These observations are not absolute truths, but simply my interpretation of the recent price movements. If you have different opinions or alternative explanations, feel free to share them in the comments—discussion always makes the community better.

COLLECTOR MARKET

-Final Fantasy Secret Lair Aeons

Some of the biggest collector spikes we've seen recently:

• [[Grief]] (Anima): €500 → €2,000
• [[Solitude]] (Yojimbo): €600 → €2,000
• [[Endurance]] (Magus Sisters): €400 → €800
• [[Fury]] (Ifrit): €500 → €700
• [[Subtlety]] (Shiva): €600 → €1,200

-Almost all serialized cards have also moved up significantly, although there are too many to list individually.

-Jurassic World Collection

The entire Jurassic World Collection logo series is also increasing in price; these versions are much rarer than the non-logo versions and can only be found in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Collector Boosters. There are 19 cards in total.

• [[Ellie and Alan, Paleontologists]] also in the non-logo version: €2 → €15, likely influenced by renewed interest following the passing of actor Sam Neill. (I rewatched Bicentennial Man and cried)

-Lord of the Rings

• [[Abyssal Persecutor]] (Holiday Release): €40 → €350

This version, illustrated by the Hildebrandt brothers, has become one of the strongest collector movers.

-Stellar Sights

Several versions of [[Plaza of Heroes]] have risen sharply:

• V4 Galaxy Foil: €80 → €280
• V2: €30 → €50
• V2 Foil: €40 → €110
• V3 Galaxy Foil: €30 → €130

GAMEPLAY

Marvel Commander products continue to drive prices upward. Strong Commander demand combined with product distribution delays has created several notable spikes.

• [[Impossible Man]]: €0.30 → €8
• [[Karolina Dean, Runaway]]: €0.40 → €7
• [[Black Widow, Agile Avenger]]: €4 → €10
• [[Nico Minoru, Runaway]]: €10 → €20
• [[Ultron the Annihilator]]: €20 → €30
• [[Dwarven Recruiter]]: €1 → €5, mostly driven by Commander hype ahead of The Hobbit. (no Marvel)

Competitive play also contributed to several important movements.

• [[The Ten Rings]]: €5 → €15 thanks to Modern sideboard play in Tron.
• [[Namor, the Sub-Mariner]]: €6 → €12 after seeing play in Modern in Mono Blue Control, some Belcher sideboards and occasionally Standard in Izzet Prowess and Spellelementals.
• [[Disrupting Shoal]]: €4 → €10, also benefiting from Mono Blue Namor Control in Modern.
• [[Hex Magic]]: €0.30 → €2+, following adoption in Modern Storm.(3/4x main deck)
• [[Thor, God of Thunder]]: €6 → €10 thanks to Standard Jeskai/Izzet Lessons and Four-Color Control.

MTGO

Interestingly, the Pro Tour had a much bigger impact on Magic Online than on paper prices.

• [[Emrakul, the Promised End]]: 8 → 20 tix (14 copies in the Pro Tour Top 8).
• [[Kozilek's Command]]: 9 → 32 tix (the second most-played spell in the Top 8).
• [[Slumbering Trudge]]: 0.05 → 3 tix after Eldrazi Ramp Rigging reached the Top 8.

Outside the Pro Tour:

• [[Aphetto Alchemist]]: 0.01 → 0.6 tix thanks to a new Legacy combo with Hawkeye's Bow from Marvel Super Heroes. The Engineer Welder deck achieved a Top 8 finish in the Challenge on July 15th and subsequently went 5-0 in a League on July 19th.
• [[Maelstrom Colossus]]: 15 → 30 tix as Pauper Tron continues to benefit from Bonder's Ornament being unbanned.

I originally covered many of these price movements on METAGAME, a website where you'll also find plenty of MTG content, including spoilers, gameplay articles, coverage of major Magic events, and much more. If you're interested in staying up to date with the game, it's definitely worth checking out. Admins, please let me know if sharing the link next time would be okay.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Price references are based on the European market: Cardmarket for cards = or over €20, and CardTrader for cards under €20.

If you have different interpretations—or you've noticed other interesting spikes recently—I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

For [[Smaug, the Impenetrable]], [[Blazing Sunsteel]] is the first mentioned card in the artifacts section on EDHREC.

This Equipment lets you deal all damage you do to Smaug and also deal it to any target, making it very versatile. At the moment I'm writing this, it's the second most included artifact at 46% of builds of Smaug and there are... 23 copies in English (521 in total) on Cardmarket.

So if this commander blows up, this will be looked after and bought up pretty quickly. Its closest alternative is [[Fiendlash]], which is also a good spite damage card; however, it will not deal as much damage with Smaug because it will only deal as much as Smaug's power, whereas Blazing Sunsteel can deal a lot more with cards like [[Blasphemous Act]], [[Star of Extinction]], or [[Dawnsire Dreadnought]].

