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The Masters Sets Are Dead…And Magic Finance Has Changed

The Masters sets may have been too much of a good thing, but we may soon miss them! Modern’s price index is about to go wild, and Chas has provided you with an unbelievably thorough guide to the future of the format’s finances here!

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Five years ago, when it was first released, Modern Masters 2013
felt like a masterstroke.

Modern was itself only about two years old, and accessibility was already
becoming an issue. The format’s top staple, Tarmogoyf, had just broken the
$100 barrier, and nobody believed that WotC would ever reprint that card in
a Standard-legal set-it was just too powerful for the format. But here was
a brand new expansion that promised to act as a release valve for expensive
card prices, and it came complete with an excellent Draft format and its
own signature event: the very first Grand Prix Las Vegas.

Modern Masters 2013
helped lower prices for a couple of months, but the excitement surrounding
the set caused so much additional demand for Modern cards that its effect
on the market was relatively short-lived. The format was growing in leaps
and bounds back then, and hype was high by the time Modern Masters 2015 rolled around. Some people grumbled about the
price increase from $6.99/pack to $9.99/pack, but most stores had been
charging about $10/pack for Modern Masters anyway (the original
print run was very small) and lots of folks were just grateful that they
didn’t have to wait in line to buy packs this time. Modern Masters 2015 was also a success, it also came attached to
an excellent Grand Prix Las Vegas, and we couldn’t wait for the next
Masters set to drop in 2017.

But then something unexpected happened. 2016 came with a surprise off-cycle
Masters set, Eternal Masters, and it had all sorts of absurd $100+
cards in it, like Mana Crypt, Force of Will, Karakas, Wasteland, and Jace,
the Mind Sculptor.

Eternal Masters
was the first Masters set that left a bad taste in some players’ mouths. A
lot of people who didn’t play much Vintage or Legacy bought packs anyway
because of how expensive many the cards in it were, and, well, all the
staples in the previous Masters sets rebounded pretty fast, so it would
have been stupid NOT to buy, right?

Only the rebound didn’t really happen. Vintage and Legacy demand is far
lower than Modern demand, and many of those cards were only expensive
because they hadn’t been printed since 1995 or whatever. Plus, for the
first time, it seemed like WotC had printed more boxes of this Masters set
than they could sell. Instead of having to jump on a waiting list for a box
at your LGS and shell out full retail, you could snag one online for well
under MSRP over a year after its released date.

Then came Modern Masters 2017, right on schedule, and the set was
fine. It had fetchlands! Everybody loves fetchlands. The set didn’t really
feel special since it was now the third Masters set in as many years, but
Modern players were still grateful to snag key staples at a discount.

And then, six months later, came Iconic Masters. Oh boy did people
HATE Iconic Masters. It had most of the same issues that Eternal Masters did, only worse. Not only was the initial value of
the set lower, but supply was FAR higher. By selling packs in big box
stories, WotC created so much supply that even the good cards in Iconic Masters-and there WERE good cards!-didn’t feel like they
were all that exciting to open.

Six months after that, we got Masters 25. When it was initially
teased, it seemed like it was going to be the Masters set to end all
Masters sets, but it ended up somehow being the worst of them by far. Want
to pay $10/pack for a shot at Jace, the Mind Sculptor? No? Oh well.

It was clear at this point that something had to give. WotC was churning
out Masters sets every six months, and they were getting worse and worse.

Why did this happen? Well, the increasing frequency of Masters sets doesn’t
feel like much of a mystery. Hasbro’s executive team probably saw how much
money WotC brought in by printing sets full of old cards that didn’t have
to go through an expensive R&D process and said, “more of that,
please!” Trying to increase that revenue stream as much as possible-going
from once every 24 months, to once every 12 months, to once every 6
months-is the exact sort of thing that large corporations like to do. “Oh,
you like this thing? Great! How much of it can we sell to you before you
get burnt out?”

But why did the quality of the cards in the sets go down? After all,
Tarmogoyf and Search the City both cost WotC the same amount of money to
print, so why not just print more Goyfs?

Well, if you’re printing Masters sets every six months, you’re going to run
out of exciting cards pretty fast unless you dole them out carefully. Think
about Cascade Bluffs, which was a $30+ card before Masters 25, and
it’s just $6 now. Print it again, and it’ll be down to $3. Obviously it
would take longer to tank a card like Mox Opal or Liliana of the Veil, but
no Magic card is immune to the effects of supply and demand. And while you
can certainly make an argument that all cards should be cheap, that
argument isn’t going to help WotC sell $10 (or $14) booster packs.

