One of the questions I get asked most frequently is ‘When should I buy (insert name/treatment of card they want that likely just came out)? I don’t want to overspend.’

This is a valid question, as it gets to the heart of the matter: How do we make sure that we get the things that we want for the lowest possible price? This is an especially important question when we’re at the beginning of a format, and prices are generally at their highest. How long can we wait to let the prices find a bottom, and can we stand to wait that long when it’s a card we really, really, REALLY want?

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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.

Foundations is out, has been out, and the prices are starting to sort out what’s good and what’s still trending downwards. We’ve got the luxury of seeing what’s headed down and what’s jumped up, as well as some of the top adopted cards on EDHREC.

We’re coming into one of the doldrums for Magic finance, as people are buying presents for others and not so much for themselves, but keep in mind that Innistrad Remastered is on the horizon and that’ll have some good buying too. 

So let’s talk about Foundations, and see what we can see. 

There’s three cards that have had big big movement early, and for all three, I want to focus on the nonfoil, regular frame versions for now. 

Bloodthirsty Conqueror – Currently at $29, from preorder high of $48 – It’s half of an infinite combo, it’s a backup version of Exquisite Blood, and it promises to be a big player in a lot of Commander decks. There are a lot of ways to take this card and do busted things with it, and yet it was overpriced early on. The chase mythics from a set should settle in the $20-$30 range, and so I think this has a little farther to fall, unless everyone and their cousin starts building infinite trigger decks in Standard.

Doubling Season – $29, from $35 – It’s an article of faith that Doubling Season always recovers. It’s been printed in seven different full sets, plus a Judge foil way back when. And yet as recently as April of 2023, it was up over $85 for a regular nonfoil version. However, we’ve had three printings in the last 18 months: Commander Masters, Wilds of Eldraine, and now Foundations. 

Mythic every time, at least, but that’s a boatload of copies. As a result, the price for regulars is at $40-$45 for the other versions, and the Foundations copies can be had for under $30, and still falling. At the very very least, you should consider picking up your personal copies soon. This doesn’t have the mega-numbers you might expect on EDHREC, but this is the quintessential casual staple, something that lots of players need and when they see it they want to build around it. 

I’m not buying in at $29, not from a set whose packs are available for the next few years. I want to be more patient here, and not get caught early.

Sire of Seven Deaths – $29 from $20 – Eldrazi are popular, and this damn thing is ridiculous. You can’t attack into it, point removal is truly going to carry an iron price, and being seven mana instead of six mana is a good thing, considering the wide array of Eldrazi cards who bonus at seven mana, like Ugin’s Labyrinth or Kozilek’s Unsealing.

This might well be the high point for the card, because the early adopters have taken the card for their decks and from here, it ought to settle back down. It doesn’t look like it’s got enough appeal in other formats to help keep the price up, but when the next Eldrazi spike comes, this will likely get up again too.

Now let’s look at some of the top cards for the set on EDHREC. Remember, the inclusion rate isn’t a guarantee of anything, and only a small portion of players will upload their decks, but it’s a site that eager adopters check, so it’s worth being aware of.

Blasphemous Edict – 6200 decks – There are a lot of Commander games where this is a board wipe for one black mana. Sure, there’s token decks that end up with huge numbers in play, but I really like this card long-term. I’ve got two Mana Foil versions for decks and that same card was a pick of mine on MTG Fast Finance this week. It’s a regular rare, so there are a lot of copies out there, but I would be quite surprised if this ever fell out of the top 5 inclusions for the set. 

Banner of Kinship – 4500 decks – Being colorless is such a big part of this card’s appeal. Every Kindred deck should consider including this deck, and the biggest bonus is that it’s decent at two counters, good at three, and disgusting past that. The closest equivalent is Vanquisher’s Banner, which has a similar price in foil but has no special versions besides a retro frame in TSR. They aren’t the same card, but if you’re playing one then you ought to consider the other and the Vanquisher’s is closing in on 200,000 decks total. Worthy company to be keeping.

Twinflame Tyrant – 4400 decks – I am the first in line when there’s a sweet Dragon, but I wasn’t expecting everyone else to come along too. Twinflame takes what you’re doing and speeds it up, and this doesn’t ask you for lots of mana like most of these other effects. I will be buying a fracture foil at some point for my deck, but the regular versions are another example of casual players’ catnip. Whatever you do, this does double! The only decks who don’t want this are things like Ob Nixilis, Captive Kingpin, who wants people to lose precisely one life. 

Scrawling Crawler – 3800 decks – Speaking of Ob Nixilis, this card fits into a bunch of strategies in addition to just being a very efficient damage dealer. Nekusar, the Mindrazer is the #15 commander all time on EDHREC, and the Crawler doubles up his effect. Great with Ob, great with the cheap Valgavoth, and also wonderful against decks who want to draw fifty cards per turn. Psychosis Crawler, which is two mana more and doesn’t give the bonus card, is in 133k decks. That’s a really good sign for its future use, and I expect the special versions to be solid gainers once they hit bottom.

