This week, instead of giving you a bunch of picks and letting you figure out which one you want to buy, I’m going to… give you a bunch of picks and let you figure out which ones you want to buy. Yeah, halfway through that sentence I realized I actually was doing that thing, but with extra steps which is the best way to say you’re not doing something but actually do exactly the thing you said you weren’t. I thought I wasn’t going to do a normal article, and I’m not, but I realized that you can approach the rest of what I write the way you approach this one and have a very high success rate. So, rather than give you 5 picks I’m medium-to-high on, I’m going to give you a bunch of candidates for a future slam dunk and let you figure out what’s what. Sound complicated? It’s not, I promise. I’ll walk you through it.
As the title indicates, I want to talk about Tatyova, and, with any luck, figure out the next Tatyova while it’s still cheap. “But Tatyova is cheap” I can almost hear you thinking before you double check, glad you didn’t blurt it out for everyone to hear.
This is NOT cheap. This is an uncommon from a recent set that hit $3 AFTER it was printed in Mystery Boosters. Will there be another Tatyova ever again? Maybe, maybe not. I’m going to identify a few potential candidates and kick myself for not going deeper on foils when Dominaria just came out.
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Last week we had a Banned & Restricted announcement that gave a colossal shakeup to four different formats (plus an unban in Vintage). We had fifteen bans across Historic, Pioneer, Modern and Legacy, and a lot of those bans have opened up opportunities within each format for both new and old decks to be played again. With so many bans it can be difficult to figure out what’s a good pickup and what isn’t, but I think that I’ve identified a few good targets here for you to have a look at.
Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath
Price today: $20 Possible price: $40
Uro has finally been given the boot in Modern, Pioneer and Historic, and I’m half surprised that they didn’t kick it out of Legacy too, just for good measure. It’s a card that has been incredibly dominant for far too long, because Wizards just can’t resist printing busted Simic cards but then want to wait long enough to ban them that their sales don’t get impacted by it.
Anyway, the point is that although Uro is gone from almost all competitive play now, it’s still an absolute powerhouse in EDH. At 671 decks as a commander it’s the fourth most popular general from Theros Beyond Death, and comes in at a medium eighth place for top cards from the set overall. It’s never going to be as ubiquitous as something like Dryad of the Ilysian Grove or Thassa’s Oracle, but the advantages it has over those is that it’s a mythic not a rare, and the fact that it’s now banned everywhere means that it’s incredibly unlikely to ever be reprinted in the next however many years.
People have been dumping their copies into the market post-ban, and you can now pick regular versions up for $20. For a card that flirted with $50 not too long ago, I think that this has a reasonable future ahead of it. It’s going to be a longer hold but I definitely don’t mind grabbing a few copies under $25, because there aren’t actually that many copies before the ramp on TCGPlayer hits $30-35. Given a year or two I think that this is a great gainer.
Lurrus of the Dream Den (EA) – Arbitrage
Price in Europe: €15 ($18) Price in US: $27 Possible price: $35
The only unban last week was Lurrus of the Dream Den in Vintage, and although Vintage might not drive prices like other formats do, FEA Lurrus was on the way up anyway and with last week’s announcement it popped to $100 and has stayed there. There are only 13 foil listings on TCGPlayer and I don’t think that they’re a great buy right now (although I hope that you were in on them at $30 when I called it in my article back in September), so now I’m looking at the non-foil EAs instead.
Lurrus is still the best Companion for competitive play, and is a big role-player in Modern and Pioneer. Non-foil EA copies have seen a bump along with the foils, and will now set you back around $27 or more. What’s more, supply is looking very low – only thirteen listings on TCGPlayer with a steep ramp, and not much resupply on the horizon.
Over in Europe you can still pick up a load of copies at around €15, which seems like some very solid arbitrage to me. If you’re able to grab these in Europe for sale in the US then go right ahead, because you’ve already got a safe backing with CardKingdom offering $20 credit for them, and TCG prices will be well above that. You could flip these quickly or sit on them a little while, but I think it’s a great opportunity if you have access (see my arbitrage article for any help with that).
Force of Negation (Foil) – Arbitrage
Price in Europe: €160 ($195) Price in US: $250 Possible price: $300
Okay I can’t resist another arbitrage pick, because I haven’t done any dedicated arbitrage specs in a little while (I think?). With Mystic Sanctuary being banned from Modern you might think that the stock of blue control decks would go down, but in fact the opposite has happened. Azorius control decks have been at the top of the Modern metagame for the past week, opting to play more Snapcaster Mages again now that they don’t have access to Mystic Sanctuary.
Force of Negation has been a staple in Modern blue decks since it was printed in Modern Horizons, and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. It’s also in over eighteen thousand EDH decks listed on EDHREC, and foils are in very scarce supply. With only thirteen NM foil copies on TCGPlayer, and only half of those under $300, the €160 copies in Europe are a tasty target.
