Throughout 2025, the MTG Standard format has been really going through it. We’ve had ban-worthy menaces cropping up one after the other, effectively ruining the format. Not only did this diminish competitive event attendance, but hope for the format’s future had all but gone out. Thankfully, in the past few weeks, it seems Wizards of the Coast has turned things around.
Between the recent bans and the release of MTG Avatar, Standard is going through a renaissance right now. Old decks have been suprerchaged by Avatar cards, and a few entirely new archetypes have popped up. One archetype in particular, Izzet Lessons, has just made a massive splash at the MTG World Championships. This, in turn, has started to cause some impressive price spikes.
MTG Artist’s Talent
Since its release in Bloomburrow, Artist’s Talent has always been a powerful and rather popular card. Offering rummaging, cost reduction, and damage amplification, this card can really do it all. While you do need to invest a fair bit of mana to get all of these perks, the potential for value is obscene. As a result, Artist’s Talent has long seen decent play.
In Modern, this card is a staple within Ruby Storm lists, and occasionally appears in Dredge too. Unsurprisingly, these decks love the cost reduction and rummaging from Talent. Meanwhile, in Pioneer, Talent is commonly found in Izzet Phoenix decks.
Now, Artist’s Talent is also appearing in Standard once again. While this card used to be part of some Vivi Cauldron lists, it took a brief post-ban sabbatical. This is thanks to the new Izzet Lessons deck that has steadily been making a name for itself. Following this deck’s appearance at the Magic World Championship 31, demand has quickly exploded.
When combined with Gran-Gran, Artist’s Talent can make all of your noncreature spells free to cast. While this does require some setup, getting three Lessons into the graveyard is easy with Talent in play. This lets you reap incredible benefits and, potentially, crush the competition.
Right now, Izzet Lessons is still a very new deck, but it looks like the real deal. Depending on how well it performs at the World Championship, there’s a chance it’ll become the new meta menace. If this does end up being the case, everyone and their Gran-Gran will want a playset of Artist’s Talent.
The Spike
Thanks to Artist’s Talent seeing plenty of play in Modern, Pioneer, and Standard before, it’s not exactly the cheapest MTG card. Typically, this time last month, near-mint non-foil copies of this Talent would sell for around $5.80 on average. Notably, this price has steadily been climbing over the past few months thanks to regular demand.
Following Izzet Lessons being brewed and breaking out, however, demand for this card has absolutely skyrocketed. Curiously, while demand is definitely up, actual play numbers for Artist’s Talent in Izzet Lessons are still very low. Potentially, this may mean investors are driving this spike, or perhaps players just haven’t had time to use it yet.
Either way, the price of Artist’s Talent has shot up from $5.80 to $30 in just a few days. Notably, this insane price spike has drained almost all of the supply from the market, with only 19 listings left. Even worse, condition copies aren’t available right now, thanks to the card’s unusual scarcity.
Unlike most rares in modern MTG sets, Artist’s Talent doesn’t have any alternative variants that could boost supply. This is the case for all of Bloomburrow’s Talent cards, and we’ve seen previously how that can make their prices volatile. Evidently, in the case of Artist’s Talent, this can lead to massive 414% price spikes.
The Future
While the future is theoretically bright for Artist’s Talent, this spike does feel somewhat odd. Even with the price of Talent cards being volatile, the fact that this card is only spiking now is unusual. After all, this isn’t the first time that Artist’s Talent has popped up in Standard.
Despite previously being part of a top Standard deck, Artist’s Talent didn’t spike much at the time. Now, however, there’s been a huge number of sales, with over 200 sales happening in the past few days. Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t left many copies on the market, but things won’t necessarily always stay that way.
Not only could Artist’s Talent theoretically be reprinted, but since it’s been popular before, players may be holding onto copies. If this is the case, there’s a non-zero chance that a lot of supply could return to the market to capitalize on this spike. Whether or not this will happen, however, remains to be seen.
Ultimately, even if some supply does return, there’s no denying Artist’s Talent is a very strong card. Playable in a wide array of formats and archetypes, there’s bound to be long-term demand for this card. In theory, this should keep the price somewhat high, but $30 might be a bit of a stretch.
Realistically, with Inkeeper’s Talent priced at around $15, that feels ike a reasonable middle-ground for Artist’s Talent. Just where it’ll end up, however, is anyone’s guess. As always, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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