Back when Return to Ravnica came out I pulled only a couple of decent rares at the pre-release; Hallowed Fountain, Overgrown Tomb, and Lotleth Troll, which was pretty much why I lost all but one of my games when versing people who pulled Vrashkas and the like.
So I traded Hallowed Fountain away for a fair amount of stuff. I was fairly new to trading then and nearly traded Overgrown tomb away for an Elderscale Wurm (!!) until some more wise traders told me it's actual worth.
I finally found someone who wanted it, and he reallllly wanted it, so he gave me a great deal: for Overgrown Tomb and a Fairy Imposter, he traded me 4 artifact lands, a Primordial Hydra and... a Thundermaw Hellkite. I didn't see it at the time; the art was cool, but I had no idea why it was good. After a while I put it in my EDH deck and fell in love with the art and his big lightning mouth. It was never a huge game winner in my EDH deck (I still haven't perfected that deck yet, and I usually play casual, so I never needed the dragon in a Standard deck or anything), but I enjoyed playing with it.
Fast forward a few weeks to now. I was talking at the store and someone said the damn thing has gone to $40! I was like "Are you serious??". Besides being dumbfounded that a card I got for about $10 had shot up to four times the price, it also put me in two minds: Should I keep the card or should I sell it?
I've sold cards at their peak before, namely Jace, Architect of Thought when it was $50, but people are saying the Thundermaw will never drop, and I really love the card, so I'm unsure what to do? Should I not care and just continue using what is a really cool card, or am I being completely stupid and missing out on an amazing opportunity to trade/sell off the card? Do you think it will drop again? And really, I'm curious to find out why exactly the price shot up after being so low only a few months ago.
Any advice, thoughts, etc would be greatly appreciated! : )
If you like it, keep it. We're not in this game to make a profit, generally.
I've got two Jace, Architect of Thought that I managed to pull while drafting. I'd probably never plunk down the money for one, but I don't plan on trading them away.
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what I create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
From what I understand its popular in other formats than Standard, however once it rotates it will likely get hit by a big fat price drop. Will likely keep some value, however, but not as much.
That said, it really depends. It will likely half in price almost overnight simply because of rotation. Still, if that does happen it will be a $20 card. The question you have to ask yourself then is this: Is a $20 bill worth you losing what seems to be your favorite card? It's a lot of money for a piece of cardboard, but at the same time $20 is rarely going to make or break you. Even if the price completely bottoms out and it drops to $5-10, it's not that much more.
To put it in game terms:
$20 is just over the cost of a draft, depending on where you play. $20 buys you 5 boosters. $20 buys you two shocklands.
Double that if the price of Thundermaw completely bottoms out. Frankly, unless you are selling cards en masse, the amount of money you will get from it will be relatively trivial and do little for you. Now, if you had an entire playset of them, I'd say unload them now and fast. The price will not be likely to increase, and can only go down from here. But being as how its a single, my answer to you is this:
If you want to keep it, keep it. Even if it bottoms out in price on rotation, the amount you would have made off of this single card is largely trivial compared to the enjoyment you seem to get from it. $20-40 isn't the end of the world, and I doubt you're that hard up for the cash to absolutely need to shell it out.
It's just good in standard, it will eventually lose it's value, I'd trade it away for several cards of value from older sets that I would actually play in my decks and would have a bigger impact than him, but they are not standard cards, thus have less value while being more powerful
The answer here is entirely subjective. We can only tell you what the dollar value of various cards are. We cannot evaluate the "fun" value that you personally get out of any particular card.
Look at a card database like Gatherer or Magiccards.info, if there are any cards there that you find to be equal or greater in "fun" value which are worth less than $40, then you should sell it. If there is nothing under $40 that you can imagine enjoying more than your dragon, then keep it.
If you are asking from a purely monetary investment perspective whether it will maintain its value, the answer is no.
Don't sell it just cause it's worth a bunch more than you got it for. However, IF there is something else that you want really badly, there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of a worth that seems like it's spiked for the time-being, but may not be there later on. That's the best thing about trading, they'll almost always come back to you in the future. I think the Hellkite will always hold some value, but certainly not $40. I bet it never dips below $10 though.
Don't sell it just cause it's worth a bunch more than you got it for. However, IF there is something else that you want really badly, there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of a worth that seems like it's spiked for the time-being, but may not be there later on. That's the best thing about trading, they'll almost always come back to you in the future. I think the Hellkite will always hold some value, but certainly not $40. I bet it never dips below $10 though.
Really never below 10 bucks.....
There is a big red baddie in standard at all times....can you remember the ones from blocks past.....
What are they worth now????
Next to nothing.....
I dont even see it staying at 10 while in modern....think of the current modern meta....
