I am willing to entertain the idea that we might have missed some value jumping around from Kamigawa to Street Fighter to Stranger Things to New Capenna to Baldur’s gate, so why don’t we check back in on Kamigawa now that prices are at the lowest point they’re going to go to?
As you can see, the commanders didn’t exactly end up where we might have expected. More people are playing a commander that interacts with 2 of the 5 colors of Saga more than they’re playing Hidetsugu, the face card of the set or Kodama of the West Tree. I got the top 5 correct but the order was VERY wrong. I would have picked Umezawa, then Hinata, then Isshin, then Tatsunari then Light Paws. I did OK but some of the ones I underrated deserve a second look. In fact, there is a spec in each of the top 5 decks that I missed before.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
To learn more about being a ProTrader, click here to see all the benefits.
I don’t think I’ve written specifically about Innistrad: Crimson Vow in relation to EDH since the set was first released, around four months ago. I think it’s time to go back and see how the set has done since then, and which cards might yet have a bright future ahead of them.
Toxrill, the Corrosive
Price in Europe: €9 ($10) Price in US: $12 Possible price: $25
Aside from being the most popular commander from the set, Toxrill has proven to be a solid card in its own right as well – 2200 as a commander and 4200 as a card. I think that it would be far more popular than that even if not for one tiny little blue mana symbol in the textbox, which is holding it back from being in all those mono-black and black/X decks that don’t include blue.
A 7/7 for 7 certainly isn’t the best rate going when it comes to pure stats, but that’s not what this card is about. The first line of text is the most important here, because it says at the beginning of each end step – that means four times for each go around your normal EDH table, and those slime counters are going on every creature you don’t control. That’s pretty strong if you ask me, and the fact that Toxrill has a card draw engine attached to it on top of that is just even sweeter. This works equally well either as a commander or part of the 99, and I honestly think that it would already be a $20 card if it were mono-black.
Prices in Europe are, as expected, a little lower for this EDH-only card, and so if you have access to that market then I’d grab some copies under and around $10 there. Over on TCGPlayer you’ll be paying a little more at $12, but I think that’s still a reasonable price to pay for what I think should be a $25 card in the not-too-distant future. There are also the Showcase variants at around the same price, but I think those arts were a swing and a miss. The Double Feature versions are…fine? but not worth paying the extra $4 if you ask me; the regular copies should do well here. If you do want to gamble on some extra arbitrage, there are €55 Double Feature foils on CardMarket – a card which is over $200 on TCGPlayer (last sold copies around $120). I won’t be taking that bet, but if you’re feeling lucky…
Edgar, Charmed Groom (Double Feature Foil)
Price in Europe: €7 ($8) Price in US: $13 Possible price: $25-50
Now onto a Double Feature foil that I do think is worth it: Edgar, Charmed Groom. I’m nearly surprised at how few Edgar decks have actually been built, but when you have the opportunity to play Edgar Markov as your commander instead then there’s really no competition. Nevertheless, the Charmed Groom has found a nice home in the 99 of lots of Vampire tribal decks, and for good reason. This card is going to be so annoying for anyone else to deal with unless they can just straight-up exile it, because otherwise it’s just going to keep flipping and making tokens and buffing your Vampires and flipping and…yeah, you get the idea.
There are five different versions of this card out there, and so I think the play is to look at the ones with low supply: Double Feature foils. There are only six listings on TCGPlayer and not many more elsewhere, so they’re already getting difficult to pick up. Europe has a few more but not many, albeit at a cheaper price point. We’ve already seen some of the more popular Double Feature foils hit sky high prices (mythics over $200 etc), and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect Edgar to be pushing $50 before too long. People that want the most premium version of this card are going to pay for it, so make sure you’re going to be the one selling it to them!
David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern and EDH. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.
We’ve had some interesting growth in a set of cards that I’ve written about before, and the time has come to revisit this particular edition: the Mystery Booster Retail Edition Foils. We’ve seen some spikes in cards like Intruder Alarm, Minamo, School at Water’s Edge, and Aurelia’s Fury. All of these have gone up for different reasons, different commanders, but the most important detail is that something cheap is now something expensive.
Aurelia’s Fury spiked due to the interaction with Hinata, Dawn-Crowned. Sure it’s cute, you get to tap every creature on the board and make every opponent unable to cast noncreature spells this turn. Hard to go wrong!
We saw all the versions of Fury go up at the same time, which is excellent news for the long-term appeal of MYB foils. Mystery Booster foils are often underpriced or similarly priced to their regular versions, and these are mythic rarity (1 for every 121 packs) for a set that wasn’t able to get drafted very much. We’re long past the time where there’s a few pallets worth of product waiting to be opened, so let’s dig in and find what’s undervalued in comparison.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
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.
