I used to avoid foil cards like the plague, but I’ve since learned better. One big reason is that I don’t actually enjoy playing with them in my tournament decks. They are thicker than other cards and have a tendency to warp when they get played, which often leads to them feeling discernible or marked in my deck.

I’m pretty picky about the cards I actually play with (art, edition, etc.) and foils just are not my thing. However, I’m in the minority and the majority of players actually enjoy playing with and collecting foils for their decks. Collecting is a big part of playing Magic. People seek out unique or premium versions of the cards they like as a way of personalizing their decks.

Since I didn’t really care about foil cards for my decks I have traditionally tended to write them off as something that I simply wasn’t interested in. There is already kind of a consensus opinion that trading for and collecting "Standard staple" foils tends to be a pretty bad EV play because they tank in value really hard when they rotate out.

When these cards were in Standard, premium copies were really, really pricey but since they rotated and are not major players in eternal formats their value has really flatlined.

The thing is that the actual non-foil versions of this type of card also plummeted in similar fashion. It isn’t really a function of Standard foils being bad investments but rather Standard cards that don’t translate to something else after rotation. It really has very little to do with foils being specifically bad and much more to do with bad cards being bad.

Keep in mind that the conversation today is based specifically on unknown commodity foils from new sets and not about already established high-end foils like Tarmogoyf. I will be discussing some trends I've discovered (admittedly through experience and mostly by accident) that have led me to turning a nice profit on new foils without even intending to.

Buying In Early By Accident

I’ve taken a much larger interest in foil cards in the past year or so purely by coincidence.

I have a pet format that I really enjoy playing called The Danger Room. Basically, it's kind of like a cube except you big-deck-battle with it instead of drafting it. I put a lot of thought into the cards that I include in my stack (like all good cube builders do!) and I eventually decided to start foiling it out three or four years ago.

For the most part my stack isn’t like super expensive cards or anything (or so I thought at the time) and the overall power level of the cards in my stack was slated for cards that would be in a very good draft deck. No Umezawa's Jitte or Pack Rat type stuff that wins the game all by itself.

So, I started picking up cool foils that I liked to play with and whenever a new set would come out. One thing that I noticed over the course of several sets was that the foils I was buying were really hitting as speculation targets despite the fact that I was just buying them to have and not as investments.

Here are the foils that I added to my Danger Room from Dragons of Tarkir: Atarka's Command, Collected Company, Deathmist Raptor, Den Protector, Dragon Hunter, Dromoka's Command, Hidden Dragonslayer, Kolaghan's Command, Roast, Stratus Dancer and Zurgo Bellstriker.

Here are the foils that I added to my stack from Fate Reforged: Ethereal Ambush, Flamewake Phoenix, Gurmag Angler, Neutralizing Blast, Soulfire Grand Master, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Valorous Stance, Whisperwood Elemental and Wild Slash.

And lastly, Khans of Tarkir: Abzan Charm, Ashcloud Phoenix, Become Immense, Bloodsoaked Champion, Crackling Doom, End Hostilities, Grim Haruspex, Hooded Hydra, Hooting Mandrills, Hordeling Outburst, Icefeather Aven, Jeskai Charm, Mantis Rider, Mardu Charm, Monastery Swiftspear, Murderous Cut, Ponyback Brigade, Savage Knuckleblade, Seeker of the Way, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, Siege Rhino, Sultai Charm, Temur Ascendancy, Temur Charm and Utter End.

As you can see I’ve picked up quite a few foils for my stack over the past year but if you consider the starting foil prices on these cards I’ve done quite well as an investment. As a rough estimate I’m probably up about 30% in value overall which is pretty impressive when you consider that I wasn’t actually doing this as an investment!

For instance, I’ve lost money on a few cards like Soulfire Grand Master and Ashcloud Phoenix which were overhyped at the start and have since gone down in value. However, when I bought these it was more of a YOLO moment where I knew I was going to lose on the deal in the long term--but simply wanted the card to play with. I would never look at unproven, high-out-of-the-gate-priced mythics as good speculation targets unless I suspected that it was going to be a format-dominating card.

One of the interesting things that I’ve noticed from buying foils for my Danger Room stack is that unless a card is specifically hyped as a "the next big thing," places tend to hedge and price foil versions conservatively from the start. One thing that is interesting with Magic sets the past year or so is that Wizards has really made an effort to have lots of different things all be good at the same time.

Understanding Value in the Context of the Metagame

The current Standard has a ton of different decks and the metagame shifts wildly from week to week depending upon what did well the previous weekend. This opens up the opportunity for lots of different cards to be good over the course of the Standard season.

Standard has always been about "decks" and synergy as opposed to eternal formats in which there are more strategies that just play all the best cards. Not to say that that Eternal decks don’t have synergy (because they obviously do) but there are typically so many good cards that already exist that we don’t need to dip into the dregs to fill out decks and sideboards.

My point is that in Standard there are lots of opportunities for cards to become the flavor of the month at some point and see a spike. Obviously, you’ve got to get out of these cards at the right time. Raptor and Protector are clearly not going to be lighting Modern on fire anytime soon but if I wanted to I could certainly sell these cards for a lot more than I bought them for right when the set came out.

