Marvel’s Spider-Man set has found itself a little overshadowed recently. Despite being shown off at San Diego Comic-Con, Wizards quickly moved on to Avatar: The Last Airbender. This set, with its exciting Commander options and Beginner Box, has understandably captured players’ attention.
Recently, we’ve seen several price spikes that have been caused by upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender cards. Toph, the First Metalbender, in particular, is generating a huge amount of interest and financial movement. Notably, however, one Spider-Man card has steadily been creeping up in the background, even though we’re still a month from release.
The Soul Stone
From what we’ve seen of the Marvel’s Spider-Man MTG set, The Soul Stone is easily the most exciting card. Sure, Amazing Spider-Man has a great ability, and Spider-Ham Peter Porker is wonderfully weird, but The Soul Stone is on a different level. This bizarrely typed artifact is an absolute monster of an MTG card, and will undoubtedly be a future staple.
At its absolute worst, The Soul Stone is a two-mana mana rock, which is Indestructible. Already, while it is mono black, this card is bound to be a staple in Commander. It’s no secret that mana rocks are popular in the format, and this is a decent one at the very least. Any black-aligned Commander deck is going to have its eyes on this card.
To solidify its future popularity that much more, The Soul Stone has an insane extra ability with a surprisingly reasonable cost. While seven mana and exiling a creature does seem steep, in Commander, this really isn’t that expensive. Not only are there tons of fast mana floating around, but there are usually tons of cheap creatures and tokens too.
After Harnessing The Soul Stone and activating the ∞ ability, the game is effectively over. At each of your upkeeps, you get to reanimate a creature from the graveyard with no catch. This ability is obviously going to be a godsend in any reanimator deck, but it’ll be useful in any black-aligned archetype.
While The Soul Stone will be strong on its own, this artifact plays especially well with Toph. Thanks to her abilities, Toph, the First Metalbender can animate The Soul Stone and give it protection against Exile effects. This should make it even harder to get rid of, allowing it to generate even more value.
The Spike
As much as there’s no doubt that The Soul Stone will be a Commander staple, competitively, it’s somewhat suspect. While ramp can be useful, the Harness cost is a lot compared to reanimation like Zombify. Even with this in mind, there’s no doubt that this will be an expensive MTG card, purely due to its Commander performance.
While a high price tag does feel inevitable, the current prices for The Soul Stone are absolutely obscene. Right now, on TCGplayer, presales for near-mint copies of The Soul Stone have hit $125. While the market price is only $85, the only listing for the card is a staggering $175. While no one has paid this much so far, it may only be a matter of time.
Thankfully, while these price tags are definitely concerning, they’re only presale prices right now. These are often significantly inflated compared to post-release prices, so getting worked up now might be premature. That said, we have seen a rise in scalping recently, which could make this card a lot more valuable than it should be.
Realistically, even scalpers shouldn’t be able to drive up the price of The Soul Stone too much. While Spider-Man is a smaller set, the rumours that it’ll only have one print run have been firmly shut down. Due to this, there’s no reason to think that Wizards couldn’t keep printing Play Boosters for as long as needed.
Sadly, the same isn’t true for Collector Boosters, which only get one print. Worryingly, there is a Borderless Gauntlet Card variant found exclusively within Collector Boosters. Should this product be scalped as much as players are expecting, then prices for this variant may be utterly obscene.
Rarer and Rarer
Currently, on TCGplayer, the Borderless variant of The Soul Stone has already sold for $500. Obviously, this price is absolutely insane, and we can only hope that it comes down over time. Right now, you could comfortably buy a Modern Horizons 3 Collector Booster box for less, as these are only $469.
Ideally, as with the current prices for the regular variant, this price may fall once the Spider-Man set is actually released. Due to the Collector Booster exclusivity, however, there’s no guarantee this will actually happen. At the moment, Spider-Man Collector Booster Boxes are $800, and that price may quickly be driven higher.
If, or rather when, this happens, the chase Collector Booster cards are bound to quickly climb in price as well. Potentially, this might mean that $500 is actually cheap for a Borderless copy of The Soul Stone, but that’s a terrifying thought. Ultimately, we’ll just have to wait and see where the price ends up settling post-release.
Notably, as if one ultra-expensive variant of The Soul Stone wasn’t enough, there’s a second chase to look out for. Similarly exclusive to Collector Boosters, the Textless Headliner card simply looks expensive. Adorned with its Cosmic Foil and seemingly gold border, this card could potentially be worth thousands. That, however, all depends on the pull rates for this card.
For now, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens. The Debut event for Marvel’s Spider-Man isn’t far away (August 30th), and that should provide more information. Hopefully, the price won’t skyrocket even more after this event.
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