The MTG card Reparations has seen an enormous price spike in the past week, jumping from $3.40 to $25 in just seven days. This Reserved List card, from the old 1996 set Mirage, is an Azorius enchantment that lets you draw a card whenever an opponent successfully casts a spell targeting you or your creatures.
Usually at this point, we look at what new combo, MTG commander, or card interaction from the latest MTG set is behind the price shift. Could there be some new enchantment control deck running around in an old eternal format?
Nope. In this case there’s no interesting interaction to highlight, as this Magic card seems to have spiked purely for the memes.
This happened because last week, major Magic: The Gathering Twitch streamer PayMoneyWubby was talking about the handful of banned Magic cards, like Invoke Prejudice, which were cut for being offensive.
He joked that Reparations would be the next card on the MTG banlist for similar reasons, and that fans should buy the card now before it was banned.
We can see where he was coming from. From the satirical irreverent humor in its flavor text, to the races of the characters depicted, to the political connotations of the word ‘reparations’, the card certainly courts controversy – though obviously, it’s unlikely Wizards would go back now to readjudicate bans for unplayed cards on the MTG Reserved List.
What Wubby didn’t expect was for his fans to buy up every copy of Reparations on the secondary market, sending its price skyrocketing upwards. On the PayMoneyWubby subreddit, folks are treating it like the new Gamestop, encouraging each other to hold, or bragging about the number of cards they purchased, and the inflated price they paid for them.
In a more recent livestream, PayMoneyWubby has addressed online accusations that this was deliberate market manipulation, a ‘pump and dump’ scheme. “I own a total of three, two or three near-mint copies of Reparations,” he told his audience.
“The amount of money I could make from even owning thousands of Reparations… I don’t know why you guys think I would risk my career for a few grand.”
The chances of Reparations maintaining the high price it currently commands is almost nil. If you’ve got some good-quality copies lying around, you won’t find a better time to sell ’em than this.
For more regular price spikes and stories about expensive MTG cards, check out this cheap common boosted by an infinite combo, or another old card that’s on the rise.
Source: Wargamer
