Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Diminishing Returns," which will now be a regular weekly column here on ManaNation. I would like to thank all of you for the overwhelmingly positive response on my recent series on mythic rares and fungibility; it was uplifting to see my thoughts taken seriously and generating interesting discussion. Now that the series on fungibility is over, it's time to shift into some content that is more representative of what this column will be on a weekly basis.

In general, this column hopes to fill a gap in ManaNation's offerings, to act as a weekly "stock ticker" that sums up the major changes in the MtG market and relates them back to what happened over the week. I will be using data collected from the Magic Online Trading League, which aggregates eBay sales data to generate a realistic secondary market price. I'm using this data for two reasons:

• The first—and by far most important—reason is that MOTL is a more accurate representation of the overall trading market than individual store data, be it CoolStuff, SCG, ChannelFireball, or whomever. No matter how big a store, or how reliable their pricing, their data won't be fluid, and it will change more suddenly than the aggregate secondary market changes. Using MOTL data can help to give you an idea of how much the secondary market has "caught up" to the pricing at market-leading stores. This should help savvy traders know how likely they are to find a "deal" in the trading market, in particular during windows where knowledge of recent tournament trends is still percolating throughout the market.

• The second reason, of course, is simply so that I won't be accused of crass store-promotion. I hope that using MOTL data will prevent such complaints.

One caveat before we begin: If you are looking for speculation tips or tricks, please look elsewhere. I play Magic relatively frequently, but I am not a professional, nor am I a large-scale trader with my fingers in every corner of the market. What I am is a professional academic with formal training in economic policy (who happens to love MtG). As such, I am someone who respects cold, hard data as an indicator of what is really going on. If you are looking for data, for concrete numerical trends in pricing with relevance to current news in the MtG world, look no further.

Now that all the intro material is out of the way, in this article I will do two things. First, I will briefly look at the major components of the Pro Tour: Paris metagame, as well as the highest-performing decks. This is to provide context for the selection of cards to look at. Second, I will assess the changes in price from the relevant cards in the decks so you know what to expect when you hit the trade tables.

Context: The Paris Metagame

So, who were the winners and losers at Paris? Well, the mothership has provided an excellent summary of the Paris metagame, complete with win/loss percentages for all the major archetypes. If we restrict our analysis to decks with greater than 5 percent of the metagame, we get the following breakdown:

The above metagame is relatively unsurprising, with Valakut and Blue/Black control dominating. The only real surprise seems to be the lack of R/U/G, which has been replaced by a slightly larger quantity of aggressive strategies, as well as a strong showing by Caw-Go variants. From this data, we might expect prices to remain relatively unchanged, save for new tech from Mirrodin Besieged. However, if we look at the Top 8 of the tournament, a strikingly different picture emerges (deck lists can be found on the mothership, here).

Yes, that's right. At a tournament where over 42 percent of the field was Valakut or Blue/Black control, neither deck managed to put a contender in the Top 8. Instead, Caw-Go and Boros demolished the tournament. If we look at the archetype performance indicators, we see Caw-Go crushing the tournament with a 60.86 percent overall win percentage. In fact, the only relevant sub-50-percent win percentage was against Quest aggro. Similarly, Boros also put on a strong showing, with a 55.93 percent win percentage. It's also worth noting that Valakut had a sub-50-percent overall win percentage (47.66 percent) and that R/U/G was conspicuously absent from the tournament. Last, and relevant for market-watchers, is that U/B/R Tezzeret is Chapin's latest breakout deck, which, despite only being played by three players, still put Chapin himself in the Top 8. Where the Innovator leads, others will follow.

Relevant Cards – Archetype Staples and MBS Adoptions

Now that we know what decks had a major metagame presence, as well as what decks performed exceptionally well, it's time to look at the data. In the table below, I have listed the rares and mythics that were present in the major and well-performing decks from the tournament. The prices given cover changes from the first business day of MBS (February 6) to this Monday (February 20). Cards whose values increased have the "% Change +/−" listed in black, while those whose valued decreased are in red. I have bolded those changes whose absolute value is greater than 5 percent.

While you are looking at this table, please consider other ways I could present the data, and if any of those would serve your needs better. I did consider splitting all of the rares into lists by deck, but thought that the general list would serve nonstandard deck lists more effectively.

As you can see from the above table, the obvious winners from Paris were Contested War Zone, Stoneforge Mystic, and Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas. A few other cards, such as Green Sun's Zenith, Mox Opal, and Mirran Crusader also posted strong showings. On the other hand, substantial losers include Black Sun's Zenith, Summoning Trap, and Thrun, the Last Troll. Most of these price changes are unsurprising, although the degree of change in Contested War Zone is a little surprising given that Kuldotha Red posted decent—but not spectacular—results. It is worth noting that Contested War Zone appears to have stabilized at its current value. Green Sun's Zenith may also be a little surprising, but its solid performance can be accounted for by Extended Elves combo and Legacy applications.

Conclusion (and Request for Suggestions)

In general, the results from the past two weeks are unsurprising, given the results of PT: Paris. Cards featured in Caw-Go, Tezzeret, Boros, Kuldotha Red, and G/W Quest are trending up, while cards featured in Valakut (except Green Sun's Zenith) and U/B control are trending down. Still, the degree to which the metagame shifted has substantially impacted prices, and savvy traders should plan to ride the relevant pricing trends accordingly. I hope this article has given you an idea of what to expect from this column going forward. I'm aiming to present data as unfiltered as possible, save for the relevant contextual information, to enable each of you to speculate and trade as you see fit. Please let me know how I can present the data, and what data is most relevant to your needs, in the comments.

P.S. I am also interested in knowing what type of format readers would be interested in on a week-to-week basis. I've been toying with the idea of formatting the column as "big movers"—something like you would see on a finance channel that covers the previous week's most heavily changed cards. That type of article would either be in a Top 10 format, or a "cards that changed by more than a certain percentage" format. Another option would be to cover pricing trends from new decks as they crop up in tournaments and on major websites to see if those news events have altered pricing at all. A hybrid type of article is also a possibility, although definitely more work, as is alternating topics based on the week, though I think one format makes more sense from a consistency standpoint. Please let me know what you think!