Price Trends: Magic: The Gathering Cards Climbing in Price - 05/14/2025
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 April 12, 2025 and May 11, 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
#5 MacCready, Lamplight Mayor (Extended Art)
- Set: Universes Beyond: Fallout
- Increase: +$10.97
- Current Market Price: $13.66
The Abzan Armor commander precon that released on April 11th with Tarkir: Dragonstorm is filled with cards that reward you for playing creatures with high toughness and low power, the most notable being Felothar the Steadfast. So last month, players looking to upgrade this precon sought other singles that support this plan like Last March of the Ents, Tree of Perdition, and MacCready, Lamplight Mayor—all of which spiked as a result.
MacCready has never been reprinted since Universes Beyond: Fallout released in March of last year (and likely won’t be, given the legal hoops of licensing IP), so it’s had the most to gain from this surge in demand.
- Set: Promo Pack: Tarkir: Dragonstorm
- Increase: +$11.62
- Current Market Price: $14.58
Cori-Steel Cutter is slicing its way through every competitive format in reach, from Standard to Pioneer to Modern and Legacy. No wonder it keeps rising in price: every red player wants a playset.
The version from the promo packs is more scarce than the base version, which makes it slightly more sensitive to the runaway demand. But the base version isn’t far behind: it’s grown from about $2 to $12 since Tarkir: Dragonstorm released.
- Set: Betrayers of Kamigawa
- Increase: +$12.61
- Current Market Price: $16.20
Now we get to the biggest cause of price shifts in the last month.
On April 22, Wizards of the Coast announced that they were unbanning five cards in Commander and moving them to the Game Changers list that supplements the experimental 1-5 bracket system. All the unbanned cards naturally spiked in price as players sought to grab their copies of these ban-worthy cards for Magic’s most popular format.
Sway of the Stars has been banned in Commander since April 2005, sees play in no other formats, and has only a single printing, so it had a ton of room to grow after this announcement. The only reason Sway isn’t even more expensive right now is because its effect is more “unfun” than it is “overpowered.” Playing Sway effectively restarts the game (which most players hate), without even guaranteeing that the caster will end up in a better position than the other players at the table.
- Set: Double Masters 2022
- Increase: +$12.92
- Current Market Price: $14.54
Gifts Ungiven is another card that was unbanned in Commander on April 22. It sees play in other formats and has multiple printings, so it didn’t have as much room to grow as Sway of the Stars, but it gained more value anyway thanks to being more generically powerful.
Gifts Ungiven searches up multiple cards at instant speed, and can be played in any deck with blue in its color identity—that’s nutty. While it comes with the downside that an opponent gets to make you discard two of the cards you searched for, players can mitigate that downside either by building their deck to play cards from the graveyard, or by bribing their opponent to let them keep the cards they most want. All 10(ish) prints of Gifts Ungiven should be considered Commander staples going forward.
- Set: Odyssey
- Increase: +$18.22
- Current Market Price: $19.41
Another newly unbanned Commander card, Braids, Cabal Minion is a nostalgic piece of Magic history that can be oppressive as a commander against opponents who aren’t prepared for it.
Note that this price spike only applies to the original Odyssey printing of Braids—the more recent printing from Modern Horizons 2 grew a similar percentage, but still costs under $1 per copy. That price difference suggests that the players most excited for this unbanning care more about the idea of Braids, Cabal Minion than they do about her in-game effect.
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 Terror of the Peaks (Extended Art)
- Set: Outlaws of Thunder Junction
- Increase: +$23.67
- Current Market Price: $63.60
Players were consumed by greed for Dragon-focused commander cards after the release of Tarkir: Dragonstorm on April 11, so many of Magic’s most powerful Dragon cards spiked in the last month. Terror of the Peaks is one such card, and the Extended Art version from Outlaws of Thunder Junction has been waiting for an opportunity like this to separate from the base OTJ version. The recent surge in interest put enough upward pressure on this version for its scarcity (relative to the base version) to become relevant for the first time.
- Set: Champions of Kamigawa
- Increase: +$24.95
- Current Market Price: $27.36
Every version of Gifts Ungiven spiked after the announcement that it would be unbanned in Commander, including the original printing Champions of Kamigawa. Of course it’s always fun to own the “first” of something, but it also helps that this version’s art is iconic, having been referenced in both Gifts Given and Realms Uncharted.
#3 Berserk (CE)
- Set: Collector's Edition
- Increase: +$27.75
- Current Market Price: $80.74
This non-tournament-legal version of Berserk from Collector’s Edition sells extremely rarely. So when two Near Mint copies sold on May 7th (breaking a four-month stretch of no sales), those few data points were enough to spike the card’s Market Price. Don’t read too much into this one.
- Set: Darksteel
- Increase: +$38.00
- Current Market Price: $47.31
Panoptic Mirror is another card that WotC unbanned in Commander on April 22. Like Sway of the Stars, it has only been printed in one set, but unlike Sway it has a good chance of actually winning the game for the player who casts it. (Simply Imprint an extra-turns spell like [Time Warp](product-hover id=”https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/32744/”) from your hand to take infinite turns.)
With plenty of power and a low supply of Near Mint copies, Panoptic Mirror has spiked the hardest of all the newly unbanned Commander cards.
#1 Sauron, the Dark Lord (Borderless Poster)
- Set: Universes Beyond: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth
- Increase: +$100.33
- Current Market Price: $317.53
The Market Prices of the borderless poster cards from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth continue to creep closer toward an accurate assessment of these cards’ values. It’ll take some time yet. These cards don’t sell often, but when they do, they almost invariably go for more than however much the market thought they were worth, so Market Price is always playing catchup to reality. Given the way licensing difficulties make Universes Beyond act like a new version of the Reserved List, we might reasonably expect these cards to keep trending up indefinitely.
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 May 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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