What to Buy From Turtles and Secrets of Strixhaven

August 21, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

We’re in a lovely place now with The Hobbit soaking up attention, and we’re about to start getting Reality Fracture promos, plus Secret Lair drops every other week (or more if they wanna get spicy!) taking our money.

But we never want to lose sight of where we’ve been. I’ve established before that generally speaking, 4-6 months is the time you want to wait on a set before buying specs, and handily, we’ve reached that timeframe for both Secrets of Strixhaven and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

So let’s talk about a few of the cards that have gotten to a lovely price, especially compared to their drop rate or usage numbers, and decide what’s worth speculating on.

I’m using EDHREC data, but there’s other databases and they are useful, but not perfect. They all have a preference for preconstructed decks, and they only take into account the most fervent users. Tons and tons of players don’t bother to upload their decks.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Waste Not Bundle Foil ($5, 121k decks on EDHREC) – As someone who loves the Turtles, I really dig this art, but more importantly, this special foil can be had at a fraction of other special foil prices. It’s about half the price of the Enchanted Tales version, and about eight times cheaper than the foil Secret Lair version. If you want those other arts, more power to you, but most folks want a fun foil for cheap and this is all of that at once.

Ninja Pizza regular frame ($4/$18 surge foil, 33k decks) – There’s a pixel art Surge Foil, but that’s more than $70 and not a good spec. Ninja Pizza is just bonkers in the Food decks, and Wizards keeps giving us more and more of those. There’s a whole lot you can do with being able to sac Food instantly for mana, plus getting a free Food each turn. I expect to see these bump up when the next big Food commander shows up. I’d prefer to have the Surge Foil regular frame, but either version should pay off nicely.

Arcade Cabinet ($1/$13 surge foil, 18k decks) – The +1/+1 counter theme is often green, or blue, or white, or Atraxa, but really, this card goes in all of them and is a great deal. A little flicker action really ups your payoffs, and for the price of a Food or a Treasure you can turn one threat into a god. Again, I like the Surge Foil to have a wonderful bump, but at $1, I can see this as a buylist play, sending in a brick when they hit $5.

Trouble in Pairs ($13/$18, 206k decks) – This is your first chance to get a foil version, and as a happy coincidence, it’s several bucks cheaper than the nonfoils. There’s a case to be made for either version, but Trouble in Pairs is just amazing and you should play it in just about every deck you can. Get either version, get a few spares for your future self, and thank me later.

All will be One ($12/$15, 109k decks) – This version isn’t quite half the price of the regular frame from ONE but it’s a good deal cheaper and a card that combos off if you just look at it funny. It’s also a really cool piece of comic art that fits what happens, and that always helps the long-term prospects.

Fracture Foils – The prices on these have come down to their lowest points, and while they might go a little lower, if you’ve been thinking about getting one, now is the time. I like Krang, Utrom Warlord a lot, as a wonderful artifact creature deck topper, but all of them have gotten to reasonable levels after starting out absurdly high.

Secrets of Strixhaven

Silver Scroll Reprieve ($25, 210k decks) – Reprieve has had more than one printing since its original, and this is an awesome version available at $10 less than when it started. I’m big on the Silver Scroll foils long term, as these are super-gorgeous to hold and importantly, they look just as good in a sleeve. I really like the number of decks that want this card, and there’s no question this is the best version to be had.

Silver Scroll Crop Rotation ($128, 440k decks) – Tons of Commander appeal, anime art, low drop rate, great spec. James picked it on cast as a buy when it gets down to $100, but I don’t think it’ll go much lower than it has gotten to now. If you want it, get it, and these will pay you off nicely in a while.

Improvisation Capstone Showcase ($14/$18, 50k decks)

Germination Practicum Showcase ($13/$15, 41k decks)

Restoration Seminar Showcase ($5/$8, 28k decks)

All three of these are the best at what they do. The blue and black ones are good too, but these three have much better inclusion rates. We wouldn’t pay seven mana to get one thing back, but we might for two permanents, and at three the deal is really getting good. These effects stack nicely over time, and require repeated counterspells from your opponents if they want to stop you from getting free stuff. I like the Showcase versions best by far, and the free repeats will feel great.

