I got:

4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Gemstone Mine (not in MM3 but still low)
4 Bonfire of the Damned (for RG Ponza)
3 Entreat the Angels
2 Griselbrand
4 Temporal Mastery
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Blood Moon
4 Etched Champion
4 Gifts Ungiven
4 Inkmoth Nexus
4 Misty Rainforest
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Primal Command
4 Ranger of Eos
4 Steel Overseer
4 Thragtusk
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Verdant Catacombs

Expect some more Modern videos on my youtube channel (above).

Two excellent MTG Finance podcasts

If you prefer to keep up with your MTG Finance listening to podcasts, there are two options that stand above the rest.

Brainstorm Brewery

This used to be the #1 MTG Finance podcast but at this point they have been surpassed. The crew is entertaining but they tend to derail and lose focus on the subject. Still, they know what they are talking about and are definitely worth a listen.

You can find Brainstorm Brewery on itunes or here: http://brainstormbrewery.com

Mtggoldfish
Mtggoldfish has been the best hard numbers site for MTG Finance for a very long time and their podcast shows the same devotion to excellency as their web site. This podcast is short, knowledgeable and to the point - exactly what I want from a MTG Finance podcast.

Do you know of any more good MTG Finance podcasts? Please let me know

Never ever play the two-mans and eight-man constructed tournaments on MTGO

It is a bad idea to play the two-man constructed tournaments on Magic Online (and the 8-mans) if you are interested in going infinite. In fact, playing the small tournaments is a serious leak compared to playing the Daily Events and the Premier Events.

Sad facts
The approximate resale value of a pack of Khans of Tarkir is 2.7 tickets at this point.
You pay 2 tickets to play a two-mans.
That means you have to have a 74% win rate in the long run to break event. Despite your win rate in the Tournament Practice room, very few people achieve this in the two-man queues.
If you can actually manage a 80% win rate (very unlikely) you only make 32 tickets in 100 tournaments.

Exceptions
This, of course, does not apply if you are only interested in the entertainment value and are prepared to pay for it.

Most people know this, why are you going on about it?
Well, having said all this, I will now play the two-mans and possibly the eight-mans with the remaining two decks of the second season of the Pauper Gauntlet.

Links
Calculate the value of any MTGO tournament here: http://www.magicev.com

Price of Khans of Tarkir boosters: http://mtgowikiprice.com/card/boo/570/khans-of-tarkir-booster

What is the Pauper Gauntlet and what are the rules? http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-pauper-gauntlet.html

Full list of the 77 Pauper Gauntlet decks for the second season: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/09/the-decks-of-pauper-gauntlet.html

The M14 Bulk Mythics project - final evaluation

A year ago I published a video about M13 crap mythics and how I would use my theories about redemption to earn money on M14 crap mythics. A crap Mythic is a mythic that goes below 50 cent at any point of its Standard life.

My actions a year ago

I invested heavily in M14 Mythics, particularly Windreader Sphinx, Darksteel Forge, Ring of Three Wishes and Devout Invocation.

At one point I even managed to move the price on Mo Souba for Windreader Sphinx.

I had 200+ copies of some or the Mythics. I did not dare go deeper at the time. And I was right not to.

Other sets
I tried to apply the same principles to other sets and found that the principle does not at all apply to small sets (Dragon's Maze) but that it applied (though somewhat less) to big sets (such as Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash).

I am now trying actively to buy any Mythic that goes below 50 cents.

So what happened to Windreader Sphinx?
When time came for the redeemers to get their crap mythics, the price of them increased violently. Just look at this graph

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Magic+2014+Core+Set/Windreader+Sphinx#online

The right time to sell was December 18th or 19th. If you did you were looking at a solid 400% profit in a year if you bought at the bottom. Almost exactly like I predicted back in 2013.

So how did I do?
This is probably the part of this article you can learn the most from.

First I lowered the buy price on all the M14 crap mythics to 0,05 so I would not be one of the botters buying these from anyone and then lose money.

