Let me tell you a quick story about my June 1995 experience, as a sophomore/junior who’d been playing for a few months. My local store (Last Grenadier in Burbank, forever next to the mall, RIP) had a box that they put five-cent uncommons into, and when Ice Age came out, I didn’t know it was going to come out.

I just knew that one day, that box had a label added: Ice Age in here! So I eagerly riffled through the cards, exclaiming, and then I saw it. Counterspell. An $8 rare from Revised, was sitting in the nickel bin! And there was another behind it!

I didn’t look at the rest of the cards, I just went to the register and gave over a buck for the 18 other cards and my $16 pair of counterspells, feeling like I was committing a felony. Then I went to my friend and said, “Look what was in the nickel box!”

He looked at me and said, “Yup, that’s a common now.” I felt the world shift, and then I looked at my stack of commons with new and disgusted eyes. 

That’s the feeling I think a lot of people are going to get as this game deals with the aftereffects of Final Fantasy. 

There’s been a lot of markers for transitions regarding this game over the years: damage on the stack, the new frame, Arena, COVID, etc. We’ve adapted to these changes, and learned new ways to manage the ways we can make money off of these changes. 

Final Fantasy is one of those changes. Never before have we activated so many people or added such a rabid set of collectors as we did for this set. As a result, the money involved is through the roof, and we’ve attracted more attention than ever. 

This means some changes, some *big* changes, and since we’re in uncharted territory here, we need to talk about what could be happening next. 

We’ve never had people stalking Target for restocks on Magic cards, but here we are. If you can buy the single Collector Boosters (often referred to as an ‘Omega’ pack) for the MSRP of $40, you can resell it for $100+ on eBay or TCGPlayer. That’s uncharted territory for sealed Magic product, unheard of for the current set. There’s a few sets where saving sealed product pays off well, Lord of the Rings’ Holiday Edition is the biggest one in recent memory, but never before has the buy/sell been so dramatic and so immediate.

People are stalking the restock at Target or Best Buy like they do for Pokemon. We’re getting called scalpers and such, but keep in mind this is all hype around Collector Boosters. The base version of the game is still going at a reasonable price, the hype and big money is chasing the premium versions. 

What we need to keep in mind is that these are folks who don’t know Magic trends, and they might cause Edge of Eternities to have some weird pricing. If you don’t know, then you might think that all the sets are this way. We’ll see what happens to the price of sealed product for EOE, and then, heaven help us, we’re hitting another enormous IP with the release of Spider-Man.

Spider-Man will be the second product in five months which capitalizes on a very well-known property. We don’t have details yet, but we know it’ll include the Spider-verse, the most recent animated movies, and I would be surprised if the Marvel live-action movies didn’t play a part. This is going to be recognizably Spider-Man, and that means we need to buckle up for a whole different group of whales to enter the game and chase singles.

There won’t be a Pro Tour: Spider-Man though, not like there was for Final Fantasy. The Pro Tour in September will be Pro Tour: Edge of Eternities even though the PT date is literally that Friday, September 26. I don’t know what sort of scheduling is happening, but it’s clearly something Wizards fumbled. The fact that Arena cards/art will not be the same as the physical cards is a huge miss, very confusing, but I doubt that will affect the prices or play patterns much.

We’re going to see some extremely disappointed people, as the Pro Tour Cloud, Midgar Mercenary is going for $4,000+ as a nonfoil, the participation in the Pro Tour. The top 32 got foil versions that have sold for as much as $25,000! The Pro Tour before that, which was Pro Tour Aetherdrift in late February of this year, participants got a nonfoil Karn Liberated: 

Top 32 got a foil version, but the price gap here is breathtaking. To make it worse, let me quote from Wizards’ website: “Karn Liberated is 2025’s Pro Tour and World Championship Secret Lair prize card, so expect to see more of our favorite sun-tanning silver golem throughout the year at the Magic Pro Tour.” Right now, on eBay, I can find nonfoils under $300 and foils for $1200. That is a huge gap in price and attention.

Heck, even the RC participation card is a sweet Aerith variant, and that’s a card I will be keeping an eye on too.

What I want to keep in mind here is that the influx of new people to the game means that if they start with Final Fantasy…they are going to expect every set to behave this way. And while EOE is shaping up to be a fun set, it’s not going to be in the same league financially. You can’t get a month’s bills out of whatever nonfoil is being handed out, or an MP Beta Black Lotus from the foil version.

If they act the same way (I hope they don’t, but humans are humans) then we’ll see people buying in a frenzy, and trying to sell cards that no one is heavily motivated to buy. That’s a nice Karn, but buddy, you’re no Cloud Strife.

That will lead to people becoming motivated and confused sellers. Again, if your business model is ‘stalk the restockers, instantly sell for 2.5x’ for Edge of Eternities, then you are in for some very bad times.

I think EOE will have some brutal undercutting going on, but I can’t say for sure what the price levels will end up at. What I’m really not sure about is what this will mean when Spider-Man shows up. Will we see people stalking the unsuspecting floor workers again? If there’s a ‘bad’ set to this group of people, will they write off Magic entirely, or wait for others to tell them that it’s worth going after again?

There will undoubtedly be an effect on EOE prices, as sealed becomes a harder thing to find. I am doubtful that the singles will hold up, though, because so far, this looks like a sweet Magic set but nothing that captures a brand new group of collectors the way FIN did. Brace yourselves, because we’re in for a wild ride. 

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.