Spikes have always been a part of the speculative landscape of Mtg finance, and on MTGO they are even more marked as buying and selling occur instantly. More than any time before, cards are subject to the wildest speculations and the highest spikes as soon as one ounce of potential has been spotted.

Hot cards rising sharply in a matter of hours is not a phenomenon exclusive to Pro Tour and Grand Prix results any more. New cards freshly spoiled, SCG tournament results, Travis Woo's brews and other social media buzzes now also contribute to send prices through the roof.

Dealing with traditional spikes is pretty straight forward--buy as many cards as possible before the price skyrockets, hold on a couple of days and sell after the price has tripled or more. Most of the time you didn't possess or care about that card before, and won't probably care afterward.

Now, one thing that definitely amplifies these trends is the presence of more and more speculators on MTGO contributing to spikes with higher peaks. With more speculators around it also seems to me that more and more regular cards experience spikes. These cards are on regular upward trends, experience a big bump and go back their upward trend. Could this be turned into additional profit?

I often advise that selling into the hype and moving on is a good move. Today I want to explore something slightly different. I'll review several cases where it was advantageous to sell a position you were probably already holding into hype, then buy it back when the dust settled down.

Traditional Spikes

With traditional spikes your only intention is to make money in the short term--the very short term. You want to get in early enough and out as close as possible to the summit. Usually, in a matter of two days or so the deal is sealed. Often enough you had no idea what the card was worth before. All you want is to make a profitable quick flip.

The Mono-Blue Ninja-Bear deck from T. Woo pushed Disrupting Shoal from 1 Tix to more than 10 Tix in two weeks.

Two months ago the newest Modern sensation featured Jeskai Ascendancy and Glittering Wish--the price of the wish multiplied by 15.

The effects of not being reprinted can also have a big impact on prices. With the full list of VMA spoiled, Wasteland gained 30 Tix overnight as a reward for not appearing on that list.

While clearly not on any Standard deck lists, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice and Ral Zarek got a bump that almost doubled their price in two or three days after cards counting green and white devotion were confirmed for Trostani, and cards with the inspired mechanic were spoiled for the blue-red planeswalker. These spikes didn't go anywhere but may have generated you extra Tix.

These are examples of traditional quick flip opportunities that happen frequently enough on MTGO. Significant profit can be made in only several days with pretty much no risk but you have to be there at the right time if you want your part of the cake.

Spikes in an Already Established Upward Trend

There's a trend I have been observing for several months that I think is likely to become more frequent on MTGO. Already-proven good cards on an upward trend are also the target of noticeable spikes--the price is going to rise and drop fairly quickly.

The concerned cards are mainly Standard-playable cards that you may have picked up this summer, when they were cheap and predicted to gain value after rotation. Typically, with such positions, you wait several months for them to reach maturity and sell them in the winter with a very decent profit.

If these spikes occur for the same reasons as the traditional spikes, I feel like they would have been unnoticed or would not have been as strong in the past. The reason? More speculators is the most likely answer to me. This trend led me to seriously consider selling my positions when they spike, with the intention to buy them back when prices come back to normal.

Let's see what I'm talking about with some concrete examples.

Courser of Kruphix

Pro Tour Journey into Nyx clearly established that Courser of Kruphix and Sylvan Caryatid would be format definers in the following Standard season. As it turned out, they weren't so much, but that's beside the point--it's not what everyone thought two months ago.

After its Pro Tour showing, Courser saw a price increase and finally settled down around 6 Tix during VMA realease events this summer--a perfect time to pick up as many playsets as needed of Courser of Kruphix. The speculative opportunity was pretty clear here. Until early September the price trend has been a perfect upward trend, reaching 12 Tix at that point in time.

On the weekend of the announcement of the reprint of the ONS Fetchlands in Khans of Tarkir, Courser jumped from 12 Tix to 17 Tix. The green centaur was promising but 17 Tix for a rare from a second set is definitely a high price--I pulled the trigger and sold all my copies in the hype. I was expecting Courser of Kruphix to maintain its price in the 15-18 price range and I was happy to sell my position three to six months earlier than originally thought.

