All the Good News — January WRITTEN BY Chris Powell

Hey traders, Happy New Year!

I'm Chris Powell and I'm back with more good news!

I hope your holidays were Magic-filled—I know mine were. I was at GP Portland in early December and GP Oakland in early January (err... Magicfest Oakland?). Whatever they are calling them these days, it didn't feel any different than a GP. Both main events were Modern; I played my Naya Eldritch Evolution brew in Portland and Hollow One in Oakland, finishing at 2–3 in each. Those results weren't ideal, but I did quite well in side events and won a bunch of prize tickets.

I love going to GPs (win or lose) and both were a blast. My opponents were friendly and everyone around me seemed to be in happy spirits. Outside of playing in events I ran into so many folks from my MTG past and present. If you haven't made it out to a GP, I highly recommend it.

What's in store for this month?

Puca News

Product Releases

Ultimate Masters: Released on Dec 7, 2018

Somehow Wizards managed to squeeze in a whole spoiler and release cycle in between my articles. This set is pretty awesome and there were a ton of key reprints. I've been sending and receiving a bunch of cards in this set to fill out playsets while the prices are low and the supply is high.

View Set

Ultimate Masters Box Toppers

Despite sparking some controversy over UMA pricing, these cards are beautiful and in high demand. I was able to get my hands on a couple of them and they look sweet! Promoting is your best bet to get YOUR hands on them.

View Set

Upcoming Releases







Ravnica Allegiance: Releases January 25, 2019

The full set has been spoiled and is fully tradeable. What Guilds did you playing at your prerelease? Gruul seemed quite strong and aggressive to me.

New Features

You may have read Jonathan Medina's article, but we added some big new functionality to the promotion features:

You can add as many promotions as you'd like and not have to purchase them until the trade is committed to you. The promotion is no longer a fixed price and works off percentages. This means that your promo will update with the card's price and ensure that you don't miss out on important trades. You can see how much people are offering (as a percentage) on your send screen rows.

We think these are very valuable additions to this feature and allows you to make zero-risk promos. This is one of the ways we want to promote and increase trade in 2018.

2019 Goals

The new year is upon us and we always believe it's important to reflect on the past and look forward to the future. As a company, we come up with goals that we'd like to meet throughout the quarter and year. Maybe it's not news, but our core goal has always been: PUT MORE CARDS IN MAILBOXES.

It may sound basic or a bit of a cop out, but we do have limited resources and ensuring those go toward the core of what makes PucaTrade great is exactly where we want to be. We have some feature ideas on how to help with that goal (more on this from Jonathan on Friday). I think we made huge strides in 2018 to improve the economy and create features that make trading (promoting) easier and in turn increase trade.

I have high hopes for this year and we are already starting to see some traders who left the site coming back.

Top Trades

The amount of Old School cards being traded is amazing. I'm happy to pass along this interesting trade data from the last couple months.

Old School

3 Underground Sea Revised Edition — 225,000, 120,000 and 96,368 points

Volcanic Island Revised Edition — 160,000 points

Chains of Mephistopheles Legends — 134,200 points

Volcanic Island Unlimited Edition — 101,759 points

Bayou Unlimited Edition — 100,000 points

Sol Ring Limited Edition Beta — 80,000 points

2 Tropical Island Unlimited Edition — 73,130 and 72,047 points

Mirror Universe Legends — 65,000 points

3 Badlands Revised Edition — 55,001, 50,000 and 24,718 points

2 Savannah Revised Edition — 44,000 and 28,000 points

2 Plateau Revised Edition — 38,000 and 30,000 points

2 Gaea's Cradle Urza's Saga — 37,849 points

Tawnos's Coffin Antiquities — 27,000 points

Masterpieces (all foil)

Bloodstained Mire Zendikar Expedition — 45,000 points

Crucible of Worlds Masterpiece Series: Kaladesh Inventions — 33,155 points

Watery Grave Zendikar Expedition — 32,100 points

Hazoret the Fervent Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations — 30,000 points

Blood Moon Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations — 30,000 points

