Wizards of the Coast deciding to reprint popular Modern staples via the Modern Masters printings is a pretty significant game changer for collectors and speculators. The most important precedent set is that Wizards is not going to allow the prices for Modern staples to get completely out of hand in the same manner that the reserve list has affected the prices of Legacy staples like dual lands.

Instead, we know that Modern will be a format where if the price of any card or group of cards gets too outrageous that we as players and collectors can actually expect that card to see a reprinting in order to get it into the hands of players.

This makes investing in Modern cards a really tricky situation because we know that if we ever invest 'too wisely,' reprints will eventually knock our profits back down to Earth. So, the trick with Modern is to always buy low but then to sell sooner rather than later since once a card gets 'too high' it is likely to be reprinted and thus go back down in price.

One last little factoid that I'd like to throw out before focusing on the cards I'm investing in now is that the full Modern Masters spoiler is up.

I know that the print run for Modern Masters 2015 is believed to be significantly higher than the first printing, which we might assume will affect the prices of reprinted cards more drastically than the first Modern Masters. However, I am taking this claim with a grain of salt, mostly due to my belief that a much lower percentage of the product of the second printing will be opened than the first printing.

It seems pretty clear to me that the absolute best thing one could have done with their first printing of Modern Masters was simply to hold onto it as sealed product. The going price for MMA booster packs is around $25.00 per, which if you bought sealed boxes at MSRP is a tremendous profit. It was way better value to buy sealed product and hold onto it. I think that many savvy investors are going to see how well that plan worked out the first time around and aim to repeat it.

So, while the print run may be larger, the fact that a lesser percentage of the product is likely to be opened should keep the effects and trends of price changes very similar to the first go-round.

With that being said I'm going to focus on some of the most glaring cards that were not included in MMII and explain how I anticipate it will affect card prices in the short term. Keep in mind that I stress "short term" because there will always be more Modern-related reprints so nothing is ever going to be a 'safe hold forever' kind of investment.

Uncommonly Good Commons and Uncommons

Editor's note: since this article went to print, Serum Visions has been announced as an FNM promo, which explains its absence from MMA2015. This does not, of course preclude another possible printing as suggested below.

The absolute most glaring card that ought to have been reprinted in MMII but wasn't is (in my opinion) Serum Visions. The card is already one of the most important and most played cards in the format and is essentially a $10 common. Modern Masters II seemed like the perfect opportunity to reprint this card as an uncommon and get more copies into the hands of players and cap the price a little bit.

However, for whatever reason it wasn't and I expect the price of this card to increase by 50-100% in the short term. People are basically just waiting to see what is or isn't in the set and then for the cards that didn't get put in to see a brisk increase.

However, I'm going to be selling all of my extra copies of Serum Visions as soon as the price spikes in the next few weeks and here is why: it is simply too fishy not to reprint the card for Modern in a Modern Masters release. The only thing that makes sense to me is that we are going to see a reprinting of Serum Vision as an easy way to push a Modern Event Deck, possibly U/R Delver, at some point in the next six months.

A U/R Delver deck seems very similar in terms of the type of good commons and uncommons to the B/W Tokens deck. Think about it: Delver of Secrets, Young Pyromancer, Lightning Bolt, and of course Serum Visions all in one deck.

I could also see Serum Visions as the type of card they could reprint in Standard in a release like Magic Origins over the summer. So, while I think the hype for the card will initially cause it to balloon up in the short term I think that holding the card will be risky business.

I was also surprised that Young Pyromancer didn't find its way into this set. The card is widely played in both Modern and Legacy and really has the ability to break out as a truly expensive uncommon. It only saw print in one core set and core sets tend to get opened far less than block expansions.

A U/R Delver event deck could help this problem but in the short term I think we'll see a rise in price on this powerful two-drop creature. I've been stocking up on the card since it was in Standard and I'm looking forward to getting paid off in the next couple of months.

I was really surprised not to see Gitaxian Probe included in MMII as it is one of the most broken cards in the format. It may not be the "most powerful" but what it does is uniquely unfair (drawing a card and playing a spell for no mana) and it is a card that because of its uniqueness is only going to get better as people find better ways to abuse it.

I would not be surprised to see this card hit a $10 price tag at some point in the future so long as it doesn't get reprinted. I also think that this is very specifically not the kind of card that would be put into a core set like MTG Origins nor is it a particularly interesting Commander reprint, and so it being reprinted at any point in the next two years would hinge directly upon a U/R Delver Modern event deck.

