To say that Commander players have been eating well recently would be an understatement. Between The Hobbit, Mystery Booster Commander Edition, and Star Trek, players have gotten to see tons of new build-arounds. This, in turn, has caused a wide range of price spikes, as multiple new legends have unlocked some serious synergies.
While one legend driving demand can often be enough to cause a spike, Prime Speaker Vannifar’s price is being elevated by multiple cards. With legends from The Hobbit and Mystery Booster Commander Edition contributing to demand, it’s no wonder prices are up.
MTG Prime Speaker Vannifar
Despite its color identity being slightly worse, Prime Speaker Vannifar is just a Birthing Pod on a stick. Both cards can trade one creature for another, stepping up in mana value each time. Technically, Prime Speaker Vannifar is actually better at this, too, since it’s cheaper to activate and easier to abuse.
Alongside untap effects like Freed from the Real, Prime Speaker Vannifar can trade up creatures repeatedly during the same turn. If you use this to string together potent enters abilities, you can set up truly insane turns. Even when used fairly, however, simply using Prime Speaker Vannifar as a tutor is always effective.
On top of this, Prime Speaker Vannifar is an Elf, letting it work wonders alongside Thranduil, the Elvenking. Not only can Thranduil pinch this ability for redundancy, but tutoring legendary Elves lets you consistently activate Thranduil’s second ability.
Thanks to also being an Ooze, Prime Speaker Vannifar is also incredibly effective alongside Uugguu, the Omniplasm. As an easy sacrifice outlet, Vannifar can split your Oozes while bringing another into play for future splitting. Additionally, thanks to being an Ooze, you can even split Vannifar to accelerate its potential.
With this synergy in mind, it’s little wonder that Prime Speaker Vannifar is preemptively being included within 71% of Uugguu lists. Now, between Uugguu and Thranduil, over 1,600 new lists are using Vannifar, which has pushed prices up dramatically.
The Spike
Back in mid-July, picking up a copy of Prime Speaker Vannifar for as little as $1.50 was surprisingly easy. Considering Birthing Pod sells for around $12, even after multiple Secret Lair reprints, this feels like a massive steal. Sadly, this once budget price point is now long gone, and it’s quickly getting further away, too.
Currently, if you want to pick up a near-mint copy of Prime Speaker Vannifar, it’ll set you back $6.47. This represents a 331% price spike in just under one month, although prices are quickly ramping up. Not only is there a peak sale price of $19.90, but supply is especially low right now.
After 297 near-mint sales in the past month, there are now just 23 listings left on TCGplayer for this condition. Even including worse-condition copies, supply is low across the board, with only 50 listings in total. The cheapest of these are lightly played copies for $2.77, although prices jump dramatically to $5.05 in the next listing.
An Underrated Gem?
While Prime Speaker Vannifar is more susceptible to removal than classic Birthing Pod, it’s still a hugely powerful card. It does feel like Vannifar is genuinely underrated and underplayed, in fact, especially in Simic decks. If anything, it feels like this should have always been more expensive, and it’s only now getting its due.
Should this current increase in popularity turn into long-term recognition and demand, Prime Speaker Vannifar could easily maintain its price point. Hell, as a mythic from 2019 with no other printing, it could easily sell for more. That being said, while supply for this card is clearly low, a reprint would solve this problem.
As much as a reprint could cause a price crash, predicting one happening is basically impossible. Between bonus sheets, Commander precons, and even Secret Lair, a reprint could pop up anywhere. Just because a reprint could happen, however, doesn’t mean that it will, so we could be waiting for absolutely ages.
Ultimately, as always, we can really only wait and see what’ll happen to Prime Speaker Vannifar going forward. In the short term, the card does seem underrated, but even that doesn’t guarantee it’ll become popular and subsequently expensive.
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