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Welcome back to High Stakes MTGO!
This past week marked for me the beginning of the buying and selling waves related to the incoming rotation of Standard.
The rotation of Standard is always a crucial time for MTGO speculators with the option buy a basket of singles, a few targeted positions, foils or full sets. With so many buying opportunities this is also a good time to review and maybe sell well-performing positions in order to reinvest in positions with a better growth potential.
The buying targets won’t only be from Battle for Zendikar (BFZ) and Oath of the Gatewatch (OGW) but also from the sets rotating out of Standard---Khans of Tarkir (KTK) and Fate Reforged (FRF). After prices have dropped significantly, full sets or singles from sets rotating out of Standard have proven to be a very safe investment with moderate returns in only a few months.
In my case the sales I focused on, and will keep focusing on, are singles from the Legendary Cube (PZ1) prize set along with a few Modern positions.
The vast majority of my PZ1 positions have recorded a gain of 40-100% over the past four months. I don’t think they can outperform BFZ or OGW cards in the coming months so I’m going to take my profits on one part of my portfolio and reinvest them in another part.
Here is the link to last snapshot of my portfolio.
Buys This Week
In my first round of BFZ singles, unsurprisingly, I’m betting on lands. Cycles of rare lands are the easiest and most consistent tix makers you can find. They most likely won’t see prices multiplied by 10 but many of them have good chances to see their price double or triple from what I paid for them.
Actually, you could say that their price has already doubled for some since a month or two ago. I’m certainly a little bit late to the party but I'd rather be late than not here at all. Prices surged a bit after the Shadows over Innistrad (SOI) rare lands were announced. They are now back down and I’m certainly going to try to go for another round and buy the lands I haven’t yet in BFZ as well as OGW.
I also intend to buy other singles, rares and mythics. For BFZ I think prices won’t get lower and can actually only go higher as new interactions or synergies are found with cards from SOI. OGW cards on the other hand may still have some room to lower their price. For a small set opened twice as much as any other small sets before, the price of a full set of OGW is still amazingly high.
This is nothing else but a random bulk spec. Champions of Kamigawa flashback drafts are done and lowered the price of that legendary land to the ground. I think this card has a unique enough effect that it may deserve a spike sometimes in the future if conditions align. I can’t really lose anything here and the reward, although hypothetical, can be very high.
Sales This Week
The price of these unique boosters was getting really high compared to the price I paid to acquire them. It was time to let part of my stock go, which may have directly or indirectly caused the price of these boosters to drop from 3 tix to 2.6 tix last week.
Legendary Cube returns this week but the Legendary Cube Prize packs won't be awarded. I would then expect the PZ1 packs to resume their slow upward trend.
However this is a reminder that the PZ1 packs can return any time, which would certainly cause their price to decline more permanently and dramatically. I'm likely to sell the rest of stockpile very soon especially if buying prices return to the neighborhood of 2.7-2.8 tix.
Following a fluctuating upward trend initiated last December, Phantasmal Image crossed the 3 tix bar about a week ago. The spread on this card has always been large but this time around I had the opportunity to liquidate my copies at ~2.5 tix, a little bit higher than my target price, so no reason to skip this sale.
This is the illustration of what I was saying in the introduction of this article. I'm in the process of moving out most, if not all, of my PZ1 singles. All of them have shown positive results and I want to exit now in order to reinvest in buying opportunities linked to the incoming Standard rotation.
I don't think these guys can safely grow by 50% or more in the next three to six months, unlike the positions I'm about to buy. The Legendrary Cube singles or prize pack specs turned out to be extremely successful with, at this very moment, all positions yielding profits.
On My Radar
To elaborate on what I said in the introduction, my goal in the next two to three weeks is to buy more BFZ singles and OGW singles and full sets. Unless you have a lot of time to dedicate to MTGO investments, full sets should be your bread and butter. They provide solid and predictable returns on large quantities of tix.
I'm also planing on buying singles and full sets of KTK and FRF. The fetchlands alone are a guarantee of value for KTK and a few mythics such as Anafenza, the Foremost and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon could see nice gains in the coming months.
Saleswise, I will flip all of my PZ1 positions very soon and convert the tix generated this way into the positions mentioned above.
Thank you for reading,
Sylvain
Hey Sylvain, Great article. When do you think the sell period for the BFZ lands will be? Will it be right around the pro tour, the week or 2 following the pro tour, or later in the standard season?
Hi PJ, I can tell you from my own personal experience, I would wait until BFZ shows a lot of gains as a whole set. This will probably happen after the next PT or the one after if I had to guess. (Usually the sweet spot between far enough away from rotation and far enough away from when it was last being heavily drafted) Of course, if any of them see a ton of play, say for example there are 4 canopy vistas in two different top tier decks, then its a great time to sell regardless of any other factors. Hope this helps!
I would expect it to be farily variable, from very early to very late, to never.
Lands really fluctate according to the metagame and new sets + rotation (which will happen a lot now).
This being said spikes tend to be more robust in Standard compared to Modern so you could wait a little bit to see what happens after a potential PT spike. But in the end it really depends if the PT metagame pans out or not (which is not very often the case).
My target is more a price target than a time target. Based on other sets with rares and lands, it’s not that easy to sustain a 5+ Tix value. So I’ll be strongly considering selling after doubling, and I’ll be happy with that. I may not just happen with all lands at once and I’m ready to wait 6 months if needed.
Hi Sylvain, great article as usual. What kind of returns are you expecting on the KTK full sets and fetches? I haven’t dabbled much in post-rotation specs. thanks!
Thanks!
With KTK full sets, as with any other full sets in my opinion, you should not really expect more than +30-40% It can be more but it also may just be a small +20%.
Other post rotation set valus usally fluctuate in this range. With the one I did recently, JOU sets did amazing with +60%, THS was ok until wotc announced they stop redemption, so it was a loss, BNG is currentl up by ~10-15% and M15 is up by ~20%. RTR and GTC did great after rotation also.
As rare, and even as good as they are, you not really expect the fetch to do more than double. And I would expect them to fluctuate frequently, similarly to RTR shocklands which were always up and down, fluctuating by +100% / -50% at most.
Hey Sylvain, great article as always. What is the plan for BFZ and OGW lands? Do you think they will see a spike on the hype up to the pro tour, and then dip back down after wards? Or do you expect more of a slow rise throughout the season?
They might be a little bit more stable than just a spike and then nothing. However the PT should certainly affect some of them strongly.
I would think that 5-6 Tix is a good upper limit to start with for these lands and I would certainly considering selling them around this range.
As the metagame evolves some lands will be more or less demand so selling them anytime they are in demand is what I would recommend, as opposed to wait for more demand. Some of these lands might stay flat or even decrease if no action is seen at the PT, but they won’t be massively opened so the price should not too low (a return to ~1 Tix is possible for BFZ lands for instance).
I’m also ready to hold on to these lands for several months. We’ll have new sets and another Standard rotation in September with still the BFZ/OGW lands in the mix, they may spike here too.