Grinding Station has been all the rage in Modern recently. Underworld Breach decks are widely considered to be the best deck in the format thanks to the unbanning of Mox Opal. Now that Grinding Breach is capable of killing on turn two, the namesake artifact is climbing in price.
On top of Grinding Station being incredibly popular in Modern at the moment, this card has very few printings available. Even though the card’s original printing is a 20-year-old one, the recent reprinting of the card from just a few months ago is the one seeing a price spike.
Grinding Station
To date, Grinding Station has only ever had two printings. The first of these was from 2004’s Fifth Dawn, which is understandably hard to acquire. Despite this implicit rarity, the variant of Grinding Station spiking recently is actually the recent reprint from Mystery Booster 2.
As you may have expected, this variant of Grinding Station is a premium one of sorts. The card was only available in the Future Sight Frame, which means it’s not exactly easy to find when opening Mystery Booster 2 packs. Curiously, Underworld Breach, the other namesake card for the Grinding Breach strategy, also has a Future Sight Frame printing in this set.
On its own, the rarity of Grinding Station within Mystery Booster 2 would surely be enough to make it demand a decent price tag. Factor in the fact that Mystery Booster 2 itself is difficult to come across, and it’s no wonder why this card is so expensive. The set was never made widely available to Local Game Stores or major retailers, as it’s intended to be a convention-exclusive product.
The only ways to find Mystery Booster 2 product is to grab it off the secondary market, go to a MagicCon event, or purchase a Festival-in-a-Box, which isn’t currently available. This means that the Grinding Station printed this year could easily be rarer than the one printed 20 years ago.
The Spike
Grinding Station’s Future Sight Frame variant jumped from $7 to about $30. The jump began right before the announcement that unbanned Mox Opal. While the initial spike may not have been related to Grinding Station’s playability in the Modern format, the card’s sudden spike in demand following its incredible performance certainly helped.
While the Future Sight Frame Grinding Station has sold for above $30 for its non-foil variant, the card has been selling for a wide range of prices. It has sold from anywhere between $21 and $33 over the past eight days. At the time of writing, the cheapest copy of the Future Sight Frame Grinding Station available on TCGplayer is $25, but most copies of the card are going for $30 or more.
If you don’t have a desire for the Future Sight Frame, the Fifth Dawn copy of Grinding Station is significantly cheaper. Because this copy of Grinding Station is 20 years old, there are a lot more played copies available on the market. You can pick up damaged copies of Grinding Station for about $9. Near-mint copies, however, still retail for about $14.
Unfortunately, if you’re a foil lover, there are no cheap foil copies of Grinding Station available. Both foil printings of the card are exceptionally rare, so they’re both expensive. According to recent sales, a played foil Grinding Station from Fifth Dawn costs about $80, while more severely damaged ones cost $60. These are the cheapest foil Grinding Stations available. Near-mint Fifth Dawn foils are still worth well over $100.
The most expensive variant of Grinding Station is a Future Sight Frame foil from Mystery Booster 2. These are exceptionally rare, with only 1-2 foil cards appearing in an entire box of Mystery Booster 2. A vast majority of boxes only have one foil card in them. Foil Future Sight Frame Grinding Stations are worth about $150.
Will Prices Go Down?
Right now, Grinding Breach is the clear top dog in the Modern format, which means it has a target on its back. As players rush to arm themselves with hate pieces for the combo deck, it may start losing some percentage points. Once players figure out the Grinding Breach matchup, there may be less of a demand to build the deck. This decrease in demand could translate to lower prices.
Grinding Station may be in demand right now, but the card doesn’t see play in other places. This is exclusively a combo card that doesn’t do anything on its own, which means that the types of decks that Grinding Station appears in are very narrow. Personally, unless Underworld Breach needs to get banned, I would expect that Grinding Station’s prices will start to decrease before long.