All posts by Cliff Daigle

I am a father, teacher, cuber and EDH fanatic. My joy is in Casual and Limited formats, though I dip a toe into Constructed when I find something fun to play. I play less than I want to and more than my schedule should really allow. I can easily be reached on Twitter @WordOfCommander. Try out my Busted Uncommons cube at http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/76330
Casual Fridays

Who Lives In A Pineapple Under The Sea?

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The SpongBob SquarePants Secret Lair is upon us, faster than anyone was anticipating. It goes on sale March 24 at 9 am PST, 12pm EST, or 4 pm Greenwich Mean Time, if that’s your zone. Three drops, and the bonus cards are as yet unknown., but the speculation is rampant and hilarious.

This is a big deal. SpongeBob has more than 300 episodes, has been on since 2010, and that’s not taking into account movies, specials, and the incredible amount of merchandise available under this brand.

So let’s dive to the deck, flop like a fish, and decide if we’re buying.

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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 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.

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Preparing for Rotation in Fall 2025

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With everything going on, with all the different previews happening, it’s really easy to lose track of the calendar. One of the things happening this year is that when Edge of Eternities comes out in August, Standard is rotating, and we’re losing several sets: Dominaria United, The Brothers’ War, Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and March of the Machine. Plus Aftermath, too, but that set barely counts most days.

Standard rotation is a tricky thing, as most card prices are driven by Eternal formats, like Modern or Commander, but there’s still quite a few cards whose prices are propped up by Standard and now is the time you want to sell off everything you aren’t using, before the big dumping starts in June or so. Let’s talk about the cards to sell, and the ones to keep.

Let’s take a moment and examine the phenomenon historically, so you can be sure that this is the right play, selling five months early. I’ll use a couple of examples from last year’s rotation, which was SNC, NEO, MID, and VOW. Let’s start with the graph for Ledger Shredder:

Shredder was everywhere, and while it’s still seeing play in Arclight Phoenix builds for both Modern and Pioneer, that’s not enough to sustain the price with so many copies. The price has dropped by half, and that means you could have sold out, waited, and re-bought the cards after rotation. You’d have the same cards plus $24 on a playset!

The Wandering Emperor makes for another good example: 

In March of last year, it was selling briskly at $30 a copy, but that’s when the slide started. In August, when it rotated, it was down to $10 and now it’s $5. That’s a lot of value you’re leaving behind if you move too late, and that’s what I want to help you avoid. Even cards that are popular in other formats take a hit too. Boseiju, Who Endures, since it’s used very widely in Modern and Commander, had its price go from $40 down to $30 at rotation, and hit a low of $25 in December, but it’s crept back up to $30 since. 

I have two metrics in mind here, the combination of ‘lots of current Standard play’ and ‘over $5 in price. Under that price, there isn’t a lot to be gained, because after rotation, it’ll still be close to that price, though maybe $2.50 instead of $4. Cards which aren’t in favor in Standard currently have already taken a big hit price-wise, and so while I’ll be mentioning several cards which are still expensive enough to warrant selling, we really want to focus on the cards we can make the most from.

Additionally, I’m focused on the basic nonfoils, because premium versions are more insulated from rotation. Those copies are in Commander decks, or foiled-out Modern ones, and therefore aren’t getting taken out of decks and resold. The Standard players, though, they got the most basic ones and they are gonna resell them.

Dominaria United

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse – Currently just over $70 for a nonfoil, basic frame version, this is the flagship card for what I want you to do. There are already 450 copies on TCGPlayer, and that’s before people start listing theirs. Yes, this is a great card for and against Ketramose, but there are a boatload of Standard decks playing with 2-4 copies of the Praetor and we can expect her price to drop by at least half. I think that between Commander (where this card is brutally good) and the occasional Modern deck it won’t go much below $35, but I would definitely not be holding any basic copies longer than I needed to.

Zur, Eternal Schemer – Zur is big big big in the Domain and Overlord type builds that make up a large section of the current metagame. Currently at $14, he’s headed for being sub-$5, since Commander is the only spot where he sees notable amounts of use. Modern and Pioneer just aren’t his territory, except for the loyal few who play Enigmatic Incarnation in Pioneer. 