Bonus:

MSC Surge Foil double-check lands (Scorched Geyser and friends) in Surge Foil for under a dollar: This was a land in SOS precons first, and now we’ve gotten a foil version in the MSH Collector decks. Amazingly, these can be had for under a dollar all over TCGPlayer, and as a fetchable dual land that has a pretty basic requirement, these should go up, at least the premium version. There’s oodles of good duals out these, but getting a very good one, and the only foil version comes from highly expensive decks. Winner all around!

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 an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Casual Fridays

Are We Buying The Marvelous Mathoms Superdrop?

August 14, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

Monday has another SL drop, this time focused on The Hobbit. We’ve got food, ghostly Hobbits, and Smaug’s treasures. Lots of fun stuff to buy, but keep in mind that there’s two more big drops happening in the next month.

September 1 brings the Perfectly Normal Superdrop, with Lo-Fi Study Beats girl, Marvel themes, and who knows what else. Two weeks after that on September 14, Masters of the Universe cards arrive! We have to plan, we have to be prepared, and now we have to plan for the one in front of us.

For now, five Hobbit-themed drops. Let’s look at prices, comparisons, and make plans.

I’m giving you the EDHREC data, but keep in mind the two big problems with this dataset: First, because a lot of people upload a preconstructed deck as-is or with just a few changes, anything that’s been in a couple precons will have really inflated numbers. Second, only a small percentage of players bother to upload decks. The data is a useful reference point, but it is not the be-all and end-all for such data.

I’m also giving you the pricing on premium cards when it exists, even if it’s just pack foils. I’m leaving out the big outliers, like serialized and Pro Tour promos, and sticking with the versions that a new SL would be competing with.

Quantity beats everything else, but we’ve seen a lot of drops with a surprising amount of stock printed. The quantity directly impacts the speed at which it will get sold out, and how quickly the price goes wild. That quantity matters more than most of the other qualities of a drop, so we’ll see how many of each are available. Normally, I’d expect that the He Who Walks Unseen drop, being more pricey and special, would have a lower print run, but we’ve seen a couple of special drops be printed to greater amounts than expected so we’ll have to find out the fun way.

Secret Lair x The Hobbit: Second Breakfast and Beyond

Seven’s a good number for the Food decks, as those decks make many, many food tokens. This is the second food-only drop, behind the Oishii ones, and that was sold for a lower starting price. This is full price, and initially, I was pretty low on this drop. But surprisingly, there’s a lot of $4 food tokens out there, so I don’t hate this drop, but I’m still not buying it. Here I think I like the nonfoil more, just to get in cheaper, but while I don’t loathe the drop, I don’t think it’s worth it unless you’re going to have all seven tokens.

Secret Lair x The Hobbit: Over the Edge of the Wild

Card	EDHREC Decks	Premium Version
Cloudshift	169,000	$3
Tocasia’s Welcome	160,000	$5
Stony Silence	24,300	$2
Imp’s Mischief	184,000	$30
Seize the Spoils	154,000	$1

Mischief is kind of a trap here, as the etched Commander Masters is $30 and the Planar Chaos pack foil is $40, but the Breaking News foil is under $10. The Breaking News frame is one of players’ least favorite looks for a card, but this Gollum version is going to be lucky to be a $15 foil.

This is the first premium version of Tocasia’s Welcome, so I’ll be in for this at Dump Week, but I’m surely not buying full-price Lairs for it.

Secret Lair x The Hobbit: Smaug’s Spoils

Card	EDHREC Decks	Premium Version
Fellwar Stone	2,350,000	$15
Lightning Greaves	2,340,000	$20
Liquimetal Torque	243,000	$5
Sol Ring	7,940,000	$15
Thought Vessel	2,350,000	$15

These cards have been printed a whole bunch, and this is decent. The art is good, and I think the growth should be slow but steady, but the quantity printed is key here. If it sells out first, this has a lot of potential, and there’s a whole lot of decks that would love a premium matched set of the big four staples.

The other borderless Thought Vessels are nicely priced, as are borderless foil Fellwar Stones, so I see this as a slow gainer if it doesn’t sell out fast.

