Which Printing of Cavern of Souls Should you Buy?
Welcome back to another edition of Variant Vault, where I organize Magic: the Gathering card variants by price from most to least expensive to determine which one is best for you.
Today I’m attempting to create a variant ranking list using
Second, Cavern of Souls holds a special place in my heart. The two copies I’ve amassed for my collection over my seven years of playing Magic were both cracked in random packs at significant points in my life and have permanent homes in my decks, so it just felt right to use such an iconic card as the basis for this analysis.
If you throw all these variants into the colliseum of the market, which variants will emerge as the most desirable and the most affordable?
The Lists
Cavern of Souls has a total of 29 variants across all of its printings. All prices used were gathered from the MTGStocks price database as of 11/14-17/2023. The full list of all these variants by price can be found below.
Cavern of Souls Variant Prices (From Most to Least Expensive):
LTC Realms and Relics (N/A) Serialized: $3132.13 (Approximate average taken from current recorded sales that are accessible to the public.)
LCI Neon Ink (99246) Tri-Color: $N/A
LCI Neon Ink (99242) Red: $N/A
LCI Neon Ink (99245) Purple: $N/A
LCI Neon Ink (99244) Blue: $N/A
LCI Neon Ink (99246) Green: $N/A
LTC Realms and Relics (93308) surge foil: $119.98 (Still adjusting to the Tales of Middle Earth Special Edition Printing)
UMA Box Topper/Extended Art (47173): $113.18
AVR Standard (446) foil: $88.62
Zendikar Rising Expedition (55985) foil: $76.80
LTC Realms and Relics (93320) foil: $58.45
Foil Etched (77532): $57.33
UMA Standard (42413) foil: $56.25
MM3 Standard (33461) foil: $55.00
2X2 Borderless (77529) foil: $48.45
LCI Borderless (99248) foil: $47.50
2X2 Standard (77525) foil: $47.00
Prerelease (103636): $43.01
Zendikar Rising Expedition (55985) non-foil: $42.83
LTC Realms and Relics (93320) non-foil: $41.88
The List (58874): $39.92
2X2 Borderless (77529) non-foil: $36.38
UMA Standard (42413) non-foil: $35.63
AVR Standard (446) non-foil: $33.99
LCI Standard (99247) foil: $33.72
MM3 Standard (33461) non-foil: $33.36
2X2 Standard (77525) non-foil: $33.12
LCI Borderless (99248) non-foil: $27.49
LCI Standard (99247) non-foil: $27.17
Most Collectible Variants
To no surprise at all, the most collectible variant of Cavern of Souls is the one that only has 100 copies in all of existence. As such, there isn’t a large swath of sales information to go off of, especially since these were just introduced to the market at the start of November.
So I did extra research to find any publicly available completed sales on eBay and Facebook Marketplace groups and took the average selling price. One of the sales was for number 2/100 which had a premium on it compared to other sales, but even with its impact on the average, I believe it’s a solid estimate for the purpose of this article.
Additionally, since the serialized variant of Cavern of Souls is a reskin from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Universes Beyond set, and Universes Beyond can be polarizing for a lot of players, I also wanted to discuss the most financially valuable Magic: The Gathering IP variant for Cavern of Souls. At this point, those appear to be neon ink variants from Lost Caverns of Ixalan in order from most to least rare: tri-color, red, purple, blue, and green. I say “appears to be” because due to the production issues, a majority of stores didn’t receive their allocation of Collector boxes of Lost Caverns at prerelease, and as a result, these variants aren’t as widely available as they would be during a normal release cycle. There's also a yellow one, but that one is a WPN premium store variant that won’t be sent to stores until 2024, so it’s not listed.
Even with production issues and difficulty in finding reasonable listings, the general prices these are selling for in the same places I investigated for the serialized variant price data are higher than the market average for the surge foils, but similar to the serialized variant, these haven’t had the time they need to circulate throughout the market and settle into a market average price. So that is a caveat to keep in mind. The Magic: The Gathering finance lesson I learned while working on this article is that sometimes you need to wait for the market to absorb the stock and settle to find the best deals instead of trying to dive into variant hunting at release.
Most Affordable Variants & Variant Guide
There also aren’t many surprises when it comes to the most affordable variants of Cavern of Souls, which are the standard non-foil and borderless non-foil variants from Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Lost Caverns has just been released, so these readily available versions of the card are flooding the market as players crack packs and sell singles.
I’m surprised that the non-foil borderless variant is cheaper than the standard foil, but if you’re someone who prefers the look of the non-foil borderless version and has the extra dollar to spare, then you’re in luck. By the time you’re reading this, I will have probably snagged myself a borderless copy from my local game store for my newly built
In general, the overall variant value hierarchy appears to be focused on three key factors based on this cavernous case study: scarcity, age, and market perception/appeal. From lowest to highest the general guide for card variant value is: standard non-foils, fancy and/or older non-foils, standard foils, foils, fancy and/or older foils, chase variants such as serialized, neon ink, surge foil, and extremely rare and/or appealing foils or highest rarity equivalent.
Reaching the Core of the Cavern
Thank you so much for reading! If you haven’t already, make sure to give MTGStocks Premium a look for more cool Magic finance stuff. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and next time I’ll be discussing the face commanders of the Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander decks.
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Max Kennel started playing Magic with the release of Shadows Over Innistrad. His primary formats of play are EDH and Limited. Outside of Magic, Max can be found writing all sorts of stuff from prose, to film, to plays such as The Story of Jimmy Kaplingus. His favorite commander deck at the moment is his Mono-Black Artifact/Aristocrats deck with Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist at the helm.
