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Hello, everyone and welcome to a new week of the Daily Stock Watch! Unstable hit the market over the weekend, and I'm not so sure how the Commander players are embracing the legality of the silver-bordered cards in the format. I don't think it's a safe venture to get involved in that market, but the great Sigmund Ausfresser got that covered here, so we'll stick to our regular segment and feature an actual card that's on the move due to Commander demand.
Our card for the day is Dictate of Erebos
This was one of the cards that I speculated on from Journey into Nyx before I took a hiatus from Magic. I remember buying normal copies of this card for under a dollar, and I eventually ended up selling them for the same price, along with my other bulk cards, when I decided it was time to take a break from the game. Today, it just hit its all-time high of $4.99, and you should be very excited if you're one of those people that have kept their copies in up to date.
It's no co-incidence that another card that has the same effect in Grave Pact also hit its all-time high just recently, so I started to wonder where else these cards are being used besides Commander. Based on the Utility Checker, there are no traces of both cards in Legacy or Modern, so this means that the spike is driven by EDH demand alone. It's quite popular in a deck that looks just like this:
Meren, of Clan Nel Toth
My creature dies, then so does yours. Wash, rinse, repeat.
This deck is pretty much all about punishing your opponents creatures using your kamikazee crits that will still return to play or your hand via Meren, of Clan Nel Toth. Seeing Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos beside each other is a scary sight to behold, and it seems that we will be seeing more of this tag team in the future.
The Other Dictates
I like the chances that cards built around the same concept, ala Leylines and Commands, would see some financial gains in the future. From this batch, I think Dictate of Kruphix or Dictate of Karametra could be next in line, but it won't be as high as this spike from Dictate of Erebos. But then again, Magic has proven that we could always be wrong about any card.
At the moment, online stores such as Star City Games, TCGPlayer, Channel Fireball, and Card Kingdom have copies listed at $5.98 up to $6.99. If you're not particularly choosy with your collection, you could grab Japanese versions via TCGPlayer for $3.79 while supplies last. I think that this upward trend will continue for a while, so it might be best to grab your copies now for $5 or less if that's possible. I won't be surprised if this card hits $10 in the coming months, so get yours now while the supplies are high. Journey into Nyx wasn't really a popular set, so the demand might be higher in the long run. I'd stay away from foils from now, but you should be fine if you could get them for $8-$10.
And that’s it for the Monday edition of the Daily Stock Watch! See you again tomorrow, as we check out a new card that should be on the go, or good enough for speculating. As always, feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. And if you want to keep up with all the market movement, be sure to check in with the QS Discord Channel for real time market information, and stay ahead of the hottest specs!
I don’t know if people should buy foreign cards for EDH. There’s a reason they are cheaper…it’s a pain in the butt to explain what cards do a bunch of times (usually to newer players). As for Dictate of Erebos itself, I’ve been a fan of this since it was in standard (in fact I advocated buying them when they were $1 and I myself purchased something like 40 copies around $1.50-$1.80) for the same reasons as you’ve outlined below. The biggest risk is reprint and with WoTC pumping out more and more products each year I think it’s wisest to make your profits while you can.
Being reprinted is the number one reason why the value of cards dip, more often than not. I’m not sure if this would come out in RIX, and I don’t think this would get the nod in Masters 25. I think there’s room for the card to grow even for just a while. But then again, I’d suppose they would probably reprint Grave Pact before Dictate of Erebos, so I wouldn’t mind hanging on to my copies for a little longer, especially since I didn’t invest much on them. And I’m also with you on the use of foreign cards for EDH, but I know some people in my community who would rather have foreign cards than English ones, and be glad to explain what they do each and everytime a newbie comes across it. I’d stick to English for profit purposes, but I just gave other people an idea on where they could get cheaper versions of the card.