Top 5: Cards to Buy, Sell, or Hold in September 2023

Wilds of Eldraine has been legal for a few weeks now, which makes it the perfect time to look at how the prices have shaped up. While the set has only added choice tools to Modern or Pioneer, it has changed the landscape of Standard. Let's take a look at the hottest items on a Magic player's buy list!

Hold/Sell: Flame of Anor

Let me start off with a non-Eldraine card that has made waves in Modern. was supercheap upon release, around €2 apiece. This price was already driven by players' hopes that a proper Wizards strategy would come out of it. So many people were waiting to sleeve up their again.

At the Pro Tour in Barcelona, decks with started playing it as a versatile anti-hate card that, if there were no hate cards to combat, could just draw two cards. Not long after, Jeskai Breach strategies adopted the card as well.

flame of anor

It has been steadily going up from €2 to even €8, quadrupling in price. While it's too late to jump on Anor's hype train now, one can still gain value by acknowledging that it's approaching its peak.

I'd liquidize the copies I have now at €8 or maybe hold to spike it at €10. However, you need to be extremely careful to notice when the trend is going down. It is a type of card that could stop seeing play as soon as Rhinos go back to five colors, for example, and Jeskai Breach ditches the Wizards build.

Temur Rhinos, Modern
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Jeskai Rona Breach by Wojciech Grabowski, 1st at Paprykarz Open Qualifier
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Hold/Sell: Agatha's Soul Cauldron

This might genuinely be the biggest surprise of the new set. had players brewing in Standard with some potential cute interactions and hopefully proper combos, but it has actually broken through in Modern! At the very beginning, Golgari Yawgmoth was identified as the deck closest to make Cauldron playable. When your has 's abilities, or allows you to perform the proper combo without Yawgmoth on the field, there has to be something there. Indeed Yawgmoth has adopted this tool in varied numbers main, giving the deck a new unique angle of redundancy.

An even more obvious choice was lurking underneath the surface. Which deck has a lot of activated abilities and counters? Scales! A fan-favorite strategy that hasn't been able to properly showcase its power at the top tables. Now, it just might! I have also seen attempts at Cauldron in blue shells, featuring and .

agatha's soul cauldron

With so much use for the card, it's not shocking that it increased in price. What is interesting though is that it went from around €15 to over €30 in a single month! As clearly portrayed in the picture, the price has stagnated and everything seems to indicate it's going to stay so.

I'd sell them off right now at €30 or potentially wait for even more Cauldron-driven decks to pop up to bump the price another tad. As far as I am concerned, even with a few more takes on the card, it is not going to go much higher than what it is now.

Golgari Yawgmoth, Modern
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Hardened Scales, Modern
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Sell: Beseech the Mirror

On the opposite end of Agatha's spectrum, we've got . It was easily the most hyped card out of the set, the initial price of €30 a testament to its potential. It even spiked to a nice €42 at one point but has been declining ever since.

I was personally lucky enough to have liquidized my prerelease copy very fast, as I'd otherwise be down a couple euros. However, as a wise saying goes: "The best time to do it was a month ago, the second best time is now."

beseech the mirror

While it has some potential in Legacy combo decks and has been tried in Modern shells, it has largely disappointed. Even Monoblack Coffers, a deck that seems tailor-made for the card, runs a mere two copies. I don't think holding onto it is going to provide any profit, and buying into it now would just be overpaying.

Monoblack Coffers, Modern
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Buy: Up the Beanstalk

Hear me out. I know it's an uncommon, so advice recommending to buy it up does not seem reasonable. Here's the twist though. I believe it's worth it to buy into foil copies of . There are three main reasons why.

up the beanstalk

First of all, played uncommons, despite their low base price, are frequently sought after by aficionados, EDH players, and cube owners. Second, Up the Beanstalk is already played a good bit in Modern decks. And if I know one thing about Omnath players, it is that they love pimping out their already mind-bogglingly expensive deck, especially with foils. Last but not least, the price graph reflects that the card is going nowhere but up … the beanstalk.

Four-Color Omnath, Modern
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Buy: Virtue of Persistence

After its high initial price started at €12, it has gone down to around €8. is a mythic removal spell with a steady reanimation effect attached to its non-Adventure seven-mana half. I have been playing a good deal of Standard and Virtue is a card that is almost worth building around on its own.

It is a removal spell that gains life. An effect like that shines in a metagame filled with a plethora of red and white aggressive strategies, which it currently is. The seven-mana mode absolutely breaks games that go long. The player with Virtue is massively advantaged over the player without it.

virtue of persistence

Seeing that the price is slowly picking up again, I would happily order at least four copies to have them at the ready to play with. I wouldn't be surprised if some Pioneer decks adopt it as well, even if it's just one or two copies.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, not of Cardmarket.