Price Trends: Magic: The Gathering Cards Climbing in Price - 02/18/2025
By Peter Day •
We want you to have the best information available when you price cards on the TCGplayer Marketplace. So to help you get the most from your inventory, we’ve put together a downloadable CSV report of Magic: The Gathering cards that have dramatically increased in Market Price in the past 30 days.
(Note: This report only considers Near Mint copies of cards with at least five sales between January 15, 2024 and February 13, 2025.)
Here are ten highlights from that report. First, we have the five cards that gained the most value in the past 30 days after starting with a Market Price of $5 or less.
Top 5 Price Increases—MTG Cards $5 or Less
- Set: Stronghold
- Increase: +$7.49
- Current Market Price: $10.48
This month the biggest winners all owe their price hikes to Hashaton, Scarab’s Fist, one of the new commanders from the Eternal Might preconstructed deck. Hashaton rewards players for discarding creature spells, so fans who want to build around this effect have started picking up every repeatable discard effect they can find.
One of those repeatable discard effects is Tortured Existence, a card which has only been printed once in Stronghold, plus a short reprint in The List. With so few copies available, this unassuming Common has bloomed in the spotlight like a flower in the sun, jumping from $2 to over $10 in just a week.
- Set: Commander: Modern Horizons 3
- Increase: +$8.11
- Current Market Price: $9.74
After a long journey, Kozilek’s Return is back where it started.
This Mythic (which only has four printings across two sets) was selling for almost $9 in mid-September, as Modern players began experimenting with the new Eldrazi cards from Modern Horizons 3 in the wake of Nadu’s ban. It then slumped in price over the next few months as interest in the format waned and players grew concerned that The One Ring would be banned and take the Eldrazi deck down with it.
That ban hit in December, sending shockwaves through the format, and Kozilek’s Return sank a tiny bit more to its lowest price since July. Then, on January 9, somebody made a huge bet on Eldrazi by buying out Kozilek’s Return, driving the average number of copies per buyer that day up to over 56.
Their bet paid off, because in late January, Eldrazi decks managed to win one Regional Championship and take 2nd place at another, confirming the deck still had legs abominable eldritch limbs. That success sent Kozilek’s Return rocketing up higher than ever before.
- Set: The List Reprints
- Increase: +$8.80
- Current Market Price: $13.29
The only other printing of Tortured Existence has spiked just as hard as the first, for the same reason: Hashaton, Scarab’s Fist.
- Set: Double Masters 2022
- Increase: +$11.71
- Current Market Price: $11.96
Varina, Lich Queen slots perfectly into any Hashaton deck by letting you draw and discard cards when you attack with Zombies. Hashaton’s ability then triggers as you discard, letting you make even more Zombies to keep the circle of unlife a’turning.
Varina has only been printed twice, and was under $1 at the start of January, so this card had plenty of room to grow.
- Set: Mirage
- Increase: +$17.52
- Current Market Price: $19.40
Besides being another discard outlet for Hashaton, Unfulfilled Desires is a member of the Reserved List, and has only been printed once (back in 1996). Collectors and investors love to speculate on Reserved List cards even when they see virtually no play, and at least in this instance, that bet seems to have paid off now that fans have a reason to sleeve it up.
Next, these are the five cards that gained the most value in the past 30 days after starting with a Market Price over $5.
Top 5 Price Increases—MTG Cards Over $5
#5 Scrubland
- Set: Revised Edition
- Increase: +$44.55
- Current Market Price: $364.17
Another member of the Reserved List, Scrubland recently hit the highest price it has held since 2022. The dual land doesn’t appear to have had any particular reason for breaking $350, as it reached that price on the back of just a handful of sales, none of which look like buyouts.
Scrubland’s historic high is still $380, which it reached briefly in July 2021.
#4 Encore Electromancer - Snapcaster Mage
- Set: Secret Lair Drop Series
- Increase: +$54.69
- Current Market Price: $721.69
Like an enamored concert-goer frozen in front of the merch stand, the market hasn’t been able to decide what this Hatsune Miku crossover card should be worth. Part of the trouble is that nobody knows for sure how rare it is—some small percentage of Miku Secret Lair drops contain a copy of this card (or its Rainbow Foil version) as a random bonus to go along with the other cards in the box.
So far only 18 copies of the non-foil version have sold on TCGplayer, with prices ranging from just under $500 to just under $800, so it may take a while for that range to narrow.
#3 The One Ring (Borderless Poster)
- Set: Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Increase: +$56.53
- Current Market Price: $344.15
Most versions of The One Ring saw a small bump after Wizards of the Coast announced that the card would be banned in Modern, as Commander players and collectors moved to scoop up the copies Modern players were offloading. But only this Borderless version has managed to ride that spike all the way back to its all-time high. Aside from the famous 1-of-1 Ring that Post Malone purchased for $2M, and the 100 serialized copies of this version, the Borderless Poster One Ring is the rarest and most valuable One Ring card collectors can hope to own. And given the logistics of licensing the LOTR IP, and the fact that WotC no longer needs to worry about the card’s impact on Modern, we may never get another printing of this card.
- Set: Revised Edition
- Increase: +$63.07
- Current Market Price: $780.92
Like its fellow dual land Scrubland, Underground Sea is having a bit of a moment right now without any apparent external cause. Still, it remains well below its historic high of $978, which it also reached in July 2021.
- Set: Commander: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Increase: +$106.35
- Current Market Price: $850.92
After more than a month of no sales, a handful of copies of the Elven Sol Ring finally sold recently for over $1000. At this point, the only thing holding this card’s Market Price below $1k is a lack of data. Only two listings remain, both of them within 5 cents of $1,500. These cards are ridiculously rare, and priced accordingly.
By selling these cards online, you can reach a broad audience of customers who are willing to pay what these cards are truly worth. Download the February 2025 Price Trends Report to review every Magic card that went up in value this month. Then list those cards on TCGplayer so your inventory can do more for your business.
Download the Magic Price Trends Report
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