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Financial
The New Power in Magic – the Legacy Dilemma
As a financial columnist, it’s my job to cover breaking news as it relates to card prices. It’s easy to just say “oh look, an expensive card” and issue a buy/sell/hold rating like so many stock watch pages. In some cases, that type of analysis is appropriate and helpful. In other situations, such as the one in which we find ourselves presently, a more in-depth analysis is required.
To what situation am I referring?
Well, if you keep up on the prices of older card, you’ll know exactly what I mean. If you don’t, well, check this out. Tarmogoyf has done what no mainstream card has done in recent history. At least one major site has raised their asking price to the $100 mark. It’s hard to say how many other sites might list it at $100. Most of them haven’t even got any. This sort of pricing and scarcity have not been seen since the days of Legends, home to such staples as Mana Drain and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
Does it seem odd to mention Tarmogoyf in the company of those two cards? How about when I tell you that Force of Will is now selling for $50 on some sites? We’re finally seeing a phenomenon I predicted in the summer of 2009. It’s been brought on by a massive interest spike in the Legacy format directly correlated to the Star City Games 5K series. Legacy used to be a niche format, but by dramatically increasing the EV for playing the format, interest has swelled.
What we’ve got here is New Power. Magic is an ever-evolving game, and the original power is so far removed from the lives of everyday players. There was a time in the game where most players could recall playing with Moxes and Lotuses and Ancestral Recalls. That time has long since passed. The vast majority of Magic players have probably never seen Power outside of a dealer’s display case. That’s why New Power is coming to the forefront.
Magic players are very much creatures of habit. While many will complain at length about expensive cards, elite rares have a certain draw, much like that of the lottery. Everyone complains about Baneslayer Angel and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, but boxes of M10 and Worldwake still fly off the shelves. Don’t believe me about Worldwake? Try calling any top-level distributor to set up a new account and get some Worldwake booster boxes. Then call me when you’re sick of having people laugh in your ear so I can soothe your aching aural canals with “I told you so.”
There’s no doubt in my mind that Tarmogoyf is essentially Power at this juncture. Force of Will belongs in the same category. The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale as well. As Legacy becomes more and more relevant in 2010, we’ll see the format begin to congeal and some “best decks” will certainly rise to prevalence. The life-cycle of the Magic rare is very strange. Cards lose a great deal of value when they rotate from Standard, but if they start seeing play in Extended, they can start pushing their old limits.
Tarmogoyf is an especially amazing card due to the sheer number of precedents it’s set. When was the last time a card was $50 in Standard? Clearly, Baneslayer and Jace are following the the footsteps of giant green zombie-monsters, or whatever the hell a Lhurgoyf is. Ask the Swedish. “Lhurgoyf” sounds Scandinavian to me. A card as dominant as ‘Goyf probably deserved a $50 price tag, but the amazing part is that it’s even MORE expensive now that it’s gone from the format.
Read that again.
Tarmogoyf has doubled in price since it left Standard. When, in the history of the game, has that ever happened? We’re at a point now where card availability is actually an issue. Some cards simply do not exist in quantities necessary to satisfy the demands of the player base. Force, Tabernacle and Goyf are all in this category. The staggering thing about Tabernacle is that it’s only used as a singleton. Imagine if it was used as a quad. The implications of this price creep are complex and intertwined. Legacy is still a nascent format, and one with much room to grow. As new strategies are found and more of the game’s most dedicated and talented minds realize the raw growth potential in the format, don’t be surprised to see more specialty cards like Entomb rise from obscurity to $30+ overnight.
2010 is going to be a very interesting year, and it’s already been a profitable one for speculators who keep an eye on the format. For my part, I’ll be doing my best to stay on top of Legacy and to grow with it. It’s a massive amount of cards to keep in one’s head, but it’s my job as a Magic journalist to do so. I’d been saying that Tarmogoyf would hit $100 in 2010, but I wasn’t planning on being right so soon. I’ll close out this week by saying this: Tarmogoyf is one of the first, not one of the last, to make such an unprecedented rise. Keep your eyes and wallets open, since there are going to be a lot of opportunities.
