We are hearing about the coronavirus vaccine and the rays of hope are starting to illuminate the future. I’m keenly aware that the virus is still a problem, and it may be super optimistic of me to think this way, but I’m hopeful that things will be back to normal by the end of next summer.

I’m VERY hopeful, because I’m a high school teacher and I would dearly love to be back in school for a fresh new year.

If that scenario holds, and things are mostly back to how things were before, then what’s that mean for Magic? What’s that mean for a collection?

#1: Paper singles for Standard might as well have rotated.

This means that cards from Eldraine, Ikoria, Theros, and Core 2021 are not only a bad idea to pick up, but you should be treating them right now as though they are about to rotate. Between the bannings and the coronavirus, Standard hasn’t been played in person in a while and I wouldn’t expect there would be much to play before rotation hits in late September/early October of 2021. 

Last year, when Theros was coming out and we didn’t know what was going to happen in 2020, I picked up a lot of Bonecrusher Giant, Fae of Wishes, and Murderous Riders. Yes, those are good in Pioneer, but looking at the play patterns online, I don’t think that I’m going to have a chance to sell these before they rotate out of Standard. C’est la vie.

Normally, when rotation is nigh, I plan to be out of those cards by Easter, but that’s probably not going to happen this year. I don’t like waiting for cards to fall too far, and here we are. Prices are already super depressed. Start with the best performing decks from this past weekend’s Zendikar Rising Championship.

Lovestruck Beast is a four-of all over the place, in 40% of decks, and is pretty much a bulk rare.

Traditionally speaking, the best time to sell a Standard card is when it is a year old, give or take. Lovestruck should, at the least, be a $2-$3 card. It was trending that way in January, but around March, when things shut down, the price tanked. 

It’s this way for most Standard staples: Bonecrusher is a buck, Vivien, Monsters’ Advocate is down to $7 despite being the fourth-most-common card in Standard, and even brand-new, free-to-add-to-a-deck Shatterskull Smashing is a mythic at $8 and falling! These cards should cost a lot more than they do.

One factor to consider is that these are the first sets with Collector Boosters. It’s true that foil Showcase Lovestruck Beast is more expensive at $2, but that’s what I would expect from a card with high Standard play and low Commander play. Compare the stats on The Great Henge, a card I’m pretty high on. Sure, it gets some Standard play (especially because it curves out with Lovestruck) but Commander is driving that boat, with nearly 16,000 decks registering it online. 

I’m willing to listen to discussions that with Commander players spending more on chase versions, the regular versions of things will be less sought after and therefore less expensive. 

But 40% of Standard decks playing this as a four-of, yet it’s a quarter? No, this is a demand problem that won’t be fixed until the very end of Standard, and I don’t want to hope that there’s a brief window of crazy Standard demand right before rotation. 

#2: Plan for the frenzy in Modern, Pioneer, and Standard.

I’m thinking of Fabled Passage here.

This is absurd. This is a land that has two printings, yes, but it’s also in 65% of the Standard field, averaging more than three copies each. It’s listed in 33k Commander decks online, and is the only fetchland currently legal in Pioneer, and is in more decks than basic Swamps. All of this is fact, and yet it’s $6 online!

Passage got a reprint in Core 21, and that put the price low enough that no one felt it was a barrier to get in. It’ll rotate out next fall, as both Throne and Core 21 will rotate out together. Very clever of Wizards, and I’d expect a Prismatic Vista reprint before we got a Passage reprint. Getting in at $6-7 and then exiting in 12-18 months for $12-15 seems quite reasonable.

Similarly, I’m in favor of getting in on Ugin, the Spirit Dragon. I’d understand if you wanted to wait till closer to rotation, but the lack of paper play means that there’s a big discount already built in:

Only 11,000 Commander decks have this listed online, and that feels off. Why wouldn’t you play this, when it offers such a backbreaking effect? Still, this was $60 before being reprinted, and is now $20. I wouldn’t be shocked if it went down to $15 by the end of October, but I also wouldn’t be shocked if it stayed where it was. I’ll be watching.

I admit I’m more hesitant about Modern cards, given that we’re getting Modern Horizons 2 at some point in 2021, but whatever isn’t reprinted in that set, you’ve got a green light from me to go wild. I’m most interested in Force of Negation, because a reprint will either drop that to $20 or a lack thereof will send it heading for $75+. There’s not much room for middle ground there.

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.

I know that there are realities to the coronavirus that far, far outstrip Magic and drafting. I’ve eschewed family this holiday season and my kids haven’t seen their grandparents in more than a year. 

That being said, the virus took away quite the run of sweet draftable products. We lost out on months of Mystery drafts, there haven’t been Jumpstarts cracked all over the place, Double Masters was a delight…but the pinnacle of things for me have been the Commander Legends drafts I’ve done on MTGO.