I put half of my crap mythics on the bots for sale at the estimated peak prices in November. Then I got nervous and decreased the prices. On December 8th a scraper bought every single copy of every one of them but at that time I had decreased the price to about 150% profit. So still not breakeven.

After that I put in the rest of them, once again at the estimated peak price.

The peak came on December 18th but it was somewhat lower than I thought so I did not sell any of them. I started selling them manually to other bots and told my partners to do so too. They did but I got caught up doing other things (it was Christmas Time, after all). The bots failed to sell even though I decreased my price to be the lowest on Magic Online.

As everyone was selling (surely some did so in panic) as the price dropped that drop was swift and quite soon we were back at pre-peak prices.

So I am stuck with a lot of M14 bulk and I went about breakeven on the whole deal.

What I will do next year
I am already picking up any bulk mythics from THS, KTK and M15 but so is everyone else. There are a lot more speculators doing exactly the same thing this year. I don't think we will ever see prices drop as low as they did last year - Hythonia was almost below 30 cent at some point.

Maybe this will never get as good again ever but I will still be picking up those 50 cent mythics when I can AND next year I will pay more attention to selling them.

Speculating the Magic Online Vintage community

Hi Everyone!

The past couple weeks have been really interesting regarding Vintage Masters. I wrote last week about when to sell Vintage Masters cards and basically, the pointer was to keep until another “Masters” set comes out, other than Modern Masters 2.

There is one other thing that’s important to point out that I have been encountering a lot lately. I am an avid Magic player. In fact, I changed to online because it’s convenient to open a program and be able to play a game within a minute. Vintage is my favorite format because games are never the same and there are a lot of interesting decisions. Vintage is the most played format by me, and I noticed that most of the time, the maximum number of players in the Vintage room is 10. That’s 10 at the popular times of day. When I log on at 2am Pacific time I usually don’t get an opponent before I decide to do something else instead of play Magic. 

The thing I want to say is that it appears that there are very few avid Vintage players online. So, why are cards skyrocketing online when there seems to be less and less people playing Vintage? It’s certainly not because there are more people collecting the cards they need to play, it’s because everyone seems to be speculating that the “good” cards will keep going up. This phenomenon happened once before in the stock market….it was happening rampantly when the stock market collapsed in 2008 and caused “the great recession”. People speculated that prices will go up, the same thing is happening online. Online is a different animal, I’m not saying they are the same, but some parts of the strategies for effective investing can transfer from one to the other.

So, there’s not a lot of Vintage players who want (or can afford to) play Vintage online. What’s making the prices go up? Speculators are making the prices go up. Since Vintage is still expensive, is it possible that speculators will only be selling to other speculators? I think that’s possible until there is a point when the cards are reprinted again. It’s like the dual lands, they were really expensive even though the online community of Legacy players was really small the speculators drove the price up to over $50 for Underground Sea. When Vintage Masters was released, the price dropped very low. The price was around $15 the entire time Vintage Masters was released. The price stayed low mostly because the speculators sat back and waited for the “right time” to buy their cards. It appears now is the time.

I just wanted to take this week to talk about how speculators can change the market and make investing more challenging. It’s really something worth talking about because there’s a lot of speculating right now that seems to be driving the prices up even though the number of Vintage players are dropping (or at most, maintaining) and the popular vintage cards that aren’t in Vintage Masters are dropping.

Ferocious Finance

Ferocious Finance is a new series of MTGO Finance videos published on my YouTube channel MagicGatheringStrat. They are done by Ferociousllama and is replacing my earlier series Weekly Finance Tips.

As of today three episodes have aired. The show is weekly and is produced with much better audio and video equipment than my own show was.

Here are the two first episodes. Subscribe to youtube.com/magicgatheringstrat to get updated when a new episode airs. Next one is due tomorrow Monday the 14th.


Episode 2 (July 6th)

Episode 1 (July 3rd)

Also, Ferociousllama and myself would be very interested in hearing what you want from a video series on MTGO Finance. Let us know in the comments below.

