While the MTG financial markets never truly stop, they’ve certainly been a lot calmer over the past few weeks. Outside of the monumental bans and unbans in December, there hasn’t been anything to change the tide. Almost every competitive MTG format has been relatively stable, and there have been few opportunities to break the mold.
Now that MTG is well and truly back in 2025, the year’s first major tournament has taken place. The first Magic Spotlight Series event, held in Atlanta, gave Standard players an opportunity to up their game for exciting prizes. Doing exactly that, many players brought new meta-breaking brews to crush the competition.
While it didn’t emerge victorious, a new Dimir Enchantments deck showed up the competition, doing far better than expected. Ultimately, this newfangled deck would achieve a mighty second-place finish once the tournament concluded. With a performance like that, it’s little wonder that MTG players have been rushing to build this new deck.
This Town Ain’t Big Enough
Out of all the cards from the new Dimir Enchantments deck, This Town Ain’t Big Enough has seen the greatest price spike. This is unsurprising, as the card was somewhat unassuming before now. Only appearing in Temur Otters for a long time, this card looked a lot like niche draft chaff, for the most part. After all, who wants to spend five mana to bounce two permanents?
Obviously, This Town Ain’t Big Enough does have a cost reduction trick up its sleeve, but most decks don’t want this. Thankfully, for fans of cheeky reference-based MTG cards at least, there are a few decks that love this effect. Esper Pixie and Temur Otters, for instance, make great use of This Town Ain’t Big Enough, as it allows you to bounce and replay your cheap creatures and enchantments.
The new Dimir Enchantments shell benefits from the exact same thing. By using This Town Ain’t Big Enough on your own permanents you can recast Hopeless Nightmare and Stormchaser’s Talent. Thanks to the cost of these cards this play is available starting on turn two, allowing you to conserve resources and get extra value.
Better than just letting you bounce two of your own things, This Town Ain’t Big Enough lets you target any two nonland premenants. Only only need to control one of these permanents to get the cost-reduction effect. This means This Town Ain’t Big Enough can bounce an opponent’s creature or threat while still renewing your own resources.
Given both Dimir Enchantments and Esper Pixie both want more resources while denying opponent’s theirs, This Town Ain’t Big Enough is basically perfect. The cost-reduction effect is near enough guaranteed, which allows the card to constantly excel. As a result, it’s no wonder that so many decks are running four copies of this card right now.
The Spike
As the title gives away, This Town Ain’t Big Enough has seen one of the most impressive price spikes in a long time. In the past month alone, the price of this Outlaws of Thunder Junction uncommon has spiked over 1200%. Currently, the market price for This Town Ain’t Big Enough sits at $3.11, however, it may climb even higher.
On TCGplayer, there are only 51 listings of This Town Ain’t Big Enough available for purchase right now. Out of these, only 24 copies are nonfoil so there’s not much supply left at all. Considering players are running four copies of this card in relevant decks, these listings may not last long.
At the moment, prices for This Town Ain’t Big Enough start at the $3.25 mark so that average is sure to increase. Once available supply dwindles even further, expect prices to soar even more. Paying $5 for This Town Ain’t Big Enough might not be out of the question soon enough, which is utterly wild to think about.
Even with prices where they are now, This Town Ain’t Big Enough has seen an absolutely meteoric price spike. Back on December 13th, this card was selling for just $0.21 but prices really began to spike around early January. As you can see on the price graph above, a huge uptick in sales led to the dramatic spike which hasn’t slowed down.
Notably, there aren’t any fancy showcase variants of This Town Ain’t Big Enough that are available. This ultimately means that less supply is available since they’re harder to find in Collector Boosters. As a result of this, it’s little wonder that This Town Ain’t Big Enough is so susceptible to price spikes.
The Future
Currently, it’s very hard to predict which way the price of This Town Ain’t Big Enough will go. Judging by the current demand, it seems like prices are practically guaranteed to spike further. For that to happen, however, more supply will need to hit the market so people actually have something to buy.
Thankfully, while is This Town Ain’t Big Enough somewhat uncommon thanks to missing showcase variants, it’s still an uncommon. As a result, there should be a decent amount of supply out there in the world. It’ll just be a matter of waiting for it to be released for the right price, or finding it at LGSs.
At the end of the day, This Town Ain’t Big Enough is hardly the most expensive MTG card in existence. That being said, as an uncommon, this card isn’t cheap, which may turn some players away. Should this happen with enough frequency, then prices may end up dipping before too long. I’d reckon that we have a little ways to go before then, however.
