Vivi Ornitier has had a hell of a ride these past few months. It was easily one of the most hyped cards from Final Fantasy during preview season. On release, it proved to be even better than anyone expected. The card has had an iron grip on Standard ever since, and still sits comfortably at the top of the metagame. Despite this, Vivi Ornitier is actually experiencing a price drop right now on the MTG secondary market.
The Bigger They Are…
For those following MTG closely right now, the fact that Vivi Ornitier is experiencing a price drop may come as a surprise. The card is wildly popular at the moment, after all, as a key piece of Vivi Cauldron, Standard’s best deck by far. This deck quickly rose to prominence in the wake of the massive Standard bans back in June. Since then it’s been absolutely everywhere in the format, dominating major events and causing players to call for an emergency ban.
This huge success is, ironically, very likely the reason why Vivi’s price is on the decline. Once a card reaches a certain level of format dominance, players start to anticipate it getting banned. This leads to lower confidence in the card, and thus lower prices. We saw this with The One Ring in Modern before its eventual ban. Nadu, Winged Wisdom was an even more extreme example. This was a card so clearly busted from the start that its price never got going at all, despite success in multiple formats.
Vivi is very much in a similar boat, which explains why its price has been steadily dropping since June. Things have sped up recently, however, following Wizards making a highly unusual statement about the card. Discussing Vivi’s current dominance, MTG Senior Game Designer Carmen Klomparens said, “We believe that we will likely take action in November. Vivi Ornitier is warping the Standard format and likely needs to go.”
This is about as close to a ban confirmation as it’s possible to give at this stage, and the market has reacted as expected. We’re seeing further Vivi price reductions, and things don’t appear to be slowing down.
The Vivi Ornitier Price Drop MTG
The numbers here really speak for themselves. Nonsensical pre-order prices aside, Vivi launched at pretty much its all-time high, in the $55-58 range. Sales were at their peak here, too, as players scrambled to buy the hot new chase mythic for Magic’s hottest set of all time.
Vivi saw a pretty significant drop-off after this, falling to $47 just before the June Standard bans. This looks fairly dramatic in a vacuum, but in reality, it’s the kind of post-release adjustment we often see with pricey mythics. The similarly coveted Sephiroth took a similar dive at the same time.
This marked the time that Vivi Cauldron began to establish itself as a broken meta player, and also the start of its financial decline. Sales drop off pretty hard here too, going from around 280 copies a day to the 120-150 a day range. From here, the card fluctuated in price with an overall downward direction, ending up at around $38 in mid-August.
The card rallied a little coming into September, hitting $40 again, but has since gone down sharply to its current position at around $29. This is a huge overall loss when you consider where it started out. Interestingly, this sharp drop actually started before Wizards’ announcement last week.
This was likely the point where anti-Vivi sentiment online hit a critical mass. Players have been complaining about the card online for months at this point, and eventually, that erodes buyer confidence. In any case, the price still appears to be on the decline currently, so $29 may not be the floor.
A Special Case
As much as Vivi might look doomed, the card is in an interesting spot, both in terms of gameplay and the larger collectability ecosystem.
For starters, all of Vivi’s value isn’t tied up in Standard alone. The card is also hugely popular in Commander, which is the main driver in the MTG financial markets. A wide range of different decks can make use of the card, from classic Spellslinger to spicy combo lists. The card has even proved fairly successful in cEDH, both as a Commander and a card in the 99. That’s no mean feat for any new Magic card.
This gives the card a solid safety net to fall back on if it is banned in Standard come November. While it’s not quite as wide as that of The One Ring, we’ve seen Commander demand alone sustain the price of plenty of cards over the years.
Nothing is certain, of course, but Vivi’s Commander playability is likely enough to hold it at the current $30 mark. Expect further dips until November, mind you, and a big one if the ban hammer does strike.
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