I last wrote about Zendikar Rising back in September, before the set had been released and talked about some EDH cards I wanted to buy when they bottomed out. Let’s check back in on those shall we?

• Thieving Skydiver at $1: check.
• Ashaya at $5: well it’s $6 so I’m counting that as a hit.
• Moraug Showcase foils at $15: They’re down to $10, so even better!

So some free advice: now would be the time to buy some of these if you fancy some good returns in a year or so.

Seeing as most things from Zendikar Rising seem to have bottomed out now, I wanted to revisit the set and take another look at what I think some of the best pickups are at current prices (other than my previous, incredibly prescient picks).

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Skyclave Apparition (FEA)

Price today: $16
Possible price: $30

Talking about things I’ve talked about before, I’ve also talked about Skyclave Apparition before in one of my articles. That was a mouthful that I probably definitely could’ve worded better, but oh well. A couple of months ago I called Skyclave Apparition FEAs to move from $10 to $25 based on the back of some early competitive play for the card, and I’ve got to say it’s only gotten better since then.

Skyclave Apparition has been showing up in a bunch of different top tier decks across Standard, Pioneer, Modern and Legacy (and Historic I guess?). It’s been heralded as the best white card printed in years, and to be honest I can’t really dispute that when it comes to these competitive formats. The card is fantastic and is doing even better than I had hoped for when I wrote about it back in September.

You can go and read what I wrote about the card back then, but I want to update my projection for the FEA copies and call them from where they currently are at $16 to land north of $30 before too long. There are only 25 listings left on TCGPlayer, a grand total of five of which have more than one copy listed (and even then only contain 2-3 copies each). When paper play picks back up (and yes, I know I keep saying that but trust me – eventually it will and you’ll be glad you picked up cards when they were cheap because oh boy are some cards from sets released during the pandemic going to get pricey), these are going to be in very high demand and you’ll feel quite smug outing your copies you got at $10-15.

Ancient Greenwarden (FEA)

Price today: €18 ($21.50)
Possible price: $40

Is it a competitive staple? No. Is it a big EDH card? Yes. So where are we going to buy it? That’s right, in Europe! Well done, we did it. That wasn’t so hard now was it?

Jokes aside, you can follow this logic for most Magic cards. Competitive-focused cards are generally the same price in the US and Europe, or cheaper in the US, and EDH cards are almost always cheaper in Europe. There’s already a steep ramp formed on TCGPlayer of these, starting at $23 and heading to $30 in no short order, with only 22 total listings. Over on MKM however, there’s a relative glut of supply at the €18 mark – some tasty pickings if I ever saw them. The healthy supply in Europe might mean a weaker demand profile for the card on this side of the pond, but that just makes it an even better arbitrage opportunity to ship Stateside.

Ancient Greenwarden has been one of the most popular EDH cards picked up from Zendikar Rising, because it’s green and says ‘land’ and ‘graveyard’ on it. At a touch over 2400 decks, Greenwarden clocks in at the number 5 include from the set – it’s effectively a beefier Ramunap Excavator that is actually a relevant body on the board, especially seeing as it has Reach strapped onto it (because it wasn’t doing enough already).

Given the steep ramp on the card already, I think we’ll see these up to $40 within 12-18 months or less, which makes for a nice return if you’re picking a bunch up in Europe.

Thieving Skydiver (FEA)

Price today: $7
Possible price $20

Sorry to disappoint anyone hoping for a non-foil pick today, but these foil extended arts are just too good to skip out on. They’re the lowest supply versions of cards being printed into Standard sets at the moment as well as being the prettiest things around, so what am I to do really?

Thieving Skydiver has uh, taken a dive in price (unimaginative, I know) since the release of Zendikar Rising, but remains one of the most popular EDH cards from the set and takes the number one slot for blue cards. Mana rocks are such a huge part of EDH, and so being able to steal them for such a low opportunity cost is a huge boon – especially in a blue deck that may well not be playing green and so be worse off when it comes to ramping out.

Although this is only a rare and not a mythic, I think that $7 is way too low for an FEA EDH all-star, and before long this is going to start climbing significantly. You should probably be playing this in every blue EDH deck you own, so I’d grab some personal copies here alongside some more to spec on. They’re around the same price in Europe at the moment so grab whatever is easiest, but give it a year or so and these aren’t going to be very cheap at all any more.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

We’re only a few days past the official release of Commander Legends, and already we’re seeing some crazy numbers from these Collector Boosters. Turns out that the Extended Art cards (which can only be found in the Collector Boosters remember) are a lot less common than you might think, especially when it comes to the Common and Uncommon slots. I can already tell I’m going to be sick of typing ‘common’ and ‘uncommon’ in a few minutes.