Stranger Things cards are announced as contents of New Capenna. This is great news not necessarily from a finance perspective as it sort of reduces the value ceiling for the Stranger Things secret lair cards in the short term and otherwise doesn’t matter a ton to us. I think if the creatures in New Capenna (not the set? But just in the packs? I think?) are popular, it means that there is long-term value in the “ideal” versions of the cards, which means the Secret Lair Stranger Things version in most cases. The cards are getting a chance to make a case for themselves in the context of a set, they got the Godzilla treatment rather than the Walking Dead treatment and people seem less ideologically opposed this time around. I think WotC miscalculated how popular Stranger Things is, or maybe this was a nice thing for Magic players rather than a cynical attempt to get money from fans of not Magic like the did with Walking Dead. Regardless, the decks are here, we have a lot of data before the cards are even really spoiled and there is money to be made. There are a lot of cards so I’m picking one spec per commander.
I tried to fit more in above the fold, but I’m honestly just sort of champing (it’s not chomping, look it up, if I have to know that, so do you) at the bit here, so let’s just do some mtg finance and worry about the paywall break later, shall we? Let’s get strange.
The order doesn’t matter a ton here. This is Sophina AKA Jim Hopper.
It’s tough to isolate just Sophina decks because it’s usually paired with something like Elmar (Max (the redhead)) but every deck I have seen has Gisela and, if the deck builder can afford it or is willing to lie about being able to afford it, Aurelia. Gisela is much more affordable – it’s currently $1 for every mana it costs. That’s a bargain considering it was never 25 mana.
Elmar aka Max aka Riley Escobar aka Left-handed handshake is a good pairing for some of the other friends forever commanders but also with shenanigans. Here’s a card not to leave home without.
Coolstuff definitely has $7 copies of this card, I checked. This is on its way to $12 on Card Kingdom, that’s enough for me to pull the trigger at $7, but I’ll let you scoop copies first.
Mike, the Dungeon Master is one of the more exciting Commanders from this set.
Sevinne’s Reclamation was in the same precon as Dockside Extortionist, which means a lot of these got buylisted. Walls will be high on retail sites, but when the dam bursts, and it will, they will be slow to restock. This has the potential to double and I’m into it. It’s a VERY good card in a lot of decks and with them committed to making White suck less, more decks will be built that can use this.
Eleven is the sort of obvious Grixis combo deck that runs like 90% of the same cards as Kess, but there is one card I think bears mentioning.
This will be actual money in 18 months and everyone will be shocked. This doesn’t go in EVERY spellslinger deck, but it should go in every deck where the commander is a Wizard OR Shaman, which will almost always contain Red and will keep getting printed. This card is very good but so is every card in the set it’s in and that still matters while the set is in print.
So we clearly need more data.
I don’t think you can go wrong snagging these under $5. They go in just about every deck – it’s always good. Deck makes only food? Well now it makes value. Clue deck? Have some mana. Treasure? You’re going to win anyway because every Treasure deck is stupid and busted. This card rules and like $3 for the extended art version is robbery.
This card is my shit – this is everything I want to do in EDH. It’s bad on webcam, but luckily America decided they were bored letting the truckers and Flesh and Blood players have all the fun and soon we’ll all be giving each other Covid at the LGS playing a long, tedious game of EDH with people we barely know like before Covid when we pretended that was something worth missing.
Unique effect, EDH-specific given mana cost, high degree of relevance in a new deck, previous big spike, low supply, hard to reprint. This seems like a slam dunk to me, but this is also a pet card of mine so I’m biased. That said, I was biased toward Helm of Possession and Ben Bleiweiss just wrote about it so you could be in a position for that to pay off, too.
This is barely Lucas-related, but the price on Thousand-Dollar Elixir has come down quite a bit and I’d say it’s at its bottom. Good time to scoop some.
Uhhhhh. Why would anyone want a worse Dalakos? Now we have 3 versions of this card and they all suck.
Anyway, this card is bad but the specs might not be.
This hurts because I got in at bulk and got out at $3. I must have read “leave the last 10% for the next guy” and added an extra 0 by mistake. No matter, this card is on its way to the moon so buy in at $5 and feel my pain when you sell too early, too.
That does it for me, readers. I think these decks will get built, especially with the cards being in New Capenna packs. Be on the lookout for EDHREC data for every commander soon and the new EDH deck previews start Thursday. Yes, I’m serious. Even in hell the damned get no rest. Until next time!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