This set is awesome to draft. It’s pointed right at players like me, with the combination of politics, drafting synergies, and good reprints. Unfortunately, we’re not able to draft this set in person in the US, and so our supply of cards has been through the Collector Boosters. 

We are approaching the maximum of supply for Commander Legends, though there is some more product undoubtedly coming. I don’t think there will be enough to depress prices more than ten percent or so. 

I’m still going to be patient until after Christmas for buying quantities, but I’ve moved in on personal copies for my Cube and my Commander decks. Let’s talk about the best deals and what they might get to.

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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.

Look, I’ll be honest: I don’t think you should buy anything from Commander Legends this weekend unless you’re getting a great price and/or it’s something you have to have for a deck. I just bought a couple of things for my Commander decks, but I’m waiting for people to finish opening their Collector Booster boxes. 

Instead, I want to look at the set we left behind, and compare prices to their Commander usage, and tell you what to stock up on.

The reason I want to just look at Commander numbers and nothing else is simple: I don’t think we will be playing in person (in North America) until next summer, when this is on the verge of rotating. Plus, all the big movers during the pandemic have been Commander-based anyway, and I’m looking for cards that are going to increase in value.

Some caveats: nonfoil, regular frame and foil regular frame mean about the same thing at this point when it comes to prices. I’m working on the math and crunching a lot of numbers, and I promise, I’m close to having something I’m comfortable reporting to you.

So, about Ikoria. It’s a fun set, with a lot of cool interactions, but to no one’s surprise, the most popular Commander card is a set: 

Not a shocker, really. These lands are incredibly versatile: fetchable, three colors, and can be cycled away. That’s really, shockingly, amazingly useful. Commander doesn’t tend to be a format with a whole lot of ‘got to hit my mana on curve every turn’ action, and in my Ur-Dragon deck, I fetch for one of these before I go get a dual land. 

Naturally, I think you should be all over these versions: 

They are prettier, that’s a given, but they are also a lot more rare than the originals. We don’t yet have data on what happens to a reprint of a card that has an Extended Art version, aside from the pure reprint of Fabled Passage, which included EA and Foil EA. Frankly, the data on that is stunning: 

This was a $100 card during Throne of Eldraine, it’s still the only fetchland in Pioneer, and it’s in 32k commander decks online. I know that I meant for this to be about Ikoria, but the ToE version is about twice as much, and there isn’t a huge supply of either version on TCG. Picking up FEA versions from Core 21 for $25 and under feels like a great deal at this point.

The Triomes are technically Showcase, not Extended Art, and that’s an important distinction. A reprint on these cards is inevitable, perhaps in the right set of Commander decks in a year or two. What won’t be the same is that these Showcase version have different art and a different frame, making the price gap between the Showcase versions and the regulars just too small. Why on earth would I buy the regular for $7, when the Showcase is $1.50 more?

I absolutely think you should get Showcase foils of these lands if your budget can accommodate it, because these are gorgeous. They are going for $20-$30, depending on the specific land, but they are among the best you could hope for in that color combination. 

These lands have a high EDH pedigree, even popping up in Modern, they are fantastic to look at and they are available for a good price. Proceed accordingly, but again, focus on the Showcase versions and not the regular frame.

One more aside: Lurrus of the Dream Den and Yorion, Sky Nomad are the only companions worth paying attention to. Lurrus gets a LOT more play, across a lot more formats. Again, I think you should go for the EA versions, but the reprint risk here is more random. Companions probably won’t be another mechanic in Standard again for a long while, but Secret Lair: Companions is much more likely in my view. 

Back to Commander, and what might be the most unfriendly card in this article:

Yes, that’s right. No Commanders for anyone, no flashback, no recast from the yard, etc. Just pure, good, wholesome fun. This is the most used card by the numbers, and 8000 people using this in just seven months is pretty impressive for a card. It’s pretty fun to deny things to other people.

The FEA foils tell the same story, starting at $19. There’s only 26 vendors on TCG with NM FEA versions of the card, and only one of those has four or more. That’s a really small number for a mere rare, not a mythic. For comparison’s sake, there’s about the same number of copies of General Kudro of Drannith in FEA.

A card with very little Constructed play but a lot of potential as a Commander hate bear is somewhere I want to be. $20 is reasonable for the foil, and EA versions at about $5 would be decent pickups too.

Surprisingly, the next card has a promo to chase, and it’s already been chased pretty hard: 

The Promo Pack version has a foil and a nonfoil, but there’s no Extended Art version at all, since it’s an uncommon. We see Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach as two of the most-played green spells in Commander because of the ramp, but Migration Path is a worthy #3 and is several dollars less for the sweet foil version. 

Cultivate and Reach are still good late-game, but Path gives you the flexibility of a re-draw if you don’t want to ramp up and cast your Commander again. It’s been widely adopted and you should have some copies handy when the day comes that the foil promo version is $7. 

