What I Would Speculate on in 2026

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Some of us just have too much money. You know what I'm talking about. And so for those of us that have too much money or have money that we have already committed to buying Magic the Gathering in the hopes that it will increase in value, this is the video for you or of course it's entertainment. But um before we dive into it, a thousand subscriber giveaway. I'm counting my chickens before they hatch. I think I'm going to reach a thousand subscribers. And when I do, I'm going to make a video about reaching 1,000 subscribers. And on that video, if you comment and you're subscribed, you'll be entered in for a chance to win that Stricks Haven booster box as well as there's other things.

[00:00:40]There'll be three winners. Um, three cool prizes. I think one prize will be semi-lame and then two cool prizes, but still three winners. And um, and by cool prizes, I mean hundred plus dollars of value. So, it's going to be a good giveaway. um subscribe and keep an eye out for that video because we're close.

[00:00:56]We are so close by. Golly. All right, great. So, first off, let's talk about investing. Let's talk about speculating.

[00:01:02]Let's talk about uh being financially prudent because this is the reality.

[00:01:09]Investment is a great word. And you can invest in Magic the Gathering. You can put your money towards it with the expectations they'll increase in value.

[00:01:17]I'm going to talk about Magic the Gathering investments, quote unquote, that have increased um that have had yearly returns of 10, 15, 20, 30%.

[00:01:30]What does this mean? It means that there's high risk by definition. Uh and this is just a a reality that you should know. um and hopefully you already do is that if anybody ever talks to you about an investment that gives you high returns and high returns is really anything above 7%. Anybody who guarantees you above 7% returns and I the reason I say 7% is because that's like a an index fund of all the stocks in the United States. Um, but even I think just kind of world growth is like around 7%. So if you if you average out all the risk between all the companies, you're going to get somewhere between like four and 7% yearly return if you just invest a little bit in every single company out there um or governments and bonds and and other risk less risk investments. So that's kind of the risk-free rate is that kind of like four to 7%. If somebody's like, "Hey, you should invest in this. it's going to give you 6% return. Um, you should still look into it and be smart about it, but odds are they're telling you the truth.

[00:02:39]Now, if somebody comes to you and says, "Hey, if you invest in this, I can guarantee you 20% returns." They are lying. That is not true. If you could guarantee that, then everybody would do it and wouldn't have those returns. I'm not a professional investor. I'm not a financial adviser. I can't explain to you all the nooks and crannies, but I can tell you that the higher returns people talk about, there must be built in there some risk.

[00:03:08]And we can debate about what the risk is, right? Is the risk that it is an underdeveloped, under understood, not understood market. And so people think it's riskier than it actually is, but it's actually not that risky. The bullish people would say that is it risky because it is actually risky and it could all go to zero or you know have tremendous downward swings. That's what the bearish people the more pessimistic people would say and and so it's hard to tell but there is risk there is risk built into investing in collectibles and investing in Magic the Gathering. So uh that's the disclaimer. I'm going to use terms like blue chip and and things like that, but nothing is blue chip in collectibles and um and but that doesn't mean we can't have a good time. So, let's dive in. Let's dive in. I'm going to talk about the uh a pickup that I believe is a blue chip pickup. I'm going to talk about a pickup that I think is not a blue chip pickup uh and that I think is just not going to perform great in the short term, by the way. And I'll talk about that in a second. I'm going to talk about a good bet that I think um is relatively short-term, but I think that is a good play that you could make money on. And I'm going to talk about a not so good bet that I wouldn't recommend putting your money in uh that I don't think is going to do well, particularly in the short term. And then I'm going to talk about a going on a hunch like this is my and I have put money on this going on a hunch, but um not a ton of money, but some money. And I'm excited to share it with you. Although, you know, am I Well, I guess if I tell you I've done it and then I share it, am I like pumping my bags? No, you'll see. It's kind of funny. Anyways, okay. So, then real quick, Nick, why are we talking about short-term? Let's talk about long-term investments. 5 10 15 years. I think all of this stuff is going to go up in 5 10 15 years. And it's like, what's going to go up more?

[00:05:02]Great question. Maybe that'll be a different video. But for this video, we're talking about what is going to increase this year in 2026. I'm talking about like December 2026. What are we going to look back on and say like, "Wow, that was a good thing to buy." Or, "Oh, yeah, that was, you know, that didn't increase at all. I could have waited, you know, if I bought that in May, that would have been a mistake. I should have waited till December to buy it or or whatever." Right? So, that's the idea. So, let's dive in. And real quick, well, no, I guess not real quick.

[00:05:33]This might take a second because I need to explain collector booster boxes.

