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Yawgmoth's Bargain

{4}{B}{B} • Enchantment • Skip your draw step. Pay 1 life: Draw a card. • Urza's Destiny (UDS) #75 • Illustrated by Michael Sutfin • Magic:

Yawgmoth's Bargain is banned in commander and legacy. This would be a completely different conversation if this card was legal in those formats. The card is absurdly powerful, but is it good enough to banned alongside the power nine? Is yawgmoth's bargain as good as a mox or a black lotus? Most people would argue that while Yawgmoth's Bargain is an extremely broken card it is not quite in the same tier as many other cards banned in legacy or commander. I should note that while there are many cards on the reserved list that are banned, very few are banned because they are simply too good to be played. Some reserved list cards are banned because they reference ante while other cards have issues in tournament play. For instance, dexterity cards and cards that trigger a subgame are banned because they cause headaches and confusion in official tournaments. Yawgmoth's Bargain does not have this issue so why can't you play it? Surely, newer cards like dockside extortionist or jeska's will are just as powerful so why does the bargain sit on the banned list while my goblin makes me 20 treasures? Undoubtedly, yawgmoth's bargain is potent. One card for one life has always been an exchange that I would pay all day everyday. Yet many cards offer that rate. Necropotence is not banned in commander and even the new necrodominance offers a similar effect for modern. Both of those cards only cost 3 mana while Yawgmoth's bargain costs double that! Six mana is a huge investment and a player really needs to be able to cast the bargain early. You can not drop this on turn six and then just pass, even with a fresh grip of cards. However, this card has always benefited from combos and synergy. You can bury the opponents in card advantage but you are more likely to combo out using this reserved list card to find your combos. Getting access to the cards immediately is a major upside and should not be underestimated. The one life payment is negligible but ensures you can not just draw your entire deck without another combo piece. Otherwise, you could just play this, draw your deck, and cast thassa's oracle. Speaking of the oracle, is yawgmoth's bargain really stronger than the demonic consultation/oracle combo? I do think that yawgmoth's bargain has a legitimate chance of getting unbanned one day. The game has evolved since the card first landed on the ban list. The card would still see a tremendous amount of play but I do not see it warping formats. Black decks might run it as a generic staple draw spell but how much better is it than phrexian arena if you are using it purely as a draw engine. Even as a combo piece, this card is 6 mana. The skipping your draw step is also not really a drawback when you can draw at anytime for one life. In fact, the card gets around nekusar and sheoldred. Currently, the card is around ten dollars in price. That is actually quite a lot for a card that can not be played in most formats. There has always been speculation surrounding this card, though, as everyone always believes this card is about to get unbanned. The card was over 5 dollars even in 2017, so this card was not bulk even before the reserved list buyouts of 2018 and 2021. Even so, the card was below 2 bucks before 2017. Of course, the card has been banned long before significant price data was calculated. In 2021, the card did go to almost fifty dollars but a banned card just can not keep that price tag. What are you playing it in? Albeit, some reserved list cards have a high price due to scarcity and not playability but I can still put those cards in decks even if they are not very good. Today, you can get the card for about 10 dollars. I have a few copies that I got in 2015 for very little and I will hold those cards until the day the card finally is liberated off of the banned list. On that day, the price of this card will rocket to the moon. I should also note that this card is one of the few reserved list cards with a foil version. The foil version is about 150 dollars which is a big discrepancy between foil and nonfoil.

Infernal Tribute

Infernal Tribute (WTH) #73 • Low: $1.73, Average: $3.74, Market: $3.71 • Weatherlight • Magic: The Gathering, MTG

This card is almost four dollars. Not only that, this card was one of the most purchased reserved list cards of the weeks so there is actual purchases involving this card. I do not know what card or strategy caused people to take a look at infernal tribute but the card is decent and playable in commander. Black gets a lot of cards with drawbacks, specifically creatures and enchantments, and infernal tribute can get rid of those permanents for you should those drawbacks get out of hand. It even draws you a card! Yes, you have to pay 2 mana but you can do it at instant speed and it is not limited to once per turn. The triple black in the casting cost means that you are in heavy black but devotion cards such as grey merchant of asphodel turn that into a benefit. Sure, this card is no necropotence and it can not sacrifice tokens, but this is a mediocre sacrifice and draw engine in one card. In edh you actually want this in Lynde cheerful tormentor curse decks. It is actually quite viable in that niche deck and I can see a need for this card in other decks in the future. You can sacrifice any nontoken permanent which is not an ability that black gets in high quantities. There are some enchantment decks in abzan that may consider infernal tribute. Anikthea hand of erebros, narci fable singer, and myrkul lord of bones all have some synergies with enchantments and sacrifice so the theme is currently viable in edh. I am actually surprised infernal tribute does not see more play in those decks. Perhaps the attention on it and increase sales will lead to it being played in more decks. The card has spiked before. The card experienced a high in the early part of 2021 and was 25 dollars. However, even in 2018 the card was almost five bucks so there has always been some early speculation on this card because of its limited playability. Bloomburrow does have a golgari food and token theme which involves a subtheme of sacrificing tokens so is that the reason people seem to be speculating on this card now? Will the price reach its 2018 values? If you know why infernal tribute is seeing some new attention on it please let me know.