Secret Lair x The Hobbit: Desolation

Card	EDHREC Decks	Premium Version
Defile	144,000	$5
Diabolic Intent	366,000	$95
Dread Return	235,000	$6
Mirkwood Bats	409,000	$6
Read the Bones	257,000	$3

Diabolic Intent has an Invocation and a LTR Hildebrand premium version that are both close to $100, but there’s a lot of regular frames down at $20 and a foil Final Fantasy version at $35. You’re placing a pretty big bet on the DI to hold the value for the Lair, and if this was the first printing, I’d be enthusiastically in, but there’s a lot of this card already out there.

That said, this art style generally does well over time. So I think this is worth buying, with the hope that this is a Lair that sells out quickly. Black-and-white Lairs often take a lot of time to increase in value.

Secret Lair x The Hobbit: He Who Walks Unseen

Card	EDHREC Decks	Premium Version
Arcane Heist	29,200	$2
Contentious Plan	67,700	$1
Curiosity	215,000	$23
Solve the Equation	147,000	$7
Windfall	522,000	$40

So this is the last Lair they spring on us, and we don’t have videos of this, but the pictures seem to indicate that we’re getting some kind of foil with a ghostly outline of Bilbo doing stuff with the Ring on. We’re leaning pretty heavily on the comboriffic Curiosity and Windfall here, and that’s tricky. Windfall has the Eddie version that’s pretty expensive from a quick-to-sell Lair and a lot of denial combos. The Ghostbusters version of Windfall is not even $15. Curiosity’s most expensive version is the Lil’ Giri printing, with a regular frame but from a convention-only Lair. The Enchanting Tales foil was printed at Uncommon, no Confetti version, and is under $5.

I want to think that this is a very limited drop, especially because it’s $60 and foil-only, but with the higher print runs lately, especially for Universes Beyond, I’m hesitant. I’ve got many Deadpool Pool Party foils telling me to think this through. I think this is the only Lair I’m going to try hard for, mainly because the first time they do a certain look, that almost always hits. Looking at Pool Party again

Additionally, this Lair is left out of all the bundles. The Non-Foil bundle has zero discount, and the All-Foil bundle has $10 off. The Everything bundle, incredibly misnamed as it leaves out the Walks Unseen Lair, is going to be $260, which is a total of about $20 off buying one of (nearly) everything. Spending $199 gets you a sweet Arcane Signet, something I’ll definitely be picking up when they get dumped on the market.

As a result, I’m talking myself into the He Who Walks Unseen Lair, and out of the rest, I’m mainly into Smaug’s Treasures. I can’t bring myself to buy the Food, the claymation Lair has only the Welcome that I’ll go for at Dump Week, and I’ll dabble slightly in the Desolation Lair, but that might be all about Dump Week too.

I’m also trying to recover from other buys recently, so my spending is a touch constrained. If you want to discuss what I’m buying, and convince me to change my mind, come over to the ProTrader Discord and let’s chat!

Uncategorized

Hatsune Miku Commander Decks And Your Delayed Gratification

August 7, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

On Monday, a Secret Lair Commander deck drops. Normally, this doesn’t merit a whole article, as the decks have all generally been winners if you’re able to buy them in the less-than-60 minutes they are available. They have a great theme, gorgeous foils, and represent a big win if you get it and seething hatred if you’re not able to.

Because, of course, most of the folks who do get one decide to resell it for a substantial profit. You can argue about bots and ethics all you like, but I’m here to talk about the way Wizards has decided to tackle this beast: by making people wait nearly a year.

Let’s talk about why this is happening now, what it signifies, and what sorts of profits we might expect.

So back in May, the Goblin Storm deck, with lots of Wizard of Barge art, went on sale and was gone in something like 30 minutes. There was an outcry from folks who didn’t want to pay to buy the deck from resellers, and most especially, the artist behind the cards was upset, with this post on social media:

This is understandable. A lot of work and care went into this, and they’ve put a lot into a sweet brand with Goblins, and want the maximum number of people to enjoy the deck.

But it sold out super fast, it’s now going for about three times the list price of $150, and Wizards made their money.

