I don't know if you noticed, but Goblin Rabblemaster continues to shock and delight.

Quiet Speculation, as you well know, was well ahead of this card, sending out an Insider e-mail blast in a very timely manner. How timely a manner?

Timeliness Is Next to Godliness

Very timely. There had been a few people jamming the card on MODO and by around Wednesday, July 30th a few financiers were keeping their eyes peeled. The Insider e-mail went out the Friday of the PT in Portland, warning everyone that Rabblemaster was doing big things and big players with big plans were on the card.

Friday used to be insanely early. In previous years, Monday was the day people got around to reading coverage and decided to see if there were any cards played in decks over the weekend that might be worth investing in. Soon that was too late, and stores had already updated some of their prices by Monday afternoon, so you'd need to order a bit earlier in the day on Monday.

Gradually, as the exchange of information got more efficient, it because necessary to order your cards on Sunday. Then it was Saturday. By the time Innistrad block rolled around, QS was on top of Huntmaster of the Fells and Wolfir Silverheart because they had someone on the floor at the PT.

In Return to Ravnica, people decided that waiting until a deck actually put up results was idiotic, spiking cards like Nivmagus Elemental because a guy with three byes got a deck tech interview at 5-0 (which made Nivmagus Elemental a 2-0 deck) or Fist of Suns despite the guy who built the deck saying he'd never play it again. Sometimes Friday is way too late.

I found out that Friday is too late when I tried to order 30 copies of Goblin Rabblemaster a bit after Kelly's Insider e-mail went out. I would have ordered them earlier, but I was composing an Insider e-mail myself at the time. When I finished composing it and scheduled it for publication, I noticed Kelly's had been published 15 minutes before mine was scheduled to go out and I thought his was much more comprehensive and covered more than just the Rabble red deck.

Still, I ordered pretty early in the day and felt good when 15 minutes later, TCG Player sent me a confirmation saying the order for 30 Rabblemasters at $1.10 each had been processed and tracking information had been added to the package. A win's a win, right?

My victory fist-pump felt hollow two days later when my order was cancelled. I e-mailed TCG Player to complain and never heard back, probably because TCG Player thinks it's funny when bad things happen to me, but the silver lining is that the store that screwed me has also blocked me so I can't give them negative feedback ever again. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Getting your order cancelled and feeling bad is the new "waiting until Monday and missing out". You have to order cards before their use is justified and backed up by results these days. Luckily the 25 copies of Rabblemaster I traded for at the prerelease and the copies I ordered from Cardshark (yes, that site still exists) did show up. I'm glad to have them now because I think these need to get sold, today.

The Party's Just Starting!

Take a look at the wacky price graph of Goblin Hamburgler.

These graphs at MTGStocks.com are useful, but I think people tend to focus a bit too much on the graph and ignore a little, very useful table that's underneath it. Tables are historically less sexy than graphs which are in turn less sexy than infographics which are in turn less sexy than Catholic schoolgirl outfits. What the hell was I talking about, again?

Oh, right, why I'm selling Rabblemaster.

The graph tells us quite a bit, and the trendline is very instructive. I think the table tells us even more.

For Lots of Reasons

It's not $10, not really. In some sort of bizarre, dystopian future where somehow we have no choice in retail but, bafflingly, this game is still going, we may be forced to to pay Star City retail. That kind of nightmare scenario is reserved only for cases where entire world economies have collapsed, plunging the world into darkness, which would be pretty terrible, or you're at an SCG Open, which is also pretty terrible.

It's not even whatever TCG Mid is, because who pays TCG Mid? There's no reason. You pay TCG Low, and you buy the cheapest copies. That's how this works. So rather than dwell on the mid price, let's take a look at the low price. I feel like the low price is overlooked but it's very instructive when you sit and think about who is selling cards for TCG Low.

If you look back to the weekend of August 4th, the low price didn't move up along with the mid price. The people selling at the cheapest prices and therefore the place where the greatest volume of sales was taking place didn't creep up initially. What we saw was a lot of people who bought in for $0.75 trying to get back out for around $2.50 because the card's price didn't seem sustainable. All of the financiers on twitter were talking about how eager they were to dump the card at $2.50.

However while you see two periods of great divergence between the prices (around August 4th and August 30th) the low price is catching up to the high price. Maybe the low copies are being bought out by speculators, but that seems unlikely at this point. The huge jump in the low price between August 10th and 11th was speculators doubling down on the spec as it popped up more places. So with a lot of evidence that the price is real, why would I say to sell?

The case to sell gets even murkier when you look at a few more factors.

Core Set Rares Can Be $1,000,000

Being a non-mythic from a core set didn't deter this little advantage engine that could in his relentless quest to peak at $25. Isn't it possible that Rabblemaster will get more play soon and we haven't seen his peak yet? Aren't we betting $15 a copy that Rabblemaster won't hit the peak established by Thragtusk?

Rabblemaster Is a Multi-Format Card

Rabble Red recently won the SCG Open in St Louis, won the Somerset Invitational and Open and is finishing well in a ton of decks in ton of formats. Is it playable in Vintage? It's being tested, that's for sure. Could Legacy see it impact there? Hard to say it's not worth trying.

