1) I dont think your comment on the time consumption and flipping burgers is fair. To me it sounds like saying my years studying at the university is wasted because I could have made more money working. You may be slow with the investments now but hopefully there is a learning curve and you get better with time.
2) Is it common for these players doing investments to have such a large and diversified portfolio? I would imagine that they would bet on fewer cards and thus take more risks. Your low return and huge time consumption could be due to your large portfolio.
3) Could you at some time in the future do a preliminary analysis of what type of bets worked and which didnt work i.e. did bets on the season do well, did predictions on future use in a deck or a combo do well etc.
I believe a lot of people play pauper and jump from deck to deck while selling off their past pet deck for the next one. This is why it's hard to predict pauper prices. Especially the ceiling. The floor is where cards should be bought to limit chances of taking a loss. Mirage block and Tempest block pauper staples should be bought up now at pennies! There's NO risk. Lotus Petal's will fall to the $3-$4 range by weeks end, and should be double that within a few months.
As far as Urza block: Snap hasn't went down too much. Unearth is in the middle of it's ceiling and floor. Rancor has been hit hard by the M13 version. Crop Rotation is always jumping from $.20-$.50.
Which leaves: Cloud of Faeries.
Cloud of Faeries was incredibly inflated at $8! And anyone who bought into it then was foolish. It's mostly used in two competitive decks; one of which gets very little play anymore (Temporal Storm). MUC/Delver still see's a lot of play, but there was once a period where it was making a much bigger splash. Add this to the fact that people noticed that playset they spent $12 on, can now be sold for at least double that a month later - and you have a bunch of people selling off their Faeries.
There's also people out there who manipulate the market. This is true in all formats; but easier in pauper. I've seen Bonesplitter take one day jumps to $.50. Chromatic Star jump to $.40. Empty the Warrens jump to $.30. Chittering Rats jump to $2.00+! All to come crashing down in days/weeks. There's no doubt that someday these cards will be worth more than their current prices - but when a card jumps in price over a period of hours or days - I always assume it's market manipulation until the card stays stable for a prolonged period (the exception is if it's an old set that was recently drafted as prices stabilize rather quickly). Nettle Sentinel and Ideas Unbound's recent overnight jumps is the only time in recent history that I lost out by doing this.
My video this week features a very powerful-looking Angel reanimator list from the pre-Blippian events in 2010 that is the type we were fearing would happen with Iona unbanned, but it offers some hope to people who were afraid of Iona. It only went 2-1, and made use of cards that are no longer legacy legal (a set of Mystical Tutor). There was apparently a few people in the event, and in the comments, that REALLY hated it, but it was probably not as obnoxiously powerful as some would fear.
Hi Pete, thanks for another great recap. I just thought I would mention that I do some pauper cards prices analysing, if you want to take a look at it. Here is the link to this month's post:
Errata: the October 27 event will be the Halloween special. We'll have time to talk about that, anyway (well, it'll just be like last year with all the spooky tribes. That was fun).
Wow, that was an interesting surprise to read that Trifecta of Doom can be added to their own tribes as 4. Looking forward to see AJ's new manaless Avatar deck.
I just noticed that I copied last week's over 25 TIX table, instead of this week's. Sorry.
Here's the right table.
Force of Will R MED $143.34
Lion's Eye Diamond R MI $92.00
Tarmogoyf R FUT $77.50
Rishadan Port R MM $65.94
Jace, the Mind Sculptor M WWK $46.79
Wasteland U TE $43.33
Gaea's Cradle R UZ $43.15
Vampiric Tutor R VI $40.88
Show and Tell R UZ $37.50
Vendilion Clique R MOR $36.14
Bonfire of the Damned M AVR $35.41
Misdirection R MM $35.26
Vedalken Shackles R 5DN $34.56
Underground Sea R ME4 $32.59
Vindicate R AP $31.13
Underground Sea R ME2 $30.67
Tangle Wire R NE $30.30
Mutavault R MOR $29.35
Null Rod R WL $28.50
Scavenging Ooze R CMD $27.51
Savannah R ME2 $26.85
Savannah R ME4 $26.65
Geist of Saint Traft M ISD $26.45
Tropical Island R ME4 $25.98
Tundra R ME2 $25.83
Tundra R ME4 $25.35
Thanks for the feedback, Paul! I'll look into throwing in some graphic "breakers" once I get a little more comfortable with the layout on this site (I wrote this article and THEN decided to put it up here, so I didn't play around with a lot of features).
