We’re a couple of weeks into Double Masters 2022 and prices are all moving downwards from where they started, and that’s good! That’s the entire point of the set, frankly, to put more copies in circulation and let people buy cards that they couldn’t have gotten before this reprint set.

One of the hardest things to do at this moment is to be patient. We’ve only had the set in hand for a couple of weeks, and while distributors are certain that we aren’t getting any more huge waves of product, we’ve still got a lot of packs left to open. 

With that in mind, let’s talk about ‘the dead cat bounce’, and what it means to us as Magic speculators.

The phrase ‘dead cat bounce’ is a stock trading term, used to indicate a time where prices go up for a little while, even as the total trend is downwards. I think we are in the process of seeing this on Imperial Seal:

Yes, that’s a graph that’s trending upwards, but it’s also a graph that is only showing two weeks’ worth of data. Let me give you an example of this effect in a true staple, Doubling Season:

This is the Double Masters from 2020 edition, and you can see how the price has gone back up over time. The dead cat bounce is not the big jump in price just before April 2021. It is a small bump upwards at the very beginning of the graph. Let’s circle it, make it easier to see what I’m talking about:

 Yes, that’s a small bump near the beginning of a big price graph, but this is what I’m talking about. A small upward trend in the midst of an overall decline. Let’s zoom in on the circled area, and see what the graph looks like.

So yes, it went up $5 in a couple weeks, and then down again, bumped back up, and within a couple of weeks was at $35 and at $45. Of course, because Doubling Season is its own level of staple, it eventually recovered and got expensive again.

My point here is that the graph for Imperial Seal is not something that makes me want to buy in. I said that this card would get cheap, and I still believe it will. We know exactly what the card is, and what the usage for it will be, as a second copy/strictly worse version of Vampiric Tutor. That card, amazing as it is and widely available thanks to Eternal Masters into Commander Legends, is in 145,000 decks on EDHREC, where the most invested players make sure to optimize lists and share them out.

Because we’re all trying to make sure we buy copies before they get expensive, our very eagerness causes the Dead Cat Bounce. It’s not that Imperial Seal is three to four times better, but it is rarer. Seal is only listed in 28,000 decks, that’s a lot of people who are going to add Seal into their decks. That’s a lot of copies that never make it into circulation, and instead get put right into decks.

I still think Seal will go below $100, and possibly below $75, but every time we flinch and buy copies, it makes the decline take that much more time.

We can’t overlook price memory here either. This phenomenon has to do with a belief that a card is worth a certain amount, even if the actual price is different. Let me give you an example from early in my Magic career.

It’s 1995. I knew Ice Age would be coming out soon, though I didn’t know exactly when. There were no emails, no Internet, just Scrye magazine giving a price guide and vague release dates. Prereleases weren’t even a thing yet! So I stroll into my local shop and there at the front is a double-row box of Ice Age cards for a quarter each. I’m super stoked and start looking through these cards, thinking that I wanted to find new sweet cards for the decks I had, and there it is, staring at me: Counterspell.

To this point, Counterspell had been uncommon in Revised and earlier, but was something like $8 at the time. And here it was, mixed in with a bunch of quarter uncommons! So I frantically searched the box, and bought probably a dozen copies, all the ones I could find. 

Then I went and found my gaming friends, and said, ‘Look! They mixed these with the commons! I just got like a hundred bucks worth of cards for three dollars!’ To which they replied, ‘Sorry, Cliff, it’s common now.’ So I bought cards thinking that they had the same value as what I remembered, but actually, the market and the new rarity had spoken.

I imagine there’s a lot of people out there thinking ‘Holy crap, this is a $1500 card and I can get it for $150!?! Take my money!’ and I get it, I do. But we have to compare apples to apples, not apples to previously gilded fruits of legend. We know that P3K reprints come way way down in price, especially on the second reprint like Imperial Recruiter did. 

Warrior’s Oath is down to $20 or so, and given that Final Fortune is also $20, I don’t expect Oath to go much lower. I do expect that the recent minor upticks for prices in Phyrexian Altar, Smothering Tithe, and other staples doesn’t reflect the final price that those cards will be at in a few months. Be patient, as hard as it is, and you’ll get your value.