I had assumed that WotC would continue to allow Masters sets to shamble on
for years, disappointing us every six months or so, but Iconic Masters and Masters 25 must have wildly
underperformed their expectations, leading to the end of the series.
Remember that it takes quite a long time for WotC to develop and print
sets-even Masters sets-so Ultimate Masters is likely a response to
the community’s reaction from a year or so ago, when Iconic Masters was making us all feel grumpy.

So we get one final, amazing Masters set, and then no more.

Which begs a very interesting question: what happens next?

Printing Money

Spoiler alert: WotC is not going to stop reprinting expensive cards.

For one, I honestly think they care about making sure that Modern is at
least a halfway accessible format. Magic is (and will continue to be) an
expensive game, but it doesn’t do WotC any good to have Modern be so
frustratingly out-of-reach that nobody but its richest, most entrenched
players can participate. After all, a format that nobody can play doesn’t
sell booster packs.

More importantly, reprints are still essentially free money for Wizards of
the Coast. The same incentives that existed for WotC when they ramped up
Masters set production still exist, and “no more Masters sets” is certainly
not the same thing as “no more reprints.” It’s simply an acknowledgment
that their old method of reprinting cards wasn’t working anymore.

But what form are these new reprints likely to take?

For starters, I’m sure we’ll continue to see yearly (at least) casual sets
like Battlebond and Conspiracy. Combine these with the
yearly Commander 20XX releases, and we’ve still got a major
pipeline for casual and Commander reprints to hit the market with just as
much regularity as before. It was already dangerous to go too deep into
long-term Commander speculation due to the frequency of these sets, and the
end of the Masters sets isn’t going to change that.

As for the higher end reprints, I feel like we’re going to see more
promotions like Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition being sold
through the Hasbro Toy Shop. By focusing on premium releases of premium
cards, WotC can essentially act as their own secondary market without
further undercutting the prices of Modern staples, satisfying investors and
super-fans without diluting the card pool even further.

This won’t help make the format more accessible, but I doubt that’ll be the
main focus over the next year or two. After all, they’ve practically
reprinted the entire Modern index over the past two calendar years, as I’m
going to show you in the next part of this article. And, yeah, maybe
they’ll just find a brand new way to inundate us with hundreds more
reprints in 2019 and 2020, but I feel like we’re far more likely to see a
sharp pullback. If WotC is thinking long term, they’re going to want to
wait for more of Modern’s mid-level cards to become expensive before
they’re printed again. That way, when they bring Masters sets back in 2021
or whatever, we’re all going to be tearing through those packs trying to
get our copies of Liliana, the Last Hope, Kolaghan’s Command, and Collected
Company.

This is why it’s time to take a look at Modern’s most played cards right
now. Normally, my Modern-buying advice can be boiled down to, “wait until a
Masters set is released, then wait another 2-3 weeks, then buy a playset of
everything good.” But with Masters sets going away, we could be looking at
some pretty serious gains over the next year or two. This winter might be
the last time to get a lot of these cards at a discount for quite some
time.

Ready for one of my patented deep dives into the Modern card pool?

Looking At Modern’s Most Played Cards


MTG Goldfish does an excellent job tracking the most played cards in
each format.

It’s one of the most useful tools for financial analysis, because we can
use it as a non-biased yardstick to measure current tournament demand.
There are some expensive Modern cards that aren’t on this list, but we’re
going to ignore them today because we have to draw the line somewhere.

In order to parse this data, I’m going to organize all 150 Modern staples
based on the year of their most recent reprint. The idea is that cards that
haven’t been printed in a while are the most vulnerable to price increases
and should be your main speculation targets going forward.

These cards used to be riskier buys because they could show up in a Masters
set at any point and fall off a price cliff, but if WotC really is done
making reprint sets for a while, there should be a nice window for you to
flip these cards at a profit before that happens.

Let’s get to the cards!

December 2018:
Ultimate Masters

Ah, the most recent set of Modern staples. You probably shouldn’t buy these
quite yet, because I’m still seeing some price erosion on cards like
Engineered Explosives, which is down $5 from last week. A bunch of people
will open their boxes and sell their singles right away, though, so there
might be some nice deals to be had in about two weeks. The initial rebound
will likely come in mid-to-late January, so you’ll want to act before then
if you can.

