Agree with Thragtusk, it seems so well positioned. Don't really agree with Talrand though, he gets significantly worse when phyrexian mana spells rotate out, not to mention ponder, and he's only a fringe player at the moment. Perhaps in a UR delver shell (will delver even exist? so much snappy hate) with goblin electromancer to get sweet value on spells, but with no ponder equivalent and fewer good cheap cantrips overall (fleeting distraction?!), I'm just not seeing it.
Actually, you can watch replays AND see whi is playing who! Just click on the big "plus" sign on each name. It will open a submenu with each game he or she played in the tournament, and the results. Double click them to watch the replay.
It's a bit less intuitive than before, but it works. :)
That combo deck is great fun when it goes off, or if I manage to get two Primal Forcemage out before a Firecat Blitz.
It does have a bit of trouble early, and I'm still trying to figure out how to mulligan with it properly. Maybe a few more lower mana cost creatures, I dunno.
I'd like to second mattlewis's advice to not focus on RTR, focus on overly-depressed newly rotated cards instead. In addition, give them about 2-3 weeks to settle as not everyone with large standard cardpools logs in right after rotation. So my recommendation would be (for early November only; don't put these cards on the list right away, otherwise you'll cut into your margins):
Thrun
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Feast and Famine
Birthing Pod
and contingent on them dropping down to very low prices:
Karn
Mox Opal
Surgical Extraction (already low but I wouldn't hit it until it's ~50 cents)
The only in-standard card I might recommend near-term is snapcaster, as he has the potential with the UW/UR control builds that are possible to really become more viable when RTR hits.
I would like to recommend the Spec of FtV: Realms Box set. Its still in the store so the price is around the $34.99msrp (Traders website $37 or 37 tickets) but the cards inside retail for over $50. Since its still in the store you cannot crack them to make much profit right now. But after they stop selling them in store I can see make a profit on them.
Pete, you ask what RtR cards to invest in. You are doing it wrong. This is the worst investing idea right now. Some of the reasons you describe such as trying to pick winners and the downward trend of cards applies very heavily to RtR. Investing in RtR means you should have good information about how the standard metagame is going to shape up. And it means you have to overcome the flood of supply which will be coming online over the next 3-5 months. A *lot* has to go right to make any tix off of investing in RtR. My advice would be to ignore RtR until the dust settles a bit and broaden your search.
Currently, staples from Scars block are tanking due to impending rotation. My advice would be to target the cards that are played in modern in order to take advantage of players dumping their old standard cards. The fast lands (Seachrome Coast and Blackcleave Cliff are the best two imo), Mox Opal, Inkmoth Nexus, Elesh Norn are all decent candidates. The NPH praestors apart from Elesh Norn bottomed in August, and have been steadily increasing since. I expect this trend to continue, but the praetors might be too long term for you. Expect Scars block cards to bottom during the first week of release events as players scrounge for tix to play RtR limited (tix only entry in the high payout sealed deck queues).
Also, cards like Breeding Pool and Godless Shrine I expect to see bumps up in price in November and December as players try to get decks together for Modern PTQ season. Both are at depressed prices relative to in an in season price. Real Estate on the cheap has historically been an excellent investment, real estate in magic is no different. Elspeth, Knight Errant also represents good value right now imo.
Buying low and selling high works. But you have to be working against the market. If everyone is selling cards and prices are depressed, you are the buyer. If everyone is buying cards and prices are rising, you must be the seller. The easiest way to accomplish this is to buy cards that no one is interested in currently, but they might need down the road. I'm not very good at picking sleepers, and it looks like the people offering you picks are pretty bad at it too. Picking sleepers is hard. Buying staples at depressed prices and waitiing for Modern season is easy.
Edit: Lotus Petal and Wasteland are probably worth a punt right now due to drafters depressing prices on these.
while I wholeheartedly support tribl wars, tribal decks and thios tribal PRE I have a really rough time entering events being a new dad with a 5 month old. Casual players understand the needs of a babytrons, and at worst, i time out in a fun game. hate to time out in a PRE because my soon pooped on my chest!
I get the idea you (or we) are testing. We can all tell stories of the cards we held that exploded in value. Your prior belief seems to be that one cannot make money this way, whereas those who suggest cards seem to have the opposite opinion. That is the great thing about the project: The profit can be assessed regardless of prior believes in a much more objective way.
I also get that it would be an inferior test if you only held a very limited portfolio of, say, 1 card. That would hardly prove anything. So I think that it is great that you manage and keep track of a large portfolio for the sake of the experiment. Your time put into the investment project is greatly appreciated (at least by me).
I do not tend to disagree with you or Smack8001 that it looks very hard to make money by predicting prices. And I certainly cannot give you any recommendations as to which cards to buy low.
