Given the source material, the core themes of The Hobbit MTG set aren’t exactly surprising. Dwarves and Treasures got tons of exciting new support in this set, which quickly caused an array of price spikes. It seems these spikes aren’t done, too, as a well-timed buyout has caused Bloomburrow’s Alchemist’s Talent to hit $20!
MTG Alchemist’s Talent
Thanks to new Treasure-focused cards like Smaug the Impenetrable, it’s no surprise that Alchemist’s Talent has spiked recently. With enough mana, this Class can give you Treasures, make them worth more mana, and make them hurt, too. Realistically, this card does everything a Treasure-focused deck could want, which has led to healthy play since its release.
Long before The Hobbit was released, Alchemist’s Talent was already an archetype staple, appearing in roughly 69,000 Commander decks. Now, according to EDHREC, new legends from The Hobbit are responsible for pushing that count up by over 4,500. Curiously, despite being a pretty tame Commander, Smaug the Magnificent is responsible for over 1,800 of these decks.
With Smaug the Impenetrable, Wicked Worm, and Thorin further boosting play rate, there’s been strong demand for Alchemist’s Talent recently. Curiously, it seemed the secondary markets were handling this added demand without issue until recently. Thanks to a major buyout in the past few days, prices for Alchemist’s Talent have shot through the roof.
A Sudden Spike
A few months ago, before hype for The Hobbit started to pick up, Alchemist’s Talent used to be worth $3 to $4 on average. Once spoiler season started, prices only picked up slightly, peaking at $5.30 before things really kicked off. Following a Reddit post spotlighting the card a few days ago, almost every copy on TCGplayer was bought out, causing prices to skyrocket.
In just a few days, the price of a near-mint Alchemist’s Talent soared from $5.10 to a peak price of $23.49. Curiously, while sales held at around $19.99 for a while, they’ve since dropped slightly to $19.43. Even with this slight price slip in the past couple of days, this still marks a 280% price spike in a remarkably short window.
Notably, despite not being touched by the buyout, there aren’t any worse-condition copies of Alchemist’s Talent available at discount prices. There also aren’t any alternative card treatments available for this Talent, which is common among Class cards. This detail also contributed to the buyout’s strength, since fewer variants mean less supply.
An Uncertain Future
Thanks to seeing such a substantial buyout, predicting the future of Alchemist’s Talent’s price isn’t easy. In theory, this price spike is unlikely to last forever, as those who caused the buyout will want to cash out eventually. Realistically, though, there’s no guarantee when this will happen, as investors could easily hoard their haul for years for maximum returns.
It’s not like this price spike has been entirely manufactured, either, as the supply of Alchemist’s Talent has been decreasing for a while. Not only have the new Hobbit cards contributed, but Treasure support and legends get printed fairly often. Thanks to this, it was only really a matter of time before the card ended up spiking.
With this in mind, there’s a real chance that the price of Alchemist’s Talent could stay high for quite some time. A reprint could change this, of course, but there’s no guarantee if or when that might happen. As always, we can only really wait and see what happens to this spike, but given its power, don’t be surprised if it stays expensive.
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