The time to pick up your Theros block cards for the fall is soon

I wrote about this before so this is just a friendly reminder. Pick up your Theros block cards in June.

If you want to know why you should pick up the Theros block cards you want for Khans of Targir standard now, check out this blog post:

http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html

Short version: Its the summer slump. Very soon interest will switch to Vintage Masters and M15. Be sure to pick up all the Theros block cards you need for play in september AND all the cards you want to speculate on.

This was the time you could pick up Jace, Architect of Thought at 14 a year ago and then sell it six months later for 38.

Two more flashback drafts announced

To my suprise there was the following announcement:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/other/05202014/cube

Its an announcement about the MTGO cube returning, but at the end there was the following:

There are two Flashback Drafts that will run simultaneously with this Cube:

May 28-June 4: Kamigawa Block
June 4-June 11: Dark Ascension and Innistrad from theInnistrad block.

This means that you, my fellow botters, now have the opportunity to pick up valuable cards from these sets. I don't expect many people to play Kamigawa block but one expensive common will drop sharply in price at least: Ninja of the Deep Hours

Innistrad Block will probably be very popular, making this an ideal time to pick up Thalias, Snapcaster Mages and other rares that will be affected by the drafts.

Modern PTQ season is almost upon us. The safe guess is that Modern card prices will reach new heights during June and July. 

Here are the main targets you want to pick up for both blocks.

Kamigawa: Ninja of the Deep Hours, Azusa, Through the Breach, Kiki-Jiki, Goryo's Vengance, Jitte, Threads of Disloyalty, Gifts Ungiven, Kataki.

Remember, there are no mythic rares in this block, so if there is any interest in the drafts at all, prices for even the most wanted cards should drop at least a little.

Innistrad: Snapcaster Mage, Lingering Souls, Cavern of Souls, Resto, Vexing Devil, Thalia, Grafdigger's Cage, Stony Silence, Sulfur Falls

The mythics are probably affected less than the rares.

Cards I bought today

There are a lot of Flashback Drafts on Magic Online these days. Right now, today, you should be picking up your Odyssey Block cards. A block usually bottoms out the weekend AFTER the draft ends. Next weekend you should pick up your Time Spiral cards.

I have been using the principles from this article about what to buy at any given moment to create my list below: htttp://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/03/what-should-you-buy-at-any-given-moment.html

I have picked up the following cards over the weekend:

Black Sun's Zenith at 0,15 tix

Cabal Ritual 0,29 tix

Deep Analysis 0,15 tix

Earth Rift at 0,15 tix

Grand Abolisher at 0,17 

Nimble Mongoose at 0,43 tix

Necromancy at 0,28 tix

Prismatic Strands at 0,15 

Standstill at 1,48 tix

Submerge at 3,42 tix

Treachery at 2,5 tix

VI Fireblast at 0,55 tix

I have also picked up Ajani's Chosen at 0,06 tix and Mana Bloom at 0,05 tix but that is very speculative 

Hope you find this useful. If you have any finance tips you wish to share, please do so in the comments below.

Randomly, I also made a video about today's buying spree:

Cards to buy right now

There are a lot of Flashback Drafts on Magic Online these days. Right now, today, you should be picking up your Scars of Mirrodin cards. A block usually bottoms out the weekend AFTER the draft ends. Next weekend you should pick up your Odyssey Block cards.

I just noticed that if a card is currently not being played, the Flashback Drafts affect it a lot more. I knew it did, but it has become even clearer lately. 

Compare the graph of Caged Sun here (only played casually)

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/New+Phyrexia/Caged+Sun

with Inkmoth Nexus (played in Modern right now)

http://www.mtggoldfish.com/price/Mirrodin+Besieged/Inkmoth+Nexus

That means that people are now aware of this effect and a lot of speculators and players are picking up their InkMoth Nexuses. You, the smart finance person, should then pick up all the cards that are not being played right now that are crashing due to the Flashback Drafts.