You say that people ".. have offered a number of strategies, and I am trying as many as I can.". It is of course a strength of the project that you are not just buying 1 card but that you are trying essentially all of the suggestions/strategies. The conclusion so far is that the average of all suggestions/strategies did not work very well. I do not find this conclusion very surprising, and giving my guess on your prior belief, I imagine that you don't find it very surprising either.
Since you now have the data I think that it would be nice to also see if all the individual strategies also failed. They probably did. But showing that all of the strategies (and not just the average strategy) failed would be a much stronger test against the money-making-hypothesis.
Magic card do have an overall trend down. Hence, if an average random $300 portfolio over the same period of time would have dropped to $1, then your profit from actively managing your portfolio is not $11 but $310. The $299 drop that you have avoided and the $11 surplus. Still, it may not be enough to cover your time consumption. Saying that prices trend down and then not taking it into account when evaluating the strategy seems inconsistent.
Since I am already playing the Devil's advocate another (..ridiculous..) conclusion one could draw from the project is that the initial investment size was just too small. You are evaluating the investments on the absolute amount of $11, which is a small number. But the $11 hinge on the $300. Since you did make a profit of 11/300 = 3.6%, you should just scale up your investment. Had you invested $10,000 then you would have a profit of $360 which is above flipping burgers. Hence, if you just scale up, the predictions were a success. Flipping burgers is a nice and thoughtful benchmark, but I do not find it ideal.
And finally, running a MTGO store is probably not a certain way to profit from magic cards. It works.... for some. For the average person it is probably as risky as predicting prices (.... given the time consumption).
But we're not on that wagon. First of all, as soon as things even only HINT to be heading out of control, the Trifecta returns to its cell, pronto.
Secondarily, Eldrazi decks are pretty much unchanged: they do the same things they were doing without Emrakul. There's not a whole new combo thanks to him. It remains to see if the prospect of using Emrakul is alluring enough to cause a proliferation of Eldrazi decks.
A lot of Hydra/Avatar decks using Progenitus? I wish there will be! They would be a new thing at least, those are very Cinderella tribes.
Reanimator Angel decks? Now, those are a real concern. In fact, I don't think Iona will last long. But we'll see.
The problem of our current meta (as of October 2012, I mean) is the dominance of Human/Maverick/Hatebear/Good Stuff/Slow Curve/$500 decks (regardless the fact that the pilots ending Top 4 are always very strong players: they're not the only ones using them, so the chance of meeting those decks is greater than what the Top 4 shows). Aether Vial plays in favor of those, so it coming back isn't going to happen at the moment, not before the power shifts elsewhere. Plus, it's a card that would become ubiquitous, that would cause boring issues within a restricted meta like ours. It's one of the main reasons it's banned. More or less the same reasoning behind the GSZ banning in Modern. It's a "why shouldn't I use this?" card (much more than GSZ itself, being colorless and CMC 1).
Yeah, I remember that. Iona is hated because it's not even a combo. You don't lose to a highly prepared deck that goes off in turn 1 or 2 because of its perfect engineering. It's just a package that cuts you off the game in many cases, and then its pilot just proceeds to do whatever, even pass the turn until you run out of cards or concede out of boredom. It's the kind of experience that makes you quit a format. Losing to, say, Cephalid Illusionist is entirely different, because you see a process unfolding, you see logic interactions between cards, you see an amazing endgame. Maybe you had no chances to stop it (but you should, as it's not that hard, so it pushes you to build better decks), and it gets annoying after a while if you keep losing to it, but at least it's something your opponent moved pieces around and has built a whole deck to accomplish. With Iona, it's just a matter of two straightforward spells, a tutor and a reanimator, that were there in some form since Alpha.
This said, I also remember endless_nameless struggling to achieve an undefeated score in the Blippian Era (he so wanted to go there at least once, made it with Praetor in the end, which is more interesting than just with Iona). It was out of incredible bad luck sometimes, but other times it was because some decks were able to exploit the slightest occasions when his focused battleplan jammed. Plus, the Iona's experience I described up there doesn't really apply to ANY deck. Some of them are half immune to her.
I agree with Lagrange. I don't really see any strategy in your approach to speculating.
Take Sorin, for instance--what's your strategy there? If you buy a card at 19.40 at what price are you hoping to get out of him at? 30? That seems like the best case scenario, but also very risky as you can only probably sell him to a bot at ~27 and make 8 tickets in the BEST case scenario. Worst case is that he, like venser, drops to 10-12 and stays there for the rest of Standard. Too risky for me.
I can also say the same thing about Tarmogoyf and Cavern of Souls. I understand you were probably just listening to viewers but I don't know what price you are hoping to get out of these cards at. Is Tarmogoyf a 120 ticket card? There are just too many options in Modern for that to be true as it stands right now. Plenty of people are priced out of him and he isn't as dominant as Jace or FoW. Is Cavern of Souls going to be a 14 ticket rare? Or even 12? Even at 14 tickets, you will max out at a 3 ticket profit on a 8 ticket card and that's probably your best case scenario.