October 2018:
Guilds of Ravnica

Look at all of these Modern-playable cards in the most recent Standard set!
While I wouldn’t worry about buying expensive cards like Arclight Phoenix
right now unless you have an immediate need, $6-$10 is a pretty solid price
for the shocklands even if you don’t care about their Standard playability.
It’s probably time to think about snagging your foil copies of cards like
Creeping Chill and Narcomoeba, too.

July 2018:
Core Set 2019

Here’s a solid card that I haven’t really thought about since finishing my
set review. Nobody’s opening Core Set 2019 anymore, and Supreme
Phantom is both a casual and a Modern favorite that’ll end up over $5 at
some point.

April 2018:
Dominaria

There isn’t much to worry about here other than the fact that Damping
Sphere has proven itself to be every bit the Modern staple that we all
thought it would be. It’ll be $5+ at some point, so you might as well start
thinking about socking a bunch of these away.

March 2018:
Masters 25

Several of these cards have already rebounded from their initial
post-reprinting lows, but Eidolon of the Great Revel, Rest in Peace, and
Thalia are still pretty cheap. As with most of the cards on this list, it’s
hard to see most of this stuff getting any cheaper as long as it keeps
seeing play. With the reprint pipeline shut down, your risk of taking a
bath on cards like this is so much lower now.

2018 Commander and Supplemental Sets

Some low-end commons and uncommons were also reprinted this year. You can
continue to ignore them if you don’t need them.

November 2017:
Iconic Masters

We’ve already missed the first round of rebounds on these cards-Horizon
Canopy was just $35 for several months in early 2018, and Death’s Shadow
was well under $10 for a while-but there’s still a little more room for
these cards to grow, especially if they aren’t in danger of being reprinted
again for a while. Inquisition of Kozilek and Thoughtseize both still feel
underpriced to me, and Aether Vial always seems to end up over $50 no
matter how little play it actually sees.

The issue with Iconic Masters is that there still seem to be packs
hitting the market from somewhere, likely due to how poorly its initial
sales figures were. Thus, it might take longer than average for these cards
to hit their second rebound phase.

September 2017:
Ixalan

Make sure you’ve got at least a set of each of these uncommons socked away
at some point before set rotation. They’re all going to be good in Modern
for a while.

July 2017:
Hour of Devastation

These cards just rotated, so it’s not like the price is going to get any
lower, but they’re not terribly exciting, either. There are plenty of
copies of Hollow One kicking around for every person who wants to play that
deck, so its upside is never going to be all that high.

March 2017:
Modern Masters 2017

It’s hard to argue that the Zendikar fetchlands are going to keep
going up in value since they’ve already more or less rebounded to their
pre-reprint prices, but they still feel like fairly safe buys. This is the
most important cycle of lands in Magic, full stop, and people will always
need them, no matter what else happens. I can certainly see a Guilds of Ravnica: Mythic Edition style fetchland promotion at
some point, but that probably wouldn’t cause these prices to drop much, if
at all.

On the lower end, Phantasmal Image, Goblin Guide, and Stony Silence all
seem like solid buys to me as well. All three cards see a ton of play, and
are among Modern’s “middle class” of staples that are easy to reprint in
the context of a Masters set but which are more difficult to bring back in
other ways. These are the sorts of cards I’m always happy to take back in
trade and hoard for a bit.

January 2017:
Aether Revolt

Oh, hey, it’s two of the most important cards in Modern! I’ve written
enough about how you should be holding on to a bunch of each over the past
couple of months, so I won’t belabor the point here. Needless to say, both
of these cards still have lots of room to grow.

2017 Commander and Supplemental Sets

Remand was reprinted in a duel deck last year. You probably didn’t notice.

Before we continue on, I just want to take a moment and fully appreciate
just how many of Modern’s most expensive cards we’ve seen on this list so
far. That’s what I meant when I said that WotC has more or less reprinted
the entire Modern index over the past two years. That’s awesome, but it’s
also completely unsustainable.

September 2016:
Kaladesh

Let me repeat another point I spent a lot of time covering during my
pre-rotation articles: the Kaladesh lands are super underrated
(and underpriced) right now relative to how much Modern play they see.
Spirebluff Canal will hit $20 at some point, and the others will easily hit
$10. Buy these while they’re still readily available.

August 2016:
Conspiracy: Take The Crown

Birds of Paradise is one of those cards that can handle a near-infinite
number of reprints due to how much demand there is from all sides of the
market, competitive and casual. The issue here is that Noble Hierarch is
better most of the time in Modern, which keeps this as a high-floor,
low-ceiling sort of card.

