Welcome back readers! The idea behind this article came from our very own Douglas Linn. He brought it to my attention that we haven't had any articles written about the impact of judge foil reprints on a card's value.

First things first. Below is a list of all the judge foils (I found on TCG player) as well as some cost comparison data. Note that the column denoting the difference between pack foils and judge foils is color coordinated (when the pack foil is worth more than the judge foil it's in green, when the judge foil is more valuable it's in red.)

But this is just the first layer of analysis. The bigger question is what does the judge foil do to the current value of a card? When a new judge foil is announced, should you unload the regular copies you have?

To determine this I used data from the two sites (http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Judge_Gift_cards and http://blacklotusproject.com/). Using these two sites, I could 1) find a list of when the judge promos came out, and 2) look back in time at the existing cards' value. When values were not on Black Lotus Project, MTG stocks was used as a substitute. Most Judge Foil Announcement dates were taken from posts on MTG Salvation, though some came from CFB and SCG announcements.

It's also important to look more at the trends from BLP rather than the prices, as BLP takes its prices from MOTL and not necessary stores/ebay/etc.

You can check out my comments above to see on a card-by-card basis how each judge foil announcement affected prices. There were, however, several patterns I noticed. These are summarized below.

1. EDH/Casual favorites rarely lose value upon the announcement or when supply is added to the market.
2. Legacy staples often lose some value upon either the announcement or the introduction into the market, but for the most part bounce back. The only exceptions are cards that have fallen out of favor for other reasons.
3. The artwork on the judge foil and more importantly the typical reaction to it will have a large impact on whether it becomes more valuable than a pack foil (if a pack foil exists).
4. The older announcements seemed to take a little longer to disseminate; i.e. the card's value might not immediately change within the first day or two of the announcement, but as more people learned, its price would change within a week or two. Whereas with newer announcements the price can often change within days. This is a strong indicator that more people are paying attention to this information and reacting accordingly.
5. Cards with iconic artwork that have not been foil before tend to be more valuable judge foils (see Lightning Bolt and Sol Ring).
6. Some Judge Foils are a major miss and worth very little (Balduvian Horde/Ravenous Baloth) more often than not these are foils based on good Standard cards, but which see little to no Legacy and EDH play.
7. Reprinted cards tend to have the following values in foils Original Printing>Judge Foil>Latest Printing
8. Cards that aren't Legacy or EDH staples tend to have Judge Foil values similar to the original printing foil (see Living Wish/Memory Lapse).
9. Cards that are valuable due to extreme rarity, but aren't played much, will see a massive drop in value with a judge foil announcement (see Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed).
10. Staple Legacy lands (Polluted Delta/Flooded Strand/etc) seem to be far more valuable as pack foils than judge foils, something to keep in mind should they make the Zendikar fetches into judge foils.

*****EDIT*****
I fixed the Wasteland/Wheel of fortune switch; so it is now correct.