Hello, readers and welcome to the Thursday edition of the Daily Stock Watch! It has been a week of reviews that involved cards that have minimal to no impact in Modern and Standard, and I plan on ending the week by following that trend with today’s feature. It’s another one of those cards that you aren’t really familiar with because it didn’t have much impact back in the day (and even after it left its Standard days), but has seen a reasonable rise in price due to supply shortage.

This card reached its all-time high of $5.05, without actually seeing any competitive air time on any deck, across all formats, based on the Utility Tracker. It is a conditional card at best, and even the unique feature it brings to the table is very mediocre, if you ask me.

In an era where position-less basketball has dominated the hoops scene, Magic has done the same by prying away from the traditional White Weenie versus Green stompy versus Suicide Black days of old, and has since transitioned to a more diverse battlefield that we now know as the “rock-paper-scissors” formats called Modern and Legacy. With this mind, can you imagine a scenario where you would like to have Dolmen Gate in your mainboard or sideboard?

But then again, it could always fit in a casual Commander deck.

It’s not much of a game changer ala Ensnaring Bridge, but it does some cool stuff for you if you’re facing an aggro deck. It gives your creatures that pseudo-protection feeling, allowing your 1/1 crits to be a threat anytime (if you have combat shenanigans) to take out larger opposing creatures. But $5 for this card? I’m not a fan at all.

These cards have gotten expensive over time (and Mesmeric Orb is already slowly creeping to that territory) but they are actually very strong right on the get-go, so we could probably try to pattern our artifact specs after them. I’m quite confident that Dolmen Gates won’t be in that realm anytime soon, but I’d be glad to be proven wrong, otherwise.

At the moment, you could find copies of this card from online stores such as Star City Games, TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom, and Channel Fireball from anywhere between $4.49 up to $6.99. Just like how it was for the foil copies of our yesterday’s Stock Watch card, there’s only a mere $2-$4 dollar difference between the normal and foil copies of Dolmen Gate, which further cements our argument that it is only a casual favorite whose demand is driven by the lack of supply, and the age of the set where it was only printed. Try to cash out now if you could.

And that’s it for the Thursday edition of the Daily Stock Watch! We’ll be taking a break tomorrow, so we’ll see you again next week, as we check out new cards 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!