Here we are, with previews coming up, a set releasing next week, and now there’s a Secret Lair Superdrop to contend with. There are eight drops in this go-round, and they go on sale at 9 am PST/12 noon EST On Monday, February 10. 

There is a wide variety of art going on here, from the most basic to gorgeous borderless, IP crossovers, and one that verges on copyright infringement. Secret Lairs are most profitable when you focus on the home runs and avoid the ones that do nothing but linger on shelves. Let’s talk about all 8, and do some figuring on what is worth buying.

Secret Lair x Hatsune Miku: Winter Diva

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Giada, Font of Hope	$1-$80	18k as commander (#17 all time) and 30k as card
Youthful Valkyrie	Bulk to $2	21k
Counterspell	Bulk to $500	1,078,000 (not a typo)
Swan Song	$9 to $63	413k
Brago, King Eternal	$2 to $10	8k as commander, 39k as card
Scrying Sheets	$5 to $40	9225 decks

We also have seen that Beloved Princess is the bonus card for this drop, which is very on-theme. It’s got almost no Commander usage, and while it will go for a couple bucks to Miku collectors, it’s not super relevant to whether this drop will sell well.

This drop will sell very well. The Mana Foil Giada is gorgeous, and this should be a worthy contender. Brago is a great theme, but the standout here is the Swan Song. This is a super popular card in regular and CEDH alike, and there has not yet been a special version of the one-mana counter. If this was a regular, non-Miku drop, I would be a fan of the drop just for that reason, as the only foil is the Theros pack foil. There is a previous Secret Lair version from Ornithological Studies, but that was non-foil only. 

However, this is the last Miku drop. The first was all gas, the second very popular, and the third was weird. Quickly sold out of English foil, English nonfoil took a little longer but did sell out, and the two Japanese-language versions are still available on the site. Ouch.

I think that the third drop being mediocre planeswalkers plus an increased quantity printed led to the current situation. I fully expect the English versions to sell fast here, and the Swan Song should be the most profitable card of the batch. 

Aether Drifters

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Parhelion II	50¢ to $3	31k
Mechtitan Core	Bulk to $3	22k
Reckoner Bankbuster	$1 to $4	27k
Smuggler’s Copter	$1 to $20	47k
Peacewalker Colossus	Bulk to $2	22k

I have to admit I love this concept. It’s a racing set, and this is amazingly replicating the look of a Hot Wheels blister card, down to the price tag as power//toughness and the printed cutout for hanging displays. They can’t actually use the Hot Wheels IP, as that’s Mattel, one of Hasbro’s main rivals. The Vehicles themselves are extremely mid, and only the Fortnite version of the Copter keeps this from being one of the absolute cheapest drops we’ve ever had. Remember, Bankbuster was banned in Standard, but it’s rotated out anyway and no one plays it. 

This art and style will probably not be enough to get this to sell out quickly. Top IP can lead to sellouts, but these are such mediocre cards that my expectations are quite low.

Arcade Racers

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Roiling Vortex	$2 to $7	39k
Wheel of Misfortune	$5 to $22	96k
Big Score	$1 to $3	226k
Final Fortune	$8 to $200	49k
Heat Shimmer	$5 to $40	30k

This is a fantastically designed set of cards, and while they aren’t expensive, the special versions aren’t cheap either. I love that we get two special frames in the same drop, increasing my desire for the foil bundle. There’s a chance that this Big Score becomes a $10 card, but I’d rather go in on singles after the drop lands, instead of trying to get a bunch of these. I really appreciate that this is the only special frame for most of these, aside from an EA Vortex, a Future Sight Final Fortune, and the other SL version of Wheel.

Lorwyn Lightboxes

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Secluded Glen	Bulk to $40	18,000
Wanderwine Hub	$1 to $13	2200
Ancient Amphitheater	50¢ to $5	5000
Auntie’s Hovel	$6 to $13	3700
Gilt-Leaf Palace	$4 to $35	15,000

These haven’t seen a lot of reprint efforts. There’s a List copy here and there, and an occasional Commander deck inclusion, but definitely no new foils to be had and these are some very pretty examples of what an artist can do. Amazingly, this is still a more expensive drop than the Aether Chasers, but my expectations are still pretty low. 

Artist Series: Jesper Ejsing

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Llanowar Elves	Bulk to $450	504k
Deflecting Swat	$43 to $70	405k
Breeches, Eager Pillager	Bulk to $1.50	30k
Sun Titan	Bulk to $9	235k

The tragedy of this drop is that a really talented artist did some fantastic paintings and they weren’t even given a chance to go borderless, or even the EA treatment. Compare this to any of the more recent artist spotlights, or any of the three artists featured in other drops in this Superdrop, and you’ll see what I mean.

