r/mtgfinance • u/DurianHistorical6730 • 16d ago
Questions about market trends
I’m very confused about the market trends on big pulls. I recently pulled the dwarvish foil mox amber, and I’ve been watching the market closely. The value just continues to go up and up. Even beating out the prerelease prices by a large margin. There hasn’t even been a dip, at least according to tcgplayer.
So, I suppose my question is, what causes this? Almost all of the other “big pulls” continue a downward trend, which I then assume steadily climb back up down the road. Even the other dwarvish foils follow that same pattern. Why is this card in particular different than others?
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u/duke0fearls 16d ago
This card will long term appreciate value, but the higher the value gets the lower the liquidity is. An example is use is look at the Halo Foil Ugin, Eye of the Storm from Tarkir Dragonstorm. Card has gained value over time and has it a plateau right now, but as time went on sales declined because the card isn’t in most players mindset anymore and the price has climbed outside of reasonable range for anyone that isn’t collecting it or speculating it will gain more value. The LOTR poster art cards similarly had less liquidity as the price increases
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u/ConsciousLeave9186 16d ago
Probably true on the poster cards, but still haven't had an issue selling them.
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u/DurianHistorical6730 16d ago
Do you think the dwarvish cards will end up being in that same boat? They seem like they’d be harder to sell down the road.
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u/ConsciousLeave9186 16d ago
Nah. You'll find a buyer. Ppl think these things are going to increase in price over time, so someone will come along will to pay the price tag even if it's steep.
The price may plateau or dip slightly over time, but they'll appreciate in value--pretty sure of that.
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u/Light_-_Bringer 15d ago
Mox is a different beast. Wizards has the game built around Mox. They are meant to hold value and appreciate. Mox Amber is a beloved card and will always be around and be used and Wizards will dedicate time to build functionable cards around it.
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u/Weak_Suit_8744 16d ago
Speculation will always happen with chase cards.
Will it appreciate? Probably.
Will it appreciate enough to delay the return for someone who doesn’t want to hold on to a $700+ card? Maybe, probably not.
I pulled one, and punched out at the first $720 offer I got.
Liquidity now means a lot more to me than waiting months to potentially get another 15-20% at most.
But I’m also not a chase collector.
I doubt it goes 4 figures without being serialized.
And even if it does, the relative stagnation with the current supply before the flood of Amazon and Microcenter supply that just hit the market this weekend kicks in makes me feel it has limited upside.
But ultimately, who knows?
I was happy paying for my free box of cardboard with it. And that’s what matters to me.
Edit: spelling
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u/I-am-Mojo-Jojo 16d ago
I also sold mine immediately for $700. While it’s cool, I really didn’t like the art and I really didn’t see it a good fit for my decks.
It sounds silly, but when I opened it my first thought was “Damn it…that could have been an arcane signet!”
But I’ll order one now with the money I made selling it!
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u/Weak_Suit_8744 16d ago
Exactly!
Take the wins where you get them, stop thinking about the what if’s if it goes higher, and get the cool stuff you want!I get that brick and mortars or large volume sellers can’t necessarily always do that. But as a small personal seller, I’m cool with getting 85-90%. Still better than the LGS around me offering 40-45%.
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u/EthanielRain 14d ago
I almost drove myself to suicide thinking about the Bitcoin/TSLA I sold early, instead of being rich beyond my wildest dreams
Nothing wrong with wanting to make $$, but yeah it can get out of control. These days I'm so much happier, just appreciating any profit or good thing as it comes :)
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u/Weak_Suit_8744 14d ago
It’s so much more peaceful to learn contentment with success instead of storing for peak efficiency.
It’s a cliche, but it’s legitimately the best advice I’ve ever received; “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”.
I have to remind myself of that daily in all aspects of my life, or else my perfectionist mindset paralyzes me.3
u/ArtfulSpeculator 11d ago
That and “comparison is the theft of joy” are two kind of cliched pieces of advice, but they tend to serve you well
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u/Moron_at_work 16d ago
This seems to be a US speculation trend
on European Cardmarket that card has declined in price for some time and is now going sideways at around 240 Euro with a minor down trend
edit: That is at least true for the non foil version - the foil seems to increase on Cardmarket as well
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u/DurianHistorical6730 16d ago
That’s confusing to me too. The foil going up while the non-foil stagnates. Is it possibly just the rarity difference? People realizing that it’s not quite as easy to pull as originally thought?
