Gustha’s Scepter, a Magic: The Gathering card last printed in 1996, has seen a sudden price spike of 465%. According to MTGGoldfish, its value leapt from $2.30 to $13 between July 24 and July 26. TCGPlayer saw a similar increase, with Gustha’s Scepter going from $1.66 to $6.56 between July 18 and July 26.
Gustha’s Scepter is a zero-mana artifact that you can tap to exile a card face-down. Alternatively, you can tap it to return a card you exiled with Gustha’s Scepter to your hand. If at any point you lose control of Gustha’s Scepter, all the cards you exiled with it are placed in their owner’s graveyards.
Gustha’s Scepter is on the MTG Reserved List, which means supply is low whenever demand climbs. In this case, it looks like demand is being driven by the next set up on the MTG release schedule, Bloomburrow. More specifically, the culprit is a card from Bloomburrow Commander – a foolish frog named Flubs.
Flubs, the Fool is a frog scout that you can use as your MTG Commander. He lets you play an extra MTG land on each of your turns. Additionally, when you play a land or cast a spell, Flubs prompts you to draw a card if you have no cards in your hand. Otherwise, he makes you discard a card.
Optimizing Flubs requires extremely careful management of your hand, and Gustha’s Scepter is a cheap and easy way to do so. You can cast the artifact for zero mana, triggering Flubs’ ability for zero cost. And if you’ve got too many cards on hand to draw, you can temporarily tuck them away by tapping Gustha’s Scepter.
The Bloomburrow MTG set and its Commander products don’t release until August 2. Given that it’s still early days for Bloomburrow, much of the interest in Gustha’s Scepter seems speculative. It’s probably not a coincidence that this Reddit post singing the praises of the Scepter/Flubs synergy was posted right before the spike. “Congrats, y’all bought 257 copies just today, insane”, says one commenter.
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Source: Wargamer