Call of the Kindred? Curse of Misfortunes? To me those just seem like a waste of time. Even if they increase 1000% is it still worth the time it took to buy them, check the prices, and sell them back?
The big speculation 'hits' of the last couple months have been modern staples and cards from zombies. Also, a few mythics from Avacyn Restored have been trending upwards. It looks like you've missed on all of those.
Personally, I do not like investing in <1 ticket rares as the time you put in trading 4 at a time is not worth it to me. I prefer mythics in the 8-12 range, modern staples, and flagship rares. I don't have any specific cards for you to invest in but I would highly encourage you to come up with some strategy when investing in a card.
My suggestions will be to consider the Innistrad cards for investment. Like; Innistrad tap lands and maybe Terminus. Other good cards are already suggested above. Shocklands will see lots of play and there will be demand to support these lands.
RtR prices of rare cards will get lower over time and they will see the min during December just before Gatecrash. So my suggestion will be not to invest on RtR now, just take the cards you want to play with.
just wanna put it out there, If we're in the whole unban a tons of combo stuff wagon that Æther Vial could be taken off to help out both aggro and control decks.
Well, I'm 95% sure that Thragtusk will be going up. M13 will be drafted much less when RtR hits and that baby is huge. Selesnya should become a thing. I'd invest in it now, asap, because it's already climbing.
Also Talrand. Holy crap, only 0.77 right now? If UR becomes a thing like I predict it'll be, he should go up by a dollar or two.
As for RtR, these are my predictions:
- Loxodon Smiter. He's a sideboard card and the discard clause isn't terribly relevant, the uncounterable clause should be good though.
- Vraska. Planeswalkers are always terribly overpriced at release.
- Jace. Same as Vraska.
+++ Angel or Serenity. I don't think people realize how good she is. She fits in Selesnya ramp and also UW control. She's fantastic. Also an EDH staple. She's going to skyrocket.
+ Chromatic Lantern. Every EDH deck wants it. Seriously. If it starts under like $1 I'd buy the crap outta it.
+ Cyclonic Rift, Lolteth Troll, Deathrite Shaman, Mizzium Mortars. I think all of these will go up, but by how much I'm not sure. I think Mortars will be played more when people realize Bonfire is best as a 2of and they fill the rest with Mortars. Cyclonic Rift has a home in multiple potential standard archetypes and I have a nagging feeling that it will truly shine with UG Simic coming in Gatecrash. These cards are risky though, but I mention them anyway.
+ Boros cards. Thalia, Champion of the Parish, Mizzium Mortars, these type of cards. Standard already had a taste of Boros and I'm guessing we're going to see some more aggro Human bombs come Gatecrash which will spike these card prices up.
+ Precinct Captain. This one I think will be a very low risk high reward card. He's pointless currently so he should be pennies. But he has potential if Boros has a home for him. I'd stock up on him if he's like 20-40 cents.
+ Restoration Angel. The card is fantastic but is currently in limbo looking for the right deck. It'll come. Whenever this card starts dropping in price is when I'd invest.
That's my advice. Safest investments would be Talrand, Precinct Captain. Risky but semi-cheap and possible good payoff are Human/Soldier Boros staples like Champion of the Parish and Thalia. Expensive cards that I'm sure will become much more expensive would be Angel of Serenity and Thragtusk. The rest depends how cheap you can get 'em.
My 0.02 event tickets.
EDIT: For the Boros stuff, I'd only recommend investing once Gatecrash is starting to be spoilered and only if the cards haven't been rising in value already.
What I am testing it the idea that it is possible to turn a profit solely by buying particular cards low and selling high. People say it can be done. However, all I can find is individual annecdotes (I bought Tarmogoyf for $5 before anyone knew it was good - and sold for $25!) Those people tend to ignore all the other cards that they also bought for $5, only to watch them drop to $2.
Having a very small number of cards in the test would show nothing - it would be akin to playing the lottery. Yes, I could buy jsut one card, and watch, but that would prove nothing. It would be like buying a single lottery card to determine whether the lottery is profitable.
The hour or so a week is consumed by checking the prices of each card in the inventory against the purchase price, deciding whether it is worthwhile to sell, selling anything which makes enough profit, then deciding how to reinvest those TIX. Some weeks I find nothing worth selling, and it takes a lot less than an hour. Other weeks take longer, since I have to sift recommendations, and determine how to spread what money I have available over the best mix of recommended cards and strategies.
A number of commenters have offered a number of strategies, and I am trying as many as I can. The one that I am least enamored of, however, is holding cards for the long term. Well over 90% of all cards drop after rotation, and that is true of nearly all non-land cards. A tiny minority rise, and that is usually after a prolonged slump. For every Venidlion Clique, there are a hundred Call of the Herd or Cunning Wish (all cost about the same when in Standard, and all were part of decks that won Pro Tours.)
