Unsurprisingly, the big MTG news this week has been the major ban announcement from Monday. Despite expectations of no changes, eight cards were either banned or unbanned, mixing up the metas of multiple formats. Unsurprisingly, this has had a pretty big impact on Magic’s secondary market, too, with multiple cards spiking in price.
While all this has been going on, however, several cards have been slowly climbing in price as supply gradually decreases. Some of these, like Corporeal Projection’s spike, are thanks to scarcity, but that isn’t always the case. Bottle-Cap Blast, for instance, used to be a widely available uncommon; however, that has all changed this month.
MTG Bottle-Cap Blast
Released as part of the MTG Fallout Commander decks, it’s easy to see why Bottle-Cap Blast is useful. Sure, it might be overcosted for removal; however, five mana to deal five mana isn’t the end of the world, in a pinch. Thankfully, it’s incredibly rare that you’d actually pay full price for Bottle-Cap Blast, thanks to Improvise.
In any deck with an abundance of artifacts, Bottle-Cap Blast essentially deals five damage for one mana. As if that wasn’t good enough, you can use this instant to get, at most, four Treasures by picking off something weak. While this can be accomplished by killing a weak token, many value engines handily also have poor stats.
Even if you’re not killing off a troublesome creature, getting four treasures for one mana is still a sweet deal. Naturally, this gets even better within any deck that wants a ton of treasures in the first place. With this in mind, it’s little wonder that Magda, Brazen Outlaw and Vihaan, Goldwaker love this card.
Technically, Mica, Reader of Ruins from Secrets of Strixhaven, is also responsible for a small uptick in play. While Mica can easily turn Treasures into copy effects, admittedly, it’s only had a small effect on overall demand. The same is true for the recently revealed Smaug the Magnificent, though notably this card won’t be released for months.
So far, each of these new-ish cards is only responsible for around 400 decks each, but that’s just a drop in the bucket. According to EDHREC, Bottle-Cap Blast sees play in over 35,5000 lists right now. While this isn’t too insane, compared to other staples, this has still put a serious strain on the market.
A Slow and Steady Spike
For most of its life, since being released in 2024, Bottle-Cap Blast has been a miraculously cheap MTG card. Back in early March, for instance, a near-mint copy would only cost you $0.44. In hindsight, this was an incredible deal, and it certainly seemed like Bottle-Cap Blast was somewhat slept on.
Thanks to over 775 near-mint sales in the past few months, however, this price point is long gone. Now, near-mint copies of Bottle-Cap Blast start at $3.79, and quickly increase after that. With TCGplayer Direct copies going for $6.92, the market price for this MTG card has been climbing pretty consistently recently.
Unfortunately, while $3.79 isn’t an obscene amount of money for Bottle-Cap Blast, there aren’t any cheaper copies available. All of the worse condition examples have already been bought out, and the surge foil variant is a significant premium. If you are in the market for one of these fancy foils, you’ll have to pay at least $58 for a near-mint example.
A Universal Problem
Currently, even at around $4, Bottle-Cap Blast doesn’t seem like a bad pickup for many red-aligned artifact-focused decks. Thanks to its somewhat limited supply from its Commander precon origins, it could easily climb in price. While this speculation is purely vibes-based, it feels like a $10 price tag isn’t out of the question for this card.
That being said, it also feels like Bottle-Cap Blast is ripe for being reprinted in any future treasure-focused Commander precon. While it might have the vibes of a precon card, however, reprinting Bottle-Cap Blast may be somewhat difficult. This is thanks to the card’s name, which is inherently tied to the Fallout universe.
Technically, Wizards of the Coast does have the ability to rename MTG cards when giving them new art. In theory, this could happen to Bottle-Cap Blast, solving the reprint problem. Sadly, while this is possible, Wizards rarely does this, especially in precons, so there’s no telling when, or if, a reprint might happen.
Ultimately, whether or not a reprint will materialize currently remains to be seen. As always, we’ll just have to watch closely and wait patiently to see what happens to Bottle-Cap Blast.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew, and our brand new MTG Rocks Podcast!