MTG Price

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Happy Sunday MTG peeps,

Recently, we were contemplating our Dark Ascension preorders as well as some other orders we had made ahead of the new standard environment. Previously, we had been sort of hit and miss but have been improving over the last few releases. One way we a had used to determine which hot new Magic the Gathering cards to pick up as well as cards from previous sets we needed to acquire was the use of on-line MTG sites providing price trending. One which we had found which was rather useful was MTG Price. Oddly enough, we had been put into contact with the brilliant fella who runs this site and he was very kind to provide an article here today for us - Thank-you very much to Mr Young :

Hello! My name is Alasdair Young and I run a free site called MTG Price that lets players quickly look up historical prices of magic cards from all the major vendors. I've been trading and playing magic since Unlimited, I've played on the Pro Tour and I have an MBA in Finance, all of which I've found to be pretty useful when running a finance-based MTG website.

Today I'm going to cover the changes in the Standard landscape for traders now that Dark Ascension is upon us. I'll also quickly cover the impact that GP Orlando had on prices.

Let's start with the elephant in the room - Sorin, Lord of Innistrad This is clearly a phenomenal card for standard and he will see a will see a lot of block play too. Since Innistrad Block is the next format, this is one to watch; more than that, Sorin's presence affects the prices of the cards that work well in the same deck as him. For example, check out this graph of Isolated Chapel prices:


A single card, if powerful enough, can cause ripple effects in other markets. I wouldn't be suprised if other black and white cards recently went up a bit on the Sorin news. Even Liliana of the Veil, a card whose price has stabilized since launch at around $24, went up $3 when Sorin was spoiled.

Does this mean that I think Sorin is a good investment? Absolutely not. Sorin isn't Jace and big plainswalkers always start high and then typically mellow out. For an extremely stark example of this effect look at Garruk, Primal Hunter. Garruck lost almost HALF of his value this week as the last stalwart of high prices (ABU Games) decided to drop him by $20, presumably in the hopes of selling him off before M13 rolls around. Because of this trend, ultimately I think Sorin will settle at $30-$35 unless someone breaks him as badly as Jace.

In terms of other cards, the biggest change has been from Gran Prix Orlando's odd choice to use Standard instead of Limited as a format. Conley Woods ultimately won the event with green/black ramp and his win has had some serious effects on the MTG trading landscape. Since his win, three big cards in his deck have jumped over 20% each - Primeval Titan, Grave Titan and Solumn Simulacrum. Indeed, Grave Titan went up over 40% from a $6 card to one that most stores have listed for over $10. Indeed, almost every card in the deck has seen at least a small rise in value.

Conley Woods' Green/ Black Ramp - Main Deck

25 lands : 1 Dragonskull Summit, 7 Forest, 1 Ghost Quarter, 4 Inkmoth Nexus, 2 Kessig Wolf Run, 1 Mountain, 5 Swamp, 4 Woodland Cemetery

16 creatures : 2 Acidic Slime, 1 Birds of Paradise, 1 Glissa, the Traitor, 4 Grave Titan, 4 Primeval Titan, 4 Solemn Simulacrum

19 other spells : 3 Black Sun's Zenith, 3 Doom Blade, 2 Geth's Verdict, 2 Green Sun's Zenith, 4 Rampant Growth, 1 Ratchet Bomb, 4 Sphere of the Suns

Sideboard : 1 Ancient Grudge, 2 Batterskull, 1 Black Sun's Zenith, 2 Curse of Death's Hold, 1 Garruk, Primal Hunter, 1 Go for the Throat, 1 Liliana of the Veil, 2 Nihil Spellbomb, 1 Ratchet Bomb, 1 Thrun, the Last Troll, 1 Tree of Redemption, 1 Viridian Corrupter

Clearly, big decks affect prices. The classic example from a couple of months ago is Grixis Control which made Olivia Voldaren spike from $5 to $15 in a single day when it was revealed at Worlds but, really, any large tournament win means copycats. (Note: Olivia has fallen back significantly in the past 2 months). What does this mean for the savvy trader? My advice is to follow the live streams of major standard tournaments and as soon as you see a new deck or interesting card likely to hit the top 8, consider buying a few of the cheapest copies on ebay or from local stores.

As for other Standard decks, next up is Delver which is by far the most common deck on MTGO at the moment. Most of the cards in this deck have already increased in value but there are still players out there who are under-pricing certain cards. My personal favourite sleeper play are foil versions of the common Delver of Secrets. As a common, the regular version is worth about fifteen or twenty cents but the foil is worth serious money - StarCity has them listed at $8 each meaning that a playset of them are worth more than a Liliana of the Veil! This is an excellent card that will stay very good for a long time to come, yet I have repeatedly found players valuing this foil in the $1-$2 range even now. Have no shame in adding these in at the end of a trade to "balance out" an otherwise almost equal exchange.

Here is a good example of a Delver list.

Speaking of Delver, if you find any Geist of Saint Traft floating around for $15 or less, snap them up. A mere two weeks ago many players haven't noticed the number of delver decks being played on MTG Online and were still valuing this card at around $12 - you could get a full playset on eBay for less than $50 on January 15th. Now, the same playset is liable to run you closer to $100. I can't see these falling much this year given the fact that the next constructed PTQ format will be Innistrad Block and Delver looks like the deck to beat in that format.

Finally, I'll touch on one other hot card that I plan on picking up many copies of: Gravecrawler. It's already up another 15% this week and I expect it to skyrocket if a viable Zombie deck can be built when the PTQ season rolls around. At $6.50 it's not a chase rare and so many players won't value it especially highly. This is a speculative play but, on paper, the cad is just wonderful and can only get better when yet more Zombies are printed in Avacyn Restored.

This rounds out what I consider to be the most important Standard trading changes over the last few weeks. If you have any comments, I'd love to hear them in the section below!

Again, thank-you to Alasdair for this brilliant assessment - we will continue to use the great resource over at MTG Price.
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