Picking cards from this vantage point actually makes a lot of sense to me. It is kind of bizarre that I never thought of it on my own and only realized it by watching the same trends happen over and over when my Danger Room cards kept spiking. Once I noticed the trend, it made a ton of sense why the cards I want to put in my cube keep going up.

The reason is that when I look at a spoiler and decide which cards I want to add to my stack I’m primarily looking for cards that I think are "good," "fun," and "flexible" in some abstract sense. The fact of the matter is that I’m just looking for plain-old-good cards removed from any kind of metagame context.

When cards go up for preorder or you are trading for cards at the prerelease or release weekend there is no context to define how much play one card will see over another. The established decks take a while to assert themselves so it is almost impossible to say which cards are going to be awesome and which cards are going to be cards without a country.

Hero of Bladehold is an insanely awesome Magic card that would have been great--except it failed the Jace test. Sometimes it can be really hard to predict a "sure thing" with regard to Standard cards and foils. Which is why I have never like speculating on the "it" card or hyped foils.

O.K. so I listed the cards from Khans block that I’ve picked up for my stack but now imagine that I’ve been doing that for like five years and have all the foils from all of those sets as well. Since this is for a cube I have the added bonus of "it doesn’t matter if it fails because I actually want it regardless." So, everything is always going to be a hold and not a sell.

The thing is that a lot of the random foils from these older sets have gotten noticeably more expensive. Seemingly random commons and uncommons that happen to be good in Modern or Legacy can command a very pricey tag.

It keeps happening to me that random cards in my stack spike up in value.

The first time I read the M14 Spoiler and saw Young Pyromancer I knew that it was one of those good cards I wanted for my cube. I had no idea that it would ultimately be a powerhouse eternal card, or that Treasure Cruise would push the card to the brink of insanity in Modern. I just knew that for the cost it had a potent and unique ability.

I got my foil Pyromancer for $5 in trade at the M2014 prerelease and have hung onto it ever since. New printings made the card much better but the thing is that there are certain kinds of cards (good, unique, interesting cards) that really lend themselves to benefiting from other good new printings. Good and great cards make other good and great cards better when played together.

Context is everything. There is no such thing as cards that are just good in a vacuum. Cards live and exist inside of decks and in concert with other cards.

Food for thought:

Grizzly Bears are a fine Magic card and I'm often pretty happy to play with them in my draft decks. They are certainly a more useful card than lots of other things that have been printed in the history of the game.

But what about this one:

Well, our bears are not looking so great in comparison to the Skylasher here. The card has the exact same stats as the bear except it has multiple other useful abilities.

And then there's this fine gentleman:

Tarmogoyf is similar to these cards in the sense that it is a creature that costs 1G. However, Tarmogoyf has a different ability that changes its base power and toughness depending upon the different card types present in all graveyards. If you asked anybody which of these three are the "best" card I don't think you'd be surprised to hear everybody agreeing that Goyf was king.

However, I will say that I had a couple nice GP finishes last year playing Naya Hexproof in Standard where my sideboard all-star was certainly Skylasher. Given that deck and the synergies that it had and the angles in which it needed help I can honestly say that I would not have played Tarmogoyf in that deck at all and certainly wouldn't have been willing to trade my Lashers for Goyfs given the option.

How good a card is in tournament play is directly related to how good it is in your deck. The general idea of "how good is a card" in the abstract is something different.

Putting It All Together

All great decks are built from good cards. Sure, Deceiver Exarch may not be the greatest value for a 3cc creature in the entire world but the synergy with Splinter Twin makes us all forget about his shortcomings. Sometimes seemingly mediocre cards can have synergies that make fantastic decks.

I wouldn't play either of these cards in a draft deck! However, they create a synergy that is extremely powerful even by Legacy standards!

The key to the strategy I'm advocating for speculative buying of new set foils is to look for cards that appear generally "good," in the sense that there is a high likelihood it finds a synergistic home in Standard or beyond.

The key to identifying "good" cards and "good" foils right off the bat is to think about cards in terms of whether or not you would actually be interested in playing with them. Is it a card that you’d actually want in your deck or not?

The initial price of many of these foils will tend to be low because there is not yet context to establish if the cards will actually be played or not in the future. Using the line of thinking that I've put forward we are essentially jumping the gun and betting on the fact that the cards will find a home and thus will go up in value in the future.

We've all been around the block playing this Magic game and the best way to get ahead of the curve on investing is to trust your own gut and get a jump on everybody else by trusting your instincts. If you see the card Siege Rhino or Dig Through Time on the spoiler and they look completely insane to you why wait around to make sure it's good before investing in foil ones?

My rule of thumb is that if a foil version of a new card is less that $8-10 and I think the card is a genuinely good Magic card, I'm typically pretty happy to trade for it. Most times, even if it goes down it will be only slightly, if at all, and the trend seems to be that these are exactly the types of cards that go up.

Trade for the good cards before everybody is completely 100% certain where they will see play. Who would have guessed this strategy would be solid?