It doesn’t matter, though, because this has three very popular cards and one of them is $43 in the base nonfoil. I cannot guarantee that this will sell out, but even the Extra Life Fierce Guardianship, which sold as much as people wanted to buy, went from $33 up to near $50 now. If you wanted to jump on Deflecting Swat singles early on, that would be valid too.

Featuring: Luke Pearson

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Bear Umbra	$6 to $40	106k
Witch of the Moors	$1 to $3	33k
Realmwalker	$2 to $6	132k
Solemn Simulacrum	$1 to $70	717k

My kids have seen the Netflix adaptation of Pearson’s Hilda books, and they are approving. It’s not like these are specific to the cards, but it’s the same art style. The card choice is solid: Realmwalker just has an FEA of the original, this is the first foil of Witch, Bear Umbra’s only other foil is the ROE pack foil, and Solemn has a hundred variations leading up to the Invention. 

It’s mainly cashing in reprint equity, and I wouldn’t be shocked if we saw any of these get another new version sometime soon, but this is a solid drop that should do okay.

City Styles 2: Dressed to Kill

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Karmic Guide	$2 to $18	103k
Ninja of the Deep Hours	$1 to $20	30k
Captain Sisay	$17 to $90	1400 as commander, 16k as card
Selvala, Explorer Returned	Bulk to $20	2000 as commander, 36k as card
Veyran, Voice of Duality	$7 to $18	8k as commander, 54k as card

Before you go crazy, knowing that City Styles 1 is $175 on TCGPlayer, please keep in mind that Tsubonari’s first drop was in a different era, when it was print to demand and not many bought it. Those first five cards don’t have anything super valuable or premium, they just look cool, and these are in that same boat. 

Karmic Guide has multiple premiums, Ninja has a TSR retro foil only, Sisay has different versions but all i the same original frame, Veyran and Selvala have nothing special either. This drop has all the trappings of something I want, and that’s before I admit that I have a very powerful Selvala deck of my own. I also think that psychology will play a part here. People will buy this because of the price of the first one, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Featuring: Mitsuhiro Arita

Card Name	Price Range	EDHREC decks
Light-Paw, Emperor’s Voice	$1 to $10	8300 as commander, 25k as card
Murktide Regent	$11 to $4000	2700
Lightning Bolt	$1 to several grand	270k
Shorikai, Genesis Engine	$2 to $8	18k as commander (#20 all time), 30k as card

The star here is clearly Murktide, a card that has fallen out of favor in the current Modern metagame, but does retain some value and utility. Shorikai might end up at $10+ given the new rush of Vehicles coming out and it was already high on the posted decks. Lightning Bolt has been printed more than 35 times, and each premium version tends to land in the $6 to $10 range. 

Murktide’s current demand level is not high, so I’d expect this to land in the $25 range for foils, but remember that for Modern players, you’re going to need four of the card, not one, and they all better match. I might pick up a stack of nonfoils once the drop lands. 

Wrap-Up

So here’s my ranking of the drops:

1. Miku in EN foil 
2. Miku in EN nonfoil
3. Artist Series: Jesper Ejsing
4. City Styles 2
5. Featuring: Mitsuhiro Arita
6. Miku in JP foil/nonfoil
7. Featuring: Luke Pearson
8. Arcade Racers
9. Lorwyn Lightboxes
10. Aether Drifters

Personally, I think I’m going to end up with this order: one all-foil bundle, two all–foil Miku bundle, five EN foil Miku, five Jesper, five City Styles 2, one Mitsuhiro. This keeps my Miku buys in line with each other and I can bundle them off together, plus I want the max of the other two lairs and one of each for personal collecting.

I will also be keeping a close eye on the ‘low stock’ notifications, especially if those pop up for the Racers or Drifters. I’m not expecting them to be popular, but I’ve been wrong before.

We don’t yet know what the bundle pricing will be, as the discounts have grown smaller and smaller over time, and I’m also not expecting a sweet bonus card like an Avengers Arcane Signet or a Rainbow Foil Seedborn Muse. If we get those, great. If not, well, I’ve made my choices. 

Good luck, and may your queue time go by quickly!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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, Innistrad Remastered is live on all the sites, for buying and for selling. No longer are we stuck with ‘preorder’ pricing, which tends to be super high and moves very slowly, now individuals can get in on the action, undercutting each other and other websites.

If you look at eBay, there’s a lot of stuff already selling, some with a preorder tag and some where the cards are in hand, but those are not the same quantity as TCGPlayer. Especially this weekend, the prices ought to move pretty fast as people seek to unload quickly. We’ve learned from Ravnica Remastered that holding for a long time is going to be unprofitable for almost everything, so let’s see where things are, and identify what might go up from here. 

