Ever since the set’s spoiler season started, the reaction to MTG’s TMNT set has been rather tepid. Between the fairly low power across the board and the controversial art, MTG players were constantly picking holes in it. With this in mind, the set, unsurprisingly, had very little impact on the MTG financial markets.
While the secondary MTG markets aren’t the perfect barometer for a set’s success, there have been incredibly few price spikes. Outside of a few Mutants that have been steadily climbing, many of the set’s synergies have been left untapped. As time has gone on, however, it appears that one of the set’s rares is getting the attention it actually deserves.
Thanks to this increased attention, we’re now seeing a decades-old MTG card spike suddenly in price. Firestorm might not be unique in the grand scheme of MTG, but there’s no denying this card can deal some serious damage.
MTG Firestorm
First released 29 years ago in Weatherlight, Firestorm is a very simple yet effective MTG card. For one mana, this card can theoretically clear the board, or even one-shot opponents, with relative ease. The only trouble is that you’ll need to fill your hand with cards first, so you can discard them all.
While many Izzet decks will have no trouble accomplishing this feat, you’ll still want to mitigate the downside of discarding cards. Thankfully, plenty of cards can accomplish this, especially in Commander. Using something like Rielle, the Everwise or Niv-Mizzet, Visionary, for instance, you can use Firestorm to completely refresh your hand.
As if Firestorm wasn’t already good enough with these cards, it recently got a lot better thanks to Cool but Rude. Once Level 2, this new Class enchantment from the MTG x TMNT set makes Firestorm significantly deadlier for a very reasonable price. Thanks to extra discard synergies on top of this, it’s no wonder that MTG players are quickly gravitating toward this new card.
Outside of Commander, Firestorm has previously also seen success in Premodern, which has been all the rage recently. While this card isn’t a staple within any deck right now, it has popped up in Reanimator and Survival Infestation shells before. Should the need for this card reemerge in the Premodern metagame, then this current price spike might just be the start.
Notably, while powerful, this combo isn’t exactly new, as each of the Dreams cards from Torment can do the same thing, albeit for more mana in most cases. Despite this overlap, Firestorm has been getting all the attention recently, causing it to spike in price.
The Spike
As a reserved list card from almost three decades ago, Firestorm was always fairly expensive. Looking back over the past year, copies of this card have occasionally sold for around $14 to $15. While this was arguably a bit much for the card’s niche utility within Discard-focused decks, Firestorm definitely has potential.
Now, however, that $14 price tag feels like a distant memory, as just a few sales have pushed prices up dramatically. In the past month, just 50 near-mint copies of Firestorm have been sold, but that has massively diminished the supply. Currently, there are just ten near-mint listings for copies of Firestorm on TCGplayer.
Thanks to this significantly reduced supply, near-mint copies of Firestorm are now selling for $57 on average. While sales have peaked at $60, recent sales are remarkably consistent, with any lower-priced copies quickly being bought up. Unfortunately, while worse condition copies do provide some reprieve from this spike, prices are up across the board.
At the moment, the cheapest you’ll be able to find a copy of Firestorm for is $42. For this lofty price tag, you’re getting a damaged copy, too, as heavily played examples start at $47. Thankfully, moderately played copies are selling for similar amounts at the moment, with lightly played ones only being a dollar more.
Technically, if you’re just after a copy of Firestorm and don’t care about legality, there are a pair of World Championship Deck printings available. Prices for these currently start at just $4; however, sales have increased alongside this price spike. Due to this, it may not be long before these unplayable non-legal variants are surprisingly expensive too.
The Future
As a card on the MTG Reserved List, Firestorm has a lot going for it when looking ahead. While we can’t predict the future, we can rest assured that Wizards shouldn’t ever reprint this card. For better or worse, this means that supply will always be a limiting factor, and it won’t take much for this card to spike.
Given that many Reserved List cards can be incredibly expensive, while only being mechanically mediocre, Firestorm seems like a sure thing. That being said, this wouldn’t be the first time that this MTG card has spiked. Back in 2018, Firestorm spiked up to $41, but only very briefly, as its value fell by half in just a few months.
Following the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in 2020, the price of Firestorm jumped once again, but even that didn’t last. With this in mind, there’s certainly no guarantee that this card will remain so expensive for very long. In theory, the lack of insane synergy could make this very short-lived, or this might be the final piece of the supply-draining puzzle. Ultimately, as always, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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