I'm not buying as much right now as I was a few months ago when I was making epic posts about dropping $10k a week.
However, I'm still buying bits and bobs so I wanted to take a minute and write about what I'm buying, how its working out as an investment, and what I have my eye on.
Let's start with Silvershield Sheriff
A few weeks ago these hit my radar because their rental price spiked from .1 dec to 2.5 dec.
I have a rule when buying cards for rentals. If I can get 1 dec per day per $1 of card, I will buy as many as I can get my hands on. It's rare that I find this anymore but this rule was why I bought 100 Mylors at $15 each a few months ago. So seeing this I made sure it was real and then bought 20 of them.
As you can see here. In a couple weeks, they've doubled in price. The rental price has come back down to 1 dec but the price of dec has doubled since then so its still all good. At .01 per day, these will still pay for themselves in 200 days and they've already doubled in value.
Venari Wavesmith
Let's talk about a time this rule didn't work.
I took a chance with this one. I knew they were relatively new and that there were A LOT more coming out. But I really liked the card, everyone was using them, and the rental price was 5 dec for a $3.50 card. Honestly I probably would not have bought this card if it was a 1 dec/$1 ratio but the fact it was better than that made me salivate and I jumped in.
Now it hasn't been terrible. I bought 35 of them for $3.50 and took in that 5 dec per day for about a week. Now it's around 1.5 dec per day and as you can see below, the price has dipped a little but not too bad. I also picked up one gold one for $25 which is now renting out for 42dec as we speak and is selling for $40. So that win made up for some of the loss in the regular foil. THe gold ones are right in my sweet spot right now but I'm going to stay away because I think its renting for more than it should and will come back down.
Next up: Kelp Initiate
For a little while, Bronze was about LlamaKron. Then when rewards were too low for that to work, people jumped to a Mylor team. But when Mylor was pinned to 40 dec per day when all other prices of rentals were coming down, people found the water splinter. This made cards like Venari Wavesmith above find demand but there must have been a Youtuber or something pushing Kelp Initiate because one night it went from .1 to 12 dec. They were selling for $7 and the gold ones were selling for $44. SO I picked up a few more of each.
While the rental prices have come down to 2.5 dec and 20 dec respectively, the gold Kelps have doubled in value and the regular are now $10.
Side note on Kelps: If you're looking for a good floor to buy out for resale, I might look at regular kelps. It would take about $400 but I think you could double your money with patience and assuming CL doesn't render them useless.
Unicorn Mustang Gold Foil:
I have several of these already but I picked up one more the other night because I liked the price, the floor is thin, its a staple card in a popular Splinter, there are only 1000 of them, and these rent for stupid prices at season end. I've rented these for 400 dec on the last day. Currently I'm getting 30-40 for them which is still not bad for an $80 purchase when Dec is .01+
Ignoring season ends, if 30 dec at .01 remains constant, this card is paid for in 266 days. That's 137% apr. So why not?
As you can see, there're only 7 of this popular card on the market and if the bottom 3 sell, this will be a double. This is what you look for when you're buying as an investment.
One more to close off...
Spineback Turtle Gold Foil Beta
Now I've actually been picking up an assortment of beta cards because based on the new rule sets, the fact that they won't be in the spellbook cards anymore, and because they are going to get a Dec boost when CL is released, its my belief they will become much more important.
WIth Water becoming more popular though, Spineback Turtle for $50 was a no-brainer. As you can see, its already up $18 from where I bought it a few days ago.
These only rent for about 10 dec so its not much there but I think the value of these cards will be considerably higher in a few years. I wouldn't be surprised to be able to get a 10x on a $50 Spineback.
But even if it doesn't, it's a great card thats only becoming more scarce and as long as the rewards down crash back down, I think the rental value will only increase.
This is also a go to card for me when playing low mana magic teams and I believe its usage will go up as more people discover it.
There's more of course but that's a good cross section.
I think if you are in the market right now, you want to be looking at anything beta. I cannot believe Marlic is going for so little compared to Alric. That Malric, kobold miner, Serpentine spy team is deadly and cheap to buy or rent right now.
I'd be careful buying any of the new cards right now. Remember that most of these cards are still only 7% printed and provide very little in terms of power for the price. There are some great cards for playing in there though.
What are you looking at? Anything starting to look like a great deal?