[00:05:39]This is my blue chip with a disclaimer.

[00:05:43]The disclaimer is that you buy collector booster boxes, you pre-order them, they come out, and then you sell them rather quickly. And this is what um I'm looking at for this year, 2026.

[00:05:57]Uh we have had three collector booster boxes released. There's a fourth one coming up and there's going to be, you know, Lord of the Rings, uh The Hobbit, and there's going to be Reality Fracture and um Star Trek and maybe I'm forgetting something. But this is the deal with the collector booster boxes that have come out early this year and from most of the ones that came out last year and actually just all the collector boxes that have come out since 2023 is that in this chart. I've I've talked about this and shown this a number of times, but on the lefth hand side we see the names of the sets. We have the set size was just which is just an interesting data point. I have a bot price here which for most of these pages is just what you could buy them from your local game store for at the time of release. The sold price is the price last time I checked on TCG player, which was like a week or something ago.

[00:06:46]Usually I have like XPath code that looks it up, but none of that's working right now. And in fact, the TCG player website's not working great right now either. This is uh Friday night, May 22nd. And uh the TCG player website is not working well. So um and then okay, sold net. This is the selling price on TCG Player times 83. Why 83? Well, if you saw a TCG player, there's going to be somewhere between somewhere around like 13 and a half percent of fees. Uh, and then there's shipping. And shipping doesn't have to be that expensive or have to be a large percent. But I am rounding down, so to speak. So, I'm multiplying by 083 to say that this is like rounding down what you will net what's going to be deposited in your bank account if you sell this booster box at its current TCG player low price.

[00:07:40]And then you have the net gains. What did you what were you able to get minus what you paid for it? And then the percent gains. Um, and as you can see, we're looking at 2023. And the percent gains on these booster boxes over 3 years has been 12%, 57%. I I guess I should say the set names with them, too.

[00:08:01]Dominario Remastered, 12% year-over-year. Forexia, all will be one 57% year-over-year. March of the Machines 33% year-over-year. Aftermath -12% year-over-year. You know, these aren't all winners, but stick with me.

[00:08:16]Lord of the Rings, 69% year-over-year.

[00:08:20]Commander Masters 19% year-over-year.

[00:08:22]Wilds of Al Drain 68% year-over-year.

[00:08:24]Lost Caverns of Exelon 61% year-over-year. And that was the year 2023. And I could keep going, but there's a lot of winners in 2024.

[00:08:32]There's a lot of winners in 2025.

[00:08:33]There's also some losers in 2025. Aether Drift did not do great. Spider-Man and Avatar had inflated release prices, which means that if you bought Spider-Man for 350 bucks at release, today you can only sell it for 330. And so you would lose money, that's negative 21%. So, um, and by the way, it's negative 21% because you're not just losing money.

[00:08:55]You didn't just buy something for 350 that you could sell it for 330, but there's also fees and shipping. So, so it feels extra bad, right? uh to have to sell something at a loss because it's now a super loss. Now, we're looking at the year 2025.

[00:09:10]If you bought Lauren Eclipsed for pre-order pricing and also through like a good distribution network type program, Nick, what programs do you recommend? I've got other videos about that. You should join my live streams uh Monday evening at 8:30 Eastern time. 8:30 to 9:30 Eastern time. Or watch them. You can go watch them, too. But I talk about Patreon programs more in the live streams, but I'm not going to like talk about the specific ones here. Um, but there's different Patreon programs you can do where they'll offer pre-ordering and you have to pre-order well ahead of time, way before the cards are spoiled. Uh, you you know, there's risk. There's risk built in. You're taking a blind bet, but if you did a blind bet on Lauren Eclipse, um, there's programs that are selling it for 265. There's and TMNT for 300 and Stricks Haven for 275. I got Stricks Haven off of a website for 325 or 315. No, I think it was 325. And then you look at the selling prices today and it is significant significant overnight gains even after shipping and fees. So Lauren Eclipse 14% gains, TMNT 8% gains.

[00:10:21]Stricks Haven 32% gains. Uh just instant attendees.

[00:10:27]Now, is will this continue? There's a lot of people who are pretty bearish on Marvel Superheroes. They're not confident this set's going to perform well. I personally think it is going to perform well. I think that a summer set with 384 cards that is analogous to like Modern Horizons 3 or um I think Commander Masters was the summer set back in I guess 2023.

[00:10:51]Yeah. Or Lord of the Rings or Commander Masters. One of those was like the summer set. just these summer sets do good things. Unless you're in 2022 with Commander Balders's Gate, but we don't talk about that. These summer sets do good things. It's got a high set size, I think it's going to perform well. And I think that the blue chip um kind of short-term, make quick money, and even like just till the end of 2026, you buy it, you hold on to it till the end of 2026, I think that collector booster boxes are a big winner. Okay, great.

