What does spring rotation mean for Khans of Tarkir prices?

18-month rotation will soon be in effect. In fact, Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged will rotate out in March/April 2015 (I don't think there is an exact date yet) after being legal in Standard for only 18 months.

What do we know about speculation in the fall set of yesteryear?
Fact #1: The good time to buy last years fall set (Khans of Tarkir in that case) is usually during the summer when interest is low and prices will rise when interest for Standard increases again in the fall. The peak price is usually in January or February in the next year (2016 in this case) before prices start to drop because of fall rotation. This could be a little bit different because KTK has not been drafted for a long time, but for simplicity's sake we will assume that this is true for KTK (and even more so for FRF).

I talk about this at length in this blog post: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html

Fact #2: When a set rotates in October it is usually a good idea to start selling in March/April, i.e. six months before rotation. That would mean that October 2015 would be the month to start selling Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged. That is very close to the time when they should be peaking because of Face #1

Fact #3: Eternally playable cards (such as fetchlands and Siege Rhino) are probably less affected by fact #1 and fact #2.

How will this play out? We don't know. We have no precedent for this. We do not really know which force is the stronger one here - low supply or rotation.

What should we do?
The safe bet is to sit this one out. Sell your Theros stuff before the end of October as you normally would. If anything has the time to spike - nice! Sell for a profit. Otherwise just get out in order to cut your losses.

The other option is to believe that the fall in price due to rotation will be somewhat delayed and that it is safe to own the KTK and FRF cards until December. Do this at your own peril.

It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. It will set expectations for how to handle Dragons of Tarkir come March/April 2016.

When is the right time to buy Khans of Tarkir cards?

I am not going to repeat what I said a year ago, only tell you that the principles still apply.

Please reread my article from 2013: http://mtgolibrary.blogspot.se/2013/11/when-to-invest-in-fall-set-theros-for.html

Also notice how well the principles did apply to most Theros cards except for the ones that went into Standard decks that relied on RTR cards (such as Thassa, even though I think we might see her again).

Spoiler: The right time to invest for Standard purposes (rotation is almost always even better, but you don't want to wait until October 2016 to get your KTK goodies, do you?) is in December this year.

Khans cards will now - with a few exceptions - fall at a slow and steady pace until December.

Good luck!

MTGO Library Bot 8.61 - Khans of Tarkir

ML Bot 8.61 supports Khans of Tarkir (KTK).


The new pricelist ("CardsMTGO.txt") is available for download on the Online Control Panel and for free during the update process and in the installer.
Lite bots should update as well because the bot uses the pricelist to learn the names of the cards.

Another Time to Buy is Coming!

Hi Everyone!

I'm sure you all know that in just a few short weeks Khans of Tarkir is releasing on MTGO. The pre-release for paper is next weekend. Like everyone else in the world who doesn't have fetch lands online, I want a set of allied colored fetches. Too bad for me, the time to buy fetches is later. At least a couple weeks after Khans comes out. It used to be a hard and fast rule that 14 days after a set was released was the best day to buy. But with recent sets, like VMA and M15, this is not the case. It really reminds me a lot of how the weather shifted during the great depression. One major cause was the "Dust Bowl". The Dust Bowl was a shift in climate that changed the viability of farming on the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.

I mentioned that because it seems at this point at least, that the Magic Online economy is changing. It's changing in two ways. The first way is that it seems to be going slower. Years ago, the best time to buy was exactly 14 days after a set came out online. That's all changed, now it's a much longer period for the prices to drop once a set is released. The other thing is that the economy seems to be a lot more stable. Yes the cards do change price more than paper, that’s mostly because the accessibility of the market far exceeds that of the Paper market. If I want a black lotus online, I can buy one right now online and play with it in 5 minutes or less. In Paper I have to buy, wait for payment to clear, wait for shipping, and finally wait to actually play a game. So by the very nature of an electronic marketplace that we can all access with our computer it will be more volatile than the paper market that is less prone to excitement and has slower availability of data.