July 2016:
Eldritch Moon

Now we’re getting somewhere. These cards have been out of Standard for a
while, are good in Modern, and have only been printed once. Once upon a
time, before twice-yearly Masters sets, these were the sorts of cards I
loved to speculate on because they usually enjoyed at least a couple years
of steady gains before showing up on the reprint docket. If Masters sets
really are gone, maybe it’s time to start thinking that way again. At the
very least, Collective Brutality seems like it could end up at $30+ for a
while, like it did on MTGO. Heck, it was $25 in paper as recently as last
April.

June 2016:
Eternal Masters

Yeah, Eternal Masters really didn’t have much for us Modern
players. Relic of Progenitus seems like it could sneak up toward $7-$8 if
it isn’t reprinted, but those margins aren’t good enough to interest me
much as a spec target.

April 2016:
Shadows Over Innistrad

If you’re wondering why Thing in the Ice is so expensive right now, that’s
because it actually spiked earlier this week. I’ll be discussing it in
depth during This Week’s Trends, but needless to say, cards from this era
are starting to become ripe for future gains.

January 2016:
Oath of the Gatewatch

Oath of the Gatewatch
looked like it had way more juicy spec targets back when there were Eldrazi
flying around all over Modern and Legacy. That’s not so much the case these
days. Thought-Knot Seer is still going to break $10 at some point, though.

2016 Commander and Supplemental Sets

Tolaria West was in From the Vault: Lore. That reprinting, as
narrow as it was, almost certainly kept this uncommon from being a $12-$15
card right now.

July 2015:
Magic Origins

I’d like Hangarback Walker more if it hadn’t been printed in a Standard
Event Deck, and those additional copies have kept the price lagging behind
its compatriots for years. Even still, it’s a solid card that’s always on
the verge of seeing quite a bit more play.

May 2015:
Modern Masters 2015

We’re finally at the era of Masters sets where the fact that a card hasn’t
been reprinted again feels like an omission. Mox Opal was the most
glaringly obvious card missing from Ultimate Masters, to the point
where I kind of feel like WotC has another product ready to go.

Surgical Extraction was another major omission, and it jumped another $10
once people realized that it wouldn’t be returning. The only reason why
Dark Confidant didn’t do the same is because there isn’t quite as much
demand for the card right now. The next time Jund wins a tournament, I
expect it to hit $80.

March 2015:
Dragons of Tarkir

For whatever reason, these two cards have had a really hard time breaking
past the $20 barrier. Every time they’ve briefly jumped above it, they’ve
settled back down to $20 again. It’s possible that there are simply enough
copies kicking around to satiate demand, but it’s equally likely that
there’s just a strong price memory effect in play here: these cards are $20
because they’re $20. At some point, that is going to change. You’re going
to want to have your playsets when it does.

2015 Commander and Supplemental Sets

Ghost Quarter was in Commander 2015, and these products continue
to not be amazing sources for Modern reprints.

October 2014:
Khans of Tarkir

We’ve finally reached the Khans of Tarkir fetchlands! Boy, it
feels like these were just reprinted yesterday, doesn’t it? It’s actually
been more than four years. At any rate, I don’t think these things are ever
going be printed in a Standard-legal set again, and I don’t even think that
a Masters set reprinting would cause the price to drop. With no more
Masters sets on the horizon, these become even safer buys at current
retail. I’m snapping these up whenever I can.

Also, how is Mantis Rider still under $2? It’s a four-of in the most
popular deck in Modern! It’s gotta hit $5 at some point, especially without
a reprint.

2014 Commander and Supplemental Sets

I’m still shocked that Wurmcoil Engine never showed up once in a single
Masters set. That’s kind of wild, right? This one’s been on the downswing
for the past couple of months, but it’ll end up back around $30 again at
some point.

July 2013:
Magic 2014

I’d like Mutavault a lot more if it saw play outside of a couple of fringe
decks, like Merfolk and Azorius Spirits. It’s certainly one of those cards
that can hit $30 overnight if the metagame changes even a little, though,
so I’ve got my eye on it for sure.

June 2013:
Modern Masters 2013

These are the only two major Modern staples from the original Modern Masters set that haven’t been reprinted yet. Manamorphose
was one of the biggest early gainers after the end of Ultimate Masters preview season, jumping from $11 up to $25 in a
matter of hours before settling back down a bit. It sees quite a bit of
play in the Arclight Phoenix decks, though, so it should stay above $15 at
least.