{2}{G}{G} • Creature — Spirit • 3/4 • When Liege of the Hollows dies, each player may pay any amount of mana. Then each player creates a num

Unlike Deranged hermit, liege of the hollows has a recorded price record of below fifty cents in 2013. That means there was a time that this card was true bulk. Did you purchase your copies when they were under a buck? If you did then you could probably sell them for ten dollars or more right now. Even so, the card was almost fifty bucks during the reserved list spikes of 2021. After the crash the card settled at about 5 dollars and it has not been true bulk since then. Possibly it will never be bulk again. Why? First, Mark Rosewater is a huge promoter for the squirrel creature type. On blogatog, Mark Rosewater even has a squirrel named Sally that functions as an avatar and answers questions. Bloomburrow is also going to be released at the end of the month so there is a lot of hype for the ten supported animal tribes in the set. Squirrel is one of those tribes and even got a commander deck that has a squirrel theme. There have also been a number of typal squirrel commanders so people are anxious to build different squirrel decks. Will liege of the hollows make the cut in these decks? I do not think the liege is an absolute staple in squirrel decks but flexing older reserved list cards in your deck is certainly a choice you can make. The squirrel cards I'm bloomburrow support a food archetype but many of the cards support tokens in general which could mean either food tokens or squirrel tokens. Liege of the hollows makes squirrel tokens so it fits the token theme of bloomburrow. However, liege of the hollows takes work. You need a sacrifice outlet so you can maximize the number of tokens you can make. It is not fun if your opponent destroys your liege when you have no available mana. It is even worse if they have a ton of open mana and make tokens using your card. I normally do not like double edged cards like this especially since squirrels do not have a strong sacrifice theme. Albeit, you can build a squirrel deck with a sac theme as food tokens need to be sacrificed to utilize. Both food decks and squirrel decks will be eating food after this set! Liege of the Hollows has a plethora of new commanders that this card can slot into. Hazel of the rootbloom and the odd acorn game could both include the liege and it would perform decently in either deck. These cards just got revealed alongside the squirrel commander deck so it is not a surprise that squirrel related cards are spiking. I expect the cards to settle after the hype for these new toys dies down. I would be remiss to not mention chatterfang or toski as other homes for liege of the hollows. Even in the bloomburrow main set you have a typal squirrel commander. I just saw a spoiler for a commander that gives all squirrels menace. Yes, attention is currently on these guys but how long will they stay in the spotlight? Is liege of the hollows a flash in the pan or will the price hold and go up even more?

Ygra Eater of All Seeds of Innocence.

Seeds of Innocence (MIR) #241 • Low: $10.87, Average: $13.36, Market: $10.55 • Mirage • Magic: The Gathering, MTG

Apparetly, ygra eater of all, from bloomburrow is the reason that Seeds of Innocence, a reserved list card, is experiencing a spike. I don't see it. I still think bird typal reserved list cards should be spiking before the release of bloomburrow. Also, ygra turns all other creatures into artifact foods. That means this card will wipe all your creatures (except for Ygra) as well as your opponents. Ygra would be gigantic and this might be enough to kill one player with commander damage. Getting rid of all your opponents' food also makes the ward more relevant. I guess this synergy is just enough for some genuine demand. Does this mean seeds of innocence stabilizes at a higher price? It is increasing in price and it is approaching its 2021 spike price. However, it is still far from its forty dollar high. I suspect this card will probably be a ten dollar card going forward. I doubt we will ever see this card below five dollars again. I feel like this card was going to spike as soon as a new commander could really take advantage of it. Will another commander with similar synergy much this card even higher?

