So the pro tour has come and gone, leaving some of us a little better off than others, and it's time to see how some of the cards I pointed out did. I suggested a ton of possible cards, 66 in fact. and that's not counting lands which I left out due to already skyrocketing prices. Everything about the prices in this article hinges on the format becoming a GP, PTQ, or SCG hosted format. Without one of those things happening, this bubble will pop, and very quickly. If you don't feel safe relying on one of those things to happen, then now is the time to get out. I'm going to risk getting burned, and not only stay invested, but continue to invest.

At this time I have roughly 60% Legacy, 10% Standard, and 30% Modern (cards in neither of the other two sections) in my investment spread. Legacy is rather stable and highly liquid, Standard is less so on both, and Modern is my gamble region. I wouldn't suggest tying up more than 35% of your assets into Modern only cards.

I started the series looking at Blue. I completely missed Disrupting Shoal, considering it nigh unusable in this format. Yeah, I was wrong there. Lets see where some value was gained though.

Remand: At the time I covered this card, you could find it for $0.95 - $1.03. Now it's selling for $1.16 - $2.13. Marginal gain at most.

Cryptic Command Went up an average of $4, from $7.19-$8.07 to it's current of $10.49 - $13.50. Another "safe" blue investment, as far as safe can go for now.

Trickbind It was $0.80-$1.00 and is now.... $0.96 - $1.42. I'm confused, I really am. I know that the combo decks usually have spell pierce or something to help protect them, but this has split second, and only costs 2. Activate inkmoth nexus? Trickbind. Start making pestermite copies? Trickbind. Huge stormcount? Trickbind the storm card. This is my current "Please buy me now!" card, it has almost no downside at a dollar to $1.50 each.

Nix In the same boat as Trickbind, but more situational. Mox Opal? Pacts? Shoals? This card hates on them all. you can still buy them for $0.14 each at the time of this writing.

Black was up next, and didn't do a whole lot in the way of price movements, and by a "whole lot" I really mean nothing. Death cloud went up about $0.10, Nezumi shortfang's top end price went up about a quarter, but other than that black did poorly.

Artifacts saw some gain, but not as much as I had hoped. The affinity decks did well, but using mostly commons and rares that were already hard to buy in on the fly with, there wasn't much to be made.

Chalice of the Void saw $1.50 in average overall value, currently sitting at $8.50-$9.50.

Cloudstone Curio also gained an average of a dollar, which is a 100% growth. It was $0.75 - $1.00, and is now $1.45 - $2.00

Sadly, those are the only two that I mentioned that moved at all from this event. The big winner was Amulet of Vigor which is currently topping at $2.55 after being bulk status for so long.

Green and White followed in the next article, and the green section was a large letdown overall. A couple of the cards mentioned gained some insignificant gains; a dime or so, but nothing worth noting. Overall green was a bust for any of the older rare cards, though elves saw a decent gain in most of it's cards, but even a nickel was a 30% gain for some of them.

White saw gains, Angel's Grace has its top end almost double, from $2.37 to $4.48, and it's bottom end near-mint price went from $1.44 to $3.34. With so many combos running the field, it's easy to see a deck like Counter-cat, or catfish as some have taken to calling it, running it in the board, as well as any other deck willing to pay one white mana to not lose to a combo.

Finally we come to red and gold. This was the "wrap up" piece for the series, and it's where the highest profits were found.

Sadly, when I reviewed the prospect of Through the Breach, I suggested not to go too deep on them. I messed that up and only told you to get "a set or two", what I should have said is "buy them all" but hindsight is 20-20.

Through the Breach was between $0.39-$0.50, and is now $11.79-$13.99. If you bought 4 of these, you've covered your costs from almost all the combined white, black, blue, and green cards you may have also picked up. If you bought more, look at every single Through the Breach as another month of insider already paid for.

Pyromancer's Swath was your other payday. They were between $0.25 and $0.47 each when the article went up, and are now $4.10 - $8.00. Another call I was apprehensive to go deep on, but I still managed to buy and trade my way up to 9 of them.

That about wraps up any of the cards I called correctly, a sad 7/66, but about what I expected for covering such a large spread of,at the time, cheap cards. It was essentially buying into junk bonds and seeing which of them could cover costs and offer profits.

Cards I'm currently getting:

Trickbind

Nix

Angels Grace

Currently selling off all Through the Breach, Vendilion Clique, Summoner's Pact, Blazing Shoal, Disruptive Shoal and Pyromancers Swath, as well as anything that will yield me a 20% return on investment from the time I bought it. Remember to calculate in shipping costs into its "bought for" price, and divide that between the number of cards both when you bought them and when sending them. Realistically, you want the buy price to be 40% higher than what you bought them for to cover those costs and still make 20%.

Next week we should know a marge majority or all of the Innistrad set, so I'll be doing my overview of it and seeing where the value is at. So far, the only thing I'm excited for is Skaab Ruinator, but that may well change when we know more of the set.

Till next week,

Stephen Moss