Magic the Gathering Adventures

Friday, June 14, 2013

ISD Block and M13 Redemption Status

[follow this link to the previous installment of the paying saga]

June 14, 2013 update: gave the bots $10.

I am missing 14 cards (Huntmaster is a double-sided card) for the four redemptions. Most of these are very expensive, and can only stay at the same price or go down in price after they rotate out of Standard, and that is the time when I will likely buy them to complete the redemptions.

I have no idea why I did not get Roaring Primadox, a penny uncommon, before! I looked up the ABU online prices and picked out two other cheaper cards.

If I got my redemptions right now, it would take $192 for the four sets.....that's a lot of money. I will pick off a card or two as they go down in price, or wait for all of these to rotate.

August 5, 2013 update: Sorin went down a lot because of the Duel Deck reprint, and Thragtusk is on its way out to post-rotation competitive irrelevance. The four most expensive cards all went UP after M14 came out. They will have to wait until after rotation. The ones in green are ready for whenever I have a little money.

$15 to the bots August 10, 2013 and DKA is the first set ready for redemption.

Here are the rares and mythics complete.

August 22, 2013 update: I gave $6 to the bots for a near complete second set of AVR. Here is what I am missing. I already have 2 Tamiyos and 4 Temporal Mastery. This is the easiest expansion for me to double redeem. I could try the same for DKA, but it goes with ISD and there is NO WAY I am forking out $50 for another Liliana. It already will be painful enough when I do it once!!!

August 23, 2013 update: $5 to the bots to position myself to double-up on M13. This is a "just in case I have enough money and the cards don't go crazy in price."

August 29, 2013 update: $10 to the bots for double redemptions of AVR and M13. Here are the cards I need in addition to the heavy hitters I was already missing. I went from 28 missing cards to 15 missing cards.

These are the cards I plan to get first for my double redemptions.

worldfire
elderscale wurm
chandra the firebrand
descent into madness
vexing devil
vampire nocturnus
thragtusk

There is no point in buy any of the expensive cards now. They can only go down in price once they are no longer in Standard.

September 15, 2013 update: $10 to get Innistrad and Dark Ascension ready for a second redemption. Ready doesn't mean I will do it, though.

Here is what I am missing for first and second sets (DKA is complete for the first one).

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Stop Modern Masters Speculation

In reference to some of the investment comments in the forums related to Modern Masters, I think Magic can be an investment like any other collectable is, its only that it has been around for such a brief period in time that the hobby has not even begun to go through the basic stages that other collectables have already gone through.

Stamp collecting, for example, has been around since the 1860s, and stamps since 1840. There have been several well-documented instances of specific collectors building on the cheap something rare and unappreciated that gained value. In the US there were experimental perforations in the 1900s and 1910s and some of these are extremely rare and no one cared about them for decades, until one or two people built really good collections of these and sold them for millions in the 1990s and 2000s (look up Schermack perforations).

What we have with MM, unfortunately, is not investing in something rare, but rather speculating on something that is common.

Now, those lucky souls who have been able to pull from the early packs, those folks are quite likely sitting on an investment, but it will take probably another 50 years for a sizable collection market to exist in Magic. It already exists, for example, in baseball cards. The set from which the Honus Wagner card comes from (the Tobacco or T206 set) is a great example: ANY card from that set sells at a premium, no matter how common it may have been when issued. We are already seeing this happen to Limited Edition Alpha with the unplayable commons, but again, we are something like 50 years behind the time when ANY unplayable common from LEA will sell for, say $30, which is a typical price for a T206 card. I bought one of these as a gift for a friend a few years back, and I didn't care which player I got, just as long as I could say that it was a T206 card.

Wizards obviously has a thorny problem when developing the player base for Modern. MM is a worthy attempt, but there will clearly have to be other attempts in the future to squash Modern staples speculations while not crashing the prices of the valuable cards.

Maybe enough MM has been printed and is being distributed, and once those who chose to speculate on the product realize this, we will see prices go down enough for the original intent of MM to be realized: getting noobs like yours truly into the format. I am eagerly waiting for this to happen because I think Modern is an awesome format, full of endless Johnny deck-building possibilities.