I posted this question in the Commander thread a few days ago, but nobody's responded, so I'll ask again to a slightly broader audience.
What, exactly, happened with the Crucible of Worlds invention? I was checking out the Magic Market Index and noticed that it went up over $50 in the last couple weeks. There are only 5 left on TCGPlayer, and a handful on eBay. No other printings are seeing anywhere near that level of spike - the pack foils and judge foil are pretty stagnant.
Why is that invention (and only that invention) skyrocketing?
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I posted this question in the Commander thread a few days ago, but nobody's responded, so I'll ask again to a slightly broader audience.
What, exactly, happened with the Crucible of Worlds invention? I was checking out the Magic Market Index and noticed that it went up over $50 in the last couple weeks. There are only 5 left on TCGPlayer, and a handful on eBay. No other printings are seeing anywhere near that level of spike - the pack foils and judge foil are pretty stagnant.
Why is that invention (and only that invention) skyrocketing?
I saw your question but I don't have an answer. It does look really slick though. Really don't know why it spiked. I'm curious as well.
I saw your question but I don't have an answer. It does look really slick though. Really don't know why it spiked. I'm curious as well.
It's gorgeous - one of the best-looking inventions, hands-down. That said, I'd expect that to cause demand to run hot out of the gate, not to swell it suddenly six months after the set released.
I can speculate two reasons, neither of which are in any way based on facts.
1) Chris Rahn is appearing at a convention/high profile tourney/event, and people want the most beautiful card he's done lately so that he can sign it for them. Few enough exist relative to the number of fans that they were able to dry up the supply.
2) People saw that KLD packs weren't going to be opened anymore, and decided that they should stock up on Inventions now, starting with the one they like the best.
Both just wild theories, with no grounding in data, but it's literally all that I can think of. I'd love to hear either some data that can prove.disprove my outlandish ideas, or other people's wild guesses.
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Saw the original post, but I have nothing constructive to reply with. Both of those explanations seem equally (un)likely, but I honestly have nothing better. I'm not aware of any format where Crucible play has suddenly jumped, any articles pushing it, or any other factors to drive the price.
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Could be a buy out. But at the same time it could simply be a person or two starting to see an upward trend in the price and deciding to pull the trigger on getting what they wanted and causing others to then react and getting what they want and suddenly a bunch of one card like that which is relatively scarce can get sold and cause a price jump. At any one time, there are often hundreds or thousands of people sitting on the sidelines looking to buy specific cards, waiting for either the right time, the money, or otherwise to go in to make their purchases. People tend to underestimate this when factoring in sudden spikes or depletion in supply when people start to finally get off of the sidelines and make their purchases, causing yet more people to do the same, not wanting to miss out on a decent price for what they were eventually planning to buy, and it can just sort of snowball from there. Sometimes it may only take one or two people buying a playset of something to get the ball rolling.
I guess we will see what happens with the card in the future.
Sometimes it may only take one or two people buying a playset of something to get the ball rolling.
If it were a buyout, I'd expect it to target a bluefetch or a manarock - one of the top expeditions/inventions. Not that Crucible of Worlds wasn't up there, but it wasn't the top card ... until suddenly it was.
If it was a buyout, I'm very afraid that it was someone testing the waters on a softer card - it's got mostly casual demand, as opposed to the blue fetches that are ubiquitous in both Modern and Legacy, or literally the first card put into every EDH deck. It's easier for me to see higher prices sticking on those cards because of the huge demand. On the other hand, if it was just a cascade of people who legitimately wanted the card - that means that there's room for pretty much any Masterpiece to spike like this if there are enough shy Trump voters people waiting on the sidelines who decide to jump in at the same time.
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Sometimes it may only take one or two people buying a playset of something to get the ball rolling.
If it were a buyout, I'd expect it to target a bluefetch or a manarock - one of the top expeditions/inventions. Not that Crucible of Worlds wasn't up there, but it wasn't the top card ... until suddenly it was.
If it was a buyout, I'm very afraid that it was someone testing the waters on a softer card - it's got mostly casual demand, as opposed to the blue fetches that are ubiquitous in both Modern and Legacy, or literally the first card put into every EDH deck. It's easier for me to see higher prices sticking on those cards because of the huge demand. On the other hand, if it was just a cascade of people who legitimately wanted the card - that means that there's room for pretty much any Masterpiece to spike like this if there are enough shy Trump voters people waiting on the sidelines who decide to jump in at the same time.
