While its Limited performance has been atrocious, The Hobbit has absolutely taken over Commander, giving players plenty of beloved characters to build decks around. Treasures and Dwarves are certainly the most popular Hobbit themes to try, but Bears also seem to be trending upwards thanks to a new Commander. Thanks to this, a few Bear typal cards, like Caller of the Claw, are starting to spike in price.
MTG Caller of the Claw
Ideally, Caller of the Claw should come down right after a board wipe, replacing all of your creatures with 2/2 Bears. While it’s not too impressive on its own, the Elf can create a ton of pressure on an empty board. Even with this in mind, however, an army of 2/2’s isn’t the most impressive, limiting Caller of the Claw to decks that have tons of synergy with it, like Ayula, Queen Among Bears and the new Beorn the Fierce.
With Beorn doubling the stats of Caller of the Claw’s tokens and easily drawing two cards, the card is far stronger in this Commander deck than average. Beorn can turn Caller of the Claw itself into a Bear, too, allowing it to synergize with the rest of the deck. Thanks to its obvious Bear Typal synergy, Caller of the Claw is seeing play in over 1,000 new Beorn the Fierce decks according to EDHREC.
While this synergy makes Beorn one of the best Commander decks for Caller of the Claw, it just makes the card playable, not incredible. Despite this, Beorn has driven a noticeable surge in demand for Caller of the Claw, pushing its price up.
The Spike
Thanks to a clear spike in demand for Caller of the Claw, the card’s price has been spiking over the last three months. With around 80 copies of the card selling for its Commander 2015 variant, Caller of the Claw isn’t flying off the shelves, but a limited supply has pushed its price upwards anyway.
Among its variants, this Elf’s 2015 variant is spiking the hardest. Worth $3.22 a few months ago, the cheapest copy of this variant is now $9.88, representing a 206% price increase. Near mint copies of the Legion variant are even worse, starting at a whopping $17.55 after shipping.
Fortunately, unlike most in-demand cards, Caller of the Claw still has poorly conditioned variants available, offering some moderate savings. The absolute cheapest copy of this card available at the time of writing is a lightly played Legions one at $7.30. This isn’t a massive discount, but it can help stretch your dollars a bit further.
A Temporary Fad
Outside of Bear Typal decks, Caller of the Claw isn’t a very strong MTG card. As far as green board protection goes, there’s a ton of stronger options available, like the ever-popular Heroic Intervention. This pushes the card out of a lot of potential Commander decks, meaning that the card doesn’t have a lot of widespread demand.
Due to this, Caller of the Claw feels like it will follow the typical pattern for cards that spike due to new Commanders. Once everyone has built their Beorn the Fierce decks, Caller of the Claw’s demand is likely to plummet, as will its price. Throw in new, exciting Commanders that will inevitably appear in Reality Fracture, and this card’s price jump really does seem temporary.
That said, as always, predicting the future in MTG is impossible, as a lower market supply could keep Caller of the Claw’s price high. With this in mind, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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