It’s hard to believe that Final Fantasy was officially released only ten weeks ago! We’ve seen the Collector Boosters get so expensive that the empty display boxes are going on TCGPlayer for more than $20, and I’m told this is a common thing for the hardcore collectors, having the empties of the boxes you’ve cracked open. 

Final Fantasy’s subset, Through the Ages, is a true home run, giving us very useful cards with some wonderful/iconic/nostalgic art. Doesn’t matter if this is not your cup of tea, there’s something here to enjoy and the collectors have come out of the woodwork. We’re told by Wizards employees that the print run for this set was bigger than any other set ever, and the demand was still too high. 

As a result, we’re seeing some cards start to dry up, and while usually I like to wait for six months or so to let a card find its bottom, when the boosters are this pricey, I can’t imagine these sink much lower before rising up. So let’s review the cards with the right mix of demand, current price, and low inventory.

For each card, I’ve listed the EDHREC data, but please keep in mind that it’s not a perfect set of data. EDHREC is both skewed to the most invested players, a very small group of very online folks, and those who do ‘precon plus some upgrades’ for leagues and other limited-pool Commander decks. I also want to remind you that per the Collecting article, it takes roughly 50 Collector Booster packs to get a foil uncommon from this sheet, about 250 for a foil rare, and a whopping 500 packs for a mythic. At $1300 a box, that’s just over $27,000 for a rare (most of this list) and $54,000 for a single foil mythic!

As the FF Collector Boxes stay at such a high price, being collectibles in and of themselves, the supply on these foils is already low, and there’s not much more coming into circulation. 

One more detail to note: James and I have spent a lot of time on MTG Fast Finance discussing how Japanese-language cards are undervalued compared to the English versions of chase cards. Frequently, the JPN price is half or less of the ENG price, but because so much of this set’s collectors just don’t care about the language, the JPN cards are often within 10-20% of the English price. If you like the foreign-language version, all of these get significantly cheaper. 

Command Beacon (317,000 decks on EDHREC, $19 for a NM English Foil) – This is one of the most popular EDHREC cards you can get in the FIC sheet, and also a bit misleading. Beacon was put into two recent Commander precons, and a lot of expensive commanders won’t even run the card. It is understandable if you don’t like the FF8 art, straight from the PlayStation 2, but we’ve already got a Galaxy foil of this at more than $30. Once these last few cheap foils are gone, we’re going to see this hit $40 or $50 pretty easily. 

Bolas’s Citadel (282k decks, Game Changer, $50) – If you’ve never played with or against this in Commander, just know that it’s a worthy Tinker target in Vintage Cube, and that’s a format with only 20 life! In Commander, it’s very easy to abuse this card and while there is a Post Malone SL version as well as a white border from MYB2, this is already the chase version at $50. 

Loran of the Third Path (205k decks, $20) – Another card with art that’s the flower of 2000’s technology, Loran is a tremendously popular card given the enters-play Disenchant and the politics of drawing extra cards. We also know that these collectors spend a lot for the anime-type art, so this just feels like a matter of time. 

Adeline, Resplendent Cathar (167k decks, $24) – The card is great, the art iconic, and the price is perfect. A rare case where the Japanese-language copies are a lot cheaper, you can get copies for $14! 

Sram, Senior Artificer (186k decks, $25) – The Commander is a draw engine for three types of decks, as well as being a fantastic include in the 99 of a lot of types of deck. We’ve had special versions, even serialized ones, and this FCA version will surpass all but the numbered copies. The art is perfectly arranged on the text, making this extra awesome.

Carpet of Flowers (104k, $18) – The SL version is already in the low $30 range, and that’s not even borderless or extended art. Even if the art makes no sense to you, knowing the game lore or not, it seems easy to see that this will grow to match and surpass that version of the card. 

Isshin, Two Heavens As One (23k as commander, #15 in last two years, 47k more, $70) – All-time confluence of factors here: Isshin is a terrifying commander in the aggressive colors, the aforementioned supply issues, and FF collectors love Lightning. I won’t be surprised when these are $150 by next summer. 

Jodah, the Unifier (24k as commander, #13, 17k more, $31) – There’s some competition in here, as we got the Spongebob Jodah not long before this was released, but the art is by Amano, and some people don’t like the bright cartoon colors. Jodah should break the top ten commanders over time, as it’s just an excuse to play all your favorite legendary creatures. 

Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor (51k, $34) – All the other mythics from FCA are super-pricey but this one is surprisingly affordable. Gix sees less play than the others, and buying in on this is more of a supply spec than anything else. 

Muldrotha, the Gravetide (20k decks, #24, 58k more, $12) – Top graveyard-based commander, great art. There are other borderless versions out there, including a Fracture Foil from Foundations, but this is still a great price for a very collectible version. 

I don’t think you need to buy any of these immediately, but I wouldn’t wait too long. Most of them have already rebounded off of lows, and as the CBs rise in price, these cards should get harder and harder to find. 

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.

I’ve been making a lot of posts lately, mainly in the ProTrader Discord, that come down to one thing: Final Fantasy was the harbinger of change. There is a before and there is an after, and just as we needed to adapt in COVID times, and adapt post-pandemic, now we need to look at what is happening with an impartial eye.

We’re not here to talk about the morality of the new reign, or the unfairness, or anything else that is as useful as an ‘old man shakes fist at cloud’ meme. We’re being clear and concise about what’s happening now in Magic and what it means going forward. 

Before we go too deep, let’s take a beat and review a little history, so we can see where we are at. 

We have to start with Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings. This set dropped in June of 2023, and was known to have the serialized Rings, a Realms and Relics subset, and also a special Holiday release with its own Showcase art, the 60’s poster treatment, and even more serialized cards. 

This was the first true Universes Beyond full set, as before, we’d only gotten little glimpses of this world. A Secret Lair, a subset of cards like Transformers done inside of a regular set, that was as far as we had gone.

LOTR was the first time that Magic players intersected with another big fandom, and since Magic’s appeal has generally been as a game, not as its own lore, the ‘collector’ aspect of the game kicked in hard. We had the 1/1 The One Ring sell for $2 million US, a record which was eclipsed last May by a 10.0 Pristine Alpha Black Lotus that went for $3 million. 

Lord of the Rings as a set, was handled almost perfectly. The biggest flaw was that the surge foil Realms and Relics went from super-mega-rare in the original Collector Boosters and then they were close to 10x easier to pull in the Holiday edition. That’s the only blemish here. And ever since those Holiday packs came out in late 2023, they’ve done nothing but go up in price. They were $350/box on release, then by the following July they were pushing $500. At one year old, in late 2024, they’d broken past the $1000 mark, and thanks in part to a lot of sales at Black Friday, it was $1500 at the start of 2025. Currently, the cost for a Holiday edition box is $2400, and the regular LOTR is at a grand.

The next inkling we had of things being different was last November, when the Marvel Secret Lairs dropped, and had mechanically unique cards in them, and good ones at that. The Secret Lair site went down and was back up and then restarted, with some server patches that ravenous fans got through. We’d seen popular things–we’d never crashed the whole damn endeavor.

And that leads us to a team–up that seemed wildly unlikely. Final Fantasy already has a whole card game, with lots of expansions and its own market! The nostalgia was too strong, and the FF collecting whales went for the Surge foils first, new depictions of beloved characters. Those went up in price fast, and the Collector Boosters they came from followed suit, buoyed by the astronomical prices of the Neon Chocobos. 

Collector Booster boxes for Final Fantasy had an MSRP of $450, which is the same as a Modern Horizons set. This stayed consistent for a bit but as soon as the collectors kicked in, the prices started going up and they did not stop. When individuals were able to sell their own boxes, the supply dipped a little and then started to climb. We’re at $1400 and past lots of predictions, but here’s the real issue: Anyone who sold a box at close to MSRP was losing out on something like 100% profit, and now anyone who could buy at MSRP would be able to resell for mega profits.

As a result, Magic has attracted the attention of the networks of folks who are trained to buy MSRP on sight and expect immediate profits. Their business model is about speed, exploiting botnets and other programs that find available inventory and buy it instantly. Pokemon and sneakers are the most common uses here, but concerts have this problem too. And let’s face it: We would buy Final Fantasy at MSRP instantly too. 

Wizards has noticed the changes in behavior too, and Collector Booster boxes for the next Universes Beyond sets (Spider-Man and Avatar: the Last Airbender) are starting out at much higher prices, to the dismay of folks who want to get those packs for cheaper. 

So where are we now?

