With Wizards away for the holidays and barely a week left in 2025, MTG is basically finished for this year. Players finally have a break from the endless spoiler season to relax and enjoy all of the fantastic new cards from this year. Thanks to this, even as the year draws to a close, we’re still seeing price spikes pop up on the market.
In particular, even though it was released over a month ago now, MTG Avatar is still having an impressive impact. New Commanders from the set are continuing to make waves, with synergistic support pieces jumping up. Most recently, it seems that a lack of supply has pushed Doubling Cube up to new heights!
MTG Doubling Cube
First released over two decades ago in 2004’s Fifth Dawn, Doubling Cube hardly needs an introduction. It’s not a staple in Commander, but just one look at this card makes its potential for shenanigans obvious. So long as you can repeatedly untap this artifact and have enough mana, you can effortlessly go infinite.
Admittedly, while there is obvious synergy, it doesn’t exactly come cheap. When using Voltaic Key and Rings of Brighthearth, for instance, you’ll need to start by floating 10 mana. Alternatively, using just Capsize means you’ll need to float at least 17 mana to go infinite.
Thanks to the cost of going infinite, Doubling Cube is often seen as a win-more card, rather than a strong utility artifact. That said, it definitely can be useful, whether you’re using it to ramp or specifically synergizing with it. Speaking of synergy, that’s exactly why Doubling Cube has been seeing such strong play alongside Ozai, the Phoenix King.
Due to Ozai’s mana preservation ability, getting enough mana to make Doubling Cube pop off is trivial. Not only does this give you tons of fuel to cast spells with, but it also keeps Ozai past his six unspent mana threshold. As if that wasn’t enough synergy, Ozai having Firebending 4 helps Doubling Cube ramp even harder.
According to EDHREC, Ozai has caused a significant demand spike for Doubling Cube, with over 1,900 MTG Commander decks wanting the card. On top of this, the slightly less recently released Electro, Assaulting Battery has around 800 lists using this card. While this is impressive, Omnath, Locus of Mana remains the most popular home for Doubling Cube at the moment.
The Spike
To date, Wizards of the Coast has printed four different versions of Doubling Cube, including the original Fifth Dawn variant. While this sounds like there should be tons of supply to go around, unfortunately, none of the future reprints were super high volume. 10th Edition, The List, and a Secret Lair drop did help improve supply, but not by an obscene degree.
Thanks to this, Doubling Cube has always been a somewhat expensive MTG card. Winding the clock back a few months, we can see near-mint non-foil copies routinely selling for around $16.43 on average. This price was pretty stable across the board, with even the Secret Lair variant selling for around $16.
Once Ozai, the Phoenix King was revealed, however, MTG players started snapping up copies of this card. Notably, since Ozai’s reveal, there haven’t been a ton of near-mint sales, but that’s more to do with the limited supply. Over the past three months, only 55 near-mint Fifth Dawn copies have been sold, but that’s still more than enough to deplete the market.
Currently, there are only 7 near-mint non-foil Fifth Dawn listings for Doubling Cube available on TCGplayer. The prices of these copies start at $40, and that doesn’t even include shipping. With recent sales peaking at $44, it seems clear that players are still willing to pay, even after a 150% price spike.
Unfortunately, due to the limited supply of Doubling Cube, there aren’t a lot of majorly compelling deals available. The List variant, for example, is up to $50, as are near-mint copies from 10th Edition. Even worse condition copies have also spiked to this price point recently. Curiously, the only affordable deal is the Secret Lair variant, which is selling for $30 right now.
The Future
Looking ahead, I can’t say I’m optimistic about the price of Doubling Cube holding for a great deal of time. There’s definitely a chance I’m left with egg on my face after saying that, but realistically, Doubling Cube is a pretty weak value engine. Outside of Commanders like Electro, Ozai, and Omnath, it’s difficult to really exploit that card’s potential.
With this in mind, it seems unlikely that Doubling Cube will suddenly become a staple in Commander. The card simply doesn’t do enough on its own, and its price is largely propped up by scarcity. This, as always, makes future predictions rather difficult, as it depends on what Wizards prints first.
If we end up getting another powerful Commander like Ozai, demand for Doubling Cube could spike once again. Realistically, this card selling for more than $50 feels like a stretch, but a second spike could solidify this price point. Given we got both Electro and Ozai this year, the chances for another effect like this feel high, but nothing is guaranteed.
While a future Commander could maintain the current price of Doubling Cube, a reprint would likely decimate its value. Now that Doubling Cube is technically a $40 MTG card, Wizards may be tempted to do this, but reprints do take time. On top of this, Wizards has also been reducing reprint sources recently, so we could be waiting for ages.
Ultimately, as always, we can’t predict the future when it comes to MTG or anything else. As such, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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