The Magic: The Gathering card Alchemist’s Talent has shot up in price over the past week. It’s risen from about $5 on the secondary market to $19, a pretty speedy increase of 280%.
There’s an obvious reason why Alchemist’s Talent – and other strong treasure cards like Rain of Riches and Bottle-Cap Blast – are moving up in price. The Hobbit set just came out, and it has three very popular versions of Smaug that all care about treasure.
Alchemist’s Talent is strong in all three of the Smaug decks, and all three have contributed to the spike. But its seeing particular consistent play in Smaug, the Magnificent – where it’s logged in 70% of the decks on EDHREC.
There are a couple of likely reasons why this Smaug wants to utilize the talent of alchemists more than most. For starters, it’s mono-red instead of black-red, so it has a far smaller card pool in general.
But secondly, Alchemist’s Talent’s best effect is to make your treasures twice as effective – they all generate two mana once you hit this class card’s second level. That’s very solid on a commander that is constantly generating treasures, one at a time.
Smaug, the Magnificent wants you to build up a critical mass of treasures as fast as possible, so it’s probably the most treasure-focused version of this set’s commanders. This mana ramp card will therefore help you cast more treasure-making spells more quickly. It also means you won’t need to burn quite so many treasures to cast your spells, helping you maintain a healthier horde with which to hurt your opponents.
This isn’t the first time Alchemist’s Talent has spiked, but the third. It became one of the most expensive cards in Bloomburrow shortly after its release, simply by being one of the better cards you can run in a very popular archetype.
The reason it rose after that – at the very, very end of 2024, is mysterious to me. At first I thought it might have something to do with the Sonic Secret Lair cards, each of which works pretty well with treasures. But, no, in fact these weren’t revealed until halfway through 2025, so it must be Foundations that set the card spiking. Rev, Tithe Extractor is mono-black, so it wasn’t her…. Nope, I’m afraid I’m stumped.
At least this particular spike is less mysterious! Keep an eye on other red or black treasure cards you might happen to own. Odds are, all the best ones are seeing some movement.
Source: Wargamer
