Thanks to the recent Modern unbans, a lot of older archetypes are reemerging. Faithless Looting and Mox Opal‘s unbanning, in particular, have put a lot of expired Modern decks back on the map. Graveyard synergies and artifact decks got huge boosts, and the market is reacting. Hollow One is one of the cards that has reemerged in the Modern format thanks to these changes. As you may expect, the card’s premium variants are spiking in price as a result.
Hollow One
Hollow One is at its best when you can play it for free. A vanilla 4/4 isn’t too powerful, but casting Hollow One for one or zero mana makes the trade worth it. Faithless Looting turns Hollow One into a one-mana card on its own. From there, using a free Cycle effect like Street Wraith turns Hollow One into a zero-mana creature.
While Hollow One certainly isn’t one of the breakout Modern archetypes at the moment, it is putting up impressive results. Consistently top 16ing Modern Challenge events, anyone who wants to relive the glory days can definitely do so in a competitive way.
While Hollow One’s performance isn’t competitive enough to warrant it as a best deck, it is still causing an increase in demand for the card. Prior to this, there was little to no demand for Hollow One at all. Following its Modern appearance, expensive variants of the card are obtaining a higher premium.
The Spike
Hollow One’s spike is a bit strange. Multiple variants of the card with lower supply are going up in price, but they are all worth much more than the market average for the variants. The most expensive of these variants appears to be the Retro bordered one from Time Spiral Remastered, at least on a consistent basis. Even though the secondary market average for this variant only amounts to a few bucks, the card is consistently selling for around $10. Considering that it was worth $1 before Faithless Looting’s unbanning, that’s quite the spike. The cheapest copy of this particular variant that was available on TCGplayer as of the writing of this article was $10, further suggesting the real price is far above the market average.
Other copies of Hollow One are a bit more… sporadic in their price. In other words, they’re selling for different prices all over the map. The white-bordered Hollow One from Mystery Booster 2, for example, has sold from everywhere between 67 cents and $15 over the last few days. At the moment, only a few copies of the card are available on TCGplayer, and they all sit at above $10.
The most expensive variant of Hollow One, barring foils with massive multipliers, is the Store Championship Hollow One. While the Vengevine, Hollow One and Blazing Rootwalla Store Championship promotional cards were originally a very confusing collection of offerings, they are now experiencing a massive uptick in demand thanks to the unbanning of Faithless Looting.
For this particular case, the Store Championship Hollow One seems to sell for between $10-$12 barring outliers. There are only a couple copies of the card on TCGplayer as of the writing of this article.
The most expensive Hallow One appear to be foils from Time Spiral Remastered. Renowned for their rarity, these go for between $35-$40.
The Verdict
Right now, it appears that the rarer variants of Hollow One are all in very low supply. The increase in demand caused by Hollow One’s return to Modern is to blame, but I would personally expect the card’s expensive variants to drop in price a bit if the supply problem was fixed.
In comparison, the cheapest copy of Hollow One on the market is available for about $5, but $9 is currently the cheapest copy of the card available. This suggests that, once again, supply for Hollow One is an issue right now.
