Last Monday’s banned and restricted announcement is still sending out ripples in Magic’s secondary market. Players are hopping aboard the hype train for the freshly unbanned cards, resulting in huge price spikes. It’s not just the confirmed changes that are stirring things up, either. Wizards also cited a trio of MTG cards, including Iona, Shield of Emeria, which could be unbanned in Commander soon. Naturally, this long-abandoned Angel is picking up some fresh financial steam as a result.
Iona, Shield Of Emeria MTG
Iona, Shield of Emeria is one of the most notorious cards on the current MTG Commander banlist. First printed in 2009’s Zendikar, the card enjoyed 10 years in the format before getting the ban hammer in July 2019. During that decade-long reign, Iona acquired a bit of a reputation for being unfair and unfun.
Simply put, Iona is one of the most effective color hosers the game has ever seen. Since it completely shuts off spells of a color being cast, it’s a one-card answer to mono-colored strategies. Even when it’s not completely shutting a player out of the game, Iona can still incidentally block a lot of multicolored cards as well, making her difficult, or impossible, to answer in many cases.
While color hosers are common in Commander, Iona has a couple of advantages that push it into ‘unfair’ territory. For starters, it lets you choose which color to hose, which removes the ‘dead card’ downside present on other hosers like Boil or Insight. Additionally, it’s also a legendary creature, which makes it easy to cheat out early with Entomb/Reanimate.
Iona has been, effectively, lying dormant since her ban, but Wizards brought her back into the conversation this week. In the latest banned and restricted announcement, Gavin Verhey noted that it was a card on Wizards’ radar for a potential unban. In fact, he said that Iona was “right on the cusp” of being unbanned this week as well. Because of this statement, players are preparing for an Iona unban and are stocking up on copies. As a result, the card is experiencing a significant price spike.
The Spike
We first started to see movement on Iona, Shield of Emeria on February 9th, the day of the latest MTG ban announcement. Where near-mint copies of Iona’s Zendikar printing could be had for around $5.35 before the spike, the lowest listing now sits at $28.50. This represents a 432% price spike, and it may not be the end of things, either.
It’s not just the Zendikar printing of Iona that’s spiking right now, either. All four of its printings are seeing huge gains at the moment. The Modern Masters 2015 version is up from $4.55 to around $20, for example. The fancy From the Vault: Angels printing is on the rise, too, going from $6.16 to around $20 as well.
Thankfully, while each variant of Iona has spiked in price, one printing is still significantly cheaper at the moment. If you’re not too fussy about borders, the white-bordered Mystery Booster 2 version of Iona can be had for around $11 right now, which is a big saving over the others.
On all four of these printings, supply isn’t looking too great at the moment. Zendikar is leading the pack at 29 copies available, but Modern Master 2015 only has 18, and From the Vault only 9. Supply is dropping fast on the white-bordered printing as well, with only 20 near-mint listings on TCGplayer at present. That there are barely 80 copies of the card available doesn’t bode well for its future affordability.
False Hope?
While the reasons behind the current Iona, Shield of Emeria price spike are clear, whether it’ll hold in the future or not is much less so. This is a spike driven entirely by speculation, as Wizards hasn’t confirmed that Iona will actually be unbanned yet. In the announcement article, Gavin Verhey noted that it would “be great to get feedback from you all first,” which players haven’t hesitated to give.
Based on social media discussion so far, players aren’t hugely jazzed about the idea of Iona making a comeback. That said, it’s still early days, and the wind could easily change before a decision is made. There’s no hard date set for the next Commander update as of right now. Verhey did mention, howevr, that they’ll likely come back with something in “May or June.” Until then, I expect the Iona spike to hold, and possibly continue, given the huge potential upside if we do get an unban.
Conversely, if Iona doesn’t get unbanned when the time comes, this spike will likely collapse overnight. Outside of a few niche Modern and Legacy decks, which weren’t driving its price before, Iona’s new price is built entirely on potential Commander demand. If that crutch is kicked away, then the card will almost certainly return to its low price from before.
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