I can try brewing up some decklists, if people like that, but as I try to make clear, I'm really much better at Limited than Constructed (and I play way more limited than constructed), so I'm not in the habit of putting decks through enough play to actively recommend them to others; I like to brew around weird ideas, play a couple of games, and then find another idea to play around with.
I could try and explore what's most fun to populate in standard, I guess - I already spotted the Counterpart interaction and I've got an idea or two for the most ridiculous cards to have multiples of...
It appears that once someone replies to the comment, it's no longer editable, or it might be a time limit on changing comments, so I couldn't "fix" the first one. Believe me, I'd love to fix the first comment if I could.
Im a Golgari - Izzet man myself (not really because I heart all colors, but for the sake of argument, I dislike Selsneya most of the guilds reprinted so far. Rackdos would be second in my dislikes.) So I didn't find the encouragement you give to Selesneya all that rousing. A deck list or two might have gone a ways towards being convincing. We have seen tokens.dec ad nauseum since last year. What makes it better/different/more exciting THIS go around? Populate by itself seems like a rather grinding mechanic. Sure it might be fun to Cackling Counterpart a big fatty and then populate it but in general I expect the copies to be small and disposable with strength in numbers counting for more than the particular brokeness of individual tokens.
Like Blippy I had some issues with the form of the article since I like there to be some graphical breaks between sections. I wanted the form to pop more from illustrative card inclusions. However I know that these things aren't core to the article's purpose for some so I leave off that with the note that many articles on this site do have some graphics and more careful formatting than here.
Thank you for the warm welcome, Slug! I'll remember the center-adjustment for the next article, though I'm obviously used to using this one, I want people to want to read the article :) Discounting the form, what did you think of the content?
RE: sponsor issues
This weekend will be the last weekend I run "sponsorless", assuming my guy remains "in absentia". One month of not being able to contact the sponsor is enough for me. I'm working the streets right NOW trying to get something lined up, pounding on doors and harassing people. You folks know how fast I work. We should be good to go by next weekend. Maybe even this weekend.
Had I noticed the center justification in the editor I would have left shifted it. When I am working on stuff, it does not show that alignment in the editor ;/
Style issue: with everything "center justified", it makes for difficult reading, especailly the last line of a paragraph. When reading block text, my eyes/brain automatically jump to the start of next line when I reach the end of one. If there's a space there, it jars my brain. I know it *LOOKS* like only a minor thing, but it made my head hurt, and I couldn't get past paragraph 5. To read your article comfortably, I had to c&p it into a text editor. I'm reasonably confident it will affect others (but not everyone) in similar fashion.
You've come a long way baby! I remember when Flippers_Giraffe told me he was handing you the torch and I told him I thought he was nuts since our first conversations were not fun or indicative of your amazingly hidden talents for organization and bringing people together. Your time served, I salute you. I hope your next endeavor (who expects Blippy to not take on more events???) will be as fun and interesting to you as the Tribal Apocalypse.
Hi,there!
I appreciated the good news for gamming. The cutting prices in games cards will pump the players to demand the games more.
The australia online gambling here's the best that presently there is for black jack and also the internet site sounds help you feel that you are playing inside of a real wager site.
It still makes me laugh every time I look at new brews with shocklands and I realize that they're going to be STANDARD and not Modern! :)
On a side note: while it is clear from the article that English is not your first language, it is still (for me, at least) quite readable. I find the wording and grammar structure entertaining. But this is just my own opinion, and others might be turned off by it. If you write more (and I hope you do!), you may want to consider having it proofread before submitting.
I think the philosphophy behind the decks is that they would be a neat way to bring back older cards that may not be easily accessible to newer players and provide them with a shell of a deck that they could build on. That said, it did not really pan out for them that way for a couple of reasons.
I appreciate the effort they are making with cool new products, they just need to work on the implementation.
I think you are right in that the Commander decks were much more of a step in the right direction.
A lot of the cards are big in Pauper and, of course, Classic. When a set wasn't drafted highly in its day and then isn't being added to the system, you have a surefire way to up the prices.
Nice update on the investments.
1) I dont think your comment on the time consumption and flipping burgers is fair. To me it sounds like saying my years studying at the university is wasted because I could have made more money working. You may be slow with the investments now but hopefully there is a learning curve and you get better with time.
2) Is it common for these players doing investments to have such a large and diversified portfolio? I would imagine that they would bet on fewer cards and thus take more risks. Your low return and huge time consumption could be due to your large portfolio.