Magic cards do have an overall downward trend, and that is not just a "cost" of doing business. It means that you *cannot* rely on holding cards for the long term. If you buy just one card, then you are playing the lottery. If you buy a lot of different cards, then it certainly appears, from the evidence so far, that you will lose money over the long term.
I know of two certain ways of profiting trading in Magic cards. The first is running a store, bying at wholesale and selling retail. It works - it's how MTGOTraders.com can afford to fund this website. The second is to trick kids and uninformed players into trading or selling cards at way below fair value. We have all seen traders like this, and I find it unappealling / against my idea of a moral code. The third way - according to soome people - is knowing enough about the market to pick "sleeper" cards in advance, buy low and sell high. That's the concept I'm testing here.
So let's continue the test. Tell me what to buy once RtR appears, and how much to pay for it. I'm open to recommendations for individual cards, types (e.g. shocklands, gates, unleash creatures, whatever), strategies (e.g. any mythics under $3), whatever.
Just a couple thoughts off the top of my head. I'll probably write more, later.
Thank you for a very passionate lesson. I agree with some of your statements but not all of them.
I am aware of the scope of the project and I do not believe that my comments/questions are outside the project's boundaries.
1) You say that Pete didn't pick any of the cards himself. I know that he is acting on user-based suggestions. Still, not all the cards in the portfolio was specifically suggested. I guess that some of them are bought based on suggested strategies rather than explicit naming. Managing these strategies could get easier over time even for an experienced expect-trader like Pete. If he is only doing as suggested (by cardnames) then I see no reason why he should spend 1 hour a week?
2) I agree that Pete should look at a large selection of cards as he is doing. I am just asking whether this is the strategy used by the people who claim to make money? Risk and returns are connected, so it is not surprising that the total profit is not sky-high.
3) It is not very informative just to state that "The ones that made money worked". I am sure we can do better than this. Some of the card suggestions had explicit motivations. Based on these motivations did some of the strategies work better than other? Fx Vorapede was predicted to go up in price once Primival Titan rotates out, Lingering souls was also predicted to go up post rotation. The mana-base was predicted to go up during different seasons etc.
So did all these strategies fail or did some of them work? It could be something each person should judge for himself but Pete might know the exact motivation behind each card in the portfolio.
Regarding your statement on the average value of magic cards trending down; Then I agree with you. However, this "fact" implies that Pete should not just look at the $11 of profit, he should be looking at the abnormal return. He made $11 in a downward trending market. Since we are already looking at the opportunity costs of flipping burgers, the downward trend is just another "cost" to take into account.
I also agree with your comment that the data seems to suggest the money-making hypothesis is not true. Still, some of the predictions were about post-rotation prices which cannot be judged yet. Also, I think the argument would be even stronger if you could say that the cards were bought based on, say, 4-5 types of predictions or strategies and each of these strategies failed. This break down into strategies would also address my question on the portfolio size. If every reasonable break down into strategies also failed then the conclusion is not just a result of portfolio size.
1) The comparison is fair. You hope that there is a learning curve and that one gets better with time. Pete has been playing, buying, selling, and trading for almost 20 years. The hypothesis he was testing was that buying staples or sleepers and waiting for them to just rise in value, and turning a profit, was "easy." If the learning curve is huge, then it isn't "easy." He didn't pick any of the cards himself, he took the advice of people posting in his column. Combined, they have decades of experience. Not so "easy" is it?
2) A diversified portfolio gives him more data points. If he'd only bought 10 copies of 1 card and it tanked or rose, you couldn't judge the hypothesis disproven or not. His experiment was appropriate to the hypothesis he was testing. Some MTG players will state "Hey, I bought 15 of this card and it rose in value" and you might think they're a genius with a narrow portfolio, but thats only because they're not reporting all the cards and boxes that they lost money on. It's a classical accounting fallacy.
3) The ones that made money worked. The ones that lost money didn't work. The purpose of the test wasn't to determine if he could buy cards that would be tournament-worthy in a few months. It was to see if making money just buying and sitting and then selling was "easy."
Website authors and forum posters, for a while, liked to consider themselves experts of speculation and jam out articles every set with "Buy" or "Sell" suggestions on them. Unlike stocks or real estate, the average value of magic cards trends down over time while requiring continual costs to stay relevant (upgrading decks), much like used cars. Beating the market in MTG as a private individual who can't leverage a markup between buy and sell prices is far from "easy." I think his data so far demonstrates that the hypothesis is not true.
Agree with Thragtusk, it seems so well positioned. Don't really agree with Talrand though, he gets significantly worse when phyrexian mana spells rotate out, not to mention ponder, and he's only a fringe player at the moment. Perhaps in a UR delver shell (will delver even exist? so much snappy hate) with goblin electromancer to get sweet value on spells, but with no ponder equivalent and fewer good cheap cantrips overall (fleeting distraction?!), I'm just not seeing it.
