Time Spiral Remastered arrives in two weeks, officially. We’ve got most of the set revealed, including the Timeshifted sheet, which is new cards put into old borders. Because TSR is a limited-run set, especially with Strixhaven coming out on April 23rd, TSR and especially the Timeshifted sheet, offers a very unique opportunity for gaining value. Let’s talk about what to get , how many there will be, and when to get it!

Let’s start with the regular set. There are no Collector Boosters or special frames (aside from the Timeshifted sheet) so there’s just regular and foil for the set itself. According to Ben Bleiweiss over at SCG, foil rares in Standard now drop about one in 18 packs, and foil mythics in one in 144 packs, roughly. This tracks with the ratio we’ve been given of foils appearing in Standard sets and the regular packs.

A Wizards source on the WPN Facebook groups has confirmed the foil rate for the foil timeshifted sheet: once every 27 packs, roughly. That is a real ‘holy meatballs’ level of scarcity, especially because the timeshifted sheet is just 121 cards appearing at the same frequency relative to each other. With 36 packs per box, you’re looking at four boxes to collect a set of nonfoil timeshifted cards, though in execution that probably won’t happen. Statistics is like that, sadly. 

There aren’t a lot of cards in the regular set that you should be too worried about, though. This is all reprints, nothing new. Granted, most of these cards haven’t been printed since the original Time Spiral block in 2007-2008, but the price is generally due to the low supply, not a super-high demand. 

Time Spiral Remastered is a limited-run product. They aren’t planning on doing a huge print run, this is just to goose the market with some reprints. I’m confident this will be a fun set to draft, but holy smokes, the foils on the Timeshifted sheet are going to carry some very high premiums.

Let’s have a table, summarizing what we know, before we talk about our plans for these cards.

For comparison: Foil Phyrexian Vorinclex is about every 296 packs, and FEA Jeweled Lotus was every 400 packs. Foil Timeshifted Thoughtseize will be roughly 8 times rarer than FEA Jeweled Lotus. I grant you that Vorinclex and Lotus were in Collector Boosters, but stores were willing to presell those cards based on allocations.

We have a very narrow window with the Timeshifted cards, in foil and not. It’s more than the four weeks between TSR’s release and Strixhaven’s release. Previews for the Standard set will begin just a couple of weeks after Time Spiral Remastered, draining attention and preorder money.

Luckily, we have a very recent example of shorter-run sets with special cards and the timeframe involved: Commander Legends.

I broke down the timeframe for Jeweled Lotus and I also looked at Phyrexian Vorinclex, because the last six months of YOLO and FOMO have lead to a pretty clear pattern: Don’t buy in the first two weeks, but the time to buy is when regular folks have gotten their boxes, and begin cracking and dumping.  You have to give the preorder people a chance to sate their ravenous, drooling, immediate needs but you have to be cognizant of the small supply involved with these cards.

In this case, with the Timeshifted sheet, we’re looking at some ridiculously rare foils. Preorders are notably rare with the big vendors, because they aren’t sure how many of each they will end up with. They are playing it conservative, which I respect as a business decision (refunding the most rabid customers instead of giving them what they paid so early for) and an indicator of their product allocation (holy crap they really aren’t getting much!).

We’ve got most of the cards on the list of 121 (four more to come out today) and I just can’t advocate for price predictions on the foils. Quantities this small are not something we’ve dealt with before, and the collectors have come out in force for Magic lately. I suspect that even the less-popular ones, like Temur Battle Rage, will have surprisingly high foil prices. 

While it’s true that the old border is not everyone’s favorite, the players who get hit with nostalgia are also going to be the older, more enfranchised players, who are also the ones that tend to have more disposable income. I’m not expecting these cards to go down over time, not one bit. 

So what do I think you should do? Wait one to two weeks, and then put down the money needed to get the foil Timeshifted cards you want for personal use, for your collections, and for later growth. Those are clearly going to be the chase cards, and with there being 1.3 Timeshifted foils per box, with 121 cards all having an equal chance to be that foil, it’s going to take a whole lot to get the copies people want.

The real growth opportunity may well be in the nonfoil Timeshifted cards. With so much product getting opened in search of the high-dollar foils, there will be opportunities to pick up the other cards in nonfoil. Tournament staples like Dismember should be good picks, because not every tournament player has an all-foil deck and like nonfoil Extended Art cards, this may be the way to add uniqueness to the competitive decks. Those in-person tournaments will eventually be held again. 

