I've been planning on getting one more box of MM17 to draft. With these spoilers for Iconic masters coming out I wonder if I should save my money for this instead? Basically I'm wondering if Iconic will have such an incredible EV on the box that my money might be better spent on that.
Lines of reasoning:
I play Modern, and many people I know play modern, so anything from MM17 will on average be easier to trade away. I'll also be more likely to have a card that I can immediately use.
Iconic does look like it has some very expensive cards at rare and mythic. Thran Dynamo, Mishra's Bauble and lightning helix at uncommon doesn't hurt either. On the other hand, it looks like Iconic masters might have more of it's value concentrated in fewer, but more expensive cards. This may mean you'd really have to get lucky in order to "get your value back" out of a draft.
What do you think? Will Iconic be more bang for your buck from a monetary aspect compared to MM17? I'm assuming price for MM17 to be $220 and iconic to be $200-220 if one is patient enough and watches the market.
MM17 for sure. Iconic has some very expensive cards right now, but really only a handful of them, and half of them are gonna get KILLED. The FS lands and Mana Drain are gonna plummet, they are held up almost exclusively by a total lack of supply. I don't see being able to pull $100 out of them on average by Christmas. MM17 has all kinds of great value, and many of these cards will climb until another printing. Thefetches in particular are chugging to where they were before, and you get 2-3 a box
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MM17 for sure. Iconic has some very expensive cards right now, but really only a handful of them, and half of them are gonna get KILLED. The FS lands and Mana Drain are gonna plummet, they are held up almost exclusively by a total lack of supply. I don't see being able to pull $100 out of them on average by Christmas. MM17 has all kinds of great value, and many of these cards will climb until another printing. The fetches in particular are chugging to where they were before, and you get 2-3 a box
When in doubt, follow the lands. Everybody needs a good manabase, so buy in to the product that lets you fix it. The fetchlands in MM3 are already bouncing back (and making me slightly regret trading mine away). Nothing in IMA looks like it'll hold value long-term. Melkor is correct - most of the value in IMA is due to scarcity of the original printings.
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I did an EV calculation at todays prices as of the like 10th of September. Then a box would be worth an outstanding 370 on average BEFORE foils. 50ish uncommons, 243! rares and 74 in mythics. Now i think the mythics are overall pretty weak. I assumed mana drain at 150... maybe it ends up half that? Still any box with mana drain is CERTAINLY going to be profitable for a few months if not always. After that its a ton of EDH stuff much of which only has 1 printing. NPH and Future sight sets weren't printed that much... both 3rd sets i believe? If damnation is any sign the prices of big name cards could drop by 50%. I do think that this is going to destroy the price on many of these cards.. but my guess is for 1-2 weeks at release just opening packs will be profitable. But certainly all the non modern staples will go down by near half on economics alone. Visions, Canopy, Thoughtseize, Vial and such should hold 70-80% of their value due to being modern staples. But what do i know.
I did an EV calculation at todays prices as of the like 10th of September. Then a box would be worth an outstanding 370 on average BEFORE foils. 50ish uncommons, 243! rares and 74 in mythics. Now i think the mythics are overall pretty weak. I assumed mana drain at 150... maybe it ends up half that? Still any box with mana drain is CERTAINLY going to be profitable for a few months if not always. After that its a ton of EDH stuff much of which only has 1 printing. NPH and Future sight sets weren't printed that much... both 3rd sets i believe? If damnation is any sign the prices of big name cards could drop by 50%. I do think that this is going to destroy the price on many of these cards.. but my guess is for 1-2 weeks at release just opening packs will be profitable. But certainly all the non modern staples will go down by near half on economics alone. Visions, Canopy, Thoughtseize, Vial and such should hold 70-80% of their value due to being modern staples. But what do i know.
Mana Drain is certainly a powerful card, but since it's legal in only two formats (Vintage and EDH), it's not really going to maintain its price the way Force of Will (a nigh-automatic 4x in Legacy) did. While there is certainly unmet demand for the card, there will be significant additional supply on the market. Look at Karakas, another Legends uncommon that became a Masters set mythic. Karakas is banned in EDH, but it's a Legacy staple. It went from $150 to $70 after the reprint - that's cut in half. IMA Drain is now available for $112 shipped at TCGPlayer, and that's only with the few copies from Hascon in circulation.
As far as Visions, Canopy, Thoughtseize, and Vial maintaining prices because they're Modern staples, it's certainly possible. I wouldn't bet on Canopy, since part of what's propping up its price is that it only has one printing in an under-opened third set. The rest have seen several reprints, so this set will introduce relatively less additional supply, so there's less room to crash.
