Mtgstocks

Hello all, my name is Corey and I'm a staff writer for MTGStocks. Today, my newest article has become available. I take a stab at how one should speculate on Modern and Pioneer playable cards in an era where both cards themselves, and product are printed non-stop. Let me know your thoughts, opinions, and critiques. Do the points I outline make for informative speculation strategy or are there better options out there?
https://www.mtgstocks.com/news/6671-modern-times-the-state-of-modern-speculation

Hello all. Today, my newest article has become available on MTGStocks. I take a stab at how one should speculate on Modern and Pioneer playable cards in an era where both cards themselves, and product are printed non-stop. Let me know your thoughts, opinions, and critiques. Do the points I outline make for informative speculation strategy or are there better options out there?
https://www.mtgstocks.com/news/6671-modern-times-the-state-of-modern-speculation

City On Fire seems like an excellent card, and it's very similar to Fiery Emancipation, a real casual favorite and powerhouse in dedicated EDH builds. Is the price destined to go up enough that it's worth it to buy in now? I wasn't sure, so I went through the history of "triple" in Magic to see if cards that triple effects triple in price, too.. The answer took me to a few cards whose prices didn't do quite what we expected, but maybe they did enough that we can collect our winnings and call it a day. Read about the history of triples, what that could mean for the future and how I feel about specs that double in a low-margin, high-volume game like mtg finance.
Have you ever lost money on a card that doubled in price?

The latest instalment to my New Horizons series which explores the 'Secret Lair Spring Superdrop 2023' is now live on MTG Stocks.
In this article I touch on the debate surrounding product fatigue with eight additional products being added into the circulation. The question I would have for you guys is how likely / how many of you would actually splash out for the whole bundle vs individual products?
I really enjoyed getting feedback on my last article when I posted on here so let me know what you guys think - (Based on that feedback, please note the the prices reflect that of the time of writing).

Personally, I make a lot buying the same copies of Teferi's Puzzle Box on Card Kingdom and then buylisting them back later. It's the gift that keeps on giving! I accepted that I would make that money every 2 years or so, but I never really worked the logic backward and tried to look at unique cards that haven't had a reason to go up yet but have in the past and likely will again. I mined Tempest for cards with unique effects that either have gone up before or which are likely to again. Mana Severance, for example, has gone up before, and I have to imagine it will again. During those wait times, though, it's fairly affordable. Ignoring RL cards, I found a decent number of interesting cards just in Tempest and I'm sure every old block has quite a few. Here is my write-up. I'm really glad to be back posting here again and if you have any questions you'd like me to answer or criticisms of my weirdly specific methods you'd like to level, this is a great spot for it. Thanks for reading and for responding to the prompt, everyone.
Edit- I had an article link I intended to bury here and it's likely too late now, but if you're inclined the link is right here

Hey, nerds
I have been percolating this idea for a while - what does it mean when someone says "my spec is in 10,000 decks on EDHREC" as justification for a spec? It's been long accepted that 10,000 decks on the site meant the card was played enough to impact prices, but is that still true? Was it ever (I doubt it). So what do we say instead? I tried to look at the problem from the standpoint of a person who winces every time they see that justification used but also might be a teensy bit responsible for its use. So, my standpoint. Do you agree with my conclusions and proposed solutions? Let me know!

Hello everyone! My name is Corey and I write Modern Times for MTGStocks. The focus of my articles is usually related towards financial speculation around the Modern format. A couple months ago, I wrote an article about All Will Be One and its financial potential for Modern... My new article revisits how close and far off my original predictions were and evaluates where things stand today! What did I miss? Do you agree or disagree. Is there room for cards from All Will Be One to find a place in Modern with the upcoming LoTR set?
https://www.mtgstocks.com/news/6374-modern-times-one-revisited

Howdy y’all! I hope y’all are doing well; my name’s Harvey and I write the Over and Under column at MTGStocks. I’ve had a lot of fun chatting about the Over and Under picks each month across various discords, so now I figured I’d bring it on over to mtgfinance. This month, I took a look at Ragavan and the Allied Fetchlands. What are y’all’s thoughts on these? Does Ragavan have more room to fall, or is it all upside from here?
https://www.mtgstocks.com/news/6176-over-and-under---may-2023

Hey there mtgfinance , My name is Matt and I write a bi-weekly series called New Horizons for MTG Stocks and wanted to share my latest article with you! On a more personal note, I began playing Magic with the release of Dragon's Maze. Since then I've experimented with all MTG formats before settling in, growing my roots, and finding an appreciation for EDH and Pauper. Since discovering the concept, I’ve been forcing Jund while also dabbling lately with the ins and outs of the Sealed format along with new releases. I do hope you enjoy my musings on here, I've been writing with MTG Stocks since the beginning of the year. I cover upcoming sets, new releases, and other products, all the while engaging with the financial aspects of the newly released cards and the price trends of reprints.
https://www.mtgstocks.com/news/6275-new-horizons-the-aftermath

Hello, /mtgfinance
My name is Jason and I was this subreddit's first moderator. I was thrilled to accept a position on the writing staff at MTG Stocks and I wanted to share my elation with all of you. If you're familiar with the methodology I developed over the last decade at MTG Price, I'll be tweaking it a bit as I continue to learn and grow and the market continues to change. If you're not familiar, don't worry - this is an excellent point to jump on. I'm really proud of the community we have cultivated in this subreddit and I hope you'll indulge my posting an article every once in a while. Thanks, nerds!