Finally, I want to talk about the Ultimatums. Yes, they are hard to cast, but two of them are clearly the best, with the other three still being good but not game-breakers the same way. Eerie and Ruinous are enormous card advantage, and have the prices to back it up. Genesis will get you some amazing plays, and the other two are just not as powerful.

I think the EA versions are decent pickups, but the FEA copies are still $15 or less and that’s really where you want to be for the best two, and possibly Genesis as well. This is a card that’s difficult to reprint unless they add it to a Commander deck of exactly these colors, which isn’t impossible. Even then, you’d be looking at a regular frame nonfoil copy, while you’ve got the sweet ones. Get yours while you can.

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.

When a card gets reprinted, it will lose value. That’s one of the bedrock principles of Magic finance, and probably isn’t news to you.

However, there are some exceptions to this rule, and some of them may be surprising to you.

Let’s take a look at some examples of cards which went UP after being reprinted, flying in the face of conventional wisdom.

The first set of foils that came to my mind in terms of reprints are pretty iconic: the OG Ravnica-block shocklands. Let’s look at Hallowed Fountain’s graph, though you can use just about any of them. Keep in mind that Ravnica was in 2009, Return to Ravnica was 2012, and Guilds of Ravnica was 2019. The original shocklands are quite well aged.

Yowza, that’s an expensive shockland, especially when you look at the price of its reprint:

Note that the Guilds reprint in 2019 didn’t faze the RTR price much, but caused the Dissension price to jump enormously. The other shocklands have had hops from time to time, but the pattern of growth is there despite the reprints. Reprints which included BFZ Expeditions in 2015, mind you.

Now you might be saying, “Yeah, but those are for the shocklands, and those are cards with mega-cross-format appeal!” You’d be right, but there’s no appreciable reason for the 2005 card to be four or five times as expensive as the 2012 one. Especially because there’s not a lot of space between the 2012 foil price and the 2019 foil price.

That’s the shocklands, though. Let’s try something else with an older foil and a lot of reprints.

Karn Liberated has been popular since his first printing in New Phyrexia (2011) and while he’s not a big deal in Commander, Tron has been the real deal with the ability to slam him down turn three and exile something. The price on the OG foil, now nearly ten years old, tells quite a tale:

Something happened in late 2018: Ultimate Master Box Toppers. But even that price has been impacted in 2020 by Double Masters, which gave us another borderless treatment.

The difference here is probably one of use: Karn is big in Modern, but tiny in Commander. Fountain, though, is in 50k+ decks online, literally half the decks that could have the shockland do.

All right, so let’s try a commander card with an original foil, and no special frame reprint. Seedborn Muse meets these criteria, though there hasn’t been a foil reprint since Battlebond in 2017:

I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of using a card with the old border foil in this thought process, but $200 as TCG low vs under $50 for 9th, 10th, and BBD foils is right in line with expectations.

How about a commander staple with an old border AND a special frame reprint? Let’s talk about the Sad Robot, Solemn Simulacrum:

The price on the foil has stayed under $50 for a long time, being the Invitational card back in 2003. There was a reprint in Magic 2012, which included a foil version, but the real event was in 2016, when the Invention version showed up and started soaking up the dollars of people who would have otherwise paid for the OG foil. We got a new FEA version in Core 2021,which seems to have impacted the price on this card, given how the price has fallen this year.

So to summarize: original pack foils are pretty safe from reprints until a special version shows up. ‘Special Version’ can mean a lot of things, such as in Sakura-Tribe Elder’s case, where there’s an FNM and the awesomely shiny JSS treatment. Mostly, though, it’s going to mean a foil extended art.

This rule does not apply if the special frame becomes more expensive than the original: collectors will then start chasing the most pricey version of the card, and the prophecy will fulfill itself. For instance, I can’t see the new Zendikar Rising Expedition version of Scalding Tarn ever being more expensive than the Battle for Zendikar Expedition version. Godless Shrine, though, the BfZ Expedition became more than the Dissension card and never looked back.

If you own an original foil of a card and a special version shows up, don’t panic. Definitely don’t panic sell, especially if it’s the original foil of a staple in Cube or Commander. There are cards that are resistant to this pressure, and playability is a big part of that calculation.

Duel Decks don’t count, as I see with Avenger of Zendikar and a couple of other cards. Those have been rotten egg of reprints for quite a while, though it’s good that some foil versions remain cheap.

What does this mean going forward?

Well, for starters, I’m going to flinch at expensive pack foils when reprints are coming. One example of this would be Rings of Brighthearth, which is getting a reprint in Commander Legends and that includes a foil extended art treatment. The presence of that FEA means I’m expecting the OG foil to take a hit. Will it recover? Maybe. Whichever one is more expensive in six weeks is the one I’d want to have going forward. Price memory is going to play a big part in something like that, too.

It also means that I much prefer to invest in special frame versions going forward. Not only are those less likely to be reprinted (note that’s not the same as impossible) but they will also be resilient to reprint drag.

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.