By now, Fire Lord Azula has well and truly cemented her place as the most popular MTG Avatar Commander. Offering an insane spell copying ability, alongside Firebending two, too, this incredible rise in popularity is hardly surprising. While Azula is somewhat hogging the spotlight, she’s hardly the only MTG Avatar Commander worth paying attention to.
Between Toph, First Metalbender, Fire Lord Zuko, and Avatar Aang, MTG Avatar has tons of interesting Commanders. While many of these focus on the set’s mechanics, others, like Iroh, Grand Lotus go in a different direction. Offering Flashback to instants and sorceries in your graveyard, Iroh feels like a great MTG Commander.
Beyond supporting a classic MTG mechanic, Iroh, Grand Lotus also has some insane synergy. This has managed to cause a decades-old MTG card from way back in Odyssey to spike in price.
MTG Catalyst Stone
On the surface, Catalyst Stone might seem just okay with Iroh, Grand Lotus. Since he gives all non-Lesson instant and sorcery cards Flashback, Catalyst Stone helps to reduce their costs. At worst, this is always useful and easily allows you to get double value out of many spells. At best, however, you can make some spells completely free to Flashback.
Since Iroh’s final ability gives Lesson spells Flashback 1, Catalyst Stone can reduce that cost to nothing. While this ability is only active on your turn, the value it can provide obviously isn’t to be scoffed at. Thanks to MTG Avatar, there are also plenty of powerful Lessons to fill your deck with, so accessing this synergy should be easy.
As if all that wasn’t enough, Catalyst Stone has another ability of its own. By increasing the cost of your opponents’ Flashback spells, this artifact is like a mini Stax piece. Admittedly, this additional upside won’t be useful all the time, but it’s a nice bit of icing on the cake.
Despite Catalyst Stone having a lot going for it with Iroh in MTG Commander, the card doesn’t have an insane play rate. According to EDHREC, the card is only seeing play within 28% of Iroh decks right now. This might not seem like much, but this does still make him the most popular home for the card.
The Spike
To date, EDHREC’s stats claim over 1,200 Iroh decks featuring Catalyst Stone have been built or brewed. This means there has been an immense uptick in demand for a card that never had much supply to begin with. Thanks to the lower print runs back in the day and a lack of reprints, this Odyssey card isn’t exactly common.
For better or worse, this has caused supply to drain quickly and prices to shoot up fast. In the past month, only around 60 near-mint copies of Catalyst Stone have been sold, but that’s essentially the entire market on TCGplayer. Similarly, the 112 lightly played copies sold have left next to nothing on the market, causing a price spike.
At the start of November, non-foil near-mint copies of Catalyst Stone were selling for around $2.06 on average. Once MTG Avatar was released and players picked up their copies, however, Catalyst Stone has dramatically risen in price. Now, copies of this card are selling for $14 on average, with most listings closer to $15.
In one month, this is a 579% price spike, which is certainly nothing to be scoffed at. Thankfully, if you’re in the market for a copy of this card, a few cheaper options are available. Heavily and moderately played copies, for instance, are selling for around $12, although that’s admittedly not the best savings ever.
Should you really like spending money, Catalyst Stone does have a foil variant, which is selling for $30+, depending on condition. While things are already expensive across the board, if demand continues, this could just be the start.
The Future
Realistically, as always, it’s impossible to predict the future of this, or any MTG price spike. That being said, unlike Norin the Wary, who has tons of generic utility, Catalyst Stone is very specific. This card will only really play well in Flashback-focused decks, and those aren’t the most common.
Unless a future MTG set has a strong Flashback theme, the hype around Catalyst Stone may die out sooner rather than later. Even if this does end up happening, there’s also the possibility of reprints to worry about. Since this price spike is driven by low supply, a reprint would likely cause a complete price crash.
Ultimately, even if this future support and hypothetical reprint don’t happen, Catalyst Stone simply isn’t that amazing in MTG. Unless you know your opponent is using Flashback cards, and you’ve got a ton too, the value is limited. Due to this, it does feel like Catalyst Stone will end up falling in price before too long.
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