As for Arcbound Ravager…well, isn’t it interesting that two of the biggest
omissions from Ultimate Masters are Affinity staples? Maybe it’s
sheer coincidence, or maybe it’s a hint as to WotC’s next major
supplemental product. We shall see.

February 2013:
Gatecrash

These two shocklands will be reprinted next month in Ravnica Allegiance. Nothing to see here.

October 2012:
Return to Ravnica

Ditto for these two shocklands. See you in a couple of days, old friends!

February 2012:
Dark Ascension

This uncommon jumped from $1 to $3 once the Bant Spirits deck took off, and
it has been more or less stuck there ever since. It might make another
small leap, but uncommons in a tier 2/3 decks don’t interest me all that
much as spec targets.

September 2011:
Innistrad

This one’s another shock to me. I guess Humans has so many expensive cards
already? Even still, a four-of in Modern’s most popular deck that hasn’t
been printed in seven years should be at least $5, right? The issue here is
that this card only sees play in the one deck, so there’s not a ton of
market beyond Humans players.

July 2011:
Magic 2012

Technically, Grim Lavamancer was reprinted in Archenemy: Nicol Bolas, but that was an expensive set that I don’t
think people are picking up just for this little guy. At any rate, Grim
Lavamancer is in a surprising number of decks these days, and it spent a
good portion of 2018 sneaking up from $5 to $15, though it has come back
down a bit since then. It’s on my list of cards that might break $20 in
2019 regardless.

February 2011:
Mirrodin Besieged

Oh, hey, another Affinity staple that hasn’t been reprinted in a while!
(I’m not counting the RPTQ promo, since that was so limited.) Inkmoth Nexus
hit $50 for a hot minute back when Infect was at the top of the format, so
there’s certainly room for growth here.

October 2010:
Scars of Mirrodin

With Kaladesh, WotC proved that they still feel like this cycle of
lands has an appropriate power level for Standard play. I agree with them.
These cards might surge in the short-term, but don’t hold them for too long
because they could show up in a Standard-legal set again as soon as we
leave Ravnica.

July 2010:
Magic 2011

Another Affinity staple! And also another piece of top-tier graveyard hate!
Boy, WotC sure has a type of card that they aren’t interested in
reprinting, don’t they? It’s hard to see Leyline of the Void going too far
past $50, but the card is great and stranger things have happened. Steel
Overseer is a better bet to gain value, but that would require Hardened
Scales to start capturing a larger share of the metagame.

October 2009:
Zendikar

Valakut has been stable in the $20 range for a while now, and I don’t
expect that to change much without a reprint. I suppose it could shoot up
again if TitanShift ends up taking down a major event, but there are ton of
release promo copies of this card out there still, and TitanShift hasn’t
been tier one in Modern for a while now.

April 2009:
Alara Reborn

Much like the other Humans cards we’ve talked about today, Meddling Mage
still feels somewhat underpriced to me relative to its scarcity. After all,
2009 was almost a full decade ago now! All the cards in a given deck can’t
be expensive, though, and Humans is already the most expensive tier deck in
Modern. So far, that has been keeping this card from going through the
roof.

February 2009:
Conflux

Another Humans staple! Huh-is it odd to anyone else that a lot the cards
that seem to have dodged a reprint in 2017 or 2018 are either from Humans
or Affinity? Could we be setting up for a pretty serious set of Modern
Challenger Decks, or is this just a coincidence?

July 2007:
Tenth Edition

Now we’re into the random stuff that really should have been reprinted
before now. It would have been easy enough to stuff Chromatic Star into a
Masters Set, but instead we’ve got an $8 uncommon. Humph.

October 2006:
Time Spiral

If Gemstone Mine were more than a one-of in Modern Dredge, we’d be looking
at a $30+ card. Instead, it’s still kicking around in a pretty similar
range to where it’s been for the past several years. There’s some upside
here, but it probably requires a metagame shift of some kind.

July 2005:
Ninth Edition

How have they not reprinted the Urzatron lands yet? Thank goodness these
were in Chronicles, which has kept the price nice and low. I don’t
see that changing anytime soon, either. There’s still A LOT of Chronicles out there.

October 2003:
Mirrodin

We’ve finally reached our oldest Modern staple that needs a reprint-the Mirrodin common Chromatic Sphere! It’s hard to complain much about
this one not being reprinted since it was just a common, but it sees enough
play at this point that it should be worth more than a buck. I just don’t
think it’ll end up more than $2-$3.

