Modern Times - Reprints and Special Guests

Happy Wednesday, all! In today's edition of Modern Times, we take a step back from big movers in the meta and look at some “Modern-legal” cards that have been impacted by their “special appearances” in supplemental products, or soon-to-be Special Guest printings (you know which card I’m talking about). 

Without further ado, let’s dig in.

Cavern of Souls

Fellow Stocks writer Harvey McGuiness wrote a nice piece on Special Guest printings in Standard-legal sets and supplemental products earlier this month. For brevity, Special Guest printings can be generalized as reprinted cards that can be opened in Standard booster packs, but are not part of the new set cards. You could think of Masterpiece Series cards as the earliest version of Special Guests, with The List and reskins of existing staples in The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth ("LTR") being some of the most recent examples to date. 

Of note in the upcoming The Lost Caverns of Ixalan set is the reprint of Cavern of Souls - which was also just reprinted in a similar vein in Commander: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth. Cavern, in particular, is a staple in the format that has stood the test of time. A testament to its potency in the format can be seen in its price history. Almost two years ago to the day, this card sat just shy of $90, and has since been sliding downhill ever so slowly as reprints have dragged down its price little by little.

With the upcoming Special Guest appearance in Lost Caverns, you can be certain this card will likely continue to fall more. Today, an original Avacyn Restored Cavern sits at around $40. Still pricey for a card that’s played at four in most decks, but less than half of what it was two years ago. What impact will Lost Caverns have on Caverns (I’ve never used the word “cavern(s)” this much in one sitting)? I would imagine the impact will be more significant than what people are giving the preview credit for.

Consider the fact that the original printing of The Great Henge (more on this in a bit) was $65 dollars not too long ago, but has since fallen to around $40 after a reprint in LTR, as well as a follow-up in Commander Masters. In reality, these reprints may seem innocuous, but they act like a slow drip of supply into the market. 

What does this mean? Assuming the meta stays relatively the same (a big assumption, admittedly), I could see Lost Cavern’s reprint of Cavern dropping its market price down to the $30-$35 range pretty easily. Perhaps at long last we’ll be able to see the sun again, and pick up a playset of these staple lands!  

Cavern of Souls	CardKingdom $47.99	TCGPlayer $41.49
Paths of the Dead	CardKingdom $54.99	TCGPlayer $45.59
Cavern of Souls (Borderless)	CardKingdom $47.99	TCGPlayer $48.25
Cavern of Souls	CardKingdom $59.99	TCGPlayer $51.97

The Great Henge

More like The Greatest Henge, amiright? All bad jokes aside, The Great Henge is a magical card (last bad joke, I swear). Seriously though, The Great Henge is one of the best things for green in Commander that we’ve seen in the past ten years, right up alongside Craterhoof Behemoth. 

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Corey, this card isn’t played in Modern.” You’d be correct, it’s not played in Modern…yet. But it is Modern-legal, and therefore fair game for discussion today. Now that that disclaimer is out of the way, back to the finance!

The Great Henge, much like Cavern of Souls, has had a drip of new printings in LTR and Commander Masters (as mentioned earlier), which have pulled its market price down considerably in just a short span of time. 

The question for cards like The Great Henge is “Where can we go from here?” And it’s a fair question to ask. In just a few months, we’ve seen double the amount of Henge reprints, but at low relative frequencies. Should we expect to see more? I want to say yes. Clearly WOTC is keenly aware of the desirability of The Great Henge, and has made somewhat of a concerted effort to increase its supply to the market, albeit very carefully. 

Financially, where does this leave us? Kind of in a state of limbo. The Great Henge seems to have stabilized at around $40 and doesn’t look like it’s going to fall further in the near future. If you have expectations of future reprints, and aren’t in a rush, then it’s probably fine to hold off on picking up your copy. On the other hand, it may very well be stuck at this price for some time, and even drift back upwards as expectations of future reprints in the near-term fade. Given that this is more of a Commander staple than a Modern staple, picking up your single copy now might not be the worst idea. In fact, it’s a pretty good one.

The Great Henge	CardKingdom $42.99	TCGPlayer $42.99
The Great Henge (Foil Etched)	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $44.89
The Party Tree	CardKingdom $44.99	TCGPlayer $49.00
The Great Henge (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $49.99	TCGPlayer $55.43

Ensnaring Bridge

I remember the Golden Age of Modern when Lantern Control was a viable deck. The Lantern(s) of Insights, the Ghoulcaller’s Bell(s), the Codex Shredder(s). It was a wonderful - you might even say a magical - time in Magic. But what would Lantern Control be without Ensnaring Bridge?