3) Could you at some time in the future do a preliminary analysis of what type of bets worked and which didnt work i.e. did bets on the season do well, did predictions on future use in a deck or a combo do well etc.
Earth Rift was at $2.40 before??? What.. I don't even.. what...
I'll try and meet expectations. :)
I believe a lot of people play pauper and jump from deck to deck while selling off their past pet deck for the next one. This is why it's hard to predict pauper prices. Especially the ceiling. The floor is where cards should be bought to limit chances of taking a loss. Mirage block and Tempest block pauper staples should be bought up now at pennies! There's NO risk. Lotus Petal's will fall to the $3-$4 range by weeks end, and should be double that within a few months.
As far as Urza block: Snap hasn't went down too much. Unearth is in the middle of it's ceiling and floor. Rancor has been hit hard by the M13 version. Crop Rotation is always jumping from $.20-$.50.
Which leaves: Cloud of Faeries.
Cloud of Faeries was incredibly inflated at $8! And anyone who bought into it then was foolish. It's mostly used in two competitive decks; one of which gets very little play anymore (Temporal Storm). MUC/Delver still see's a lot of play, but there was once a period where it was making a much bigger splash. Add this to the fact that people noticed that playset they spent $12 on, can now be sold for at least double that a month later - and you have a bunch of people selling off their Faeries.
There's also people out there who manipulate the market. This is true in all formats; but easier in pauper. I've seen Bonesplitter take one day jumps to $.50. Chromatic Star jump to $.40. Empty the Warrens jump to $.30. Chittering Rats jump to $2.00+! All to come crashing down in days/weeks. There's no doubt that someday these cards will be worth more than their current prices - but when a card jumps in price over a period of hours or days - I always assume it's market manipulation until the card stays stable for a prolonged period (the exception is if it's an old set that was recently drafted as prices stabilize rather quickly). Nettle Sentinel and Ideas Unbound's recent overnight jumps is the only time in recent history that I lost out by doing this.
My video this week features a very powerful-looking Angel reanimator list from the pre-Blippian events in 2010 that is the type we were fearing would happen with Iona unbanned, but it offers some hope to people who were afraid of Iona. It only went 2-1, and made use of cards that are no longer legacy legal (a set of Mystical Tutor). There was apparently a few people in the event, and in the comments, that REALLY hated it, but it was probably not as obnoxiously powerful as some would fear.
Hi Pete, thanks for another great recap. I just thought I would mention that I do some pauper cards prices analysing, if you want to take a look at it. Here is the link to this month's post:
http://pauperscage.blogspot.ca/2012/10/prices-october-2012.html
However, I also don't know why some of the Urza pauper cards went down so hard. I assume they had just gone up too high for their own good.
Errata: the October 27 event will be the Halloween special. We'll have time to talk about that, anyway (well, it'll just be like last year with all the spooky tribes. That was fun).
Thank you Blippy for all the time and effort you've put into running this tournament.
Wow, that was an interesting surprise to read that Trifecta of Doom can be added to their own tribes as 4. Looking forward to see AJ's new manaless Avatar deck.
I just noticed that I copied last week's over 25 TIX table, instead of this week's. Sorry.
Here's the right table.
Force of Will R MED $143.34
Lion's Eye Diamond R MI $92.00
Tarmogoyf R FUT $77.50
Rishadan Port R MM $65.94
Jace, the Mind Sculptor M WWK $46.79
Wasteland U TE $43.33
Gaea's Cradle R UZ $43.15
Vampiric Tutor R VI $40.88
Show and Tell R UZ $37.50
Vendilion Clique R MOR $36.14
Bonfire of the Damned M AVR $35.41
Misdirection R MM $35.26
Vedalken Shackles R 5DN $34.56
Underground Sea R ME4 $32.59
Vindicate R AP $31.13
Underground Sea R ME2 $30.67
Tangle Wire R NE $30.30
Mutavault R MOR $29.35
Null Rod R WL $28.50
Scavenging Ooze R CMD $27.51
Savannah R ME2 $26.85
Savannah R ME4 $26.65
Geist of Saint Traft M ISD $26.45
Tropical Island R ME4 $25.98
Tundra R ME2 $25.83
Tundra R ME4 $25.35
Thanks for the feedback, Paul! I'll look into throwing in some graphic "breakers" once I get a little more comfortable with the layout on this site (I wrote this article and THEN decided to put it up here, so I didn't play around with a lot of features).