Actually, you can watch replays AND see whi is playing who! Just click on the big "plus" sign on each name. It will open a submenu with each game he or she played in the tournament, and the results. Double click them to watch the replay.
It's a bit less intuitive than before, but it works. :)
Valakut unbanned in Modern really irritates me. That was a card that I never wanted to see again.
That combo deck is great fun when it goes off, or if I manage to get two Primal Forcemage out before a Firecat Blitz.
It does have a bit of trouble early, and I'm still trying to figure out how to mulligan with it properly. Maybe a few more lower mana cost creatures, I dunno.
No prob, and congrats!
Looking forward to see you in the event when you'll be an older dad, maybe!
I'd like to second mattlewis's advice to not focus on RTR, focus on overly-depressed newly rotated cards instead. In addition, give them about 2-3 weeks to settle as not everyone with large standard cardpools logs in right after rotation. So my recommendation would be (for early November only; don't put these cards on the list right away, otherwise you'll cut into your margins):
Thrun
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Feast and Famine
Birthing Pod
and contingent on them dropping down to very low prices:
Karn
Mox Opal
Surgical Extraction (already low but I wouldn't hit it until it's ~50 cents)
The only in-standard card I might recommend near-term is snapcaster, as he has the potential with the UW/UR control builds that are possible to really become more viable when RTR hits.
I would like to recommend the Spec of FtV: Realms Box set. Its still in the store so the price is around the $34.99msrp (Traders website $37 or 37 tickets) but the cards inside retail for over $50. Since its still in the store you cannot crack them to make much profit right now. But after they stop selling them in store I can see make a profit on them.
Pete, you ask what RtR cards to invest in. You are doing it wrong. This is the worst investing idea right now. Some of the reasons you describe such as trying to pick winners and the downward trend of cards applies very heavily to RtR. Investing in RtR means you should have good information about how the standard metagame is going to shape up. And it means you have to overcome the flood of supply which will be coming online over the next 3-5 months. A *lot* has to go right to make any tix off of investing in RtR. My advice would be to ignore RtR until the dust settles a bit and broaden your search.
Currently, staples from Scars block are tanking due to impending rotation. My advice would be to target the cards that are played in modern in order to take advantage of players dumping their old standard cards. The fast lands (Seachrome Coast and Blackcleave Cliff are the best two imo), Mox Opal, Inkmoth Nexus, Elesh Norn are all decent candidates. The NPH praestors apart from Elesh Norn bottomed in August, and have been steadily increasing since. I expect this trend to continue, but the praetors might be too long term for you. Expect Scars block cards to bottom during the first week of release events as players scrounge for tix to play RtR limited (tix only entry in the high payout sealed deck queues).
Also, cards like Breeding Pool and Godless Shrine I expect to see bumps up in price in November and December as players try to get decks together for Modern PTQ season. Both are at depressed prices relative to in an in season price. Real Estate on the cheap has historically been an excellent investment, real estate in magic is no different. Elspeth, Knight Errant also represents good value right now imo.
Buying low and selling high works. But you have to be working against the market. If everyone is selling cards and prices are depressed, you are the buyer. If everyone is buying cards and prices are rising, you must be the seller. The easiest way to accomplish this is to buy cards that no one is interested in currently, but they might need down the road. I'm not very good at picking sleepers, and it looks like the people offering you picks are pretty bad at it too. Picking sleepers is hard. Buying staples at depressed prices and waitiing for Modern season is easy.
Edit: Lotus Petal and Wasteland are probably worth a punt right now due to drafters depressing prices on these.
Everything Doc said.
thanks anyways! sorry for being a crabgrass!
while I wholeheartedly support tribl wars, tribal decks and thios tribal PRE I have a really rough time entering events being a new dad with a 5 month old. Casual players understand the needs of a babytrons, and at worst, i time out in a fun game. hate to time out in a PRE because my soon pooped on my chest!
it was a typo. It's supposed to be (Shared Animosity)
Comment edit:
sorry for being crankly abotu the two rating, thanks for explaining noobishness :)
I get the idea you (or we) are testing. We can all tell stories of the cards we held that exploded in value. Your prior belief seems to be that one cannot make money this way, whereas those who suggest cards seem to have the opposite opinion. That is the great thing about the project: The profit can be assessed regardless of prior believes in a much more objective way.
I also get that it would be an inferior test if you only held a very limited portfolio of, say, 1 card. That would hardly prove anything. So I think that it is great that you manage and keep track of a large portfolio for the sake of the experiment. Your time put into the investment project is greatly appreciated (at least by me).