Dark Depths Ultimate Masters: Box Toppers — 28,598 points

Chromatic Lantern Masterpiece Series: Kaladesh Inventions — 27,777 points

Elspeth, Knight-Errant Masterpiece Series: Guilds of Ravnica — 26,838 points

Rings of Brighthearth Masterpiece Series: Kaladesh Inventions — 26,666 points

Scroll Rack Masterpiece Series: Kaladesh Inventions — 26,500 points

The Scarab God Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations — 25,967 points

Damnation Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations — 25,000 points

Ancient Tomb Ultimate Masters: Box Toppers — 25,300 points

Booster boxes and FTV

Modern Masters 2017 - Booster Box — 31,547 points

Ixalan - Booster Box — 30,000 points

Modern/Legacy

Lion's Eye Diamond Mirage — 50,000 points

2 Cavern of Souls Modern Masters 2017 Edition — 50,000 points

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon Fate Reforged — 39,946 points

Karn Liberated Modern Masters 2015 Edition — 33,333 points

2 Force of Will Eternal Masters — 29,889 and 27,000 points

2 Liliana of the Veil Foil Ultimate Masters — 28,050 and 25,073 points

Mana Drain Foil Judge Promos — 26,163 points

Liliana, the Last Hope Foil Eldritch Moon — 25,000 points

Mox Opal Scars of Mirrodin — 24,855 points

Cavern of Souls Avacyn Restored — 24,209 points

Below are the most traded cards by rarity.

Rares

Tocatli Honor Guard Ixalan — 93 trades

Firesong and Sunspeaker Buy-A-Box Promos — 56 trades

Animation Module Kaladesh — 55 trades

Bomat Courier Kaladesh — 55 trades

Assassin's Trophy Guilds of Ravnica — 46 trades

Impervious Greatwurm Guilds of Ravnica MYTHIC RARE 44 trades

Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle Dominaria — 43 trades

Tajic, Legion's Edge Guilds of Ravnica — 43 trades

Gonti, Lord of Luxury Kaladesh — 43 trades

Scrapheap Scrounger Kaladesh — 43 trades

Erratic Cyclops Guilds of Ravnica — 42 trades

Legion Warboss Guilds of Ravnica — 42 trades

Uncommons

Lava Coil Guilds of Ravnica — 74 trades

Creeping Chill Guilds of Ravnica — 63 trades

Plaguecrafter Guilds of Ravnica — 63 trades

Merfolk Trickster Dominaria — 55 trades

Crackling Drake Guilds of Ravnica — 52 trades

Wizard's Lightning Dominaria — 49 trades

Cast Down Dominaria — 47 trades

Chemister's Insight Guilds of Ravnica — 47 trades

Cast Down FNM Promos — 46 trades

Seal Away Dominaria — 44 trades

Commons

Rat Colony Dominaria — 105 trades

Shadowborn Apostle Magic 2014 Core Set — 90 trades

Relentless Rats Masters 25 — 70 trades

Gurmag Angler Fate Reforged — 64 trades

Wastes (184 Full Art) Oath of the Gatewatch — 57 trades

Dive Down Ixalan — 56 trades

Ghitu Lavarunner Dominaria — 54 trades

Bug Fixes

Most of the bug fixing the last couple months was related to the new promotion features, but we do have a backlog of things we will be looking into over the upcoming months.

The most recent updates to the site can always be seen here. This link is on the version number in the footer of the site (currently v3.6.7.2). I agree this is a tad hidden on the site and most people don't know about it, so I will do my best to give updates in these posts going forward.

Wrap Up

MTG is definitely on the upswing with Arena taking the spotlight and Ravnica Allegiance about to shake up the Standard format. Even I have been playing Standard these days on Arena (having not played Standard in over two years) since it's easily accessible without spending a bunch on cards!

Enjoy the release weekend and send those unwanted cards out on Puca. I know I will be!

Thanks for reading! As always, give and let give!

Chris Powell is one of the Founders of PucaTrade and now serves as an Advisor. He started playing Magic in 1994–1995, but took a 17—year hiatus. Fellow developer Mitch Trale got him back into the game in 2012 with Return to Ravnica. Shortly after that, they teamed up to build PucaTrade.