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.

Whether or not you play the game, Fortnite is a big part of the zeitgeist right now. It’s insanely popular on Twitch and has led to a lot of money and views. After Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Arcane (the League of Legends series), Street Fighter, and now Fortnite, we’re going to get some Warhammer 40k crossover and then next year comes The Lord of the Rings.

What’s interesting from the Fortnite drop is that like the Arcane drop, it’s all reprints and no new legends/characters. The art for this drop is super on brand, though, and we’ve got the time-honored formula of ‘one semi-expensive card and a bunch of $5 or less’ cards.

So let’s get into this drop and see if it’s worth a purchase, for the right now and for the long term.

First, let’s make a table with the most relevant information about the nonland drop:

Card name	Magic name	Cost of cheapest version	Cost of priciest version	EDHREC inclusion
Dance Battle	Dance of Many	Chronices – $1	The Dark – $9	1,800 decks
Shrinking Storm	Wrath of God	The List – $5	Alpha – $3k, LP	57,000 decks
Supply Llama	Etherium Sculptor	C18 – 50 cents	Shards of Alara foil – $5.50	34,000 decks
Battle Bus	Smuggler’s Copter	Neon Dynasty Commander – $1	Kaladesh foil – $12	19,000 decks
Crack the Vault	Grim Tutor	Core Set 2021 – $16	Starter 1999 – $80	51,000 decks
Battle Royale	Triumph of the Hordes	New Phyrexia – $15	New Phyrexia foil – $50	36,000 decks
The Cube	Planar Bridge	Double Masters 2022 – $1.50	Kaladesh Inventions – $80	8,800 decks

So let’s start with something that should be pretty clear off the bat: The cards, by themselves, aren’t worth the likely $40 nonfoil/$50 foil price we will be charged. This drop doesn’t have any super expensive card by itself, which is usually a thing, like Rhystic Study in the Arcane drop.

We know full well that reprinting a card drives down the value, but in case you needed a reminder that original supply is important, here’s the graph for Grim Tutor:

This was more than $300 at its peak, was $200 when the reprint came, and it doesn’t appear to have found the floor for the white border version. Even being listed in 51,000 decks online doesn’t save the Foil Borderless price from being in the mid-$20 range. Remember, those online decks are from the most invested folks, the ones who are super into optimization. It doesn’t really take into account the more casual players. 

So Grim Tutor is going to stay cheap, and with another special version, probably won’t get more expensive. Triumph of the Hordes is an uncommon, but it’s a popular one and it’s avoided reprints since New Phyrexia came out. 

I wouldn’t expect it to hold $15 as an inclusion on The List or something like that, either. We’ve just had no copies at all entering the marketplace, and it’s not like we got all that much of NPH in the first place. Remember that sets in that era followed the Big-Small-Small model, and as the third set, New Phyrexia had the least of all. I wrote about this effect seven years ago, and how the ratio of 6:2:1 came to be. Suffice it to say that New Phyrexia uncommons are six times rarer than Scars of Mirrodin uncommons, and the set is from eleven years ago. Not a lot to go around!

So really, what we’re paying for is the art and the Fortnite reskinning of the cards, not the cards themselves. Let’s be clear, the art is top-notch and it’s in a nicely extended frame. Since this is all reprints, and there’s nothing new as there was in Walking Dead or Street Fighter, we have to try and figure out not just what the cards are worth now, but what these might be in a year or two years.

Remember that the lead time for something like this is not short. Art has to be commissioned, designs approved, and all this started at least a year ago, if not more. Fortnite is still a popular game, significantly more popular on Twitch than Magic is.

Here’s a chart of the views and number of channels for Fortnite:

And here’s the same data for Magic, both MTGO and Arena content. Note how different the measurements are along the vertical.

Other sites show similar data, in that Fortnite gets many more viewers and hours watched. Even if you look at the graphs and numbers and think that Fortnite is in decline, their numbers are way, way ahead of Magic. 

It’s not hard to imagine a world in a few years where Fortnite has faded away, and then these cards are a trip down nostalgia lane. Wizards of the Coast is more than happy to capitalize on nostalgia, as demonstrated by their use of retro frame borders. 

