Grand Prix: Yokohama was this past weekend, attended by over 1,500 players battling for prizes and glory. Importantly, they did battle with Modern decks, which is good for Insiders. Modern is popular enough on the tournament level to drive prices and many of the cards in the set are old enough that it’s hard to track them down. They get expensive or hard to find. Ergo, it’s a good field to get action on, especially because many of the lower-tier decks still have good money rares in them that you can trade into. This week, we’ll look at the Grand Prix results and analyze them for Modern play and speculation.

As I write this, there are 167 of 249 M13 cards spoiled, and that’s over half the set. Base sets rarely have brainbustingly-intense rares in them (Baneslayer excepted), but there’s enough to get excited about at this point. There’s also enough to be honest about in terms of holding off on purchasing. There will be much more M13 discussion in the coming weeks leading up to release, and this is an early edition with thoughts on what we have seen so far

There’s a lot to Magic that’s worth cash beyond just the cards themselves. There are promotional items, oversized cards, optional expansions and more. While you and I don’t chase these things down most of the time, there are collectors who want these items and they’re willing to pay some serious cash for them.

There’s the old adage that “a fool and his money are soon parted,” but there’s often a different factor at work with scammers preying on Magic players, and it’s as old as the confidence game itself. Since so much money changes hands in Magic, the market attracts scammers, just like most other markets. The biggest arena that I see this in is in auction collections on eBay. I’ve been drawn in before, as have many other people, and this week, I’ll share how you can both avoid scams and profitably look for collections on eBay.

I’ve often wondered whether there was any difference between selling hot cards as singles instead of playsets on Ebay. This question gets more complicated when we think about why people are buying cards. Since you only need one of a card for Commander, you might be unlikely to pay more for extra copies you won’t use. If you need a playset, you might pay a premium so that you don’t have to round up the cards from different buyers and wait for all of them in the mail. I sat down and ran the numbers this week on several cards, demanded in different markets, for a good analysis on what you should do.

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Don’t want to prune through Twitter updates all day for Pro Tour Avacyn Restored tech? Here’s the one page you need. We will be continuously updating this page with stories of savage beats, wild unsubstantiated rumors, worthwhile recaps and more. Our Insider subscribers also get access to our realtime email blasts with trade ideas and tips!

I’m back again this week, scouring event results for more Modern speculation calls for your trading profit. Why should you care about Modern? Even if you don’t play, there is a lot of official support for the format. The Pro Tour for Avacyn Restored features Modern, as do several Grands Prix this year. Modern events fire almost every day on Magic Online, which brings us a steady feed of information. No doubt, pros are looking at these same results and compiling the best decks to bring to the Pro Tour. We’ve seen double-digit price changes during Pro Tours and I don’t think Modern events are any different. It’s the perfect time for breakout cards to shine. Let’s take a look at a few that I’ve identified early in the lead-up.

I love doing my financial recaps of older sets where I mine the expensive cards, but going back further is a little harder in two ways. First, there are just so few good cards in older sets. Second, the good ones don’t often turn over, so it’s hard to establish prices. Luckily, Mirage Block was the first “modern” block and it brought in some great spells that wizards still sling today. Let’s take a walk through time as we re-acquaint ourselves with the block. Below is a list of some of the choice picks from the block; I left out the cards worth under two dollars, leaving only the prime cards on the list. There are some cards in here that I guarantee will surprise you.

In the stock market, penny stocks are cheap, probably-junk securities that you get on the hope that they move up a few cents and show you a profit. They’re an alluring strategy in the stock market because you can get a big volume of them. For one share of Apple, you could score well over 5,000 shares of a junk medical-science company that may be on the verge of a huge patent. If your shares go up, they go UP. We look at penny stocks in Magic the same way; these are the gambits that you stock up on with hopes of big payoffs.

Wizards announced three more Modern Grands Prix this year, bringing the schedule to two American GPs, a Euro GP and a Canadian GP so close that I’d imagine plenty of players are hunting for their passports. Modern is a ripe field for speculation and it’s a great time to be stocking up on some hot cards for the format. This week, we’re going to take a look at what you should pick up, what you should hold off on, and what the Modern metagame will shape up to. You’re also going to get some Insider-only tech that could pay off in a big way.