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.

Today, Foundations goes from pre-sale to full sale, and there’s two aspects of that I have to pay attention to: first, we want to try and pick the risers early, and second, we get a race to the bottom with the rest of the cards. 

Specifically today I want to talk about Jumpstart cards. It’s proven that many of the Jumpstart cards can get pricey when they become popular, like Neyith of the Wild Hunt, who’s nearly tripled in price since she’s amazing with the new Wolverine. 

So let’s talk about that set, what it’s meant for, and how we can profit.

Jumpstart is a subset that I understand the purpose of, as a way to get new players to play. Magic is an exceedingly complicated game, expecting the player to keep track of a complicated turn order and an endless array of card types. I am as invested as a player can be, short of a professional PT player or a dedicated tournament grinder, and it seems like every Commander game I play has a card I’ve never seen. 

However, I despise that these cards are only available in the Jumpstart packs, and therefore the supply is super scarce. People who open Jumpstart casually end up keeping the cards, and so the available supply is restricted to those who can open Jumpstart in some quantity. I also wish these were available in foil somehow, especially with the assorted slots available in a Collector Booster. Nonfoils stand out like a sore thumb in a lot of Commander decks, especially for modern cards.

So let’s start off with the Jumpstart cards that I like long-term, and see where some of these might go.

Generous Pup – $9 – Magic has recently taught me to never, ever, bet against cute puppies and/or cats. The Generous Pup is both adorable and ridiculously powerful, turning the placement of one +1/+1 counter into a whole Virtue of Loyalty trigger. That combination of abilities means that this card will often have a home, and being a cute puppy, this is one of my picks to rise quickly. The only thing holding this card back will be a lack of awareness for the card itself.

I think there’s a very good chance that this grows to a $20 price within the year.

Scythecat Cub – $29 – This is about the upper end of what Jumpstart cards can go for, and so while the Cub is amazeballs it’s too expensive for me right now. Most importantly, it says ‘that creature’ so you can go wild on any creature in your deck, or your Commander, or any combo pieces you want to enable. There’s so much potential in the card, and while it’s expensive now, I think it’ll have to trend down in price soon, and once it gets cheap, we can figure if the new price is worth it. 

Thurid, Mare of Destiny – $22 – I have made and lost plenty of money on Crested Sunmare over the years, and even adding red for Shadowfax works thematically, but isn’t necessary for Thurid. Having the copy ability on the Commander is extremely powerful, and having copies of Unicorns, Horses, and Pegasi running around is very strong. 

As such, we’re looking at this as a Commander, not just a card in the 99. That impacts the price, historically, as the only folks who want this card want to build around it, instead of adding it to others. The most popular commander from Jumpstart 2022, Kibo, is something like $7. I expect Thurid to sink down to the $10 range. 

Bonus, though, is that the Lisa Marie Secret Lair version of Crested Sunmare is a great spec if people decide to build Thurid decks. 

General Kreat, the Boltbringer – $14 – If Goblin players find out about this card, we’re all doomed. This combines two things Goblins like to do, make more tokens and punish the hell out of the rest of us. Impact Tremors on a creature is exactly what a Goblin deck wants, because they want to dump a million creatures into play and if the rest of us are dead before the attack step, oh well! Saves the effort of counting.

This also goes really well into the ‘deal one damage’ plans too, and that’s enough appeal across the genres for this to stay out of the bulk bin, and I would expect this to pop back up and get expensive when the attention gets high.

Dionus, Elvish Archdruid – $16 – This is too low. I’m actively afraid of what the Elf players will do with this card. Double the mana, bump the counters, all sorts of shenanigans are on the table when Dionus arrives. Elves are one of the most popular tribes in Magic, and this is going to double down on what they do best. I’ve met almost no Elf decks who would decline this card, especially something like Ezuri, who could tap out for mana, activate twice, and then attack for a billion.

Hurska Sweet-Tooth – $25 – This has a lot of play in Food decks, but those decks are so spoiled for choices that I think this might have trouble finding a place at this price tag. Considering the ease with which life is gained, and in big chunks, though, this has potential. Right now it’s $25, which is more than most decks want to deal with, especially with the number of cards that go into Food decks. This will come down some, but not a whole lot.

Finally, two cards I’m watching close as we switch from presale prices to open sellers: 

Borderless Mana Foil Blasphemous Edict at $45 – Mana Foil rares take over five hundred packs to be opened. There’s a lot of deals on Mana Foils early, but remember that even as Fractured Foils are the rarest, these are still extremely difficult cards to pull. I think this will easily gain to $75 eventually, and I’m hoping to get a couple of copies in the $35 range before the prices start to go back up.