We need to acknowledge that Wizards of the Coast has one of the greatest profit margins ever. They pay their staff to design cards, and they pay (grudgingly and with not enough money) artists for art to go on the cards, but their product costs are literally paper and packaging. Secret Lairs especially are incredible generators of profit for the company, with the cost to make a single $30 nonfoil drop likely in the $2-$5 range.

The decks are more expensive and time-consuming to make, and thus cost more. I fully expect the decks to move up to $200 soon, along with an increase to $40/$50 as the base price for new Secret Lair drops. The profits are too tempting, and Magic needs to keep being the only profitable part of Hasbro.

As a result, the forthcoming Hatsune Miku deck has a new twist, something to help ease the pain. I want to let Matthew Hodgins, the director of Secret Lair, say it directly:

“For this release, Secret Lair is introducing a 24-hour order window to help more fans get the deck. Orders placed between Monday, August 10, 2026, 9 a.m. PT and Tuesday, August 11, 2026, 8:59 a.m. PT will be fulfilled. A limited quantity will be available to ship right away, while additional orders placed during the window are expected to ship in May 2027 in North America and June 2027 in the EU and the UK.”

“Secret Lair has a tradition of experimentation, so we’re trying something kind of new here that harkens back to the early, early days of Secret Lair to meet demand where we think it will be highest—on fully playable products. This sale is an experiment (and, yes, a direct response to Goblin Storm) with introducing a 24-hour limited order window on products meant to be playable out of the box. So, this could include things like Commander decks, specialty products like the Secret Lair Dandân Deck, or anything else wild we think of down the line that may have the unique combination of high demand and out-of-the-box playability. If it goes well, we may create a new storefront (kind of like the Chaos Vault) for these types of sales. If we see issues, we may go back to the drawing board. We’ll see how it goes and check in soon.”

We have a lot to unpack here, but let’s start with the second paragraph. They want to give people a chance to buy the deck at MSRP who miss out on the initial window. By this point, there’s optimized processes for getting stuff via the Secret Lair site (if you want to know how ProTraders do it, come join up!) so there’s not a lot of technical ways to help people get copies. The printers are also incredibly booked up, as we know from the Their Magic Is Limitless sale, where people could buy the Lairs for delivery in April 2027. I’m certain Wizards would love to print twice as many Miku decks ahead of time, but there just isn’t time to do that.

So now Wizards is going to delay your purchase for nearly a year, pushing everything back to May 2027. It seems like they won’t charge you, as ProTrader experiences reported that for Their Magic Is Limitless, only orders totaling over $2,000 were immediately charged. That might differ with Miku, just as a disclaimer. This is how it happened for some folks, and Wizards might fiddle with some settings.

We’ll get to profits in a moment, but it needs to be said that Wizards is already feeling the effects of overbooking their printers’ capabilities. My Little Pony Lairs were delayed this summer by three months, and they are promising different arrival dates for the US and EU customers. I fully expect the second wave of Miku decks to be delayed as well, not out of malice, but just the chaos of existence stepping in and stuff happening. A lot can happen between now and May, so that’s why I think the gratification will end up further delayed.

The hilarious part is, my plan and recommendation for the Miku deck remains the same: buy all that you can. If you get some of the early copies, those will profit nicely. If you have to wait, then wait. By the time the second wave arrives, it’ll feel like a new experience all over again. I’m convinced that Wizards is doing this more for the optics than for the actual amount, but perhaps I’m wrong and their profit margins soar. After all, if they charge us now, they are getting an interest-free loan for the better part of a year.

I’m going to be watching the prices of the deck and the singles as time passes, to see what the awareness of a second wave will do to prices. Logically, it would make sense if things stayed cheap in anticipation of that second wave, but Magic players are not the patient type. They want what they want, and the collector urges are incredibly strong. The really hilarious thing to watch will be what the prices are after the second wave hits, and we know no more is coming. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the decks hit their highest price right after those are in hand.

So good luck on Monday, and know that your profits will be strong now and also strong when the encore arrives.

Casual Fridays

The Mana Math for Magic: The Gathering | The Hobbit

July 31, 2026 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

Welcome back to the long-running, incredibly-complete series where we take Wizards’ obfuscations about drop rates and give you a clear answer to the question everyone wants: How hard is it to open the card I want from a Collector Booster? Or to put another way, what are my chances in these super-expensive packs?