The number of Commander staples on this sheet also represent opportunity. Sure, those players generally want the foils, but as we’ve seen with foil EA Jeweled Lotus and other such chase cards, the nonfoils won’t maintain too much of a gap. Solemn Simulacrum is my favorite pick here, but Panharmonicon is also really pulling at my interest. Sorting this sheet by EDHREC ranking will help you concentrate on the higher-demand cards, and help you decide where to put your money.

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.

Right now, presuming the Collector Booster is $20, there aren’t a lot of cards that you can hit to make it worthwhile. I’ll give you the list in a moment, but first let’s talk about what to do when a set isn’t being opened very well, and the opportunities that represents. Plus, some cards that you ought to have in reserve for later.

Here’s the list of cards that are selling for $20 or more which you can get from a Kaldheim Collector Booster. 

Considering that the set is only a couple of months old, that’s not a huge list, and more than a little worrisome. There’s only five different cards represented in this list of eighteen, two-thirds of which are versions of Vorinclex and Valki. With so much value concentrated in a few chase cards, there isn’t a lot to be gained by opening Collector Boosters. If you miss, you lose out pretty significantly. 

Now part of this problem is recency. This is the new set and it’s one month away from the next set coming out. We’ve even got a special release in Time Spiral Remastered on deck, so all the attention is about to fade away from Kaldheim. This is a confluence of factors making sure that the set isn’t going to be opened in big numbers anymore, which tells us that the prices aren’t going to fall any further. From this point, I’d expect to see prices start to head upwards slowly, or jump if new and awesome interactions occur.

Since we’re at the bottom, there’s a few more cards that I’m looking at worth buying, because they do something pretty unique and worth hanging on to.

Pyre of Heroes ($1 for the cheapest version, $5 for the most premium, Foil Extended Art) – For a lot of tribal decks, the ability to upgrade one of your creatures into the next level of the tribe is a very valuable one, especially because it’s put right into play. There are some tribes where this drawback is actually an engine all its own, for Zombies or some other tribes that like to hop in and out of the graveyard. Tribal enablers often have their own growth cycle, and while this has a lot going on to stop Birthing Pod-level shenanigans, matching this with Maskwood Nexus puts any interaction on the table. Value engine plus potential combo goodness means I’m in. 

Draugr Necromancer (fifty cents to three bucks) – This isn’t in a lot of EDH decks yet, and frankly I’m not sure why. First of all, it exiles all your opponents’ creatures instead of letting them go to the yard. That’s generally a very useful ability, but the replay value to those exiled creatures is really wonderful. Yes, the Necromancer has to stay in play for you to cast those creatures, but this bad boy is a Zombie, the tribe which has the easiest time coming back into play. Having this plus snow basics in your deck is a pretty easy ask, with a potentially enormous payoff. I’m a big big fan of what this offers in Commander games, and all it will take is one experience or popular stream with the Necromancer for this to find some glory days and big prices. 

When I looked up this card, it made me think about what I’d pay for an easier time of things. Here’s the cheapest listings for single copies of the card:

Now, I hate buying spec copies one at a time. Unpacking a whole bunch of copies, filling up my PO Box, paying a bunch of shipping fees, all of those make me like checking the ‘who’s for four or more copies’ tag. Let’s see what that has…

Hmmmm. Am I willing to pay more for my 4x copies than I am for a bunch of singletons? In this case, a dollar or so each is a pretty significant percentage. If it was a wall of 20+ copies it would be an easier choice, but just four here and eight there isn’t terribly appealing. This doesn’t happen on a lot of cards, but it’s something to keep in mind. How much is the time and energy worth? How much extra will you pay to get just one or two packages rather than 16? I don’t have an answer for you there, as only you know how much time you have to spare to do that. Bonus points for this optimistic person listing copies at $50.

Toski, Bearer of Secrets ($2-$7) – Finally, a card that’s Commander gold in the color it was always meant to be in. There’s two versions of this effect as blue enchantments, but having a tiny squirrel who’s rabid to attack is just perfect. Toski hasn’t been widely adapted into Commander decks yet but I like the odds that this becomes quite the staple. Playing Toski as a Commander also lets you build some Voltron version, loading up on equipment or other enhancements and drawing cards when he gets in there. The graph puts us where we want to be, at lowest price due to maximum supply and ready to stock up on copies in anticipation of their future increase. I prefer to have any of the more premium versions, as this would be a fun reprint to see in a future Commander deck.