Having said all that, here are some very concrete pickups that you (or your bots) should invest in.

I have been using the principles from this article to create my list below: : ttp://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2014/03/what-should-you-buy-at-any-given-moment.html

I have picked up the following cards over the weekend:

Beast Within at 0,30 tix
Caged Sun at 0,30 tix
VI Fireblast at 0,55 tix
VI Funeral Charm at 0,21 tix
Inquisition of Kozilek at 0,53 tix (it has gone up)
Kaervek's Torch at 0,15 tix
Life's Finale at 0,07 tix
Mark of Asylum at 0,07 tix (This is based only on the Brainstorm Brewery tip)
Molten Rain at 0,15 tix
No Mercy at 0,6 tix
BOK Sowing Salt at 0,3 tix
Spinning Darkness at 0,28 tix
Staff of Nin at 0,07 tix (This is more speculative)

Tectonic Edge dipped down a lot for a very short while but it has not gone up far too much already.

Hope you find this useful. If you have any finance tips you wish to share, please let me know.

Also, a special shoutout to this excellent MTGO Finance blog that I discovered this morning: http://blog.mtgprice.com  Check it out.

Starting a second business or expand your existing one? Part 1

There are many issues involved in whether to start a second business or not, often they go down to: "would the time, money and energy invested in starting a second business be better spent by focusing on the growth of the first one?"

This is something I am going through at the moment as I am investing most of my (little) free time on my new second business (Photography), sacrificing time to fine tune my pricing, advertising my bots and a good part of my stock (Event Tickets) in order to kick start it.

Many entrepreneurs have become successful by putting all their efforts into growing a single business, while on the other hand, many have found success through diversification. Just like most choices in the business world, both have pros and cons. On the next part I will be going to share some of them with you.

Weekly MTGO Finance Tips episode 7

Short summary of the video:

• Avoid trying to call shots for the Pro Tour. It is fun, but real MTGO Finance is about the long-term grind for the EV, not about bragging what calls you made and hide those who failed.
• Buy Molten Rain (0,15), Great Furnace (0,19), Unmake (0,36)
• Sell Tarmogoyf, Dual Lands, LED and Force of Will.

Want to know why shotscalling is bad and will lose you Money in the long run? Check this out:

Launching the mtgostrat bot

Two days ago the crew behind mtgostrat.com (a strategy site for all things Magic) launched a bot called "mtgostrat".

I am part of that crew and I am one of the people handling the bot. In this blog I will share my experiences as a new botter.

Here is our announcement on the site: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/12/announcing-mtgostrat-card-bot/

mtgostrat.com is starting this bot with a very small inventory: 10.000 cards and 300 tickets. The bot is mainly looking to buy rares and mythics at first. It has way too small a budget to invest in commons and uncommons and will have to stay away from the Pauper format, as its future is uncertain at best (Premier Events fire rarely and the Daily Events are gone - Pauper cards are falling broadly right now).

I have heard that it takes a long time for a bot to turn a profit (maybe even a year?) and it will be interesting to see if the 1000+ fans of the site and YouTube.com/MagicGatheringStrat can make a difference.

If you have any experience of launching a bot with a budget this small, please share

And do please check out "mtgostrat" on Magic Online and sell it some rares and mythics.

Daily Events are back!

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/275b

Sales will be back to normality!

When to invest in the Fall set (Theros for 2013)

This fall people have asked me several times when to buy Theros cards. I have always answered "between December 15 and New Year". That is still my answer, but let us examine if that is really the truth, using data from the last Three fall sets, as well as considering how the non-existence of Daily and bigger events affect this.

When should you have bought Return to Ravnica cards?

One of my favorite MTGO Finance sites, mtggoldfish.com, has a very useful index function.

Let us look at the index for Return to Ravnica here: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/card/RTR

So the bottom prices of RTR were Dec 14 2002, Jan 5, 2013 and Another dip on Feb 9, 2013.

