Over Magic: The Gathering’s 31 years of existence, Wizards has made over 30,000 unique cards. While the vast majority of these aren’t playable in most MTG formats, it’s no wonder a lot of cards get forgotten. Occasionally, these cards can make surprise returns thanks to being effective tech against new Commander strategies.
That appears to be exactly what’s happening to Equinox. First released 31 years ago in Legends, this has seemingly been all but forgotten. Thanks to new synergy with upcoming legends and as unique tech, however, this card has spiked in price.
Equinox
Like many old MTG cards, Equinox is a rather simple. Essentially, this card lets you enchant and tap a land to counter a land destruction spell that targets you. For one mana, this is a pretty sweet effect that can keep you safe from a lot of hate in Commander.
While Equinox does have potential, the card sees play in less than 1,000 Commander decks, according to EDHREC. This isn’t really a surprise, since the card is situational at best. If your opponents aren’t running land destruction, Equinox will sit around and do nothing. While cards like Armageddon and Strip Mine do see moderate play, there’s little guarantee you’ll face them, especially with the social implications of blowing up lands in Commander.
With no sideboards in Commander, you have to take a bit of a risk to run Equinox in the 99. That said, there is a fair bit of land destruction floating about at the moment, thanks to Hearthhull, the Worldseed. While most variants of this deck are land sacrifice-focused, some variants do branch out into land destruction.
As if this weren’t enough impetus, Toph, the First Metalbender is going to have a lot more lands floating around. Equinox actually has fantastic synergy with Toph thanks to the card’s current oracle text. Since Equinox can be used to counter a spell that would destroy a land of yours, this means it can be used to protect you nontoken artifacts.
This turns Equinox from a risky inclusion in the 99 into an auto include, as it becomes a repeatable free counterspell. In theory, you could also protect the lands that you Earthbend, but the ability does have built-in protection. Still, if you’re playing Toph and want to keep your artifacts safe, Equinox seems insane.
The Spike
Sadly, if you like the sound of this synergy with Toph, you’ll now have to pay a pretty penny for Equinox. Following a surge in demand earlier this month, there aren’t many near-mint copies left on the market. The few remaining copies that are still available are now selling for $5 a pop.
This time last month, before the sudden surge in interest, near-mint copies of Equinox were only $1.43. Considering the card hardly sees any play in Commander, even this price still might seem like a little much. Unsurprisingly, this price is due to the card’s natural rarity, which is especially prevalent for near-mint copies.
Thankfully, if you are in the market for a copy of Equinox and don’t care about condition, you can save yourself some money. Heavily played and damaged copies of this card are still available for under $1. Currently, there’s a surprisingly good amount of supply for these worse condition variants too.
While lower condition copies are still fairly widely available, it does appear that the near-mint supply has been manipulated somewhat. With 50 copies being sold over three days, there’s a good chance that investors bought up the available supply. As usual, this led to a rapid price increase as the remaining sellers capitalized on demand.
The Future
Looking ahead, the future does seem rather bright for Equinox. While we’ve only scratched the surface of the Avatar: The Last Airbender set, Toph, the First Metalbender looks like she’ll be a very popular Commander. With Equinox being an easy auto-include within the 99 of decks built around her, there could be a lot of demand soon.
If this happens, the price of Equinox could absolutely skyrocket since there are so few copies available. While it has been forgotten until now, this card is very powerful within this niche and will subsequently be highly desirable. There’s a non-zero chance that the price of this card will double again, or even more, going forward.
Notably, while the short-term prospects of Equinox are very compelling, this card isn’t on the Reserved List. As such, nothing is stopping Wizards from reprinting it in a Commander precon, Secret Lair drop, or bonus sheet. If this happens, the card’s price would undoubtedly crash, as there should be more than enough copies to sate demand.
This possibility of being reprinted might be the reason that MTG players haven’t heavily invested in Equinox so far. While Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn’t have precons, it does have a bonus sheet. In theory, this puts a reprint of Equinox on the table, especially with all the land synergies, but that’s not guaranteed and seems rather unlikely.
Ultimately, as always, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens to the price of Equinox. If players simply didn’t know this card and synergy existed, it could see a massive popularity and further price spike.
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