We’ve come to the end of another year, and instead of looking back on what we’ve been buying in 2021, I want to look forward to 2022. The past year has been a decent one for buying cardboard and a bad one for most everything else, but thankfully I’m here to talk about the former and not the latter. Today’s picks are going to be aimed at a one year trajectory, so we’ll check back in with them at the end of 2022 and see where we landed!
Kaldra Compleat (Showcase Foil)
Price today: $10
Possible price: $30
For a deck full of pretty bad cards, Hammer Time is still tearing up the Modern format every week, with a few different iterations and variations being played around with but the core remaining pretty much the same. One of the ‘fun-ofs’, a sometimes food for the deck, is Kaldra Compleat – it doesn’t quite pack the same +10/+10 punch as the Hammer itself, but has a whole slew of keywords that can help to push damage through where the Hammer fails.
You’ll find it here and there in Hammer lists and is also a relatively popular EDH card, found in around 5000 decks listed on EDHREC. I like the look of its supply levels and price ramp on TCGPlayer at the moment, partially because the Showcase foils are actually cheaper than the regular foils right now by a few bucks. Showcase foils are starting at $10 whereas regular foils are up at $14, and I think that’s due for a correction. I think the Showcase versions look pretty good, and don’t deserve to be lower than the version that has more supply.
There are a decent number of $10 around at the moment, but it’s not long before it jumps to $15 and then $20, and given a year I think that this MH2 mythic will see a nice jump once supply really dries up. We won’t be seeing this Showcase version again for a while, and so picking these up now seems like a good move for an easy double or triple up.
Katilda, Dawnheart Prime
Price in Europe: €0.20 ($0.25)
Price in US: $0.50
Possible price: $1
Onto something a little less exciting for my next pick, Katilda, Dawnheart Prime (not to be confused with Katilda, Dawnheart Martyr from Crimson Vow, because those names in subsequent sets were obviously a great idea) is the fifth most popular commander from Midnight Hunt and a reasonably popular card in the 99 as well. The protection from Werewolves ability probably isn’t what you’re playing this card for, but turning all your Humans into mana dorks is pretty great and having an anthem effect on top of that is even better.
I don’t think that this will make its way into Modern Humans anytime soon (not that that’s much of a force in the format at the moment anyway), but should be a fairly popular EDH and casual card for a while. Playing it as a two mana commander that can help ramp you into bigger spells quite quickly is strong, and the third ability keeps it relevant into the late-game as well, especially if you’re playing around with +1/+1 counter synergies.
It’s close to bulk prices at the moment, especially if you’re shopping in Europe, and I think that it’s going to be a good buylist target a little way down the road. 12 months out I expect to see this buylisting for $0.80 – $1; CardKingdom will often pay close to retail for strong casual cards in non-foil and so that’s where I’ll be looking.
Damn (Old-Border Foil)
Price today: $4
Possible price: $10
Jumping back to Modern Horizons 2 for my last pick today, I think that Damn is underpriced at the moment. It’s the 3rd most popular card from the set in terms of percentage inclusion, and I don’t see a good reason that it shouldn’t be in almost every black-white EDH deck that you build. Strong spot removal with an option to board-wipe attached is fantastic flexibility in one card, and at two and four mana, spells really don’t get much better than that.
In terms of different versions, the retro foils and FEAs are the ones to look at here, and although it’s currently the cheaper version, I think that the retro foil is the one to focus on. In my opinion you can’t really beat the look of the old frames and the foils just look excellent, so at $4 I think they’re a steal. At $7 the FEAs aren’t too bad either and it might be worth grabbing a couple of those too because they’ll likely be following a similar trajectory, but my pick for today is the OBFs.
They’re actually more expensive in Europe at the moment so no luck with arbitrage there, but the $4 copies on TCGPlayer are definitely good enough to pick a stack up. A year down the road I can see these cruising to $10 and maybe higher, especially if it starts to see play in Modern (which is highly possible given the power level of the card).
That’s all from me today, and I’ll see you in the new year with more pieces of cardboard to spend your money on. Happy holidays!
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, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.