Liliana of the Veil – Easy to forget she’s Standard-legal again, but she’s already at $12 from the times she’s been reprinted. I’m expecting her copies to slide under $10, but probably not as far as $5.

Temporary Lockdown – It’s just over $5 now, but it’ll end up being a dollar. This card has seen some wild fluctuations in its time, and if you’ve got spares, let them go now. 

The Brothers’ War

Amazingly, from this set, there’s nothing that fits my criteria. Stuff is either already very cheap or it’s a card popular in other formats like Commander or Modern. 

Phyrexia: All WIll Be One

Atraxa, Grand Unifier  – At $18, you might be thinking she gets enough Modern and Legacy and Commander love to keep that price. You’d be wrong. By the end of August, she’ll be under $10, but the premium copies in those reanimator decks will all be sitting pretty. There’s just going to be too many sellers and not enough buyers. 

Jace, the Perfected Mind – This is an interesting case, because the Phyrexian copies are cheaper than the regular copies. He can be had for $6 right now, and that’s going to be more like $3 in six months. Get what you can, while you can. He’s being used as a finisher for Standard control decks, and that’s it. Please don’t hang on too long.

March of the Machine (and Aftermath)

Faerie Mastermind – While this is a great card in Commander, present in 150k decks, we’re up against the numbers problem. Everyone who’s on Dimir Bounce as a deck has four of these, and that’s a whole lot of copies that will end up on the market in the next few months. A slide is inevitable, a reprint is also quite likely. We know there’s a return to Lorwyn coming, and Faeries are indeed a thing on that plane. Seeing the $16 copies slide down to $6 seems very, very likely. This might well bounce back, especially if there’s new Faeries and this avoid a Commander precon reprint, but the slide is our immediate concern. 

Sunfall – There’s only 35k decks that have this registered on EDHREC, which feels low for what this does. Its biggest issue is that Farewell is now the default board wipe, and everything else lives in its shadow. Sunfall is just over $5 now, and that’s with Standard demand propping it up. At rotation, it might well be $2 or less. 

Tranquil Frillback – Another $6 card, the set it was in represents its greatest strength. Aftermath was one of the least-opened products of Magic’s history, and a model that Wizards has said they want to steer away from. Rotation will steal a couple dollars from this, but there’s a minimum level of interest from Commander players and Dinosaur enthusiasts that I might get some cheap.

I hope this helps you plan your selling for the coming months!

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 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.

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What Miku and Marvel Mean for Final Fantasy and Spider-Man

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There’s a whole lot going on in the Magic world. We’ve got Final Fantasy previews, we know there’s an Avatar:The Last Airbender Secret Lair in November, and there’s a whole lot of Spider-Man product on the horizon for this summer. That’s before you get to all the fun of Aetherdrift being live and Tarkir: Dragonstorm on deck for April.

With all that in mind, though, I want to take a beat and think about what’s happening with some recent Secret Lairs, because there’s an emerging pattern that has me wondering if I should re-examine the buying I’ve been doing, and will be doing. So let’s look at some of the biggest recent sales and see what changes Wizards has made.

It would be lovely if we knew precisely how many of each Secret Lair drop were sold. With that data, we’d know how rare each of them were compared to each other, and be able to figure out likely pricing on those sets after they sell out. However, we don’t have access to that data, more’s the pity.

What we do have is a case study in Wizards adjusting to meet market demands, and that’s via the four Hatsune Miku drops. In May of 2024, the first drop happened, the Sakura Superstar. That drop, featuring six cards that are quite mid except for the Azusa, Lost but Seeking, sold out in something like three hours. The drop was goosed by the presence of a sweet Rainbow Foil Seedborn Muse, giving you a great bonus card for every $200 spent. Miku was the big draw, though, and the fast sellout was accompanied by high prices. That rapid sellout started the price increasing on the sealed boxes, putting them up over $150 now. 