It looks like there isn’t a difference in terms of print run between EA commons and uncommons in these Collector Boosters, so the rarity difference doesn’t actually mean anything there. Thanks to some maths run by James at MTGPrice on the collector boosters, we have some pretty solid estimates of how many copies of each card exist in the world…and it’s less than you might think.

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Judging by the data we have available to us, it looks like there are less than 10,000 of each FEA common and uncommon from the entire print run of Commander Legends collector boosters, and that estimate is probably on the high side by quite a bit. Don’t be fooled by the common and uncommon rarity symbols they have stamped on them; these are premium pieces of cardboard and should be treated as such. We’ve been given quite a few EDH ultra-staples here in FEA for the first time, and some of those cards have never really had a fancy version printed before, making them a must-have for many EDH players.

I’m focusing on a few of those cards in my picks today, but you can apply this logic to plenty of the other FEA commons and uncommons and go have a look at targets for yourself. There are definitely too many good options to fit into one article!

Command Tower (FEA)

Price today: €12 ($14)
Possible price: $30+

It’s been a little while since I properly dedicated a slot to an arbitrage pick, so here you go! EDH players in the US have already been taking a shot at these, because other than the Commander’s Arsenal version and Judge Promo (which are both $100+), Commander Legends is the only other place you can find a foil version. And what’s better than a foil? An extended art foil, of course. We know by now that EDH is much more popular in the US than in Europe (and if you don’t, then go and read my article on arbitrage here), and that’s reflected in the pricing here. €12 on MKM compared to $24 on TCGPlayer is some serious arbitrage immediately, let alone if you wait a few months to sell.

Let’s talk some more numbers. Command Tower is listed in 277,283 decks recorded on EDHREC. 64% of all decks (and I’m surprised it’s that low), because duh – it’s a free untapped land that taps for any colour for you. The only real reason not to run it is because it doesn’t have a land type and so in mono-colour (and sometimes 2-colour decks) it can be worse than a basic land for you. But anyway, 277k decks that could want this card, and less than 10k FEA copies in the wild? Looks like some easy maths to me.

We are getting another foil Command Tower printing in Commander Collection: Green next month, but the premium versions of those sets (the ones that have the foils) are only being distributed to WPN stores and so allocation numbers are low – like, really low. Judging by the direction Wizards are going in we’ll most likely see another premium printing of Command Tower at some point, but I doubt we’ll see a FEA for a fair while. And remember, numbers on these are very limited compared to the number of players that are going to want them, so prices are going to be headed upwards pretty quickly.

I’m already racking up the word count on this article, so I’ll try and be a little more brief on my next two picks. Most of what I’ve said above in general and about Command Tower applies to both of these next picks, so I’ll explain a little more about them but not more than you should need to be convinced.

Terramorphic Expanse (FEA)

Price today: $2
Possible price: $10

Myriad Landscape (FEA)

Price today: $3
Possible price: $10

Terramorphic Expanse is an interesting one here, in that there have been zillions of printings and plenty of foils alongside that, but other than very slight border differences they all kinda look the same. The only one with a different art is the version printed in Jumpstart, and there weren’t any foils in that set so it’s not quite hitting that true premium spot. Getting this FEA version in Commander Legends is going to really scratch that itch for a lot of players, aaaaaand let’s check EDHREC…yep, 116k decks. Less than 10k copies. You know the drill!

Myriad Landscape is on a very similar footing, but with only one previous foil in Masters 25, this FEA might be even more popular than Terramorphic Expanse. It’s “only” in 81k decks, which is obviously still a huge number but not quite the territory that the other two hold – but it is a very good option in multicolour decks to go and find the lands you need to cast your spells. Fewer people are probably running it than should, but demand is still more than high enough to run down the supply.
Both of these can be picked up at around $2-3 both on TCGPlayer and MKM at the moment, which is just way too cheap. Yes, they’re technically commons and uncommons, but It’s better to think of them more like regular rares or mythics than what they’re labelled as. Demand for these is going to be super high and supply is much lower than people might think. It’s basic stonks.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Today I wanted to talk about something that is quite difficult for some people to do (myself included), and that’s looking the other way when most people are focused on the newest release in Magic. The release of Commander Legends is just around the corner (this Friday in fact), but whilst everyone else is looking at the shiny new cards, I’m going to be looking back at some older cards that I think are undervalued.

With the rate that sets are being released now, the hype cycle moves on much more quickly than it used to, meaning that even relatively recently released cards can get forgotten about more easily, only to pop back up in a year or so and make you go “hang on, when did this get expensive?”. Those are some of the cards I’ve got in store for you this week, so let’s have a look, shall we?

