I thought Karn wasnt good enough by himself, and while I saw the Teferi-Seal Away synergy, I underestimated how many people wanted to play these cards. I also didn’t give enough credit to the idea of Karn as a colorless card, meaning that I didn’t make the mental leap to how he goes in EVERY deck. Literally every deck can play this, from aggro to control.
Today I want to look at where Karn’s price is, some historical comparisons, and where he might be going. There’s some printing and distribution factors at play too.
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Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.
I’ve been at this a while, and not just writing about Magic. I’ve done precious little buying of cards (until recently–one of my New Year’s resolutions was to buy more of my own advice) and done really well through targeted trading.
I’ve also sold cards for assorted life expenses along the way, including in 2001 when I needed a new transmission and felt blessed to get $200 for my playsets of Tropical Island and Force of Will.
All that being said, recent events in Magic card pricing are just mindblowing, and I’ve got some advice for you to weather the storm.
There are a range of factors pushing at prices right now. Let’s look at one example, a card which recently made it over two grand, pushing towards $3,000, and is more expensive than Unlimited Power: The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.
Let’s also take a minute and see who needs this card. Legacy Lands players need one copy (and that one copy makes up ~50% of the deck’s price, the playset of Mox Diamond is another ~30%), people who like to play the super-niche format 93-94 want it, and collectors of Legends cards want it.
When you need it, you need it!
Is that a big group of people? Not really. The issue is the low supply of the card, and that means there’s a battle to get the few copies available.
So this one card is worth two months’ rent, or a semi-decent used car. Use the analogy you like, but respect that people are paying that much for this card for one or more reasons.
What we also need to consider is that fear is moving a lot of these prices. People are afraid of missing out (FOMO is the acronym) on the next spike, and identifying such cards is becoming less of a skill over time, because not all prices are holding.
It went from under a buck, up to $9, and now down to $3 because no one was buying it at the $9 level. The card is AMAZING in Zedruu the Greathearted decks, and I’m forced to wonder: Given that there was enough demand to get Zedruu up to nearly $10 at one point…are there more Legacy Lands players than Zedruu players? And if not, what’s going on?
The Reserved List is not a bad thing. I said it. I mean it.
I’d like dual lands for all my Commander decks, but really, I don’t need them. I’ve got fetchable shocks and bicycle lands and other variants, plus stuff like Command Tower. Duals would be a nice upgrade but they are not a necessity. Masterpieces are in the same space, given that the MSP Sol Ring is now above $300 and pushing at $400. That’s more than a Beta Sol Ring and within $100 of an Alpha!
Magic benefits from having aspirational levels. If you master Standard, there’s Modern. Then Legacy, then Vintage. Other formats come into play, like new draft environments, build your own Cube, or get into 93-94.
None of those are necessary to enjoy the game. They are all fun, in different ways, and if you really want to get into Vintage dive in online for about $500 to buy Ravager Shops.
The Reserved List is mostly terrible cards anyway, a clear overreaction to Chronicles. Here’s a couple of example cards:
Look at that pristine arm!
My point in all of this is that for years now, there’s been a combination of factors causing cards to go up. Speculators, collectors, people who want the cards, and people who are scared of having to buy at the high price when they could have bought at the old price.
For almost all of us, it doesn’t matter. Would your tokens deck be better with a Gaea’s Cradle? Absolutely. Would it be almost as good with Growing Rites of Itlimoc, or Mana Echoes, or a range of other cards that will be plenty busted.
In terms of financial advice, I’d suggest you look at the Reserved List and cross that with the cards you might actually play. For example, Winding Canyons is in the midst of an upward spike, it was available for $10 for quite a while and the frenzy has moved to this card, pushing it past $20. It might stabilize at $30, and then trickle downwards as people realize the new price isn’t here to stay…but the price will have gone up.
Just worse than Whispersilk ot Trailblazer’s Boots?
Sub $5 for the longest time, spiking to $30, now at about $15 for a card that is objectively terrible. The card is just bad, but it’s being collected, it’s not getting played. You have to understand that distinction and you have to embrace how the spikes will be worse for the playable cards.
So here’s a couple of RL cards that are decent candidates for a spike:
Hand of Justice at fifty cents, because I think a lot of people destroyed their Fallen Empires cards. I remember how worthless these were for the longest time.
Autumn Willow at a buck, because early hexproof is bah-roken.