First of all, the prices of the regular singles are not heavily impacted yet. Nonfoils in the regular frame for FIN and EOE both remain in the range of where other sets were at this point, with perhaps the exception of Starting Town, which spiked a lot earlier than I expected. While the special versions are getting crazy expensive, the regulars are fine. 

Please remember that the panic currently overtaking folks is all about special shiny versions. Regulars, and regular foils, are still not difficult to find. 

Also, we need to keep in mind that Wizards wants the profit too. Once the distributor gets the product, Wizards doesn’t make any more money. So they are going to set that price higher whenever they think the market will bear it. Up to this point, that’s meant the Horizons sets or reprint sets stuffed with value. Now, though, we’re seeing some reaction from them and they are making more money per box. 

The scary thing is, there’s nothing in the future that should slow this down. The ‘regular’ Magic sets might be a blip, but the presence of an Infinity Gauntlet means big-time Marvel crossovers. We’re already seeing Spider-Man variants with classic comic book covers, and those sorts of collectibles have lots of crossover appeal.

Finally, the bots and such should be a fixture of life online for the foreseeable future. As long as there’s profit to be made in being the first to buy out someone who lists an Avatar CBB at $600, there will be scrapers and crawlers flagging and buying faster than humans can click links. This will keep happening until a) technology to block the bots arises or b) there’s no longer profit to be made. I don’t know when (if) either of those things will happen.

The one good thing I can see here is that the folks running bots aren’t looking to do anything but instantly flip. We are seeing some impressive lows for the Final Fantasy SL cards, and I’m looking forward to buying plenty of the recent FIAB promos as well. Even if something sells out online, you’ll usually have chances to get singles at decent prices.

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.

We’re six months past the release of Aetherdrift, and that set is commonly given the side-eye as being one of the weakest sets in recent memory, both in terms of impact and finances.

So that means there’s a lot of potential value, as folks don’t bother to open or use the cards. 

Today, I want to look at the set, its chase treatments, evaluate use-cases, and see what I want to pick up in anticipation of future gains.

Fracture Foils are a treatment that has proven to be very popular, depending on the card and art. They’ve shown up in three sets so far: Foundations, Aetherdrift, and Duskmourn: House of Horror. Outlaws of Thunder Junction went for raised foils as part of the OTP bonus sheet, and we’ll come back to that. Each of the Fracture Foil sets have had cards show up in English and in Japanese-language, even if you’re opening English packs. In order to get a specific English Fracture Foil in DSK, you’d need roughly 1,428 Collector Booster packs. That number is 1,515 for Foundations, and the same 1,515 packs for Aetherdrift. These are tough to open on their own. 

However, the rarity is not the only factor at play here. The card needs demand, either from being amazing art, amazing card, mega-staple, or some combination thereof. Here’s the prices for all the Fracture Foils, TCG Low as of this weekend:

Foundations is the only one of these three that has reprints, but this isn’t just about the reprints. Twinflame Tyrant is in about 73k decks on EDHREC, but it’s a Dragon and we know how much people love our scaly overlords. (I run the meetings on Wednesdays!) Enduring Vitality is in 50k more decks and it is about half the price. All five of the Enduring creatures, being value engines, are in at least 68,000 decks each, but four of the five have lower prices than Progenitus, a card who sees play with Cubes and only 15,000 Commander decks total. 

I’m looking at these price lists and I’m thinking that we are seeing opportunity. Nothing on the agenda right now is making these cards spike, but there’s a whole lot that could go off. Cursecloth is waiting for a Zombie deck, as an example. These cards are underpriced considering how difficult it is to pull one. These Aetherdrift Fracture Foils are not even falling victim to the yellow problem, this is just reflective of a belief that nothing in the set is worth money…so nothing in the set is worth money.

There’s another subset of hard-to-get cards in Aetherdrift: The first-place foils and the borderless first-place foils. These were only found in the Box Topper packs, and you get exactly one per Play Booster Box, Collector Booster Box, and the Finish Line Bundle. Let’s go over how tough those are to pull from Box Topper packs:

We don’t know the ratio of bundles sold vs. CB boxes and Play boxes, so we can’t estimate the relative costs for each copy of a card, but it’s surely not cheap. The Special Guests especially are incredibly difficult to snag, but only Chrome Mox at $450 is above a price tag of $100 for any of these rarities or treatments. That’s way out there, and not the prices I would have expected. We’re in an era where Final Fantasy has brought in a ton of new collectors, with lots of Collector Booster boxes rising in price but Aetherdrift staying stubbornly cheap. 

