Final Fantasy is out this weekend, and that’s the start of a wild time in Magic finance. We’ve never seen prices like this for the premium products, on top of the markup Wizards was already frontloading in.
Given the influence of outside collectors, I don’t feel great about recommending cards right now. If you want some of the really chase stuff, I still think you should wait a week or two before moving in.
What I do want to talk about is a phenomenon I’ve noticed when it comes to Secret Lairs. I’ve been looking over some recent lairs that sold out and didn’t, and there’s a trend that may or may not change how I approach my budget for such Lairs.
Come with me and explore the idea of Dump Week.
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Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
On Monday, we’re getting the Summer Superdrop for 2025, and it’s got six groups of cards. Three of those drops are Final Fantasy cards, and I covered all of those just a couple weeks ago.
We need to go over the other drops hitting on June 9, as well as an additional drop coming on June 16. This feels like a lot of Secret Lair because it is, and while I didn’t buy any of the Pencil Superdrop, I’m already planning on a big spend for Final Fantasy, and adding to that with some of these other drops too.
So let’s look at what’s in here, what it compares to, and why the additional drop is really worth watching.
For these drops, I want to look at the EDHREC data and the other premium offerings, to get a sense of what’s already there and how much demand is present. As ever, EDHREC is a useful dataset but it isn’t the only one. An enormous number of people don’t post their lists to the site, and so we can’t look at this data and think that’s the whole story. It’s helpful, but it’s not something all-knowing.
On the one hand, we’re really mining the reprint equity here. Aside from the Bombardment, these are four cards that have never gotten a premium treatment, and in two cases, barely any reprints at all. On the other, these are regular-frame cards from an iconic artist. I’ve ranted before about how much I want for artist series drops to be able to really showcase the art, and Foglio’s art isn’t given that chance to really shine.
What really stings is that this drop comes along in the same release as two other artists who can use the whole card frame, and this is also coming out at the same time as the Final Fantasy Through the Ages subset, which has no frame at all, just floating text. This happened recently with Jesper Ejsing too, and these artists deserve better. Break the frame!
As for the value, Lumberjack is not really a relevant card for almost all decks, Bombardment has multiple cooler versions, and Constant Mists is a card that will have a table itching for your blood. Song of the Dryads is a worthwhile way to shut down a commander, but really, this is a very middling lair and if you really want something from it, the singles should be your target in about two weeks.
This is an awesomely abstract drop, with cards worth the interest. I had no idea Resculpt was so popular in decks, but cheap, flexible removal comes at a cost. Mirage Mirror surprised me too, and this is a fun way to add another premium Scion of Draco out there. (I’m getting close to taking it out of my Ur-Dragon deck, I must admit.)
And as much as I like this art, I have to say that the singles are likely your best bet here too. Consecrated Sphinx’s Brain Dead version is over $40 now, but when the drop first got into peoples’ hands, it was available under $15. I like these cards, and am likely to spec on them, but I don’t feel a burning need to buy this as a sealed set.
The Art of Frank Frazetta: The Second Exhibition
Card
Current EDHREC #
Other Premium Versions
Deadly Dispute
350,000
WPN Retro Frame $1 FIC ??
Murderous Rider
69,000
Showcase Foil $1.50
Zulaport Cutthroat
284,000
TSR Retro Foil $47 2020 SLD Foil $27
Aggravated Assault
111,000
Confetti WOT $67 Invocation $45 40K SLD Foil $25
Desperate Ritual
70,000
None, pack foils $10-$15
First of all, my apologies to the artist, whose name I have repeatedly misstated as Franzetta instead of the proper Frazetta.
This is a fantastic drop on all counts. We know from the last Frazetta drop that the art is popular, and the borderless look with this art is just amazing. There’s also no duds in this set of cards, because while I don’t think that many people play Desperate Ritual in Commander, we’ve got plenty of folks who play four copies in Storm-style decks and that will soak up a lot of demand.