It’s a well-known tidbit that you should never open packs, they are almost never worth it. The theory is extra-true in the modern day, where the Expected Value of a Collector Booster box is way out of line with the amount it takes to buy that box.

Hype and FOMO are carrying the day, and if you’re feeling the heat, let’s go over some stone cold numbers, as we know the absolute truth for almost every card you could open. Let’s get to it!

All of the information on these tables is taken from Wizards’ own posts, mostly the Collecting article that tells us the drop rates for each type of card in a Collector Booster. If you know the percentage, and how many cards fall into that category, a little division and then taking a reciprocal gets us to the answer.

Let’s start with nonfoils of Booster Fun treatments, which take up two slots in the pack, meaning that we get twice as many. Could also be some lovely spec opportunities in future too.

This generally lines up well with other nonfoils, but a couple of things jump out here. First of all, more than half the nonfoils opened in these slots will be Extended Art or a Scene card. Taken a step further, combine those categories with Box Toppers and Dragon Hoard and you’re at more than 80%. There’s gonna be a lot of those cards out there.

The individual Box Toppers are gonna be a tougher pull than people anticipate, because there’s forty of them. Close to twice as difficult to nab in nonfoil as some of the mythic variants, we’ll have to see what the prices end up at.

Now for the Booster Fun foils:

We’ve got four categories where specific cards can be more than 300 CB packs to get opened, where MSH has only two categories like that and only the Silver Scroll foils from Secrets of Strixhaven were over 300. Mythic Scrolls were 650 packs each, where the rares were about 324 packs.

So in terms of pure statistics, Surge Foil Box Toppers, Surge Foil Mythic Book Covers, Surge Foil Mythic Rare Dragon Hoard and Traditional Foil Dwarven Language cards are roughly as hard to open as Rare Silver Scroll Foils. There’s a lot of other factors at play, so don’t go confusing price with the pack odds, but if you want to know equivalencies, there you go.

I’m interested in how the prices settle out on the Box Toppers, too. We know the relative drop rates for the nonfoil and the Surge Foil, both of which are in the Collector Boosters. The unknown is how many of the Traditional Foils will be opened, since you get one of those per Play Booster box/CB box. The math says it’s roughly $6,800 worth of cards to open to get one specific Traditional Foil (given $170/box and 40 boxes) but only $6,300 for a nonfoil and $12,800 worth of product to get the Surge Foil. Will the market prices reflect these rates? Likely not, but I can’t predict mass psychology.

Finally, let’s talk about the big bad of the set. Smaug the Magnificent is the headliner, the chase, the one you want to open above all else. We’re told that roughly 500 of these bad boys were put into circulation, and with that number, we can start doing some estimating.

We know for certain that the first Lord of the Rings print run for Collector Boosters was 3.3 million packs, and for the Holiday Edition, that’s 1.5 million, based on the numbers they told us at the time. They no longer give us enough specifics to get that number (and that’s quite deliberate on their end) but that’s where we can start estimations. If the print run for The Hobbit is the same as the summer LOTR, then you’re looking at one golden Smaug every 6,666 packs, or 555.5 boxes of Collector Boosters. If you think the print run is equal to the smaller Holiday Edition, then it’s every 3,333 packs, or 278 boxes. We don’t have hard numbers (if you know the actual print run, that’s wonderful information to share) so your guess is as likely as mine.

Under duress, I’d put the number somewhere in between, so it’ll take around 4,000 packs, maybe 4,500, but I have to reiterate that I don’t have an ironclad set of numbers to work with. The drop rate is incredibly low, and with Magic collectors hitting quite the fever pitch, I fully expect the first Smaug on the open market to go for $35,000 or more. Vendors are offering mega-bounties, as they have buyers lined up to pay even more.

So there you have it, a comprehensive list of the drop rates for every card type in Collector Boosters. If you want to know about more niche things like uncommons and such, drop in on the ProTrader Discord and I’ll give that a look for you. Good luck in your packs!

MTGPrice Blog