In the continued celebration of the Secret Lair Bonus Slots, Wizards of the Coast has granted MTG players an opportunity to experience a sort of lottery with some of their more exclusive products. Because these cards are not officially announced in any capacity, players are left to discover these themselves and concoct precisely how lucky they are after an appropriate sample size is posted. While any bizarrely unannounced treatments merited a considerable price tag once upon a time, recent events suggest that this may no longer be consistent. That said, one particular card was discovered recently that will probably go for a high price tag.
Shadowborn Apostle
This particular premium Shadowborn Apostle treatment was discovered in the Kegisloops Secret Lair, as reported by Redditor GladiusLumin. A lot of Slivers have notably come out from these Secret Lair bonus slots recently, and have not ended up being worth much, so why is a Shadowborn Apostle so exciting?
Well, this is not the first time that a card like Shadowborn Apostle has been printed into this bonus slot, and all the past iterations of cards like this have been incredibly expensive. As an example, lets look at the most well-known of these premium treatments:
Persistent Petitioners
Persistent Petitioners and Shadowborn Apostle both encompass the minority of MTG cards that do not have a limit of copies per deck. These cards need a ton of copies to be passably playable but are communal favorites for EDH. When built properly, these decks create an incredibly consistent strategy that is not horribly overpowered, which are the two metrics that most players want to hit with this format.
Rarities between these Persistent Petitioners vary heavily, resulting in a variance in price. The most expensive of these Petitioners, as pictured above, go for about $270, according to TCGplayer. The cheapest Persistent Petitioners is actually the most recent. This $30 card is shown at the top of this section.
The MTG community has discovered about six premium variants for Persistent Petitioners. I say ‘about’ because it is pretty challenging to track how many of these exist since Wizards of the Coast doesn’t officially announce them. There are only two Shadowborn Apostle variants discovered as of now, and there will likely be more.
Price Forecast?
While the most recent Shadowborn Apostle does not have enough market data behind it to discern a price, it looks like the Apostle pictured above is currently going for $110. As has been mentioned when discussing the major falling out in prices for Bonus Slot cards, while we would previously assume that these cards are rare as a community, we no longer have any idea just how rare these cards are. If something were to be done about the problematic shipping costs for Secret Lair products, perhaps we would have a more appropriate sample size sooner.