The Rider deserves lots of play, and Dispute/Cutthroat have earned their numbers. This drop is something I’ll be getting the max of foils for.
So on top of my plans for Final Fantasy purchases, I’ll be adding the max of the Frazetta foils to my purchases. The rest can wait for singles.
Once you’re done spending that money, you’ll get another chance a week later. Magic has teamed up with the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) for a charity-driven drop that will be print-to-demand. You’ll have one month to make your purchases, from June 16 to July 13. Best of all, the price is $30 nonfoil/$40 foil, and this is unusual for the charity drops. Let’s talk about the cards:
The only fly in this ointment is that Iteration is banned in Pioneer and Legacy, otherwise, this is another banger of a drop. The least-included card here is Xenagos, a card that’s tough to get rid of and makes everyone at the table very hesitant to make a move, because you don’t know when something huge and hasty is going to show up and bash away.
The Sol Ring deserves mention here as something that will get expensive, the art is just too good and it doesn’t matter that there’s already two dozen great pieces of art for that card. (I didn’t count, there’s just too much.) Sylvan Library is full-scale cheating in Commander, letting you do everything you want for only two mana, and the prices on that alone make this drop have a floor of breaking even, in both foil and nonfoil. I also adore the chancla being removed, because if you know, you know.
I also really appreciate that this is available in your choice of languages for the text. As I’ve aged into being a Magic boomer, I want to be able to read my cards. This drop strikes a great balance between the cultures and the languages.
This is available for a month, so there’s no hurry. Your wallet has a chance to recover a little from Final Fantasy expenditures, and there’s a good chance you can buy the singles while the Lair is still on the site, too. I plan on buying several copies of this lair, in foil and non, plus some singles once supply maxes out.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
Welcome to the latest installment of Mana Math, where I take a bunch of facts and figures that Wizards dumps on us and I turn it into a simple, understandable answer to the burning question: How hard is it to get the cards we want?
The math is pretty straightforward, but Wizards likes to obfuscate things, because they don’t want us to know specifics. As an example, thanks to The One Ring and the other serialized cards, we know exactly how many Collector Booster packs they printed of both the Holiday Edition and the summer edition. And from there, we know how many copies there are of each mythic, rare, uncommon and common from those packs.
They don’t like it when we know all of that, so they try to hide a lot of it, but they are required by assorted laws to print your odds for each potential pull. So let’s break down the numbers, and see what we can see.
To be clear, I’m focused on the Collector Boosters, for two reasons: First, they have never gone back and reprinted Collector Boosters, as far as we know. Closest is the LOTR Holiday Edition, and there’s no sign that they are going to do something like that here.
Our focus will be the last five slots of the Collector Booster. Let’s begin with three of those slots, and if you want Wizards’ breakdown, here is the link. Here’s my table to translate:
For the purposes of these tables, MSRP is $38 per CB, which is $456/box. They are currently selling for more than $750/box, and so I’m rounding the pack cost to $60/pack, or $720/box. I realize prices are fluctuating, and you might be able to get them cheaper, but you can’t get a large amount for a lot less, and the average is easier to comprehend.
Also, for this set, when they refer to Booster Fun, they mean one of the following treatments: Artist Rare, Woodblock Rare, Borderless Character, Borderless Lands, and EA Legendary Cards.
It’s notable that you have three chances at a specific card with these slots, but they are guaranteeing that a maximum of one will be foil. You might get zero. The chances are a touch conditional, but not enough to make a notable difference when you’re at percentages like these. Keep in mind that you’re only at 8% per slot to get a foil anyway, so only about 32% of Collector Boosters would have even one foil. Further, of that 8%, 5.8% is going to be Traditional Foil EA rares from the Commander set. (Some awesome rares in there, though!) Diabolical!
I also want to point out that there’s a treatment which isn’t on this list: EA versions of the original art for the 8 face commanders, which can only be opened in the bundles that comes with two legendary EA cards, and the Collector Booster Sample packs. We aren’t given percentages, so I’m running with the idea that all are equal and with 163 options, over two slots, you’ve got a 1/81.5 of getting the specific EA you want.