Nonfoil EDH stuff will always crash with a reprint. Stuff like Auriok Championand Wilt-Leaf Liege that's played in Modern but doesn't qualify as a staple, will crash. Commons and uncommons will crash. Hard. HasCon was last weekend, so people are still digesting the spoiler.
OP, here's a question for you. Are you thinking that you might be getting (and drafting) this box on opening weekend? And, if you do so, will you immediately try to offload cards that do not go straight into one of your decks? Because if you're not willing to do that (and Urza knows, I'm not), then looking at prices before the market settles is really an exercise in futility.
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Karakas is banned in EDH, but it's a Legacy staple. It went from $150 to $70 after the reprint - that's cut in half.
... and it can be had for <$40 with some searching.
Don't underestimate the scarcity aspect of IMA. I was so stoked when Berserk was reprinted in Conspiracy 2, and thought I was making out like a bandit picking them up for $20 a piece. It's falling below $10, and I doubt it'll ever get back to $20 again. Looking at EMA, box value was so volatile for the first few weeks and a lot of people got screwed paying north of $250 a box when it eventually settled at $170ish and began to move slowly upwards from there. It seems to me that the MM releases tend to be way less volatile than our sample size of 1 for the 'eternal' sets. I don't know if this pre-prerelease will help mitigate the heavy fluctuation and stabilize the secondary market faster...
Man, I'm starting to sound like Rudy! This is terrible.
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Lines of reasoning:
I play Modern, and many people I know play modern, so anything from MM17 will on average be easier to trade away. I'll also be more likely to have a card that I can immediately use.
Iconic does look like it has some very expensive cards at rare and mythic. Thran Dynamo, Mishra's Bauble and lightning helix at uncommon doesn't hurt either. On the other hand, it looks like Iconic masters might have more of it's value concentrated in fewer, but more expensive cards. This may mean you'd really have to get lucky in order to "get your value back" out of a draft.
What do you think? Will Iconic be more bang for your buck from a monetary aspect compared to MM17? I'm assuming price for MM17 to be $220 and iconic to be $200-220 if one is patient enough and watches the market.
When in doubt, follow the lands. Everybody needs a good manabase, so buy in to the product that lets you fix it. The fetchlands in MM3 are already bouncing back (and making me slightly regret trading mine away). Nothing in IMA looks like it'll hold value long-term. Melkor is correct - most of the value in IMA is due to scarcity of the original printings.
Mana Drain is certainly a powerful card, but since it's legal in only two formats (Vintage and EDH), it's not really going to maintain its price the way Force of Will (a nigh-automatic 4x in Legacy) did. While there is certainly unmet demand for the card, there will be significant additional supply on the market. Look at Karakas, another Legends uncommon that became a Masters set mythic. Karakas is banned in EDH, but it's a Legacy staple. It went from $150 to $70 after the reprint - that's cut in half. IMA Drain is now available for $112 shipped at TCGPlayer, and that's only with the few copies from Hascon in circulation.
As far as Visions, Canopy, Thoughtseize, and Vial maintaining prices because they're Modern staples, it's certainly possible. I wouldn't bet on Canopy, since part of what's propping up its price is that it only has one printing in an under-opened third set. The rest have seen several reprints, so this set will introduce relatively less additional supply, so there's less room to crash.
Nonfoil EDH stuff will always crash with a reprint. Stuff like Auriok Championand Wilt-Leaf Liege that's played in Modern but doesn't qualify as a staple, will crash. Commons and uncommons will crash. Hard. HasCon was last weekend, so people are still digesting the spoiler.
OP, here's a question for you. Are you thinking that you might be getting (and drafting) this box on opening weekend? And, if you do so, will you immediately try to offload cards that do not go straight into one of your decks? Because if you're not willing to do that (and Urza knows, I'm not), then looking at prices before the market settles is really an exercise in futility.
... and it can be had for <$40 with some searching.
Don't underestimate the scarcity aspect of IMA. I was so stoked when Berserk was reprinted in Conspiracy 2, and thought I was making out like a bandit picking them up for $20 a piece. It's falling below $10, and I doubt it'll ever get back to $20 again. Looking at EMA, box value was so volatile for the first few weeks and a lot of people got screwed paying north of $250 a box when it eventually settled at $170ish and began to move slowly upwards from there. It seems to me that the MM releases tend to be way less volatile than our sample size of 1 for the 'eternal' sets. I don't know if this pre-prerelease will help mitigate the heavy fluctuation and stabilize the secondary market faster...
Man, I'm starting to sound like Rudy! This is terrible.