Weekly Winners 2019 - 31

An interesting week with several demand and speculation driven spikes. Just in time for FNM, I'll now tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight!

 

#1 Mana Breach $7.69 (+551.69%)

 

This is the type of card you always need to be on the lookout for. Almost every week, people share their "I should have bought this when it was cheap" after reading this article. Mana Breach fits right in. One driving factor of card price is ability uniqueness. When a card does stuff not many other cards do, it will be the only option for you if you need it for your strategy. Uniqueness also varies from format to format. In standard, your choices are limited compared to Modern or Legacy.

In EDH, uniqueness is even more important. When a card with a (fairly) unique ability gets popular, it can quickly get very expensive. Since you can only play 1 copy of a card and a card is unique, a card will get a lot of organic demand. Not a big problem for cards from recent sets with big print runs. The fact that EDH players only need 1 copy will suppress the demand for the card as well. But is that card from an old set, like Mana Breach; demand can quickly and vastly surpass supply, spiking the price.

On first glance, this exact thing has happened with Mana Breach. For M20, Omnath, Locus of the Roil was spoiled, a commander fit for a land strategy. Together with Risen Reef you have a nice engine going. But Chulane, Teller of Tales might have a use for Mana Breach as well. One could reason that people started to brew new EDH decks with these (and other) commanders, driving up Mana Breach's price.

But on closer inspection, Mana Breach might be more of a speculative buyout. Check out the graph. You can see that the spike was high earlier this week, but the card is falling in price since. Also note that the market price did not spike. On the 7th edition printing, the available foils were bought out just a few days prior to the non-foil version spiking. This is also a clue that the card was bought out.

 

Mana Breach	CardKingdom $4.99	TCGPlayer $7.69
Omnath, Locus of the Roil	CardKingdom $16.99	TCGPlayer $15.90

 

#2 Ixidor, Reality Sculptor $6.92 (+224.88%)

 

A few weeks ago, European distributor had an introductory text about Commander 2019 set. The page has been edited, but it used to say this: Each deck has a returning keyword ability as its main theme. The four featured abilities are populate, flashback, morph, and madness. And with that 'leak' all eyes seem to be focused on morph-themed cards.

Ixidor, Reality Sculptor is a great example! It fits right into a morph strategy. Aside from being a 'morph lord'; its ability can prove to be powerful, especially with the most expensive morph cards. And since you can pay for any morph, Ixidor, Reality Sculptor is a color fixer too.

The card was bought out. But don't blame this one on just the 'professional' speculators. With the leak in mind, it is easy for anyone with an internet connection and the skill to type words into a search engine to pick out Ixidor, Reality Sculptor as a card that might become relevant soon. But be warned! We have not seen many spoilers from Commander 2019 yet. Any good morph card could be in the actual deck, killing any and all benefit of buying it now.

Having said that, here are some other cards that might be relevant. This list is just my two cents, there are probably more relevant cards as well.

Den Protector

 

Bane of the Living

 

Secret Plans

 

Dermoplasm

 

Aphetto Runecaster

 

Ashcloud Phoenix

 

Vesuvan Shapeshifter

 

Trail of Mystery

 

Vesuvan Shapeshifter	CardKingdom $1.79	TCGPlayer $1.61
Aphetto Runecaster	CardKingdom $0.35	TCGPlayer $0.32
Dermoplasm	CardKingdom $0.35	TCGPlayer $0.44
Ashcloud Phoenix	CardKingdom $0.69	TCGPlayer $0.60
Trail of Mystery	CardKingdom $0.25	TCGPlayer $0.37
Secret Plans	CardKingdom $0.25	TCGPlayer $0.24

 

#3 Divergent Transformations $4.99 (+142.23%)

 

Budget decks that are featured in an MTGGoldfish article have a tendency to be less-budget the day after, as many people read the articles and get inspired into buying cards. Divergent Transformations was featured in a recent article and its price went up. Divergent Transformations is nice with the new commander Kykar, Wind's Fury.

This spike seems pretty straightforward, right? It got included in an article and it shot up. But there is something odd going on too. The linked article was published on July 31st. At that time, Divergent Transformations had already spiked and has not moved in price since. And since MTGStocks.com is based in Europe, our July 31st update happens when it is still July 30th in the United States. That spike seems to have happened before the article was published. Maybe the date on MTGGoldfish is incorrect. But since Divergent Transformations was already going up, it is more plausible that the card organically/speculatively went up due to people brewing with it. The article features new brews and strategies, so that is a plausible explanation.

 

Divergent Transformations
Commander 2016	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $4.99

 

Cheap Pickups

Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past 7 years. Many cards have been even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.

 

Karakas $23.24 - Post record low and going up

 

Containment Priest $5.08 - Record low and bottoming out

 

Grove of the Burnwillows $10.59 - Record low and bottoming out

 

Containment Priest	CardKingdom $3.99	TCGPlayer $5.08
Karakas	CardKingdom $18.99	TCGPlayer $23.24
Grove of the Burnwillows	CardKingdom $7.99	TCGPlayer $10.60