Kelly Reid, editor of financial news site http://www.quietspeculation.com, has been playing Magic the Gathering since 1994. With 15 years experience in the game, his goal is to teach others to fund their gaming through proactive speculation and intelligent trading.| Useful Author Links | Last 4 posts |
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I feel pretty lucky to have picked up my Goyfs and Forces at the beginning of year for $50 and $25 respectively (thanks wife a truly fantastic birthday present).
But mana drain now looks further and further out of reach. Breaking into a format has never been more difficult.
You’re thinking what I’ve been thinking: soon there’s going to be a new “Power 9″ in Magic. So far you’ve got Tabernacle, Force of Will and Goyf (it depends if Baneslayer or New Jace will go along these lines in different formats).
It’s amazing that one day we might complain about Magic being too many players. It’s because of all these newer players that all of these prices are spiraling out of control (Remember, Price = Supply + Demand). If Wizards aren’t printing enough for the newer players who want the cards, then the price goes up. Of course, this goes for the number of people now interested in Legacy due to a series of tournaments.
Yes, printing more cards in currently printed sets will help bring down prices (See Fallen Empires as an example). But that doesn’t help for out-or-print sets. How do we fix that? Something to Ponder (still only a $1. For now)
The interest in legacy, as you stated, surely increased the price of the card, but don’t forget that it also is used in the Extended season which is underway. This is a format where the card WILL rotate. This will lead to a drop in price. Calling this card new power while it is still using some of its draw in non-eternal formats to fuel it’s price seems premature. Will it be in this JV team of new power? Most likely, but if we are using prices and it’s use in multiple decks to determine this we should wait to pass judgment. Currently we can say that it is used in a great many number of decks, so it passes that test, but I’m unsure it will be maintaining price wise come rotation. There will be some amount of decline, and I’m curious what it will be.
While force of will is a second-string power 9 card I agree with, tabernacle just doesn’t fit the bill. The power 9 see extensive play, and I would posit that most eternal decks are running 4-5 pieces of power now. Tabernacle doesn’t see that kind of play in legacy. It is merely an expensive card in legacy, not a multi-deck wonder phenomenon.
I also am skeptical of using the prices of the most expensive supplier as a means of determining the value of the card, which it seems like you are doing. I can still find them at $60 of that value consistently. Since you do state that you do plan to try and play the card market, it’s hard for one not to consider briefly that you or someone else was hoping to profit off of this article.
If you plan to question my motives, please doso openly and don’t make a thinly veiled attempt to do so. I know of no one who would question my integrity, despite the fact that I could ostensibly pump and dump to my heart’s content, and the market reaction would basically render my predictions “correct”. There’s a reason I don’t do that, and choose to instead MISS calls. It’s called ethics, and it’s something my momma taught me. It’s not negotiable nor is it questionable.
FULL DISCLOSURE: My store, Dragons Den, owns FIVE Tarmogoyfs, not like, 200. We stock 0 Tabernacles and 0 Forces of Will (although I do keep one set aside for my personal collection). And no, I’m not in the pocket of CFB, SCG, CoolStuff, or any other dealer beyond the compensation I receive for producing content for them. Now that we’ve cleared up that crap –
I am not suggesting that $100 Goyfs should exist, or that they should go higher. I’m just reporting on the facts. CFB has theirs at 100. Star City has theirs at 90. You CAN find them elsewhere, but the larger dealers are what we’d call “market makers” in the financial industry. They move such quantity that they can, to a reasonable degree, dictate the price of the most in-demand commodities.
The point of this piece was to draw attenton to the MASSIVE effect Legacy is having on older card prices. Tarmogoyf is, as you may have read, a “perfect storm” card. The fact is, we’ve got years until it leaves Extended, by which point even more Legacy players will have joined in the fray. IT’s a “keeper” card, which means that people amass play-sets and DO NOT SELL THEM. This is pretty awful for the game, especially if the flagship aggressive creature of a format is $100+. The price might well die down after the PTQ season, but just the fact that it’s reaching such new highs in the same era that Force of Will starts seeing $50 carries with it tremendous implications for the game of Magic long-term.
We have to figure out where it’ll stop, because this kind of inflation is NOT good for the game. Tarmogoyf was the first card to set the precedent, and Baneslayer Angel and Jace TMS have followed suit. I think Mythic rares are horrible for the secondary market, but I cannot deny that they sell packs like no other. That’s a piece for another day.