It’s worth noting that reprint sets like this are supposed to lower the prices of the cards in the set, at least for the basic copies. Wizards has figured out that they can do two things at once: First, make the regular frame foils and nonfoils cheaper, and at the same time, make new premium versions which should sell well. Generally speaking, we see that’s true with last year’s Ravnica Remastered, and before that, Dominaria Remastered. 

The base versions of cards reprinted in those sets have fallen and mostly haven’t recovered. There’s a few exceptions, Cyclonic Rift being the standout, but things like Force of Will, which hasn’t been reprinted in the two years since, still hasn’t recovered. (To be fair, Force is up a few bucks in the last four months but it’s still not above $60, when it was $100+ before the DMR reprint) 

Ravnica Remastered is a fantastic example of the concept of both making base cards cheap (and therefore accessible to a wider range of players) and premium versions pricey. The serialized shocks are all over $250, with Steam Vents closing in on a grand. At the other end, the basic nonfoils from the set are all under $15 except for shocklands, Bruvac, and Cyclonic Rift. 

That’s the model I’m expecting for Innistrad Remastered cards. 

We already have some data for cards dropping in price, and like I said, I expect a lot more of this over the weekend. Prices are current as of late Thursday night as time zones allow the preorders to unlock. 

Emrakul, the Promised End is now $38 when EMN base copies were $63 in September 2024. 

Edgar Markov is $55 for the nonfoil (the first nonfoil!) when the C17 foils were $90 in October 2024.

The Meathook Massacre is $29 when MID copies were $55 in October 2024.

This trend is prevalent among basically everything that is in Innistrad Remastered, and if you want to buy basic copies, you should wait patiently. There is a lot of price drop coming, for the regulars and for most of the premium versions as well. 

The card most likely to pull a Cyclonic Rift is The Meathook Massacre. It’s at the right confluence of rarity and EDH demand, but it’s niche enough to avoid being reprinted again in the next 12 months or so. (Probably, anyway, because Wizards’ reprint policy can charitably be described as ‘mystifying’.) Meathook is in 127,000 decks on EDHREC, which is quite good for its age and rarity. EDHREC is a database where only the most devoted players upload their lists, so remember that the more casual players don’t add their decks. Casual players are also likely why the card has been expensive for its whole lifespan, even after it was banned from Standard. For comparison’s sake, Cyclonic Rift is at 688,000 decks, so more than 5x as popular despite multiple printings. 

I expect Meathook to drop below $20 sometime in the next couple of months, and that’s when I will want to move back in. 

One of the things that I’m not as excited to buy are the lands. The ‘slow lands’ have been reprinted in the Dr. Who set, and got both EA and Surge Foil EA versions there, to go with the original set’s Borderless and then Double Feature had the Silver Screen versions. We’re looking at a wide mix of premiums, and a whole lot more of the basic copies. These will languish like a lot of other land cycles have, and while getting in for $3 or even $2 a copy is an attractive idea, given the Commander popularity, it’s very easy to imagine these getting another reprint before too long.

There is a card that is set up to fall like a rock and almost immediately rebound: the Borderless foil of Rooftop Storm. Aetherdrift has two Commander decks, one with an artifacts/energy subtheme, and an Esper Zombies list. I would not be surprised if Rooftop Storm was in the deck, but that’s a basic nonfoil. We’re about to see a number of Zombie cards pop off, and this is one of the greatest reasons to sleeve up the undead, making the deck free and your Commander cost less. (Still gotta pay the Commander Tax!)

Currently, foil Borderless versions are at $5.50 and falling, plus today the whole Zombie decklist is revealed, making a perfect storm of potential.

Finally, I want to make a point about the Movie Poster cards. These are awesome and iconic, gorgeous pieces of art melded with great design. I will be happy to get these cards. 

These are not going to be super-expensive cards, though.

Back in the Mana Math of INR, we went over how it takes 100 Collector Boosters to get a foil copy of a certain Movie Poster card, or fifty to get a nonfoil. If INR is printed at the same rate as Lord of the Rings: Holiday Edition, that’s 1.5 million Collector Boosters. A little division, and we get the total number of copies at 15,000 foils and 30,000 nonfoils.

I think the number of packs is greater than 1.5 million, putting the copies higher and higher. Plus, with that many movie copies out there, we can do some comparisons that may cause wincing. Remember how Meathook is in 127k decks? Well, Guardian Project is in 200k, and there’s a xxx/500 serialized foil of that available for $115 on TCGPlayer. The current price of $100 for the Showcase foils is far too high. If you want these sweet shiny cards, be patient and you’ll save a lot.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

A lot of us use the TCGPlayer site to buy and sell cards, frequently reselling cards on that site that we bought from them. Their fees are not unreasonable, and while some of us are exclusive to eBay for selling, it’s generally true that the more people who see your item, the more likely it is to sell. (Presuming that it’s priced at a level where it would sell, anyway.)