Borderless Fractured Foil Doubling Season has sold out under $400 for presales–I expect this to be a $600 card if not higher. It’s a mega-staple, and this is the best version to date. Please do not underestimate the appeal of the cute kittens!

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.

Foundations prerelease is this weekend, and in case you’re forgetting, this is the set that will be legal in Standard until early 2030. The cards you open will be useful for just over four years, and most interestingly, we’re getting Collector Booster and Play Boosters for this set. We’ve never gotten reprints of Collector Boosters, and so today, I want to dive into some specifics about this set, the cards in it, and what the different distribution methods mean for the cards themselves.

Last week, I went over the math of the set, and some of that will get repeated here. It’s necessary to know what the drop rates for the different frames are, but today we’re focusing on the things that repeat in the two different boosters. The supply range for those is quite different, and if we get a glut early, followed by a very tiny trickle of supply, that’s a formula for big potential growth. 

One thing I want to mention about the set: There are five reprint cards that have a Borderless, but no EA. With these as reprints, they are unlikely to be huge movers, but be aware. Giada, Font of Hope, Phyrexian Arena, Etali, Primal Storm, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, Genesis Wave, and Lathril, Blade of the Elves.

Now, this table has the odds for what’s in a Play Booster. There is space for a rare/mythic, and then a wildcard which could be foil. Additionally, I’ve calculated the cost to buy the packs needed for a copy, averaging at $4 each. If you can get them cheaper, great, but $4 is a good average.

Those Play Booster odds hurt the eye to see. To put in context, needing to open 5600 Play Boosters is worse odds to get a specific Borderless Foil Mythic Rare than you had opening Lord of the Rings Collector Boosters to get a xxx/700 Dwarven Sol Ring, which took an estimated 4762 packs to open.

Let’s do the same table for Collector Boosters, using only the Borderless Foils and the regular frame foils. 

Traditional Foil (unless noted otherwise)	# of cards in that group	Percent chance for any card of that category	Percent chance for a specific card of that category	# of packs to open one specific card from that category	Times $24/pack to get cost/copy
Borderless Rare	43	34.50%	0.80%	124.64	$2,991.30
Borderless Mythic Rare	17	6.80%	0.40%	250.00	$6,000.00
Regular Frame Foil Rare	60	85.70%	1.43%	70.01	$1,680.28
Regular Frame Foil Mythic Rare	20	14.30%	0.72%	139.86	$3,356.64

Much more tolerable drop rates, and you’ll notice how much cheaper it is to open these cards in a Collector Booster than it is for a Play Booster. In fact, let’s compare those directly, for foils and nonfoils. 

Card/Frame/Treatment	Cost in Play Boosters	Cost in Collector Boosters	Difference in price	Efficiency
Borderless Rare	$1,849.46	$1,116.88	$732.58	39.61%
Borderless Mythic Rare	$3,777.78	$2,217.39	$1,560.39	41.30%
Foil Rare	$1,472.39	$840.14	$632.25	42.94%
Foil Mythic Rare	$3,076.92	$1,678.32	$1,398.60	45.45%
Borderless Foil Rare	$10,750.00	$2,991.30	$7,758.70	72.17%
Borderless Foil Mythic Rare	$22,666.67	$6,000.00	$16,666.67	73.53%

So here we are. Efficiency is 1 minus the ratio, as a way of comparing the difference in prices without having to measure the absolute sizes of the differences. The higher the percentage, the bigger the difference in price and therefore how much easier it is to get those cards from the Collector Boosters instead of the Play Boosters. 

Extended Art cards aren’t in the Play Boosters at all, so there’s a strong chance if the Borderless versions get cleaned out for a card, the EA versions will follow suit. Additionally, the EA versions won’t ever be replenished via Play Boosters, whereas we’ll be opening a few extras of Borderless here and there. Not often, mind you, but if Foundations is a good draft experience AND the cards are decently priced AND they are useful for Standard, we’ll see the Play Booster boxes get opened for a while. Wizards will print move of these as needed, which is a good plan for cards that have a four-year lifespan in Standard. 

We also need to be mindful of the timeframe. Foundations is going to lose attention to Innistrad Remastered, which is scheduled to be released January 24. Given that there’s several major holidays between now and then, the amount of packs opened should be impacted. I think that some of the more popular cards won’t be able to get very low before they begin to grow in price, and specifically, the Fracture Foils ought to really take off early.

It’s roughly 1,500 packs to open a Fracture Foil in Foundations, and it was only about 900 packs to get a Confetti foil in Wilds of Eldraine. These are mega-rare, and have the anime appeal to go with the sweet foiling. As an example, you could get a Confetti Foil Rhystic Study early on for $250 or so, and now they are three times that. I don’t think all the Fracture Foils have that growth potential, but Doubling Season gets my vote for having the cute anime kittens on it, and I’ve learned not to bet against cute on shiny Magic cards. 

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.