Greetings, Speculators!

Is it just me, or were there a lot of cards that presented just 0 opportunities to make any money?

The Times Are a Changin'

As recently as Theros, you couldn't list cards on TCG Player before the set was legal. Even if you pulled stuff at the prerelease, you were stuck waiting for the set to go live or you listed them for sale on eBay. This didn't matter much for most cards because between Star City, eBay and articles being written about projected prices, the prices were basically established so selling for market value on TCG Player or market value on eBay didn't matter much.

Similarly, Star City's prices were taken to be basically gospel and selling on eBay meant you were getting SCG -10 or 20% which was still fine since they mark up quite a bit. I will take $10 on Pain Seer and not complain that I can't get the $12 Star City was charging all day. (Star City sold out of Pain Seer at $12--try and keep THAT bit of trivia from coloring every financial set review you do in the future. I haven't been able to.)

Again, this was all fine. The secondary market economy hummed along. Say what you want about Star City having a tendency to arbitrarily establish prices knowing their legion of loyal buyers will pay whatever they charge and cite "good customer service" when you ask them why they paid 20% more than every other site--when it comes to prerelease prices, SCG does a good job of mimicking a free market.

Pain Seer hit $12 because it sold out at lower prices and they just kept jacking the price up a few dollars until it his an astounding $12. They didn't show the spoiler and say, "Here you go, monkeys. Give us $50 a playset". They allowed people to say amongst themselves, "Am I crazy, or is this Dark Confidant with one more toughness?" which is in quotes because someone in the QS forums said that.

The hype generated by people who either didn't read the card or who overestimated how easy it would be to trigger inspired by attacking with a Grizzly Bear in a format full of Courser of Kruphix sent the price up. Hype does funny things to prices.

Recently, TCG Player has allowed people to presell cards, and that combined with hype has done some pretty goofy things to certain prices. While it hasn't really inflated many prices out of control or out of touch with reality (unless you think Surrak Dragonclaw should be worth twice as much as Wingmate Roc), what it has done is limit opportunity for certain cards.

Today I wanted to highlight a few opportunities that I was waiting for that were smothered in the cradle by a combination of hype, results and a new paradigm in presale pricing.

Treasure Cruise

 What if we gave Ancestral Recall Threshold? Would it be fair for Legacy?

Clearly Ancestral Vision is worth the trouble of playing an otherwise Grey Ogrey card like Shardless Agent. Having Vision as a potential cascade target means you can load up a deck full of value cards like Hymn to Tourach and spin the wheel, knowing you're going to get something very strong and that sometimes it will be essentially Ancestral Recall.

Treasure Cruise is essentially the same deal. Delver decks run a lot of spells and Wastelands and fetches, and sometimes that helps you make Nimble Mongoose a very good one-drop. In Mongoose's place, Cruise was always going to be tested as a way to fill your hand back up and give you a lot of advantage in Legacy (maybe even Modern). It's a bit of a nonbo with Mongoose, Tombstalker, Past in Flames and Tarmogoyf, but it's a powerful draw spell and people were always going to want to try it.

How do we know? Well, the card presold for $20 in foil. This non-foil was pretty obviously going to be one of those "free on draft tables, maybe $0.15 on the buylist in two years" kind of cards, but foils were predicted as Legacy foils before anyone even had physical possession of copies of the card.

Cards like Vandalblast, which were obvious to some Eternal players, took a bit of time to get up to a decent price for foils. Treasure Cruise was a lot more like Young Pyromancer in that people immediately recognized that it would impact eternal formats and they established the price early. With foil copies selling at that $20 mark (before people even cracked boosters--ridiculous!) there wouldn't be much point to anyone listing copies for $5. The price was set.

The price of foil cruise might go down, but that's not really the point, nor is there any opportunity there. Either the card performs and maintains its high price or it doesn't and its price coming down doesn't present much of an opportunity because no one will want them. You have an opportunity to crack these in a pack and try to out them for close to that $20, but the days of buying a Legacy foil for cheap before people figure out a good potential utility for it and hanging onto them are numbered. People are getting a lot savvier.

What I Like Instead

Stubborn Denial has eternal potential as well. At $4, this is a foil with potential upside given that it's uncommon and therefore three times as rare as Treasure Cruise. While Stubborn Denial hasn't impacted Eternal yet (and might never), Treasure Cruise has already been tested in a list that won an SCG Open.

I would recommend trading for foil Denials as there is much less of a chance of Denial getting there, but I think the amount of buzz I have seen around the card is belied by its current price tag.

Foils from the set are inflated right now--nearly every card that has seen any play is out of control. Monastery Swiftspear, another Khans card featured in the winning SCG Open Delver list is sold out on SCG at $12. Treasure Cruise has a much better chance of maintaining its price, but Swiftspear has been touted by burn players as well as Delver players.

Swiftspear could bolster the price of some of the Phyrexian mana spells that haven't increased out of control yet. It's too late to make any money on Gitaxian Probe, but Gut Shot has seen play in Legacy due to its ability to surprise-kill a Delver before it flips, as well as take down cards like Dark Confidant or even come out on top when you bash into their Tarmogoyf with a goyf of your own.

