A Penny Saved, A Bauble Earned

10 Jul
by Ryan Cole

Hello, everyone! I'm the Penny Pincher, here to tell you about the possible interest you could gain by investing in the MTG penny stock market. I focus on cards under the five dollar mark and point out why they could see gains.

So let's haul this box out of the MTGStocks backroom and see what I've found!

A Vicious Cycle…

Here’s to hoping Brutal Cathar doesn’t get a reprint anytime soon, given that it’s set to be in Standard for another year now. When this was first released it didn’t see much gain and stayed at just around a dollar for an entire year. People didn’t see the potential.

The fact that it exiles one of your opponent’s creatures, provided it’s Day when it enters, makes it a spectacular card. But if it comes in when it’s already Night this effect won’t trigger, which turned a lot of players off. So buyers weren’t seeing any sway in its price.

The fact that it runs back the exile effect whenever it flips back to the Day side is what really helped it jump. Being able to keep this one on the board for a while made players start to see its utility, which in turn ran the market up on Brutal Cathar, so it’s seen pretty steady gain. Since April 2022 this card has seen only a couple of drops and a ton of gains, so this may be the one to pick up cheap.

A Place to Manage Campaigns…

War Room, originally printed in Commander Legends, has only seen this one reprint in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, and if it stays that way we could easily be seeing this card rise in price as sets roll out. 

Giving you a card draw for just three generic mana and life points equal to the number of colors in your commander's color identity is pretty good for a card coming in at only five bucks. Since its original printing it’s seen very consistent daily values with only mild growth and decline, and this reprint helped to set both copies at this five dollar price point. 

If no more reprints are pending, this card could easily sustain this price, if not rise to greater heights as people seek out this sort of card advantage.

Something to Think About…

Urza's Bauble is one of those cards that you see so often in the iconography of MTG that you might forget that it only has two printings. Ice Age showed this card to the world and Fifth Edition just helped to keep its memory alive. 

That's how it was with Bauble for a long time. It was under a dollar back in the days of Ice Age, until 2017 when it got its first real spike in price. With Eggs being a fun deck that people were getting into, this card's price finally broke out above that dollar mark. 

Its ability to let you see one of your opponent's cards in hand isn't that amazing, but the extra card draw it gives you the following upkeep is much coveted and even outside of an Eggs build that effect is very useful. 

The old and iconic cards can explode out of anywhere, and so it’s always nice to have a few in your portfolio.

Brutal Cathar
War Room
Urza's Bauble

Well, that's all for me today. I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this article and if you want to see more from me or our other writers then head to MTGStock's main page and make sure to become a member while you're there! The good stuff is all back here in storage anyway! Hope to see you again soon!

Check out these other articles:

New Horizons - LOTR Commander by Matt Grzechnik

Too, Reverse In Works It by Jason Alt

The Big Things - Arabian Nights Speculation by Harvey McGuinness

Ryan Cole
Ryan Cole

Ryan Cole lives in Canton, Ohio with his new wife Julia. He began playing magic in 1995 with cards he bought with money he found odd jobs for, just to play the game. At 35 he is happy at home and living as full a life as is possible. He is starting a career in freelance writing and works as a cook while he pursues that dream.


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