I can try brewing up some decklists, if people like that, but as I try to make clear, I'm really much better at Limited than Constructed (and I play way more limited than constructed), so I'm not in the habit of putting decks through enough play to actively recommend them to others; I like to brew around weird ideas, play a couple of games, and then find another idea to play around with.
I could try and explore what's most fun to populate in standard, I guess - I already spotted the Counterpart interaction and I've got an idea or two for the most ridiculous cards to have multiples of...
It appears that once someone replies to the comment, it's no longer editable, or it might be a time limit on changing comments, so I couldn't "fix" the first one. Believe me, I'd love to fix the first comment if I could.
Im a Golgari - Izzet man myself (not really because I heart all colors, but for the sake of argument, I dislike Selsneya most of the guilds reprinted so far. Rackdos would be second in my dislikes.) So I didn't find the encouragement you give to Selesneya all that rousing. A deck list or two might have gone a ways towards being convincing. We have seen tokens.dec ad nauseum since last year. What makes it better/different/more exciting THIS go around? Populate by itself seems like a rather grinding mechanic. Sure it might be fun to Cackling Counterpart a big fatty and then populate it but in general I expect the copies to be small and disposable with strength in numbers counting for more than the particular brokeness of individual tokens.
Like Blippy I had some issues with the form of the article since I like there to be some graphical breaks between sections. I wanted the form to pop more from illustrative card inclusions. However I know that these things aren't core to the article's purpose for some so I leave off that with the note that many articles on this site do have some graphics and more careful formatting than here.
Also, welcome to the fold.
Thank you for the warm welcome, Slug! I'll remember the center-adjustment for the next article, though I'm obviously used to using this one, I want people to want to read the article :) Discounting the form, what did you think of the content?
To know me is to love me! :)
RE: sponsor issues
This weekend will be the last weekend I run "sponsorless", assuming my guy remains "in absentia". One month of not being able to contact the sponsor is enough for me. I'm working the streets right NOW trying to get something lined up, pounding on doors and harassing people. You folks know how fast I work. We should be good to go by next weekend. Maybe even this weekend.
Had I noticed the center justification in the editor I would have left shifted it. When I am working on stuff, it does not show that alignment in the editor ;/
Style issue: with everything "center justified", it makes for difficult reading, especailly the last line of a paragraph. When reading block text, my eyes/brain automatically jump to the start of next line when I reach the end of one. If there's a space there, it jars my brain. I know it *LOOKS* like only a minor thing, but it made my head hurt, and I couldn't get past paragraph 5. To read your article comfortably, I had to c&p it into a text editor. I'm reasonably confident it will affect others (but not everyone) in similar fashion.
On another note...
Welcome to the club!
I second Paul! (And Blippy, you being able to win Paul over is a great accomplishment!)
The alphabot/valuebot situation is unfortunate, though. Hope it will be resolved soon and for the better.
You've come a long way baby! I remember when Flippers_Giraffe told me he was handing you the torch and I told him I thought he was nuts since our first conversations were not fun or indicative of your amazingly hidden talents for organization and bringing people together. Your time served, I salute you. I hope your next endeavor (who expects Blippy to not take on more events???) will be as fun and interesting to you as the Tribal Apocalypse.
Hi,there!
I appreciated the good news for gamming. The cutting prices in games cards will pump the players to demand the games more.
It still makes me laugh every time I look at new brews with shocklands and I realize that they're going to be STANDARD and not Modern! :)
On a side note: while it is clear from the article that English is not your first language, it is still (for me, at least) quite readable. I find the wording and grammar structure entertaining. But this is just my own opinion, and others might be turned off by it. If you write more (and I hope you do!), you may want to consider having it proofread before submitting.
Agreed. I was lobbying for those and wasteland to make the cut.
Fire and Lightning is/was amazing in the fact that it has me tempted to buy it to get back into paper legacy.
Graveborn was awesome in the fact it brought entomb which at the time was a $20 card online.
But yeah Slivers was junk.
FTV realms i think was a huge miss overall. There are just way better cards they have added. EX: Volrath's stronghold or Dark Depths anyone?
I think the philosphophy behind the decks is that they would be a neat way to bring back older cards that may not be easily accessible to newer players and provide them with a shell of a deck that they could build on. That said, it did not really pan out for them that way for a couple of reasons.
I appreciate the effort they are making with cool new products, they just need to work on the implementation.
I think you are right in that the Commander decks were much more of a step in the right direction.
A lot of the cards are big in Pauper and, of course, Classic. When a set wasn't drafted highly in its day and then isn't being added to the system, you have a surefire way to up the prices.