Weekly Winners 2018 - 31

This week two of the three winners are strange, even crazy buyouts. The third one is a nice combo that works well with a new printed commander.

 

#1 Gaea's Liege $12 (+1,933.90%)

 

This week's winner is a total crazy buyout. Gaea's Liege spiked hard this week and not because of a glitch. This rare from Revised Edition sees no play in competitive formats and even sees only fringe play in Commander. The only reason Gaea's Liege spiked was because one person bought out the cards, and then listed 1500 copies on Ebay for a ridiculous price. Click here to check out the listing. Thanks to @WordofCommander for making a screenshot. However, after this ridiculous price, it seems the seller has already lowered it to offer a whopping $11.000 discount.

Buying out 1500 copies of a Revised Edition rare means that one player owns between 1% and 1.5% of all available copies of the card, a calculation based on a great post on Reddit about print runs that everyone should read.

This is nothing more than a random, poorly executed buyout. Only if you, the player, are willing to pay almost 2000% more for a single copy of the card, the person responsible for the buyout gets what he wants. My hunch is that the price of this card will drop down to normal levels quickly.

 

#2 Mist-Cloaked Herald $3.75 (+752%)

 

Weekly Winner #2 is another crazy buyout and #3 from Core Set 2019. Last week I wrote about Sun Sentinel and the week before that about Llanowar Elves. This week Mist-Cloaked Herald spiked as well.

The card is a common, but just like I said last week it is less common than you might think. Just as with Llanowar Elves, and Sun Sentinel the card is not available in boosters and is printed in a much lower rate than a 'normal' common from the set. This does not automatically lead to a much higher value. But when speculators jump on cards like these and buy them out to make a profit the price will skyrocket.

And the sad thing is: the prices will stick. Not only is the price of Sun Sentinel now a steady $4, its market price is up as well and keeping steady. Mist-Cloaked Herald has now settled into a steady price of $3.70, with a $3.50 market price. Although the price of these cards is artifically inflated, it (sadly) does pay off. You as a player are more than willing to pay the price, and in the end that is what counts when valuing a card.

 

#3 Aura Thief $14.49 (+263%)

 

When looking at Aura Thief, you might think: when is the ability of this card relevant enough to be even slightly good? In what fairytale wonderland situation is this a great card? Well, meet Enchanted Evening. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise that this combo wins you any game, unless someone can counter or destroy one of the pieces, while the other is still on the stack. Enchanted Evening has spiked as well:

The combo works well with a new commander from C18: Tuvasa the Sunlit. With the printing of that new card, players have started to experiment with enchanted themed decks around it. Check out this Reddit post for some relevant discussion on the deck.

 

#4 Vengevine $44.59 (+79%)

 

Vengevine is one of those cards that has been lingering to spike at some point, and has been getting some extra love since the printing of Stitcher's Supplier. It has seen play in Modern Bridgevine decks which have been doing really well lately.

Since Vengevine has only been (really) printed in Rise of the Eldrazi, the supply is lower than you might think, and if this becomes a popular deck I don't see the prices coming down until the next reprint. Other cards from this deck, like Bridge from Below are already slowly following and might go up more if the deck will keep posting results. However, the supply of these should be higher because it being printed at rare in both Future Sight and Modern Masters.

Bridge from Below
Future Sight	Buy on CardKingdom $10.99
Modern Masters	Buy on CardKingdom $9.99