Magic: The Gathering just dropped one of the biggest announcements that its playerbase has ever seen. The entire 2026 set schedule and 19 different Secret Lairs were all released to the public in one afternoon. Despite this, and an entire Pro Tour taking place during the announcements, MagicCon: Atlanta hasn’t heavily impacted the MTG finance market.
Although some initial movements are occurring, this indifference is rather shocking. Instead of something moving in response to the dozens of new cards revealed, or the Pro Tour results, a group hug card just randomly spiked from $10 to $40 over the weekend.
Avatar of Growth
Avatar of Growth is not an easy card to find. There’s only one printing of Avatar of Growth available, and it originates from the Game Night board game-esque product. Released back in 2019, this product offers players five different mono-colored decks spanning each color. Players can battle one another with balanced decks in a sort of board game experience.
Each deck has one card that, at the time, was exclusive to this product. Three of the exclusive Mythic Rares that originated in this product have since been reprinted. Avatar of Growth is the only Game Night exclusive card that’s still worth more than a few bucks.
In the right deck, Avatar of Growth can be quite powerful in Commander. A three mana 4/4 is already above rate, but ramping two basic lands into play makes Avatar of Growth one of the most efficient ways to ramp in any color. That said, your opponents get to do this too, so you need to build your deck to break the parity that this card offers.
Basically, you need to ensure that your deck can abuse the two lands far more than everyone else can. In a casual setting, this makes Avatar of Growth strong in Landfall decks, including the very popular World Shaper Edge of Eternities Commander preconstructed deck. More lands gives you more potential sacrifice triggers with Hearthhull, the Worldseed, while other Landfall triggers can help you break the parity that Avatar of Growth offers.
On the cEDH side of things, Avatar of Growth is starting to see some success. The card has appeared in some of the controversial new Semi-Blue cEDH decklists. This archetype focuses on winning the game by going all-in on a land-untapping strategy using no interactive spells and cards that are incredibly hard to interact with. Many of the deck’s untapping pieces, like Palinchron, untap more than just one land. These two extra lands from Avatar of Growth can seriously go the distance in this strategy.
All of that said, Avatar of Growth’s results in Semi-Blue are very new and very niche. These are top eight finishes to larger events, which should garner some attention, but the price spike that this card is experiencing is very unlikely to be just a result of some niche demand. The serious lack of supply is the main reason for Avatar of Growth’s spike.
The Spike
Avatar of Growth’s spike started to occur about one week ago. The card was worth $10 before as a testament to its rarity, but all the copies across various markets were quickly snatched up. As demand increased for the card, so did the price, and Avatar of Growth is now selling for $40 on TCGplayer.
That said, the number of purchases for this card at its new value is small. Near Mint copies of Avatar of Growth have all sold for $35 and up over the last few days, but only five copies were moved during this time. The only available listings for the card on TCGplayer are asking for about $50, and other popular American card carriers, like Star City Games and Card Kingdom, are sold out.
While the $40 asking price seems to be very real for Avatar of Growth, there is a lot of skepticism about this spike. This almost certainly feels like a forced buyout in our opinion, which makes this spike feel a bit hollow.
It Might Come Down Quickly
In our opinion, Avatar of Growth does not feel like a $40 card. While there may be some niche demand for it as a result of recent Semi-Blue results, the result of this spike isn’t so much caused by the slight rise in demand, but the lack of supply for Avatar of Growth.
This isn’t the first time that a Magic Game Night card has had an obscene price, mind you. Rot Hulk, another Mythic Rare originally printed in this product, was also very expensive for quite some time, but the source of demand was a lot more believable. This was, and remains, a very popular upgrade to Zombie Typal Commander decks. The card would eventually be reprinted in a Commander precon and in Mystery Booster 2, which was enough to get its market value under a dollar.
The same thing may happen to Avatar of Growth. Should this card see a reprint in a future preconstructed Commander deck, there will be more than enough supply to satiate the limited demand this card experiences. Even without a reprint, there’s a non-zero chance that Avatar of Growth will start dropping in price. If players are unwilling to pay these inflated prices, the card should start to drop as owners want to move their copies. There is a very real chance that Avatar of Growth’s demand does continue, however, despite our opinion that it won’t. As always, it’s impossible to truly tell the future, but for $40, we would pass on Avatar of Growth, unless you want to try the card in Semi-Blue yourself.
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