That does reflect well on our hypothesis, but we also need to consider the differences between Theros and RTR. Theros will be drafted all year, first alone, then with Born of the Gods and finally with both Born of the Gods and Journey into Nyx, whereas Return to Ravnica was not drafted at all during Gatecrash.

Let us look at the fall set of 2011 then.

When should you have bought Innistrad cards?
We are only considering the Standard Life span of the cards here, so the real answer ("right after rotation!") is not relevant to our Theros discussion.

Here is the ISD index: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/card/ISD

We have the two deepest bottoms at Nov 29, 2011 and Feb 22, 2011 but then ISD drops again (!) and reaches its very lowest Point in May 2012, right around the release of Avacyn Restored.

ISD was also drafted differently. It was drafted with its first small set, DKA, but then it was not drafted at all during Avacyn Restored.

We will need to look at Scars of Mirrodin, which was actually drafted just the way that Theros will be drafted. What did that do the price of rares and mythics from SOM?

When should you have bought Scars of Mirrodin cards?

Once again ignoring the huge effect of rotation, lets have a look at the index: http://www.mtggoldfish.com/card/SOM

There is again a valley around Christmas. The very lowest points are Jan 17, 2011 and March 3rd, 2011, but then something strange happens. There is a huge dip! On June 16, 2011, SOM prices are as much as 20% lower than in February. There is also very importantly no significant spike in prices during the first two quarters of the year. The spike comes right when M12 is released.

Goldfish has no data for Zendikar. If anyone knows where to find that data, let me know.

What will be the effect of the non-existence of Premier and Daily events?
All events bigger than 8 players are gone from Magic Online when I write this. This has caused prices to drop. This will probably accentuate the drop around Christmas, making picking up cards in December more attractive than what would have otherwise been the case.

Standard PTQ Season
This year, Standard PTQ Season has been moved. It now runs from December 7, 2013 until March 9, 2014. This probably means that Standard prices will go up as soon as PTQs return to Magic Online and that they will drop more sharply during the second quarter without PTQ support.

The conclusion
It is probably premature to buy into Theros in December and if you can wait until May/June, you should do so.  My suggestion? Buy playsets that you need (I will do so, especially as I advocate Selling Everything from Theros block as early as in March 2015 with the current PTQ season Schedule unchanged) in December and then buy your speculation stock in May/June.

MTG Finance articles I have written

I find writing and doing videos about MTGO finance very challenging, as it is quite a sensitive subject. Therefore I have done so much less than I should. I think mtgolibrary might be the right outlet for me to publish my finance Writing, so expect more MTGO Finance articles from me in the future.

Before I proceed to do so I wanted to highlight some of my earlier work as well as a really good article on my own website mtgostrat.com.

An introduction to MTGO Speculation
This is the only one that is not mine. The writer is Jason Grant and he intends to publish more Finance articles on mtgostrat.com: 

Speculation 101 with Jason: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/11/real-way-go-infinite-mtgo-speculation-101/

Seasonal Trading on MTGO

I feel that the long term cycles on card prices for MTGO are very exploitable and something that most bot operators overlook. This article will be updated eventually, so take into account that it was written Before they moved Modern PTQ Season.

Seasonal Trading on MTGO:
http://puremtgo.com/articles/mtg-finance-seasonal-trading-cycles-over-year-magic-online

You will fail when you speculate on MTGO
Warning! Speculation on Magic Online will probably fail for you. Here's why: http://youtu.be/mHwCO4QCWqA

Spread your risks
Me on Good Bots and Spreading Risks: http://mtgostrat.com/2013/09/mtgo-finance-good-bots-spreading-risks/

With a special shoutout to the bot owners that have treated me the best as a customer.

Earlier om mtgolibrary: When to sell your card
When do you sell your card? http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-sell-magic-online-card.html

The Most Important Thing
The Most Important thing about MTGO finance: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/10/the-most-important-thing_23.html