One of the great things about MTG as a game is that it’s still delivering new firsts, even over 30 years in. Most sets give us one first-of-its-kind design or another. Beyond that, products like Mystery Booster 2 push things even further in new directions. This past weekend brought another MTG first, and one you most likely missed. At Dreamhack Atlanta, the top-performing players each received a metal prize card; the first cards of their kind in MTG history.
We’ve seen plenty of wild alternate art printings and treatments in recent years, but nothing quite on this level. Not content to just look like metal, these cards are actually completely made of metal. They’re not just pure collectibles, either, but actual, full-text metal cards. The implications of this new addition are surprisingly numerous.
A Test Of Mettle
According to a tweet from Robert Taylor, these metal MTG prize cards were given out to the top 8 competitors at Dreamhack Atlanta over the weekend. The exact event they were awarded for is unclear, but Sunday’s $5K Modern 4-Slot RCQ seems the most likely candidate. The card chosen for this milestone treatment was Ral, Monsoon Mage from Modern Horizons 3.
This makes a ton of sense as an inaugural metal card. Ral was one of the breakout cards of the set for Modern, bringing Ruby Storm into contention as a real deck in the format. Even today, after it has fallen from grace somewhat, it’s still the fourth most popular deck in Modern. Given that Dreamhack mainly featured Modern events, this is a solid pick for a prize card.
It’s also fitting for practical reasons. As we’ll get into, metal cards aren’t really playable in the traditional sense. Their massively increased weight essentially makes them marked cards in a deck. What they can be used for, however, is Commanders. Since those are separate from your deck, you can run this new Ral in the command zone with no problems. The increased durability of metal vs. cardboard means you can play it unsleeved, too, which avoids the hassle of sleeving/unsleeving that comes with running DFC Commanders.
Granted, Ral isn’t exactly a popular Commander. At the time of writing, only 930 players have built a deck around him according to EDHRec. The fact that he’s a legendary creature does open up this possibility, however.
Before we get into pricing, it is worth noting that we’ve technically seen metal MTG cards before. Previously, FaNaTik and Hasbro have released limited edition sets of MTG-branded silver ingots. These aren’t full cards, however, so the discussion this time around will be notably different.
Precious Metals?
Other TCGs have been using this idea for years. Both Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! have dabbled in the format before. Since we have no benchmark for what a metal card in MTG might be worth, looking at examples from these other games is helpful when trying to determine their market value.
Pokémon started producing metal cards in 2021, with metal Charizard and Pikachu cards appearing in the Celebrations Ultra-Premium Collection. Since then three more have been printed, in comparable premium products. Despite all being guaranteed includes in specific products, these cards go for around $40-100 on average. Three of them, Charizard, Pikachu, and Mew, are all very iconic characters, which is worth bearing in mind here.
Yu-Gi-Oh! does something similar with metal cards in premium products, but it also has them as tournament prizes too. This puts the Yu-Gi-Oh! metal cards closer to the Ral we’re looking at today. These vary a lot in price, but top-end options like the 20th Anniversary Blue-Eyes White Dragon and the stainless steel Dark Magician girl go for around $250.
Given that these metal Rals appear to be much more scarce than these other options, once might assume a much higher price. It’s worth noting that Ral isn’t an iconic character on the same level as the others we’ve discussed here, however. Given that metal cards are primarily collectibles, this matters more than you’d think.
I could see the pricing on these metal Rals going one of two ways. Either they settle at around the $200 mark for their scarcity minus their niche appeal, or they’ll go the way of the hyper-exclusive WotC employee cards and sell for several thousand dollars.
More To Come?
These new MTG metal prize cards are significant in and of themselves. They could also be a sign of things to come, however. Back in August, WotC announced the Magic Spotlight Series. This is a new series of tournaments for 2025, covering different formats and offering different prizes. In addition to cash and promos, each Spotlight event will also feature a unique themed prize too. Magic Spotlight Foundations, for example, will award a case of every Standard-legal set in 2025 to the winner.
The rest of these themed prizes are a mystery for now, but based on the metal Rals from this weekend we could see more metal cards among them. Maybe a pseudo Secret Lair featuring five metal cards on a theme for the winner of an event. The use of this technology at a relatively small event could be a test for broader use in next year’s Spotlight Series. This is pure speculation of course, but the promise of unique prizes made back in August certainly supports the possibility.
Whether players would respond well to metal cards as prizes is another matter. While high-end tournament prize cards are rarely played with anyway, metal cards that can’t be played with whether you want to or not may rub some the wrong way. Many would likely prefer the likes of Secret Lair Showdown promos instead. If the right cards are chosen, however, these could become incredibly desirable collectibles, and worthy prizes indeed.
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