I do not tend to disagree with you or Smack8001 that it looks very hard to make money by predicting prices. And I certainly cannot give you any recommendations as to which cards to buy low.
You say that people ".. have offered a number of strategies, and I am trying as many as I can.". It is of course a strength of the project that you are not just buying 1 card but that you are trying essentially all of the suggestions/strategies. The conclusion so far is that the average of all suggestions/strategies did not work very well. I do not find this conclusion very surprising, and giving my guess on your prior belief, I imagine that you don't find it very surprising either.
Since you now have the data I think that it would be nice to also see if all the individual strategies also failed. They probably did. But showing that all of the strategies (and not just the average strategy) failed would be a much stronger test against the money-making-hypothesis.
Magic card do have an overall trend down. Hence, if an average random $300 portfolio over the same period of time would have dropped to $1, then your profit from actively managing your portfolio is not $11 but $310. The $299 drop that you have avoided and the $11 surplus. Still, it may not be enough to cover your time consumption. Saying that prices trend down and then not taking it into account when evaluating the strategy seems inconsistent.
Since I am already playing the Devil's advocate another (..ridiculous..) conclusion one could draw from the project is that the initial investment size was just too small. You are evaluating the investments on the absolute amount of $11, which is a small number. But the $11 hinge on the $300. Since you did make a profit of 11/300 = 3.6%, you should just scale up your investment. Had you invested $10,000 then you would have a profit of $360 which is above flipping burgers. Hence, if you just scale up, the predictions were a success. Flipping burgers is a nice and thoughtful benchmark, but I do not find it ideal.
And finally, running a MTGO store is probably not a certain way to profit from magic cards. It works.... for some. For the average person it is probably as risky as predicting prices (.... given the time consumption).
But we're not on that wagon. First of all, as soon as things even only HINT to be heading out of control, the Trifecta returns to its cell, pronto.
Secondarily, Eldrazi decks are pretty much unchanged: they do the same things they were doing without Emrakul. There's not a whole new combo thanks to him. It remains to see if the prospect of using Emrakul is alluring enough to cause a proliferation of Eldrazi decks.
A lot of Hydra/Avatar decks using Progenitus? I wish there will be! They would be a new thing at least, those are very Cinderella tribes.
Reanimator Angel decks? Now, those are a real concern. In fact, I don't think Iona will last long. But we'll see.
The problem of our current meta (as of October 2012, I mean) is the dominance of Human/Maverick/Hatebear/Good Stuff/Slow Curve/$500 decks (regardless the fact that the pilots ending Top 4 are always very strong players: they're not the only ones using them, so the chance of meeting those decks is greater than what the Top 4 shows). Aether Vial plays in favor of those, so it coming back isn't going to happen at the moment, not before the power shifts elsewhere. Plus, it's a card that would become ubiquitous, that would cause boring issues within a restricted meta like ours. It's one of the main reasons it's banned. More or less the same reasoning behind the GSZ banning in Modern. It's a "why shouldn't I use this?" card (much more than GSZ itself, being colorless and CMC 1).
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Yeah, I remember that. Iona is hated because it's not even a combo. You don't lose to a highly prepared deck that goes off in turn 1 or 2 because of its perfect engineering. It's just a package that cuts you off the game in many cases, and then its pilot just proceeds to do whatever, even pass the turn until you run out of cards or concede out of boredom. It's the kind of experience that makes you quit a format. Losing to, say, Cephalid Illusionist is entirely different, because you see a process unfolding, you see logic interactions between cards, you see an amazing endgame. Maybe you had no chances to stop it (but you should, as it's not that hard, so it pushes you to build better decks), and it gets annoying after a while if you keep losing to it, but at least it's something your opponent moved pieces around and has built a whole deck to accomplish. With Iona, it's just a matter of two straightforward spells, a tutor and a reanimator, that were there in some form since Alpha.
This said, I also remember endless_nameless struggling to achieve an undefeated score in the Blippian Era (he so wanted to go there at least once, made it with Praetor in the end, which is more interesting than just with Iona). It was out of incredible bad luck sometimes, but other times it was because some decks were able to exploit the slightest occasions when his focused battleplan jammed. Plus, the Iona's experience I described up there doesn't really apply to ANY deck. Some of them are half immune to her.
It's Marcus! Welcome man!
I agree with Lagrange. I don't really see any strategy in your approach to speculating.
Take Sorin, for instance--what's your strategy there? If you buy a card at 19.40 at what price are you hoping to get out of him at? 30? That seems like the best case scenario, but also very risky as you can only probably sell him to a bot at ~27 and make 8 tickets in the BEST case scenario. Worst case is that he, like venser, drops to 10-12 and stays there for the rest of Standard. Too risky for me.
