MTG Salvation

There's a widely and often repeated mantra that buying packs of cards is ineffective and inefficient and uneconomical.

But what of preorders for an entire set?

What's an arguably good standard price to purchase any set before release?

What's a good price to pre-order Shadows Over Innistrad?

I can't speak to the specific prices for this set (especially as much of the set is still unknown) but from previous sets I can say that buying full sets is rarely a winning bargain. You are paying for the convenience and certainty of having every card immediately and not playing the pack opening lottery. You will also end up getting a bunch of cards you won't need (all the vanilla/limited cards).

If you want to be economical your best bet is to buy just the singles you need... and not buy into the pre-release hype. If you are savy enough to pick up on some underrated cards and pre-order them, then great... but the majority of the time you are better waiting until MTGO redemptions hit and buying in then. Most cards will be near their bottom at that point.

This is all assuming you don't need the cards to play with quickly and you are going for the economical route.

I think it is typically a bad idea. There is just so much of a given set that going to be absolute chaff--regardless of the set. If you are really set on owning a complete set (heh), you will eventually be able to find sealed sets a few months after release from MTGO redemptions. You'll have a better idea of what you are getting as well AND that will likely be a relatively low point in the price of the set.

Well I remember buying an entire set of the original zendikar set (no mythics) x4 when it first came out for $400. Just the 20 fetches itself made my money back.

Your best bet, if you are willing to be patient, is to wait until the magic online set redemption sets hit and flood the paper magic market, as that's often when prices on cards from the set (and complete sets themselves) drop in price considerably. However, in general, its often best to stick with buying just the singles/playsets from the set that you need for decks and such. Personally I've always avoided preordering (or even preselling for that matter) anything, as I find that while there may be a few cards that may go up after the set is released, most of the cards will drop in value once people figure out what is good and what isn't, and once supply gets to a point where it exceeds general demand at the normally inflated pre-sales prices.

Unless you have some major tournaments, which actually have a good chance to have decent returns (like a PT, or in the good old days nationals) preordering full sets is not too cost efficient, but there are some corner cases where it might be a decent idea. I did it few times, getting 4x full sets, but only when I didn't know what I would be playing and making certain that buying the key cards I had noted seperately would be more expensive than getting sets.

As for the other tip, getting your full sets after waiting until redemption sets are flooding the market, or even buying the cards online and redeeming them yourself, is a good one. I've picked lot of cheapish foil sets up over the years. Six months ago I got a redeemed Origins foil set and my some of my best buys include New Phyrexia foil sets... So I can recommend this if you can wait few months before after the set comes out, so the set price has time to drop to the bottom.

So depending on your situation, it might be, under some conditions (big money events on the release week or the next AND you have a strong chance of doing well), reasonable to preorder full sets, but then you need to know that you are paying 150$ more per set than you would be paying in two months. So getting 4x sets will have to gain you about 400$ EV. Also make certain you buy from a trustworthy seller, who can actually deliver the goods in reasonable time frame, as nothing sucks more than getting the cards three weeks late and having to scratch decks together without the 1k you have paid for the preorders.

On MCM (Only availlable to people living in EU) a preorder for SOI costs you 163 euros per set. Both BFZ and Oathjust 296 full sets are availlable at 99 euros, so for four sets it's just 256 euros for getting the cards ASAP. But naturally there's a smallis chance for the set to be worth more than the 99 euros, for example Dragons is currently worth 179 euros, and Khans is 122 euros. So if you had purchased Dragons sets at 163 euros per set, you would actually be making some money. That also means that dealers propably should be cracking Dragons cases and the price would come back down. Notice that this is the EU case. The market in US is completely different beast as the preorder prices are pretty high compared to MCM prices, where the competition is pretty intense sometimes.