At this point, it’s no secret that Magic: The Gathering has had some weird and wonderful crossovers. Universes Beyond has technically only been around for five years, but Wizards hasn’t been slowing down. Given the immense sales success of these sets, this eagerness is unsurprising, to say the least.
Despite sets like Final Fantasy making $200,000,000 in one day, not every Universes Beyond set is so lucky. Some, like the game’s Clue crossover, have flown under the radar in comparison. For better or worse, this unique crossover definitely didn’t contain the most powerful MTG cards; however, they do have their uses.
Proving this point, Apothecary White is now on the up and up. Thanks to Edge of Eternities and the set’s most popular Commander, we’re seeing a range of compelling price spikes.
Apothecary White
As mentioned, Apothecary White was one of the unique cards released in Magic’s Clue crossover. Dubbed Ravnica: Clue Edition, this product launched alongside Murders at Karlov Manor, but didn’t receive much fanfare. This might have had to do with the poor reception and sales of the main-set, which was bemused for its overabundance of hats.
Despite being rather quickly forgotten about, Apothecary White is a pretty capable card in Commander. Just from sitting on the board, this Cleric can steadily accrue value, creating up to three Food Tokens per turn. As if this weren’t enough, Apothecary White can then create a whole bunch of humans, too.
On her own, Apothecary White definitely has potential; however, according to EDHREC, she’s not exactly popular. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this card is much better in dedicated Food-themed shells, which create tons of these tokens. One new Edge of Eternities legend is particularly impressive in this regard.
Offering a unique Food-flinging strategy, Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is easily the most popular and interesting Edge of Eternities Commander. Beyond just being Food-based, Ragost has a lot of synergy with Apothecary White. Obviously, she can generate Food Tokens fairly easily, but her Human creating ability is amped up too.
Since Ragost turns all artifacts you control into Food, this deck should have mountains of them available. This, in turn, lets you create tons of Humans, ideally just before your turn starts. From here, you’ll have more than enough tokens to attack with to create three more Food right away.
The Spike
Much like Astrid Peth, who also spiked recently, sales of Apothecary White ticked up shortly after Ragost’s reveal. While it seemingly took a few more days to discover this synergy, over 250 copies were then sold in three days. From here, sales have continued at a surprisingly impressive pace.
While supply is far from running out just yet, this uptick in demand has caused prices to steadily creep up. Over the last week, in particular, prices have risen from $1.77 to $5.44 on average. To date, the peak price for a copy of Apothecary White has been $7.19; however, that was likely due to TCGplayer Direct.
At the moment, there are still a fair few listings for Apothecary White on TCGplayer. With over 470 copies from 35 sellers, we’re hardly seeing a buyout here. Curiously, there’s a chance that prices have already begun to fall somewhat, as there are copies available for under $5. Depending on which way the market moves, these current prices might end up being a steal.
Notably, only one variant of Apothecary White exists. Unlike most MTG cards, there’s no Extended Art or even Foil variant found in Collector Boosters. Thanks to this, Apothecary White is technically somewhat scarce. There has been a lot of supply sitting on TCGplayer, but that’s likely due to a lack of demand.
The Future
Looking ahead, it’s rather difficult to know where the price of Apothecary White will end up. Food decks are definitely popular in Commander, all the more so now thanks to Ragost. Due to this, long-term demand could be quite high, especially since Wizards prints new Food support cards fairly often.
On top of this, Apothecary White obviously has the merit of being a Universes Beyond card. Typically, these cards are difficult to reprint without new art and often a new name. In this case, however, Apothecary White both sounds and looks like a regular MTG card. To make reprinting even easier, Hasbro owns the Clue brand, so there shouldn’t be any licensing issues to resolve.
The big question right now is whether or not Apothecary White will continue to increase in price. Sadly, this is very difficult to figure out, since it’ll depend on Ragost-based demand. If MTG players have already picked up their copies, as sales suggest, demand will slow and prices will fall. Notably, however, Edge of Eternities has technically only been officially released today.
Now that the set’s official release date is here, there may be a new surge in demand as players build around Ragost. Admittedly, it seems the majority of MTG players are more prepared than this, so I wouldn’t expect a huge second spike. If sales continue at all, though, then prices could steadily increase over time.
Ultimately, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens to Apothecary White in the coming weeks. With recent sales dipping slightly, we may already be on the decline, but it’s too early to say.
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