#ButWhy is this card so expensive... Lion's Eye Diamond

When a price changes drastically, there's (usually) a reason for that, for example an unbanning, spoiling of a new card that complements a card, or some new tech. But why are cards expensive that, well, already are expensive? That's what I'm going to try to explore in this article series. This instalment, we'll be talking about Lion's Eye Diamond.

Aim of this article

Many articles require (some) background knowledge about formats, the metagame and price history of a card and similar cards. We also like to serve newcomers, casual players and infrequent players in the community who would like to understand how or why a card got to where it is now. When I started with these series, I figured there would be plenty and plenty of cards to choose from, but I already find that it's more limited than I thought. However, I really like to discuss the card of today: Lion's Eye Diamond! When you show this to a new player, he/she would probably think it's a very bad card. Cards that invoke this reaction to (new) players, are exactly what I'm looking for. This together with the recent spikes of LED, makes it an interesting card to discuss. Let's start with the graph.

When looking at the graph, we notice that the price has actually been quite stable for a long time. From June 2012 until January 2016 the price rose only from around $60 to $80. But after that, it encountered its first buyout, bumping the price to $130. Only half a year later, it shot up very briefly to about $245, but quickly settled back round $160 and slowly dropping to $120, a price it would stay for around 2 years. Now recently, in the big Reserved List buyout craze that's been going on, it went up again to about $240. The market price, however, only went up in this latest development from $130 to $170.

Mirage

Lion's Eye Diamond has only one print, namely in Mirage. Mirage was ninth expansion, released in October 1996 and was the first set in which the official blocks were introduced. This block structure was not something that briefly happened. It lasted for two decades and will be officially abandoned when Dominaria is released. These blocks were constructed of 3 expansion sets, in case of the Mirage block, these sets were Mirage, Visions and Weatherlight.

Abilities

As I stated earlier, I love Lion's Eye Diamond because of how bad the card looks to new players, but how insanely powerful it actually is. It's a mana artifact, with just one ability:

Sacrifice Lion's Eye Diamond, Discard your hand: Add three mana of any one color to your mana pool. Activate this ability only any time you could cast an instant.

There is something you should know about this: it's a mana ability. What does that mean? As soon as the ability is activated, the mana is created. The comprehensive rules state, that an activated ability is a mana ability if it meets three criteria: it doesn't have a target, it could put mana into a player's mana pool when it resolves, and it's not a loyalty ability. As you can see, this constitutes the ability of Lion's Eye Diamond as mana ability, with a very important implication: mana abilities are among the few activated or triggered abilities that don't use the stack or require passing priority to resolve, so they cannot be responded to or targeted. Since it's a mana ability, Pithing Needle doesn't affect it (however, you can name LED with Needle as a bluff) and you can still respond by activating LED's ability with a split second spell, like Krosan Grip, on the stack.

When Lion's Eye Diamond was originally printed, the oracle was a bit different, and used to read: "Play this ability as a mana source".

LED was designed to not be able to use the mana for a spell in your hand. When Mirage was printed, you had to have the mana in your manapool before you could cast a spell, meaning that LED would work as intended. However, nowadays you start by announcing the spell and putting it on the stack and then pay for it. Therefore, the wording of LED changed to "Activate this ability only any time you could cast an instant." (while still counting as a mana ability).

The comparison with Black Lotus is quickly drawn. Both are artifacts, cost and generate three mana when sacrificed. So you can create mana, but if you discard your hand, how can you cast something with that mana? We have to cast a spell from somewhere else!

In the next section, we'll discuss how we can still abuse the mana generated.

Eternal Play

Lion's Eye Diamond is not Modern legal, but we do see it played in Legacy where it's 100% legal. In Vintage it however is a restricted card. We almost exclusively see Lion's Eye Diamond in combo decks, most notably storm decks, like Ad Nauseam Tendrils, The Epic Storm and Doomsday decks.

The most widely used interaction is with tutors and wishes, like Infernal Tutor and Burning Wish. Especially the first one of these two is notable, since you have to be hellbent to make optimal use of it, basically making it a Demonic Tutor. So what happens is that you announce the spell, pay for it, explicitly indicate that you wish to retain priority and activate Lion's Eye Diamond's ability. You now have a spell on the stack, discarded your hand, and have 3 mana of a chosen color in your mana pool. Now how should we spend this mana? Oh, lets let the tutor/wish resolve and voila, there's our spell.

In Legacy Doomsday decks, a lot of piles of 5 cards have been concocted to kill the opponent, of which Lion's Eye Diamond is one of the cards used in most piles. If you're interested in knowing more about these piles, I'd suggest giving the Doomsday Codex a read.

Another common play is playing Lion's Eye Diamond in combination with Past in Flames. It's not really that big of a problem to discard your hand, if you can then play all spells from your graveyard, especially when you're playing these spells for the second time this turn!

So... #ButWhy is Lion's Eye Diamond so expensive? It's a card that has a limited supply and since it's on the dreaded Reserved List, there won't be any new prints anytime soon (or ever!). The card sees moderate play in Eternal formats and has proven its versatility and power multiple times. I don't really see the price of this card coming down any time soon.