$0.25$0.35

$0.34$0.35

Answer: it wouldn’t be. Once Upon a Time (we’ll talk about that card another day), Ensnaring Bridge was $60… And then Mox Opal was banned in January of 2020. A couple years later, Ensnaring Bridge saw another reprint in 2022, and then in LTR it made one final appearance. Today, in all its former glory, an original Stronghold Bridge will cost you a mere $15 (25% of what it was worth at its peak), and looks to be trending downward still. 

Is there still a place in Modern for Ensnaring Bridge? Possibly. The Modern meta is shifting like sand beneath our feet, but even so still favors a meta heavily concentrated around Rakdos Scam and 4-Color Omnath builds. Having said that, a lot of mono-black brews are popping up with cards like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Beseech the Mirror that also run Karn, the Great Creator (“KGC”) to grab goodies from the sideboard, including our friend Ensnaring Bridge. Beyond Mono-Black Coffers builds (again, more on that in a sec), Tron and other anti-meta builds that love to use KGC as a toolbox for timely artifacts usually sideboard (and in some cases mainboard) an Ensnaring Bridge or two. 

The meta has a tendency to swing pretty quickly, so it might be worth picking up a couple Ensnaring Bridges while they sit at a relative all-time low. I’m always a sucker for these once-powerful Modern staples, and have written a couple articles on staples that have fallen out of favor in the age of Modern Horizons X formats. All the same, the format will likely undergo a dramatic makeover once Modern Horizon 3 hits the shelves of your local game stores, so perhaps there’s still hope yet for Bridge to make a large-scale comeback in the meta!

Ensnaring Bridge	CardKingdom $17.99	TCGPlayer $13.33
Bridge of Khazad-dum	CardKingdom $15.99	TCGPlayer $10.74
Ensnaring Bridge	CardKingdom $16.99	TCGPlayer $13.99
Ensnaring Bridge	CardKingdom $19.99	TCGPlayer $16.50

Cabal Coffers

The final card I’d like to talk about today is Cabal Coffers. Can you believe that just under two years ago that this was around $150? I still find it hard to believe. Lo and behold, Cabal Coffers from its original set, Torment, now sits around $20. Its Modern Horizons 2 reprint sits at $17, and its guest appearance in LTR Commander sits at $27. 

Cabal Coffers was never really a Modern playable. Its reprint in MH2 seemed more like throwing a bone to Commander players that had been dying for a reprint to pair with their Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Nevertheless, its printing in MH2 brought a classic combo of Urborg+Coffers to the Modern scene. Since then, many brewers, builders, and stubborn players that refuse to play the meta (me) have tinkered with the potential of mono-black in Modern. And why not? With cards like Grief, Beseech the Mirror, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse, Orcish Bowmasters, and Troll of Khazad-dum, the incentive to play mono-black is pretty enticing right now. 

I believe of all the cards I’ve discussed today that are not called Cavern of Souls, Coffers has the most realistic chance of being impactful in Modern in the long run. As mono-black continues to get rampant support like we’ve never seen before, its potential only grows. Furthermore, powerful colorless spells like KGC push Coffers-style decks upward too, as more power-crept artifacts sneak into the format, like we’ve seen with Cityscape Leveler and Agatha's Soul Cauldron (among others). 

I would highly advise picking up a couple of Coffers at their current price. One for your Commander needs, and one for your future Modern needs. 

Cabal Coffers	CardKingdom $20.99	TCGPlayer $21.64
Minas Morgul	CardKingdom $32.99	TCGPlayer $26.93
Cabal Coffers (Borderless)	CardKingdom $24.99	TCGPlayer $27.16
Cabal Coffers	CardKingdom $19.99	TCGPlayer $17.70

Some Final Thoughts

Gone are the days of Chronicles-style sets, here are the times of Masters-style sets… and Special Guests. WOTC has certainly found some creative ways to increase the expected value of their Standard sets through vehicles like The List, or “Standard Set: Commander” supplemental items.  The cards discussed here today are part of this paradigm shift in both product design and reprint distribution. 

Such a shift has enabled a slow dissemination of reprints into the market, pushing prices down over long periods rather than abruptly, as in the case of dedicated reprint sets. This is certainly the intention, and epitome, of eating your cake and having it, too. Collectors and speculators despise mass reprintings, and spend a considerable amount of their discretionary income on the game, while players love reprints, but maybe spend a little more carefully on product so as to not break the bank.

Special Guest reprints appease both audiences rather effectively. Players opening their draft packs, or bundle, or Commander products have a chance to pull some of these reprints, while collectors can remain relatively at ease in that their original prints need not “tank” in value right out of the gate. Strategies like this give players and speculators alike time to see the writing on the wall for some high-end staples, and adjust accordingly in a way that’s much more accommodative than large-scale Masters set reprints. Win-win. Happy Halloween, and be safe speculating!

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