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Daily Stock Watch – Thing in the Ice

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Hello, readers and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! The year is about to end and we're about to enter December with the much awaited arrival of Ultimate Masters, and we couldn't be more excited with the financial impact it's going to have across all formats once the set's released. A select few of these cards will see some price gains while a majority of it will see its price drop because of supply increase. Like what I've always talked about in the past and believed in when it comes to reprints, I'm going to have the same approach with these newly reprinted cards and its "allies", or cards that will gain more financially in their arrival. For today's segment though, I'm going to talk about one of the biggest gainers in Modern that we didn't actually see coming.


This card used to be a household name back in the day in both Midrange and Control strategies that fiddled with a lot of spells to win games. Its all-time high was $17.85, and it's now back to $12.50 after spending a majority of the last two years at below $5. A lot of this could be attributed to the success of Arclight Phoenix in both Standard and Modern, as it just gave Thing in the Ice // Awoken Horror a new lease of life in this new UR based strategy.

This deck kinda looks like a Standard one at first glance, but it's hard to deny the power level of the phoenix and the new drake from Guilds of Ravnica. Both are very consistent at what they are supposed to do, and the cheap spells from Modern led by Faithless Looting gives them so much power to operate in both quick or dragging games. The deck was so cleverly built with the right amount of cantrips that allows you to operate at a tempo that favors you, and it helps that you have Thing in the Ice // Awoken Horror to hold the fort in early games from aggression. If your opponent is unable to answer it though, they could simply be staring at a giant threat that could finish the game in one fell swoop along with a number of Arclight Phoenix that you've buried in your graveyard. I've yet to see solid results for this deck so I wouldn't be fascinated by something that looks very promising in paper. We've seen a lot of cards spike and not produce results in the long run. Just think of Pelt Collector and Vexing Devil for comparison purposes.

Thing in the Ice Crew

These cards thaw the sleeping horror that's been frozen solid inside that two mana, harmless-looking defender. It also allows the deck to be flexible and threatening after boarding, as you could just about insert any possible threats in the future renditions of the deck. This promising prospect alone should keep the interest pretty high for Thing in the Ice in the long run. I wouldn't be too keen on investing on it right now but it would help if you could get some for just a little over its earlier price.

At the moment, StarCityGames and Card Kingdom are both out of stock of Thing in the Ice, but you could still find a lot of it via TCGPlayer for as low as $10.10. I don't see foil copies of this card as a premium, but it would be a good buy at $15 or less right now. If you're really into trying the deck, I'd say that you could grab those copies from TCGPlayer, but otherwise, don't buy in for spec purposes. It would hurt a lot if you get buried with a number of copies that would be hard to move if it doesn't succeed too much in the long run.

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!

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