In its heyday, Raffine, Scheming Seer was an absolute monster of an MTG card. Empowering the titular Esper Raffine archetype, this card completely dominated Standard into becoming a bland midrange soup. Thankfully, Raffine rotated out last year, so we haven’t had to deal with their antics for some time.
While Raffine was most popular in Standard, they’re not completely unplayable elsewhere. Proving this, Raffine, Scheming Seer has recently seen a surprising uptick in demand, pushing the card’s price back up. A recent price spike of over 650% has allowed Raffine to hit a new all-time high price!
Raffine, Scheming Seer
Raffine, Scheming Seer is a real menace of an MTG card. They might not have a deadly enters effect, but they’re nonetheless capable of having an almost immediate impact. So long as you’ve got another creature to attack with, Raffine can start dishing out counters and sculpting your hand.
At the very worst, a single Connive trigger can still put in decent work thanks to Raffine having Ward 1. This protection should hopefully keep them around for a few turns, at least, allowing you to accrue some decent value. While this is always nice, the ceiling for Raffine, Scheming Seer is so, so, much higher.
With a robust board of creatures at your disposal, Raffine, Scheming Seer can make massive threats and refresh your hand in one fell swoop. Unsurprisingly, this can get out of hand very quickly, turning Raffine into a must-kill threat. While this potential makes Raffine fairly popular in Commander, it’s a new synergy that has really unlocked their potential.
Hashaton, Scarab’s Fist has the power to make the downside of Connive into all upside. Rather than reluctantly having to discard cards, Hashaton turns those into copyable threats. Admittedly, you do have to pay three mana for this effect, but you can obviously choose what you discard.
Thanks to this synergy, Raffine makes a fantastic upgrade to the Eternal Might Commander deck. Better than just working with Hashaton, Raffine also synergizes with the go-wide Zombie Typal nature when Temmet, Naktamun’s Will is in charge. If anything, it’s just a surprise that players weren’t jumping into this synergy any sooner.
The Spike
As we’ve seen a lot recently, Raffine, Scheming Seer started to see increased attention following Eternal Might’s reveal on January 24th. After this date, there’s a notable uptick in sales which can be seen on TCGplayer’s handy dandy graph above. While the sales volume of this card isn’t as impressive as some recent spikes, extra demand is still extra demand.
Prior to things kicking off, on January 24th, Raffine, Scheming Seer was worth just $1.26 on average. As usual, as the sales volume increased, this market price started to increase fairly slowly at first. Within the past week, however, prices have really ramped up, especially for the near-mint variant.
Curiously, while supply and demand are obviously factors here, Raffine, Scheming Seer is hardly scarce right now. On TCGplayer, there are still 70+ copies available for purchase, with prices starting around $5. As a result of this, it seems TCGplayer Direct is the main reason behind this specific spike.
Thanks to offering increased convenience, often at extra cost, it’s not rare for TCGplayer Direct to influence market price averages. Right now, a Direct by TCGplayer copy will set you back $14.98, so it’s unsurprising that’s affecting things. Even with that in mind, however, at the very least the price of Raffine, Scheming Seer is up 296%.
Thanks to being a mythic, there is a Showcase variant of Raffine, Scheming Seer to provide some extra supply. Currently, copies of this variant are selling for around $5 on average, with listings available for closer to $4. So long as you don’t mind the art, this is a fairly effective way to pick up a copy for cheap.
The Future
While it’s impossible to truly predict the future, it seems like Raffine, Scheming Seer may not stay expensive for too long. For better or worse, when a price spike is largely driven by TCGplayer Direct, it tends not to last. Even if there’s a lot of demand right now, it seems unlikely that Raffine can maintain their current appeal for long.
Historically, while they do see some play, Raffine, Scheming Seer hasn’t been the most popular card in Commander. Since they’re not played in any competitive format right now, this means prices will fall once attention fades. This is bound to happen once new Commander decks come out, such as those for Tarkir: Dragonstorm.
Thankfully, while the writing may be on the wall for Raffine, they do have plenty of potential. Any deck that cares about card draw, discarding, or +1/+1 counters could theoretically use this Sphinx. The only real trouble is their color identity, which can make it hard to just slot them into a precon.
Ultimately, this probably isn’t the last that we’ve heard of Raffine, Scheming Seer. In the short term, this card’s price may fall, but they’re bound to bounce back before too long.