I can also say the same thing about Tarmogoyf and Cavern of Souls. I understand you were probably just listening to viewers but I don't know what price you are hoping to get out of these cards at. Is Tarmogoyf a 120 ticket card? There are just too many options in Modern for that to be true as it stands right now. Plenty of people are priced out of him and he isn't as dominant as Jace or FoW. Is Cavern of Souls going to be a 14 ticket rare? Or even 12? Even at 14 tickets, you will max out at a 3 ticket profit on a 8 ticket card and that's probably your best case scenario.
Call of the Kindred? Curse of Misfortunes? To me those just seem like a waste of time. Even if they increase 1000% is it still worth the time it took to buy them, check the prices, and sell them back?
The big speculation 'hits' of the last couple months have been modern staples and cards from zombies. Also, a few mythics from Avacyn Restored have been trending upwards. It looks like you've missed on all of those.
Personally, I do not like investing in <1 ticket rares as the time you put in trading 4 at a time is not worth it to me. I prefer mythics in the 8-12 range, modern staples, and flagship rares. I don't have any specific cards for you to invest in but I would highly encourage you to come up with some strategy when investing in a card.
My suggestions will be to consider the Innistrad cards for investment. Like; Innistrad tap lands and maybe Terminus. Other good cards are already suggested above. Shocklands will see lots of play and there will be demand to support these lands.
RtR prices of rare cards will get lower over time and they will see the min during December just before Gatecrash. So my suggestion will be not to invest on RtR now, just take the cards you want to play with.
just wanna put it out there, If we're in the whole unban a tons of combo stuff wagon that Æther Vial could be taken off to help out both aggro and control decks.
Well, I'm 95% sure that Thragtusk will be going up. M13 will be drafted much less when RtR hits and that baby is huge. Selesnya should become a thing. I'd invest in it now, asap, because it's already climbing.
Also Talrand. Holy crap, only 0.77 right now? If UR becomes a thing like I predict it'll be, he should go up by a dollar or two.
As for RtR, these are my predictions:
- Loxodon Smiter. He's a sideboard card and the discard clause isn't terribly relevant, the uncounterable clause should be good though.
- Vraska. Planeswalkers are always terribly overpriced at release.
- Jace. Same as Vraska.
+++ Angel or Serenity. I don't think people realize how good she is. She fits in Selesnya ramp and also UW control. She's fantastic. Also an EDH staple. She's going to skyrocket.
+ Chromatic Lantern. Every EDH deck wants it. Seriously. If it starts under like $1 I'd buy the crap outta it.
+ Cyclonic Rift, Lolteth Troll, Deathrite Shaman, Mizzium Mortars. I think all of these will go up, but by how much I'm not sure. I think Mortars will be played more when people realize Bonfire is best as a 2of and they fill the rest with Mortars. Cyclonic Rift has a home in multiple potential standard archetypes and I have a nagging feeling that it will truly shine with UG Simic coming in Gatecrash. These cards are risky though, but I mention them anyway.
+ Boros cards. Thalia, Champion of the Parish, Mizzium Mortars, these type of cards. Standard already had a taste of Boros and I'm guessing we're going to see some more aggro Human bombs come Gatecrash which will spike these card prices up.
+ Precinct Captain. This one I think will be a very low risk high reward card. He's pointless currently so he should be pennies. But he has potential if Boros has a home for him. I'd stock up on him if he's like 20-40 cents.
+ Restoration Angel. The card is fantastic but is currently in limbo looking for the right deck. It'll come. Whenever this card starts dropping in price is when I'd invest.
That's my advice. Safest investments would be Talrand, Precinct Captain. Risky but semi-cheap and possible good payoff are Human/Soldier Boros staples like Champion of the Parish and Thalia. Expensive cards that I'm sure will become much more expensive would be Angel of Serenity and Thragtusk. The rest depends how cheap you can get 'em.
My 0.02 event tickets.
EDIT: For the Boros stuff, I'd only recommend investing once Gatecrash is starting to be spoilered and only if the cards haven't been rising in value already.
What I am testing it the idea that it is possible to turn a profit solely by buying particular cards low and selling high. People say it can be done. However, all I can find is individual annecdotes (I bought Tarmogoyf for $5 before anyone knew it was good - and sold for $25!) Those people tend to ignore all the other cards that they also bought for $5, only to watch them drop to $2.
Having a very small number of cards in the test would show nothing - it would be akin to playing the lottery. Yes, I could buy jsut one card, and watch, but that would prove nothing. It would be like buying a single lottery card to determine whether the lottery is profitable.
The hour or so a week is consumed by checking the prices of each card in the inventory against the purchase price, deciding whether it is worthwhile to sell, selling anything which makes enough profit, then deciding how to reinvest those TIX. Some weeks I find nothing worth selling, and it takes a lot less than an hour. Other weeks take longer, since I have to sift recommendations, and determine how to spread what money I have available over the best mix of recommended cards and strategies.
