The History of MTG Finance
What doesn’t grow, dies. What dies (used to) grow the
The Standard Era 1993-2011
I started playing Magic in October of 2008.
In those days MTG Finance was simple - all you had to do was buy power and duals and wait fifteen years. If you wanted to make money more quickly with Magic finance, there was a simple formula as well. Most cards that held value were those that were Standard-playable and reprints were few and far between. Aside from Standard cards, cards that were playable in a given Pro Tour Qualifying format would be expensive during that season only. Back then, you could reasonably make a profit by buying cards for a given format just before the PTQ season started and selling them during that given season. Standard was predictable and consistently a driver of prices for cards, until a few months before rotation. Prior to its rotation, I traded two Tarmogoyfs for a
During this time, if you stayed up to date with meta knowledge, you could buy cards for Block Format (RIP) before the season began and sell them at a profit when the season was underway. Extended (good riddance) was the closest thing we had to a pioneer or modern, but offered the option of buying cards cheaply at the end of one Extended season and holding them until the start of the next season. This predictable ebb and flow ended in 2011 with the birth of Modern.
The “Modern” Era 2011-2012
At its inception, Tarmogoyf quickly became one of the faces of the Modern format. It was efficient and the mascot for Jund, one of the format’s most iconic decks. In 2011, Legacy was less expensive to get into than Modern is today, but with its inception people saw Modern as a non-rotating format that they could invest in one deck and stop needing to lose money buying Standard cards that would rotate.
The early days of Modern saw multiple decks that would get cards placed on the Modern ban list. The entirety of the first Modern Pro Tour Top 8 included at least one card that would later be banned. Zoo was the most popular deck in the format and Tarmogoyf was quickly raised to a $100 card. Shocklands and
During this time, card prices were based on playability instead of Reserve List status as reprints were still relatively scarce, since they were still regulated by Standard. Cards needed to be safe for the Standard format in order to be reprinted. That would change shortly.
Card prices would still follow the PTQ season, with the exception of Modern. Modern was seen as the affordable eternal format, meaning people saw it as a safe long-term investment. Standard would see its first exodus of players during this time in favor of Modern. Some players would build Modern decks and be happy that they would only need to buy cards as particular cards from their deck changed as most strategies would be playable for years at a time.
This era also saw a shift in how people would buy cards, with an increase in the online Magic market. Sites like TCGPlayer would become more popular, giving players more options to purchase cards than their local game store or Starcity Games. This ease of access and increased competition helped better regulate the price of cards. While it didn’t necessarily make cards more affordable, it did create a market that was more in tune with supply and demand of actual cards.
The Masters Era 2012-2018
If the Masters Era had a face, it would once again be Tarmogoyf. This era saw seven Masters sets, and Tarmogoyf was reprinted in four of them. This period started when
The reprints of cards would make singles more affordable, for a time, but did little to decrease the overall affordability of Modern. As each reprint set came, the cards needed for a particular deck that didn’t see reprints would increase in price. This meant that if you wanted to build a deck that was $500 before a Masters set, because of the other cards increasing in price that were not reprinted the total cost of the deck would remain $500. As the stock of reprint sets depleted, the total cost of the deck would start to increase again, as those reprinted cards were no longer in a heavy supply. During this period, the safest way to protect yourself from reprints was to build decks. This would mean that if a single card from your deck was reprinted the increase from the rest of your deck would make up for the loss. At this time, you could also make money by buying cards that weren’t reprinted in a set, before the set’s release, therefore buying them before the price increase.
This era also saw another major change in how people bought and sold cards. Many people were cutting out stores altogether and buying and selling cards directly to each other across the world through various Facebook buy-and-sell groups. Groups like MTG Sick Deals were founded, allowing people to buy and sell cards with greater ease. MTG Sick Deals was started in 2021 by James Keenan who frequented my local FNM. He wasn’t a bad player, but he was also not a pro level player. He was an average guy with an interest in Magic: the Gathering who saw an opportunity to buy and sell cards for his personal use without overpaying or losing large sums of money selling his cards. Today, it’s his primary source of income, and using groups like his is the primary way many of us buy and sell cards today.
The Commander Era 2018-Now
The changes following the Masters Era were not limited to power creep. During this time we also saw the end of the Pro Tour, a massive shift in the economy, and a pandemic. People were no longer incentivized to invest over a thousand dollars into a Modern deck or any money into a Standard deck. Regulated play was reserved to Magic Online during the pandemic, meaning there was no reason to own paper cards - with two exceptions. Reserve List cards would boom in price at the start of the pandemic, mostly tied to the increase in the price of cryptocurrency, combined with the additional discretionary income players had at the time. People saw owning these cards as an investment. The other exception was Commander. While Commander had been a popular format before the pandemic, it became the strongest driver in physical card prices during the pandemic. This is in part because people felt comfortable playing Commander with the same specific people week after week in someone’s home with the closing of the play area in most game stores. The other driver was MTGO having a terrible Commander interface. While some people like playing Commander on MTGO, most find it to be a very painful experience. This led to players playing via webcam on sites like Spelltable. To do so, players would need physical cards that they didn’t really need to play online.
We also saw a shift in Magic design to be more Commander-focused. Every set would have more legendary creatures than the last. Like the Modern Era before it, reprints usually meant that other cards would go up in price, except now, staple reprints like
This era has also seen a number of shifts in how we buy cards. Whatnot has allowed players to make selling cards into a game show. Another major change is that trading is almost nonexistent. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone bring a trade binder to an event. I think this change is due to a combination of changing demographic of players and the ease at which players can just buy and sell their own cards without having to give such a massive portion to a store.
And our friend the Tarmogoyf? A two mana 5/6 vanilla creature is borderline unplayable in Commander. In today’s meta, Tarmogoyf is nearly unplayable in every format. Thankfully,
Thank you for stopping by again. Next month we’ll return to our normal Safe Bets. With Modern Horizons 3 around the corner there will be a number of cards that spike or drop in price day to day with each preview. Once the set is fully previewed, I’ll be better able to read the future of stable MTG investments.
Further Reading:
Three Cards Spiking Because of Modern Horizons 3
Checking in with The Big Score