There will always be what some consider chaos in the Magic Online economy because it still moves very quickly, although slower than before. But the economy seems a lot more predictable to me than ever before. It could be a greater number of players online that allow the market to have more stability (with more people there comes more stability). Alternatively, it could be Vintage Masters rolling off sale. I’m not sure because we have never seen anything like Vintage Masters online before and it’s really difficult to predict when we don’t have any data to compare to. Think of it like Comps in real estate. With nothing to compare to, there’s no way to know what to charge. We don’t know what’s happening as VMA goes off sale.

On the other hand, it could be that MTGO is growing and getting more popular and more people are deciding they want to play online because it’s convenient (that’s the only reason I play online instead of paper).

I know I have mentioned it before, but it’s an exciting time in MTGO and I really like to see what’s going to happen. One thing for sure that’s going to happen. Khan fetch lands will sell for a premium the first several days they are available. I’d say that it’s the best bet to stay out of them until they have been out for 2 weeks unless you’re buying them for practically nothing. Then you’re going to want to watch their trends until they start going up. I’m going to say my standard thing (I feel like a broken record with this one), four days of climbing prices is the time to buy. I say four days because it’s safer than three from being a temporary price jump, and a real trend isn’t two days long. Usually the upward trend will start between two and six weeks after the release.

The beginning of the MTGO rollercoaster!

Hi Everyone!

This week is just like the first week of school! There’s some excitement, some anxiety, and a lot of uncertainty. We all worried about our friends, our teachers, the homework…everything. That’s what’s happening right now in MTGO.

The Khans of Tarkir spoiler was released and we all know what Khans holds for us. I always love when we finally get to see all the cards in a new set, but this summer it’s different. This summer it means our beloved Vintage Masters is going the way of the Dodo. In just a few short weeks Khans will release on line and then it’s really over.

Why is this relevant a month before Vintage masters goes away? It is relevant because everyone online realized that this week. Look at any card on any price website. If you do, you’ll see that so many cards have spiked up in value. Look at Council’s Judgment (a card I have been stockpiling since the release of Vintage Masters by the way). This week Council’s Judgment shot up over 200% this week alone! All the constructed playable cards have been spiking in value. If it had any value before Vintage Masters, it’s going up (Power is going up too). The time when cards start to shoot up is the time that makes me excited and nervous at the same time. I always think about when to get out of certain cards and when to buy more.

I think the trick right here is to hold cards until there’s a reason to sell. It’s no secret the price of Vintage Masters cards would increase once Vintage Masters went off sale. The cards not being expected to go up is a reason to sell. I’d wait around until probably early 2015 in February or March and unload the Vintage Masters stuff then unless you’re in it for the long haul. By this time, there will probably be one of two reasons: The price may become stagnant Or Wizards could announce another “Masters” set for next summer (most likely Modern Masters 2, but possibly Legacy Masters, or on a very slim chance Vintage Masters 2 or Masters Edition 5).

I know dozens of people who play seriously and invest casually (they’re doing it backward if you ask me, but to each his (or her) own) and told me they bought Vintage Masters dual lands, or Power to just hang on to, to make a fortune on in a few years. That sounds good and it’s always fun to say, “I own power”, but the hardcore investors should stay out of that kind of investment as it ties up a lot of resources and doesn’t make a lot of percentage when you look at the time vs the profit.

It’s an exciting time. If you haven’t bought all the Vintage Masters you want, you’d better pick them up before they get out of control. I just tell my friends who bought cards for investment purposes the same thing every time the market goes through a shakeup (expected or not expected). I tell them that it’s important to look at the situation and remember what they thought when they got in and stay frosty.

What will the Khans of Tarkir fetches sell for?

Hi Everyone!

In my article earlier this week I mentioned that allied fetch lands are coming back. Now that I have had a few days to consider what will be the forces acting upon the fetch land prices, I wanted to tell everyone about it.

