Ambition's Cost Pt. 3: Cheapest Available Printing

In the first two installments of Ambition's Cost, I explored the tool I am using to compare format prices and then analyzed the same price data for patterns. I uncovereed the relative price of lands in each of these format's best decks and discovered that in Standard, Modern, and Legacy, the price of non-basic lands are 35 to 55 percent of the average competitive deck's total cost. In Vintage, where lands make up 10-15 percent of a deck's cost, lands still account for nearly $2,000 of the average competitive deck's total price.

Cheapest Available Printing (CAP)

The Cheapest Available Printing or CAP is simply the least expensive version of a card that is available. A format staple is a card that can be found in multiple deck archetypes. Often these are lands, but they can also be other cards like Tarmogoyf. Format staples tend to be expensive, because they are in high demand due to their inclusion in multiple competitive decks. Many of the format staples have been printed a few different times either through a standard set or in a supplemental product like Modern Masters, duel decks, or a special promo.

Elspeth, Knight Errant has been printed six times. Its CAP is from the Duel Deck: Elspeth vs. Tezzeret, at $14.05. The most expensive printing is the Modern Masters promo foil at $49.99, more than three times the price of the CAP. Budget-conscious deck builders would prefer to use the CAP, and having affordable CAP prices lowers the price barrier to entry into any given format. It is also important to point out that having an affordable CAP does not mean that all copies of a card are affordable. Some printings become more valuable due to the art, foil, or rarity. These are things that are important to collectors, but are not necessarily that important to a player looking to get into a format with a competitive deck.

Affordable CAPs Mean Healthier Format

Having affordable CAP prices for staples is very important for the health of a format. I am in agreement with Wizards on promoting Standard to be the most played format. It is ever-changing, with cards entering at a fast clip, while other cards rotate out. Pro tours featuring Standard are exciting, because there are always new decks that appear resulting from professionally-tested, new interactions. Modern, Legacy, and Vintage suffer from too much stability in their card pools. Cards from new sets rarely make significant dents in them. However, these formats all play differently and each is fun in its own right. Unfortunately, for many Magic players, all formats outside of Standard are well out of range for their budgets,

In order to keep the player base of non-rotating formats healthy, format staples must stay affordable. $200 for a CAP Tarmogoyf, one of the most widely played creatures in Modern, is unacceptable. $100 or more for a CAP dual land, which are ubiquitous in Legacy and Vintage, is also unacceptable. Price adjustments are needed to improve the health of these formats, otherwise they will likely die out. Vintage and Legacy are already most of the way dead. They are rarely played at stores with actual cards. There are few events for these formats and those few events are orders of magnitude smaller than Modern and Standard events. These are signs that these formats are dying. I don't want them to go away, and to save them drastic measures must be taken.

Reprinting Does Not Necessarily Mean Instant Price Reduction

Reprinting old cards is contentious because of their current prices. There are a lot of unknowns, and collectors expect the Reserve List to protect their investments in old expensive cards. When expensive cards are reprinted, we expect their prices to drop because economics tells us that increasing supply drives prices down, but that is not always the case. Format staples used in multiple deck archetypes have price benefits from modest reprintings. We can look at Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant before and after Modern Masters was printed just before M14.

Tarmogoyf - Future Sight (7/2013, $141 vs. $143 - MMA)

Dark Confidant - Ravnica: City of Guilds (7/2013, $77 vs. $74 - MMA)

Looking at the price lines between Modern Masters and M14, you can clearly see fast movement upward. This should be somewhat surprising considering more copies of each card were entering the market. What we sometimes fail to notice is that opportunities like this often get new players interested in a format, increasing demand. In these cases, we can think about a Standard player who jumps into a modern Masters draft, opens a Tarmogoyf, enjoys playing with the other cards in the format and decides to make a Modern deck. Now that player needs to buy three more Tarmogoyfs to complete their new deck. The price of Tarmogoyf ends up climbing because more decks are being built with a need for Tarmogoyf than new Goyfs are being opened. In the case of Goyf, that price continued to climb and rests at approximately $200 today. Dark Confidant, after the initial climb after Modern Masters was printed, has seen a drop in price over time because new cards made him less desirable in the decks he was being played. Either way, both staples presented collectors and financiers a window to make some cash off the staples they had collected because new players entered the format.

The same thing would happen for Legacy and Vintage staples were they to be reprinted in similar fashion. In the final installment of Ambition's Cost, I will explore the actions I think Wizards should take to revive Vintage and Legacy while at the same time giving collectors a chance to make money off their staples should they choose to do so.