The big issue here is the same thing haunting the textured foils from the OTP set: The cards don’t look terribly appealing. 

To be clear, the pictures on Gatherer and TCGPlayer are mustard-yellow, and being borderless, that makes for a LOT of the yellow color:

This is a difficult thing to want to spend money on, if it looks this much like a hot dog topping. If they’d gone for some other color, they might have had better luck, but making everything yellow also makes the color identity of the card much more difficult, something that is hard to grasp until you play with these cards and see how they look in person:

There’s no other word for it: These cards are ugly. Doesn’t mean they can’t get expensive, just means that they aren’t right now. 

With that in mind, though, there’s a couple of cards from DFT’s rarest pulls that are worth considering:

Bloodghast ($9, 84k on EDHREC) – The Secret Lair version of this card, from one of the very first Lairs six years ago and only in nonfoil, is at $11, or you can get this for $9. It’s a card that has an infinite combo with Perilous Forays and if you’re willing to go to three-card combos there’s plenty of those around. It’s in plenty of decks, and is incredibly a Vampire if you want those synergies. 

Lord of the Undead (34k decks) – The only thing that does this justice is a comparison of the regular SPG and the First-Place SPG:

The yellow one is $55. The regular foil is $9. Both are worth it for the next time Zombies get popular, as this is just cool art. 

Salvation Engine is the most popular Fracture Foil from DFT on EDHREC, and I think it’s worth picking up. It’s a plus-two anthem for artifact creatures, and if you have six power of creatures (a 4/4 or two 1/1 artifacts can do it) then you can get an attack and return something to play. That’s a pretty great set of abilities in a single card.

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.

We’ve got a lot of Secret Lairs in our rearview mirror, and yet, the site itself is a pretty fascinating picture of what has gone before. 

Wizards has chosen to make lairs available on the site until they sell out, and in some cases, that’s taking quite a while. 

So today, I want to review the Lairs that are still available, and give some thinking to what lessons we can take away from those Lairs. 

We’re going to start with the oldest Lairs, and I’ll link anything I wrote about that drop. For each drop, I’ll also list if foil, nonfoil, or both are still available.

Camp Totally Safe Superdrop – This originally ended up on the site in late Sept 2024, and here’s what is still on the site: 

Chucky (nonfoil) – The IP was strong enough to support several films in the franchise, but as was pointed out to me, it was the same group of people who went to all of the movies. It didn’t have a wide outpouring of support and interest, but instead had a deep interest with a smaller group. Additionally, there’s a bunch of people who found this creepy and unfun. Also very relevant: The cards themselves were not terribly relevant to Commander players.

Tome of the Astral Sorceress (both) – We’ve seen a few drops in this visual style, with a lot of white space and text focus, and mostly, they have not done well. 

Ghostbusters (both) – Eladamri’s Call is holding this from being a total wash, but the nostalgia was not strong enough here to get this to sell out, even almost a year later.

Slimer (both) – It’s possible that these two cartoon drops were way overprinted (more on that in a sec) but as I said originally, Windfall was the best here and has stayed there. Interest just hasn’t kept pace.

Miku: Electric Entourage (JP foil) – The English foil is $36 just for the Elspeth/Miku card from this drop, but the JP foil of the same card is available for $8 on the same website. Miku collectors are driving this train, as Elspeth Tirel is not a super-popular Commander card. My theory here is that the first two Miku drops sold out ridiculously fast, and the second pair of Miku drops had a lot more printed. JP foils of Miku cards will eventually get there, given the collectors, but this being available a year later speaks volumes about how many were printed. 

Strange Sands: Swamp and Strange Sands: Mountain – The Islands sold out fast as a Rorschach meme, but I imagine this is all interest from people who liked the lands and bought enough for their commander deck. There’s less demand for these two lands, even when you’re getting this many copies.  

Winter Superdrop 2025 – Lorwyn Lightboxes (nonfoil) – This might stay on the site till we’re back at the Lorwyn plane, but the creature types just aren’t that popular to support the nonfoils.  

