Surmise Surprise

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Howdy MTG folks,

Rise of the Eldrazi is set to be released on April 23, 2010 with official previews starting on Wizards of the Coast on April 5th. We have already seen seven cards spoiled to date and the fan community is on the edge of their seat anxiously awaiting for rest of them to be revealed.

We, certainly like many of you, get hit with quite a large number of new cards during this time running up to the official release which we all attempt to evaluate and then place in categories of awesome epic / good / situational / poor / nasty-bad and the like. We endeavour to determine the usefulness of individual cards within our current deck builds, builds we may want to develop, and what we may want to keep for some yet unknown development.

Based on all of this mental exercise, we may then begin to speculate over the future monetary value of the given card and then start planning what to pre-order or what to 'wait for' until the price comes down. We, like many of you perhaps, pre-ordered cards knowing that the price would naturally fluctuate but will settle on the going price of the day and hope we get good value.

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Some of the smarter Pre-Orders we had done just before Worldwake was released was Stoneforge Mystic and Basilisk Collar. We had a good feeling about these two cards and prognosticated that once they began to see play locally and on 'the circuit', many would re-evaluate the cards, acquire them, create a demand and subsequently increase the cost to obtain the cards.











Anywhoos - Here is what we had pre-ordered and the local price at the time . . .
Stoneforge Mystic, 4 x $ 1.50 = $ 6.00
Basilisk Collar, 4 x $ 3.00 = $ 12.00
Yep - a total of $ 18.00 but we felt we could develop a great deck around this and the other cards that were being previewed at the time.

Fast Forward to today - These same cards now are demanding a much higher price (locally) . . .
Stoneforge Mystic, 4 x $ 9.00 = $ 36.00
Basilisk Collar, 4 x $ 9.00 = $ 36.00
Yep - what cost us $18 would now have cost $72.00 and we feel rather good about saving around $54.00

Sooo - in summary, pre-ordering can be rather beneficial in saving your money or if your speculation was a bit off, could have cost you more than it should eventually have. Prepare yourself - read the reviews, play-test with proxies of these new cards and then plan your pre-orders so you will be the one smiling at Friday Night Magic with a great deck that did not cost you your arm and leg.

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For reference, here are some approximate prices for the top twelve cards in Zendikar and Worldwake - Remember - this is a snap-shot and is garuanteed to change.

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