Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll tell you about the Magic: the Gathering cards that'll be the talk of the town tonight! Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Discord.
Don't worry, you can still get Faithless Looting for under $0.50. The largest spike comes from the old card frame printed in Commander: The Brothers' War. In case you're a casual player and don't really care for constructed competitive formats and don't really follow social media (wouldn't blame you), last Monday Wizards banned and unbanned several cards in Modern, Pioneer, and Legacy. Mainly the Modern format got shaken up by banning some very popular (problematic) staples and unbanning some fan-favorites. One of these unbanned cards is Faithless Looting, thus people bought their favorite print of the card, quickly driving up the prices. In today's article I'll mainly pick winners as talking points and discuss cards that have moved in price because of the winner, since this Weekly Winners is full of cards impacted by the (un)bannings.
Faithless Looting does really well in, you guessed it, graveyard decks. For you get to draw two and discard two, and you even get to do it again if you'd like with its flashback cost. It's no surprise that for the same reason we've seen more cards going up this week. Examples are Arclight Phoenix, Demilich, and Hollow One, especially their special prints like old card frame, foils, or unique arts.
Another card impacted by the unbanning of Faithless Looting is Indomitable Creativity. This sorcery tries to cheat a big creature onto the battlefield, and usually that creature is Archon of Cruelty. But there is another plan: trying to reanimate the Archon with Persist, but in that case we still need a way to get it into the graveyard first. Faithless Looting fits that bill nicely. It can get the Archons into the graveyard when they get stuck in your hand and provide draw to find the cards you do need at that point.
Who of you is old enough to remember Splinter Twin being in the Modern format? It was banned in 2016 in Modern for being too strong since it dominated way too much. As a little recap, Splinter Twin is part of a two-card infinite combo with Deceiver Exarch. When you have Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite in play, and you put Splinter Twin on it, you can make an infinite amount of Deceiver Exarchs or Pestermite with haste and thus you can swing for (very probably most likely) lethal.
There have been people calling for the unbanning of Splinter Twin for a long time now, since the Modern metagame has become more powerful anyway and some people even suggest that this deck may not even be tier 1 anymore. With cards like Orcish Bowmasters in the card pool that can quickly deal with Pestermites, it may simply not be good enough anymore. But time will tell as the meta is reshaping and it doesn't stop people from playing the archetype. Don't forget that in the meantime this archetype also has received new cards that may fit into the deck.
One of these cards is Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student, which has also gone up 144% to $49. Tamiyo already saw some Modern play and is also an often seen card in Legacy. It's now also finding it's way into Modern Splinter Twin and also the Grinding Station deck that's definitely driving the price up. And, as we just mentioned, we also see a small uptick in the price of Orcish Bowmasters that may be more popular to combat Twin decks.
Mox Opal also was unbanned in Modern, and while it isn't the card with the most percentage-wise gains, it definitely is in terms of absolute value. The cheapest Opal, from Double Masters, is now around $160. Just like all Moxes, this card provides "free" mana, but you do need at least three artifacts to enable its Metalcraft. It was banned in January 2020 and now, almost five years later, is once again legal in Modern.
We already briefly touched upon Grinding Station. The card itself doesn't have a lot of movement, except for it's Future Sight print in Mystery Booster 2. But Mox Opal has resparked interest in this archetype. Since the deck is artifact heavy, it's not really a problem to activate the Opal. The idea is to mill yourself out with Grinding Station by playing your artifacts and replaying them from your graveyard with Underworld Breach until you find Thassa's Oracle and have an empty library. Also important to note is that this deck plays four copies of Faithless Looting as well. The deck truly received some great support from the unbannings.
Mox Opal also is found in Modern Affinity decks, Hammer Time decks, and even Hardened Scales decks. Besides that it sees play in Legacy as well. With the current price tag of Mox Opal and it being legal again in Modern, I wouldn't be surprised if Wizards is going to reprint it as a chase mythic in an upcoming set.
Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past seven years. Many cards were even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.
Sapphire Medallion has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.
Arjen has been playing Magic since the Ice Age set released. He primarily plays Legacy format and founded MTGStocks over a decade ago when he and his friends wanted to track card prices to purchase singles at optimal times.