Thawing Glaciers at sub-$20, because the judge promo is about $60, and colorless land find is always helpful.
Varchild’s War-Riders at or below $4, because sometimes the other players need creatures.
Tombstone Stairwell because lots of Zombies coming and going is exactly what some decks want.
These are just a few examples, not intended to be a prediction or a guide, but my ideas on cards that are at the nexus of the Reserved List and playability. I don’t know what collectors will do, or speculators (remember, Narwhal spiked to $10 once based on buyouts) but I know that playable RL cards have a low supply, due to the number already in decks.
If you need such cards for your EDH deck, better move fast. This wave of spikes isn’t done.
Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.
I know you’re all hyped about Dominaria being out, and rightfully so, but the truth is that our attention as finance-minded people needs to be on the just-finished Ixalan block and the soon-to-rotate-from-Standard blocks.
A couple of weeks ago I talked about Kaladesh, and now it’s time to go over the best long-term value from Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation.
What I’m looking for is one of three things:
Eternal appeal, meaning that the card sees some play in Modern, Legacy, or other non-rotating formats
Casual appeal, so cards that Commanders, Cubers, or 60-card “Every dragon ever printed” kitchen table players love.
Cards that do something no other card does, or that has a strong similarity to some other card that has gone up over time.
If one of those is met, I’ll think about it. Two is a likely buy, and all 3 means I’m snapping it up.
This is the most available token-doubling card around, considering that it’s a new rare. Stuff like Doubling Season, Primal Vigor, and Parallel Lives all command greater prices on lower supply.
That doesn’t stop this card from being an excellent investment. Yes, there’s an occasional Standard deck that’s using the card, but the tokens lists aren’t amazing yet. (Aryel, Knight of Windgrace would love for you to play Anointed Procession!)
Where this shines, though, is in the casual market. The demand for this card is high enough to push the price up to being the #6 card in Amonkhet, and the most valuable non-mythic.
It’s not going to dip at rotation, but instead start to creep upward. It’s never going to have a huge spike, but if you’re the kind of person who tosses cards in the box and forgets about them for years, this is your card.
I really love the cycling lands in Commander. They are fetchable and so much more reasonably priced than shocks and duals. Being able to cycle it away in the late game is an acceptable tradeoff for it coming into play tapped. Again, this is one for gradual growth and has a real reprint risk. This would be a good set of cards to get in a cycle of Commander decks, unless you have a lot of them. I think it’s worth the risk.
I’m all for niche decks, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how many Cats there are out there. This kitty is best friends with Brimaz, King of Oreskos, but the number of Cats is higher than you think. Get on the foils while they are dirt cheap, and before they print a new Cat Legend and this jumps to $10.
I would be in on the foils a lot heavier than the nonfoils. This has popped up in a few sideboards but a deck placed 68th at a Modern SCG Open with three of the mentors in the maindeck.
My favorite interaction is how this stops the Druid/Vizier combo, as the untap effect on Devoted Druid means two damage, ruling out the infinite mana combo. It’s a niche card, sure, but it’s a cheap niche card. Worth having a few foils around for when they spike to $10, sometime in the next year.
This one is the purest spec pick, but it does something unique, and I’m generally willing to spend a few bucks on one-of-a-kind effects. Yes, Final Fortune does this more cleanly, but that’s not Modern legal. What I’m doing here is picking up a bulk mythic in anticipation of someone breaking the card, and there’s a case to be made in foils or nonfoils. Generally, I like having foils for more of a premium, but if you want to grab 20 nonfoils I’d support that too.
The only thing keeping this version of Samut from being a $15 foil is that she doesn’t fit in Atraxa decks. Having the ability to go find two more ‘walkers with her ultimate is just bonkers. I grabbed a couple foils under $5 off eBay just to sock away and keep handy. I don’t think we will ever get another card that interacts with planeswalkers the way Doubling Season does…but we did get Deepglow Skate…
That’s a big jump in foils, and I’m not really sure why. Is it because of the combo with Decree of Silence? It’s only in a little over a thousand decks on EDHREC, so I don’t think that’s it.
There’s a bump here and even if I don’t know why it is, it’s a cheap enough card with a unique effect. Worth having in stock.
It’s not bad in Commander either, as long as you can play colorless lands.
Granted, a lot of its recent spike can be chalked up to increased Standard play, but it’s showing up a little in Modern, and that’s where things can get very spicy.
