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This is how amazing things happen.
I’ve been busy.
Tinkering with the few Scars of Mirrodin previews we have so far, and loving it. This is my kinda set, so far at least, and Scars marks, for me at least, a period of unbridled success on the part of the Magic design teams.
I'll have to regale you all with the story of my PT: Amsterdam FAIL to let you know how "when I eff things up, I really eff things up." Another time. You the readers, however, get to reap the benefits of me being such a prima donna; I’ve got some cards that I wouldn’t have recommended going into the ‘foilo.
Thanks to a couple cards that have been recently spoiled, I’d like to introduce you to the most fun you can have with mana since Nettle Sentinel rotated:
(via ChannelFireball.com)
It’s called Myr Galvanizer. Here’s the text of the card:
Myr Galvanizer 3
Artifact Creature – Myr
Other Myr creatures you control get +1/+1.
1, T: Untap each other Myr you control.
This gets me a little excited. The artifacts we were promised are here in what is in fact shaping up to be an artifact-centric set. Furthermore, WotC apparently forgot about Splinter Twin.
Probably the rare you least wanted to open, Splinter Twin enables some zany things with Mr. Galvanizer and any other mana-myr (Copper Myr for example). Sure, it’s a three card combo, but it’s doable in different ways, and we have another potential enabler (because it is in fact red, which is the color of Splinter Twin):
BAM! The first red planeswalker. Koth of the Hammer.
(via Mr. Mike Flores, on dailymtg.com)
Koth’s abilities are as follows:
+1: Untap target mountain, it becomes a 4/4 elemental until end of turn.
-2: Add R to your mana pool for each mountain you control.
-5: You get an emblem with “mountains you control gain ‘T: this land does 1 damage to target creature or player.’”
Yeah, he seems good. And he’s red. Koth of the Hammer everyone. He’ll be here all season.
Anyway, he’s a boss, and this is just ONE piece of one way to abuse what was hopefully not a gross oversight by the R&D folks. I expect this combo to be hot in the first couple weeks at least of Scars Standard, so I’d get all the Splinter Twins I can pick up. They’re bulk right now, so really, the slightest jump, and you're golden, and the risk is so low that it gets confused for Jason Derulo (the song is awful, by the way, almost as bad as that joke). I’m picking up about 10 Splinter Twins, and my gut tells me I’ll regret only having 2.5 playsets, but I’m being a little conservative here. Get ‘em for cheap, and flip ‘em for a buck. If you get them while bulking, you’re up 900% each. Those are sick gains. I wouldn’t hold on to these, because you don’t want to be left holding a bag of them, but I will probably keep around 4 for myself, just in case I want to play the deck (if it happens).
What else we got? Well basically, I like picking up all the artifact-centric cards. It might seem obvious, but only one has really spiked any, and that’s Steel Overseer. I loved my Lodestone Golem call, especially now, and it’s sold out on SCG, so that’s something (they do have the foil for what seems like a remarkably low price as of writing). I think we move any Thada Adel Acquisitor out of our bulk boxes and start valuing her a little higher. She’s also bulk, and is great in Vintage’s Noble Fish decks, so why not pick up a bunch? I’d pick up 10 for about $2, and I wouldn’t get rid of them for less than $3.50
Some other considerations are Cosis Trickster which I’d be comfortable recommending a pickup of about five of these (also, bulk!) I also love the Renegade Doppelganger pickups from last week, as this makes any Myr deck viable in Blue as well, and for cheaper (albeit more fragile).
Current Portfolio: About 8-10 Lodestone Golems Between 5-10 Renegade Doppelganger, 4xStoneforge Mystics , 4x Goblin Guides, and 12x Armament Master[card]s, 10x [card]Thada Adel Acquisitor ($2, total) and roughly 10x Splinter Twin ($1.50-2 Total). $40.00 (approx.).
Current Performance: Up $40 if you got FTV:R. Otherwise, statickish, but up a coupla duckets.
On Kelly's suggestion, we're going to hold off on the contest from last week until Insider Access launches. Keep filling out your portfolios! Until next time, may your favorite color be Green!
Insider Access? What content have you provided that people are willing to pay for? The only half decent articles I've read in a while are Kelly's mailbag articles. Cosi's Trickster? Serious Fail. It doesn't take a genious to sit on bulk cards which are a dime today and a dime tomorrow. If they go up you toot your horn and sound like a genius.
I'm really not buying splinter twin either.
Paul, "buy" what you want. The intent here is to make money with a fixed-portfolio strategy. I don't (in my writing, at least) ever claim to be a genious [sic].
We're not forcing you to read the content here, and/or purchase insider access. I also don't, due to the ambiguity of your post, know whether you're attacking me personally or the site in general, but either way, we are players who are making money or financing our hobby through the hobby itself. If you can say the same, you don't need us, and we'd love to have you write for us.
If you can't, grab a seat in the front of the class and let us teach you something. If you get one good pick a week from us (especially now, while we're free) you're getting more than most sites offer, free or otherwise.
I need to catch up with my portfolio been diverting funds from the MTG budget into the "bills I need to pay in order to have a place to keep my collection" budget. What I like about your series of articles is that there are always action items and evaluation in them. I'd love to have more time to do all my own research and trend watching but it is honestly simplier and less resource intensive to have someone with more knowledge and experience in the game to do it instead.
Its why I like the portfolio feature, its quick, the choices have some backing, its trackable, its "fund manager" isnt an idiot(at least not all the time :P) and its better than just cracking packs over and over hoping for a high money rare. I don't expect it to be perfect and have instant turn arounds and super suprise infalliable exploding picks(MoMA anyone?), it's just a much better way of keeping this game as a game instead of a wallet drain.
I'd be happy with a constant 10% rolling gain every quarter and a steady stream of recommended portfolio additions, evaluations and removals. Honestly, I'd love to see another writer run a portfolio column to see some friendly competion and see how they fare against each other. When writers compete, readers benefit.
If this column continues to deliver Im happy investing a little bit of that bankroll back into QS, just keep us budgeted folks in mind when creating the pricing willya? 😉
Why are you recommending Cosi's Trickster? I think if he was going to see success, he would have seen it by now.
Did you want the pics of our portfolio to be the cards that you recommended to us? Or is it open to us? Do you want to see blue chips portfolio like dual lands and force of wills, or do you want to see speculatory cards?
Hordling –
the picture should be of the portfolio, while I would be impressed with another binder full of power (like the one you posted) it's not really in the spirit of the column.
as far as cosi's trickster, I don't know that we've "seen it by now" as far as potential goes for that guy. He's harder to gauge, but if there's a monoU aggro deck, he could be a fine SB card. It's not a *hard* pickup, but for $0.50, it's not unsafe.
I would pick up Splinter Twin for another reason: Pestermite/Splinter Twin combo stays in extended and might stay the sideboard combo of choice for Pyromancer´s Ascension decks.
I was thinking, is there anyway to add what buy prices we should be trying to find for some older stuff in the portfolio if we are trying to catch up without have to crawl thru the old articles? Maybe a spreadsheet or something?
I actually went ahead and created a kind of Portfolio helper excel workbook. I'll pass it along to you so you can see if you want to offer it thru the site later. Includes an Accquistion log, a sale log and a Compilation log that gives summary info based on the two. I plan to turn it into an database and then an app shortly. Let me know if this is something QS might be interested in having as a feature of the pay side.
Some features I mean to add:
Automatic Bankroll & Portfolio value calculations+tracking
Big gains/loss tracking
Automatic feeds from data sources
Easier to use sales log
Anyone have anything that they'd hope a MTG Financial focused app would do or help do?
What program do you use to create all that? I'm just curious, I want to get into that stuff.
When creating database style apps I usually start in Excel for some initial design to figure out what I want to capture. For a web based database, its over into SQL or Access depending on the enviroment. If I'm looking to design an app for a mobile device I start working on building an interface shell to read the data in Java using the Eclipse IDE.
Love the site, fun reads.
I bought in on the Mind Over Matter suggestion (10 @ $2-3) and sold them to a site last week for $6.33 ea (5ish SP). Gotta love it.
Got my Golems and Inquisitors too, keep'em coming! Thanks!
Okay, so I've finished entering in the portfolio into my spreadsheet. I have good news even if you havent been able to get rid of your MoMa stock yet!
So far based on the numbers that Dave has recommended, we should have a portfolio with around $82.75 invested leaving us with 17.25 liquid in the bankroll. This assumes we haven't offloaded MoMa yet either and have been picking things up in between the suggested value ranges at a quanity that matches the total investment when shipping is factored in.
If we were to attempt to offload every card in the portfolio for cash(via eBay since its the most likely), the portfolio is valued at $89.16 on 9/17/2010. A small gain of $6.41.
If we were to attempt to trade every card in the portfolio for other cards(using SCG as our trading valuation model and not personal/subjective valuations), the portfolio is worth $168.98. A gain of 104% or up $86.23 in trading value!
Now if you have been able to convert your MoMas into cash at this point, our portfolio is standing at around a sell value of ~$70 and a trade value of ~$151. Our liquid bankroll has gone up to ~$30 from the sale of MoMa which contributed ~$13, if you have been able to move your MoMa with at least a profit margin of 50%.
Not too shabby!