I’m sorry you considered it a veiled accusation, as I didn’t intend it to allude to anything more than what I had stated. I state that it was briefly considered. Note I didn’t say that I concluded you were a calculating and unethical person trying to sway the masses through your readership. If I thought that, I would state that. Cool your jets, man.
Thanks for your response in regards to the “market makers” idea, since I feel that that was more at the heart of what I wanted to know with that last bit: Why use $100 card prices when they are far from the norm? I was skeptical/confused why you used that number, and you gave me the answer.
I liked the article and the idea of a 2nd string Power 9(that might not have 9 cards yet) starting due to legacy’s rise in popularity, I know I have recently started getting interested in legacy.
I don’t think Jordy was accusing you of ‘Pump and Dump’ing. He was saying that accounting Goyfs price jump to Legacy is incorrect. Yes it probably did jump due to some demand for Legacy but Goyf is a powerhouse in Extended with more and more decks running him. And now that we are in the middle of the Extended PTQ season it most likely had more of an impact on Goyf’s price than any demand that Legacy is putting out.
I find Kelly’s article correct. Whether or not its healthy for the format is subject to what lens you choose to view Magic. As the format evolves and more players begin enter Legacy, a top tier of cards will emerge. Most Legacy players who where playing prior to recent level of attention that Legacy has received have known about the cards to have in the format.
If one is looking for investment opportunities in Legacy, I would take the analysis from Kelly’s article and combine it with the reality of what the supply is in the status quo. As counterintuitive as it may seem, there are a lot of mono color decks that match up well with the top tier decks. Fish, Burn, Dragonstompy, Stax, Dredge (LED or LEDless) are among some the better decks in the format and don’t require investment beyond $500 (with the possible exception of Stax). Tech and niche cards such as Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void, Back to Basics, Engineered Explosives are all great investment opportunities. Additionally, I would suggest that the more play testing and creativity added the format will create some new staples. Additionally, as with most formats, there will be the decks to beat and then there will be the responses to those decks that approach the meta game in an alternative and unconventional way with outside the box cards. Dragonstompy & Merfolk are the perfect examples.
Tarmogoyf has been a force in Extended for quite some time now, so I’m not buying that argument right now. He’s only really used in Zoo decks, which have been popular for at least a year. We had an Extended PTQ season last Winter too. Goyf was not $100. The only rational explanation is Legacy. I’m game to hear other arguments but at this point, it seems clear why it’s rocketing up in price.
As someone influential in the MTG financial markets, as silly as it sounds, I have to be very wary of being labeled unethical or having my ethics questioned in any way. My entire body of work is predicated upon my ability to judge these trends on their own merit, without bias towards my own finances. As such, I’m very conscientious about maintaining a reputation of honesty :) Hope you guys can appreciate that.
Its totally understandable that you need to be wary.
I wasn’t playing Extended last time it rolled around for a PTQ so I can’t comment on his price now vs back then but he is ran in more than just Zoo. Right now the only one I can think of off the top of my head is RG Scapeshift and sometimes in the SB of Dredge. Also factor in that Zoo is the most played archetype (since there are quite a few different Zoos).
I agree Legacy is effecting Goyfs price, by a decent amount too, but I believe (and could be totally wrong, I don’t run a website about Magic) that Extended has more of a tug on its price than Legacy. Once the Extended PTQ season is over then Legacy will dictat Goyf’s price (and God I hope it isn’t too much)
Enjoying the discussion BTW.
I don’t see the price of Goyf dropping as a result of the Extended happenings. Even as the season comes to a close or in the future when the set leaves extended, I don’t foresee there being a large drop off in the prices. The justification is based on other staples in the Legacy format that have left extended and the resulting price changes that have occurred. Polluted Delta is a perfect example of this. During the last part of its tenure in Extended, it was priced at roughly $20. Post rotation, it dropped to its lowest price at $16. Since the announcement of the 5K’s the price has gone up to $18.5 and is trending up. The difference with Goyf is that now people know it will retain its value post rotation so there is no incentive to sell it off. In fact, as Kelly suggested, there is only an incentive to keep them since the price is climbing (I believe the term was “Keeper” or something). At any rate, the prices of those cards like the fetchlands that have rotated out will likely only continue to rise.
At worst, the recent influx of interest in Legacy and the staples associated with it makes it completely unpredictable to guess about what will happen
Kelly, what Legacy cards do you recommend picking up for short or long term gain?