Besides the constant rollercoaster that is Double Masters 2022, MTG has not had a lot of financial movement in the past week. Besides the set mentioned above’s Mythic Rares showing a sign of spiking, one other bizarre movement has been detected. The initial spike for these happened a few days ago, so the prices now have stabilized slightly lower than the initial spike. Either way, some random Commander cards are spiking incredibly hard.
Tower of the Magistrate
Since the source of this spike was a social one (we’ll get to what that was), there is a lot of instability surrounding the price of this card. After the initial spike, Tower of the Magistrate hit $50 while its foil version hit $500! The massive foil multiplier is due to the card being printed in Mercadian Masques, one of the older Wizards of the Coast sets that didn’t have an excess of foil printings due to supplementary products. Since then, Tower of the Magistrate has dropped to have a market average of around $35 and $375, respectively. That being said, not every source is updated with the spikes from social sources. This is shown by NM to MP Towers selling for anywhere between $15 to $40. Before the spike (a week before the writing of this article), Tower of Magistrates was a $5 card.
Argivian Find
While the Tower of the Magistrate spoiler was much more dramatic, this quieter one was, in my opinion, more impressive. Argivian Find was floating between $1-3 for a while. This is partially because it’s an old card (like the Tower) but mostly because it sees fringe play in Commander and cEDH. After the social event caused this to spike, Argivian Find peaked at $12 before returning to $10. For any who managed to open this Weatherlight uncommon, this card has more than tripled its value from the past week! The effect is nothing special, but in a game of Commander where you’re only allowed to have one copy of a card in your deck, recursion becomes more essential to find crucial pieces to your overall strategy.
Fury Storm
Originally featured in the 2018 Nature’s Vengeance EDH Precon, Fury Storm was another card mentioned by this source that had a massive spike in price. This card may be a good fit for Commanders who interact with many instant and sorceries in red. For each instance that you cast your Commander, the spell copies itself. Fury Storm itself also copies an Instant or Sorcery. This card, in particular, is the scariest thing on the whole list and may see another price spike. Since it’s only $6 right now, I recommend picking these up.
There’s more to Fury Storm than what’s on the surface. Fury Storm threatens to go infinite on the spot if you’ve cast your Commander at least once. You do this by copying your original Fury Storm with the copy of Fury Storm. The new copy simply copies your actual Fury Storm again. This will generate infinite copies of Fury Storm. How do you abuse copy effects in MTG? While there aren’t many cards that trigger from copied cards since caring about cast spells is a commonality, there are still ways to win the game. Ral, Storm Conduit will end the game on the spot, dealing infinite damage to your opponents with its static ability. Magecraft is also particularly potent with this loop. Use Commander all-star Archmage Emeritus to draw as many cards as you want or use Storm-Kiln Artist to generate infinite mana, artifacts and have a creature with infinite power. Professor Onyx is also capable of winning the game on the spot with her Magecraft ability.
This was mentioned by the social source, Fury Storm is also an excellent tool to copy your opponent’s win condition and resolve it first. Laugh at your opponent’s Expropriate when you make three copies for yourself in response.
Why did these Random Cards have an Insane Spike?
For any EDH players who aren’t already aware, The Command Zone is a group of content creators at the center of not only Commander but MTG content as a whole. They’ve even collaborated with celebrities like MTG enthusiast Post Malone in the content on their channel. This past week, The Command Zone released a Youtube episode about ‘underrated cards in Commander.’ Because of how influential this social source is, the episode alone was enough cause to send the prices of these cards into the stratosphere. We’ve talked before about the social influence of secondary market prices, and for the most part, it makes sense. These rectangular pieces of cardboard only have as much value as we, the players, give them.
Not Everything Spiked
While this video was the sole driver for all the spikes mentioned, many of the cards featured in this video did not see any spikes. Like the card Compost that was also featured on one of our top lists, outside of these cards being undiscovered gems, supply seems to be a significant driver with the cards that did spike. All the cards above are from old sets or were released in supplementary products. They also only have one printing. While other cards in this video likely also saw an increase in demand, it was not enough to dent the supply on something like Bolt Bend. The spikes are, therefore, caused mainly by the market demand following this video but are also the result of poor supply. Cards like these would be excellent targets for a future reprint.
Do You think these cards are Worth it?
As was seen with the Double Masters 2022 Draft Box hype, sometimes social commentary can get a little out of control in the MTG secondary market. These boxes found their price points pretty quickly afterward, but any who bought in when they were above market price is probably kicking themselves. With how expensive this card game is, saving every cent you can is essential. On that note, are these recently spiked cards really worth their price tag? As the video above states, searching the MTG archives will reward you with undervalued gems if you have the time. MTG is a huge card game, so doing this successfully takes hours of your time.