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Hagra Mauling (FEA)

Price today: $2
Possible price: $10

$2 to $10? Come on David, that’s an outrageous call for such a recently printed card! Ok, but…is it though? I think that we’re all familiar with how good these MDFCs are by now, both as combo pieces and as solid value cards in more ‘normal’ decks. It’s mostly the mythic ones being played, and their price tag reflects that (although I think that most of them are still decent pickups, as I doubt they’ll see another print for a little while) – but some of the rare and uncommon ones are great too, both in EDH and competitive formats.

In Modern and Pioneer (heck, and Legacy too) we’ve seen the ‘Oops All Spells’ deck doing pretty well in a few different iterations since these MDFCs were released in Zendikar Rising. I’m happy to see that they’re good, but not good or dominant enough to warrant any bans – I think that Wizards really nailed it with these MDFCs and got them at just the right kind of power level. Anyway, all of these ‘Oops All Spells’ decks play 4 of each of the mythic MDFCs, and past that the next card of choice is almost always Hagra Mauling, and generally as a four-of. It’s seeing a decent amount of play in Standard as well, which bodes well for it being a potential tool for non-combo Pioneer (and maybe Modern) decks down the line.

You can pick these foil extended arts up for around $2 on TCGPlayer at the moment, which honestly seems way too low. Although there’s very little paper play at the moment, for a card that’s seeing a decent amount of competitive play as well as being in a reasonable number of EDH decks (840, not huge but certainly not insignificant for a new card), I would’ve expected this to be closer to $5. Once paper play returns, quite a number of players are going to need these for their decks, and I would not be surprised to see them going for FEAs when they’re not-so-expensive. As well as that, these MDFCs are the poster-child for open-ended synergy, which means that they’re only going to get better as we get more cards to play with them. Give it a year and I think you’ll be happy to have a stack of these.

Cyclonic Rift (Double Masters)

Price today: $15
Possible price: $30

Cyclonic Rift. An absolute super-staple in EDH, included in almost 90k decks on EDHREC – that’s nearly 40% of all blue decks. The most recent reprint given to us was in Double Masters, where we got a fancy box topper version of the card as well – but I want to focus on the regular copies here. Time and time again we’ve seen this card bounce back from reprints like…uhh, something really bouncy I guess? I don’t know, insert your own analogy here […]. If you’re building a blue EDH deck, there’s a very high chance this card is going in it, and so there are always going to be players needing to buy copies of the card.

Cyclonic Rift was way up close to $40 before we got the reprint in Double Masters, which has now brought the price back down to around $15. The important thing here is that it didn’t catch another printing in Commander Legends, which had been something speculated on as a possibility. Without anywhere else to put another printing of this card for a little while going forwards then, I think that will mean we see upwards pressure on all versions of Rift until it gets a fresh print.

People are still building EDH decks even without much paper play happening, but as I said last week there will be extra downwards pressure on card prices as we enter the holiday season. That makes now a good time to pick up cards that you want to be selling next summer, and I think that this should be one of them. I do really like the borderless foils at $35 as well here, although there are a couple of walls of those on TCGPlayer that need to be eaten away at before the price moves too much.

Nyx Lotus (FEA)

Price today: $20
Possible price: $50

Nyx Lotus is a powerful EDH card in the right deck, those namely being mono-coloured ones that can get a decent number of devotion pips into play. It’s actually the 6th most popular inclusion from Theros Beyond Death, and at 8500 decks it’s definitely making its mark on the format. It has the potential to produce a buttload of mana very quickly (which is probably why it enters play tapped), and it’s very easy to go infinite with something like Filigree Sages.

Although it’s kind of relegated to mono-colour (and sometimes two colour) decks, it’s still a great mana rock in those shells, and the FEA versions are starting to get a little thin on the ground. There are a couple of copies left below $20 on TCGPlayer but with only 31 total listings and most of those being single copies, these are definitely draining out. I expect to see this post up over $30 within a few months, and I doubt we’ll be seeing a FEA versions any time soon so I don’t doubt it’ll just keep going up over the next year or two, with $40-50 being easily possible in that timeframe.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Don’t brace yourselves, because Ned Stark never said that, but what you should do is brace your wallets for Commander Legends. Along with a billion and one new Legendary Partner cards (which for the record I still think is a stupid mechanic that they shouldn’t have doubled down on), we’re getting a decent slew of reprints in Commander Masters Legends. Preorder prices have been racing downwards since previews were revealed, and there are going to be some really tasty prices for us to feast on.