This could see a reprint in Modern Horizons 2, but that’s not coming out until Q3 this year and so I think you’ve got plenty of time to arbitrage some copies of Force of Negation before then. It’s not one to go deep on but if you can grab a copy or two under $200 in Europe then you should do just fine to sell close to $300 in the US.
David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.
Right now, one card, with two versions, is soaking up most of the value of Kaldheim packs, and yes, it’s Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider. It’s been a while since we had a set that was underwhelming financially, and it’s worth discussing what happens to everything else in the set and how we got to this point.
Vorinclex has hit his low price, and from here, I expect it to trend steadily upwards:
The Phyrexian version is more common than the Showcase version, because packs in every language can end up with a Phyrexian-language Vorinclex. The demand is that much higher, though, as evidenced by such a high pre-order price for the nonfoil.
Kaldheim still has some cards that are nice to find in a booster pack, but past the top handful, it gets pretty rough. The last time we had a set with an effect like this, it was the Masterpieces. I’m thinking of both the Inventions from Kaladesh block and the Invocations from Amonkhet block.
When there’s a chase version of a card every X packs/boxes, it depresses the prices of the other cards. Phyrexian foil Vorinclex is going for $300 and rising, which means at distributor prices, you need to open one of those at a certain rate to make it worthwhile. It was worth it for the Masterpieces, which were more common as a set than Phyrexian foil Vorinclex, but it’s not quite there yet.
It will be, though. The demand is real from Commander players and collectors who want the hottest things from each set, regardless of price. It doesn’t take a lot of those folks to really move the needle, and that’s how we get FEA Jeweled Lotus at prices that are consistently rising:
So what do we do, when there’s a high-value singleton and everything else is falling in price as expected? We should prepare for the rest of the cards to keep falling as the star rises, and adjust expectations accordingly.
It also needs to be said that while the set has a lot of good cards, there’s a noticeable shift in power level, away from the tremendousness that was most of the past year and all of the bans that happened are testament to that power level. Kaldheim isn’t a bad set, it’s just that there’s very few cards which compare favorably to the sets that came before.
With all the interest on the top few cards, there’s a few cards I’ve got my eye on and I’m hoping that they fall to a target price. I’m prepared for them to not fall that far, but the combination of lower power and leftover financial interest means they’ve got farther to go.
Reflections of Littjara – Currently at $1.50 for the regulars and falling, this is a card that every tribal deck should give serious thought to. It’s part of the class of Commander cards that say ‘I don’t do anything right now, but I’m about to make the table groan in disgust and envy.’ I like this card a lot in the long term, but I’m fully willing to be patient for this to creep down to a dollar for the regular version. There’s a promo foil from the Kaldheim bundle, and that’s available for $2 or less, but that isn’t borderless foil. Once these sink lower, I think they will be an excellent long term hold.
Maskwood Nexus – This isn’t as cheap,with regulars being $2.50 and the FEA versions pushing $10, but the effect is real and this being colorless means it’s a backup to the decks playing Conspiracy, Arcane Adaptation, or both. The early adopters all have their copies, and now we’re in the waiting game for the rest of them to fall in price. Arcane Adaptation doubled in a year, and while I don’t think this will go to $20 that fast, I do think it’ll trickle down to $7 or even $5 and that’s really when I want to pick up a few copies.
The World Tree – Obvious cards are obvious, and this is no exception. It has to go into five-color decks but that’s the sort of deck that really needs fixing that’s as simple as playing a tapped land. This has come down notably since the beginning of the set:
It’s flattened out for now but I’m letting this cool down even more. I grabbed a personal copy already but the spec copies I’m being patient on the rest of the copies I want to get. I don’t know how much farther down they will go in full-art foil, but I’m more intrigued by the regular copies at $3 or so. I don’t think it’s a reprint risk, either, even if they do a five-color Commander deck I doubt it would be in there.
Mystic Reflection – There are a lot of meme-level interactions with this card, and that’s the only reason that I can think of for this to still be as expensive as it is. It’s not a huge Commander card, though it’s got lots of amusing interactions. Frankly, this feels like it should be a bulk rare, and that’s the sort of price I want to get in on. This being about $14 for the foil full art is especially confusing, and I definitely do not want to be buying a card with no obvious uses.
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.
I don’t expect YOU to upgrade the Kaldheim precon decks, necessarily. I am not even going to tell you how I think you should do that – it’s not my job. It’s so not my job I just hired a father/son duo to write that article series on EDHREC and if you came here looking for that, that’s where it is, go nuts. I feel qualified as an EDH-understander to do that, like if you wanted to tweet at me and ask me a specific question, I’m all over it, but, again, not my job. I’m not above it, it’s just outside the scope of what I do here.
Besides, you want me to answer a different question because it’s relevant to your interests. You’re not here for “how do I upgrade these decks” but rather “how are other people upgrading these decks?” and “follow-up, why should I care?” and lucky you, I have the answers to both of those questions locked and loaded.
Do these decks matter? I think one matters more than the other, so I’m going to bury the lede a bit and talk about the less exciting one first.