While Thragtusk was relegated to Standard and being a one-of in goofy Nic-fit Pod decks in Legacy, Rabblemaster generates the kind of advantage that can take over formats. Why would you sell a card that isn't tailing down yet if its price isn't pegged to its Standard playability?

What Am I Thinking?

I have a lot of reasons I want to sell Rabblemaster now.

Reprints Killed Thragtusk

If Rabblemaster is reprinted in an event deck or similar sealed product, it won't be the second time it's been printed, because Rabblemaster was already a promo, and there are so many promo copies out there, they're cheaper than the M15 set copies despite being foils.

While a promo didn't stop Restoration Angel from maintaining a respectable price or stop Emrakul, the Aeons Torn from getting out of control, three printings were all it took to bring down Thragtusk.

A Reprint Seems Somewhat Likely

This is the Khans of Tarkir event deck. The card depicted is Mardu Skullhunter. Low-rent internet detectives have managed to zoom in on the dots on the top of the box.

We have black, which we knew about, white very obviously, and what looks a lot like red. There is a mardu card on the box, there is no way this is a white-black deck. If we know anything about Mardu, it's that there are weenies with haste in Mardu. Ankle Shanker seems like a good rare to jam in there, and Rabblemaster pairs well with Ankle Shanker.

None of this is proof positive, but I think fear about a reprint will do as much to attenuate the growth of the card as an actual reprint in fact will. People are hesitant to invest right now and this is one of the reasons why. Now, naturally some people will want to be greedy where others are fearful, so you should have buyers at around $10.

Lock in Your Profits

I would rather have cash on hand to buy more Khans sealed product than have money tied up in Rabblemaster right now. I'm not saying I can't afford Khans if I don't sell, I'm saying I can buy more if I do. I haven't committed to buying enough Khans boxes because no one has. This set is getting a lot of hype, and I'd rather have a few stabs at foil fetches and foil EDH goodies than watch Rabblemaster maybe go up, maybe not.

The low price moving up seems to indicate speculators are in on this card--the low price is infrequently someone selling a playset, so speculators are more likely to buy the cheapest copies and players are more likely to buy the cheapest playset, closer to the mid price. That being the case, you'll want to avoid selling into a market where there are more sellers than buyers if the price starts to tank. Yes, people may play this card in Modern, but that doesn't mean there isn't volatility in the price.

Rabblemaster Isn't Thragtusk

At all. Thragtusk was good because it was an exceptional answer to the best deck in the format. It punished the use of Vapor Snag. It could be podded away for value. It gave Jund Midrange the curve-topper it wanted. It was never a dead draw, helped you swing through wraths, rewarded you for playing Restoration Angel and it won games.

Rabblemaster is a fast clock, and Mardu's speed may well be a good home for Rabblemaster, but Rabble can't go in nearly as many decks as Thragtusk could, and while Rabble Red can make a case for being the best deck right now, the deck loses a ton of cards to rotation. Jund midrange may step up, but wedge-based decks are going to be hot with the new set, and it's unlikely that Rabblemaster fits into a non-Mardu deck.

With Mono-Red Devotion unlikely to be a thing with the departure of cards like Boros Reckoner, Rabblemaster has less utility than Thragtusk. Naturally, its cross-format play will help its price, but I imagine that will help it maintain $8-$10 under good conditions, not ascend to $15-$20.

You Lose By Waiting

Right now the card is still on the rise with amateur speculators asking each other whether now is a good time to buy in. If you wait until the card starts to tank in price, you'll find yourself short on buyers and you may have to hold until the price craters post-rotation and you end up finding out just how much play in Modern and Legacy will keep its price above the $0.75 you paid, which brings me to my final point.

You Paid $0.75

Or cracked them in packs, or traded for them. The card was never expected to even hit $10, and unless you see justification that I don't for the card continuing to climb, you might want to join me in getting out. Will I be a little embarrassed if the card keeps going up? Maybe a little, but that will mostly be because I publicly said to sell at $10, not because I consider a card dectupling while I had a bunch in a box to be a failure.

I sold Sphinx's Revelation at $12 and that wasn't that disappointing. Sure, I could have predicted they would hit $25 and sold for around $20 then, but I bought in at $4, and I bought Zendikar fetches with my Rev money. That's finance. Sure, I'm betting about $10 that it won't hit $20, but I'm also cashing in my $0.75 bet that it could hit $10. You can hold, I think I'll fold.

Not compelled by my argument to sell? Not in a position to sell because you didn't have any in the first place? I think the logic here is going to likely apply to a card or two from M16. Let's revisit this in about a year.

Will Rabblemaster be a $20 card, buoyed by continued Standard success and sustained by cross-format play? Will it be a bulk goblin, tanked by apathy from the player base due to a changing format and possibly a crippling reprint? Will M16, the last ever core set, have something similar that we can apply our Rabblemaster lesson to? It will be interesting to find out.