Weekly Winners 2019 - 33

16 Aug

by Peter

A slow but interesting week! The absence of huge spikes and speculation allows me to cover cards that normally don't make the cut, but are not less interesting. Just in time for FNM, I'll now tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight!

#1 Mischievous Quanar $2.25 (+125%)

Sitting at just $2.25, the spike on Mischievous Quanar is not very large. But one thing is very interesting! Check out the graph on the card, if you inspect the market price, you will notice that it is now almost $0.75 higher than the Average price listed. Usually, this is the other way around. The market price reflects the actual prices people buy the card for.

When the price of a card is manipulated by speculators, you'll notice the complete opposite: a card's AVG price spikes extremely high, but the market price won't budge. It is therefore safe to assume that Mischievous Quanar will see a price increase in the AVG price as well.

Mischievous Quanar's price increase is caused by the attention the Morph mechanic gets in the Commander 2019 decks. Several other morph-cards have gone up in price. Mischievous Quanar did not make it to any lists of cards 'to watch out for', but sometimes the crowd seems wiser than the experts.

In an attempt to be thorough and complete, please note that MTGGoldfish released a 'budget commander' video six days ago. Mischievous Quanar was also part of that budget deck. Its price started to rise days before and has continued to rise at the same pace. It doesn't seem likely that the two are connected. But the video is certainly worth it to watch!

Mischievous Quanar
Scourge	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $2.25

#2 Nesting Dragon $6.73 (+37.91%)

Could you pull off a Eggs tribal deck? Well, you could very well try it as this week Atla Palani, Nest Tender was spoiled. As a consequence Nesting Dragon spiked. With it, you are guaranteed to have a good source of eggs, and Atla Palani, Nest Tender turns those eggs in nasty, big, fat, creatures. One hopes the hatchlings will be dragons or dinosaurs. But something makes me think that Eldrazi also born from eggs.

If anything, this spike shows the fun EDH players see in brewing new decks with funny themes. And also: its proof how much influence the demand for EDH cards has on card prices.

Nesting Dragon	CardKingdom $4.99	TCGPlayer $6.73
Atla Palani, Nest Tender	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $19.67

#3 Cryptic Command $33.20 (+5.93%)

We are still far away from its all-time price record of $58, but Cryptic Command seems to start climbing up again. Even 3 reprints at rare in masters sets is not enough to bring down Cryptic Command's price to the place where some other popular cards have gone after just one or two reprints. On top of that Cryptic Command is both a Player Reward and an Amonkhet Invocation too.

Normally you would expect the price of a card like this to drop, or stay the same. That was the case for a long period of time, but Cryptic Command has been slowly climbing up since February. This week it netted a 5% price increase. And its market price is following suit.

Cryptic Command remains a Modern Allstar as it sees play in 14 different decks through all tiers. It sees some play in Legacy and is often seen in EDH as well. It simply is, and will remain a very powerful, flexible and relevant card to run in a deck that can reliably produce .

All of the other original art reprints are climbing in price too. Interestingly, the copy from Iconic Masters has seen a drop in market price. So, if you want to own Cryptic Command, that would be the cheapest option.

Cryptic Command	CardKingdom $34.99	TCGPlayer $33.20
Intet, the Dreamer	CardKingdom $0.69	TCGPlayer $1.34
Cryptic Command	CardKingdom $27.99	TCGPlayer $27.62
Cryptic Command	CardKingdom $27.99	TCGPlayer $29.44

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.