I’m writing this article from a coffee shop in Lexington, Massachusetts, after GP: Providence. The GP was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I punted Round 1 like a fool, leading to a spectacular 0–3 drop performance. That’s the real problem with a Round 1 loss that isn’t an issue with losses past [...]

Providence is fast approaching, and a Legacy GP represents a trading opportunity, which (for most of us) occurs once a year, at most. The format has undergone a surge in popularity over the past two years, and a tournament the size of a GP will bring out people who normally wouldn’t attend smaller tournaments. While [...]

Introduction Hello, all, and welcome back to Diminishing Returns. My apologies for not having an article for you last week; I had a reasonably terrible couple of weeks, between my personal life exploding and grading after finals week. However, I have now heroically dug myself out of the avalanche of papers, exams, and quizzes, just [...]

It's that time of year again—set reviews! Before I go into the review, I would like to remind readers that, in general, the most financially savvy thing to do at prerelease is to ship everything you open. Barring another Jace, the Mind Sculptor—and there isn't one in this set—virtually all mythic rare and rare cards [...]

Introduction Hello all, and welcome back to "Diminishing Returns." It's been a few weeks, so it's time to come back to the Standard stock ticker. I've adjusted the threshold to be +/− $0.50, given the length of time between stock ticker articles. As a reminder on how this column works, or a primer for those [...]

Last week, I published an article calling out Ben Bleiweiss and Star City Games for exacerbating what I see as the beginnings of a bubble in the prices of Legacy staples. As of this writing, for example, the price of Wasteland on SCG is $79.99 (out of stock) and Force of Will is $89.99 (in [...]

Update: Please be sure to read the comments for further discussion on this topic by a number of individuals including Ben Bleiweiss himself. If you haven't been living under a rock for the past month, you undoubtedly know that something is rotten in the Legacy format. Over the past three to four weeks, the prices [...]

Hello, everyone, and welcome back! I took last week off from writing the weekly Standard stock ticker because not much had changed in the metagame. I hope you all enjoyed the article I posted on the economic role of grinders/sharks in the MtG trading ecosystem. Now, let's get back to the grindstone, and see if [...]

Last week, Gavin Verhey posted an excellent article detailing a number of pervasive myths regarding Magic. Myth #6, which spawned the most debate in the forums, was that "Mythic rares make Standard decks significantly more expensive" and referenced my analysis here on ManaNation.com a few weeks ago. Needless to say, not everyone in the forums [...]

Not too much to say today, other than to keep an eye out for an additional article from me later this week or early next week. I'm going to be tackling the problem of trading "sharks" from the perspective of economic efficiency. It's sure to be interesting, and probably contentious, so stay tuned! With that, [...]