[00:11:25]What do I not recommend buying now and holding till the end of 2026 and selling? I actually don't recommend specialty bundles. Um, and I'm thinking about the Codex bundle specifically. The Codex bundle is fascinating because I never liked this bundle. I never felt great about it. Um, there was somebody in a chat in a live stream who pointed out that you could buy these if you had Walmart Plus, which I do, that you could buy these for a h 100red bucks. And at the time, they're pre-ordering elsewhere for 180. And I remember thinking like, oh, well, sorry, they weren't pre-ordering elsewhere for 180 yet. They were still pre-ordering everywhere for like around 100. But I was thinking like, yeah, this is the thing. The promos aren't that great. a special soul ring. They have a secret layer with a special soul ring that comes out like once a month. Uh and then the signets are cool, but they're not that cool, right? Uh this isn't there's no Mox Opal. There's no um you know, just so they're they're also not as good as like the Avatar Commander bundle that had fierce guardianship and other like great free spells, great commander cards. So anyways, I never felt awesome about the secrets of strict haven bundle. I didn't make that clear on this YouTube channel. It wasn't like one of my predictions that, oh, this is going to tank. And I thought I was the idiot when the price was like 180. Um, and you can see, well, I guess it's been tanked for a hot minute, but it was, you know, look, there's quite a few people that bought this for 180. And um, some people really thought it was worth that.

[00:13:06]And then here it is now at 130. I don't think this product is going to recover by the end of the year. I think it will recover eventually. Like I said, in the long term, I think basically everything is going to go up in value. Um, but something that I think is like similar to this is something like the Final Fantasy gift bundle. Now, the Final Fantasy gift bundle, uh, it came out and, you know, I guess there were some people that were paying like 280 for these. Uh, but then it's basically been at 180 for a year now. And it's a great product.

[00:13:42]It's got the collector booster. It's got the regular boosters just like the Codex bundle. Collector booster, regular boosters. Um, it's cool stuff, but these things are just flat. They're flat right now. Now, when will they go up? I think they'll go up when their collector booster boxes shoot through the roof.

[00:13:56]Um, but that just hasn't happened yet for Final Fantasy. I don't think it's going to happen this year for Secrets of Stricks Haven. I do think if you want to pick up a Codex bundle, this is probably the cheapest they will ever be. So, if you're like, "Oh, I really want one."

[00:14:09]Like, go for it. Get one. put it on your shelf. If I had 130 bucks lying around, I'd probably get one to put on my shelf.

[00:14:16]Um, but alas, right? So, that is that uh the the not blue chip collectible in my opinion is specialty bundles. Wait, what did I say? Not blue chip collectible is the specialty bundles. Yep. Yep. Yep.

[00:14:33]Yep. Great. Okay, let's talk about bets.

[00:14:35]Let's talk about a good bet. So, I'm going to copycat and on a little bit here. I think a good bet are these Lord of the Rings, uh, Tales of Middleear commander decks. Uh, so the, you know, if you don't follow Anon, you should.

[00:14:49]Um, great information, cool channel. The deal about these is that they were reprinted recently. Before they were reprinted, these things were more expensive.

[00:15:03]Yeah. Like 280, 290, 300, whatever. They got reprinted. got as low as like 180.

[00:15:10]Um, I bought some of these for like around 200. That was pretty cool. But then, you know, so now they're rebounding a little bit and we're at the like 260s, 270s.

[00:15:21]The dealio is that the Hobbit set is not going to have commander decks. And so the thesis for these is that when The Hobbit comes out, people are going to want Lord of the Rings style commander decks and they will have to go and buy these.

[00:15:40]I like that thesis. I think that's true.

[00:15:43]I think that they're um another reason I like that thesis is The Hobbit is a small set. Before you go buy into all the FOMO and the hype around the Hobbit and how like the collector booster boxes are already sold out and everything, this is the reality about small collector booster boxes is that they have never been a good opening experience talking about collector booster boxes and I think I have a sheet here that kind of summarizes this. Yeah.

[00:16:12]So, if you look at the small set sizes, which are like March of the Machines Aftermath, that was a dismal collector booster box opening. Assassin's Creed, one of my favorite hubby Magic Monday videos, it was him opening up Assassin's Creed collector booster boxes cuz he's so funny about how frustrating it is to open up the same rares, the same cards over and over and over again. Uh, and then Spider-Man. Spider-Man, same thing.