I don’t want to compare this Secret Lair to things like Arcane, both because of the cards involved and the timeline is still pretty short. Can’t compare it to Walking Dead either, because that was all new cards. 

The other thing to remember about an unpopular Secret Lair drop, or a very-short-window one like Extra Life, is that if not many people buy it, then it’ll rise in price that much faster. So we’re stuck. I don’t think this is a good IP for the long term, and the cards are certainly not worth it either.

That said, all of the non-land Secret Lairs have generally appreciated in price, as a collectible if nothing else. I am skipping the June 2022 Superdrop because I don’t see enough unique things there to catch my eye. I will probably not buy very much of the Fortnite sets because even if they grow on a long timeline, it will be such modest growth over such a long time, that I’d rather put that money into 2X2 singles when those hit the floor, or bricks of underappreciated CLB cards. 

I respect that if you’re big into Fortnite, this drop will make you happy. The art is top-notch and wonderfully captures the spirit of the game. Buying a couple of sets and waiting is defensible, as you’re unlikely to lose money this way, your money will just be tied up for a really long time. There hasn’t yet been a non-land Secret Lair that went down as a sealed product, but there’s plenty that are still not much over their original cost. I will probably end up getting some singles once the drop arrives, though.

I haven’t mentioned the lands yet, and that’s because if you think I’m lukewarm on Secret Lair lands, I’m even more chilly when it comes to the lands. Yes, some of the Godzilla lands have sold nicely but those were bonus inclusions that weren’t an option on their own. So far, the land cycles in a Secret Lair haven’t lit up the world, or even gotten more than slight gains. It’s very hard for me to care about these, especially at $7 or so per basic land. I would understand if you wanted to get a couple sets of the regular cards, but the lands are a no-go for me. None of the Lairs’ sets of land have been worth it yet, and while that might eventually change, I need to see that change first before I put any money in.

If you want to talk about these points with me or other readers, hop into the Discord channel and let me know!

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.

No, I’m not talking about Double Masters 2022, which isn’t officially releasing until next week. Nor am I discussing Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. What I’m thinking about is Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, and if we’ve hit bottom. 

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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.

Welcome, let’s get down to the numbers of Double Masters 2022. We’ve got only 24 Draft Boosters per box and a mere 4 Collector Boosters per box, effectively upping the price for each pack.

We are also getting double the rares and mythics, along with some incredibly expensive reprints. Quite the assortment of value here, and with the numbers doubled, we’ve got some really amazing things and some real bulk mixed together.

So let’s dive in and see how rare these cards are, especially compared to rarities of sets past, as try to figure out what’s worth it and what isn’t.

The basics: 120 rares and 40 mythics means twice the odds in Draft Boosters (more on that in a minute) but the last two slots in a Collector Booster are split unevenly. 

We know which rares and mythics have a Borderless version and a Textured version. All rares and mythics have a foil-etched version. This list is going to be updated as previews get finished off.

Borderless Rare (30)	Borderless Mythic (20)	Textured Foil Borderless Mythic (5)
Aether Vial Anger of the Gods Assassin’s Trophy Bloodforged Battle-Axe Bloom Tender Chaos Warp City of Brass Damnation Forbidden Orchard Force of Negation Gifts Ungiven Glimpse the Unthinkable Grand Arbiter Augustin IV Grim Flayer Hardened Scales Kolaghan’s Command Marchesa, the Black Rose Oracle of Mul Daya Panharmonicon Phyrexian Altar Pithing Needle Sensei’s Divining Top Smothering Tithe Supreme Verdict Surgical Extraction Teferi’s Protection The Mimeoplasm Thousand-Year Storm Vedalken Orrery	Allosaurus Shepherd Cavern of Souls Concordant Crossroads Consecrated Sphinx Crucible of Worlds Dockside Extortionist Dragonlord Dromoka Elenda, the Dusk Rose Emrakul, the Aeons Torn Imperial Seal Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Mana Drain Mana Vault Muldrotha, the Gravetide Seasoned Pyromancer Sedris, the Traitor King Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre	Emrakul, the Aeons Torn Kozilek, Butcher of Truth Liliana, the Last Hope Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre Wrenn and Six

Let’s deal with the Borderless slot first. With 30 rares and 20 mythics, this is almost very straightforward in this slot of the Collector Booster. The rares are in the pool twice, then add the mythics. As a result, to get a specific Borderless rare, you’ve got a 1/40 chance. 