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.

Right now, one card, with two versions, is soaking up most of the value of Kaldheim packs, and yes, it’s Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. It’s been a while since we had a set that was underwhelming financially, and it’s worth discussing what happens to everything else in the set and how we got to this point.

Vorinclex has hit his low price, and from here, I expect it to trend steadily upwards: 

The Phyrexian version is more common than the Showcase version, because packs in every language can end up with a Phyrexian-language Vorinclex. The demand is that much higher, though, as evidenced by such a high pre-order price for the nonfoil.

Kaldheim still has some cards that are nice to find in a booster pack, but past the top handful, it gets pretty rough. The last time we had a set with an effect like this, it was the Masterpieces. I’m thinking of both the Inventions from Kaladesh block and the Invocations from Amonkhet block.

When there’s a chase version of a card every X packs/boxes, it depresses the prices of the other cards. Phyrexian foil Vorinclex is going for $300 and rising, which means at distributor prices, you need to open one of those at a certain rate to make it worthwhile. It was worth it for the Masterpieces, which were more common as a set than Phyrexian foil Vorinclex, but it’s not quite there yet.

It will be, though. The demand is real from Commander players and collectors who want the hottest things from each set, regardless of price. It doesn’t take a lot of those folks to really move the needle, and that’s how we get FEA Jeweled Lotus at prices that are consistently rising:

So what do we do, when there’s a high-value singleton and everything else is falling in price as expected? We should prepare for the rest of the cards to keep falling as the star rises, and adjust expectations accordingly.

It also needs to be said that while the set has a lot of good cards, there’s a noticeable shift in power level, away from the tremendousness that was most of the past year and all of the bans that happened are testament to that power level. Kaldheim isn’t a bad set, it’s just that there’s very few cards which compare favorably to the sets that came before. 

With all the interest on the top few cards, there’s a few cards I’ve got my eye on and I’m hoping that they fall to a target price. I’m prepared for them to not fall that far, but the combination of lower power and leftover financial interest means they’ve got farther to go.

Reflections of Littjara – Currently at $1.50 for the regulars and falling, this is a card that every tribal deck should give serious thought to. It’s part of the class of Commander cards that say ‘I don’t do anything right now, but I’m about to make the table groan in disgust and envy.’ I like this card a lot in the long term, but I’m fully willing to be patient for this to creep down to a dollar for the regular version. There’s a promo foil from the Kaldheim bundle, and that’s available for $2 or less, but that isn’t borderless foil. Once these sink lower, I think they will be an excellent long term hold.

Maskwood Nexus – This isn’t as cheap,with regulars being $2.50 and the FEA versions pushing $10, but the effect is real and this being colorless means it’s a backup to the decks playing Conspiracy, Arcane Adaptation, or both. The early adopters all have their copies, and now we’re in the waiting game for the rest of them to fall in price. Arcane Adaptation doubled in a year, and while I don’t think this will go to $20 that fast, I do think it’ll trickle down to $7 or even $5 and that’s really when I want to pick up a few copies.

The World Tree – Obvious cards are obvious, and this is no exception. It has to go into five-color decks but that’s the sort of deck that really needs fixing that’s as simple as playing a tapped land. This has come down notably since the beginning of the set:

It’s flattened out for now but I’m letting this cool down even more. I grabbed a personal copy already but the spec copies I’m being patient on the rest of the copies I want to get. I don’t know how much farther down they will go in full-art foil, but I’m more intrigued by the regular copies at $3 or so. I don’t think it’s a reprint risk, either, even if they do a five-color Commander deck I doubt it would be in there.

Mystic Reflection – There are a lot of meme-level interactions with this card, and that’s the only reason that I can think of for this to still be as expensive as it is. It’s not a huge Commander card, though it’s got lots of amusing interactions. Frankly, this feels like it should be a bulk rare, and that’s the sort of price I want to get in on. This being about $14 for the foil full art is especially confusing, and I definitely do not want to be buying a card with no obvious uses.

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.

This week I want to address something that I get asked a whole lot: “Should I buy {card from the new set} now, or should I wait?”