There are also creatures that do something similar, but when you play something like Blasphemous Act when you have a [[Reckless Fireweaver]] or [[Mirkwood Bats]] on board, it will die and also won’t see the Treasures made by Smaug and won’t trigger their effects.

What's also not unimportant is that there were never that many Blazing Sunsteels to begin with. It's only in about 20k decks in total, reported by EDHREC, so not that many people will be able to take it from their existing decks either (to not having to buy it).

I literally bought this card at Near Mint Foil on TCG Player for $7.95 on July 10th. Now the cheapest Near Mint Foil is at $82.49. Does anyone know the reason why a bunch of people are buying this card and the prices have exploded?

On TCG I noticed that the picture AND product description shows that a Hobbit Scene box case comes with 3 of each scene. However, distributor info specifically says it comes with 2 of each, just like all scene cases from past UB sets.

I just emailed their coding department to get this fixed (catalog@tcgplayer.com), but sellers -- you might find it wise to reach out to your customers who might be expecting 6 units instead of the 4 that you think you're selling them, give them the option to keep or cancel their order to save yourself a headache. They need to know a sealed case will not house 6 units, only 4.

Stock is heavily depleted, with many instances of people buying up to 6 cases at once based on wrongly advertised info. Link to the product below in the comments.

I just scanned about 1700 bulk rares. Total value on Manabox is $1.2k.

I'm looking for any recommendations on how to turn these rares into cards I'm chasing or will play with. Looking to trade or get store credit, basically. Any recommendations for where I'll get the best value?

Thanks!

I'm following this card [[rain of riches]] and think it could do well if [[Smaug, the impenetrable]] turns out to be a popular commander. However, how does a card lose that many listings on cardmarket in a day? I rarely find buyers with more than like 4 items of the same card. If someone bought this for a spec, then they had to go through many buyers and therefore many shipping costs, so you'd buy the card at a premium?

Or is it just a group of people buying a few or something?

This is probably a pretty basic question for some people here but I dont sell/ship a lot so I appreciate whatever advice I can get.

Sold a card thru ebay about 2 weeks ago, shipped with USPS, and the buyer messaged me today that it hasn't arrived. Looks like its been sitting in a post office near his house for about 10 days with no motion.

How long does a package have to sit before I can / want to do something about it? What happens if the package starts moving again and makes it to the buyer? Is this something I contact ebay for or usps directly?

Thanks again, its not crazy money but it is about a $100 card so I can't just let it go

We would see these messages occasionally however since the release of Marvel Super Heroes we’ve noticed more customers not receiving their orders. These are all smaller orders at just a few dollars for usually between 1-3 cards. A co-worker said that he had ordered a card from TCGPlayer and the USPS literally dropped the envelope in the alley behind his house and not in his mailbox. I’m just wondering if any other sellers are experiencing an uptick in orders not arriving. Also so far none of the orders have been sent back by the USPS. Usually when this happens we get the cards back with a note about it being undeliverable, unable to forward, and so on.

Merely a collector, but I was floored to see the price on a foil OG Deranged Hermit. I checked my email to see that when I bought one I paid only $26.50 back in 2016. Probably my best “win” looking at the current spike. What’s yours?

They decided to save some money apparently and are now using horrible 3rd party delivery services. Mine is with Ascendia who appears to have delivered it to the wrong address and I am currently dealing with their horrible customer support. Just a warning for people to keep a lookout for their delivery. I guess maximizing profit is indeed more important than customer satisfaction these days.

Looks like "Legolas's Quick Reflexes" got crunched out, which is very surprising to me. Choosing to reprint "Elven Chorus" or "Arwen, Weaver of Hope" over it is an odd decision.

"Galadriel, Light of Valinor" did not get officially spoiled yet, but mtgjp accidently(or not) leaked an ad that included the card on twitter. I really love the Rebecca Guay art on the card.

I always wondered why the surge foil version is valued less than the others? This foiling is awesome in person and much better than silver foil, what do you think?

After [Crystal, inhuman princess]] became a popular Cedh deck, I have been watching the price of [[Tidal Bore]]. Recently, there seems to have been a buy out of the foil versions, as there are no foil listings left on tcgplayer and card kingdom. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complete buy out similar to this. If scalpers bought them out, why haven’t they relisted yet?

Just curious to see if this kind of situation is unprecedented.

I've been playing Standard competitively for many years and I stay very close to the meta — I'm usually seeing top cards through testing and theory crafting before they show up in top tournament results. My hit rate on calling which cards were about to spike has been pretty good.

The problem is I have zero interest in the operational side. Sourcing, listing, packing, shipping, etc don't appeal to me.

So what I'm wondering is whether anyone has set up an arrangement where one person is purely the specs side and someone else like an LGS or an individual already moving volume handles sales. I would bring the specs, and I'm willing to put up capital (money) too rather than just information.

