My post here yesterday regarding my belief that Prophetic Flamespeaker is a good buy certainly stirred up the community and produced some good conversation, so over all I would consider it a success, but I can’t help but feeling like I could have explained myself better, which is what I want to do now.
1. The Grand Prix San Antonio Trial deck list is what brought Prophetic Flamespeaker to my attention, but it is not the reason I feel the card is a good investment. In all reality, after spending its first 9 months in standard seeing minimal play, the odds that Flamespeaker becomes an x4 staple is minimal, 10 or 15 percent, and maybe less.
2. Flamespeaker doesn’t need to be an x4 staple to increase in price in the longer term. I went back and looked over the current prices of spring set mythics over the entire history of the mythic rarity. Discounting standard legal sets and the recently rotated Dragon’s Maze, there are 50 spring set mythics from Alara Reborn through Avacyn Restored. 38 of these cards are currently worth four dollars or more.
Of the 12 cards (20 percent of spring set mythics) worth less than $4, two have been reprinted in Commander decks, six are from the not-that-old Avacyn Restored, and four are just underpowered (think: Cast Through Time).
If you narrow the search to small spring set mythics, you have a total of 20 cards from Alara Reborn and New Phyrexia. Of these twenty, 18 have a single printing, and only two of these 18 are worth less than $4 (Defiler of Souls and Etched Monstrosity).
Admittedly, I don’t know exact print runs, so the fact that such a low number of mythics from spring sets stay at Prophetic Flamespeaker price levels over the long-term is not necessarily predictive for the Human Shaman. Maybe there is far more JOU in print than NPH, despite the fact that NPH was powerful and rather liked (from what I remember) and JOU is underpowered and disliked. But all in all it seems likely that, without a reprinting, Flamespeaker will be at least $4 in two or three years.
3. A good number of the mythics from spring sets that are now $6-$12 dollars were $2-$3 during their standard life, so it’s not simply that these past mythics with higher price tags are more powerful or inherently more valuable than Flamespeaker.
4. I mentioned the negative spread on Prophetic Flamespeaker. I was not trying to suggest you should look to make a profit by buying from one vendor for $1.69 and selling to another at $2.01, at $0.30 cent per copy, its not really worth the work. But the spread has more value than arbitrage opportunities.
The average spread on standard mythics is somewhere in the in the neighborhood of 35 percent. Just like the EV of an in-print booster box cannot maintain a price that is higher than the cost of the box, a card cannot maintain a negative spread. Vendors will adjust their pricing, and over the long term the spread will trend back towards the average. All this to say, the negative spread suggests that Flamespeaker is due for a price adjustment.
5. I always try to be aware of the opportunity costs of my speculations. This is the main reason why I didn’t “go deep” on 50 or 100 copies of Flamespeaker. I believe the odds are strongly in favor of Flamespeaker increasing in price eventually, and being $4+ in three years, but I also value having my hypothetical “100 copies of Flamespeaker” cash to use on other speculations during the next 36 months.
For me, buying two or three sets is the sweet spot for Flamespeaker. If I hits the 10 percenter, and Flamespeaker becomes a standard staple, I going be be very glad I bought in. Over the long term, its hard for me to imagine a unique, powerful, and (fringe) eternal playable mythic from an under-opened set being $2, so I’m happy to have some number of copies on hand, without incurring too much of an opportunity cost. And if I’m total wrong? I get out of them for $1 and lose $0.50 per copy. Very little risk, if opportunity costs are controlled.
6. Some people took issue with my calling Prophetic Flamespeaker “modern playable” or “eternal playable.” To me, playable isn’t a subjective statement, it’s an objective analysis of deck lists. Since Flamespeaker was an x4 in an deck that won a event, and showed up in various quantities in a handful of other decks in other tournaments, its playable in my book.
I’m not suggesting its the next Tarmogoyf, but Flamespeaker is of a power level that makes it modern playable. I know this because people its been played.
7. I mentioned this in the forums. Don’t buy a card because I (or any other financier) buys it, or tells you to. Use my evidence and thoughts as a jumping off point to form your own opinions and learn to the data and tools available to see why a card is, or is not, a good purchase. My goal is to share well-evidenced and statistically based opinions. Your job is to think for yourself.
Anyways, I hope this makes a bit more sense.
That’s all for tonight. I’m going to hit up a VMA 8-4 before heading to bed, I should have the second part of the Cognitive Bias in MTG Finance piece on www.mtggoldfish.com in the next day or two, it’s written, I’m just softening the rough edges.
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