Hey All, looking for a group that wants to meet up regularly for spelltable games over a few month period to play Precon decks that get steadily upgraded.
Rules are this:

1. Don't be a dick
   
2. Play competitively within the restrictions
   
3. Decks are chosen at start of league and all decks come from the same Commander release product.
   
4. No duplicate decklists at the start of league
   
5. League goes 3 months, 20$ US upgrade per month. Prices are tracked based on lowest average market price during the upgrade month using data from mtgstocks.com
   
6. Decklists are tracked using moxfield. Lists shared after each game.
   
7. Playing for fun/bragging rights plus data on how far a precon can be pushed.
   
8. No spending limit on blinging out your deck if you want to go that route.
   

DM me up if interested.

From what i see [[Mnemonic Betrayal]] is a sole Commander card, following mtgtop8 it does see play in cEDH under several Generals. The Mythic from GRN did have a spike in 2021 and is now creeping back up, while the foils have just broken the 2021 high.
https://www.mtgstocks.com/prints/42006-mnemonic-betrayal
It's a sweet Dimir Card, quite powerful and often overlooked, with a single print in a set which is nearing its 5th anniversary - the good old times before showcase borderless holo neon serialized etched booster fun.
If it doesnt get Secretly Flaired I could see it go further, so I will slowly start selling but keep some as well. Not a buy, just a heads up for those already holding.

I was looking at the MTGStocks EV analytics this morning (check it out, if you haven’t: https://www.mtgstocks.com/analytics/expectedvalue), and it dawned on me just how much I’ve learned from interactions with folks on this sub.
As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have known about MTGStocks at all, if not for the awesome Weekly Winners posts here by u/cybey.
As a private, casual investor, I wouldn’t even have thought about volume movements on TCGplayer, if not for the great updates by u/Prid3.
This sub is my source of information about what’s happening in the broader context of MTG Finance, too, because I always see news breaking here first about Hasbro corporate events, stock value shifts and third-party assessments.
The feedback I’ve received on my own posts—both when they slap and when they bomb—has helped me evaluate my own thinking about MTG Finance and hopefully add more value here with the limited time and resources I have. I’ve been playing and collecting for over 20 years, but I still learn a lot from all of you—including through your ridiculous meme specs.
Thanks a million to everyone who shows up here to talk shop with strangers every day. You’re the real treasure we’ve made along the way.

I use mtgstocks to check prices, however I noticed they have a monthly subscription service, has anyone gotten this and found it useful? Are there any better websites out there for watching mtg stocks?

Hello all. I'm not used to making these so please bear with me. This is an instructional how-to on using Google Sheets to import card data on cards including market prices. For this example I am using Scryfall but you can pull from MTGStocks, TCGPlayer, whoever has the JSON data.
This method uses the apps script feature of Google sheets. This method is more efficient than importxml in Google sheets because of how scraping works. Using apps scripts you can import everything you will ever need when it comes to MTG data. Market prices, card stats, sealed product prices, purchase histories, etc.
Step-by-step example on how to pull market price data for a collection of cards.

1. Create a new spreadsheet in google sheets.
2. In the top row, write in the following headers:
   A1: "Scryfall ID"
   B1: "Card Name"
   C1: "Variant"
   D1: "Set"
   E1: "Market Price"
   
3. Copy and paste the Scryfall ID of the card into column A for each card. For each card, this info can be found by going to its Scryfall page and clicking "Copy-pasteable JSON" on the bottom right. Then highlight and copy the value in the "id" field (it should be near the top).
   
4. If you want the market price to show the card's foil value, fill in FOIL under Variant for each card this applies to. See here for an example I made.
   
5. Click Extensions -> Apps Script
   
6. Delete what's in there and paste the following in its entirety:
   

   const COL_SID = 0; const COL_NAME = 1; const COL_VARIANT = 2; const COL_SET = 3; const COL_VALUE = 4; const ROW_DATA = 2; // Add function option to menu function onOpen() { var ui = SpreadsheetApp.getUi(); ui.createMenu('My Tools') .addItem('Update Data', 'GetMarketPrices') .addToUi(); } function GetMarketPrices() { var sheet; var scryfallID, name, set, variant; var data, jsonData; var numCards = 0; sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheets()[0]; while (true) { if (sheet.getRange((ROW_DATA + numCards++), 1).getValues().toString() === "") { numCards--; break; } } data = sheet.getRange(ROW_DATA, 1, numCards, 5).getValues(); for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) { if (scryfallID == "") break; name = data[i][COL_NAME]; set = data[i][COL_SET]; variant = data[i][COL_VARIANT]; scryfallID = data[i][COL_SID]; jsonData = JSON.parse(UrlFetchApp.fetch("https://api.scryfall.com/cards/" + scryfallID, {muteHttpExceptions: true}).getContentText()); if (variant === "FOIL") data[i][COL_VALUE] = jsonData.prices.usd_foil; else data[i][COL_VALUE] = jsonData.prices.usd; data[i][COL_NAME] = jsonData.name; data[i][COL_SET] = jsonData.set.toUpperCase(); sheet.getRange(1, 1).getValue(); } sheet.getRange(2, 1, data.length, 5).setValues(data); } 

7. Go back to your sheet. If you do not see "My Tools" on the menu bar at the top of the page, refresh the page, it'll take a few seconds after refreshing to load. Click "My Tools" and click "Update Data". It will likely ask you to approve permission to run because the project will be marked unsafe. Approve this permission. Click Update Data again after approving. The card name, set, and market price should populate immediately. See here for my results.
   

You can expand on this however you want to include other fields for each card. For example if I wanted a column for the rarity of each card I could get that with jsonData.rarity.
I hope this helps.

I noticed Soldevi Excavations did a little dance this week on MTGStocks, jumping from about $25 to $45. I watch Mox Man's live streams on YouTube sometimes and I just happened to catch part of the one this week where he and his viewers did a "buy out" of over 100 copies of Excavations in about an hour. Over the years, Mox Man has repeatedly talked about Soldevi Excavations as a RL card that is important to him and his channel and he claims to know the whereabouts of over 3000 copies. But I don't get the hype--
Soldevi Excavations is actually a bad investment.
I own exactly two copies of Soldevi Excavations and I refuse to buy or trade for any more. Why? It's just not a good card! What if you don't want to sacrifice an untapped Island--or even worse, you can't? In these common situations, Excavations is just a dead card in your hand. And what is the payoff if you do get Soldevi Excavations onto the battlefield? You get a land that taps for either two mana or to (effectively) Scry 1 for three mana. Neither of these abilities is worth sacrificing an untapped Island for! And don't forget, you can also get completely blown out by a card like Wasteland. In my opinion, actually playing with Soldevi Excavations is a very high-risk, low-reward proposition.
So, is Soldevi Excavations a scarce enough Reserved List card that it will go up and stay up? Very unlikely. Without actual player-driven demand for a card like Excavations, more will eventually come onto the marketplace. Yes, they might be priced a bit higher than before--but with over 200,000 of each Alliances rare printed, there are surely lots of copies out there waiting to be found and sold!
I think my take away is this: If Mox Man could affect the market like this for a card like Soldevi Excavations in a casual YouTube live stream, a Reserved List-buying cabal of wealthy speculators could easily pop up and manipulate the price of most RL cards at will. This is kind of what happened with Wheel of Fortune, and I'm sure it will continue happening.
The supply of original Reserved List cards is a finite thing, vulnerable to any sudden new increase in demand from players or to a brute-force attack by investors with deep pockets. And I get that some people just want to collect 1,000 General Jarkelds or whatever, cool. I myself have a collection of over 700 Bogardan Phoenix, just because it was the first card I ever opened in a booster. But my stack of Bogardan Phoenixes are not what I would ever consider an investment.
Let's be clear about one thing--unplayable Reserved List cards are never going to be valuable in comparison to the other, playable Reserved List cards you could have purchased instead.

Heyall !
​
Beforehand, I would like all of us to send huge thanks to u/Prid3 for the quality content he brings here. It's informative, it's frequent, it's informed & he writes well. Also it's not only for speculators : I am just a regular player, subject to a FOMO well-groomed by WotC, who wants to avoid buying during spikes. And I think it why mtgfinance is a bit of a split community : you have people who are just interested in a getting a good deal before a spike, and people who are actually trying to make serious money (I think they won't retire early and scamming PS5 might be more profitable BUT I understand how it can be fun, addictive and an nice addition to this hobby)
​
Now we all know MtG is a small, unregulated market prone to market manipulations. I think it's also becoming clear that Prid3 has a significant impact on prices. It's been a few weeks now that mtgstocks is just Prid3 + 1 week delay. He is not the first one to influence prices : Rudy uses extravaganza + gut feeling, but he is also widely suspected of market manipulation. Many influencers create prices increases but speculation is usually not their purpose and price increase is a by-product of their own content. Most MTG finance sites like mtgstock write a justification post-price increase, so by the time you read it it's too late : stocks are mostly cleaned => not very useful in a digital age. And people sharing their bricks of specs are usually doing it for the lol and it's inconsequential on prices.
​
There's a small subset of very serious mtg speculators who use advanced tools such as API scrapping prices, arbitrage opportunities and available stocks in real-time such as mtgban. Obv sharing their tips is not in their interest. I might be wrong but the way I see it, the easiest way to make money in mtg w/o immobilizing to much capital is to buy very early when tensions appear, and sell into the hype. The issue is that it's very human to be tempted to "create" the spike to offload, especially if you're very long on a given card and spike doesn't happen, or price are increase less than expected.
So how do we avoid that ? Basically we can't, and it's really a matter of the trust and track record. I think Prid3 is a rare breed of individual with access to advanced tools, and desire to create quality content to share with mtg finance wanabees. He succeeds in creating trust for several reasons
- He has been a long-time member of mtgfinance, with buttload of karma
- He is data oriented and shares at least a data point (most of the time)
- He always shares his reasoning => btw this is the part I like the most, even when I don't agree
- He follows-up on specs, shares rationale when he chooses to pass, and admits when he was mistaken. I love that too !
Happy to hear anyone's thoughts on trust.
PS : And once again, thank you Prid3 you make this reddit a better place <3

I'm currently going through Kaldheim stuff and realized that [[Toski, Bearer of Secrets]] is creeping up, starting with October last year.
https://www.mtgstocks.com/prints/58912-toski-bearer-of-secrets
I'm purely going by price data here, but I guess everyone knows it is a popular EDH card. Hard to tell if we will see him reprinted in August, but I'd say it wouldn't be a surprise. I will keep an eye out and sell if price should make a jump. If you want him for play buy now or bet on a reprint.
Timewise it makes sense, Kaldheim is old enough and hasn't been the most popular set. In that spirit several B Tier cards are moving up, especially bling versions. As an honorable mention foil copies of [[Fynn, the Fangbearer]] are seeing a minor spike. I think people missed his poison theme and the market is starting to catch up.
Last but not least it might be a good time to snag some of the remaining Collector displays, I have seen them pop up on clearance here and there around 160€. But currently 190€ seems to be the best price, at least here in Europe. Too much for me, but I doubt they will get cheaper.
Alright, I'm back to my charts, stay save and spend wisely everyone.

I noticed that Wormfang Manta foils jumped to the top of the list on MTGStocks today. There are still a handful of lightly played copies available on tcgplayer for under $10, if anyone else is keen (I don't want to do a buyout). But I did pick up 10 more lightly played foil copies for $6.05 each today, after seeing them jump on MTGStocks. This makes my total speculation (to date) 40 copies. Considering I used to buy foil Wormfang Mantas in 2021 in NM condition for $10-$12, buying them now in lightly played condition for half that price feels a little bad. But that's just what I've done. It seems that all the NM copies on the market are $12 or more, however. So, it's at least holding steady there on the NM price it seems.
Wormfang Manta foils are still a speculation I believe in. It seems highly unlikely that Wormfang Manta ever sees a reprint, even in a "remastered" set. And even if it does somehow see a reprint in a Secret Lair, I don't anticipate there would be much of a negative impact on the price of the OG foils. Remember, you'd have to open 40 or 50 booster boxes of Judgement to reliably open just one foil Wormfang Manta--Project Booster Fun wasn't going to come along for another 20 years. You got one foil rare in each booster box of Judgement, if you weren't unlucky, and there were 44 rares in the set.
I've already posted about why I think Wormfang Manta is a playable card, especially in a landscape suddenly rife with Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. It's certainly a very niche card, but it's a beautiful foil and part of the card does say "Take an extra turn." I'm guessing it becomes a $50 foil in the future.
Now, a bit of insight into how I sometimes operate. I've also purchased 10+ foils of the entire cycle of Wormfang creatures: Crab, Newt, Turtle, Drake, and Behemoth. In my opinion, none of the other Wormfang creatures have as much playable potential as the Manta. But I think offering them as a complete set to collectors (in the distant future) might be a good way to market them.

I'm looking to complete my collection of Revised Ed by purchasing [[Crusade]].
According to mtgstocks.com the revised ed card has a market value around $2.50.
The only online vendor I can find is eBay and they seem to be going for $40...
Any thoughts on where you can find these mythical $2.50 NM cards?

I've been out of the loop but I still work at an lgs and peek at mtgstocks to see if there are any noteworthy price hikes. I just saw Grinding Station shoot up and was checking out the deck and couldn't figure out why it included Jegantha. Can any let me know what purpose it serves?