Despite containing plenty of powerful cards for constructed and Commander, Avatar: The Last Airbender hasn’t caused many price spikes yet. Potentially, MTG players simply aren’t that enthused about the set, or are just waiting for spoiler season to conclude. Thankfully, until that happens, there are still plenty of older cards worth looking at.
The recently released PlayStation MTG cards, for instance, have unsurprisingly been commanding a lot of attention. God of War and Ghost of Tsushima, in particular, both sold out incredibly quickly and have been moving the markets. Curiously, one of the least popular PlayStation legends has also been doing the same recently.
Thieving Varmint
Released in the Outlaws of Thunder Junction Grand Larceny Commander deck, Thieving Varmint is a fairly simple MTG card. At worst, this little Varmint is a dangerous blocker that will make your opponents think twice about sending threats at you. Beyond just having Deathtouch, Thieving Varmint is also a rather compelling mana dork for a card-stealing deck.
Offering two mana of any color for one life, Thieving Varmint makes casting stolen spells significantly easier. That said, the fixing provided isn’t always needed if you’re using Nathan Drake, Treasure Hunter. In fact, a lot of card-stealing legends come with built-in protections to let you cast your stolen spells.
Gonti, Canny Acquisitor, for instance, similarly ensures you don’t need specific mana to cast your opponents’ stolen spells. Even with this in mind, getting two mana for just one life is still an amazing trade in Commander. So long as you have enough stolen spells to cast, the Varmint can really put in work.
Notably, while they’re not the most common, Wizards has been printing more and more card-stealing effects recently. In MTG Spider Man, for instance, we got Black Cat, Cunning Thief. Unsurprisingly, this mono-black legend has also been running Thieving Varmint fairly consistently, although she’s not the biggest demand driver.
While these recent decks have been drawing attention to Thieving Varmint, according to EDHREC, it hasn’t been obscene. This card is seeing play within 64% and 52% of Nathan Drake and Black Cat decks, respectively, but these legends aren’t massively popular. In total, only around 650 new decks are using this card, but that’s still been enough to move the market.
The Spike
For the longest time, near-mint copies of Thieving Varmint were selling for around $0.69 on TCGplayer. This isn’t really too surprising, as while the card sees play in around 24,000 Commander decks, Gonti, Canny Acquisitor is its most common home. Due to this, players don’t really need to pick up copies, as they can instead just buy the Grand Larceny deck.
That said, Gonti only accounts for around 7000 of the decks that use Thieving Varmint, so demand is still somewhat steady. Speaking of demand, the spikes driven by the recently released legends doesn’t make a lot of sense. With Spider Man released on the 26th and the PlayStation legends spoiled on the 27th, you’d expect an immense rush of demand then.
Instead, it took until October 13th for a lot of MTG players to pay attention to this card. Potentially, this may have been caused by an article on EDHREC, but that is unconfirmed. Either way, this sudden spike in demand caused a significant dent in the available supply, quickly pushing prices up.
Currently, copies of Thieving Varmint are selling for around $2.79 on TCGplayer. While the market price figure is still a little way behind this, it might not be long before prices increase further. With only 21 listings available at the moment, there’s not much supply remaining to go around.
Thankfully, there is an Extended Art variant of Thieving Varmint, which is significantly cheaper at the moment. With 122 listings available, prices for near-mint copies of this variant start at just $0.60. Notably, however, demand for this variant has been spiking hard recently, so these cheap copies may soon sell out.
The Future
For better or worse, the future of Thieving Varmint could really go either way. If Wizards prints more card-stealing legends in MTG, then the price of Thieving Varmint will likely increase. Given the love for this mechanic and Universes Beyond using it frequently, this feels like a fairly likely possibility.
That said, while we do expect to see more card-stealing cards in the future, Thieving Varmint could easily be reprinted. If Wizards of the Coast makes a precon around this mechanic, this Varmint would be an incredibly easy reprint. Should this happen, the price of Thieving Varmint would likely crash thanks to the new supply.
In the short term, at least, there’s a good chance the price of Thieving Varmint will keep climbing. Even with middling demand, low supply can still push up prices fast, as this Commander card could easily be worth $5. Whether or not it will be worth much more than that in the long run, however, remains to be seen.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage!