I have 300 dollars what should I buy?

by Tony Guo

I get a lot of questions on youtube, I have X amount of money, what should I buy.  

Rather than go into great detail in each email, I'll blog about.  It is such an innocent question.  And in legal terms you are shifting the liability.  If the price goes up, well congrats.  If it goes down, well its your fault.  

I typically hate answering this sort of question.  It takes five seconds to type the question, but a very long time for me to type back a decent answer.  

It's the holidays so why not.  

Modern is legit, which means modern cards are good to speculate on.  But only from Zendikar and after.  Anything before Zendikar, Bobs, Cliques, Gofys, thoughtseizes, etc, can and will be reprinted.  I've actively dumped my vials, cliques, thoughseizes, and Bobs even though I know they will go up a bit soon.  I dump them because I focusing on other modern cards.  

I'm very high on the Zendi lands, but who isn't.  Fetchlands are great to pick up right now.  If you wait, it will be to late.  

I love inquistion to Kozilek at 6.  I expect it to break 10 long term.  It is being used over thoughtseize or with it in many decks.  And guess what, no reprints.  It is the spell snare of its generation... (and I expect spell snare to be reprinted in modern masters).  

The simple truth is that a bottleneck will happen not just with the Zendi lands, but with most of the cards from Zendikar until New Phrex.  Why?  Because they can't be reprinted.  It is sooo elementary yet, dependent on patience.  

Fastlands from scars, inkmoth nexus, yadadada, same things I've been saying for a while.  They have seen a recent bump, but I expect some of the fastlands and the nexus to be at 10 soon.  

Sword of war and peace, sword of feast and famine, and wormcoil will also be important.  You can get each for under 10, and under 7 right now if you buy them in playsets.  

Going over to standard.  Jace is 17 on SCG games which seems low.  Troll is 4.  Detention sphere is 6.  And Vraska is 10.  Low very low.  And the online redemption sets haven't hit yet.  If there's a target to double in the future it is troll.  But I like all the above.  And the shocks.  I do see them bottoming out at 8 when the market is flooded from online redemptions.  However, short and long they will bounce back.  Remember Gatecrash only uses Gatecrash boosters for draft.  The shocks are a hallmark of the game and will remain that way for a very long time.  I don't mind sitting on them, watching them drop, buying more, and then making bank.

The number one rule for me is to speculate on cards I love.  This has the affect of me not being able to let go (see angelic destiny for an example).  But even though destiny is now a 4 dollar card, I still love it as much as I did when it was 15.  Same with Vraska and Troll....  I may move them, I may not.  But I know they will become movable at some point when they are in standard for double what they are now.