We shouted out pretty quickly that Opalesence was likely to see a price spike, but even then, we were a bit slow about it. Multiple players already had the card’s financial spike on their radar, and its price did not stop rising.
Now, near-mint copies of Opalesence can cost as much as $40. That’s a long way from the $14 near-mint copies were at the beginning of August. Anyone who’s been keeping up with Duskmourn should have seen this coming, but for those who haven’t, let’s get caught up.
Duskmourn Loves Enchantments
- Mana Value: 2WW
- Rarity: Rare
- Card Type: Enchantment
- MTG Sets: Urza’s Destiny
- Card Text: Each other global enchantment is a creature with power and toughness each equal to its converted mana cost. It’s still an enchantment.
Opalesence is a fantastic win condition in an enchantment matters Commander deck. Turning all of your enchantments into creatures and turning them sideways is an excellent way to win games, especially if you want your other enchantments to restrict your opponent’s actions.
Duskmourn has increased interest in enchantment-based strategies heavily. Not only are a ton of enchantment creatures coming in the set thanks to Delirium enablement but multiple new Duskmourn mechanics specifically care about enchantments. Rooms are a new enchantment type, basically acting as a bizarre split card, while Eerie cares about enchantments entering play and Rooms being fully complete. On top of this, an entire Commander precon deck in Duskmourn is focused around enchantments, and white happens to be in its color identity. For all these reasons, there is a major uptick in interest for cards like Opalesence.
Opalesence, sadly, is one of those cards where demand likely outweighs supply. This is on the Reserved List, which means no additional copies of Opalesence can ever be printed. No strictly better version of the card can ever be printed, either.
The card is also from Urza’s Destiny, a set released 25 years ago. Needless to say, Magic was not as big of a game back then as it is now, so there were a lot fewer cards going around. All of this means that Opalesence is not the easiest card to find on the market. Small increases in demand will make this card’s price jump.
Did You Pick it Up?
If you didn’t listen to our nudge the first time, maybe you’ll listen now. Opalesence is a powerful finisher for any enchantment deck in Commander, and the archetype is getting a ton of support in Duskmourn. If you expect a new enchantment-based legendary creature to catch your fancy, you should consider starting to find a copy of this card. Beat-up versions are still not too expensive, but that may not last forever.
If you’re not interested in Opalesence right now, we would recommend you stay away for a while. There is a chance that this card’s price comes back down after the initial Duskmourn hype settles, but because this is a Reserved List card, it could act differently than we expect. There will never be more copies of Opalesence in the world, so for each copy that enters a collection, never to return, there is one less copy of the card available on the secondary market.
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