The Pro Tour is this weekend, and I have to say that I have no idea what’s going to get played. Standard has a couple of really good decks, and a whole lot of good-but-not-great-but-damn-it’s-fun decks.

It’s also worth mentioning that we are a mere five weeks away from the Core Set 2019 prerelease.

Honestly, we are getting the Pro Tour this weekend, Battlebond is for sale the weekend after, then it’s GP Vegas, and then just a couple weeks to the new set.

That’s a roundabout way of saying that we are almost to maximum supply on Dominaria. It’s time to look at where some prices are, where they might be, and where I want to be buying, in anticipation of unloading them later with notable gains.

For all of these cards, I don’t expect a lot of movement downward in the next few weeks. The market has had time to determine how good or bad cards are, and lots of them have fallen to the lowest price they will be at.

It’s possible that these cards could fall another 10-15% if people don’t play much Battlebond and just dive back into Dominaria drafts when they are available at the local store, which is a risk I’m willing to take on given the forecast for these.

Also, we could see prices fall further based on future Dominaria needs. Let’s say Karn, Scion of Urza stays at his current price through the end of Dominaria, about $60-$65. It doesn’t take much foresight to see his price hitting $80 or higher around Christmas. Remember, Chandra, Torch of Defiance was once nearly $50, and that was in a set that had Masterpieces!

If Karn is that high, and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria climbs from around $35 to $50, which is totally reasonable given Teferi’s adoption in Modern, then we’ve got two jackpot cards.

Remember that the distributor price for boxes is about $75, so hitting on one of those two cards makes opening boxes a very appealing idea for stores, who would then have a ton of the rest of the set to sell. That might depress prices further, and it’s got me pretty concerned.

I freely admit I’m not going deep on anticipated Standard demand. While I am thinking about Standard, my background is as a filthy casual and there’s other tasty targets to stock up on.

Oath of Teferi (75 cents in nonfoil/$5 foil)

I freely admit that every time a NM Foil comes up on TCG under $3, I’m putting it in my cart. I dearly love what this card enables in one of the most common archetypes in Commander: Planeswalker Superfriends. Doesn’t matter which flavor of the deck you’re running, it’s either Atraxa or someone 5-color as the Commander and this Oath is busted like nothing else. Yes, The Chain Veil does the same thing and is colorless (and is in nearly 4000 decks), but this offers no drawback and affects the board when it shows up.

The easy way to tell if a card is going to be popular in Commander (aside from just checking EDHREC, where this is only in 200 decks so far) is if it’s a win-more card. This is absolutely a win-more card. You’re doing great if you have Planeswalkers in play, so now you get to double up! Winner! Don’t underestimate the dopamine rush of having this card in play and going through all of your ‘walkers to get max value.

Oath of Teferi is not going to go up in value anytime soon. Dominaria is super popular, but the supply of foils is going to be drained, slowly and surely, and won’t be this cheap for long. If nothing else, buy your personal copy now, and a spare or two. You’ll thank me when this is $10 in 12 months.

 

Mox Amber (currently $14/$45)

I admit that I thought this would fall farther, faster. The early adopters got theirs, I opened three in three drafts (one foil) and traded them all immediately, like they were radioactive. The curve for both versions has flattened out, though, and there appears to be just enough demand for its current leveled-out price.

The supply is gluttonous, though. There’s 350 non-shiny versions on TCG right now, and another hundred foils. That’s a lot of people who’d need to buy in to raise these prices. Plus, unbelievably, more people have entered this Mox into the EDHREC database than they have Oath of Teferi!

Mox Amber is showing up in the Aetherflux Reservoir deck that’s trying to blast people with the giant space laser, but while that’s janky fun, it’s living in an Abrade/Thrashing Brontodon world. That’s pretty rough, and most of the deck rotates out in September.

This has farther to go. I’m going to be patient with this, and I’m definitely not getting any until much later this year, when I’m looking for a range of $10/$30. I think Modern will break this card eventually, making the foils a safer place to park some value.

Damping Sphere ($2/$25)

Yep, that’s a foil multiplier of over 12x, and that’s entirely due to its rapid adoption in Modern as a super-popular sideboard card:

Note that while it’s in 12% of decks, the average number is just under two. That means people aren’t loading up on it, they are packing 1 or 2 and that’s it. Because it’s cheap and colorless and it wrecks entire strategies by itself, look at the variety of decks playing it:

Control, aggro, combo, midrange…all the colors are represented too. There’s little reason not to have a couple of these around.

This card is going to act like a rollercoaster. It’ll fall out of favor, then Tron/Storm/Ad Nauseum/whatever comes back into style, then this will be the ubiquitous sideboard card again.

That said, this is the price when we are at peak or near-peak supply. We aren’t in Fatal Push territory, but right now is absolutely when you get the ones you’re going to use. It’ll be $5 by the end of the year, and the foils are going to be opened less frequently than you think. Spending $25 now might seem silly for a two-of, but in a year, the Sphere will be at least $40 in foil.

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for nearly five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. He’s the official substitute teacher of MTG Fast Finance, and if you’re going to be at GP Vegas, look for the guy under the giant flashing ‘Cube Draft’ sign and he’ll have you drafting in no time!