Lately, Wizards of the Coast has had a habit of reprinting lower rarity cards that have a huge competitive history. We’ve seen this with Pyroclasm from Duskmourn and Burst Lightning from MTG Foundations. Because both of these cards were big forces in past formats, they got a lot of love from Wizards. Having previously been printed as textless promos, there were some seriously fancy variants with rather low supply.
Unsurprisingly, once reprints were confirmed, many MTG players quickly rushed to buy these classic rare variants. This, in turn, pushed the price of these cards up considerably as supply failed to meet new demand. Another card with a fancy textless variant was reprinted in MTG Foundations. While Zombify isn’t doing a ton of work in the current Standard format, it is a powerful card.
Zombify
Zombify was reprinted as an uncommon in MTG Foundations. For reference, this is a four-mana Sorcery that reanimates a creature from your graveyard. No strings attached.
Zombify definitely isn’t a Standard powerhouse, but it is seeing some experimentation in various lists. The most common of these is Rakdos Reanimator decks that utilize The Infamous Cruelclaw in combination with larger creatures like Valgavoth, Terror Eater and Trumpeting Carnosaur. Between the Cruelclaw and Zombify, there are multiple ways to cheat in powerful haymakers. While this is not a tier-one archetype, it is gaining popularity.
As players begin to build Rakdos Reanimator, the demand for Zombify is increasing. Sure, you can spend a few cents on a Foundations printing of the card, but if you want the pretty textless version of the card, you may have to pay a premium.
The Spike
Before Zombify’s reprinting in Foundations, this textless version of the card wasn’t even worth a dollar. Now, the supply of Zombify’s promo variant has almost been cleaned out on TCGplayer! This was a Friday Night Magic promo, so there isn’t an abundance of these in the first place, but now that players actually want the card, it’s becoming difficult to find.
There are a lot of damaged and played copies of Zombify out there. A Near Mint Zombify can run you as much as $7, but you’re more likely to be paying around the $2-3 mark for most copies of the card. The market average for Zombify, for reference, is currently $2.56. The card began spiking near the end of October, so Zombify’s price has been rising for about a month now.
What’s a good price to pick up this copy of Zombify for? I would be happy to find one for somewhere in the $2-3 range. Near mint copies should probably retail for more, and damaged copies should retail for less. Considering that there are copies of this card going for as much as $6.83, it seems like cleaner copies of this card could be rather expensive compared to their 50-cent uncommon version.
The good news is if you don’t want to spend $2-3 on a card like this, you don’t have to. Just grab the MTG Foundations reprint, and the game piece functions the same. If you want the fancier version of this card to play in Standard, we’d recommend buying it sooner than later. Unfortunately, once this card goes down in price, it may not be playable in the format any longer. If it continues to be playable, this copy of the card might remain expensive. It all depends on how the supply of textless Zombify reacts to the market.
