The dust is beginning to settle following the excitement of Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir. The pros have revealed their various brewing ideas, with much focus on Jeskai decks. We saw multiple buyouts resulting from the event, including sudden jumps in Dig Through Time and Pearl Lake Ancient.

These two cards likely made many speculators decent profits. It’s not everyday one can earn a 200% return on an investment. But not everything was warm and fuzzy – the market of MTG speculation can be a double-edged sword. If you’re not quick enough, you might be signing yourself up for some disappointing results.

This week I’ll do my best to boil down some data into a couple of overarching conclusions, while also pointing out some observations from Grand Prix Los Angeles.

Live and Die by the Sword (Or Leviathan)

While watching the Pro Tour event a week or so ago, I noticed the sudden excitement Pearl Lake Ancient had been drumming up. It appeared to be a solid choice for win condition that multiple control decks favored. The result was a significant jump in the leviathan’s price:

After spiking to over $6, the card has since retraced its way back down to around $3.50 at TCG Mid. This number is fairly misleading, however, as multiple playsets can be purchased on eBay for a mere $9. I’m fairly certain we are going to see this card drift back down towards its initial $2 preorder price unless it wins a major Standard event.

“Okay”, you say. “Show us a card that spiked and actually did well at the Pro Tour.”

Let’s look at the biggest winner from Pro Tour Khans, Dig Through Time:

Here we see an even larger spike from $2 to over $15 in one weekend. This was truly the break-out card of Standard. But do you see the trend after the weekend passed? Since spiking near $16, the format-defining instant has drifted back towards $10. Once again, we see that selling into the weekend hype or shortly thereafter was the correct play. Those who hesitated were left settling for a lower (though hopefully still profitable) price.

Tell Us Something We Don’t Know

Most experienced speculators already know that selling new cards into hype is the way to maximize profits. After seeing cards shoot for the stars only to settle back down to earth in a matter of days, you begin to become accustomed to this pattern. Of course, selling at the peak is easier said than done.

I managed to move my single set of Dig Through Time in the neighborhood of the peak. But I was not as successful with moving my Pearl Lake Ancients, mostly because one of the two sets I purchased took a full week to arrive in the mail.

Thus my first lesson: if you need to wait for a breaking out, newly printed card to arrive in the mail to sell into hype, you’d better make sure it can get to you quickly. Even a three day delay could be the difference between a 100% profit and a 50% loss.

If I may, I’d like to argue that another card had a breakout performance at the Pro Tour: Temple of Epiphany. I know, this card was already climbing heading into the event. But its recent success in the Jeskai aggro decks has led to greater demand for the mana-fixing land.

In about a week, this land jumped from $7.50 to $12. While the jump wasn’t as significant, there is a very favorable feature to this price curve that isn’t present in the other two shared earlier. There’s no drop! This land is still on the rise, meaning profits you may be sitting on are still growing.

What distinguishes this card from the previous two? Two key characteristics: it’s a land, which means it yields utility beyond the Standard builds that leveraged it most at the Pro Tour, and it’s from Journey Into Nyx.

Being from the third set of the previous block means there are fewer copies around and there are far fewer being opened going forward. Therefore, the demand is rising but the supply is far from liquid enough to keep up. Hence the monotonically rising price.

Contrast this with Mantis Rider, which is arguably just as format-defining. Despite its ubiquity thus far in Standard, the overall trajectory of this creature is negative. More copies are being opened every week. Being a large set rare, supply is really going to put downward pressure on this card’s price. And being in the same set as five highly sought-after Fetch Lands, the price of this card will be even more kept in check.

Here is my second lesson: if you want to buy into spiking cards based on a Pro Tour result, look at moving in on the older cards. They may not yield the same percentage increase, but the pressure to move them quickly will be virtually absent. Newer cards, on the other hand, tend to spike artificially high and then face ongoing downward pressure as more copies are opened. If you are concerned you may not be able to act quickly enough, avoiding trends like Pearl Lake Ancient may be the best decision you can make on a Pro Tour weekend.

By the way, this observation is very applicable to one of the breakout cards from GP LA, Savage Knuckleblade.

