Despite its unusual origin as an Aftermath set turned bonus sheet, The Big Score is surprisingly packed with powerful cards. While this sounds like good news, the set’s bonus sheet nature means that supply is somewhat limited. This, in turn, makes many cards susceptible to spiking in price, which is exactly what has happened to Ancient Cornucopia.
MTG Ancient Cornucopia
Three-mana mana rocks need a lot to shine nowadays, but Ancient Cornucopia has repeatedly proven its worth. If you’re consistently casting five-colored spells, Ancient Cornucopia can gain five life every turn. That’s an obscene amount of lifegain in two-player formats, allowing this artifact to appear in rogue Standard decks to this day.
Thanks to this, when Secrets of Strixhaven’s new lifegain-focused Witherbloom cards were revealed, Ancient Cornucopia saw a lot of immediate demand. Whether it was speculative Standard strategies for cards like Withering Curse, or taking advantage of new Commander lifegain cards like Eccentric Pestfinder, Ancient Cornucopia slots right in to any decks focused on the new Witherbloom cards. That said, the card is particularly strong with the color combination’s most popular Commander Blech, Loafing Pest.
Thanks to buffing your typal team whenever you gain life, Ancient Cornucopia and Blech have some insane synergy when used together. Even if you’re just gaining one life with the artifact, Ancient Cornucopia makes any spell you cast a buff for your team. This works exceptionally well with cheap instants like Assassin’s Trophy, which are extremely common inclusions in a Blech Commander deck. Thanks to this, Ancient Cornucopia appears in 579 different Blech decks according to EDHREC.
All of that said, even outside of Witherbloom’s lifegain shenanigans, Ancient Cornucopia is just a decent card with a limited print run. Thanks to appearing in The Big Score, there aren’t a ton of copies of this card to go around. All of this seems to have combined to create a price spike for the life-gaining artifact.
The Spike
Between Witherbloom lifegain synergy demand in Commander and Standard, Ancient Cornucopia saw a massive demand spike between March 31st and April 3rd. Selling about 394 near-mint copies since the card’s massive demand spike, here is now a massive strain on this card’s supply. Now, only 70 listings of Ancient Cornucopia’s traditional variant are available. Combine a strained supply with continued demand, and Ancient Cornucopia’s price was continually pushed up.
Before the initial demand rush in early April, Ancient Cornucopia was going for as little as $1.12. While it took some time for the artifact’s price to increase, traditional Ancient Cornucopias now go for $5.94 after shipping at the cheapest, marking a 430% price spike. If you want nonfoil copies of the card for tournament play, you’ll have to pay at least $6.27 for traditional nonfoil copies.
If you want to save a few cents, the extended art variant of Ancient Cornucopia seems to be a bit cheaper right now. With multiple copies available for about $5 flat, you can save about a dollar here. However, considering that demand has recently spiked for this variant, this is unlikely to last long. If you want to spend more, the Showcase variant of Ancient Cornucopia is available for $8.75 after shipping.
A Flash in the Pan
While predicting the future of the MTG financial market is impossible, past patterns suggest that this Ancient Cornucopia spike is temporary. Once upon a time, when Domain was a Standard powerhouse and Pioneer was taken more seriously, Ancient Cornucopia was a $50 card. Those strategies and formats fell off over time, however, reducing Ancient Cornucopia to primarily a Commander card. Realistically, due to where it sees play now, it seems likely that the pattern will repeat.
That said, if you can find Ancient Cornucopia for cheap, it could be a decent card to pick up in the long run. Because of their lower print run, Big Score cards tend to spike hard whenever they break out. We saw this recently with Harvester of Misery, which spiked to $29.87 after winning the Pro Tour in the Dimir Excruciator deck.
To avoid these breakout spikes, picking up a playset of Ancient Cornucopia on the cheap might be in your best interest. If the card doesn’t get a reprint, it could also become more expensive over time thanks to its Commander applications. While it’s impossible to know for sure if this artifact will see more spikes in the future, Ancient Cornucopia should nevertheless be able to find a home in your arsenal of decks.
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