A number of commenters have offered a number of strategies, and I am trying as many as I can. The one that I am least enamored of, however, is holding cards for the long term. Well over 90% of all cards drop after rotation, and that is true of nearly all non-land cards. A tiny minority rise, and that is usually after a prolonged slump. For every Venidlion Clique, there are a hundred Call of the Herd or Cunning Wish (all cost about the same when in Standard, and all were part of decks that won Pro Tours.)
Magic cards do have an overall downward trend, and that is not just a "cost" of doing business. It means that you *cannot* rely on holding cards for the long term. If you buy just one card, then you are playing the lottery. If you buy a lot of different cards, then it certainly appears, from the evidence so far, that you will lose money over the long term.
I know of two certain ways of profiting trading in Magic cards. The first is running a store, bying at wholesale and selling retail. It works - it's how MTGOTraders.com can afford to fund this website. The second is to trick kids and uninformed players into trading or selling cards at way below fair value. We have all seen traders like this, and I find it unappealling / against my idea of a moral code. The third way - according to soome people - is knowing enough about the market to pick "sleeper" cards in advance, buy low and sell high. That's the concept I'm testing here.
So let's continue the test. Tell me what to buy once RtR appears, and how much to pay for it. I'm open to recommendations for individual cards, types (e.g. shocklands, gates, unleash creatures, whatever), strategies (e.g. any mythics under $3), whatever.
Just a couple thoughts off the top of my head. I'll probably write more, later.
Thank you for a very passionate lesson. I agree with some of your statements but not all of them.
I am aware of the scope of the project and I do not believe that my comments/questions are outside the project's boundaries.
1) You say that Pete didn't pick any of the cards himself. I know that he is acting on user-based suggestions. Still, not all the cards in the portfolio was specifically suggested. I guess that some of them are bought based on suggested strategies rather than explicit naming. Managing these strategies could get easier over time even for an experienced expect-trader like Pete. If he is only doing as suggested (by cardnames) then I see no reason why he should spend 1 hour a week?
2) I agree that Pete should look at a large selection of cards as he is doing. I am just asking whether this is the strategy used by the people who claim to make money? Risk and returns are connected, so it is not surprising that the total profit is not sky-high.
3) It is not very informative just to state that "The ones that made money worked". I am sure we can do better than this. Some of the card suggestions had explicit motivations. Based on these motivations did some of the strategies work better than other? Fx Vorapede was predicted to go up in price once Primival Titan rotates out, Lingering souls was also predicted to go up post rotation. The mana-base was predicted to go up during different seasons etc.
So did all these strategies fail or did some of them work? It could be something each person should judge for himself but Pete might know the exact motivation behind each card in the portfolio.
Regarding your statement on the average value of magic cards trending down; Then I agree with you. However, this "fact" implies that Pete should not just look at the $11 of profit, he should be looking at the abnormal return. He made $11 in a downward trending market. Since we are already looking at the opportunity costs of flipping burgers, the downward trend is just another "cost" to take into account.
I also agree with your comment that the data seems to suggest the money-making hypothesis is not true. Still, some of the predictions were about post-rotation prices which cannot be judged yet. Also, I think the argument would be even stronger if you could say that the cards were bought based on, say, 4-5 types of predictions or strategies and each of these strategies failed. This break down into strategies would also address my question on the portfolio size. If every reasonable break down into strategies also failed then the conclusion is not just a result of portfolio size.
@Lagrange
1) The comparison is fair. You hope that there is a learning curve and that one gets better with time. Pete has been playing, buying, selling, and trading for almost 20 years. The hypothesis he was testing was that buying staples or sleepers and waiting for them to just rise in value, and turning a profit, was "easy." If the learning curve is huge, then it isn't "easy." He didn't pick any of the cards himself, he took the advice of people posting in his column. Combined, they have decades of experience. Not so "easy" is it?
2) A diversified portfolio gives him more data points. If he'd only bought 10 copies of 1 card and it tanked or rose, you couldn't judge the hypothesis disproven or not. His experiment was appropriate to the hypothesis he was testing. Some MTG players will state "Hey, I bought 15 of this card and it rose in value" and you might think they're a genius with a narrow portfolio, but thats only because they're not reporting all the cards and boxes that they lost money on. It's a classical accounting fallacy.
3) The ones that made money worked. The ones that lost money didn't work. The purpose of the test wasn't to determine if he could buy cards that would be tournament-worthy in a few months. It was to see if making money just buying and sitting and then selling was "easy."
Website authors and forum posters, for a while, liked to consider themselves experts of speculation and jam out articles every set with "Buy" or "Sell" suggestions on them. Unlike stocks or real estate, the average value of magic cards trends down over time while requiring continual costs to stay relevant (upgrading decks), much like used cars. Beating the market in MTG as a private individual who can't leverage a markup between buy and sell prices is far from "easy." I think his data so far demonstrates that the hypothesis is not true.