The second one, Digital Sensation, is a much more popular set of individual cards, as I went over back then, with more than one getting their first special printing. Since that was just about a month later in late June, it’s unlikely that Wizards was able to order a greater quantity of the lairs and this one sold out in around two hours. Makes a lot of sense, really. The hype was wild, the first set of Lairs were already selling for double, and everyone wanted their copies. 

Where the change can really be seen is in the third drop, Electric Entourage. This was in late September, which is enough time for Wizards to have made changes based on the first drop. The result was that the drop took a lot longer to sell out, with the ENG foil going first, the ENG nonfoil second, and eventually, the JPN nonfoil sold out. There are still JPN foil copies to be found on the Secret Lair website, though it’s got the low stock alert. The additional issues here is that these are all planeswalkers, and only two of them feature Miku herself. 

That pattern, of ENG foil-ENG nonfoil-JPN foil-JPN nonfoil, that’s the same order of how expensive the sealed ones are on TCGPlayer. 

The most recent and the final drop, Winter Diva, has been up for seventeen days and only the ENG nonfoil has sold out. There’s low stock alerts, but the lack of speed or urgency here is impressive. I fully expect that there’s a lot more copies of this drop than the first, though the exact amount greater is pure speculation. The card selection here is top-notch, as I said, and I have confidence in this lair in the long term. However, I have to revise the timeline of when they’d get profitable, because the drops are already landing and the glut is real. In a few months, we might see these settle out some, but given the hype cycle coming this summer, I’m not sure when it’ll get back.

We have another recent example of the surge of interest: The Marvel X Secret Lair collaboration in late October sold out in five hours or so, with the bonus Signets selling out just before all the Lairs went out too. The process of buying appeared to have lots of technical glitches and bypasses which seemed to have been fixed now but between the Final Fantasy drops and the Spider-Man drops that are inevitably coming, this first Marvel drop is a signpost.

So the saga of the Miku drops directly informs my expectations for the Marvel and Final Fantasy drops. However much got sold in October, Wizards took that data and talked to their printer, very likely increasing the quantity being printed by a significant amount. I don’t think we’ll get to ‘not sold out seventeen days later’ level of quantity, but we should expect that it’s probably not going to sell out in five hours, more like twelve hours or maybe a whole day.

It feels sacreligious to type those words out, that a Secret Lair drop with this sort of IP (dare I hope for some 8-bit Final Fantasy 4 or 6, or polygon-blocky FF7!) would not sell out near-immediately, but Wizards has the data. They know how fast things sold out, and importantly, they want to maximize their profits. They don’t make anything from the secondary market, so their goal is to find the number of lairs where everyone gets all they want. That number was too low for the first Marvel drop, and I expect they’ve learned and adjusted.

I will 100% still be trying to buy as quickly as possible when those are available, but the evidence points me towards thinking that I don’t need to panic. I was feeling that way with Marvel’s first round, but I will be a bit less anxious this summer. They want to sell all the Lairs, to make every dime they can, so I’m expecting a lot more product. That doesn’t mean it won’t sell out, either.

We’ll also have to see what the greater print run means for singles. Marvel had a lot of great things, and some great buying opportunities. For example, Rhythm of the Wild, the Wolverine version, is up a dollar since I picked it in late December. Most of the great singles have started to rise up from their lows, and if you didn’t get something, now is the time.

If the print run is maximized, we’ll see some much lower prices when most of the cards land, and a slower growth in price. Everything depends on the mentality, though, and if the perception is of rarity, it’ll be priced that way. 

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 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.

Casual Fridays, Uncategorized

Early Movement on Aetherdrift Card Prices

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It’s really, really easy to get caught up in ‘the next thing’ because of Wizards of the Coast’s obsession with keeping excitement high. Granted, there’s a vested interest in keeping up with what’s coming out and what’s happening, because there’s profit opportunities such as the recent spike in Commander’s banned list. There’s no end of new events, streams, articles, and ways for Wizards to drum up interest in upcoming sets. 