This is another of my ‘don’t necessarily buy right now’ articles that I like to do in the run-up to set releases, but I’ll discuss that further in my individual picks – so be sure to take note. Especially heading into the holiday season prices are going to be getting lower than average, with people spending more of their money on presents and less on cardboard.

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Vampiric Tutor

Price I want to buy at: $30
Possible future price: $60

$30 might be a slightly optimistic buy-in point for Vampiric Tutor, but honestly I don’t think it’s far off. Although preorders on TCG are always thin on the ground at this point in time, over on MKM they’re already preselling for under €30 (~$36), so if you have access to that market then I’d be sorely tempted to grab a few right now, especially if you’re just looking to grab any personal copies. We could see it dip below that before release, or as we head into peak supply, but if it does then I doubt it’ll be by much. After its printing in Eternal Masters we saw prices around $30 so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar trend here.

Vampiric Tutor is in over 36k decks listed on EDHREC – a pretty staggering number to be sure – but we know that EDH players just love their tutors, and an instant speed tutor for one mana is too good to pass up for a lot of black decks. This reprint will be a big opportunity for a lot of people to pick copies up that were previously priced out of the card, and the bling-minded among us will be scooping up the gorgeous foil EA copies.

I’m picking the regular version here instead of the Extended Art for a couple of reasons: I think it stands a lot to gain over a 1-2 year horizon, and I’m honestly not sure what kind of pricing we’re going to see for the EAs and EA foils. I don’t mind saying that I don’t feel confident enough to give you an exact dollar amount that I want to be buying EAs and EA foils at, but I will say that I’m going to be keeping a close eye on them as prices tumble once Collector Boosters start to get cracked and we head into peak supply. The lowest EA non-foil is currently $100 on TCGPlayer but I think that’ll come down towards $60-80, with foils probably staying $100+ for the most part.

The EMA version with the same art as this had gotten up well over $100 before the reprint had been announced, so I think that $30 to $60 is rather a conservative call and you can probably make a decent chunk more money than that depending on how long you want to hold onto them for.

Mana Drain

Price I want to buy at: $50
Possible future price: $100

Blue mages rejoice! The best counterspell in Magic (probably) has been given to us again, meaning that even more people at the EDH table can counter an Expropriate and then cast their own almost for free the next turn. Ugh, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Anyway, if you’re the type of person that wants to do…that, then Commander Legends has just taken $100 off the cost of doing so.

Anyway, pretty much everything you just read about Vampiric Tutor goes for Mana Drain too. We last saw it in Iconic Masters, which depressed prices down to a little under $50, and I fully expected to see prices around the same with Commander Legends. It’s almost as if I’ve just checked MKM and can see that they’re currently preordering for $53…

Despite being a little less popular than Vampiric Tutor, Mana Drain has always retained a higher price tag – it has fewer printings and is slightly less replaceable than Vampiric Tutor can be. Although we’re moving into an era of more frequent reprints across the board, the high price tag on both of these cards means that Wizards need to be careful where they print them, and so we probably won’t be seeing them again very soon, meaning that we can get a good run out of them in the meantime. Mana Drain was $150 before this reprint, so $100 seems pretty easy to get to again.

The EA versions of Mana Drain we’re getting in Commander Legends are especially hot, using the swirly vortex art from the Iconic Masters printing. Same as Vampiric Tutor, EA foils will be big money so keep an eye out for when they hit lows.

Austere Command (EA Foil)

Price I want to buy at: $5
Possible future price: $15

For my last trick card, I am actually picking an EA foil specifically. Although we’ve pretty much just had Austere Command printed in Double Masters, we’re being given it again in Commander Legends. Why that might be is a question scientists still can’t answer, and I amongst many others are caught holding copies from 2XM that have just had their spec timeline lengthened considerably.

Never fear, however, because we are being indulged with an EA version of the card, which I think outclasses any premium versions of the card we’ve had before. The original Lorwyn and Commander set copies have, in my opinion, the best art, but they’re cursed with the absolute mess of text that Wizards used to use for modal choice cards, rendering them a lot less popular than they otherwise might be. After that the other printings in Iconic Masters, Double Masters and now Commander Legends use the newer art, with the final version being the (ugly) Invocation from Amonkhet.

For the vast majority of people I think that this EA foil will certainly be superior to the Invocation, which is the only other ‘premium’ printing, and probably better than the Lorwyn art copies as well. That means that a lot of EDH players are likely going to upgrade their copies for their decks, pushing up the price of this Collector Booster-only item. Preorders are low in supply at the moment, but copies can be found for €5 on MKM and around $10 on TCGPlayer, which indicates to me that we could easily see these around $5 at peak supply. Another EA printing is probably quite a way off after this one, so I think that they’ll have a good amount of room to grow towards $10-15.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.