Then we get to what might be the sweetest slot of all, but also the most swingy. The FCA slot, FINAL FANTASY Through the Ages, has an array of cards, and here’s the breakdown:
Most interesting tidbit here is that the foils and nonfoils will have exactly the same amount in circulation from Collector Boosters, but nonfoils can be opened in Play Boosters. According to Wizards, you have a 1 in 3 chance of opening a nonfoil FCA in Play Boosters, with a 63.25% for that card to be uncommon, 29.75% to be rare, and 7% to be foil.
So if you open 1000 Play Boosters, statistics say you’ll get 210 Uncommons, 99 rares, 23 mythics. Roughly, that would be 12 of each uncommon, 3 of each rare, and 1.5 of each mythic. Out of a thousand packs!
I fully expect the price on nonfoil uncommon FCAs to drop dramatically over time, rares and mythics will still be hard to pull but there will be a fair amount more of the nonfoils out there, thanks to the Play Boosters.
The last slot has all foils, including some Surge foils, and maybe even some Chocobos!
I’m estimating your chances at a colored Chocobo at 0.03% because all the others add up to 99.97% and the serialized is such a tiny percentage that it doesn’t matter.
Look again, your eyes don’t lie. It will be twice as difficult to pull a FCA foil of one rarity as it will a Surge Foil Borderless (with the number in the background) of that same rarity. The Chocobos might have all the attention, but I will be watching early prices closely to see if people underprice the FCA foils or overprice the Surge Borderless.
You may have noticed some overlap, and for the sake of being a completionist, here’s a table with your chances for some specific subtypes that show up in more than one slot. It’s not a big bump, but it’s a bump and we’re going for the 100% here.
Finally, let’s talk about the xx/77 Golden Chocobos. We know how many there are, and if we fill in the print run, we can get to percentages and odds. Here’s a table for you:
We think the print run for FIN will be a bit bigger than the LOTR main set, and we’re estimating that the Collector Booster print run is just under 4 million packs. Roughly, it’ll take you 50,000 packs to catch the golden bird, and if you do, there’s enough collectors out there to give you a sweet pack of greens.
If you have questions or god forbid, I made errors, please reach out to me on social media. The ProTrader Discord is the best choice by far, and we can merrily argue over thousandths of a percent. Good luck in your packs!
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
Hello again and welcome back, this time we need to talk about the Final Fantasy 7 Commander deck, whose leaders are Cloud, Ex-Soldier and Tifa, Martial Artist. Like the other decks, there’s a very clear strategy, and this time it revolves around creatures, big creatures, and smashing the hell out of the rest of the table.
I’ve got a list of things that I think will help you build the deck, and which have a very good chance of inclusion. Even better will be the things that spike as a result. (Please see recent spikes based on my article for Yuna and Tidus for examples of money that could be made.)
So let’s talk about the implied relationship that stands head and above every other will-they-or-won’t-they in gaming history, and the cards you want to add to their deck.
If you want to run Tifa or Cloud as your commander, your plans aren’t too far apart.
Both of them give you a delightful bonus for attacking and hitting with a creature with 7+ power, and they give you value in different ways. I like Tifa better, but that’s a personal thing, both are good. They both want big, buff creatures, and reward you nicely for doing so. Tifa really wants trample, Cloud really wants equipped creatures to attack.
Sylvok Battle-Chair/Colossal Dreadmask will be a good card, but this would be a bulk buylist play and that’s not always where you want to be. Both of them do the thing for our power couple nicely, but if you can play something to give all your creatures just one more power, they get a lot better in Tifa’s deck. There’s a lot of free equipping going on (more on that later) and so I want to get a built-in creature to go with it.