However, when I saw the sharp decline in price two weeks later I looked at the Courser again as a potential buying position. If you look closer at the average trend you see that Courser of Kruphix was on an upward trend from mid-June (6 Tix) to early November (15 Tix). After the spike triggered by the reprint of the ONS fetchlands, its price when back to 11 Tix, on its previous price trend, still moving upward.

I decided to buy back my copies of Courser of Kruphix at 11.5 Tix since they went back to where they were before the spike. I was able to resume my plans for this card, with the price spike as a benefit in my pocket.

As you see on the graph above, 15 Tix was the top of this trend, hit twice, right after Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir and early last month. The trend has now clearly changed direction and is downward at the moment. For the record I haven't yet sold the copies I bought back in September; 15 Tix is a very decent price for a rare and I probably should have.

Without the spike we had in September I probably would have made the same mistake. But with this sell/buy back move on the spike I have set aside some additional profit for sure.

Courser of Kruphix is the only position I sold and bought back later on, but let's take a look at other recent examples where this strategy should have been applied.

Dack Fayden

Newly printed in Conspiracy and Vintage Masters, Dack Fayden dropped pretty quickly online to the 3-4 Tix range. As a new mythic from a large set and with some potential in Vintage and Legacy, Dack was a good opportunity for the long term. I bought many copies at around 4.5 Tix and I was ready to wait one or two years for this position to mature.

Since July, Dack Fayden was on a nice and slow upward trend. I'm not really sure what triggered it, but in September Dack received a lot of attention and spiked from 8 Tix to 18 Tix in less than a week. At this point in time I had tripled the value of my investment in merely two and a half months, rather than one or two years, and I was left with two options--selling Dack or holding Dack.

What I chose was option #2, holding Dack. I signed up for the long term and I didn't pay much more attention to this bump. I should have sold him, and this bump really was a good spike that I should have taken advantage of.

What if I had opted for option #1? I would have done what I recommend very often--selling into the hype. Even with a long-term investment this advice holds. If Dack Fayden had stayed up high, fine, I was out of this position in less than three months, with a 200% profit ready for rotating cards or Modern positions. Since it was a spike, what Dack Fayden did was to actually come back to the 8-10 Tix price range, back on its previous upward trend.

By selling Dack Fayden at 17-18 Tix I would have taken advantage of this extra profit and I would have given myself the opportunity to buy him back later if the price came back to its previous trend. Since I was ready to ride with Dack for a year or more, buying him back would have been a good move. Instead, I'm still holding my copies of Dack Fayden, without Tix in my pocket.

Battlefield Forge & Shivan Reef

M15 painlands probably were the surest bets last September when M15 rares prices were around their lowest. According to the metagame, all of them were expected to rise and gain value as we approach the winter when they are likely to be at their top.

Thanks to the success of Jeskai decks, Battlefield Forge and Shivan Reef were the first M15 painlands to experience a bump early in November. Because of the hype around these color combinations and also maybe because of the presence of more speculators nowadays, this bump was more like a spike. After this significant price raise (50% or more) the prices didn't maintain at all. Take a look.

Here again, selling your Forges and Reefs into the hype was probably the move. Here again too, these two lands were in an constant upward trend since the end of September and went back to their previous trend after their spike. Buying them back and waiting for this winter could have generated you double profit on one single spec.

Take-Home Message

Spikes are always an opportunity for speculators to generate a significant chunk of profit faster than expected. With spikes now occurring more frequently and more intensely than in the past on cards already on an upward trend, this new pattern of the MTGO economy may as well be an additional source of Tix for whoever pays enough attention to these trends.

The advice to sell into the hype is more than ever applicable, especially if a big drop is now expected after the spike with the opportunity to buy back and to return to the purpose of your initial investment. I'll definitely be paying more attention to spikes involving positions already moving upward.

Thanks for reading,

Sylvain Lehoux