However, TCGPlayer has made some specific choices in their user interface that lead to less people seeing your item, and we need to be aware of these cases. Not just because it costs money, but because these might be cases where selling on a different platform is a much more profitable choice.

I’m not saying this to denigrate TCGPlayer or the service it provides. I use them a lot, both for buying and selling, and I appreciate the task they are facing. Hundreds of thousands of cards, frames, foiling, and conditions, plus the vagaries of shipping, taxes, and the Direct service…it’s a tremendous logistical challenge! I also really like their new data, for 1M/3M/6M/12M and knowledge of copies selling per day. These are things I wish they would improve, for everyone’s sake.

So let’s get into three big things you need to be aware of with TCGPlayer, which might be costing you profits.

If you’re a regular listener of MTG Fast Finance (and why aren’t you, it’s a great show, and we have the data to back it up) we’ve mentioned some of these concepts but we haven’t really set it all down together in this way. I’m collecting this information, combining it, making it simple for you to keep in mind

TCGPlayer doesn’t list all versions under ‘show all versions.’

This probably isn’t groundbreaking to you at this point, but TCGPlayer made the choice as the Collector Booster era hit us to list every version with a different frame, or a different foiling, as a separate product page. Here’s an example with Banner of Kinship, a card which has regular frame, Extended Art, and Borderless Art. Each of those has a foil, plus the Borderless has a Mana Foil treatment. 

All told, that’s seven versions to keep track of. TCGPlayer has four listings for the card. If you type in Banner Of in the search bar, here’s what you get:

This is forgivable, but here’s the core issue with this choice. If I click the first result, I can only see two of those options: the original frame and the Prerelease foil. Worse yet, if I click on the original frame, and I click on ‘all versions’ I can only see the original frames. The only way to get to the premium versions is to know exactly which premium version I want, and type that into the search bar.

The egregious offense here is that a potential buyer, on the biggest card-selling platform in North America, cannot see all the versions side by side. TCGPlayer does allow you to see regular and prerelease foil side by side, along with all the reprinted versions, so why not give players ALL the options? Makes no sense.

TCGPlayer hides other languages by default, even if other languages are opened in English packs.

In Foundations and in Duskmourn, players can open a Collector Booster and get a Fracture Foil. One in three Fracture Foils in English packs are Japanese-language cards, the same as you would get in Japanese-language packs. 

They are the same card, pulled from the same pack, and have a similar number of copies in circulation when you take into account Japanese-language packs having 100% chance for Japanese-language Fracture Foils. 

But for TCGPlayer, the default language choice is English, and that means to find these copies, which are just as pretty, you have to go in and add Japanese to the languages you’re viewing. As a result, these copies move slower and go for cheaper. For this card, Enduring Courage, you’re looking at about $90 for the English version but half that for the Japanese version. Similar gaps exist for the other cards with this set of treatments, and you can save a lot of money if you want these cards. For instance, if you’re hungering for the anime Llanowar Elves, the English will run you about $425, but the Japanese can be had for $80 less. 

And if you happen to pull a Japanese version, do yourself a favor and list it on eBay instead. You’ll make more money. It’s close to being arbitrage worthy, where I’m telling you to buy on TCG the Enduring Courage for $50 and sell it on eBay for $75 (which is something you could do right now), but if the gap widens much more, then the taxes, shipping, and fees won’t be prohibitive and you will indeed turn a profit.

Cheap price + high shipping + multiple copies = low profit

Let’s use an example of a card, the promo pack Infernal Grasp. The cheapest NM nonfoil is $1.86+$1.27 for shipping, a total of $3.11. People want their versions to match, so you want to get four, and this is where people mess up. They want their copies to show up as cheap, but add a high shipping cost, so you can get more money per sale. But then they make a costly mistake: They list a bunch of copies at once.

Here’s three vendors who have multiples of the same nonfoil promo, and all of whom are trying this game of high shipping. 

At a glance, it looks like a killing, selling this card for at least double. But when you spread out the shipping, the bonus vanishes. Sure, the top one is $6.47 if someone buys a single copy, but if someone buys four, that’s $11.21 total. Per card, that’s $2.80, less than the person who listed a single copy at the cheapest price!

If I were to buy these as a spec (which I wouldn’t, though the new Borderless is intriguing) and get all ten, I’m in for $2.43 a copy before taxes.I get why people put a big shipping cost–they want to make sure that every order is worth at least a certain amount. But if you follow that practice, and lower your prices to keep up, then list lots of copies, you can lose money per copy.

This is only a problem when all three conditions are met, and if you avoid any one of the three, you’ll be fine. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.