This has a semi-complicated answer, and requires you to have done some thinking about the card first. My method is not foolproof, but will get you what you want in almost all cases. Let’s get into the specifics and the pitfalls.

To be clear, this is my process that I apply to newly released cards that are getting a lot of hype. This isn’t about reprinted cards (buy after three months) or Reserved List cards (if it didn’t spike already, it’s a buy) but only about new, in pack cards. This does apply to reprint sets like Double Masters, as well as combination sets like Commander Legends.

The first thing I need you to think about is why you’re buying the cards. Are you going to put it in your cube/Commander/Standard/whatever format deck immediately, or are you buying speculative copies?

If it’s for personal use, I suggest you get your copies within the first two or three weeks. Let the frenzy die down, but wait until people have had the chance to open their personal boxes, the stuff they preordered but couldn’t ship until the official opening day. That time frame is about right for the new things to fall from the preorder prices, but short enough before scarcity starts to pump prices up.

Let’s look at an example from the recent past: Jeweled Lotus in Foil Extended Art.

We had a couple of weeks in there where the price crept down under $400, despite crazy preorders. The immediate frenzy had a chance to die down, and keep in mind that this was one of the rarest cards in packs, needing approximately 400 Collector Boosters to come up with one copy. The second that prices started to go up, and the FOMO kicked in, it went up several hundred more, and frankly, it’s going to keep creeping upward with every copy sold.

Now, this philosophy only applies to the cards that are the most sought after, which isn’t always the rarest version of a card. The other FEA mythics from Commander Legends are exactly as common as the FEA Lotus, but demand plus cachet mean that Soulfire Eruption is $7 as an FEA, when the Jeweled Lotus is $750+.

The card I’m thinking of right now is the foil Phyrexian Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. Preordering for $400+, it’s dipped under $200 on TCG and there’s a lot under $250.

If you want one for a deck (and you know you do, it’s even better than Doubling Season when it comes to planeswalkers) then I strongly advocate that you do so now. The price is right and I totally sympathize with the desire to get the card right now and put it into the deck (or decks) that want it badly. I think you should go ahead and snap up the Phyrexian foil now, or in the next 1-2 weeks, before the price shoots back up. Too many cards are spiking too hard, and this is the hot card of the moment. Please don’t clever yourself out of what you want.

When picking up cards for speculative purposes, though, I don’t like to acquire the big cards for hopes of gains in the same timeframe. I advocate more patience. The greatest supply on a card is almost always 2-4 months after release, when the next big set comes out. The rest of Commander Legends is in this phase, and there are some excellent deals to be had if you’ve been patient. Yes, a couple of cards spiked back up, like FEA Apex Devastator, but for the most part, prices have dropped back down.

Now, there are potential issues with my plan. In some cases, when you buy your personal copy before the first month is over, it’ll fall farther. This happened to me with the FEA version of Hellkite Courser, an amazing addition to my The Ur-Dragon deck.

I bought a copy the first week for about $35. I should have been more patient, and saved myself $10. It’s come up a little in price from that low point, because FEA mythics were never really in huge supply from this set, but my eagerness cost me a little cash. Not a ruinous amount, but it stings. This is a risk I’m taking on because I just don’t want to wait. I want to have the new cool card in my deck RIGHT NOW!

Just as moving too soon can be a bad thing and cause me to overpay early, moving too late can mean I pay more as well. This is harder to evaluate ahead of time, but it tends to track with how playable a card is in the format it’s aimed at. 

The example here would be Jeska’s Will:

If I’d moved in on the two-week plan, instead of expecting this to hit the lowest point at three months, then I could have made a lot of money in a very short period of time. Many people did, and have made their money, but this is the risk I take in moving too slowly.

One more thing about the distinction between personal copies and spec copies: We don’t tend to worry too much about the cost of the sweet card we put into a Commander deck, at least as it comes to new cards. Is it the version we wanted? Okay, great, get in there and let’s do some work. Commander is the intersection of collecting and playing, with the delicious topping of being able to show off the collection while playing.

When it comes to your personal copies, I’m a strong advocate of getting what you want right away. Don’t mess around trying to save a couple of dollars. Go get what you want, and then enjoy the feeling of that acquisition. You’re gaining value left and right with all the help from our site and our Discord, you deserve to get that sweet card.

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.