However, we can’t lose sight of the here and now, which means Aetherdrift! The set only came out a week ago, and there’s a lot of movement on prices. Not all of it is downwards, either, so let’s get into it and see what opportunities exist right now, and which hint at future ones. 

All data is as of Thursday night, 2/20, for the regular frame nonfoil.

Ketramose, the New Dawn (Lowest sale was $15, Highest $75, currently $48) – Ketramose is getting all of the attention from the set, especially for its strength in Modern, where there’s a wide assortment of ways to exile things for benefit. Some of those are aggressive (Phelia) and some are reactive (Force of Negation) but all of them now come with a cantrip once Ketramose is in play. What’s additionally wild is how Path to Exile now comes with a card to draw as well!

Ketramose will start showing up in some lists in the next couple of weeks, and there’s a good chance that we see the card pop back up above $60. People aren’t dipping a toe in with this card, they are going full-on with the complete playset in a deck, and for a mythic, buying four at a time can really impact the supply.

Monument to Endurance (L: $4, H: $15, C: $11) – This is one of the top inclusions from EDHREC, not least because there are two Zombie commanders who want to discard cards, and Varina has also been newly popular. I have a hard time thinking that this price stays high, as it’s just a rare and people are getting one at a time. It takes tremendous demand to keep an in-print rare above $10, and I’m doubtful about this card in the short term.

Radiant Lotus (L: $13, H: $70, C: $16) – We all know that this is a Lotus, and making three mana at a time, but the six mana and the need for sacrifice is a real cost. I’m not surprised that it’s fallen this far, but clearly it’s got farther to fall until the combos are found. I don’t doubt that this card can be broken, but we’ve got to keep in mind that this isn’t fast mana, it’s a boatload of mana after you’ve found a way to get a six-mana rock into play. I don’t think it’ll go below $10, but the premium copies with truly gorgeous art might stay expensive just for the aesthetics. 

Oildeep Gearhulk (L: $3, H: $11, C: $5) – What a lot of people are overlooking about this card is that it shares the Vendilion Clique ability of looking at the hand, and then you get to decide if you need to get rid of a card from your opponent’s hand. It’s a tough mana cost, and it’s very dangerous to add this card to Standard when there’s already a Dimir self-bounce deck running around. It’s a mythic, and that helps its price, but this will never be a four-of card and so I expect the price to stabilize between $5 and $10.

The Aetherspark (L: $25, H: $110, C: $34) – It’s a crazy card with an impressive type line, but that novelty was responsible for lots of hype and a too-high price. This really needs to come down under $20, and likely to the $15 range. A regular planeswalker with these abilities (+1: add a counter to a critter, -5: Draw two, -10: Add ten mana) would be pretty middling for what Commander decks what to do. There’s a lot less work that can go into a win condition, and once people realize that, the price will trickle downwards. It might pop up if something turns out to be a fun combo, but if the point of the combo is adding mana, it might not do too much. 

Loot, the Pathfinder (L: $1.50, H: $30, C: $3) – I’ve seen people building decks around Loot and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, a combo that makes my heart sing. ASC is already super pricey because of the Modern combos that it helps to reinforce, but Loot is an accessory, not a focus. Does great things, powerful things, and there’s combos in Standard with Sleep-Cursed Faerie, but we’re going to need to see results before we start buying. 

Riptide Gearhulk (L: $5, H: $10, C: $10) – It’s pretty evil that this is legal in Standard alongside Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines. If someone double-triggers this on you, then your third and fourth turns from now are locked in. It’s also a really quick clock, smashing for six or 8 depending on the cantrips in your hand when you attack. Additionally, everything that cares about having two power, like Enduring Innocence, will gladly welcome the card. Ten bucks feels about right, but the rest of the set and the speed of undercutting might lower the price slowly over time. 

The Verges (range in prices, mostly $4-$7 now from $10 heights) – I like these to travel back upwards into the $10 or even $15 range before they rotate out of Standard. It’s really, REALLY powerful to have dual lands that come into play untapped, and considering that these are best friends with the Surveil lands from MKM, we’re going to see a lot of Surveil/Verge manabases for all of 2025 and 2026. 

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 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.