Over and Under - July 2023

The One of One Ring has been found. Gift Bundles have hit the shelves. Orcish Bowmasters has started its triumphal procession across multiple formats. All around, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth has been the financial smash hit Wizards of the Coast was hoping it would be.

But, as with just about every other time I’ve penned one of these Over and Under installments, it’s time to move on to the next thing: Commander Masters. It’s summer, and that means its reprint season. Buckle up, because we’ve got a lot to talk about.

But first – time for our recap from last month!

Review: Cavern of Souls

Cavern of Souls has taken an interesting split pathway with respect to the price trajectories of its printings since we last checked in on it. As we discussed back in June, the vast majority of its printings have had a significant reduction in overall prices, both in listed copies (median) and completed transactions (market), indicating that we’ve reached a stable point for the price. Demand for the card is certainly still strong - $50 is nothing to scoff at – but the newly abundant supply of reprints courtesy of the LTR Realms and Relics promotion has lowered the price floor.

Speaking of these Realms and Relics, not only have they created a greater market supply in line with traditional reprint runs, but the alternate Tolkein theme applied to them has also led to a bit of a redirection of cash, meaning that players aren’t just picking up Cavern of Souls, rather they’re hunting down this promotional printing specifically. This has caused the aforementioned exaggeration of price differences between printings (traditional and Realms and Relics), as market data is pointing towards an increased sell-through rate for the new printing in comparison to the old.

In short, the usual amount of money is flowing towards Cavern of Souls overall, but a disproportionate amount of it is currently being directed towards this newest iteration, suppressing the demand for earlier iterations.

Review: Wheel of Fortune

Ah, Wheel of Fortune. It might not be in the Power Nine like its cousin Timetwister, but it has certainly made a name for itself as the progenitor of “wheel” effects. So how has its price faired since last month’s check-in? To be honest, not much has changed.

After Orcish Bowmasters was previewed, a lot of eyes immediately went towards wheel effects, both as something players may be cutting so as to avoid the punishment Orcish Bowmasters could deal out, or as something players may add so as to combo with their own Bowmasters. Either way, people were talking about wheels, and where better to start than with the original?

Overall, this increased attention did lead to a brief pickup in sales, but Orcish Bowmasters has largely settled into non-red lists, alongside the rest of the OpusThief shell (Notion Thief, Narset, Parter of Veils, etc) via decks such as Tivit, Seller of Secrets, meaning that the primary combo piece which was driving the excitement isn’t actually playing out as the combo most players anticipated. This isn’t to say that Wheel of Fortune’s price trajectory is collapsing or even dead in the water, but it does mean that we’re back to watching and waiting for news to pick the card’s price back up.

Alright, that’s our review. Now it’s time to talk about this month’s overvalued pick.

Nesting Dragon

Oh boy, time to get into Commander Masters preview season. If there was any one point to take away from this article, it would be that, for a great deal of popular casual magic cards, inflated prices aren’t primarily due to demand, but rather a lack of supply.

Nesting Dragon is not a $10 card, and I’m not just saying that because it’s already been confirmed for a reprint next month, which has accelerated its price collapse. Similar things can be said of many other cards: the Medallion cycle, Ohran Frostfang, etc. All of these are popular cards loved by casual players far and wide, and all of them have had severely limited print cycles. Nesting Dragon is simply the tip of the iceberg, but it serves well as an example of how significant the supply side of the equation is in Magic’s market dynamics.

An exacerbated but similar effect can be seen across the Reserve List – compare Grim Monolith (nearly $250) to its cousin Mana Vault (barely $50). When it comes to Magic, supply (or lack thereof) creates a hefty premium, something which is crucial to be aware of as we continue to evaluate the effect of sets like Commander Masters going forward. When Nesting Dragon crashes back to sub-$5 (honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it at $2 or less), it won’t be due to a decrease in demand, but rather the market finally expressing what the real value of the card is. If you have a copy and you’re happily playing it, then by all means hold tight to your Dragons. Otherwise, I’d let my copies go – and fast.

Next up, it’s our undervalued pick.

Dockside Extortionist

"This Goblin was reprinted just a year ago and is already almost $60, do you really think it can go higher, Harvey?" Yes. As much as I hate to say it, Dockside Extortionist is the poster child of “things are worth what people will pay,” and with each passing day Commander players seem ready to pay more and more for this sneaky little Goblin.

Whenever new sets come out, players swarm together and build Commander decks. The excitement is palpable, and Wizards of the Coast has most definitely figured that out for itself. When the new set is a Masters set, that excitement is only heightened, as decks that were previously off-limits due to prohibitively expensive key cards are now newly accessible due to crashing singles prices. This acts like a bowling ball being dropped into a pool – while the costs of the reprinted cards (i.e. the impact zone) are lowered, money is suddenly free to be directed elsewhere (the splash from the impact). If players are saving $60 or more on a new and exciting deck, then those disposable savings are now free to be spent on upgrades. Enter Dockside Extortionist.

We all know what Dockside does and why it’s expensive. Unlike Nesting Dragon, Dockside really is a $60 card through and through – it's been the chase rare/mythic in all of its printings and its effects are both game-warping and ubiquitously desirable. It would take a ban or repetitive reprints to knock that price down, something which Wizards seems less than intent on doing due to their desires to maintain a base level of reprint equity from which to pull each year. Keep an eye on Dockside Extortionist’s price as the months go on; chances are the market will start to dry in the coming days.

Nesting Dragon	CardKingdom $2.79	TCGPlayer $2.35
Dockside Extortionist	CardKingdom $79.99	TCGPlayer $63.00
Dockside Extortionist	CardKingdom $79.99	TCGPlayer $62.57
Orcish Bowmasters	CardKingdom $54.99	TCGPlayer $45.00

Wrap Up

While this month’s picks all have significant price correlations with that of Commander Masters and its broad-market implications, I’d argue that this is far and away from some of our other more speculative Over and Under iterations. A surprise Dockside reprint would be welcomed by all, but as we saw with Double Masters 2022, it certainly won’t slash the price – or even necessarily reduce it – for long. Nesting Dragon is already set to flood the market relative to demand, the only question there is how low can it really go. 

Thanks for checking in, and tune in next month where we’ll again ask what’s over and what’s under.

Check out these other articles:

Modern Times - MOM Revisted by Corey Williams

Why'd That Go Up? by Jason Alt

A Penny Saved, A Bauble Earned by Ryan Cole