From my experience running a shop for 6 years and generally observing magic players buying habits over the last 15 years, I can honestly say that for a lot of people there are many expensive cards on their lists that they tend to hold off buying in order to get other things they need (or pay rent/bills usually...) but when money becomes available (especially around tax time) many of those people suddenly have the resources to get some of the stuff they have been holding off getting and depending upon the general scarcity of the card, this can cause a tax-time spike in some cards. However, given that we are in mid/late may, I'd say we're more or less past that period of time, so in this case the second part of this comes into play.
People who hold off buying more valuable cards like that, will often also keep an eye on the price, sometimes fairly often, sometimes not, but will tend to be less likely to jump at buying something that is relatively stable, and focus on the things that are increasing in cost so as to save as much money on the overall for their magic purchases in the long-run. Magic players often hate spikes because it throws off well laid plans for purchasing order of cards. That said, when people see what seems to be a card suddenly on the rise, whether from a general spike in demand, or a buyout in progress, or just a few people grabbing a particularly scarce card that people on the sidelines notice the card rising, will then often panic buy, afraid they might miss out and have to pay $10, $20, $50, or $100 more for the cards they are after. This snowball effect can cause something similar to a buyout because enough people on the sidelines panic buy and thusly cause the supply to drain to near zero online until more can be listed at typically a higher price, or it leaves only the higher priced listings that eventually the sidelines buyers decide was too high to pay and stop the panic buying, the spike they were worried about already having happened.
With a playerbase so large, its inevitable that any potentially scarce card that has strong demand to it in general can see a natural spike in such a way. The same is true in the opposite direction. When a card gets reprinted or begins to drop in value due to less demand from certain groups, there is inevitably a large amount of people on the sidelines willing to buy at a lower price at various price levels to where it can put a floor, whether temporarily, or permanently under the value of a card.
Some reprints that are only valuable due to scarcity, but don't have that much pent up demand waiting for the card to drop in value will be the ones most likely to tank and stay low after a reprinting or the like. But higher demand cards that have a large amount of pent up demand behind them waiting for cheaper prices will inevitably have a floor put under them because when you have a card with a certain demand at a say $100 price point, that card will inevitably have a certain demand + x at say $80, and a certain demand + x + y at say $60, and eventually that pent up demand equals the new supply, and the card reaches equilibrium. Once that happens, and the card perhaps starts to rise again, due to people realizing the card isn't going to drop any further and deciding now is the time to buy, this can cause a card to rise back up from say $60 to $80 quickly enough, even as it will be unlikely to get back to $100 for the time being due to the higher supply.
Playerbase growth also was a huge thing for a while. People looking for older cards was huge starting in 2009 and a ton of cards spiked all over the place. In more recent years a combination of reprint products all over the place (whether limited supply or not), as well as a playerbase that isn't growing by leaps and bounds (as far as I can tell) anymore, has led to stagnation of singles and box prices of many products starting with RTR it has seemed.
This is why its important to keep an eye on not only the price of some of these more scarce cards like the masterpieces and such, as well as their relative supply. A slow drain in supply can be just as much of an indicator of inevitable price increases as anything else, even if the price hasn't moved much yet.
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What, exactly, happened with the Crucible of Worlds invention? I was checking out the Magic Market Index and noticed that it went up over $50 in the last couple weeks. There are only 5 left on TCGPlayer, and a handful on eBay. No other printings are seeing anywhere near that level of spike - the pack foils and judge foil are pretty stagnant.
Why is that invention (and only that invention) skyrocketing?
I saw your question but I don't have an answer. It does look really slick though. Really don't know why it spiked. I'm curious as well.
It's gorgeous - one of the best-looking inventions, hands-down. That said, I'd expect that to cause demand to run hot out of the gate, not to swell it suddenly six months after the set released.
I can speculate two reasons, neither of which are in any way based on facts.
1) Chris Rahn is appearing at a convention/high profile tourney/event, and people want the most beautiful card he's done lately so that he can sign it for them. Few enough exist relative to the number of fans that they were able to dry up the supply.