Ragnar is sort of a weird precon. It plays a little better outside of the box against Lathril than vice versa but once you start adding the ridiculous Elves from Magic’s history to Lathril, Ranar gets outpaced in the arms race. There aren’t really any exciting Foretell cards to add and there likely won’t be more in the future, so it seems like this deck has made itself fairly obsolete by virtue of doubling down on a set-specific mechanic versus giving people another chance/excuse to build Golgari Elves. I rebuilt my Nath deck and it was super cool how everyone scoops to Tergrid. I mean, I hate it, but some people like that, and there are a lot more options for Golgari elves than for Azorius “cards from literally just this one set.”
That said, people are using this as a blink commander to get value when you return stuff. You only get one token when you Ghostway your board, so you’ll have to do it in smaller batches to get value, but value you shall have.
It used to be, a reprinting would tank non-mythic rares pretty hard, but Closet didn’t even really acknowledge that a bunch of supply was added with its Double Masters printing and just hovered around its pre-2018 value. This doesn’t go to $10 for longer than it will take to reprint it again, but with a $4 floor, I think getting in for $3ish on TCG Player and getting out for $6 CK store credit in a year is very achievable and super easy. This card is very good and won’t stop being good.
It’s subtle, but you can see the CK price beginning to diverge from the TCG Player price. One reason for that is that Panharmonicon is on “the list” and can be busted from Kaldheim Collector and Set boosters, giving individual and store-level sellers a few copies to list, driving a race toward the bottom, but not giving a big store like CK enough copies to keep in stock as fast as demand is rising, especially with events closed. If Ck wants copies, they have to throw buylist money at them, and hope people want to mail them in.
They’re paying TCG retail on their buylist, just about. The cheap copies on TCG Player will disappear because set boosters of Kaldheim are about kind of like a dog with two butts – fun and novel at first but the drawbacks quickly make themselves apparent. I am betting on CK’s assessment of the trajectory of this card being the right one. This has very little to do with Ranar except that Panharmonicon should go in every Ranar deck without exception, and this was as good a place to talk about this card as any.
Lathril may nor may not want to be at the helm of the deck, but if this card makes people rebuild their Nath deck and jam this in, more power to them because this still caused an Elf deck to be created and it does work in the 99.
There is no money to be made here unless you find these in a binder for its old price at a store that doesn’t look stuff up. Between the Golgari Elf commanders in Commander Legends and now Lathril, there was no reason not to expect this to be in play, but a crazy moonshot wasn’t quite what I expected or I might have mentioned something before. This was $2.50 on November 10th and now it’s 8 times that, which seems high, certainly. I would sell into this hype, but if you don’t have copies, don’t think about Ezuri as much as think about what is absolutely going to predictably go bat$@&% as a result of Strixhaven, buy those cards now and sell into the dumb, predictable hype there. Strixhaven probably gives us Wizard tribal stuff and probably doesn’t reprint the Ezuri equivalent in that precon deck, one of which is bound to be Wizards related. Or, hey, here’s a thought – Bitterblossom spiked because they said Throne of Eldraine would be a fairy tale set and everyone said “YOU HAD ME AT FAIRY” and bought Bitterblossoms. That’s dumb, but if spikes like that are predictable, why not buy the stuff for pennies now and wait for the inevitable?
Oh wow, Kaldheim! A snow set with Vikings and Barbarians and Berserkers. This is going to do so much work when that set drops!
*45 continuous seconds of a fart sound effect*
Someone(s) (including my podcast cohost DJ “stank” Johnson) made money buying this for like a quarter and waiting for the big-brain speculator crowd to pay him $4 each for them. There’s free money in Strixhaven and if a basically useless card like Lovisa is in play, imagine what happens if there is a Wizard that’s close to as playable as Ezuri. Yeah, we missed Ezuri, but we got into EDH so there was more than one opportunity every 6 months for a spec to hit. Dust yourself off, look at Wizards lists and make stacks so fat they end up guarded by super problematic goblins in the town where all the kids at Strixhaven buy their wands or whatever.
This JUST got reprinted and it stayed above $10, when it has gotten significantly lower in the past.
Card Kingdom isn’t doing a fire sale and I am not sure you should, either. A lot of people don’t love the new art. If the price is where it is after the card was added to The List AND it got a printing in a product like Commander Collection: Green, I like its chances of rebounding.
I didn’t expect this to be the “better luck next time!” article, but I think the Elves in Commander Legends shortened our window in a way I didn’t anticipate and I could have written this article the day they spoiled Lathril and we still would have been too late. All we can do is prepare better for next time. This going from $3 to $11 is pretty significant, especially for a card with a Duel deck (albeit like the first one ever with 0 supply) printing.
Let’s quickly post some pics of cards it’s NOT too late to buy and call it a day.
I got nothing. All the Elf stuff doubled from all of the Elf decks lately. I literally think next week I’m going to do something I tell you never to do and pick out a bunch of Wizards stuff that probably goes up. Let’s be early for once, shall we? Until next time!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