If we go back in time a little and look at the Return to Ravnica shock lands, we see that they had a turbulence price wise their entire time in standard. I think this will be less true of shock lands. The reason is that fetches don’t seem so good in standard with no shock lands to fetch. It’s possible that they could do a cycle of lands that are a basic type that can make other colors of mana (like Murmuring Bosk) and then it could be just as turbulent. The other reason I don’t think prices will be so erratic because cards that are good in the “eternal formats” (I include Modern in this grouping along with Legacy and Vintage). The eternal formats seem to have much less price turbulence. It won’t all be smooth sailing, but it won’t be like the shock lands that were awesome in standard and modern, and almost never saw play in the older eternal formats. I think it’s going to be a smooth ride for the fetches through Standard...It’s possible that the fetches could barely be playable in standard. I don’t know right now.

My favorite tool when making decisions is research. Let’s have a look at the closest thing to this that happened fairly recently, the enemy fetches from Zendikar (have a look for yourself…it’s tedious and boring for a lot of people so I left the data out of this article). Unfortunately, Modern didn’t exist when they first came out, neither did Vintage Online. Fetches were as low as $3 in Zendikar standard days. I think they will be higher this time around.

My prediction is that the reprints of the Onslaught allied fetches will settle in the $7 to $10 range while they are in standard. I think they will be a great investment.

One last interesting thing I read in another article is that it’s possible that the allied fetches open new Modern deck choices. At first it sounded like nonsense until I realized that a lot of modern decks (scapeshift, UWR, and Jund) all have very shaky mana bases and taking out a key land really hurts. It’s really possible that decks with color combinations that don’t have access to the best mana with enemy colored fetches could emerge as competitive decks with the addition of more fetch lands.

One cautionary note I wanted to make: The new 2 set blocks and no core sets gives Wizards a lot more new “planes” to visit than before (twice as many to be exact). It seems to me like they could be using this opportunity to reprint cards that are expensive to make them accessible at a faster rate than before.

Mtg Confidant

Fetches in Khans of Tarkir!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Everyone!

I’m sure everyone has heard by now that the original allied color fetch lands from Onslaught will be in Khans of Tarkir. That’s great because they are one of the major barriers to players getting into Legacy. My initial thought is that Wizards could print the Zendikar fetches in the next set or the next block. I don’t know what is going to happen. All I can say as of right now you should unload any allied fetches and pick them up after Khans comes out. 

My first impression is that this is great for Modern. It gives people a way to play Modern with fetches, that are practically a necessity without having to spend a fortune on the Zendikar fetches. I can go on and on about the specific things that are accomplished by the Onslaught Fetches in Standard but I boiled it down to two basic things happening.

First, it allows players the accessibility to play the older formats. This is good for everyone because no matter what cards they reprint, other cards in the format will get more expensive and make up the difference. If a ton of people get into Modern because of the fetches, they will buy up all the other cards needed for modern too and drive their prices up. If you don’t have all your money in fetches, then you’ll actually be doing better after the fetches get reprinted than if they hadn’t been reprinted.

Second, it is a new tool for Modern. Modern didn’t have allied fetches ever. This is a new and exciting development that will make Modern a more interesting format it will make good mana bases easier in the format. And, it will make already excellent mana bases even better. All in all, I think this is a great development for Magic and all the “eternal” formats (including Modern).

 

The only other thing that I’m thinking initially about new cards that certainly will see play in Modern is that (I have said it before) over a long enough time period, all the eternal formats will look almost the same. They won’t eve

r be exactly the same, but will become more similar as time goes on. The allied fetches are a perfect example of this and I don’t know what it means about the format as a whole.

I do know one thing about the fetches getting reprinted, they are going to be a great opportunity to invest and make some money on the cards.

Your plans for the V3 crash

A lot of people are mad at Wizards for shutting down the v3 client on July 16th. I will not give you my opinion here. It is a fact that it is happening. How will it affect you? How will it affect the market?

Judging from earlier client switchovers, the market will fall. In fact, the switchover will be an excellent opportunity for picking up cards. The market will quickly recover and probably be back to normal levels in time for the Khans of Tarkir release.

This means that you should probably pick up:

* Theros block standard cards. Pick up the cards in Theros block with focus on cards that have done well in block and cards from the two later sets.

* Vintage Masters

July 17-31 will be an excellent time to pick these up when everyone else is looking at M15 or quitting the game.

Questions? Thoughts? How many of you were there when V2 shut down?