The Premodern format has really been picking up speed recently. Tickets for major events have been selling out exceptionally quickly, and the metgame is impressively well-balanced. With a bunch of competitive tier one decks to pick between, it’s no wonder so many players are gravitating to the format.
As Premodern gets more and more popular, we’ve seen several newly crowned format staples spike in price. Tangle Wire and Psychatog have both spiked in price recently, and now Phyrexian Devourer is doing the same. With recent sales topping out at $48, this card is already expensive, but that may just be the start.
MTG Phyrexian Devourer
First released almost 30 years ago in Alliances, Phyrexian Devourer took its sweet time to get going. On the surface, this card is pretty terrible, as it’s expensive and requires a lot of resources to actually work. Even if you do play it and exile a bunch of your library, Phyrexian Devourer will likely end up killing itself.
While Phyrexian Devourer might seem like a bit of a joke, it gets seriously scary with just a simple Fling. Since you can keep exiling cards in response to Phyrexian Devourer’s sacrifice trigger, this card easily has one-shot potential. This can even work quite well in Commander, although having four opponents does complicate things.
Thankfully, Premodern doesn’t have this problem, allowing Phyrexian Devourer to thrive in the format. A big part of this success is down to Tinker, which can cheat Devourer into play ahead of schedule. From here, you only really need two mana for a Fling to win the game, as Devourer does the rest.
This out-of-nowhere strategy has Devourer Combo routinely winning Premodern leagues, now that it’s on Magic Online. This success streak has also been driving up paper prices, especially as the format gains popularity. Now, supply for Phyrexian Devourer has reached an all-time low, causing prices to shoot up.
The Spike
While Phyrexian Devourer has been doing well in Premodern, it’s hardly a multiformat staple in MTG. What it did have going for it, however, was age, as it hasn’t been reprinted since Alliances. This card, in fact, is on the Reserved List, so we’re never going to get any more copies of it.
Thanks to this implicit scarcity, copies of Phyrexian Devourer used to sell for around $14 a few months ago. This price has been surprisingly consistent amidst steady sales, but a recent spike changed all that. With a staggering 15 copies being sold in one day, the market was left with just a few copies remaining.
Now, on TCGplayer, there are only ten listings for copies of Phyrexian Devourer, regardless of condition. Prices for these start at $95 for a near-mint example; however, notably, nothing has sold at this price. Instead, the most recent sale was for $54.39, for a lightly played example of Phyrexian Devourer.
While this does mark a 288% price spike in the past few months, things are very much in a state of flux. For a time, $200 near-mint listings were the only option, but cheaper supply has steadily been hitting the market. Thanks to this, it might not be long before prices dip back down to slightly more affordable levels.
The Future
Sadly, while the price of Phyrexian Devourer is pretty volatile at the moment, the future does look expensive. With no hope of a reprint, thanks to its Reserved List status, and Premodern only growing more popular, there’s a perfect storm of desirability. Unless the Premodern metagame dramatically shifts all of a sudden, there’s no telling when this demand might end.
Technically, while demand is a strong driver, the price of Phyrexian Devourer could still fall back down over time. Should sales slow or stop, those who have invested money into Devourer may lower their prices to move their copies. Sadly, while this could theoretically happen, there’s no guarantee it will, or at least anytime soon.
If there’s any slight silver lining to the current price of Phyrexian Devourer, it’s that Devourer Combo isn’t the best Premodern deck. While capable of winning Leagues, it’s hardly a dominant force that players need to win. Thanks to this, even if Phyrexian Devourer does end up being a $100 MTG card, players can simply play other decks.
Ultimately, as always, we can’t predict the future of MTG or what’ll happen to Phyrexian Devourer. As such, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks and months.
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