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Another little nugget of fun I found in our reports! Ā This chart for Sphere of Resistance is interesting for 2 reasons.
1) Ā The spike in late February almost immediately corrected itself, but the marginal increase in buy price remained.
2) The buy priceĀ jumped up in the last few days, but almost immediately corrected back down.
These sorts of "sell side first" spikes are fascinating, as I explained in my last post, because they are not based on true demand. Ā I asked the team what they thought, and the only thing that came up was Tiny Leaders. Ā I think TL is a great format, butĀ I doubtĀ it'sĀ pushing enough volumeĀ to move markets overnight; Ā a spike like this appears to be a concerted effort to bet on a hypothesis by an individual or small group.
Once again David Schumann had additional insight:
It's a solid TL spec (especially for Thalia prison style decks). I'm actually surprised it didn't spike earlier when Chalice of the Void did as a way to help inhibit Delver/TC style decks. The massive sudden increase coupled to the fact that the spread is very high implies that it's a buyout as opposed to an actual increase in demand. I wouldn't be surprised if we see it dip back down within a week, though I imagine (similar to the duals) it's "new price" will be about the average of the old and new. I would not be surprised if we start seeing people target low cost reserved list rares with applications in lower tier legacy decks or that fit into TL.
I don’t know what goes through the mind of a person who expects a Sphere of Resistance spike, but doesn’t it just not make sense for sphere to spike without Thorn of Amethyst spiking? Assuming that the demand were real?
Thorn only hits noncreatures while sphere hits everything. I do agree that the two tend to be linked in price though. Winter Orb could also be mentioned as well because they play well together.
TCG Player may have them at $10, but there are plenty of copies available under that mark. In case anyone wants to get in on the spec, here are the current numbers of availability.
Cardshark, Cardkingdom, Coolstuffinc, Toywiz, and amazon all have a couple copies left in stock around $5-6. Mtgfanatic though has over 40 copies at that price point. All the other major sites are out of stock though.
I purchased a couple copies mostly for myself because I think they would be solid in tiny leaders. Sphere of Resistance is on the reserved list though so I doubt its price will ever go down.
Anyone else buying in?
The bitch about Reserved List cards is that artificial spikes can easily “stick” because there is NO downward pressure.
Bet MTGFanatic won’t ship if you order š
Don’t think Sphere of Resistance is on the reserved list š®
mtgfanatic did ship and they still have tons of copies at that price point.
Chaz is correct, Sphere is not reserved.
Toy wiz probably won’t either, and their shipping is like $10
Toywiz is awful, I actually had the “pleasure” of being inside their store a few times in the past. Though I guess NY is notorious for scummy MTG stores.
This isn’t the type of effect that you play to beat creature decks.
It is if those creatures are Elves.
I really don’t think this is Tiny Leaders (it may help), as it is Lands becoming more popular in legacy. People need to dig a little deeper than just see 3CMC and automatically assume it’s Tiny Leaders related.
It’s a SB card in Lands, you can view decklists and 83% of the time see it there. Almost always a 4X.
http://www.mtggoldfish.com/archetype/legacy-lands…
The reason I mentioned tiny leaders is because I want to play the card in that format and I ordered a couple copies for that purpose. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Thalia is already awesome in the format and casting sphere before or after you cast Thalia seems sweet.
I may be way off, but I suspect that a lot of these TL spikes do not reflect real demand from TL players but instead represent speculation hype by people hoping to stock up on things that MIGHT be good IF TL becomes a widespread, popular format.
I’m in full agreement on that. We’ve seen numerous cards spike because their CMC was 3 or less and they MIGHT be good in a few TL decks (or in some cases…really good in one). As I stated…I think this one is a buyout, but I don’t think it’s a bad choice for a spec target.
I’d guess it’s more from Legacy than Tiny Leaders. It’s a solid sideboard card against many archetypes: Storm, UR Delver, Infect, Elves, OmniTell, Dredge – basically anything that either wants to resolve a flurry of cheap spells or cast their spells without mana. I personally play 4x in 12 Post. I believe Lands and MUD play them as well.