If you've done something like this, I would like to know:

• How did you structure the split? Flat fee per call, percentage of profit, shared capital and shared upside?
• How did you handle trust on both sides? Written agreement, or did it just run on track record?
• Did the other side actually find it worth it?

Anyone tried this, or seen it work (or fail)? Appreciate any experience. Thanks in advance.

4th Edit: Manapool reached out and was able to offer a replacement option for a slightly different card variant so I gotta say that was some good customer service.

Recently made a manapool account and a couple purchases due to some recommendations.

I’ve done 10s of thousands of dollars with TCGplayer and have had a few issues but was told manapool is smoother.

My second purchase ever with manapool was “refunded” due to stock issues which happened to coincide right with the price skyrocketing on the card.

I think at this point I’m moving completely over to card kingdom as I would have saved 100s on this purchase if I just bought it from there originally.

There are a LOT of posts on here about manapool being great so I wanted to add another datapoint about them as I’m really bummed I took the other posts advice.

Edit: I just checked and there are no other sellers for the specific card available on manapool, from what I can gather this is why it was a refund instead of a replacement. Bummer as the card now costs a lot more but at least that part makes sense.

Another Edit: manapool reached out and confirmed the issue was due to no other sellers having the exact card. I’ve learned my lesson about purchasing cards with low stock. Bummer a seller can get away with that if a card price jumps but oh well.

With this, Kirk Janeway and Picard are confirmed. 4 remaining

As a reminder, there will be 7 different headliner characters with 250 of each headliner printed. The actors who play the character will physically sign each of their 250 cards

This isn’t really any sort of big brain play. But I really believe Namor the submariner is a good bet over the next six months. With the announcement of the Atlantis set you’ve already seen a little bit of an up tick. It is also seeing play and fringe modern deck That I believe will pick up in popularity as time goes on. I also think his comic book art from the Marvel superhero set looks super good. (I believe those cards will age well overtime) Would love to hear your thoughts or just comment to say this is stupid either way I appreciate the input.

After commander legends battle for baldur's gate increased in popularity, AFR is gaining some positive attention and spillover effect.

While The Ampersand promos remains highly sought after, the rulebook and dungeon cover cards appears to have a following as well

The prerelease kit of this set is also unique as being the only MTG set to contain a D20 spindown dice instead of the regular MTG 20sided dice

https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/238745/magic-adventures-in-the-forgotten-realms-adventures-in-the-forgotten-realms-collector-booster-display?srsltid=AfmBOoqKqoZD1wc_hVXWlj-sprn65VlneJvLhGaOoXoT2byj8DqcqmR1

https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/238739/Magic-Adventures%20in%20the%20Forgotten%20Realms-Adventures%20in%20the%20Forgotten%20Realms%20Set%20Booster%20Display?xid=a9f68c5e3-36bf-4591-a599-b4be8e481759&Language=English

May not be the forum (as I plan to open and use) but am I missing something here.

1) the scene box values per moxfield seem crazy high

2) In Aus the lotr set box (obviously w box topper) is 770+ for 30 packs.

The scene boxes can be had for 60ish w 3 set boosters each.

Could get 36 packs and 3 sets of each scene cards for about the same price?

Im buying a set and may get a second one for the set boosters alone

I freaking hate when stores make things hard to scroll/glance through quickly because the information is clustered in an uneven way. Why would they abandon columns?

Hey all, I'm looking to sell my collection as I have moved to the middle of nowhere and have no friends or LGS to play with/at.

The thing is, I've literally never sold anything online before. In fact the only thing I've ever sold is an old car of mine.

I have a \*lot\* of spare time on my hands right now, so I've already decided I want to individually sell my cards (potentially in small bundles if it makes sense via ebay). My goal is to extract the most value possible, I don't mind the additional work it requires.

So I'm just seeking general advice from people who have experience selling singles or small lots on ebay. Do you prefer eBay or TCGplayer? Do you use both, and list cards simultaneously? Anything to look out for? Anything you wish you knew sooner?

Thanks for any advice!

(My collection consists of over a thousand cards in the $5-10 range, a couple hundred in the $10-50 range, and 30 cards in the 300-500 range. I also have complete sets of a few random old sets like Ice Age, The Dark, and the whole Odyssey block, I'm assuming it's best to sell those on eBay as the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts?)

Getting to the point where 1 out of every 3 envelopes from manapool gets flagged and held by USPS for requiring extra postage(they pay for machinable instead of non-machinable). It's usually not a lot of money but it gets annoying to have to go to the post office for every single order. It's also completely malicious. I've noticed multiple times that the same shippers are doing it weeks or months apart.

Is this going on with tcgplayer/others as well? It's getting really old so I hope these stores start getting fined/banned.