And that’s it! While this list obviously isn’t exhaustive-cards like
Krark-Clan Ironworks and Goblin Lore didn’t show up, for example-I think
it’s safe to say that we’ve covered at least 75-80% of the Modern metagame
in today’s article.

From a big picture perspective, you can make a pretty reasonable argument
that the Masters series had one major goal that was more important than all
the rest. See, all the sets that were released before Return to Ravnica seem to have had far smaller print runs than all
of the sets from Return to Ravnica forward, and the pre- Zendikar sets had especially tiny print runs compared to current
expansions like Ixalan and Guilds of Ravnica. That’s how
we ended up with sideboard cards like Gaddock Teeg and Runed Halo hitting
$50.

If you look at the Masters sets as a five-year plan to reprint all of the
relevant cards from before Return to Ravnica at least once, then
WotC has more or less accomplished their mission. Even a year ago, this
list would have been littered with random stuff from Lorwyn and Shadowmoor-cards that were expensive just because they hadn’t been
reprinted. Heck,
I pretty much did write that article a year ago
. Almost all of the cards that seemed like they sorely needed a reprint
ended up in either Masters 25 or Ultimate Masters.

Regardless of what comes next, though, I can’t imagine WotC reprints almost
the entire Modern index AGAIN over the next 24 months. And that means that
prices are about to go up. Take advantage of the Masters sets while you
can, because it might not be long before you start looking back on this era
with fondness.

This Week’s Trends

The Standard market was fairly slow this week. Treasure Map was the only
card to make significant gains, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to
anyone who has been following the Standard market. The powerful Ixalan artifact has been showing up more and more in recent weeks,
though it’s the fact that Treasure Map is a four-of in most current builds
of Jeskai Control that really put it over the top from a financial
perspective. Unless the metagame speeds up again, this one’s heading for
$10.

A lot of the key Izzet and Jeskai cards had a solid week as well, including
Niv-Mizzet, Parun, Arclight Phoenix, Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, and
red/blue lands like Sulfur Falls and Steam Vents. While most of these gains
were only in the $1-$2 range, it reflects the fact that Izzet Drakes and
Jeskai Control are both ascendant strategies in the current metagame. At a
time of year when Standard cards tend to start dropping in price, these
decks are still doing well.

On the other side of the ledger, it wasn’t a great week for cards in
Golgari Midrange or Boros Angels. Both versions of Vraska lost a couple of
bucks this week, which isn’t all that surprising since the current
iteration of Golgari Midrange doesn’t run either planeswalker, even in
their sideboard. But Jadelight Ranger and Doom Whisperer also ticked down a
bit this week, and those cards do see play. Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice
and Lyra Dawnbringer also dropped about a buck each this week as Boros
Angels continues to fall into the lower half of Standard’s second tier.

Overall, though, the Standard market still feels fairly robust for late
November/early December. As I suspected, this format continues to draw
interest in a way that most post-Pro Tour iterations of Standard rarely do,
and that has kept prices from falling off a cliff. It’ll be interesting to
see if we’ll get the same great buying window that we usually get during
the holidays-after all, the year’s major tournaments are almost all in the
books-or if prices will remain steady into the New Year.

After our discussion today, none of the movements in the Modern market
should come as much of a surprise. The cards that were reprinted in Ultimate Masters continue to fall, with Snapcaster Mage, Liliana
of the Veil, Runed Halo, Goryo’s Vengeance, Life From the Loam, and
Engineered Explosives taking the biggest tumbles this week. Meanwhile,
Surgical Extraction, Misty Rainforest, Verdant Catacombs, Amulet of Vigor,
and Liliana, the Last Hope all ticked up a bit.

The most interesting Modern gainer of the week was Thing in the Ice. The
card had been slowly gaining all year long, and it finally hit a breaking
point where it jumped from $8 up to $13 in a matter of hours. It sees play
in pretty much every Izzet-colored deck in the format, and the recent
success of Izzet Phoenix finally caused demand for Thing in the Ice to
outstrip demand. Since we’re not getting a reprint anytime soon and I don’t
think any buyout shenanigans were afoot here, I don’t think this one’s
dropping below $10 again for a while.

There was one buyout shenanigan last week, though: Tolarian Entrancer, a
Reserved List card from Weatherlight, which jumped from $2 to $8.
StarCityGames still has several copies in stock for $4, though, and I don’t
think I’ve ever actually seen this card played before. It doesn’t seem
completely unplayable, but not all Reserved List cards should be worth
$10+. Don’t expect this spike to stick, and I don’t even think there’s a
way to sell this one into the hype.