With Marvel Super Heroes in contention to be the best-selling MTG set ever, it impacting the secondary market was inevitable. Typically, we expect to see this happen when Commander precons get revealed, but Marvel Super Heroes isn’t waiting around for that. Thanks to The Serpent Society, we’re already seeing a serious MTG price spike to Bloodroot Apothecary.
MTG Bloodroot Apothecary
Released as part of the Peace Offering precon from Bloomburrow, Bloodroot Apothecary is a bit of an unusual MTG card. While it wasn’t bad within its home precon, it also felt like it was doing its own thing. Without any other poison support in the deck, it felt like an easy cut for more synergistic options.
That being said, Bloodroot Apothecary is by no means a bad MTG card. Even in an unfocused deck, the sheer volume of Treasures and other sacrifice-based effects in Commander makes it legitimately scary. For the most part, however, this card is just confined to Poison-focused Commander decks and Peace Offering lists that didn’t cut it.
Now, however, Bloodroot Apothecary has a new home in The Serpent Society. With a strong Poison Counter and sacrifice theme, this new Commander feels like the best possible fit for this card. In reality, however, the actual synergy is somewhat lacking, since Bloodroot Apothecary only cares about noncreature tokens.
Since The Serpent Society will force your opponent to sacrifice a nontoken creature, there’s barely any crossover between these cards. Realistically, it’s just the poison theme, which isn’t much to write home about. Despite this, MTG players have been quick to invest in this card, pumping its price up to the moon.
While the synergy isn’t fantastic, Bloodroot Apothecary can dish out a ton of Poison Counters in Commander. Not only are there tons of Treasures, Clues, and Food in the format, but you can even increase its counter production, too. With The Roaming Throne and Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider in play, for instance, you can add eight Poison Counters at once with a single Bloodroot Apothecary trigger.
The Spike
Despite the somewhat lacking synergy, getting another Poison-focused Commander again is big news. As such, many MTG players have been quick to invest in this card, and it’s not bad from that perspective. Since it was only printed in a precon, supply is fairly low to begin with, allowing tons of copies to be snapped up.
With the stars aligned, MTG players didn’t hesitate to pick up over 800 near-mint copies of Bloodroot Apothecary in the past two days. This, in turn, has almost completely drained the market of supply, as there are only six near-mint listings left on TCGplayer. Currently, prices for these limited copies start at $20, not including shipping; however, nothing has sold close to this price yet.
Instead, the peak sale price of the default frame version of Bloodroot Apothecary has only hit $9.47 so far. While this is a long way off $20, it’s still a 1427% spike in barely three days. Thankfully, while the price of default frame copies of Bloodroot Apothecary is up significantly, the extended art variant is a ways behind.
Despite seeing a similar, albeit weaker, surge in sales, extended art copies are selling for $3.34 right now. That said, copies at this price point are few and far between, with prices soon ramping up toward $5. While there are 72 listings for all conditions available right now, these might not last very long.
The Future
Looking ahead, assessing the future of Bloodroot Apothecary is a bit difficult. On the one hand, this card is a solid, self-contained hate piece that can shut down some strategies. At the same time, however, if it doesn’t facilitate a Poison kill, you’ll just give each opponent a treasure for free.
With this in mind, it’s unlikely that Bloodroot Apothecary will break out and see widespread Commander play outside of Poison-focused decks. To make matters worse, it’s not that incredible with The Serpent Society, either, since they’re only connected via dishing out Poison Counters. Still, this new source of demand could easily keep prices up if this Commander proves popular.
Should demand increase as the set’s release approaches, then Bloodroot Apothecary’s low supply could become a real problem. Technically, a reprint would solve this problem, but finding a place for that could prove difficult. As an eternal legal Poison-focused card, it’s unlikely we’ll get a thematically fitting precon anytime soon, for instance.
Despite these potential troubles, there’s a real chance that the Bloodroot Apothecary price spike won’t last for too long. Like the majority of Commander-based price spikes, when new legends come along, interest in past cards can fade. Considering the Marvel Super Heroes precons are right around the corner, this may happen sooner rather than later.
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