Mutagenic Growth is another card that I really like, and it has the added benefit of having upside even if people don't pair it with Swiftspear. Swiftspear and other prowess creatures getting some testing done with them in all formats is going to grant significant upside to Phyrexian mana spells. I don't like Stubborn Denial for cash quite yet, but I think at $2.50, foil Gut Shot is particularly tempting given we saw non-foils peak at $10.

Mantis Rider

Jadine Klomparens, a West Michigan resident who very nearly became the first woman to win a Grand Prix is at it again, this time smashing everyone at an SCG Open with a Jeskai deck--I'm so glad I don't hear people saying "American" anymore--that emphasized cards like Mantis Rider and Seeker of the Way. Click here for a decktech interview.

Mantis Rider went from clinging to the caboose of the hype train with its $5 "but no one has even cracked a booster yet!" price to its $10 "seats in first class on the hype train" designation today. Let's be clear about one thing right off the bat--this is not a $10 card. Goblin Rabblemaster is a $10 card because it's playable in any deck that has access to red mana and wants insane amounts of advantage and speed.

Mantis Rider is very good and very narrow. It's possible that the meta could shift and leave Mantis Rider behind or it could end up outclassed by a better card in a future set, whereas Rabblemaster has a lower chance of that given the different things it can do.

I don't know if Mantis Rider will end up back at $5, but there's a good chance it will. Its narrow color identity precludes it going in a lot of different decks. $10 is reserved for staple non-mythics that are one color and can go in multiple decks.

Mantis Rider simply can't be Thoughtseize money for long. It's not likely to replace Lightning Angel in Modern, especially since Angel isn't played to an extent that it needs replacing. Legacy likes its 3-power fliers to cost one mana, not three. This means Mantis Rider is a Standard-only card relegated to very few decks.

Do I love Mantis Rider in Jadine's deck? %&*s to the yeah, I do. That doesn't mean Mantis Rider is going to be able to maintain $10. Rabblemaster was in a set that no one wants to draft, no one wants to buy, no one is redeeming on MODO (the people who aren't scared away by MODO being a bag of dicks right now are doing flashback drafts, not trifling with core set). I don't think a few copies of the promo are enough to offset all of those factors. Rabblemaster has a much, much higher price potential than Mantis Rider, and if Rabblemaster is a $10 card, Mantis Rider is a $5 card.

That means not only is there no opportunity to buying in now, there was no opportunity to buy in a week or two ago when it was $5. People were high-fiving each other online for their $5 copies shipping. I am sure dealers were glad to get $5 out of these because that's likely its price. Narrow utility and high supply are powerful dampening factors on the price. Paying $5 on Saturday won't feel great when these stabilize lower and by the time you get them in the mail, the price is already dipping.

Khans is going to be the most-opened set in Magic history so I am not the least bit bullish on non-foil non-mythics, no matter how many abilities they have. Unless you want a playset to attack people with because you actually play Magic, you're never going to be overjoyed that you paid $5 for a $5 card.

What I like Instead

Steam Augury is $0.25 on the most expensive site online. I have long said that whether Steam Augury was better or worse than Fact or Fiction was largely irrelevant due to it lacking a deck.

With two printings, the upside of Augury is limited to an extent, but with Augury essentially a bulk rare and with Jacob Van Lunen writing an article that extolls the virtues of the card in the Mantis Rider deck, I imagine anyone buying $10 Mantis Rider will need some Auguries as well. Outing these for anything better than "total bulk" is all upside whereas we never really had a chance to do anything with Mantis Rider.

Similarly, Dig Through Time has potential upside even at its current $3 pricetag. With the foil sold out at the same $20 we're seeing on Treasure Cruise, it's pretty obvious that a lot of people think Dig Through Time has potential eternal format utility. With it seeing play in a Standard deck that put up results and with Eternal players brewing with it, I think trading for Dig at its current price tag is good because it could potentially see the same $5 I think Mantis Rider will see when the dust settles.

I would much rather buy the underpriced cards than worry about the overpriced ones. With a Sultai dredge deck still possible, Eternal potential, EDH potential and 18 months of legality, it's pretty clear that there are a lot of things in Dig Through Time's favor.

A big attenuating  factor is its unlikeliness to be a four-of in the deck compared to Mantis Rider being a shoo-in four-of. I think that's offset by its likelihood to be included in more than one deck. While Mantis Rider is three colors which all but insures it can only go in Jeskai decks (or decks very ballsy about splashing), Dig can go in any deck that runs blue. You don't have to be dredging to get enough cards in the yard to play Dig for cheap.

Finding the Opportunities

All in all, I think there is opportunity associated with overhyped cards. You have to look at the other cards in the deck and what is going to be possible with those cards going up and see what is underpriced. While I can't imagine anyone is going to be glad they paid $20 for a foil Treasure Cruise in the next 12 months, I could see someone making some serious money by finding an underpriced card that could go in the same deck. Whether we have found it yet or have to keep looking, I think this frame of mind will help you look at new sets.