Why hasn't this card spiked? If any reserved list card is going up in value, it would make sense for it to be this one. Why? Bloomburrow is a set that focuses on ten different animal creature types. Bird is the major animal for blue/white so you can expect many new birds to enter the game. While bloomburrow is not a fully typal set there are some typal cards sprinkled throughout the animal kingdom. That means birds are receiving tribal support for the first time in many years. Birds are quite popular so I would expect the number of bird commander decks to increase after the release of bloomburrow. After all, there are bound to be some bird commanders and one or more of these commanders may support the tribe. Typically, there is at least one commander that blatantly screams at you to play birds. Soraya the falconer is a legendary creature so it can function as a mono white bird commander. A lord effect for all birds and the threat of banding is decent for the 3 mana cost. Having a lord in your command zone firmly establishes you as a bird typal deck but this card also functions quite well in the 99 of any bird deck. The cost is at an acceptable rate and the power level is borderline. If you are making a kastral the windcrested deck when bloomburrow comes out don't you just throw in the falconer? I will admit that I am dissapointed in some of the bird support in bloomburrow. Many of the bird cards support cards WITHOUT flying. That is dissapointing as most birds fly so those support cards clash with a bird decks overall strategy. I will note that this creature does not fly so that actually adds further use for this card. Even so, did birds get the short end of the stick just to make limited playable? How do people feel about this choice? People have looked at this reserved list card in the past. If players were currently interested in vintage Magic then eyes would fall on soraya the falconer. Instead, people don't even pick up reserved list bulk when it synergizes with the latest set anymore. Aside from a spike in 2021, the card also had attention on it as early as 2018. Today, the card is less than two dollars even with so many bird cards being spoiled. This is not the first time that birds have had the spotlight. There was also some bird support in invasion and flying and bird support has been sprinkled throughout the history of the game. Will this be the next reserved list card to spike in 2024? Is this card just one bloomburrow spoiler away from being the next market hit? Why hasn't anyone attempted to manipulate the reserved list bulk market? Perhaps that person could be you?

Narwhal (Continued)

Narwhal (HML) #35 • Low: $0.48, Average: $1.2, Market: $0.92 • Homelands • Magic: The Gathering, MTG

According to mtgstocks, Narwhal reached it price peak in June 2016. This is unusual as most reserved list cards have a price peak in 2021. While narwhal did spike again in 2021, it was not as much as in 2016. In 2021, narwhal only reached a market high of about 6 dollars. Did everyone ignore narwhal in 2021 because it had previously, and knowingly, been targeted years earlier? Did people think that reserved list bulk that had never spiked was a safer bet in 2021? What would happen if I bought 2000 copies of narwhal today? Would the card spike again or would people remember the meme and think that market manipulation was happening again. Would narwhal have held its price tag if it saw play in commander? Today, I can find copies of narwhal for a dollar or less. Would the card be 10 cents if not for the attention placed on this card? Is narwhal worth one dollar right now or it is worth more? Less? Regardless, it is important to understand the history of this card. This was an example of a reserved list spike created by people who want to manipulate the mtg market. Are all reserved list spikes just market manipulation? Do people just sell reserved list cards back and forth to each other? While the market can be manipulated, this is not always the case. However, do not buy into the hype. Do not fall for fomo. Do not buy a card when its hot or spiking. If you wanted the card you would already own the card. When I see a bulk card spike, I think that I lost my oppurtunity or window and I hope that card crashes. If it crashes and returns to near its original price then I pick up a few copies simply because if someone had eyes on the card once, someone else may take another look later. However, sometimes you need to accept that certain reserved list cards are no longer at a price worth paying.

Narwhal

{2}{U}{U} • Creature — Whale • 2/2 • First strike, protection from red • Masters Edition II (ME2) #57 • Illustrated by David A. Cherry • Mag