For the mythics, it’s a touch more complicated. The fifteen mythics that do NOT have a Textured version are a straight 1/80 to show up in that slot, but for the five that do, you need to flip a coin and see whether you get a Textured or not. 

To put in more specific terms, I’m 1/80 to get a Borderless Wrenn and Six of any type, but I’m 1/160 to get either a Textured foil or a Borderless.

The foil-etched slot has a lot more options. The set has 120 rares and 40 mythics, and that means the potential pulls are from 280 cards. Any foil-etched rare is 1/140 and any mythic is 1/280.

Have a table, to help summarize these things.

Because Wizards has a slot for the etched, and a slot for the Borderless, we’ve got an interesting situation. The rarest special versions this set will not be borderless, or even the textured foils. It’ll be the foil-etched mythics that do not have a borderless version.

Have another table:

Rares in foil-etched WITHOUT a Borderless version (1/140 packs)	Mythics in foil-etched WITHOUT a Borderless Version (1/280 packs)
Abbot of Keral Keep Abzan Ascendancy Alesha, Who Smiles at Death Anguished Unmaking Arjun, the Shifting Flame Ashenmoor Liege Ashen Rider Atarka’s Command Atla Palani, Nest Tender Backdraft Hellkite Balefire Liege Bedlam Reveler Boartusk Liege Bring to Light Child of Alara Conqueror’s Flail Creakwood Liege Dack’s Duplicate Darksteel Plate Dauntless Escort Deathbringer Liege Disciple of the Ring Doran, the Siege Tower Drogskol Reaver Dromoka’s Command Elsha of the Infinite Empyrial Archangel Fiery Justice Figure of Destiny Firesong and Sunspeaker Glen Elendra Liege Gravecrawler Greater Gargadon Green Sun’s Zenith Guided Passage Hostage Taker Hydroid Krasis Impervious Greatwurm Intet, the Dreamer Jeskai Ascendancy Jodah, Archmage Eternal Judith, the Scourge Diva Kaervek the Merciless Kambal, Consul of Allocation Kederekt Leviathan Lavalanche Legion’s Initiative Leonin Arbiter Magister Sphinx Master Biomancer Mathas, Fiend Seeker Mikaeus, the Lunarch Mindwrack Liege Murkfiend Liege Necrotic Ooze Nim Deathmantle Ob Nixilis, Unshackled Oona’s Prowler Phyrexian Tyranny Pillar of the Paruns Planar Bridge Prized Amalgam Pull from Tomorrow Rafiq of the Many Restoration Angel Reveillark Rishkar, Peema Renegade Roon of the Hidden Realm Ruric Thar, the Unbowed Shattergang Brothers Sidisi, Brood Tyrant Skullbriar, the Walking Grave Splinterfright Talrand, Sky Summoner Tariel, Reckoner of Souls Teneb, the Harvester Thistledown Liege Thraximundar Thrumming Stone Twinflame Ulasht, the Hate Seed Varina, Lich Queen Venser, Shaper Savant Villainous Wealth Wasitora, Nekoru Queen Weathered Wayfarer Wilt-Leaf Liege Yahenni, Undying Partisan Zur the Enchanter	Aminatou, the Fateshifter Animar, Soul of Elements As Foretold Aurelia, the Warleader Bitterblossom Divine Visitation Dragonlord Silumgar Emiel the Blessed Ezuri, Claw of Progress Food Chain Ghave, Guru of Spores Hellkite Overlord Kaalia of the Vast Karador, Ghost Chieftain Lord of Extinction Master of Cruelties Mizzix of the Izmagnus Monastery Mentor Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh Uril, the Miststalker Warrior’s Oath

As is the tradition, let’s have a comparison of cards at different rarities and finishes, to give another perspective:

Card	Rarity	Frame	Approx. # of packs to open one	Value of packs opened ($70/pack)
Teferi’s Protection	Rare	Borderless	40	$2,800
Imperial Seal	Mythic	Borderless	80	$5,600
Wrenn and Six	Mythic	Textured	160	$11,200
Green Sun’s Zenith	Rare	Foil-Etched	140	$9,800
Food Chain	Mythic	Foil-Etched	280	$19,600

And to finish off talk of Collector Boosters, let’s review where these packs and these cards rate as compared to sets from the last couple of years. Do note that these tables do NOT account for the different prices of packs, a problem which I will rectify soon.

