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Hello, everyone and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! Ravnica Allegiance is arriving soon, and a good chunk of the spoilers has already arrived. I honestly think that the set is underwhelming so far as it tries to give so much emphasis to guild colors and the synergies that they have. One card that has been the beneficiary of these pre-release price spikes is what I'll be featuring today.
It's hard to defend the good in this card after how horribly it has performed financially during its entire existence in the world of Magic. A four CMC creature with no evasion and a measly 1/1 body is by all means a liability at any given time in a perfect world where pace of attacking with creatures and removals are plenty abound. Despite being a mythic rare, Elenda, the Dusk Rose barely found its niche even in Commander, where they might only be minimal interest in foil copies of the card. Two weeks to the release of the new set, why is this card suddenly a $15 spec with almost no solid reason to back up that claim?
Outside of this card, I don't see any other reason why Orzhov would even bother considering building around Elenda. There are no solid sacrifice outlets that could abuse it in a tokens build besides Pitiless Pontiff, and even this one is not that good because you'd have to have mana to be able to work with any sacrifice shenanigans. People just find it hard to move on from something successful, as this combination could somewhat make a case that's reminiscent of the Aristocrats deck way back in 2013. Almost six years removed from that deck's success, are we staring at a possible reincarnation of it, or are we just trying to salvage a spec failure so badly?
Looking at Elenda's price history via MTGStocks would tell you that this price spike is purely driven by two things: hype and a selective buyout. Upon checking various online stores such as TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and StarCityGames, we could already see that stocks are already dry and this has been the primary reason why card prices are easily manipulated by new stocks via TCGPlayer. This is one of the few occasions where you could wear your detective hat and just figure out what's driving this price mad. I'll give you a heads up and tell you that right now, StarCityGames is buying normal copies of the card for $6, and paying $8 for the PR foil and normal foil of it. Card Kingdom is paying higher at $9.50 for normal copies, and up to $14.50 for foil PR copies and $13 for the normal ones. All I'm going to tell you right now is that sell this card while you still can, because I just can't see any possible reasons for this price to hold in the coming days once the full spoiler is out. I don't think that there will be another sacrifice outlet that functions just like Phyrexian Altar since they have already made one that's on-theme with the vampire clan, and doing so would considerably tilt the balance to more combo-esque approaches that negates the guild-themed concept of Ravnica Allegiance.
But then again, I could be wrong and WotC could just do something like printing something of that caliber. That would certainly make Elenda a tier one spec. Just to be safe, sell to the hype right now and make profit out of it. Even selling at buylist price is a good idea in my opinion, but you could always try letting go at what price the market commands. A win-win situation that would net you profit that you never expected at all.
And that’s it for today’s edition of the Daily Stock Watch! See you again next time, as we check out a new card that should be on the go, or good enough for speculating. As always, feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. And if you want to keep up with all the market movement, be sure to check in with the QS Discord Channel for real time market information, and stay ahead of the hottest specs!
