It hasn’t been long since Wizards of the Coast revealed a new Secret Lair exclusive to those who attend MTG Con Minneapolis. The only other way to get this prized item is through the festival-in-a-box deals, a recurring theme with each new MTG Con. These are typically found on the Secret Lair site, and have not been the best bang for your buck financially… until now.
Many players thought that, after the reveal of the content of this deal, the price would for it would be over $500, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The new deal for Minneapolis is surprisingly lucrative. Many players have already jumped on this fantastic deal only minutes after it went live. Is it worth looking into this new deal for you? Let’s walk through it.
Festival in a Box: Minneapolis 2023
The Festival in a Box: Minneapolis 2023 only includes five products. According to the official Secret Lair site, this is what you should expect to find:
- 1x Legendary Flyers (Not That Kind) Foil Edition
- 1x Mystery Booster Convention Edition Booster Box
- 1x Phyrexia: All Will Be One Draft Booster Box
- 1x The Brothers’ War Draft Booster Box
- 1x Traditional Foil Arcane Signet
Three Booster boxes, an exclusive Secret Lair, and an exclusive foil Commander staple are nothing to scoff at. As many may expect, there is much value to be had here. Let’s take a look at what each portion of this Secret Lair deal is currently selling for.
The Mystery Booster Convention Edition has been a staple for these Festival in a Box deals. Mystery Boosters are meant to emulate a Chaos Draft: a format where players draft a bunch of packs from different sets. As such, the card pool for these products is absolutely massive. That said, there are some fantastic hits available within the set, like Mana Crypt, a card so powerful it got shadow banned from Game Knights.
According to TCGplayer, these currently go for about $225 each. The Festival in a Box deal is only $270, $45 more than the Booster Box on its own. The other product available as a part of this deal is worth far more than $45.
Draft Booster Box Value
The second box available is the Phyrexia: All Will Be One Draft Box. Typically, these are meant for players to play draft with, while Set Boosters are more tailored to a strong opening experience. As such, the best use of this box would be to draft it amongst friends, but there are still 32 packs of cards for you to open.
There are still a lot of cards to open from this set, so these boxes tend to go around $102. That said, the expected value from these boxes, according to MTGStocks.com, is quite a bit better at $125. If you’re interested in what some of the best cards are to open from Phyrexia: All Will Be One, we recently took a look at the top 10 most expensive cards from the set. Don’t worry, we made sure to exclude the fancy treatments that won’t be available in this box.
The Brothers’ War
The Brothers’ War was truly a fantastic format to draft. According to statistics used to compare Phyrexia: All Will Be One to other sets, The Brothers’ War is one of the most balanced sets ever.
Top-end cards from this set, admittedly, have not aged too well. Mishra and Urza’s mythic forms were worth an arm and a leg once upon a time, and while Urza still retails for around $19, many cards have lost value. Portal to Phyrexia, Urza Lord Protector, and Myrel, Shield of Argive are the cards to look out for here. If you’re lucky enough to open a foil Meld card, there is still a decent foil multiplier there.
All in all, these boxes are retailing for around what the Phyrexia: All Will Be One Draft boxes are, but the Phyrexian box has much more impressive contents financially. Average expected value for these boxes, according to MTGStocks.com, is still around the $100 mark.
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Secret Lair + Promo
We’re already far ahead of the asking price for this deal in terms of value, but there’s still more to see. These are the least valuable products included in the deal, but there is still a notable amount of value to be had.
Arcane Signets are a Commander staple through and through. The cheapest Signet on the market won’t even cost you a dollar, but premium foil Signets like this one can go for a surprising amount. Currently, TCGplayer has this foil going for $20. This deal already has some incredible value attached, so I would not be surprised if this particular Arcane Signet loses a lot of value as a result of this Festival in a Box being popular. I would value this at around $10 by the time you get it, but I am very prepared to miss the mark as well.
The new and exclusive Legendary Flyers (Not That Kind) Secret Lair was one we jumped into when it was officially announced. For those who are not attending Minneapolis in person, this is the only way to get this particular Secret Lair.
This Secret Lair sells for $40 but the singles, in their cheapest variants, only retail for around $12. This makes the Secret Lair a questionable buy on its own (financially), but it’s a perfectly fine add-on to this deal. If you take into account the foil copies of the singles being offered in this Secret Lair, the value rebounds a bit.
Final Totals
If you were to buy all of these products individually on the day this article was written, this is what your bill would look like:
- Mystery Booster Convention Edition $225
- Phyrexia: All Will Be One Draft Booster Box $102
- The Brothers’ War Draft Booster Box $102
- Secret Lair Legendary Flyers (Not That Kind) $40
- Arcane Signet $20
- Grand Total: $489
As mentioned earlier, the Convention Edition is only worth $270, which means you’re saving about $220! Do note that there’s a good chance that after product floods the market from this deal, prices will come down a bit, so the amount of value here will probably be less in the long run. That said, it’s unlikely that you’ll be losing out with such a good deal.
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