Set Name	Odds of a specific foil treatment rare	Odds of a specific foil treatment mythic
Double Masters 2022	1/40 to 1/140	1/80 to 1/280
CL: Battle for Baldur’s Gate	1/88	1/176 to 1/352
Streets of New Capenna	1/82 to 1/164	1/164 to 1/492
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/136	1/272 up to 1/544
Innistrad: Crimson Vow	1/74	1/171
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt	1/75.5	1/151
Forgotten Realms	1/63	1/126
Strixhaven	1/154.5	1/309
Kaldheim	1/64	1/128
Modern Horizons 2	1/126.5	1/253
Commander Legends EA Foils	1/204	1/400

Now the cards: 

Card/Treatment	Set	Odds of pulling it from a Collector Booster (approx.)
Extended Art Foil Jeweled Lotus	Commander Legends	1/400
Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex	Kaldheim	1/256
Japanese-Language Alternate Art Time Warp Foil	Strixhaven (Mystical Archive)	1/309
Foil Extended Art The Meathook Massacre	Innistrad: Midnight Hunt	1/151
Foil Fang Frame Sorin, the Mirthless by Ayami Kojima	Innistrad: Crimson Vow	1/171
Phyrexian foil (or foil-etched) Jin-Gitaxias	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/544
Blue Soft Glow Hidetsugu	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/219
Green Soft Glow Hidetsugu	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/444
Red Soft Glow Hidetsugu	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/1828
Phyrexian Foil Urabrask, Heretic Praetor	Streets of New Capenna	1/492
Borderless Foil Ancient Brass Dragon	Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate	1/352
Foil Etched Food Chain	Double Masters 2022	1/280
Textured Borderless Foil Emrakul, the Aeons Torn	Double Masters 2022	1/160

The way that Wizards changed the number of packs in a box, and therefore the cost per pack, outweighs the progress they made when increasing the drop rate for these cards. It’s also worth noting that a lot of Double Masters 2022 will end up at very low prices because of low demand for a lot of these cards. These slots will be very swingy indeed!

Draft Boosters are also relatively straightforward. There are no foil-etched cards, and there are no textured foils. Just foil Borderless and regular frame foil.

There’s two slots dedicated to rares or mythics. Same deal as the foil-etched slot applies, twice the rares means that any rare is 2/280 or 1/140, and any mythic is 1/280. Those are nonfoils, though, and represent how we’re going to get prices on regular copies so very low.

Trickier is that Borderless foils can show up in the third and fourth slots, along with foils in the regular frame. We’re explicitly told that your chances of a borderless foil rare or mythic in those slots is 1.25%, which comes out to 1/80 per slot for a borderless foil of either rarity. Since rares are twice as common as mythics, there’s a 1/240 chance of any borderless foil mythic in that slot and 1/120 for any borderless rare. Then we have to multiply by the number of cards (30 for rares, 20 for mythics) to get the chances of a specific foil borderless card. 

One more step. I’ve calculated all of these on a per-slot basis, so then this table has those odds x2, due to the pair of potential slots.

Any Traditional Foil Rare, regular frame	Any Traditional Foil Mythic Rare, regular frame	Any Borderless Foil Rare	Any Borderless Foil Mythic Rare
1 in 4.25 packs	1 in 8.5 packs	1 in 60 packs	1 in 120 packs
Specific Borderless Foil Rare	1 in 1800 packs
Specific Borderless Foil Mythic Rare	1 in 2400 packs

I’m happy to talk about the math and my methods in the comments here, on Twitter, but especially in the ProTrader Discord. Please feel free to stop by and discuss your experiences and your pulls!

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.