Narwhal is a meme. It is a very old meme from back in 2016 and many have forgotten the history of this card. However, its importance in discussions about reserved list bulk and buyouts deserves to be recorded. After all, if we do not know our history we may be doomed to repeat it. In 2016, there were some amount of reserved list buyouts. Particularly, some cards were being purchased seemingly without reason. Typically, a reserved list card spikes in price because of natural demand. Maybe a new card comes out that synergizes perfectly with a reserved list card. Perhaps, a newly released set creates a strong two card infinite combo in commander or some other format. These scenarios sometimes trigger reserved list spikes because there is genuine demand as players jam the latest hot commodity into a deck. 2016 was the first time I saw some reserved list market movement that seemed to be based on manipulation rather than legitimate demand. It is possible that this was the year where it finally clicked that reserved list cards were in limited supply. Reserved list cards can never be reprinted but many reserved list cards were already approaching twenty years old. There was some concern that a group of people or a very wealthy individual would buy up all the bulk on the reserved list for pennies each. Even if there was no desire for any of the reserved list cards currently, some people knew that buying thousands of copies of a card for fifty cents could be very profitable even if those cards only ever reached a maximum of ten dollars per copy. Some people chose to cast their net very wide and buy reserved list cards despite playability or demand. The thought was that reserved list cards would all eventually rise in price due to scarcity and collectability rather than demand or playability. Some people had more discretion and only bought reserved list cards that they thought had potential playability in the long term. Do not forget that every card in the game just needs a single powerful interaction to skyrocket in price. Cards with unique or unusual effects also had strong speculation but there are clearly some reserved list cards that just don't do anything. Narwhal is one such card. For 4 mana you get a 2/2 with first strike and protection from red. Notably, first strike is considered a color pie break in blue but this is not a sufficient reason to play it. The flavor is awesome though! How are you attacking first with that huge horn in the way? How are you casting that fireball on my creature that is under water? The reason I bring all of this up is because in 2016 a youtube personality, formerly called mtglion, started buying out narwhals and then discussing it on his youtube channel. I am not sure if those old videos are still on his youtube channel but he is still active under the new name: UMU. His goal was not to break the market and spike narwhals so he could become rich. Instead, he wanted to see how easily a single individual could manipulate the market of reserved list bulk. Mtglion openly stated that he was buying out copies of narwhal to see the reaction. It was a meme. The card was selected because the probability that the card would ever have genuine demand due to playability was astronomically low. Instead, narwhals are cute, silly little animals and everyone loves those guys. Does anyone remember that episode of Futurama with the narwhals? Would people finally see that reserved list cards are an investment that will go up? Would people get scared that the reserved list was entering the hands of investors looking to pump but not dump? Would certain people hold a monopoly on certain reserved list cards completely controlling the market? At first, the price of narwhal did go up. In June 2016, a single near mint copy of Narwhal was almost ten dollars! That is insane for a card with artificial demand created by someone openly stating that they are manipulating the market. One person literally did move the market and he did not even need thousands of dollars to do it.

{3}{G}{G} • Creature — Elf • 1/1 • Echo {3}{G}{G} (At the beginning of your upkeep, if this came under your control since the beginning of y

Mtgstocks has price data on cards from 2013 forward. A lot of price data before this era has been lost to time. For some reserved list cards price lows do not accurately reflect reality as data may not exist from the 90s and early 2000s. I know that deranged hermit must have been a bulk rare at one point but mtgstocks has the lowest price point for this card at five dollars. That means even in 2013 this card was not true bulk. It has held a price point of over five dollars for the entire history that prices has been tracked. The card has also never dipped below 5 dollars during this time. Thus, deranged hermit was always a mid tier reserved list card. There are many reasons for this. First, squirrels are Mark Rosewater's favorite creature type. He fought for years to get squirrels back into black border and has been a major ally for these little guys. Even when squirrels were considered too silly for tournament magic, Rosewater put Squirrel support in an unset. With the head designer publicly fighting this hard for squirrels, is it any wonder that there has been much speculation over this card for many years? Deranged hermit is a decent card as well. For 5 mana you are getting 5 bodies. If you pay the echo cost thanks to the lord ability you are getting 4 2/2 squirrels and the hermit. That rate is fair and even if you do not pay the echo cost you still get the pump until your next turn. This card can function as both an army in a can and a miniature overrun all in one. Modern horizons 2 brought back squirrels in force and the support was at a higher power level since the cards were from a direct to modern product. This fact combined with the reserved list spikes of 2021 created an interesting event, in which, for a short time, deranged hermit, was a penny away from 300 dollars for a near mint copy. That is an insane price for any card. Had squirrels become a legitimate deck in modern, deranged hermit, may have kept a large price tag but 300 dollars was an exaggeration. Modern horizons 2 did have a prominent golgari squirrel commander in chatterfang, but one edh deck was not enough to sustain that price. The hype eventually died down and the reserved list crashed and soon deranged hermit plummeted back down. Bloomburrow has brought more attention to deranged hermit. The set has a prominent squirrel theme and squirrels is the main animal tribe in golgari colors. Furthermore, squirrels have a token theme associated with food. Deranged hermit produces squirrel tokens so the themes do intersect. Will 2024 be a repeat of 2021? Will the card spike to a ridiculous price only to retrace when the hype for bloomburrow dies down? Is this just a buyout because many investors see that players are showing an interest in squirrels again? Time will tell. I have a single copy of this card that I bought for about 6 dollars. I always wanted more copies but the card has never been true bulk so I never moved in on the card. I believe the window has closed. I do not believe we will see deranged hermits for less than 10 dollars moving forward even after attention is on the next flavor of the month. I would not pick up a copy for more than fifteen. I do think the price will eventually go down before stabilizing. I wonder if bloomburrow will cause any other reserved list animal cards to spike? I would speculate on bird support as there are some birds and flying matters cards on the reserved list. There is also another squirrel support card on the reserved list that has some upward movement but it seems like deranged hermit is the big winner with this set.

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