Murders at Karlov Manor spoiler season is now over, but the secondary market of existing MTG cards remains somewhat quiet. While a ton of new cards are on the horizon, the current state of MTG’s biggest formats has largely been left unchanged. The first Regional Championship , for example, taking place in Ghent was largely uneventful, featuring a balanced metagame and a winners metagame full of established titans.
That said, one archetype that has been performing better than usual put up a competitive win rate at the Regional Championship. Dredge is far from a competitive staple in the Modern format, but the deck has been performing decently the past few weeks.
Would I recommend registering Dredge for a big Modern event? No. Either way, a big Dredge piece is seeing a price spike this week, at least for its premium variant, but current sales suggest that players shouldn’t jump on this to save a few bucks. Let’s take a look.
Retro Borders for Retro Archetypes
The Retro Bordered Stinkweed Imp from Time Spiral Remastered is seeing a surprising price spike. While this could be related to Dredge’s notable, yet far from format-breaking performances recently, the rise in price for this particular copy of Stinkweed Imp could simply be because of its desirability. Price patterns, however, suggest that it may be something different.
Outside of Modern Dredge, Stinkweed Imp sees play in focused Commander decks that want to abuse the graveyard. Dredge is an absurdly powerful mechanic, filling your graveyard incredibly quick. If you have a way to constantly discard and draw cards, you’ll amass cards in your graveyard at absurd rates.
Over just a few weeks, the nonfoil Time Spiral Remastered Stinkweed Imp saw a significant spike. Jumping from a market average of $1.64 to $7.95 on TCGplayer, while the card’s price is going up, sales are incredibly inconsistent. You can find some sales for $10 and others for $1, so take this price spike with a grain of salt. This has only been exasperated further by a few $20 sales that are complete outliers.
Perhaps the strangest thing about the entire trend is the much rarer foil iterations of the Retro Bordered Stinkweed Imp have not spiked at all. This could either indicate that a big spike is currently in the works, or that the spike to the non-foil Stinkweed Imp is being artificially fabricated by false demand.
If you’re interested in acquiring non-foil Retro Bordered Stinkweed Imps, be careful paying high prices for it, at least for the time-being. Alternatively, foil Stinkweed Imps could start spiking, but it’s difficult to say at the moment. If you just want any old copy of Stinkweed Imp, there are multiples available for less than a dollar.
Nantuko Shrine
Last week’s sudden price spike thanks to Slime Against Humanity has continued to get more expensive. The synergy with Slime Against Humanity is clear, with Nantuko Shrine offering an army of Squirrels for players creating charged up Slime tokens with the strategy’s signature spell. Both Slime Against Humanity and Nantuko Shrine want copies of Slime Against Humanity in the grave. What’s not to love?
Nantuko Shrine has continued to spike in price following our last look, now selling for $4 or more pretty comfortably for any condition over heavily played according to the card’s past few days in sales. Foils have also continued to spike, with some copies selling for as high as $41 in near mint condition!
Read More: Exclusive Red-Bordered MTG Secret Lair has Surprising Reprint Value
Roaming Throne
Roaming Throne isn’t so much spiking in price, but the card has been consistently getting more expensive since its release in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. This Commander staple is seriously expensive, especially considering that it released in Magic’s most recent tentpole set. Not only that, but Roaming Throne is 100% worth it for many Commander decks.
Roaming Throne offers an adaptable copying effect that can see play in a ton of different Commander decks. Of course, Roaming Throne does its best work in Typal decks that have a prevailing creature type theme, as Roaming Throne can trigger related payoffs by adapting that creature type, and can copy abilities from a multitude of different creatures.
Another big upside to Roaming Throne over other options is that it doesn’t care how the targeted creature type triggers its abilities. Whether they’re ETB or attack triggers, Roaming Throne will copy them all.
Even in decks that don’t have a Typal focus, Roaming Throne can still provide value by specifically copying your Commander’s activated abilities. As long as that copying effect is valuable enough for your strategy, Roaming Throne can become a powerful roleplayer.
Over the past six months, Roaming Throne has continually increased in price. The cheapest Roaming Throne ever was is $8.25, the price it found after it initially dropped to after release. The Throne has gradually increased since then, and currently demands a market average of $23.36.
Trends Still Emerging?
For now, the marketplace remains relatively quiet, but once we begin to understand what Murders at Karlov Manor cards impact the secondary market the most, that’s likely to change. For now, as players get ready to indulge in Wizards of the Coast’s newest offering, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on any emerging strategies that may cause a collection of cards to rise in price.
Read More: The First Secret Lair Drop of 2024 Has Been Revealed!