Featuring Mitsuhira Arita (nonfoil) – Interestingly, the foils are less expensive than the nonfoils for Murktide Regent, but it’s the other way round for the other three cards. The Murktide nonfoil goes for $21, and you can buy the drop for $29 (plus shipping and tax). If Murktide becomes popular in the Modern metagame, we might see this take off, but right now it’s not there.

Arcade Racers (both) – A polarizing frame, while neat, and an uninspired group of cards. One thing I need to look out for when evaluating EDHREC numbers is how many Commander decks a card has been in–every precon is worth a bunch of EDHREC decks. 

Miku: Winter Diva (JP foil/nonfoil) – As I said, I think the print run was juiced for the later Miku drops, but this is still really good value. Swan Song is the headliner, but the play might be to pick up singles in JP foil right now. As before, there’s a big gap in price on TCGPlayer between the English and Japanese foils. 

Our Boss is on Vacation 2025 – Garden Buds (both) – Given all the lands-theme stuff that’s been printed lately, this should do better, but it remains a source of value. I suspect this was overprinted. 

Class of ‘87 (both) – Just ugly and a bad set of cards. A combination we always need to avoid. 

Adventures of the Little Witch (foil) – Again, this is more about the cards in the drop than anything else. The nonfoils sold out, but there’s still a lot of foils left for some very mid cards. 

Ultimate Pencil Superdrop – We covered this on MTG Fast Finance pretty extensively, and our verdict was that this was an experiment. Clearly, one not to be repeated. Plus, a pencil was literally the bonus inclusion on this drop. Feels like this is where the shark got jumped, and they have corrected back. 

Vroooooooom (all 3) and Everything is on Fire (all 3) – I have no beef with the idea of a chase tier of Secret Lair cards. I just need them to have unique art and more obvious foiling, like everything we’ve seen with Fracture Foils as the chase cards. These sets were targeted at folks who need a playset of cards, but Commander is the big driver on these prices. The concept can work, just not with these cards. 

Featuring: Jay Howell (both) – Another set of mid cards with okay art, nothing jawdropping.

KEXP (all four) – Lands are something they just should stop doing in Secret Lair, even if they took a step in the right direction by giving us ten lands not five. The other KEXP is on theme for the Pencil drop–mid cards, uninspiring art. 

Secret Lair Commander deck: Everyone’s Invited – The theme is a little off, but every other Commander deck has sold out. This being $200 to start and not even getting there with the double rainbow foils and the reprints just doomed the deck. Even a $40 Sol Ring can’t tempt people in.

Artist Spotlight: Phil Foglio (both) – Yes, this is a reprint of Constant Mists, and PFogs is an iconic artist, but we need to get past artist spotlights that use the original Magic frame. We need borderless, at least, and we need cards that are higher demand than these four.

Featuring: Imiri Sakabashira (both) – Uninspired card choices, though the art is awesome. Used to be that great art would overcome mediocre cards for a Lair, but we’re getting so many so often that it’s no longer the case. 

Sonic: Friends and Foes (both) – This is probably overprinting. The Universes Beyond sets have been pure fire lately, and Wizards knows exactly how many Spongebobs and Marvels and Final Fantasy sets got sold. I expect they set the number available pretty high on the Friends and Foes, but then they throttled the number you could buy of each, so we ended up with an odd mix of leftovers. Now that the attention has moved on, we’ll see how these linger. 

Featuring Deathburger (galaxy and nonfoil, also with Commander deck for each) – I’ve made the analogy in more than one area that galaxy foil might be the new retro foil. The first time, it was outstanding and neat and unusual. But if they overdo it, and do it to too many mediocre cards, it loses something. The other galaxy foil drop was too much value to resist, but this one has nothing that grabs the buyer, especially at $60. If this had had Academy Manufactor, then we’d really be talking, but the card choices and higher price mean that this will linger on. 

So what can we take away? I think there’s some key points.

1. Not every UB product is gold-plated. Street Fighter is the best example here, as it’s taken more than three years to get to $90, but the above list has a lot of UB stuff that just didn’t excite the buyer. 
2. New foiling is nice, but not as nice as cards people want. Raised foils and galaxy foiling are not automatic.
3. Card choice matters above all else. Should be obvious, but if a drop has mediocre cards, you don’t need to buy it.

I’ll want to keep these things in mind as more drops happen and we have more demands for our money.

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.