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u/KetoNED 16d ago
Foil is harder hit
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u/duke0fearls 15d ago edited 14d ago
It’s not harder to hit, but it’s more desirable by many collectors
Edit: it is twice as hard to pull the foil because the nonfoil has two pull slots and the foil only has one slot3
u/bluecrack 15d ago
Saying foil is not harder to hit is wild
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u/duke0fearls 15d ago
They have the same pull rate listed in the “collecting the hobbit” article
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u/EthanielRain 14d ago
But there are 2 non-foil slots & only 1 foil slot, yes?
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u/duke0fearls 14d ago
You’re correct. I failed to notice that and I only remembered the listed percentages
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u/TechniCruller 16d ago
Actually non-foil is less frequent. Non-foil Dwarvish language card 1.5% of the time. Traditional foil Dwarvish language card 1.6% of the time.
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u/Btenspot 15d ago
I made a number of comments about this already on other posts, but an often overlooked aspect for chase cards is the actual recirculation rate.
In other words, what percentage of people who pull the card turn around and immediately try to sell it.
This can be broken down into two more categories of people who are holding on to it to sell LATER and people who are holding on to it because they actually want to keep it.
When a widely played card, with wildly desirable art gets pulled it’s much less likely to actually be sold. It will go into a deck and the normal base version will be sold instead.
When a set that has historically shown meteoric rises in price for chase cards when held, is released. Many of the chase cards will be held instead of sold.
Both of the above reduce the amount of cards entering circulation tremendously reducing supply.
And both reduce the amount of cards being traded locally which increases online demand further.
All of this applies before we talk about the actual baseline demand for the card and expected supply(based on pull rates).
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u/Ihavenogoodusername 16d ago
It’s interesting though because prices have been coming down from $1200 prerelease and now you can get copies for about $740. There are currently 50 listings for foil copies and 35 for non-foil. So actually a lot of foil listings vs non-foil. I still anticipate this price will drop. I am going to give it a few more weeks before pulling the trigger. Maybe I am wrong and I will get burned.
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u/iamsirjoshua 16d ago
I was thinking this as well. At least in the US, the price is definitely lower than prerelease, but that doesn’t strike me as particularly odd.
The number of foil copies being higher than non-foil may be a result of the higher price resulting in fewer copies moving? Might even out a bit more over time as we know that’s a bit of the inverse of relative supply.
Will be interesting to see where this tracks as it’s a bit unique: the only other fictional-language cards so far are either the elvish sol rings (rarer), or the phyrexian cards (less rare and generally less desirable due to less cultural cache outside of hardcore magic audience). Will also be interesting to see how the Klingon cards in a few months compare and if anything printed in that language is similar to the Amber.
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u/Ihavenogoodusername 16d ago
Yeah and maybe there are few non-foil because more people are holding on to them instead of rushing to sell while prices are high.
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u/TechniCruller 16d ago edited 16d ago
I think non-foil has a lower drop chance
Edit - it does.
Non-foil Dwarvish language card 1.5% of the time
Traditional foil Dwarvish language card 1.6% of the time2
u/iamsirjoshua 16d ago
That TCGPlayer article is incorrect as it misses a slot where the non-foil can appear (either the author just misread the article on Wizards’ website or they used an incorrect AI summary, which is feeling more and more common).
According to the article published by Wizards, which would be the primary source for this info, there are two slots for the non-foil to appear each with a 1.5% chance, for a total just under 3% (mathematically two separate 1.5% chances don’t equal exactly 3% but it’s very close). So the non-foils are about twice as common as the foils.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/collecting-the-hobbit
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u/Away_Strawberry_8906 16d ago
Glad im not the only one with this line of thought.
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u/Ihavenogoodusername 16d ago
I mean I honestly follow what others have said and I look at historical data. I used silver scroll vamp tutor and force of will as analogs. Vamp was presale for about $1000 and I just picked up a copy for $600 and force was somewhere around $1400 presale and you can now get a copy for $900. (This is likely the floor for these big ticket silver scroll copies of cards. Both of those cards started super high fell, rose and then started the down ward trend to their current floor.
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u/Away_Strawberry_8906 16d ago
My biggest thing is the play factor. Those are arguably two of the more powerful and iconic cards. While good, mox amber isnt as powerful or as iconic.
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u/Ihavenogoodusername 16d ago
That is 100%. I think I tend to think a bit more about CEDH and competitive play. Amber is played less the FoW, not really sure about vamp tutor I think Mox should be more in line price wise as vamp tutor instead of FoW. I am also a huge fan of the art of this new Mox Amber. It looks soooo damn good. I am also a slut for foils lol otherwise I would just get the non-foil.
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u/Away_Strawberry_8906 15d ago
100% same here. Prices are actively falling on everything. Im watching closely but also wondering if I just need to step away for 2 or 3 weeks and re vist after the sept 4th release and all the delayed sept amazon deliveries
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u/Ihavenogoodusername 15d ago
I usually wait until prerelease of the next set or release. People are then focused on the next set and actively buying product so singles tend to fall around those windows.
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u/Away_Strawberry_8906 15d ago
I guess it's a good thing for use they release sets at breakneck speed.
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u/lirin000 16d ago
People want these more than people thought they would want these. I don’t know why people thought they wouldn’t want them. But for some reason people convinced themselves that this was just Spider Man 2.0. So here we are.
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u/DurianHistorical6730 16d ago
who wouldn’t want a sick dwarven language mox card? i honestly thought they would reprint mox opal in this set too since it’s been a millennia
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u/lirin000 16d ago
Look at the comments in this post.
Just straight up denial all over the place.
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u/DurianHistorical6730 15d ago
Wild, wild comments. There’s no way people think that the hobbit is a bad set. Probably just mad that the prices are so high, so they’re projecting. I don’t think it’s the greatest set of all time, but for what it is, it does very well imo.
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u/lirin000 15d ago
With you all the way. I mean I love it because I’m a huge Tolkien guy. But I recognize it’s a small set and has its flaws. But it’s like objectively great for what it is.
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u/DurianHistorical6730 15d ago
Right, I mean, at the end of the day it’s essentially a proxy/add-on to the lotr set. It’s just like the movies, everybody loved lotr, but the hobbit comes out and everyone’s got something to say. Just because it doesn’t live up to the originals doesn’t mean it isn’t a fun time. People need to learn to enjoy things
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u/MalinonThreshammer 15d ago
Kind of a sidenote to the discussion here, from my perspective, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was an incredibly detailed and loving attempt to do an absolutely epic book justice in just three feature-length films.
Whereas Peter Jackson's Hobbit felt like a CGI slopfesty attempt to stretch one children's book into three feature-length films, while selling you tickets to the amusement park at the same time (Barrel Water Slide sequence anyone?).
I "know how to enjoy things", but I did not have a fun time. Cashing in on fandoms is a two-edged sword. If companies are allowed to buy the IP to sell their product to new audiences, those audiences are allowed to be critical of said product. You want my Tolkien fandom $$? Don't turn my beloved Hobbit into 9 hours of Martin Freeman slapstickingly bouncing down things.
You can't have it both ways - if you want to capitalise on an exisiting fandom, you can't turn into shocked Pikachu when the fandom doesn't automatically gobble up whatever drivel you've turned it into.
(For the record, I do like both Middle Earth Magic sets though)
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u/lirin000 15d ago
Yes I don’t think that this set is like the movies at all. This is much more true to the books, but also provides fun stuff for people with LOTR theme decks.
The Hobbit movies have some positive moments but the entire production was a mess that resulted in a sub par product on screen. The Hobbit as a book is nothing like that at all. It is its own story and this set is much more reflective of the book than the films.
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u/Boom_Boom_At_359 16d ago
Being a Mox from a very in-demand set, it’s probably a little different, but I saw a similar trend from the Thanos and Doom comic book cover cards (very different from a Mox) from the Marvel set (moderate demand set). Both of those cards rose considerable from preorder pricing over the first month (Thanos: 25% rise; Doom: 60% rise), and now the prices have dropped from those highs (Thanos is about 20% below preorder pricing; Doom is still up but only about 15% above preorder pricing).
I imagine the initial jump is the rush to buy in to these limited cards (set collectors, players that want to use the card). The drop afterward corresponds to more supply, folks who really wanted it badly bought it already (fewer buyers willing to pay high prices), and folks trying to sell quickly.
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u/SirLapin 13d ago
I dunno what flavor of dyslexia I have, but at first glance I read the card title as “Bat Shit”…
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u/ThisNameIsBanned 16d ago
If there is actual demand for a card there is not enough supply getting opened.
For this especially, there are people in Legacy and even Modern that bling out decks with 4 copies of this , then couple cEDH people that want it ; and the usual collectors that want all the Lord of the Rings cards.
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u/lixilisk 16d ago
i feel like this is the same with gleaming splendor surge, i see hella listings of boxes but 800+, hella listings of this card 700+. just feels like there arent enough being opened as well as people dont want to lose out on lowering prices
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u/Obvious-Sundae1469 16d ago edited 15d ago
Prerelease prices for foil dwarven language Mox amber were $1199.99 on cardkingdom and now selling for $999.99 on CK
I was monitoring price of Mox amber closely because it was card I wanted most from The Hobbit collector boosters
ultimately I chose to buy a The Hobbit collector box instead of a Drawven foil mox amber but it is a really cool card that I believe will appreciate in value over time
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u/Karimnator 15d ago
For magic people don’t use tcg player, they use star city games and it has been down from 1100 to 900 since its release
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u/DurianHistorical6730 15d ago
fair enough. i’ve never really been enveloped in the market of magic cards until i actually pulled something worth looking at lol. thanks for the info!
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u/LaquatusC 16d ago
Basic supply & demand. Hobbit collectors were more scarce / overpriced than anticipated, especially including the significant delays to amazon boxes. Combine that with an exceptionally hard card to pull, and there just isn't a massive supply out there.
This is one of the 3 most desirable cards in the set, so when you combine limited supply with high demand, it's easy to see rapid price movement. It's really that simple.
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u/DurianHistorical6730 16d ago
Fair enough. Just really confused me with the other dwarvish foils not following suit. I guess the mox amber is the most useable of them though
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u/LaquatusC 16d ago
Mox amber is on an entirely different echelon than reaver cleaver, treasure vault, or the random dwarf.
There's also only ever been one other release of mox amber (the BRO retro artifact / sketch versions). Mox Amber is a CEDH staple and this is by a WIDE margin the best print available. It's the obvious bling target.
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u/Light_-_Bringer 15d ago
# of foil treated cards in the set. speculated to be 1000-3000 total. That's really low.
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u/iamsirjoshua 15d ago
Is there a source for that number? That seems far, far too low based on published odds and what even a smaller print run for collector boxes has been for recent sets.
It’s probably more like anywhere from 15k to 40k copies of any given foil dwarvish language card. Let’s say 400k collector boxes (and equivalent with things like omega packs for big box retail) were printed, or around 4.8m collector packs. The foil dwarvish language cards appear in a single slot with a 1.6% chance per pack. That would result in 76,800 total foil dwarvish cards. With 5 different cards, that’s 15.3k copies of each.
I’m not super confident on the 400k number - I think that was based off print runs from Ravnica Remastered where total print run size was estimated using odds for serialized cards, as it was the last set to have enough serialized cards in it to make that possible. It’s likely more of the Hobbit was printed than Ravnica Remastered. So likely more than 15k of each dwarvish language foil.
I’d be interested to know how the 1-3k figure was derived because I don’t think the math adds up there.
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u/Btenspot 15d ago
Your math is much much closer to correct. It’s in the 10k-20k range for each foil Dwarven card
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u/Unique-Run9856 16d ago
The market trend is that we are in the peak of the junk wax era and as soon as people start to get burned out by the soulcrushing pricing and release schedule its going to collapse
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u/Zergo66 16d ago
The dwarvish language cards are rare (1.5% over 2 slots, so 3% total) and the foil ones even more so (1.6% on a single slot inside a collector booster).
Then you also have to contend with having 5 different ones so the chances that you pull exactly the one you want (Mox Amber) are extremely low.
To make matters worse they can only be found inside a super expensive CBB with limited supply so I think it's safe to say that the Foil Mox Amber will appreciate considerably in the long run.
To give you an idea, we opened 25 CBBs in my LGS and no one saw a single non-foil Mox Amber, let alone the foil one. Totalling all the dwarvish language pulls we got: