Sandstorm Salvager
15, Jan, 25

New Standard Selesnya Staple Spikes 250% Through Short Supply

Despite MTG Foundations providing an interesting shake-up to the established order, Standard has been somewhat stale recently. Esper Pixie and Dimir Bounce are both known quantities at this point and the metagame has adapted accordingly. The same is true for Selesnya Cage decks, which is even more of a recent innovation.

Despite the Standard metagame looking surprisingly stale, it’s nonetheless still a popular format. With multiple major events filling the 2025 calendar Standard is very much the competitive format of the moment. As such, it’s little surprise that the format has still been causing all manner of price spikes recently.

Sandstorm Salvager

Sandstorm Salvager

Currently, Sandstorm Salvager is a bit of a niche Standard staple, and that’s being generous. At the moment, this card only really appears in one deck, Selesnya Cage, which is hardly the most popular. Within this deck, however, the card is a true four-of staple that’s basically mandatory to play.

Within Selesnya Cage Sandstorm Salvager is powerful because it offers two bodies for the price of one. This alone would make them worthwhile in the deck since the titular Collector’s Cage wants three creatures with different powers. Since Sandstorm Salvager can provide two of the three needed powers in an instant, it’s little wonder it’s useful.

Beyond just offering two relevant bodies Sandstorm Salvager can also buff any tokens that you control. At worst, this ability will help you fulfill Collector’s Cage’s requirements without having to dig through your deck for extra creatures. At best, however, this ability can be a surprisingly effective wincon.

Thanks to granting Trample, as well as a largely board-wide buff, Sandstorm Salvager allows your tokens to do real work. Considering the amount of these you’ll have, from Overlord of the Mistmoors, Sanguine Evangelist, and Pawpatch Recruit, there’s real game-ending potential.

Outside of Standard, Sandstorm Salvager is also pretty great in Commander. If you’re running a token-themed deck, slotting this card into the 99 essentially gives you a repeatable board-wide buff for just two mana. Despite this strength, Sandstorm Salvager is hardly appearing everywhere, as only around 6000 decks are running it currently.

The Spike

Sandstorm Salvager Price Spike

Unlike some of the most explosive price spikes that we’ve seen recently, Sandstorm Salvager is more of a slow burn. Hailing from The Big Score, which arrived within Outlaws of Thunder Junction, this card was already moderately expensive to start with. At the start of December, you’d have to pay around $2.28 for a near-mint copy.

Unsurprisingly, once the Selesnya Cage deck emerged, interest in Sandstorm Salvager began to rise, along with its price. At the beginning of January, interest in the card peaked with a huge surge in sales. As usual, this rush of demand quickly caused prices to swell, jumping up to the $6.45 mark.

Despite the market price of Sandstorm Salvager holding firm, for now, listings for the card start at around $8. This puts the price spike for the card at around 250%, but this may just be the start. To date, players have spent upwards of $14.33 on a copy of this card, likely via TCGplayer Direct. With this in mind, it may only be a matter of time before prices spike higher.

Unsurprisingly, the normal variant of Sandstorm Salvager isn’t the only one spiking in price. The Extended Art variant, for example, has jumped up from $3.10 to around $4.88. While this may not seem so impressive, listings for the card now also start closer to the $8 mark, including shipping.

Currently, the most expensive variant of Sandstorm Salvager continues to be the Showcase variant with the vault frame. Once selling for $5.27, this card now has a market price of $8.26. Continuing the running trend, listings for this card now start at around $13, so that market price may soon increase.

The Future

As mentioned a few times already, given the current listing prices, it seems inevitable that Sandstorm Salvager will get more expensive. That being said, nothing is guaranteed, especially since Selesnya Cage is hardly the best deck in Standard right now. According to MTG Decks Selesnya Cage is very much a tier two archetype at the moment, and recent results reflect this point.

Outside of the occasional Standard League win, Selesnya Cage is struggling to remain truly competitive. Should the archetype fail to rise above this point after Aetherdrift rolls around, interest may die out entirely. Thankfully, Brightglass Gearhulk might be an interesting upgrade for the deck, but that’s not guaranteed.

Despite this middling performance, Sandstorm Salvager does have one ace up its sleeve; availability. Thanks to its release being squashed into the main Outlaws of Thunder Junction set, The Big Score cards are hardly the most available. As we’ve seen with Vaultborn Tyrant this means popular cards can get seriously expensive very quickly.

For better or worse, Sandstorm Salvager is likely never going to be anywhere close to Vaultborn Tyrant in price. If we’re to guess, $10 seems like a fair settling point, prior to Aetherdrift. Once Aetherdrift spoilers begin, and the set releases, the sky is the limit for this card and archetype. That said, given recent results, I wouldn’t exactly Selesnya Cage to become the best deck in Standard any time soon.

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