I know some of you are familiar with the Market Watch series I've been doing on www.empeopled.com, but for those of you who may not be, each week I try to look at one particular card and break it down as either a good or bad speculation target. A few weeks ago I wrote about Mana Bloom, a card many were excited about speculating on, and detailed why I wasn't a fan of the move.

So I wanted this week to look back at how it would have worked out if you went in on Mana Bloom (spoilers: it wasn't great). So I went a step further. The goal here isn't to figure out if you made money from Mana Bloom if you chose to speculate on it, but rather to evaluate what exactly we're looking for when we do speculate on a near-bulk card like this.

It was the speculator's dream. A bulk care that all of a sudden was seeing new life and rejuvinated financial prospects. Buy into the next big spike at 20 cents apiece? Sign me up! How could you not make money?

At least, that was the thinking about a month ago as Journey into Nyx was spoiled and everyone became excited about the prospect of "new Enchantress" and Constellation. The buy-in in most cases was under a quarter. This is definitely the type of spec that can hit big and really pay off, and I understand the appeal of that.

I took the cautious route on this one.

You can read the full article here.