Batterskull (2XM borderless foil $7) – Speaking of living weapon/job select/For Mirrodin! cards, this is another one that does everything you want. Vigilance plus lifelink is a big-time rattlesnake effect, and this version is by far the sweetest.
Kaldra Compleat (pack foil $13, sketch foil $10) – There is a Spotlight Series for $120+ but I don’t think it’s worth buying as a speculative purchase. Those might go up, as it takes only four purchases to clear out everything under $700, but since I’m not the one who can shift demand that heavily, I prefer the lower-tier cards to go from $10 to $25, as the sketch foils might. This gives every stat you might want, is tough to remove, and is reasonably priced. Getting this onto either commander seems like a good reason to fold up and start a new game.
Hexplate Wallbreaker (reg/EA $5, no foils) – If there’s one thing Commander players love, it’s having a commander that does something, and then picking up all the cards that do the same thing. We love bonuses. The really great thing is that this ability works with Tifa, so after your first attack phase, you’ll get two more attacks. Untapping is not going to happen for each of those, sadly.
Loxodon Warhammer (SLD foil $10) – Adding three power is the magic number for both of them, and while a classic, you especially want trample on Tifa. Lifelink is great, as is a premium version of one of the best equipment ever.
O-Naginata (2XM foil 50¢, SOK foil $5) – I wish there was a sweet version of this to go after, but again, adding three power is where both legends are happiest and this time it is as cheap as can be, no need for ways to cheat the equip cost.
Tenza, Godo’s Maul (bulk) – CHK foils are $25+ and likely not worth the chase, but it’s a fantastic card to have in there, giving all the bonuses you could ask for. Godo has had a premium version printed, but not his favorite method of bashing heads.
Ace’s Baseball Bat (WHO Surge foil $1) – Same idea, two mana, three power, one to equip. First Strike on attack is a nice bonus, and getting the sweet version for a buck is a real bump too.
Commander’s Plate (SLD Rainbow Foil $32) – I want the Marvel version, as the other SLD foil is $50+ and I think this can get there. Giving either legend protection from blue and black is a fantastic mode, and while you’d like to be immune from Path or Swords, this covers most of your other bases.
Robe of Stars (reg/EA $16) – Phasing is incredibly underplayed. You want to be able to keep your things safe, and this is a super unfair way to do that. Keep in mind that you won’t have to re-equip this when your creature and equipment all phase back in. Both versions are about the same price, as is common on these Commander set printings that only have regular and EA versions, so buy whichever you like. One won’t get much more expensive than the other.
Sunforger (MM2 and 2XM foils $6) – If you’ve never played with this card, it’s one of the most incredible things you can do. Free equip triggers are extra wonderful with this card, and the blowout potential is huge. For two mana, you get to find lot out there, but there are *really* good spell packages to put together. Some examples: Swords to Plowshares, Teferi’s Protection, Chaos Warp, Great Train Heist (or other Spree cards, you pay extra costs but can go wild), Akroma’s Will, Deflecting Swat, Wear/Tear, and my personal favorite, Reprieve. No one expects that in a Naya Equipment deck!
Caduceus, Staff of Hermes (ACR etched $7) – Is this an unfair card in a format where you start at 40 life? Sure is. Do some video game crossover action and wreck the table. Whenever we’ve had pack foil, EA foil, and etched foil, the etched tends to jump in price first, so that’s the version I’m targeting here.
Behemoth Sledge (PIP Surge Foil $5) – This doesn’t put Cloud into seven power, but Tifa will get there on the attack. The Surge foil is the sweetest version to be had, and both of them will hit hard and gain you a lot of life in the process.
Privileged Position (2XM borderless $5) – You need a very good reason to leave this out of any deck with green and white in the identity. It’s unfair, but that’s in the card’s name. Given the art, the age, and the usage, I’m shocked at how cheap this is right now.
Iroas, God of Victory (SLD foil $34) – Really, this has it all. Seven power when alive, gives two great abilities to your attackers, and there’s even a sweet constellation version to get before it gets too expensive.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
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