[00:16:39]Uh, famously, um, Goldfish, MTG, MTG Goldfish opened up, um, Saffron Olive opened up a bunch of Spider-Man collector booster boxes and was very underwhelmed by the opening experience. And that after that video came out, the Spider-Man collector booster boxes began to tank. And so, it's just there's a risk there's a risk with the Hobbit uh, that the set is not going to do well. But on the other hand, if people are craving Lord of the Rings and aren't able to really get that craving satisfied because The Hobbit is a small 190ish card set, that might make these decks all the more attractive. And so, you know, if I had the chunk of change lying around, if I was making a bet that I wanted to pay off around the time Hobbit came out, I wouldn't buy I actually wouldn't pre-order Hobbit collector booster boxes. I would be buying these right now. Now, the risk that I should point out associated with these is they could print more of them.

[00:17:43]They might be printing more of them. I I think there's I don't think they are and I I don't I haven't heard any evidence that they are, but that's just a possibility. That is something that could happen. If they reprinted them once this year, who's to say they're not planning on reprinting them again for the release, which would uh definitely drop prices. So anyways, a good bet, a pretty safe bet in my opinion are the Lord of the Rings Tales Middleear Commander Deck sets. What is not a safe bet, now I'm kind of contradicting myself, but I'll explain, are collector booster boxes that came out in the past six months.

[00:18:25]I am a big fan of pre-ordering collector booster boxes, then selling them shortly, like at release or even holding on to them for a little bit. Um, but mostly selling them pretty quickly. I am not a big fan of after a set comes out like Lauren Eclipsed buying the booster box hoping that it appreciates particularly quickly.

[00:18:48]Uh you can see kind of the price history here. We're kind of at an all-time low for these Lauren Eclipse booster boxes.

[00:18:54]So from that perspective, it could be a good pickup. But what my point is is that I don't think this is going to rise in price anytime soon. I could eat my words, but I feel this way for all of these booster boxes that have come out this year. I feel this way about Lauren Eclipse. I feel this way about TMNT, and I feel this way about Stricks Haven. The problem is the hype cycle is going, and we're going to get more and more exciting, cool things to buy. I just don't see a catalyst that's going to shoot Lauren Eclipse collector booster boxes into the stratosphere. And so, for a short-term hold, I'm not in. Um, that being said, if you don't have a Lauren Eclipse collector booster box, they're beautiful. I have one on my shelf right here. And they're at kind of an all-time low. So, it's not like it's a terrible buy, but I don't think that I guess what the point is is that the collector booster boxes after they come out, they can go through a lull. The hype cycle has passed and it will take some time before they spike or recover or whatever. So, for that reason, I think a not great spec right now would be like the Lauren Eclipse, the Avatar Last Air Bender, Spider-Man even. Um, and then Secrets of Stricks Haven, TMNT.

[00:20:15]I don't think those are great pickups with the expectation that they're going to increase in price by the end of 2026.

[00:20:20]I could be wrong, obviously, but that's my opinion. Now for the fun part, which is what I am kind of speculating on, what I have a hunch about, and what I'm picking up singles for Aliens.

[00:20:35]I hear me out.

[00:20:40]I think that Star Trek is going to be a good set and I think there's going to be alien synergies. Am I a big Star Trek fan? No.

[00:20:50]But this is just this is where I'm at. I think that there's going to be alien synergies and I think that one or two of these alien cards that aren't the freaking sticker ones are going to be uh valuable, rare, popular, and they essentially all come from Doctor Who.

[00:21:15]And I do I think that I think it could be uh Vashta Nurata like Aliens Matters kind of like strategies I think will come out and I think that some of these cards are going to be sought after and powerful. Where am I putting my bet? I'm actually putting my bet on Veston Menopatra. I don't know how to say that.

[00:21:38]Leader. I've already bought a bunch of copies. Is that me?

[00:21:45]Hey, look. You can see me.

[00:21:48]For those of you who are just listening, uh you can see that on May 18th, 45 were sold for 30 cents. That was me. And um honestly, I'm going to pick up more probably. Um and it's an alien. It makes aliens. I think there's going to be aliens matter synergies, and I think the alien cards from Doctor Who are going to kind of go up in value. So, that is my kind of fun spec. Anyways, thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments if you agree, if you disagree, if you have a thesis uh that you're interested in sharing. Uh my channel is small. It, you know, getting to a thousand subscribers, maybe, but it's small, so I feel like it's pretty safe to share. Um, you know, we're among friends here.

[00:22:32]Share your secrets. I've just shared all mine. Anyways, good times. Thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one. Oh, and subscribe so that you can be part of the 10,000 subscriber giveaway. Okay, thanks. Bye.