This is an amazing card when utilized properly, and I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about the foils if there wasn’t a Buy-a-Box version lurking. It synergizes with a lot of decks, sees some Modern play, and something I want to have a few copies of for the day when it gets broken.
There are a lot of flavors of Hollow One decks running around, and while I personally despise random discards, I can’t argue with the power or the results. Fifteen for a small-set foil rare that gets played in a top-tier strategy as a four-of says “I ought to be $30” and you should purchase accordingly.
Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.
The week between the full set being previewed and prereleases happening is the time when prices start to move.
The earliest adopters are trying hard to get their cards in hand for the very first events, but one thing to note recently is that now prereleases happen at the same time for both online and in paper.
That means this week, we will start to see what’s in demand. What are people eager to build? Keep an eye on the online world, and be ready.
As for prereleases, I stand by this advice: Trade away everything you open. Most of it’s going down in price, but there’s some that are bucking the trend.
There’s a lot to like about Karn, as I wrote last week, but there’s also a lot of issues. Maybe he’s more Modern playable than I’d thought? Does Affinity secretly want to churn him into play and start making huge tokens? I doubt it, but Karn has jumped into being the chase mythic of the set.
It’s been a long time since we had a $50 card in Standard booster packs, and while it’s not impossible, it’s very very unlikely. Please don’t buy at this price. If he was $30 I could see him hitting $40, but more growth from here isn’t going to happen.
Her price was never too high, so it’s not like anyone lost a ton of money on her so far. Nonetheless this is a really low starting price for a planeswalker, and one as nostalgia-stuffed as Jaya should have a higher value just for the collectors.
We’ve gotten pretty jaded about planeswalkers, though. Did you buy Dovin Baan at $30? Maybe $20? $10? He started sliding early and never stopped.
$30, and saw play maybe once.
I’d venture that triple-red is as restrictive as WU, and her abilities are underwhelming. Even her ultimate is not a game-winner, just an advantage engine.
At the same time, picking up a set for $20 is super tempting. There’s a lot of time for her to get broken…but not too much time, as she rotates in 18 months, not the max of 2 years.
This isn’t just about building the new hotness, but I do note that there’s a LOT of Vampire Knights already present. There’s a lot of synergies to be used, and please don’t overlook how good chaining these Sagas can be. Benalish Marshal has stayed steady at nearly $2, and that seems like the best card to pair with the Saga.
This is the foil price and if Knights are about to blow up, an excellent target.
I think this will come back down in price, but in the meantime, it’s good to know that if I opened one at the prerelease, I’d get to win with the card both in the matches I played and then when I traded it away.
It’s got further to go, too. The most broken thing about Cabal Coffers is how well it works with incidental Swamps and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. The Stronghold needs only basics, and that’s why this is not the second coming.
In your monoblack Commander deck, it’s still nothing too amazing. Your utility lands are not going to help, even Leechridden Swamp! So to profit, you need four basic swamps, and then you’re ahead one mana.
Normally I’d be all over foils of a card like this, but the advantage is much smaller here and extracting value over time is going to take a very long time indeed.
This, though, has long-term value written all over it. Every Commander player I talk to is atwitter over this card, and a lot of them are simply nutty over the chance to have more than one copy of their commander in play.
Granted, not every deck wants to have more than one copy in play. Having two Experiment Kraj in play sounds pretty weak, and two Kemba, Kha Regent is also sort of lame. How about two Mairsil, the Pretender though? I have to admit that having two The Ur-Dragon attacking is the sort of thing that makes my head spin around in purest joy.
If you care that the equip and play cost is nine mana, then Commander isn’t the format for you. The name of the game isn’t always winning. It’s about doing broken and busted things, like having three Karona, False God in play and getting one more each turn!
I’m not buying this at $15, let me be clear. I’m not even going to consider it until the end of the format, when the OMGGIMMEGIMMEGIMME rush has worn off and I can get foils in the $6 range.
Just letting you know that it’s jumped and that it’s on my radar.
We’ve got no shortage of awesome Dragons, but the combination of flying, haste, trample, and ‘see you in three turns’ seems especially potent in Commander, and that’s why the foils are above 4x the nonfoil price.
Here’s all six standard-legal dragons!
There’s only a handful of Dragons in Standard at the moment, so I don’t think a Brawl deck that’s Dragon tribal is possible…yet. I love these foils long-term, but I’m going to need to watch how well the set is selling. I suspect it’ll move very well indeed, so we will see.
Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
