There’s been four Secret Lair decks so far: Coin Flips, Angels, Cats and Dogs, and Cute to Brute. In order, those go for $340, $420, $300 and $250 on TCGPlayer right now. All of them cost $150 to order off the website, and that is quite a pattern to set.

However, it’s been on sale for several days, and has barely gotten to the ‘low stock alert’ level. If it’s guaranteed money, why isn’t it sold out already?

Let’s get into the value of the cards, and the potential reasons why this deck hasn’t sold out yet, and my plan for this drop.

The sealed decks mentioned before, those prices are a bit misleading. Each of those decks has five newly foiled cards with new art, and the strong majority of those prices are held in those new cards. For each of the decks, let me break down the specifics: 

Deck	New Art Double-Sided Foil Cards	Other cards > $5
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose	Zndrsplt, Eye of Wisdom  Okaun, Eye of Chaos  Propaganda  Stitch in Time  Krark’s Thumb	Goblin Engineer Sakashima the Impostor Whir of Invention Seize the Day Commander’s Plate Shadowspear Embercleave Academy Ruins Inventors’ Fair Training Center
Raining Cats and Dogs	Rin and Seri, Inseparable Jetmir, Nexus of Revels Jinnie Fay, Jetmir’s Second Anointed Procession Sol Ring	Brimaz, King of Oreskos Three Visits Skullclamp Lurking Predators Jetmir’s Garden
Angels: They’re Just Like Us but Cooler	Gisela, the Broken Blade Bruna, the Fading Light Archangel of Thune (single-sided) Court of Grace (single-sided) Commander’s Plate (single-sided)	Lightning Greaves Sword of the Animist Urza’s Incubator Emeria, the Sky Ruin Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
From Cute To Brute	Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge Archangel Avacyn // Avacyn, the Purifier Bloodline Keeper // Lord of Lineage Nicol Bolas, the Ravager // Nicol Bolas, the Arisen Westvale Abbey // Ormendahl, Profane Prince	Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy Rhys the Redeemed Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy Triplicate Titan Valakut Awakening Dowsing Dagger Guardian Project Darkbore Pathway Hengegate Pathway Riverglide Pathway
20 Ways To Win	(all ten are single-sided) Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin Approach of the Second Sun Felidar Sovereign Happily Ever After Triskaidekaphile Revel in Riches Helix Pinnacle Simic Ascendancy Sol Ring Maze’s End	Auriok Champion Dryad of the Ilysian Grove Heliod, Sun-Crowned Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis Seedborn Muse Clever Concealment Halo Fountain Mystic Remora Bountiful Promenade Reflecting Pool Wooded Bastion

Note: If you look up the last column of cards on TCGPlayer, you should look for ‘The List’ version, because these reprints have the little planeswalker symbol in the bottom left. 

Until 20 Ways to Win, the decks were all printed to order, so that plays a big part in the quantity that were available. Only the people who wanted to order it got it, and a whole lot of those people kept it all. Speculators got some of the decks, sure, but it’s taken a while for those decks to gain value. 

It’s also worth noting that the first four decks are much more upgradeable for the themes they have, so you could get the deck and add some sweet cards, with a great experience. The newest deck pulls you in a lot of different directions, but has little support for the twenty ways. For instance, there’s not a single other Shrine to trigger the Go-Shintai, and the only clone effect for Biovisionary is Rite of Replication.

My last point about these decklists is that several of these cards are going to take a hit as people dump the cards onto TCG after cracking it open. Clever Concealment and Kynaois and Tiro are two cards that were Commander sets only, and have a tiny amount in circulation. We’re about to get a good deal more, and those two especially should drop down a good deal before starting to slowly climb again. 

Wizards has set the limit at two decks per account, and while there’s plenty of folks who have more than one account set up in order to bypass this exact sort of limitation, they don’t seem to have gone after this with the needed fervor to cause the deck to sell out. I would imagine that they used the numbers sold from the first four decks to tell them how many of this one to print, with maybe a bit extra added in.

What this deck lacks is the juicing with expensive cards that we got in the Marvel drops. Outside of the ten special cards, the aforementioned Commander reprints and the Heliod are the only extra-pricey ones at $10 or more. It would not have been difficult for Wizards to add a couple more cards and make sure it felt like a big value.

To be clear: I think this deck is a fine buy. It should gain in value slowly, but what I’d prefer to do is spend $300 on the foil singles when they become available. Revel in Riches in in 86,000 decks on EDHREC, and Approach of the Second Sun is close behind at 83,000. After that, there’s Triskaidekaphile at just under 60,000, just about as many as Simic Ascendancy, and then Felidar Sovereign is at 50,000. That’s a great set of targets when people start getting the decks in hand. 

That way, I’m going after all the cards with high growth potential and unique art, without the large storage issue or the need to break down the sealed decks. The tanuki art should grow nicely over time, and are definitely the cards to target. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) 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 official substitute teacher 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.