2) People saw that KLD packs weren't going to be opened anymore, and decided that they should stock up on Inventions now, starting with the one they like the best.
Both just wild theories, with no grounding in data, but it's literally all that I can think of. I'd love to hear either some data that can prove.disprove my outlandish ideas, or other people's wild guesses.
I guess we will see what happens with the card in the future.
If it were a buyout, I'd expect it to target a blue fetch or a mana rock - one of the top expeditions/inventions. Not that Crucible of Worlds wasn't up there, but it wasn't the top card ... until suddenly it was.
If it was a buyout, I'm very afraid that it was someone testing the waters on a softer card - it's got mostly casual demand, as opposed to the blue fetches that are ubiquitous in both Modern and Legacy, or literally the first card put into every EDH deck. It's easier for me to see higher prices sticking on those cards because of the huge demand. On the other hand, if it was just a cascade of people who legitimately wanted the card - that means that there's room for pretty much any Masterpiece to spike like this if there are enough
shy Trump voterspeople waiting on the sidelines who decide to jump in at the same time.From my experience running a shop for 6 years and generally observing magic players buying habits over the last 15 years, I can honestly say that for a lot of people there are many expensive cards on their lists that they tend to hold off buying in order to get other things they need (or pay rent/bills usually...) but when money becomes available (especially around tax time) many of those people suddenly have the resources to get some of the stuff they have been holding off getting and depending upon the general scarcity of the card, this can cause a tax-time spike in some cards. However, given that we are in mid/late may, I'd say we're more or less past that period of time, so in this case the second part of this comes into play.
People who hold off buying more valuable cards like that, will often also keep an eye on the price, sometimes fairly often, sometimes not, but will tend to be less likely to jump at buying something that is relatively stable, and focus on the things that are increasing in cost so as to save as much money on the overall for their magic purchases in the long-run. Magic players often hate spikes because it throws off well laid plans for purchasing order of cards. That said, when people see what seems to be a card suddenly on the rise, whether from a general spike in demand, or a buyout in progress, or just a few people grabbing a particularly scarce card that people on the sidelines notice the card rising, will then often panic buy, afraid they might miss out and have to pay $10, $20, $50, or $100 more for the cards they are after. This snowball effect can cause something similar to a buyout because enough people on the sidelines panic buy and thusly cause the supply to drain to near zero online until more can be listed at typically a higher price, or it leaves only the higher priced listings that eventually the sidelines buyers decide was too high to pay and stop the panic buying, the spike they were worried about already having happened.
With a playerbase so large, its inevitable that any potentially scarce card that has strong demand to it in general can see a natural spike in such a way. The same is true in the opposite direction. When a card gets reprinted or begins to drop in value due to less demand from certain groups, there is inevitably a large amount of people on the sidelines willing to buy at a lower price at various price levels to where it can put a floor, whether temporarily, or permanently under the value of a card.
Some reprints that are only valuable due to scarcity, but don't have that much pent up demand waiting for the card to drop in value will be the ones most likely to tank and stay low after a reprinting or the like. But higher demand cards that have a large amount of pent up demand behind them waiting for cheaper prices will inevitably have a floor put under them because when you have a card with a certain demand at a say $100 price point, that card will inevitably have a certain demand + x at say $80, and a certain demand + x + y at say $60, and eventually that pent up demand equals the new supply, and the card reaches equilibrium. Once that happens, and the card perhaps starts to rise again, due to people realizing the card isn't going to drop any further and deciding now is the time to buy, this can cause a card to rise back up from say $60 to $80 quickly enough, even as it will be unlikely to get back to $100 for the time being due to the higher supply.
Playerbase growth also was a huge thing for a while. People looking for older cards was huge starting in 2009 and a ton of cards spiked all over the place. In more recent years a combination of reprint products all over the place (whether limited supply or not), as well as a playerbase that isn't growing by leaps and bounds (as far as I can tell) anymore, has led to stagnation of singles and box prices of many products starting with RTR it has seemed.
This is why its important to keep an eye on not only the price of some of these more scarce cards like the masterpieces and such, as well as their relative supply. A slow drain in supply can be just as much of an indicator of inevitable price increases as anything else, even if the price hasn't moved much yet.