Last week, we wrote a bit of an odd finance article alongside our usual offerings. Long story short, there was a significant price spike that occurred over in Europe that didn’t seem to be affecting the U.S. There could be several factors here, like an unavailability of LOTR cards in certain languages but, after a week of waiting, the price spike has hit the U.S. market in full force. Did you get in on Lorien Revealed before its price spiked?
Massive Lorien Revealed Spike (That We Knew was Coming)
Last week, we covered a massive Lorien Revealed spike that appeared over on Cardmarket.com. Cardmarket, generally, is the same thing TCGplayer is for the U.S. over in Europe. Its generally the open market that many players use to set what MTG card singles go for.
Last week, Lorien Revealed spiked hard. Foil copies of the card hit the equivalent of $6.20 USD. At the time, foil copies of the card were only about $1.50 on TCGplayer.
Long story short, thanks to being a cheap Islandcycler that can also refill your hand, players are starting to play Lorien Revealed over, well, lands. Lorien Revealed essentially functioning as a blue land allows players to pitch the card to effects like Force of Will, Force of Negation and Subtlety. The card can also get Delved away for Murktide Regent, giving it a counter.
This card is absolutely everywhere in Modern at the moment, and with the Lord of the Rings Pro Tour coming up this weekend, Lorien Revealed should see a lot of screen time between Constructed and Draft portions of the tournament.
Current U.S. Price Spikes
While we were unsure of what exactly was causing the spike in Europe that was leaving the spike untouched in the U.S., it appears that the European market was simply ahead of the curve. Fast forward a week later, and Lorien Revealed’s spikes in the U.S. now match what we saw in Europe in last week. The normal copy of the card has spiked from 10 cents to $2! That’s a massive 1900% price spike!
$2 may not seem like a lot at first glance, but its important to remember that Lorien Revealed is a common. If you’ve opened some LOTR packs, chances are a few copies of this card got lost in your bulk. Additionally, anyone who bought a bunch of these at their 10 cent mark may be in for a massive payday, since every copy of the card will now sell for $2.
Even though this price spike is what the TCGplayer market price indicates, cards are actually selling for even more on the site. $2.50 seems like a common selling point for the card at the time of writing, but there are copies of the card selling for $3.60. Not only has the card spiked a massive amount, but current prices indicate that the spike is not over yet.
Like Europe, foil copies of Lorien Revealed have spiked from about 20 cents to about $6.
Read More: Disappointing New MTG Deck Shamed During Its Reveal
Void Winnower
Outside of the Lorien Revealed spike finally becoming real for the U.S., Void Winnower is now seeing a decent spike in price. For reference, the new Commander Masters decks have been spoiled and, while controversial in price, there are a lot of obvious staples for the various archetypes that are just straight up missing. We covered some of these earlier this week.
Void Winnower is one of the cards we did not cover that began seeing price spikes as the week continued. There was a very real reason not to reprint this card in Commander Masters. According to Commander creator Sheldon Menery, Void Winnower presents a play pattern that he is not willing to make more common in Commander:
“It’s a notable omission in that it’s a card that presents a play pattern we’d rather avoid in Commander. We’d like for the format to be as interactive as possible and while Void Winnower isn’t as bad as some others, it definitely takes part of the game away from the other players.”
As mentioned in Menery’s quote, Void Winnower does not encourage interaction in the Commander format. Instead, Void Winnower thrives in turning off your opponent’s options. They cannot cast odd mana valued spells, and cannot block with even mana valued creatures. There is nothing interactive about this. Instead, its a heavily restrictive card.
Regardless, Void Winnower is, whether you like it or not, a powerful colorless Eldrazi, which means its quite good in Eldrazi Unbound deck. As a result, Void Winnower has increased in price from $9 to about $20. Lightly played copies of Void Winnower still appear to be selling for around $10, but near mint copies are still $20.
Palantir of Orthanc
Over the past month or so, the Palantir of Orthanc has about doubled in price. As a colorless card that’s good in basically any Commander deck, the Palantir of Orthanc has a lot of potential homes.
For three mana, on each of your end steps, Palantir of Orthanc will Scry two. Past that point, target opponent may choose to allow you draw a card or mill. The catch is that each time this card triggers, it gets an Influence counter. If your opponent chooses the mill option, Palantir of Orthanc will mill the amount of cards equal to its Influence counters. The Palantir then deals damage equal to the combined mana values of cards milled to your opponent.
Basically, this makes choosing the mill option become increasingly more dangerous as the Palantir accumulates counters. In constructed, it can become dangerous to choose the mill option even after a few triggers. Players have more life to play with in Commander, so a strategy that is interested in filling up the graveyard may be the best way to use the Palantir.
Thanks to the card being powerful in many different strategies and being colorless, the Palantir of Orthanc has increased from about $6 to around $12 on the secondary market. Generally, nonfoil copies of this card are currently selling for between $10 and $12.
Did You Get in on the Ground Floor?
A very tangible opportunity was presented for U.S. players interested in attaining some Lorien Revealed, for gameplay or investment purposes, to grab these cards before they started spiking. We had a whole week of notice from the European markets thanks to Cardmarket and, while we weren’t sure this was a case of the U.S. being behind the times, it was the most likely scenario.
Now that everyone knows just how good Lorien Revealed is, finding these for a couple cents is going to be quite tough. Expect to pay a couple bucks for these if you need them. That said, will people really continue to buy these at this price point, or do players who want Lorien Revealed already have all that they need?
Read More: Commander Masters List Additions Highlight Powerful Multiformat Staples!