To be fair, this article is being written Sunday morning, so I cannot anticipate whether or not this three-drop creature will continue to shine throughout the Grand Prix. But if it does, I can assure you there will be a run on this card. Likely the price trajectory will overshoot reality, and once again a downward trend will resume. If you participated in a buyout of this card, I urge you to sell immediately into any spike. Don’t get left holding the bag.

One More Thing

While not reflected in the SCG Open from last weekend, the Grand Prix yielded new successful deck lists – at least as of day one’s completion. I’m referring to the mothership’s content that claims

Although Siege Rhino and Mantis Rider still left their mark of the day, the biggest stories to come out of Day 1 are the rise of Sultai, Mardu, and Temur decks. All three performed very well over the course of the day, with Pro Tour Hall of Famer Brian Kibler’s Temur deck leading the pack overnight. The other players with perfect records of 9-0 are Peter Ingram, Tamada Ryoichi, Isaac Sears, and Carlo Falcis.

I want to use this statement as an opportunity to remind everyone of one important thing: while the Standard format may appear to be approaching a steady state, it’s far from solved. Therefore, be prepared to see shifts in the metagame. Mantis Rider may be the best card in Standard right now, but this may not be the case in a month. Therefore the urgency of selling into spikes is even more relevant.

I’m even thinking about cashing out on my Temple of Ephiphany investment very soon. I don’t have too many, but the ones I do own are worth considerably more now than they were a couple months ago.

Could they go higher? Certainly. Could they go lower? I’d rephrase that question as “When will they go lower?” because they certainly will eventually.

If U/R continues to be a dominant color pairing through Standard, then it may take a while. But the inevitable fact is Standard rotation will apply downward pressure on all temples. Therefore selling the copies while they are hottest in Standard seems like a solid strategy. They may appreciate further from here, but they could just as easily be replaced by a different temple due to metagame shifts.

This leads me to my third and final lesson for today: it may not be a bad idea to sell your hyped cards, even ones that aren’t as prone to sudden drops, if the Standard metagame is still in flux. This also frees up your cash to take advantage of any potential shifts in the format.

This last statement may be most controversial. Many readers may raise their arms exclaiming how foolish it will be to sell Temple of Epiphany now rather than wait for further upside. They may even be correct. To me it all boils down to risk/reward. At $12, the upside on the U/R temple is much smaller than before. I do think we can hit $15, but there are no guarantees.

The only guarantee is that new decks will be brewed and tested ad nauseam, and one day we may see a shift. You can’t sell the farm and move out of Temple of Epiphany completely while it’s the hottest temple, but don’t forget about the underappreciated Temple of Enlightenment or Temple of Malice. These are out of favor right now, but could easily become top dog should a new deck break out.

My point is, in a format filled with powerful multi-colored cards we are sure to see anything and everything. Each temple will have its chance to shine, and moving out of popular ones while cheaply acquiring a few unpopular ones may be the way to go.

Good luck to you all in this dynamic time period of shifting trends! Be sharp and operate with discipline in order to ensure you are netting profits and not getting stuck holding the bag on cards like Pearl Lake Ancient.

…

Sigbits

• Further evidence that Pearl Lake Ancient is no longer exciting: Star City Games now has 26 copies in stock at just $2.99. They also have 25 Mantis Rider in stock at $7.99. Compare this with last block’s Sylvan Caryatid of which they have 0 regular copies in stock at $19.99!
• You could be holding onto your Dig Through Times after their Pro Tour breakout. They are still out of stock at SCG with a price tag of $11.99. But personally, I find the data on Thoughtseize far more exciting. There are only 14 Theros copies in stock with a price tag of… wait for it… $29.99! By the way, they’re paying $17.50 for nonfoils and $50 for foils. Their nonfoil buy price is significantly higher than those buyers on Trader Tools, just FYI. Talk about a bullish outlook!
• We have a very good measure of the impact of Modern and Legacy on Thoughtseize’s price by comparing it with Hero's Downfall. Both are played heavily in similar decks in Standard. But while SCG is nearly sold out of Theros Thoughtseize at $29.99, they have 40 copies of Hero's Downfall in stock with a modest price tag of $11.99.