Okay, fine. I know we’re not technically two months in, but with Standard finally becoming settled (and healthy at the same time!), this feels like a good time as any to bring out this piece.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for awhile now. There was so much hype when Khans of Tarkir was released (fetches!) that it was hard to tell how much was hype (best draft evar!) and how much was true quality that would last. There were shortages early on, and stores like mine were unable to get enough Khans in to keep up with the demand. I haven’t seen that happen since Magic 2010, and it’s certainly a great sign for any block.

But now the dust has settled, and the real question sinks in. Did any of that matter financially? After all, if it did, we have an analogue the next time something like this happens. If it didn’t, then that’s certainly something worth finding out about as well.

So, let’s do that.

Top-down

Theros released on Sept. 27, 2013, while Khans of Tarkir released on Sept. 26, 2014. This makes it very easy to draw comparisons, and all EV numbers exclude commons.

Let’s dig in.

Theros Peak Booster Pack EV: $5.04 on Oct. 15, 2013.

Khans of Tarkir Peak Booster Pack EV: $5.01 on Oct. 13, 2014.

Okay, first data point down, and already an interesting result. All this data is courtesy of the tools available at MTGStocks.com, and using that we see Theros actually topped out a little higher than Khans did, despite the anecdotes of shortages we saw and all the talk of this being the most impactful Standard Fall set ever.

Today

Theros Booster Pack EV on Nov. 13, 2013: $4.02.

Khans of Tarkir Booster Pack EV on Nov. 13, 2014: $3.54.

Wild.

I have to say, when I started writing this I did not expect the results to come out like this. Theros had some cool concepts, but it had absolutely nothing rivaling the power of Khans of Tarkir in the older formats. This is an incredible difference in light of that.

There’s one more data point I’m interested in before offering some theories as to what we’re seeing reflected in the numbers.

The Future

Lowest EV reached by Theros Booster Packs: July 19, 2014; $2.66

Khans of Tarkir? We’ll see.

We see that Theros dropped 34 percent from where it sat today last year, to where it bottomed out last summer.

If Khans follows the same pattern, Pack EV will be $2.33, or a difference of $12 a box. It also bears mentioning that Theros is, today, up 17 percent, and at its post-rotation peak was up 20 percent.

Data Conclusions

That’s a lot of numbers, I know. But what it pretty clearly tells us is that the “shortages” didn’t affect the numbers at all. Yes, demand was high, but so was supply, as it is with every in-print Standard set. That demand may have been a little delayed by shortages, but in the end supply came through.

So why the heck was Theros, a cool set but no Khans, worth more at this point in time?

Ironically, it may have to do with exactly how popular Khans of Tarkir is. People aren’t busting these packs for a chase mythic or two. There are good mythics and even more good rares. You’re not playing the lottery every time you open pack, hoping for Elspeth or Stormbreath or maybe Thoughtseize; you’re just opening packs because there’s so much good to be found.

Because the crucial data point we’re missing here is amount sold. Sure, Khans prices are lower than Theros right now, but that could very well be because there’s simply so much more being opened. We don’t know, but given the anecdotal evidence and general trendlines of Magic we can assume it’s true.

So what does this mean moving forward? My take is that the unprecedented amount of Khans of Tarkir being opened means that those fetchlands we’ve been talking so much about are going to continue to trend down. They’ve already reached the $12-14 dollar mark I predicted on the set’s release, but our look at Theros suggests they have another 20-30% or so to drop, which would give us sub-$10 fetchlands at least moving into next year.

But there’s another factor at play, the other crucial difference between Khans and Theros.

The latter was opened for a full draft year whereas Khans will be out of rotation in the spring. So that likely lops some numbers off from above, and given that it seems we can more likely expect a drop of 20% set-wide rather than 34%. It also means I don’t expect fetches to drop any more than another 10-15%. If we do see Khans drop as hard as Theros did, it also means the rise come Rotation could be even sharper.

Now, I know this is a lot of conjecture given the future based off some numbers, but this is the work and thought process I go through when formulating an opinion about the coming year in Magic finance.

Am I totally off-base here? Are my projections missing the mark? What do you think?

Thanks for reading,

Corbin Hosler

@Chosler88 on Twitter