MTG Salvation

A few things about the market before getting to the values and analysis. Sets in Standard follow a standard pattern in terms of value, in that they start out high during the prerelease and the first week or two of its release. Some cards spike during the first Star City Games Open Series, the first tournament that is Standard-legal and showcases several pros' work at breaking the set. Then comes the Pro Tour if it is Standard, which shows the results of the many of the best players in Magic deciding on the best. Both of these tournaments will rise certain cards, and the rest of the set will lower due to three factors. Magic: the Gathering Online set redemptions, Limited play, and product being opened for non-limited play. The market gets flooded and prices go down. This continues until a few weeks after the next set starts this cycle, and then the previous set starts rising in value and continue until the a few weeks before the set starts to rotate when only cards that see play in non-rotating formats will drop in value. This means the best time to invest is after the Pro Tour, but before the next set comes out. The worst times are at the beginning and end of its time in Standard and when the set stops being played in Limited.

Another aspect is always invest in dual lands as soon as possible. Having a good manabase will always serve a player better than having the "best" card in the set. Invest in dual lands, then desired cards, and then speculation. Also, when speculating, realize that demand is more important than profit margin. Having 200 copies of a card that spikes is not immediate value, as one has to unload that value. Stores will only buy so many of a card that spikes. Lastly, if a card spikes, that is not a sign that one should immediately buy in. Sometimes the card is a flash in the pan and crashes in value. Look at a card and determine if the card has both potential to be playable and rise. 

With that, it is time to discuss the price changes and what to look at. 

Okay,, the Standard market is in a bad state.  Outside of the green Eldrazi Ramp deck and the black-based Aristocrats deck, there has not been a major shift in the meta. The dominant decks of last Standard are the dominate deck of new standard in Red Aggro, Esper Dragons, Abzan, and (Dark) Jeskai. In these decks, there is little that changed outside the mana base. Coupled with the Zendikar Expeditions gimmick, this has produced one of the worst Magic markets. On the surface, with six different tournament winning decks, this should be a good diverse market, but instead it is full of a bunch of low value staples, which is not entirely bad for players, and very expensive staples, which is. This is mostly due to the low power of Battle for Zendikar and the sheer volume of it opened. Oath of the Gatewatch is going to need to be full of good cards at every level to raise the value of the market. 

Ghostfire Blade (1.31): There could be some interesting cards in Oath of the Gatewatch that will play with this card. 

Anafenza, the Foremost (7.89): This card is strong, but it will not be good outside of Standard.  Get it only if there is a desire to play Abzan in Standard.