Our #1 winner this week is quite a surprise. Deserted Temple is not a card with an intrinsic high power level like many other cards above $150 have. Just by itself, or next to some basic lands Deserted Temple is pretty useless. In that case, you can use it to fix your colors when you didn't draw enough lands to pay for a double colored mana cost. It could come in handy in Limited.
Deserted Temple only gets really good when you play it next to lands that give more than one mana when you tap them. Cabal Coffers, Cabal Stronghold or Gaea's Cradle, to name a few prime examples. And is it especially true for EDH, because you can only run 1 copy of each card in your deck. Deserted Temple's ability kind of functions like a flexible copy of another land you control.
It recent rise to unbelievable heights is mostly due to the popularity of Kaldheim commander Tergrid, God of Fright. That one commander is the cause of many many spikes in recent months. And it's almost no surprise that it is also the culprit in this case.
Before Tergrid, God of Fright, there was already demand for Deserted Temple, driving up its price to around $20. And that's not surprising because the card is a good addition to any deck with powerful lands.
But let me give you a word of warning too. The $198.88 price tag is all but ridiculous for Deserted Temple. Just compare it to its price in Europe: €12.82. Its market price is lagging behind too with $44.02. There are many reasons that point into the direction of a speculative buyout. The card has no reprints, is quite unique and from and older set, all while being in demand. A tasty target for speculators.
In an attempt to be comprehensive: please note that Strixhaven: School of Mages features a cycle of lands that have a tapping ability. Among them is Hall of Oracles. There might be more to follow. I have no evidence there is causation between this spike and the recent spoilers, but it felt relevant to note.
Whenever you think of a Mox, your first thought probably won't be Mox Tantalite. Sure, it's a Mox in name, but it doesn't work like the old Moxes. You can't drop this one on turn one and get your extra mana right away. You'll have to wait three turns to get that extra mana. With that you lose the main upside of other Moxes: getting a head start very early. The comparison is not fair of course; since the 'old' moxes are so powerful that they are banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage.
A more fair comparison would be with Mox Diamond or Mox Amber. But compared to those, Mox Tantalite is the lesser of the three and up to this week, that was reflected in the fact that it had the lowest price tag of the three.
It is still cheaper than those to, but it more than double in value this week. And the reason is connected to EDH (yes, again). In Commander 2021, a new commander will be printed that has a very good use for Mox Tantalite.
Osgir, the Reconstructor's second ability allows you to exile an artifact from your graveyard for , and by doing that you get two copies of the exiled card. And remember: can be zero. Mox Tantalite has a zero mana cost. And getting cards in your graveyard is not a huge problem. Either by discarding them, or sacrificing them to other permanents. YouTuber BadBoyMTG made a great video about this, check it out below.
#3 Windswept Heath $110.98 (+177%) - AND ALL OTHER ONS FETCHES
Wowzers! Windswept Heath a $100+ card? I would have never thought the day would come any time soon that it would even break $80, let alone $100. It has always been the 'cheaper one' in the cyle of onslaught fetchlands, together with that other one: Wooded Foothills. Well, those days seem to be over as that last one even surpassed Polluted Delta this week.
But not quite, to be a bit more exact. Polluted Delta has a market value of $60.52, and Windswept Heath is stuck at $38.87. Both spiked this week but I would take the market price as leading for now, until the AVG price settles somewhere near the market value.
All fetches from Onslaught spiked this week, but Windswept Heath's leap was the biggest. The primary reason for this, is that it had the most room to grow. Netting a high percentile growth is easier for cards that are worth less. The other reason in that the demand of Windswept Heath is higher as the #1 deck in Modern is currently the Heliod Company deck.
The spike of all the fetches also fits a wider pattern of older cards in high demand getting bought out. The print run of those old-framed fetches is much lower than their reprints from Khans of Tarkir. But the Khans printing went up as well.
I really wonder how much value Windswept Heath will hold in the long term. Earlier this week it was at a $150 price point, but it quickly fell to the $110 of today. The market price did not budge much; an indication of a speculative buyout.
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.
