The world of MTG finance is no place for the faint of heart. It’s a living, breathing ecosystem, where unseen factors shift the prices of cards up and down every single day. It’s about as volatile as the stock market, and just as cloaked in secrecy. If you want a good example of this, you needn’t look any further than the price drops affecting some of the new MTG Marvel cards at present.
These cards seemed like the definition of safe bets when the drops launched nearly three weeks ago. They featured popular characters, were playable in Commander, and had very limited supply. Early prices were hugely encouraging, too. Now, however, things have done a full 180. These Marvel cards have absolutely tanked in price, most by over 50%.
The MTG Marvel Price Drops
It’s hard to convey the sheer scale of the recent MTG Marvel price drops. The best way I can think of to do so is just to get right into the raw numbers. As mentioned above, all five of the new legendary heroes have lost a huge chunk of their initial value. Captain America gets off the lightest, with a 46% drop down from $65 to $35. None of the heroes get out of this unscathed, however.
Storm, Force of Nature, the most-hyped and most expensive of the new Marvel Commanders, has crashed from $86 to $42. That’s a 51% drop, in spite of all that potential power. After this, things really get bad. Black Panther, Wakandan King has gone from $40 to $16, a 60% drop, while Wolverine, Best There Is has fallen from $71 to $28, which is a 61% drop. Finally, Iron Man, Titan of Innovation has taken the hardest hit of all, dropping 66% from $56 to $19.
The Rainbow Foil versions of these cards aren’t faring any better. These have all fallen by very similar amounts. In fact, the Rainbow Foil editions of Captain America and Storm have actually dropped more than their regular counterparts. These all have higher prices than the regular versions, of course, but they appear no more resilient to whatever erosion is currently taking place.
In addition, the reprints from the Marvel Secret Lairs are all dropping hard too. There are too many of these to list here, but particular highlights include Wakandan Skyscraper, which took a 70% drop from $7 to $2, and Secure the Wastes, which fell by 69% from $9 to $3. While many of these cards are likely still overpriced, they’re much more affordable to the average player now.
Cause And Effect
These are huge drops, in a relatively short space of time. It wasn’t long ago that we were all stunned by how quickly this Superdrop sold out, after all. So what gives? What’s the logic behind these massive MTG Marvel price drops? Like much of the secondary market, there’s no one clear answer here. There are certainly a few factors we can point to, however.
First of all, this weekend saw Mark Rosewater confirm that all of the exclusive new cards from these drops will definitely get a reprint at some point. This wasn’t exactly new information, but the reassurance undoubtedly made the initial high prices of these cards much less attractive. Why pay a premium now when you can pick up the cards you want for a fraction of that later?
Interestingly, these huge price drops started before this statement was made. Without exception, all of the new Marvel legends hit their price peak between the 11th and 13th of November, and have been dropping ever since. This is a near-exact midpoint between the initial release of the drops and today. Clearly, the tides of public opinion started to turn well before Rosewater got involved.
A more likely explanation is that the early hype bubble around these Secret Lair drops burst around November 11th. Because they sold out so quickly at first, scalpers were quick to capitalize on everyone’s FOMO by selling the cards and drops for big money. The people buying the new legends for upwards of $70 were all doing so via pre-sales before any product actually got into players’ hands.
Now that the Marvel cards are out in the wild, their prices are starting to adjust to more accurately reflect market demand. That’s bad news for scalpers and good news for genuine players.
The Right Time To Buy?
Many discussing the MTG Marvel price drops online are noting that now might be an ideal time to buy into the cards if you haven’t already. This is an exciting prospect. The new Commanders here are all interesting build-arounds, after all, and their current prices are about half what they were previously. Does this logic bear out?
In some ways, it does. Though they’ve dropped hard recently, most of the Marvel legends are now showing signs of recovery with small price upticks. It’s possible that the current low points will be historic lows for the cards. Until they’re inevitably reprinted, that is.
The issue of reprints muddies the water on this topic somewhat. Knowing that these cards will be reprinted definitely lowers their price ceiling, but there’s no guarantee that the manner of their reprinting will actually have a big impact on supply. They could be printed as Collector Booster exclusives for one of the upcoming Marvel sets, which would do little for their prices. Conversely, if they appeared in a main set or a Bonus Sheet they’d nosedive even further.
This is all likely far in the future, however. For now, players only have one option if they want to run these Commanders. While some, like Wolverine, are definitely overpriced currently in a vacuum, others are legitimately interesting for the format. Storm and Captain America in particular are seeing a lot of love, hence the latter’s relatively low price drop.
For now, I think these cards have likely fallen as far as they will for a while. Prices look to be stabilizing, and $20-40 is probably about right for popular, limited-supply cards like these. If you don’t need your copies desperately, holding out until they’re reprinted could save you a bundle, however.