Speaking of drawing cards and playing spells for no mana... Mishra's Bauble is also kind of an interesting no-reprint in this set as this Coldsnap uncommon has already spiked up close to $10. I feel like this one is a little bit more forgivable because they might not have considered how big of an impact the delve creatures like Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler would affect the Modern metagame.

I really like Mishra's Bauble as a potential card to pick up because first of all it is from an under-opened set and second of all it is much less likely to be reprinted than some of the more staple cantrips.

Rancor is an absolutely fantastic Magic card. From the perspective of somebody who manages inventory for a card shop, I can assure you that you'd be shocked by the pure volume of Rancors that a game store sells.

Not only do the casual guys and girls put this card into like every deck they make but it is also featured in two of the best decks in Modern: Infect and Bogles. Interestingly enough the card also didn't make it into MMII which I think is very good for people who speculated on it.

Another thing worth noting is that Noble Hierarch and Daybreak Coronet both did get reprinted in Modern Masters 2015, which are the most prohibitive expensive cards in the two respective decks where Rancor gets played. If the price of Hierarch and Coronet comes down it stands to reason that more people will be looking to pick up Rancor in the future.

Give Me Lots of Land Destruction

While Modern Masters 2015 may have given us a very notable land destruction spell in Fulminator Mage many of the most potent land kill is stunningly absent from the set.

One of the big things that makes Modern unique from Standard is the fact that "old style," messed up land destruction spells are legal. For instance, think about a card like Blood Moon which is also absent from MMII (and a great prospective target right now) and how different that card feels than spells that have been printed in the past six or seven years.

The completely-wreck-you hateful land destruction is an important aspect of how Modern works and I'm surprised to see these cards not reprinted this time around as they are already quite expensive. It actually makes me wonder if there is some sort of a "ban-watch" going on for the abusive Mana-hosers at the DCI. That is purely speculative, but it is very strange to me that the land destruction spells didn't see a reprint. I guess it is also theoretically possible that Boil is not the most fun card for Modern Masters Limited...

Nonetheless, whatever the reason that these spells didn't make it into the set makes them fantastic speculative candidates.

Choke is basically one of the hottest Modern cards right now and has been picking up a lot of steam in terms of value. I think the fact that it is not in MMII likely shoots this card over the $10 mark in a hurry. It has been over a year since the last time I didn't pull out a Choke from somebody's trade binder and I expect that the card is really primed to gain value.

The biggest thing working against Choke is that blue control decks are not really at their best at the moment. However, if something changes and they become a little bit better the space for growth on this single also increases greatly.

Tectonic Edge has seen some reprints but it is also a really important card in Modern. It is incidental land destruction that can go into a wide variety of control and midrange decks and also double as hard removal against decks with manlands.

In my opinion, Edge is easily one of the best utility lands in the format and I'd expect that the fact that it didn't make it into MMII can only cause it to gain some value in the future.

Here is a card that most people don't know too much about but it is a really unique and quite powerful spell. I like it as a way to deal with Lingering Souls and Young Pyromancer, and it's a pretty decent sideboard spell against both Tron and Affinity.

The card has very little value right now but is old and from Ravnica, and if it sees some play somewhere down the line the price has a lot of room to grow.

Karn Liberated, Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, and Eye of Ugin all saw a reprint in Modern Masters II and the upcoming set is heavily implied to have an Eldrazi theme going on...

Seems like Tron in Modern really benefits from this chain of events and Sowing Salt is easily the most devastating sideboard card against that deck. Yet another example of a screwed up sideboard card from an era where R&D still believed that spells that made it so your opponents couldn't cast spells were fun and fair.

The far reaching effects of Modern Masters II are going to be large, sweeping, and impossible to predict completely. However, this kind of volatile environment is exactly where speculators and prospectors like us are able to really thrive and make bank by trading for cards that are likely to grow. I love commons and uncommons as cards to invest in because they typically start very low and thus have tons of room to grow.

Commons and uncommons also typically are cards with a ton of utility that see a ton of play. If you look at the cards I propose as potential investments in this article, they are all cards that see a lot of play in a variety of different archetypes.

I'm really looking forward to Modern Masters II and getting a chance to draft it at my local game shop. I'm also looking forward to making some solid trades and attacking the market from the bottom right on up!